ALLEGORY

ALLEGORY. The Greek root means literally “to say something else.” In modern terms it refers to a veiled or figurative presentation, wherein the elements of the presentation are symbolic of substituted values. In the Hellenistic world, it signified the bringing out of hidden meanings from a sacred text, and was elaborated as a technique for the literary and philosophical exegesis of texts (e.g., Homer, Hesiod), which a cultivated society found embarrassing as sacred scripture. The term “allegory” is used in one place in the New Testament (Gal 4:24), though the technique is employed without the use of the term elsewhere (e.g., Is 5:1–6; Mt 13f.); but it was a 1st c. Alexandrian Jew, Philo, who first applied the method in a thoroughgoing way to the Old Testament in order to explicate the sublime and lofty character of the Jewish faith. Christian writers of Alexandria (q.v.), perhaps as early as the Epistle of Barnabas (q.v.) in about 150, and definitively with Clement and Origen (qq.v.) later, took Philo’s lead and used the technique to demonstrate the rationality, moral quality, and mystical calling of Christianity. Gregory of Nyssa (q.v.) was the 4th c.’s most able practitioner of this art of exegesis, carrying on the torch of the great Alexandrians and contributing significantly to the development of Christian Greek thought-in particular with his Life of Moses. Allegory thus contributed to the Christian acquisition of the philosophical patrimony and to the “interiorization” of the Scriptures (q.v.) in the long Holy Tradition of Orthodox spiritual literature (q.v.).