richard b hays echoes of scripture in the gospels

Origen, for example, famously appealed to the interpretation of the story of Hagar and Sarah that Paul offers in Gal 4:21–5:1 in support of a sweeping assertion that “all the narrative portion, relating either to the marriages, or to the begetting of the children, or to battles of different kinds, or to any other histories whatever” is to be interpreted as “the forms and figures of hidden and sacred things” ( Princ. The strategy of allegorical interpretation could also be applied to non-narrative texts (e.g., biblical law-codes, or the descriptions in Exodus of the layout and furnishings of the tabernacle).

According to this mode of interpretation, the characters, events, and circumstances of the biblical stories were to be read as pointing beyond themselves to timeless, eternal truths, carrying meaning and significance that extended far beyond what could have been understood and intended by their original authors. How can a story about someone else (and someone so far removed from me in time and place and situation) function as a form of the living and enduring word of God, speaking with relevance and power to me, in my own time and place (and indeed to all the people of God, in all times and all places)?įor centuries, in late antiquity and the middle ages (and into the modern era too, in portions of the church), the commonest way of responding to that challenge was to adopt a strategy of allegorical reading. One of the perpetual challenges faced by readers of the Bible lies in the narrative form of so much of the Bible’s contents-a challenge that is compounded by the alien and peculiar content of so many of the stories the Bible tells. Starling Narrative, Allegory and Figural Reading

Richard b hays echoes of scripture in the gospels