Raphaela Swadosch

The song of songs as a contribution to the radicalisation of the idea of relationship a study of the resonance relations of the Song of Songs

In this dissertation the Old Testament Song of Songs (SoS) is methodically prepared with the sociological theory of resonance according to H. Rosa for two different readings and interpreted as an expression of self-world-relations. The resonance theory is prepared as a hermeneutic key, which allows to describe the SoS as a point of departure and destination of succeeding radical-relational self-world-relations. This radical relationality, shows up in the transformation of the self and the co-variance of the world. It goes beyond the social context of the lovers described in the SoS and includes their entire (surrounding) world in their relationship. These world relations are captured by an adapted constellational concept of person in a biblical anthropological reading and combined with the resonant reference fields. Applying a resonance-theoretically prepared understanding of eroticism and the resonance parameters of unavailability, affect, response relation, self-efficacy expectation, and transformation, the resonant relations of the SoS are examined and described by means of precise textual analyses. In the analysis, an interpretive surplus of the SoS emerges. This is methodically captured in a further step by combining resonance and eroticism with a canonical reading of the SoS. This illustrates that the interpersonal dynamics of love as they are depicted in their diversity in the SoS, as a whole, serve as a reference to God's way of loving. Three thematic areas of relationship formation become discernible through the canonical reading of the SoS, which can be presented in resonance-theoretical terms as: Passion as Erotic Affection, Relational Suffering as Repulsive Experience, and Restoration of Relationship as Transformational Process.