RE: [asa] On Job

At 12:14 PM 10/6/2006, Jon Tandy wrote:

>"...If Christians for millennia could primarily interpret Genesis
>allegorically, surely we can, too. (Allegory was the primary way
>that "pre-modern" people read Scripture, hence Genesis being
>understood as something to do with the fall and salvation when it
>really does not say such a thing literally in the most ancient texts.)

@ How far back does "pre-modern" go? ~ Janice

"....[19] Harpur quotes Origen as saying, " It is allowed, by all who
have any knowledge of the scriptures that everything there is
conveyed enigmatically, i.e., esoterically." As usual, no source is
given for this alleged quote from Origen; such a line is attributed
to Origen in Contra Celsus by Kuhn in Who is this King of Glory? An
online copy of that work here, reveals no such quote.

It is also said that when the church "turned to literalism and an
exoteric, bottom-line rendering of the faith," Origen's works were
banned. This ignores the plain historical fact that literalism was a
fundamental method of reading before Origen, and by Origen himself.

As reported here [*see below] Origen did make recourse to an
allegorical method more than others did, but he did so only when "it
would entail anything impossible, absurd, or unworthy of God" -- he
did not interpret the entirety of the scriptures allegorically as
Harpur would wish to imply. As the article also makes clear, whether
indeed Origen's works were banned is far from clear, and it was not
due to "literalism vs. allegorism."

Finally, Harpur charges that the church forgot or ignored "the fact
that St. Paul himself used the esoteric, allegorical approach: but
carefully hides in a footnote the single reference to Paul allegedly
doing this in Gal. 4:24-5 -- hardly enough to establish a normal
methodology, even if true; however, the Jews did not reject allegory
as a means of interpretation, and what Paul does here is not what
Harpur does in his "allegorizing" (e.g., making the story of the
prodigal son some metaphor for primordial matter!), but a case of
historical appeal to type and antitype from what he regards as real
history. See description here http://www.tektonics.org/qt/typola.htm

  *Origen and Origenism
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11306b.htm

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Received on Sun Oct 8 23:25:39 2006