Alleoort

i. History of the Word.— The substantive iWrjyopla, with its verb iX\ijyopei''a, is derived from 4XXo, something else, and iyopevoi, J s]>eak ; and is defined by Heraclitus (Heraclides ?) — probably of the first century A.D. — as follows: fiXXa ftiv iyopeiuiv rphrot frepa Si Cby X^7ei <nmaivujv iiriiivinun iXKif-^opia naXeiToi : ' The mode of speech which says other things (than the mere letter) and hints at different things from what it expresses, is called appropriately allegori/' (c. 5).

Neither substantive nor verb is found in the LXX ; and the verb alone, and that only once (Gal 4"), occurs in the NT. The word, wliether substantive nr verb, appears to be altogether late Greek. Plutarch (flourished 80-120 A.D.j tells ns {De Aud. Poet.

19 E) that it was the equivalent in his day for the more ohl-fasliioned virdfoia, the deeper sense (or the figure cxjiressing it), which was a special feature in the Stoic philosojihy, with its 0epavrcia {treatment, mnvipulatimi); and Cicero had not long before introduced d\\r)yopla, in its Greek form, in two or three passages in his works (e.7. Orator 27 ; Ad Attic, ii. 2U) ; while Philo ha(i freely used sub- st.

intive and verb early in the first century ; and the verb is used in Josephus {Ant. Prooem. 4) of some of the writings of Moses. ii. Distinctive Meaning. — The provinces of allegory, tyjie, symbol, parable, fable, metaphor, analogy, mystery, may all trench upon one another ; but eacli has its speciality, and the same thing can only receive the ditl'erent names as it is viewed from the different points. Allegory differs e.

sscniuilhj from tyjie in that it is not a premonition of future development, and that there is no neces- sary historical and real correspondence in the main idea of the original to the new application of it : from symbol, in that it is not a lower grade natur- ally shadowing forth a higher ; from parable, in that it is not a picture of a single compact truth, but a transparency through which the different details are seen as different truths, and in that it is not necessarily ethical in its aim ; from fable, in that its lessons are not confined to the sphere of |iractical worldly prudence ; from metaphor, in that its interpretation is not immediate and obvious, but has to be sought out through the medium of verbal or phenomenal parallels ; from analogy, because it is not addressed to the reason so much as to the imagination ; and from mystery, in that it does not await a new order of things to be specially manifested and truly discerned.

All these tropes may indeed be classed under the allegorical or the figurative, so far as they all jioint to a sense different from that contained ic the mere letter. But, conventionally and in practice, allegory has a s]ihere of its own. In the non-specific sense, it has to do with the general relations of life in its external resemblances, one thing being mirrored in another according to out- ward appearance, so that the appearance of the one can serve as the figure of the other.

In other words, the thing put before the eye or ear repre- sents, not itself, out something else in some way like it. Thus the fish was early used as an allegory of Christ ; it was not, strictly speaking, a symbol, or a type, or a parable, or any of the figures above compared. The resemblance was both far-fetched and outward, being evolved from the several letters of the word IxOvi as the initials of 'IijffoOt, Xpiorit, 0con, Tiis, "Luirrip.

Of allegory jiroper, more or less elaborated, we have within the bounds of the sacred books very little. In the OT may be instanced the allegorv of the Vine in the 80th Psalm, and in the NT tho.se of the Door, the Shepherd (Jn 10), and the Vine (Jn 15).

In the more confined, the tcehnieal and historical sense, it denoted, especially for Alexandrian Greeks and Jews, the system of interpretation by which the most ancient Greek literature, in the one case, and the OT VTitings (and subsequently the NT), in the other, were assigned their value in proportion as they meant, not what they said, but something else, and could be made the clothing of cosmo- logical, philosophical, moral, or reli;^;ous ideas. This leads us to the third and final division.

iii. Allegorical Interpretation. — The ten- dency to allegorize has its foundations in human nature. Constantly and unconsciously we read into the creations of other men, as, for example, into a painting or a poem, our own thoughts, con- ceptions, and emotions, and are scarcely to be persuaded that they were not the original thoughts, conceptions, and emotions of the creator.

Or, ALLEGORY ALLEGORY 65 again, when any literature lia» so deeply inwrought iteelf into the hearts and lives of a people as to have become a sacred and inseparable constituent of their nature, and when time has nevertheless so far chanj^ed the current of thouj.'

ht as to make that literature apparently inconsistent with the new idea, or inadequate to express it, — then the choice for the people lies between a ruinous breach with what is, by this time, part and parcel of themselves, and, on the other hand, forcing the olil lan^'uage to be a vehicle for the new thought.

Hence the tendency to allegory, which is indigenous to human nature, becomes, in the absence of his- torical criticism, also innntahle, except to the indifferent iconoclast, if such there be. Allegory proved the safety-valve for Greek, Jew, and Christian. During and, perhaps, owing to tlie in- tellectual movement of the hfth century B.C.

, — in 6pit« of the severe critical <ieprecation of Plato, whose mind was set on higher things, — Homer, the ' IJilile of the Greeks,' was saved for the educate<i by allegory ; with the stories he told of the gods, if he was not allegorical, he was impious, or they were immoral. Hence, from Anaxagoras onwards, the actions of the Homeric gods and heroes are allegories of the forces of nature ; and, in Heraclitus (iirst century A.D.

), the ' story of Ares and Aphrodite and Hepha'stus is a picture of iron sulxlued by tire, and restored to its original hard- ness by Poseidon, that is, by water.' Or else they are the movements of mental powers and moral virtues ; and so, in Comutus (also first cent. A.D.)

, when Odysseus filled his ears that he might be deaf to the song of the Sirens, it is an allegory of the righteous filling their senses and powers of mind with di\'ine words and actions that the passions and pleasures which tempt all men on the sea of life might knock at their doors in vain (Hatch, llibhert Lecture,i, 1888, pp. 62, 64). Hut allegorizing was Jewish as well as (ireek, and Palestinian as well as Hellenistic.

Hoth sections of Jews used allegory for apologetic purpcses, but not with identical aims. The Pal.

Jews allegorized the OT, finding a hidden sense in sentences, words, letters, and (in the centuries after Christ) even vowel-points, in order to satisfy their consciences for the non-observance of laws that had become impracticalile, or to justify traditional and often trivial increment, or to defend God against apparent inconsistency, or the writers or historical ctiaracters against impiety or immorality ; or, generally, for homiletical pur- poses. Thus Akiba (first and second centuries a.k.)

claimed to have saved by allegory the Sonif of Songs from rejection. Allegory was a consider- able element in the Pal. Haggada (or inter- vretation), and there were definite canons regu- lating its use.

The Hellenistic Jews, whose metropolis of culture was Alexandria, and who, in the neighbourhoo<l of NT times, constituted the majority of Jews, directed their apologetic towards educated Greeks, for philosophical pur- poses, and allegorized the OT to jirove that their sacred Inioks were neither barbarous nor immoral nor iiiMiious, that their religion had the same rationale as Greek philosophy, and that Moses had l)een the teacher, or, at all events, the anticipator, of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.

The Helknistic thinkers desired to be Greek philo- sophers without ceasing to l>e Jewish religionists. Thus the Alexandrian Aristobulus (second cent. B.C.), reputed to be the earliest known Hellenistic allegorizer, in his coiniiientary on the Pent, ad- dressed to Ptolemy Philoinclor, sought (as Clement of Alexandria says) to ' bring Peripatetic philo- sophy out of Moses an<l the Prophet.s.' l!ut the representative Alexandrian allegorizer was Pliilo (early in first century A.Ii.)

: he reduced allegory to VOL. I. — s a system of his own, with canons similar to those of the Pal. Haggadists, but freely used, and adapted to philosophical ends by means of the Platonic doctrine of ideas.

Professing to retain the literal sense as carrjnng in itself moral teach ing, he nevertheless made the allegorical so tran- scendentlj' significant (as the soul in the body) that both literal and moral were continually over- whelmed : before the writer's deteiiuination to extract the allegorical at all costs and in any sense that at the time suited his mood, the facts often disappeared, the narrative was turned upside dowii, and, in the handling of the characters of OT story, the unities were entirely ignored.

So, when it is said that Jacob took a stone for his pillow, what he did, as the archetype of a self-disciplining soul, was to put one of the incorporeal intelligences of that holy ground close to his mind ; and, under the pretext of going to sleep, he, in reality, found repose in the intelligence which he had chosen that on it he might lay the burden of his life. A";ain, Joseph is made, in one aspect, the type ot the sensual mind, and, in another, of a conqueror \-ictorious over pleasure.

\Ve find the Alexandrian method employed upon the OT as early as the Book of Wisdom and its allegorical interpretation of the manna in the Pent, (le^*"-), and of the high priest's robe as the image of the whole world (18^). Tlie early Christians therefore found this current and acknowledged method of interpretation to their hand in the arguments they drew from the OT against the unbelieving Jews j and, in particular, St.

Paul and the Paulinists, in their ellorts to turn the law itself against the law-worshipping Judaisers. Hut not till post-apostolic times, cul- minating in the times of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, does the allegorical method show itself in any luxuriance.

The method of Jesus and the speakers and writers in NT is typical rather tlian allegorical, and Palestinian rather than Alex- andrian ; and, in any case, is self-restrained and free from the characteristic extravagance of rabbi and philosopher. St. Paul, in his application of the method to the command as to oxen threshing (1 Co g"-).

to the rock (1 Co 10*), and to the veil of Moses (2 Co 3'""-), is both Palestinian and Alex- andrian in disregarding the original drift of the passages and incidents, treating it as noiiiipg (1 Co 9'") in comparison with the tyj)ico-allegori,,a,l interpretation ; but he is Pal. in being homiletical in his aim and not philosoiihical, and in having persons and events in his perspective rather than abstract truth.

In (Jal 4''""- he openly atlirnis that Hagar and Sarah, Ishmael and I-siiac, 4<rriv &>.Ki)- yopountva, i.e.

are (1) spoken or written of in the Scriptures allegorical ly, or (2) inter])reted allcgori- cally (with his approval) in his own day; and, in treating them (somewhat after Pliilo s manner upon the same subject) as representing two dillerent covenants, one of the present and the other of llu future Jerusalem, he approximates to the Alex- andrian philosophical practice of allegorizing con- crete things, persons, and events into abstract ideas : but only approximates ; for not only is he clearly historical and typical in his ba:iis, and homiletical in his aim, but, if ffwrrjixei refers (as some think) to the numerical value of the letters according to the l{abbinic Gematria, he is, even here, Palestinian rather than Alexandrian in his method of interpretation.

In the K/i. Id the Ucbrewn the inlluence of Philo and Alexandria comes out more definitely. The writer is an 'idealist whose heaven is the liome of all transcendental rralilics, whoso earth is full of their symbols, and these are most abundant where earth is most saircil— in the tcMiiile (or tabernacle) and worship of his people.' He 18 Alexandrian in his frequent contrasts between 66 ALLEMETH ALMIGHTY the inTirible (U'), impemhable (8» 9^ 12»«),.

arche- v^aTXld (8^), and the visible (U'), perishable P^ world o appearance (W), the imperfect copy {^LTy^) of the former (9^ 8') ; or again between jida Xis the shadow (.da) and Cmstian^y a8 Ihe nearest earthly •Mn;>-o^""'^\'°" (\:';''»^^ f^l heavenly substance ri i^rovpiyia) (8» 10 ) .

and tne alTeKory^of Melchizedek, based not on the historical personage so much as on the nature of the two ^S allusions t« him, combined with the signifi^ ] cMce of the great sUence elsewhere in the Ol as t^ hfs birth and descent, as we as of the two names Melchizedek and Salera,-all these together bring made the foundation of a logical construction of Uie person and work of Christ as an emlwdiment of the Le onceived idea.

-can hardly be considered without regard to PhUo's treatment of ^lelchizedek ^ an allegory of his apparently impersonal Logo^^^ And yet, with the expression in the 1 10th 1 ^•alm be- ^e iB. ^Thou art a priest for ever after the order of MSchizedek,' we must allow Dr. Westcott a clrtefn margCi of justification when he maintainB rSe trelTment^f Melchizedek -typical ratto than allegorical ; though he appears ^ he t«o Xin.;>hen he affirms. ' There is no al'egory in this epistle.

ALLEMETH (nj^u), AV Alemeth, 1 Ch 6» ; iii™„n (ii-Svi Tos "1"*.— A Levitical city of Ben- famin "it t noic^^l ^^-ith Anathoth and is tlie i'r'ent -Almit on the hUls N. of Anathoth^ SJKi> vol. ui. sheet xvii. C- R- CoNDER.