Evangelicals have not shaken off the shackles of Dispensationalism's aberrant mantra literal wherever possible. The Old Testament doesn't have to be literal historical narratives to be true, and this biblical literalism has spawned endless social controversies (especially in the United States) that are ignited whenever an archeologist says that Israel was never enslaved in Egypt, or when a geologist says that Noah's flood never happened, or when an evolutionary scientist say there never was a historical Adam. Imposing biblical literalism upon the Old Testament does not defend our faith, but instead leads to have a crisis of faith. I'm not arguing for a purely allegorical reading of the Bible, but instead to understand the bible so far as it preaches Jesus Christ crucified, regardless of whether this or that Torah story written down is literal or allegorical.
David Bentley Hart (DBH) argues that the Apostles believed that the stories in the Torah were allegorical tales—not literal historical accounts of actual events, and that the Apostles reappropriated these ancient tales for instructing Christians—and so archeologists, geologists, evolutionary biologists, are free to do their research work without being burdened by biblical literalism. The historicity of the bible is at the anxious edge of evangelicalism, and even famous scholars such as N. T. Wright have chided Hart's New Testament: A Translation for emphasizing Paul's allegorical interpretation of the Torah. In N.T. Wright's review of Hart's New Testament he reveals his commitment to biblical literalism in this critically remark (or mocking statement) about Hart: "Paul’s scriptural tales may look like Israel’s history but are simply homespun allegories." Hart's reply to N.T. Wright with a prooftext demonstrating that Paul did not understand the Torah the same way as N.T. Wright does: Hart said "Thus Wright objects to (and dismissively misrepresents) my observation that Paul may literally mean what he seems explicitly to say in 1 Corinthians 10:11, that some of the stories recorded in the Torah may already be allegorical in form rather than strictly literal historical narratives."
I recommend reading Hart's translation of 1 Corinthians 10 in his New Testament: A Translation to better understand why Hart thinks that Paul denied the historicity of the entire Old Testaments (especially the Torah's tales) and to understand why the Apostles did not read the scriptures in compliance of the strict rules of biblical literalism. Here are two verses from Hart's New Testament translation that emphasize Paul's figurative (and non-literal) understanding of the Torah:
1 Corinthians 10:11 (DBH) "Now these things happened to them figuratively, and were written for the purpose of our admonition, for whom the ends of the ages have arrived."
1 Corinthians 10:6 (DBH) "Now these things have become typological figures for us, so that we should not lust after evil things, as indeed those men lusted."
Hart includes a very helpful footnote to his translation of 1 Corinthians 10:11 that reveals Paul's figurative treatment of the Torah:
"As should be obvious, Paul frequently allegorizes Hebrew scripture; the 'spiritual reading' of scripture typical of the Church Fathers of the early centuries was not their invention, nor just something borrowed from pagan culture, but was already a widely accepted hermeneutical practice among Jewish scholars. So it is not anachronistic to read Paul here as saying that the stories he is repeating are not accurate historical accounts of actual events, but allegorical tales composed for the edification of readers." [1]
David Bentley's argument that the Apostles denied the historicity of the Old Testament is not limited to 1 Corinthians 10:11 alone, so I highly recommend reading Hart's New Testament, and reading my review of it too. The Apostles (especially Paul) interpreted the Old Testament in a non-literalistic way in order to preach the good news of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. The Apostles were concerned with the living and historical passion of Jesus, but they were not concerned about the historicity of the tales in the Torah and they certainly did not interpret the scriptures through the rubric of biblical literalism.
Sources:
- David Bentley Hart. The New Testament: A Translation. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 2017. [Abbreviated as DBH throughout]
Related: Biblical Literalism, D. B. Hart, David Bentley Hart, DBH, historicity, n.t. wright, new testament, paul
March 14th, 2018 - 20:40
This seems to be committing the “black-or-white fallacy”? Why does an allegorical interpretation exclude a literal historical sense? Or why does a literal sense exclude an allegorical? In my reading of the Fathers most of them seem to embrace both senses? I’d love to see an article that cites specific examples of Fathers denying the historical literal sense of Scripture. I’m certainly open to the possibility of this being true, and I would find such an article to be helpful.
March 15th, 2018 - 00:42
I was also wondering about this. Auerbach’s classic definition of figural reading certainly affirms the historical reality of that which is interpreted figurally.
March 15th, 2018 - 06:31
Paul does engage in typology, in a very few instances, but that is not precisely allegory as it arises in Alexandria.
March 15th, 2018 - 13:33
Thank you all for reading the OP. In it, I do not argue for the allegorical methods of alexandrian patristics. The main point is that Paul is not committed to biblical literalism, and that the truth of the bible does not depend on the historicity of the Old Testament in general and Torah specifically.
March 15th, 2018 - 18:13
The point was not meant to be critical, just reflecting more on Hart’s position than yours. Enjoyed the article at any rate.
August 27th, 2019 - 19:40
Below are the requested examples of the church fathers negating the historicity of Old Testament passages. I included these in a past article reprinted below.
The early church fathers were so rich in their understanding of God’s flawlessly good and thoroughly coherent nature.
They birthed an irrepressible insight about Scriptural interpretation that prompted them to plant their hermeneutical flag deep into the ground. They were willing to stand and contend against ANY dead literal reading of Scripture which maligned and defamed God’s character by attributing to Him any kind of despicable behavior. The fathers believed that any Bible reading was dead wrong if it painted God as a child-drowning, infant-burning, throat-slitting, plague-sending, people-smiting killer.
“Saint Ambrose (and Augustine) took Paul’s statement ‘the letter kills but the Spirit gives life’ as a slogan for allegorical interpretation.” A. Berkeley Mickelson, INTERPRETING THE BIBLE, Eerdmans Publishing, 1963, page 34. Ambrose was the Bishop of Milan was one of the four great doctors of the western church.
The great eastern church father Origen, wrote, “Ignorant assertions about God appear to be nothing else but this: that Scripture is not understood in its spiritual sense, but is interpreted according to the bare letter.” (On First Principles 4:2.1-2, 4).
Gregory of Nyssa wrote that “allegory” allowed certain OT Scriptures to be “converted from the raw and indigestible state of their literal meaning into a wholesome and healthy intellectual food.” (Hom., in Cant., prol.).
It was the universally revered Gregory who wrote the following summary showing his own understanding of the early church’s Christo-allegorical hermeneutic:
“Since some ecclesiastics deem it right to stand always by the literal meaning of the holy scripture and do not agree that anything in it was said through enigma and allegories for our benefit, I consider it necessary first to speak in defense of these things to those who bring such accusations against us, because in our view there is nothing unreasonable in our seriously studying ALL POSSIBLE MEANS of tracking down the benefit to be had from the divinely inspired Scripture…. We will TURN SUCH WORDS AS THESE OVER AND OVER IN OUR MIND….When it comes to the ‘insightful reading’ of such passages that comes via the ‘elevated sense’, we shall not beg to differ at all about its name whether one wishes to call it tropologia, allegoria, or anything else [type, shadow, anti-type, metonymy, etc.] — but ONLY ABOUT WHETHER IT CONTAINS ‘MEANINGS THAT ARE BENEFICIAL.'” Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs, prologue, quoted in PAUL, THE CORINTHIANS AND THE BIRTH OF CHRISTIAN HERMENEUTICS, by Margaret Mitchell, Cambridge Press, pages 1-3, 2010.
The great western father Augustine taught that the harmful husk (literal reading) of Scripture had to be removed so that the valuable kernel (allegorical meaning) could be consumed. (On Christian Teaching, 3.12.18). Saint Augustine said, “If a passage seems to endorse wickedness or wrongdoing or to forbid selflessness or kindness, it is figurative and not to be read literally.” He believed that all Scripture must be interpreted through the love of God and neighbor, on which all the law and prophets hang. Matt. 22:37-40. (Source: On Christian Teaching, see 3:10.14; 3:11.17; 3.16.24).
Augustine used the Rule of Divine Character when allegorizing, which essentially holds that the character of God revealed in Jesus cannot EVER be violated by the literal reading of ANY Old Testament Scripture. If the passage “appears on its face” to attribute unworthy motives, brutal behavior, cruel intentions, hypocritical conduct or coercive attributes to God, then it must be read allegorically and NOT literally.
“Wherefore, in the Old Testament there is a veiling of the New, and in the New Testament a revealing of the Old. According to that veiling, carnal men, understanding things in a carnal fashion, have been under the dominion, both then and now, of a penal fear. On the other hand, spiritual men… have a spiritual understanding and have been made free through love which they have been gifted.” Saint Augustine (On Catechizing the Uninstructed 4:8; NPNF 1/3:287).
John Cassian stated the church fathers’ dynamic bottom line against dead letter Bible reading in the following excerpt from Institutes 8.4: “And so, since these things cannot without horrible sacrilege be literally understood of him who is declared by the authority of Holy Scripture to be invisible, ineffable, incomprehensible, simple, and uncomposite, the disturbance of anger (not to mention wrath) cannot be attributed to that immutable nature without monstrous blasphemy.”
Let’s now consider a practical example of HOW the fathers DID deal with the difficult passages in the Old Testament.
HOW DID THE CHURCH FATHER ORIGEN HANDLE THE GENOCIDAL WARS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT?
Commenting on the brutal wars in which Joshua was involved, Origen says:
“The Jews who read these events, I am speaking of the Jews according to the appearance, who is circumcised in his body, and ignores the true Jew who is circumcised in his heart; this [physical] Jew does not find ought except description of wars, killing of enemies, and victory of the Israelites who plundered the possession of the foreigners and pagans, under the guidance of Joshua….
While the Jew according to the heart, that is the Christian who follows Jesus, the Son of God, and NOT Joshua the Son of Nun, understands these events as representing the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. He says, ‘Today also my master Jesus Christ fights the powers of the evil and drives them out from the towns which they occupied before. He drives them out of our souls. He kills the kings who reigned over them, so that sin will not reign over us. As our souls become free from the reign of sin they become a temple of the Lord and of the God’s Kingdom, hearing the words, ‘The kingdom of God is within you'”…. Homilies on Joshua 13.1[125]
“Unless those carnal wars (of the Old Testament) were a symbol of spiritual wars, I do not think that the Jewish historical books would ever have been passed down by the apostles to be read by Christ’s followers in their churches… Thus, the apostle, being aware that physical wars have become personal battles of the soul against spiritual adversaries, gives orders to the soldiers of Christ like a military commander when he says, ‘Put on the armor of God so as to be able to hold your ground against the wiles of the devil'” (Eph. 6:11). (Hom 15.1 [138]).
“[A Christian] affirms that even now my Lord Jesus Christ wars against opposing powers and casts out of their cities, that is, out of our souls, those who used to occupy them. And he destroys the kings who were ruling in our souls ‘that sin may no longer reign in us,’ [citing Rom. 6:12] so that, after he abolishes the king of sin from the city of our soul, our soul may become the city of God and God may reign in it, and it may be proclaimed to us, ‘Behold, the kingdom of God is within you'” [citing Luke 17:21] (Hom 13.1 [125].
“This warfare must be conducted by the Christian not with physical weapons, but with prayers, meditation on the Word of God, good deeds and good thoughts. Only in this way is the Christian able to withstand the works of the Devil, all the while invoking the help of Jesus Christ” (Hom 16.5).
Origen repeatedly stresses that a Christian reads with circumcised heart and thus ‘understands that all these things are mysteries of the kingdom of heaven’ (Hom 13.1 [125].
Origen says that literal (dead letter) Bible readings, at least in these warfare texts, is equivalent to heresy. Origen charges that reading Joshua’s warfare texts literally is “teaching cruelty” (Hom 11.6 [119]). Literalists “make malicious charges against our Lord and Savior, who commands the kingdom of heaven, which he had promised to those who believe in him, to be seized through violence” (Hom. 12.2 [121]). Without the “deeper understanding” of an allegorical reading, literalists, in Origen’s view, produce “perverse doctrines beautified by the assertions of a splendid discourse. . . [that]. . . . introduce into the churches sects not fitting to us, and to pollute all the church of the Lord” (Hom 7.7 [83]).
So, Origen sees “the promised land enemies” not as hostile humans but as carnal and/or Satanic IMPULSES. These enemies represent NOT flesh and blood foes, but rather terroristic thoughts, malicious mentalities, lustful strongholds, deadly ideas, and sinful mindsets. This alone is where ANY level of violence is spiritually permitted– on our own inner toxic impulses and lethal ideas, NEVER on humans made in the image of God.
March 15th, 2018 - 06:20
I am very sorry but I must disagree completely with Hart’s proposal because it is based in a too modern conception of history, one that Paul would never have considered. No first century form of allegorical, typological and/or spiritual interpretation would have so carelessly thrown away its historical reference because history itself would have been sacred to them. Philo of Alexandria is a classic example of this. Antiquity, for the first century Jew as well as the first century Greek/Roman writer, was the sacred affirmation of the value of all historical argumentation. History, actual history, was shot through with sacred meaning and was itself spiritual. It was always the place from which one started and then from which one could transcend to its deeper meaning. Harts evaluation of Paul’s attitude towards history is over-stated, trite and uninformed. Which I am sorry to say, is often typical of his style when dealing with matters of history.
March 4th, 2019 - 05:59
“Who is so silly as to believe that God … planted a paradise eastward in Eden, and set in it a visible and palpable tree of life … [and] anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life?”
– Origen, 184-253 AD
April 15th, 2018 - 00:01
No either/or here. Paul would have assumed that the ancient stories were “true” without any interest in questioning their historicity. We moderns see a gap between historical likelihood and textual legitimacy. Paul would have perceived no gap there; he and those of his time read for insight, not historical satisfaction.
January 14th, 2020 - 21:54
Interesting perspective on the OT. Still, if the OT can be viewed allegorically, why can’t the NT be as well? What’s more fantastic, a talking snake, the Red Sea parting…or dead people coming back to life wondering around the city upon the death of a man believed by his disciples to be the Son of God, who subsequently comes back to life on the third day, returning to heaven apparently via the defiance of gravity?
I’m not sure how accepting the OT accounts of the fantastic would be more problematic than accepting the NT accounts of fantastic events.
January 1st, 2023 - 16:41
1) “Paul does engage in typology, in a very few instances, but that is not precisely allegory as it arises in Alexandria.”
Typology is a variant of allegoresis (or one may call spiritual allegory instead of textual allegory), which is a hermeneutical practice that didn’t start with Alexandria, but was among the Essenes and Neo-platonists. Christ and the Church taught this form of “exegesis”. Paul uses typology or tropology in many instances like 1 Corin. 5.7, 9.9-10, 10.4, 6-10; Galatians 4.21-31; Romans 5.14, 10.18. Dr. Ramelli explains the historical practice & origin of allegoresis. http://www.jgrchj.net/volume14/JGRChJ14-5_Ramelli.pdf
2) “Why does an allegorical interpretation exclude a literal historical sense?”
Of course, we don’t deny that the OT has some historical merit (e.g. Israelite people, possible figures, & ancient kings like Nebud.), but such stories that deny the Christocentric interpretation renders such stories as not being historically —theologically true. If we are to have the mind of Christ, we must be discerning instead of being naive enough to assume everything as true. The fact that Jesus didn’t fulfill the literal or exegetical reading of the prophecies, but only the spiritual and mystical reading, proves that the divine atrocities in the old are false when taking the literal reading. This explains why no Jew in Palestine expected a messiah to suffer and die (John 12.34; Matt. 12.40, 16.22).
You might ask why should we believe in a Bible that’s not inerrant, but it’s the same reason why we believe in science and history without assuming they’re inerrant. Jesus intended us to be discerning rather than be totally naive.
January 1st, 2023 - 17:31
1) “Paul does engage in typology, in a very few instances, but that is not precisely allegory as it arises in Alexandria.”
Typology is a variant of allegoresis (or one may call spiritual allegory instead of textual allegory), which is a hermeneutical practice that didn’t start with Alexandria, but was among the Essenes and Neo-platonists. Christ and the Church taught this form of “exegesis”. Paul uses typology or tropology in many instances like 1 Corin. 5.7, 9.9-10, 10.4, 6-10; Galatians 4.21-31; Romans 5.14, 10.18. Dr. Ramelli explains the historical practice & origin of allegoresis. http://www.jgrchj.net/volume14/JGRChJ14-5_Ramelli.pdf
2) “Why does an allegorical interpretation exclude a literal historical sense?”
Of course, we don’t deny that the OT has some historical merit (e.g. Israelite people, possible figures, & ancient kings like Nebud.), but such stories that deny the Christocentric interpretation renders such stories as not being historically —theologically true. If we are to have the mind of Christ, we must be discerning instead of being naive enough to assume everything as true. The fact that Jesus didn’t fulfill the literal or exegetical reading of the prophecies, but only the spiritual and mystical reading, proves that the divine atrocities in the old are false when taking the literal reading. This explains why no Jew in Palestine expected a messiah to suffer and die (John 12.34; Matt. 12.40, 16.22). Isaiah 53 is not about Christ if we read it contextually with its previous chapters, and so forth any citation taken out of the old is meant typologically (Greek word “fulfill” also means imitates or complements according to Dr. Joel M. Hoffman, a NT scholar).
You might ask why should we believe in a Bible that’s not inerrant, but it’s the same reason why we believe in science and history without assuming they’re inerrant. Jesus intended us to be discerning rather than be totally naive. The rule of faith is following the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (i.e. sapient philosophy and mystical experience), which confers the prophetic and philosophical reading (both inspired mediums of the Spirit) rather than basing our minds off the letter (Ephesians 1:17-19; Wisdom 9:16-17; Philippians 2:5). Even if the Bible were inerrant textually, you still have to use your mind to fix the contradictions in the Bible, which is a fool’s errand, and even argue with other fundies whether such and such is true literally. Some fundies affirm flat earth and other fundies do not. What matters to Christianity is not the infallibility of the Bible (esp. given the many variants and canons that exist), but what matters is whether its major doctrines are rightly coherent and verifiable, because a library of books has no correlation with truth but sapient philosophy does.