Rufino de Aquilea
Origen also composed a "Commentary on the Song of Songs", in which he took explicit care to explain why the Song of Songs was relevant to a Christian audience. The "Commentary on the Song of Songs" was Origen's most celebrated commentary and Jerome famously writes in his preface to his translation of two of Origen's homilies over the Song of Songs that "In his other works, Origen habitually excels others. In this commentary, he excelled himself." Origen expanded on the exegesis of the Jewish Rabbi Akiva, interpreting the Song of Songs as a mystical allegory in which the bridegroom represents the Logos and the bride represents the soul of the believer. This was the first Christian commentary to expound such an interpretation and it became extremely influential on later interpretations of the Song of Songs. Despite this, the commentary now only survives in part through a Latin translation of it made by Tyrannius Rufinus in 410. Fragments of some other commentaries survive. Citations in Origen's "Philokalia" include fragments of the third book of the commentary on Genesis. There is also Ps. i, iv.1, the small commentary on Canticles, and the second book of the large commentary on the same, the twentieth book of the commentary on Ezekiel, and the commentary on Hosea. Of the non-extant commentaries, there is limited evidence of their arrangement.