Is allegorical interpretation a Good Thing?
I just had a fascinating interaction online in the context of discussing the relation of the Sometime Testament to the New. The conversation went something similar this.
Blogger: 'At that place is no difference between the OT and the NT. There is nothing in the NT which is not in the OT.'
Me: 'What well-nigh Jesus?'
Blogger: 'He is all over the Old Testament. You just have to look.'
Me: 'Really? Where for example?'
He then offered me the following allegorical reading of the Joshua ii based on the fact that Joshua in Hebrew is the aforementioned name equally Jesus in Greek (the Hebrew meaning of course 'God saves', Matt 1.21):
The conquest of the land is non a prediction of Jesus. Information technology is a prediction of reclaiming Adam'due south or human being's rightful identify in the Garden of Eden. As you know, the Bible starts with Adam or man losing his place in the garden. The Bible then ends with human being reclaiming his rightful and original place in the new earth in the book of Revelation.
Joshua is a type of Christ in the OT. He leads the Israelites to the promised land just as Jesus leads us to conservancy. Joshua destroys the city of Jericho not past force, but with the representation of the Give-and-take of God based on the Police of God through the blowing of the trumpets while walking in front of the Ark. The family unit of Rahab is saved by ii Israelites who represent the two witnesses or the ii books of the Bible. Rahab makes a covenant with them just as Jesus makes a covenant with usa through His Word. Ultimately, Rahab is saved by a scarlet cord that is draped out of her window. Manifestly the reddish represents the blood of Christ.
When I responded that I was not persuaded that this was in fact the 'meaning' of the text, I was offered further 'insight':
The whole story of the gospel is in the story of Joshua and Rahab. In add-on to the tidbits I gave you before, I will requite yous some more spiritual insight on this story. Yous will discover that throughout the Bible, the church is represented by a woman. I submit to you that Rahab represents the church in this story. Just like God's true church on world, Rahab is the merely one in the metropolis of Jericho to make a covenant with the ii Israelites. In fact, she is told to bring all her family into her household if they want to be saved. Is this not the gospel? Are we every bit the church, not suppose to bring in every lost soul to be saved? Are nosotros non supposed to spread the gospel? Notice in the story that only those that were with Rahab in her household was saved by hanging the cherry thread. Now Ian, y'all should at to the lowest degree agree that the color scarlet is no coincidence here when it represents salvation. Information technology is very obvious that it represents the blood of Christ.
I had not come across this reading before (practice I demand to get out more?) only I have to say I found information technology fascinating, and can readily see its appeal. In some means it appears to come up close to Paul'south own reading of the OT ('the rock was Christ' i Cor 10.4, 'Hagar stands for Mt Sinai' Gal 4.25) and in fact Paul uses the wordallegoreo in introducing this idea. Perhaps the all-time known allegorical reading is of the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. Origen read it allegorically thus:
The human being who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the Police, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience, the beast is the Lord'due south body, the [inn], which accepts all who wish to enter, is the Church building. … The manager of the [inn] is the head of the Church, to whom its care has been entrusted. And the fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Savior's second coming. (Homily 34.three)
This reading was most universal throughout early Christianity, existence advocated past Irenaeus, Cloudless also as Origen, and in the fourth and fifth centuries past Chrysostom in Constantinople, Ambrose in Milan, and Augustine—whose version is perhaps best known:
A certain man went downwardly from Jerusalem to Jericho; Adam himself is meant; Jerusalem is the heavenly city of peace, from whose blessedness Adam fell; Jericho means the moon, and signifies our mortality, because it is born, waxes, wanes, an dies. Thieves are the devil and his angels. Who stripped him, namely; of his immortality; and vanquish him, by persuading him to sin; and left him half-dead, because in so far every bit man tin understand and know God, he lives, only in and then far equally he is wasted and oppressed by sin, he is dead; he is therefore called one-half-expressionless. The priest and the Levite who saw him and passed by, signify the priesthood and ministry of the Old Testament which could profit zero for salvation. Samaritan means Guardian, and therefore the Lord Himself is signified by this proper noun. The bounden of the wounds is the restraint of sin. Oil is the condolement of practiced hope; vino the exhortation to work with fervent spirit. The beast is the mankind in which He deigned to come up to us. The beingness set upon the beast is belief in the incarnation of Christ. The inn is the Church, where travelers returning to their heavenly country are refreshed afterward pilgrimage. The morrow is later on the resurrection of the Lord. The 2 pence are either the two precepts of beloved, or the promise of this life and of that which is to come.
What is incorrect with these readings? After all (equally another blogger comments) does this not 'cohere with and menstruum from the Church's declaration of the Cross and Resurrection'? The Reformers had no time for such readings, and Calvin gives this brusk shrift:
The allegory which is here contrived by the advocates of complimentary volition is as well absurd to deserve refutation… I acknowledge that I have no liking for any of these interpretations; merely we ought to have a deeper reverence for Scripture than to reckon ourselves at liberty to disguise its natural meaning. And, indeed, any one may see that the marvel of certain men has led them to contrive these speculations, opposite to the intention of Christ. (Commentary on Matthew, Marking and Luke volume 3)
Of course, the great paradox here is that I suspect the person who offered me the allegory of Joshua comes from a Reformed church that esteems Calvin.
So what is wrong with this kind of reading?
Firstly information technology functions by pulling the text into the earth of the reader, instead of taking the reader into the world of the text. In doing this, as Calvin states, it 'disguises its natural meaning', or as I would express it, this arroyo really silences the text. We are left non with the text merely with the allegory. The main bespeak of Jesus' parable is a call to ethical action: 'Go thou and exercise likewise.' The master signal about the Joshua narrative is that God's mercy extends to unexpected people (I would fence). Both of these are lost in the allegory.
Secondly and perhaps more surprising, the allegory actually silences itself. It offers such a systematised way of reading that it precludes any interaction or reflection. Moving over the small point that in one part of the allegory Joshua is Jesus but in another part the scarlet cord is, I wonder what the implications might be of seeing the people of God not just as a woman, merely every bit a racially outcast prostitute? Or that Jesus' expiry was similar a string that had been skilfully woven past the easily of such a woman? I think y'all could defend this notion past looking at the cardinal function of (marginalised) women in the gospels, bearers (literally) of God's good news at the start of Jesus' life, the only ones who remained by his cross in his death, and the beginning witnesses of his resurrection. But I really doubtfulness that this was in the mind of my give-and-take partner!
Thirdly it eliminates problems and challenges in the text. The Volume of Joshua is a prime number instance of the difficulty of reading about divinely sanctioned violence and fifty-fifty genocide. I consider this trouble in another mail service—just of course the moment you read allegorically, the problem disappears. It is worth noting that the NT never reads Joshua allegorically.
Fourthly this approach ignores a basic feature of the text—its genre. It presents itself every bit nothing other than a (theologically shaped) historical account of things that happened. If we can read this allegorically or figuratively, then why non practice the same to the stories about Jesus? The resurrection was not something that happened, merely a way of describing the apostles' feeling that somehow Jesus had a new significance across death.
Fifthly it turns the commentator into a priest—someone who stands betwixt me and the text and mediates the significant to me. I had non worked out that the thread was the blood of Jesus—how could I? When I was slow to go with the allegory of Joshua, I was enjoined:
The OT is total of stories like this where the gospel and the salvation of Jesus is represented. You lot but have to open up your middle and expect through your "spiritual glasses"! Praise God for the wonderful true stories!! I beg of you to pray and inquire God to open your heart and mind. The OT is not just a historical record. Every story has deep inspirational and spiritual meaning for united states of america.
Of grade, what he really meant was not that the OT is more than a historical record—information technology is hardly historical at all. And it is not that I take to wait through my 'spiritual glasses' simply that I had to look throughhis spectacles!
In the finish, the allegorical approach de-historicizes the text and undermines the idea that texts are bearers of meaning. Instead, they go a sort of code that needs unlocking with a secret central which but belongs to the initiated—which is gnostic rather than rational. Note that this is a very different exercise from reading a text metaphorically, or finding application past seeing parallels in the text with subsequently texts or our own situation.
And so by and large speaking if y'all are finding a biblical passage strange, inexplainable and difficult to understand, this is a good matter. On the other hand, if you lot read and remember it all makes sense, fits perfectly with your theology and in that location is no challenge here—that's the fourth dimension to start worrying!
(First posted in September 2013. Worth another outing.)
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