Allegory and Typology in Early Christian Refigurations of the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

This chapter traces the origin, development, and reception of Christian allegorical readings of Scripture, with focus on the third and fourth centuries. After presenting the cluster of New Testament texts that provides the most significant precedent, warrant, and pattern for patristic allegorical interpretation, it considers Origen of Alexandria’s expansion of the Apostle Paul’s dual categories of visible and invisible and spirit and letter, and his defence of the legitimacy of Christian allegory against Celsus. It then traces the fourth-century critique and extension of the readings exemplified by Origen—the former through Eustathius of Antioch, Diodore of Tarsus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, and the latter through Pamphilus’s Apology for Origen and Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs. It argues that the late-antique debate over Christian allegory hinged on hermeneutical questions regarding (1) whether divine allegorical composition warranted allegorical interpretation and (2) whether New Testament figural readings, especially those of Paul, were exhaustive and, therefore, a boundary, or suggestive and, therefore, an invitation.