Biblical Hermeneutics: Origen of Alexandria and Allegorical Interpretation.
In this article, (maybe part of a series if people like it) I want to talk about some of the different ways by which the Bible and other scriptures have been interpreted throughout the centuries starting with the Bible. These days, many (though by no means all) Western Christians tend to read the Bible as being literally and historically true in all aspects. Whilst this itself, is an interpretation that has been present throughout Christian history, it has by no means been the only, or even the main, way in which the Bible has been understood. We will see this by an examination of the Christian philosopher, theologian and Church Father Origen of Alexandria (184-253 C.E) and his methods of reading and interpreting the bible. I want to show people that the completely literal way of reading the Bible is relatively recent in origin and for centuries, Christians read it differently. I am someone who is generally against reading texts, especially religious scriptures in this literal manner because I think that one has to take the historical context in which the text was written, into account for a good interpretation. I also am also very drawn to allegorical reading as well. Purely literal interpretations in my opinion are much too simplistic in nature. There is a name for the field dedicated to this very subject of interpretation and it is called hermeneutics.
What is Hermeneutics?
Hermeneutics is at its heart, simply the theory, method and study of interpretation, principally how we interpret texts. Hermeneutics is defined by John D. Caputo in his book Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information as:
“The theory of interpretation, it is the theory that everything is a matter of interpretation.” (Page 4)
Hermeneutics may sound very complicated, but it is something that everyone does without really realising it. Every time you read a text, whether that’s a religious scripture, newspaper, novel, or anything else, you are actively interpreting what you read. Hermeneutics is thus used in a number of disciplines such as law and the sciences as well as just philosophy and theology. It is something that all of us would do better to learn more about.
Biblical Hermeneutics, a small history of allegorical interpretation and the Greek philosophical influence on Christianity:
Unsurprisingly, the Bible is one of the most commented upon and interpreted texts in history. There have been countless ways of interpreting it throughout the centuries devised by Jews and Christians alike. One of the main ones, and the one that Origen famously used as we will see, is known as allegorical interpretation. Allegorical interpretation arose in the context of Greco-Roman culture and it is essentially the idea that there is some ‘hidden meaning’ that is present within the text that differs from what the author actually wrote. It is defined by Rita Copeland and Peter T Struck as:
“explaining a work, or a figure in myth, or any created entity, as if there were another sense to which it referred, that is, presuming the work or figure to be encoded with meaning intended by the author or a higher spiritual authority.” (Copeland and Struck, 2010).
One of the first times allegorical interpretation was employed is reading the epic poems of Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey. As Jörg Rüpke points out on page 171 of his great book on Roman religion, Pantheon, the method was mainly used to reconcile “contradictions and offensive elements” with its status as an authoritative work, as the author really meant something else from what they actually wrote. For example, if the gods in the poems did something seen as morally wrong to the reader, it could be explained away because the text may say that, but it actually means something else so then the text can remain authoritative.
Eventually, Greek culture spread around the Mediterranean and Near East with the conquests of Alexander the Great who founded the great city of Alexandria in Egypt where Origen was born. With Greek culture came Greek philosophy and allegorical interpretation was adopted by philosophers such as the Stoics and also by Hellenized Jews, that is, Jews who came under the influence of Greek culture. There was a large Jewish community in Alexandria and one of them in particular, known as Philo (20 B.C.E — 50 C.E) who lived at the time of Jesus was the first to really apply allegorical interpretation to the Hebrew Bible. Philo was heavily influenced by the Greek philosopher Plato and he readily applied Plato’s ideas to the text in an ingenious way to many events and figures in the Bible such as the Genesis creation story and the story of Abraham. For example, as Carlos Lévy and Edward N Zalta state in their article about Philo:
“For him, allegory assumes importance when literal interpretation encounters difficulty, for example, when it suggests conclusions in contradiction with God’s absolute perfection. In Leg. 2.19, he does not hesitate to say that the creation of Eve from one of Adam’s ribs was a most improbable myth, if taken literally. It becomes likely only if one understands that “ribs” are in fact the powers of Adam’s mind.”
It is important to note that Philo, and later on Origen were not complete allegorists, they did regard scripture as divinely inspired and they did believe a lot of it to be historically true. They were also not total literalists though, they also believed that some of the meaning of the text was hidden. Philo also had a large influence on later Jewish and Christian thinkers and as we can see, Origen was working within a long tradition of allegorical interpretation, he was by no means the first to apply it to the Bible, not even the first one from his city. But the way in which he did use it was brilliant.
Lastly some Christians may now object to allegorical interpretation thinking that it is merely the invasion of unnecessary Greek philosophy into Christianity. In a way, this is true. But it is also true that without Greek philosophy, especially Plato, Christianity would be vastly different to how we know it today. Ideas such as the existence of the soul, and the ‘logos’ (word) of God in the famous prologue to the Gospel of John all originate from Greek philosophy and one couldn’t have followed the complex debates on the divinity of Jesus taking place in the first few centuries cumulating in 325 at the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E without at least a rudimentary understanding of Greek philosophy. Christianity like all other faiths, did not emerge with its doctrine fully formed, it took influences from the ideas and beliefs around it and for Christianity, that was Greco-Roman culture and with it Greek philosophy.
Origen’s Life
Origen was born in 184 C.E in Alexandria, Egypt, at that point part of the Roman Empire. He was born to Leonides, a professor of literature and a Christian. When he was a teenager, the Roman Emperor, Septimius Severus started to persecute Christians and Origen’s father was imprisoned. Origen reportedly wanted to martyr himself along with his father but was stopped from doing so by his mother who hid his clothes. Too embarrassed to leave the house naked, Origen, thankfully for both his mother and for us, did not manage to achieve his desire. Origen became a philosopher and teacher and over the years achieved much fame and prestige, becoming known throughout the empire. He travelled widely and wrote prolifically including one work of Apologetics ‘Contra Celsum’ (Against Celus) in which he defended the Christian faith against the Pagan philosopher, Celus, the work is still regarded as one of genius and thankfully can still be read in its entirety today. Due to a conflict with the local bishop in Alexandria, he moved to the city of Caesarea in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey and opened a school there which was very successful and attracted many students. His reputation reached such an extent, that the mother of the Roman Emperor Severus Alexander, Julia Avita Mamaea invited him to teach her philosophy . in the year 250 C.E, a plague broke out for which Christians were blamed by the Emperor Decius. Origen was imprisoned and severely tortured by the authorities who tried to make him reject his faith which he vehemently refused. He survived but was very weakened by the ordeal and he sadly passed away a few years later from his injuries.
Origen’s Hermeneutical method:
Now we finally get on to Origen’s hermeneutics. As already stated, Origen was an allegorist. His method of reading the bible though had a method and scripture for him had three senses based on Platonic models known as ‘the body’, ‘the psyche’ and ‘the spirit’. He said that the three books of the bible known as wisdom literature, the book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs were perfect examples of these three senses. As noted British scholar of religion Karen Armstrong writes in her book The Lost Art of Scripture:
“Proverbs represented the body of scripture and expressed the literal sense of the text; it was essential to master this thoroughly before attempting anything further. Ecclesiastes worked at the level of the psyche, the natural powers of mind and heart; its author taught us to see the vanity of earthly things. And showed us how futile it was to place all our hopes in the material world. By teaching us how to behave, it represented the moral sense of scripture. Only a Christian who had been through this preliminary initiation could advance to the spiritual or allegorical sense.” (Page 211)
On the same page, she goes onto say that the Song of Songs represented the allegorical sense for Origen. The first line for example ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth’ literally was a bride longing for her groom, morally, the bride represented all Christians who longed to return to their original state of being in God. Allegorically, the bride was a symbol of the people of Israel who had received the ‘dowry’ of the Hebrew scriptures but were waiting for the Word to fulfil them. Applied to an individual person, Armstrong says, the line represented the hope that the soul would be enlightened by the visitation of the Word. (Jesus).
This was the interpretation of merely the first line of the Song of Songs and one can see that Origen’s use of allegory was not careless but was incredibly sophisticated and well-thought out. One can also see from Armstrong’s brilliant summary, that as I said earlier, Origen did not dismiss the literal sense of the text but viewed it as a very important part of his entire exegetical method. As she says, a student had to master this sense and absorb it before moving on to the others. David Vessey writes about how and why Origen created his method and the particularly Christian spin he put into it in his essay on Medieval Hermeneutics in The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics:
“Origen built upon Jewish principles of interpretation and Roman rhetorical theory to produce an exegetical practice that moved the interpreter from the text to the higher spiritual truths. Jewish interpreters and the Hebrew Bible were too closely wedded to the letter of the law; Christian interpreters had to see the law as foretelling something new, revelatory, and latent in the symbols of the Hebrew Bible.” (Page 73)
Finally, the best way to get a good idea of what Origen himself thought about scripture and how he used his hermeneutical method, is to read a passage from one of his own works in his own words. In Book IV of his ‘On First Principles’ He explains his view of the creation narrative in book of Genesis:
“Now who is there, pray, possessed of understanding, that will regard the statement as appropriate, that the first day, and the second, and the third, in which also both evening and morning are mentioned, existed without sun, and moon, and stars — the first day even without a sky? And who is found so ignorant as to suppose that God, as if He had been a husbandman, planted trees in paradise, in Eden towards the east, and a tree of life in it…No one, I think, can doubt that the statement that God walked in the afternoon in paradise, and that Adam lay hid under a tree, is related figuratively in Scripture, that some mystical meaning may be indicated by it…It is very easy for anyone who pleases to gather out of holy Scripture what is recorded indeed as having been done, but what nevertheless cannot be believed as having reasonably and appropriately occurred according to the historical account….And many other instances similar to this will be found in the Gospels by anyone who will read them with attention, and will observe that in those narratives which appear to be literally recorded, there are inserted and interwoven things which cannot be admitted historically, but which may be accepted in a spiritual signification.” (Book IV, Verse 16)
What he says here might surprise and even shock some modern Christians because Origen is essentially calling someone ‘ignorant’ who interprets the book in a completely literal way. He is also going against the view that it today known as ‘Creationism’ as he explicitly states that the Genesis account isn’t to be taken as completely historically true. What it should show however is that even without the modern methods of Historical Criticism, many early Christians did not interpret the Bible (or not all of it, at least) in a completely literalist manner. Hopefully seeing this, Christians who do tend to read their scriptures in this way will realise that there are, and always have been, many ways to read them. Ways that are more compatible with modern scientific theories, such as evolution, and that allow them to still keep the authority invested in their sacred writings intact. I am fully convinced that a better appreciation and familiarity with hermeneutics will calm the waters of the so-called ‘war’ between science and religion that is raging today.
Origen’s hermeneutical method was massively influential and would be used by Christians right through the Middle Ages. The modern literalist way of reading scriptures without any method of interpretation or resort to historical context is a relatively recent innovation historically, arising mainly in the 19th century with antecedents in the Reformation. Origen cannot be accused of not being a ‘true Christian’ for not reading the Bible in this way, indeed he was tortured and later died for refusing to renounce his faith. No doubt, he and many other early Christians, as well as the theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages would have found the literal view of interpretation expounded by some modern Western Christians, extremely strange.
Nonetheless, Origen’s is a name that should be known by all Christians. He was regarded as the best Christian scholar of his day and he raised the faith to a position of intellectual respectability that it had never had before. Never again could Pagan philosophers accuse Christianity of being only a faith for the uneducated and ignorant after having read Origen’s monumental literary output where he combined his Christian faith with sophisticated hermeneutics and a learned expertise in many schools of Greek philosophy. He is remembered as one of the most important Christian theologians and philosophers, not only of the first few centuries of the church, but of all time.
Bibliography
Note: Only for books as the online sources have links to them within the text.
Armstrong, K (2019) The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts. London: The Bodley Head. P. 211
Caputo, J D. (2018) Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information. London: Penguin Random House, p.4
Copeland, R and Struck, P (2010). Introduction. In R Copeland and P Struck, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2
Rupke, J/ Richardson, D, M.B (trans) (2018) Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press. P. 171
Vessey, D (2016) Medieval Hermeneutics. In: N, Keane , and C, Law ed. The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, 1st ed. Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 67–80
