allegory

allegory. In Christian exegesis, one of the traditional ways of interpreting Scripture in distinction to the literal or historical sense. The Greek word comes from ancient literary theory and is defined as ‘speaking one thing and signifying something other than what is said’. From the first Christians applied allegory to the OT to make it yield a Christian meaning. St Paul used the term (Gal. 4: 24) to point to the relationship between the old Israel and the Church. Origen, who is regarded as the great exponent of allegory, distinguished a threefold literal, moral, and spiritual sense, but in practice usually worked with a two-fold distinction between letter and spirit, history and deeper allegorical meaning, as did most of the Fathers. Concern to safeguard the literal, historic meaning of the biblical text led to criticism of allegory in the patristic period by Antiochene theologians and later by the Reformers. In modern times there has been renewed appreciation of patristic allegory, often called ‘typology’. See also EXEGESIS.