THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
Allegorical Interpretation
Accordingly, ouc of
tlie
first
whose writings nre preserved,
Early Allegorism.
of
Hosert
the prophets
one wlien he
(xii. 5), is
of the earliest allejrorists, siivsof .Jacob's strujiftle with the
!in>rel
was
a striigj;le in ])niyer: this was because the idea of an act ual physical contest no lonjier harnmnized with the jiroThe activity phetic conception of heavenly beings. of the Scribes at a later period made the Hible a book for scholars, and allegorisin was fostered as a form of Midriish. The IJook of Oaiiicl supplied an illustration hereof, when it interpreted Jeremiah's prophecy of the seventy years of exile (xxix. ICt) as seventv weeks of years, and thus gave hopes of redemption from the conleniporary tyranny of the that
it
The dread of nprcKhiciiig liiblical anihro pomorphisms a thoroughly Jewish dread, and a Greeks.
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churaeteristic feature of the oldest porticms of the Septuagint sho ws the original disposition of all allegoiism; namely, to spirit uali/e mythology. See AnTIinOI'OMOUI'llISM Skptiaoixt. Essential as allcgorism thus was to the Palestinian Jews, it was none the less so to the Alexandrian Hebrews, who were made to feel the derision of llic ilelli'ues at the naive Alexandrian Al- ]iresentations of the I5il)le. The Jews legorism. replied by adopting the Hellenes' own
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weapons: if the latter made Homer speak the language of Pythagoras, Piato, Anaxagoras, and Zeno, the Ji'Ws traiisfurmed the Uible into a manual of philo.sopliy which also was made to This contain the teachings fif tlu'se philosophers. polemic or apologetic feature of Alexandrian allcgorism is at the same time characteristic of its rcla tion to the Palestinian Jlidrash on the one hand, and theallegori/.ed mythology of the Greeks on the other; in its pur|iose, Alexandrian allegory was Hellenic; But one in its origin and method, it was .lewish. would hardly be warranted in maintaining that nllegorism was specifically Hellenic because thcAlexandrians were the first .lews known to have cultivated it; nothing can be ri'ally proved from the absence of allegory in the few inconsiderable remains of Palestinian Scriptural lore of the two centuries before the common era. Closely connecting with the Palestinian Alidrash is AmsTonci.rs,. rightly to be termed the father of Alexandrian allegory. His ])urpose, to jirove the essential identity of Scripture and Aristotelianism, is of course the Alexandrian one; but his eX]ilanalions of the Biblical anthropomorphisms is thoroughly Palestinian, and reminds one of Targnin and SeptuaSimilarly, The Wisdom of Solomon, another gint, Apocryphal book of the same period, is not specitically Hellenic in its allegorical synibolTheWisdom ism. The explanation of the heavenly of Solomon, laihler in .Jacob's vision, as a symbol of Hivine Providcnci' and the supersensual world, isjvistas little Hellenic jis the Biblical narrative itself, the sense of which is very correctly given (Wisdom, x, 10), The inlluence of a Palestinian Jlidrash, preserved in the Mishnah (H. H. iii. 8), is evident in the explanation of the serpent (Num. xxi, 9), as a "symbol of salvation, while the salvation itself came from God " (Wi.sdom. xvi..')). These and .similar interpretations are so clearly of Palestinian origin that it would be wrong to assume any foreign intluence for them. Tlu> literal reality of the Law and of the Biblical history is so strongly adhered to by the author of The Wisdom of Solomon, coming as it does from Pharissiic circles, that one can liardlv speak of his treatment as an allcgorization of the Bible. The Allegorical Interpretation of the Law in the
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Ahisteas Lettkk exhibits Hellenic intluence more decidedly. It seeks to give ethical motives for all the rit il and ceremonial laws. On the one hand, the tlesh of birds of prey is declared unclean, it says, in order to teach how violence and injustice detile the ,soul; on the othir. that of animals which chew the cud and divide the hoof is permitted. For the formir ( liaiacleristic typilies the duty of invoking (toil freiiuently and the latter signilic'S the distinction bet wi'cn right and wrong, ami the division to bi' maintained between Israel and nations practising abominations. A further step, hut an inevilabli' one, was taken by those allegorists of w hon Philo w rites (" De Mi gratione .brahami," xvi. ed. Mangey, i.4.")(l). that they cut loose entirely from Radical AUegorism. any observance of the Law, and saw in the records of .lewish revelation nothing btit a presentiition of higher philosophical truths. Such an extreme step could oidy provoke reaction: and the residt was that many would have nothing whatever to do with Allegorical IntiTpretation, justly seein,!r in it a danger to iiractical Judaism. These antiallegorists were specially represented in Palestine, where the warning was lu'ard (about ,50 li.c.) against those "evil waters " to be avoided by the young scholars "abroad," i.e. Egypt (see Anx.M.loN). Nor were there wanting in Alexandria itself
many determined opponentsof "
De
Somniis,'"
i.
this tendency (Philo. ed. JIangey, i. ()3.5). But the sides, allegorists as well as anti-
l(i;
extremists on both
allegorists, were in the minority for infisl teachers held steailfastly to the ancestnd faith as farasactual jiractise was concerned, and endeavored only tlii-oretically to harmonize .Judaism with the Hellenic pliilo.sophy by means of allegory. Philo informs us
('"De Vita Contemplativa, HI. ii. 47.T)tlial his predecessors in this allegorical tendency (from whom he (|Uotes eighteen times see the list in Siegfried's " Philo," p. 2(1) had committed their teachings to writing; but beyond Ihcpse quotations nothing has been preserved. The following is an illustration: "Men versed in natural philosophy explain the history of Abraham and Sarah in an allegorical manner with no inconsiderable ingenuity and propriety. The man here [Abraham] is a symbolical ex])ression for the virtuous mind, and by his wife is meant virtue, for the name of his wife is .Sarah ["princess"], because there is nothing more royal or more worthy of regal iireeminence than virtue " ("De Abrahamo," XX. 8; ed, Mangey, ii. 1,")). It would not be just, in the absence of striking proof, to maintain that Joskimiib, who in his preface to the " Antiquitates" speaks of Josephus. the literal sense and the allegorical, was influenced by Alexandrianism in general or by Philo in partictdar (.Siegfried's " Philo," p. 270). His symbolical exposition of the Tabernacle with its utensils, and of the high priest's vestments ("Ant." iii. 7, t; 7), and his interpretation that the Holy of Holies means the heavens, the ,showbread means the twelve months, and the candlestick means the seven planets, resemble Philo, but are merely resemblances. Similar explanations are repeatedly given by the Midrash; and this kind of symbolism was always a favorite in Palestine. All achievements of precedingallegorists, however, were far surpassed by Philo, the most important rej)resentative of .Jewish Alexandrianism. His philosophy furnished one foundation-stone to Christianity: his Allegorical Interpretation, in an even greater degree, contributed to the Church's interpretation of the Old Testament; and strange to ,Siiy neither his philosophy nor his allcgorism had the slightest
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