Reading Revelation : Allegorical Exegesis in Late Antique Alexandria (original) (raw)
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mirabilia Ars, 2018
In this paper it will be examined the School of Alexandria. The latter was a great center of Christianity, for a span of five centuries, until the reign of Justinian (529 A.D.). In it, the first system of Christian theology was formed and the allegorical method of biblical exegesis was devised. The School of Alexandria adopted the allegorical interpretation of the Holy Scripture, believing that it hides the truth and at the same time reveals it. It hides the truth from the ignorant, whose eyes are blinded by sin and pride, hence they are prevented from the knowledge of the truth. Origen, one of the greatest Christian theologians employed the allegorical method of the interpretation of the Bible in the belief that he was explaining them, whereas he was exploiting them on behalf his own dogmatic teaching. He was accused of that by other fathers of the Christian Church but also by many heretics. Origen had to defend his exegetical method against the various attacks from heretics, from laymen the church and from Celsus who attacked the Christian writers because, being «ashamed of these things (which are written the Bible), they take refuge allegory». On the other hand, Origen was not a «pure» allegorist in that he has some place for literal interpretation as well. Finally, Origen's basic commitments were to the Scriptures as the word of God, the church as the guardian of the tradition and the household of faith, and to Platonic metaphysics He thus wanted to hold both to his literally true Christian history, and to his spiritually true Platonism and Neoplatonism.
Interpretation and the semiotics of allegory in Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine
Semiotica, 1987
In discussions of the nature of interpretation from classical to modern times, the term 'allegory' and its cognates have been used in a variety of ways which need to be distinguished. In classical treatments of the subject, allegoria was one of the grammatico-rhetorical tropes, a species of metaphor or transferred, non-literal discourse, where the transfer of meaning was understood to be continuous throughout a sentence or a larger narrative unit. Classical grammarians, especially those of Stoic persuasion, interpreted Homer and other religious and mythological texts as if allegories were interwoven in the narratives, thus making allegoria seem more like a function of interpretation, commentary, or exegesis, activities which seek to renew a text according to the discursive practices of prevailing philosophies and ideologies. Classical thought did not readily distinguish the trope from its interpretation in a commentary. In the terms of post-Augustinian Christian exegesis, a biblical text may have three 'levels' of allegory, one of which was called allegory, and the signfunctions of biblical allegory were accounted for in terms of the grammatical trope. The trope and the discourse substituted for the trope (the interpretation) could both be called allegory. This often confusing dual treatment of allegory (one from the side of the production of discourse, the other from interpretation or exegesis) foregrounds what both have in common-the problematic status of polysemous or over-coded meaning, But allegory also foregrounds an important principle of all interpretation or commentary: interpretation seeks to reveal, in another or supplementary text, what was signified but unexpressed or suppressed in the text being interpreted. Both rhetor and exegete presuppose that allegory is constituted by an essential semiotic supplementarity. The purpose of this essay is to explore the principles of interpretation in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine, writers who utilized the classical grammatical tradition and established the central interpretive methodology for medieval semiotics and exegesis. These writers share a sophisticated understanding of textual semiosis
Patristic Exegesis: The Myth of the Alexandrian-Antiochene Schools of Interpretation
Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2019
The notion that there existed a distinction between so-called "Alexandrian" and "Antiochene" exegesis in the ancient church has become a common assumption among theologians. The typical belief is that Alexandria promoted an allegorical reading of Scripture, whereas Antioch endorsed a literal approach. However, church historians have long since recognized that this distinction is neither wholly accurate nor helpful to understanding ancient Christian hermeneutics. Indeed, neither school of interpretation sanctioned the practice of just one exegetical method. Rather, both Alexandrian and Antiochene theologians were expedient hermeneuts, meaning they utilized whichever exegetical practice (allegory, typology, literal, historical) that would supply them with their desired theology or interpretive conclusion. The difference between Alexandria and Antioch was not exegetical; it was theological. In other words, it was their respective theological paradigms that dictated their exegetical practices, allowing them to utilize whichever hermeneutical method was most expedient for their theological purposes. Ultimately, neither Alexandrian nor Antiochene exegetes possessed a greater respect for the biblical text over the other, nor did they adhere to modern-day historical-grammatical hermeneutics as theologians would like to believe.
[2016] Responses to Revelation: Alexandrian and Cappadocian Text Production and Hermeneutics
In the second decade of the 20 th century a small group of Jewish German intellectuals was considering resuscitating Schelling's late project of a philosophy of revelation. In his Star of Redemption, Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) reads the attempt of thinking revelation, which plunged idealism in an abyss of trans-speculative silence and in the depths of the via negativa, as the dawn of a different, thoroughly positive, line of approach not only to revelation itself but also to the thought that goes to revelation's encounter. Rosenzweig construes revelation as a complex speech-act that invites and enables a liturgical response. Instead of a semantics of revelation stretched beyond its speculative limits, Rosenzweig envisages a pragmatic of revelation and a performative-liturgical semiosis. Our group reunites three philosophers with a patristic background and an expertise in the modern and recent philosophies of language. We shall use the semantic-pragmatic tension at the heart of the Rosenzweig-Schelling debate to explore the possibility of a performative liturgical function of patristic literature as an alternative to the already well-studied semantic and speculative directions of this same literature. Our central concern will be taking seriously this literature's claims to being an extension of and a diligent response to scriptural revelation. To this end, we propose a set of analyses of Origen's exegesis of Proverbs 22:20-21, John 1:1-2, and Phillipians 2:6-11, as well as a few, more comprehensive, interpretations of Cappadocian homiletic literature, which we shall place in dialogue with Rosenzweig's Sprachdenken, Benveniste's theory of enunciation, and Austin's performative linguistics; with Lévinas' philosophy of language and its Lyotardian elaboration, as well as with Zizioulas personalist reformulation of patristic ontology.
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Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2017
In the fifth book of his Stromateis, Clement of Alexandria reflects on the symbolic nature of religious language among both barbarians and Greeks before providing his own figural reading of the tabernacle from the Jewish Scriptures. He claims that the symbolic mode is useful for speaking of divine truths, and at first glance, it appears that Christians must also utilize symbolic interpretation to understand their sacred texts. This essay explores a few of the reading practices that Clement utilizes within the argument of Str. 5. In particular, it analyzes the technical terminology of ancient symbolic interpretation in the pagan tradition and how Clement adapts these terms to his own distinct scriptural lexicon. This essay argues that, if one moves beyond Clement's theoretical statements on symbolic interpretation in Str. 5 to investigate his exegetical practices, two things become clear. First, although both genres utilize symbolic interpretation, Clement sees a distinction between Christian Scripture and pagan literature. Second, Clement places a surprising restriction on Christian figural reading. This essay, then, marks a preliminary phase towards a reassessment of Clement's scriptural exegesis.