Sources Chrétiennes dxxiii contains the second part of the commentary on the Song of Songs, ascribed to Neilos of Ancyra, an ascription accepted by the editor, Marie-Gabrielle Guérard. Neilos was a monk from Ancyra (modern Ankara) who lived towards the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century on a mountain close to Ancyra in a small monastic community. His commentary on the Song of Songs belongs to an genre of such commentaries already well established (Origen and Gregory of Nyssa being notable examples), which treat the Song of Songs as a treatise on the life of prayer leading to union with God, the culmination of progress that began with other works of Solomon's – Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Neilos's commentary has the distinction of being the earliest commentary on the Song that survives in its original language and comments on the whole of the biblical text. In contrast, from Origen we have only the beginnings of his consideration of the Song – in his two homilies covering Cant. i. 1–ii. 14, and in what survives of his Commentary – three or four books out of ten – only a couple of verses further; in both cases not in the original Greek but in Jerome's Latin for the homilies, and Rufinus’ Latin for the commentary; Gregory of Nyssa's set of fifteen homilies, which survive in the original Greek, only go as far as Cant. vi. 9.

Neilos's commentary does not, however, survive on its own in manuscripts; it survives in manuscripts consisting of a commentary drawn from commentaries by different authors. One manuscript (belonging to Trinity College, Cambridge), the only one that contains Neilos's commentary in its entirety, preserves a chain made up from various other sources, mostly Origen's commentaries, Gregory of Nyssa's homilies, and a commentary of Theodoret, with a few extracts from Cyril of Alexandria. Two further manuscripts contain the text of Neilos’s commentary only so far as Cant. iv. 1 (one in Venice, Ven. Marc. Gr. 22, and the other at the Vatican, Vat. Gr. 2129). There are a few other manuscripts, either very close to one or other of the manuscripts mentioned, or so full of errors as to be of little use.

Guérard's critical text is, therefore, naturally presented in two volumes: the first covering Cant. i. 1–4. 1, and the other Cant. iv. 2–viii. 14. The first volume appeared as SC cdiii (1994); the second volume, the one under review, appeared nearly thirty years later in 2022. Guérard's introduction to the second volume begins by addressing this anomaly (perhaps even greater an anomaly when it is realised that the two Sources Chrétiennes volumes are based on work submitted for a thesis at the Sorbonne in 1981). The principal reason for the delay, as Guérard candidly admits, is the publication in 2004 of a complete edition of Neilos's commentary, prepared by H.-U. Rosenbaum, which revealed manuscripts relevant to the establishment of Neilos's text, as well as several misreadings of manuscripts in the text contained in SC xdiii (listed at pp. 229–34 of SC dxiii). Furthermore, another critical edition has also appeared – not directly of Neilos's commentary, but of Procopios of Gaza's Epitome of various commentaries on the Song, including Neilos's, which proves of particular importance for filling in lacunae in the Trinity College manuscript, our sole witness for the second part of the commentary (that is, the part contained in SC dxiii), as well as providing further witnesses to the text published in SC xdiii (listed for both volumes on pp. 227–8).

Neilos's commentary on the Song is significant for several reasons. First of all, it is, as Guérard asserts, the first commentary on the Song to survive complete in its original language. It is also of interest as being by Neilos, who is by no means an obscure monk. It is true that we know very little about him, but what we do know is that ‘Neilos’ seemed appropriate as a name under which to preserve for posterity works by Evagrios that would have been lost to us had their Evagrian provenance been realised. Neilos, unbeknown to himself, provided a home for most of the works by Evagrios to have survived in their original Greek, instead of being preserved only in Syriac, as was the case with his more speculative works. Neilos can hardly claim our gratitude, but his own commitment to a kind of non-speculative Evagrianism, such as is manifest in this commentary on the Song, created a safe haven for Evagrios's more directly ascetical works. For his commentary on the Song stands in an Origenian/Evagrian tradition, helping the seeker after God to understand the experience of prayer and union with God beyond the stage of natural contemplation, combining, as Origen (and indeed Gregory) tried to do, an ecclesial understanding of union with God with what we have come to call a ‘mystical’ understanding, where ‘the soul, whether found in the terrestrial region, the subterranean region, or the celestial, finds itself like the gazelle or the fawn, spending its time with the saints of each region, so that every knee may bow, in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen’.