Evaluate the allegorical method of interpreting Scripture.
Allegory means to speak figuratively, Both Greeks and Jews used allegory. The Greeks, especially the Stoics, used allegory to explain away the myths concerning the gods. The Rabbis under stood Scripture to have hidden meanings; therefore, they used the allegorical method to bring out the hidden meanings. Paul used the allegorical interpretation of an Old Testament Scripture to illustrate the difference in bondage under the Law and freedom under grace:
For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freedom. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the Mount Sinai. which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. Paul went far beyond the literal or historical understanding of the story of Hagar and Sarah when he applied it to enslaved Israel and the free. His interpretation differs, however, from true allegory since he did not deny the reality of the Old Testament history. The story is a figure of a spiritual truth. Paul¡¯s use of allegory indicates that the method is not ethically wrong, but it is an inferior way of discerning the real meaning of the Scriptures. His use of Abraham¡¯s two sons as examples of the enslaved and the free is not entirely forced. Allegory was used by the Hellenistic Jews to develop a philosophy based on Moses¡¯ writings which had a semblance to the Greek philosophers. Philo was convinced of the spiritual superiority of Moses and the prophets over Plato and the philosophers. He compared divine wisdom to Sarah, the princess, and human wisdom to Hagar, the concubine. The extreme allegorical interpretation of Philo has caused Christians to recoil from using allegory and to deny that Paul employed a different and moderate form of allegory. Allegory has often been a means of avoiding the literal sense of a passage when this caused difficulties or raised objections. The essence of figurative interpretation is not merely to enable us to cope with aspects of a text that we do not like. It is nearer to being a way of enabling us to discover something from a text that would otherwise be mute. Allegory may make it possible to handle different texts; more fundamentally it makes it possible to hear something that speaks to us from texts that may not otherwise do so. The correctness of figurative interpretations is difficult to evaluate. We cannot establish what was in the back of God¡¯s mind at a given moment unless God reveals it, any true interpretation of this kind comes as the gift of the Spirit who inspired scripture.
