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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Some Church Fathers taught that
biblical documents should be
understood allegorically, not
literally; that is, not "infallibly."
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Preview and Summary: The mandated literalist-view of Big Religion is one more attempt at power-and-control over the minds of people - rather than allowing "the Spirit of truth" to lead and guide one into various nuances of meaning.
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Origen scorned the literalist view of scripture; said that there were many things in the gospels, "recorded as actual events, which did not happen literally." He quotes as example the story of Jesus taken to a mountain top and tempted by the Devil. Origen ridicules the notion that anyone could see all the kingdoms of the world from any mountain and asserts that this is meant to be taken allegorically: "The careful reader will detect thousands of other passages like this in the gospels."
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Clement, too, stated that mature Christians could penetrate the allegorical meaning of scripture by understanding "the involutions of words and the solutions of enigmas," but that the beginner sees only the surface meaning.
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Galatians 4: 23, 24: "Howbeit the son by the handmaid is born after the flesh; but the son by the freewoman is born through promise. Which things contain an allegory: for these women are two covenants; one from mount Sinai, bearing children unto bondage, which is Hagar." (ASV)
"not God's words but a story-teller's words"
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What you are reading in the second chapter of Genesis is not the revealed word of God in which every phrase must be searched for meaning.
You are reading a 10th century BCE folk tale designed to help human beings make sense out of the fact of evil. No conversation between Eve and the serpent ever took place because neither Eve as the presumed first woman, nor the serpent, which apparently walked on two feet and spoke perfect Hebrew, ever existed.
The dialogue in that story is the dialogue that the original story teller employed. The serpent, as the tempter, was employing its understanding of God to buttress its argument. These are not God’s words, but a story teller’s words, so it matters little who is lying. The serpent is making God say what the serpent wants God to say in order to achieve its purpose. People do that all the time.
That is how slavery, segregation, the diminution of women, the oppression of homosexuals, religious wars, and religious persecution are developed. People quote God or God’s 'Word' (the Bible) to place God on the side of a variety of issues.
So break the literal hold the Bible has on you and begin to study the scriptures for what they are - tribal tales through which people seek the meaning of God.
~ Bishop John Shelby Spong
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