Peccata Lectionis: Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Memory in a Deconstructive Reading of the Targum to Song of Songs

This study examines the deconstruction of the Targum to Song of Songs, focusing on how binary oppositions and traditional interpretive frameworks are both challenged and reconfigured. While the targumists aim to prevent a potentially ‘sinful reading’ of the text, their interventions paradoxically recreate the possibility of a reading that could be considered ‘sinful’. They break down the boundaries between the spiritual and the physical, and question the identity, number, and gender of the participants in the love relationship. In the Targum, the classical narrative structure is also deconstructed. Chronology and causality yield to traditional memory and consciousness, producing a repetitive, fragmented, mosaic-like pattern unlike conventional narratives. Moreover, a semantic layer already shaped by context and in dialogue with the meaning of the textual antecedent enters the interpretive horizon of tradition, reinforcing the prominence of ambiguity—similarly to the base poetic text. The targumic deconstruction illuminates the relativity of concepts and meanings and highlights the flexible interpretive possibilities inherent in tradition. It not only liberates the conceptions within the text but also frees the reader from constraints imposed by binary hierarchies of value. The conceptual liberation leads to the realization that God and the relationship with God cannot be approached or described in earthly terms.