Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

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Secret Alias
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Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

Post by Secret Alias »

I know what people will say - Philo used a lot of allegory. That's true to some extent. But there are some things we should keep in mind. Philo was writing to outsiders. Was Origen doing the same?

Here's what I mean.

There must have been a 'church' that Origen belonged to. There were mostly illiterate people who took religion literally. Jesus did X, Y or Z and that means 1, 2, 3 for me. It wasn't like Origen presided over an 'allegorist' Christian community. Christianity was pretty much the same for Christians in Alexandria, Rome even within Marcionism or other assemblies for the average person. What Origen, Irenaeus, Justin, Marcion were fighting over was Christianity as expressed at the highest levels of the Church. So why does Origen feel the need to cloak everything he says in complex and most implausible allegories? I think the Alexandrian tradition or the tradition he identified with in Egypt originally wasn't able to express itself openly. Much like Philo. Philo couldn't express how the Jews read the Book of Exodus because he was living in a time of great strife and revolutionary fervor. It would just feed into the narrative that Jews were troublemakers.

I wonder if it was the same for Origen.
ABuddhist
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Re: Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

Post by ABuddhist »

Or maybe Origen was dealing with a tradition that, for whatever reason, insisted that the teachings be kept secret. Mystery religions need not only arise in response to times of great strife and revolutionary fervor.
Secret Alias
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Re: Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

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But there's a difference. You can have a mystery religion. No one is allowed to talk about what goes on behind closed doors. But you don't need to advance 'allegorical readings' of the newspaper. Origen can take the Cat in the Hat and turn it into a symbolic account of the Lakers game. I am sure that the religion at Eleusis wasn't allegorizing to the extend that Origen was. Clement doesn't even allegorize to the degree Origen allegorizes.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

Post by GakuseiDon »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 11:27 amThere were mostly illiterate people who took religion literally.
How can illiterate people take anything 'literally'? Like most people throughout time, I'd guess 90% of the Christians who grew up in the religion didn't care what was written and just believed what the priests told them to while trying not to let that interfere with their day.

Our view of Christianity is shaped by those educated and concerned enough to put their ideas into writing. The idea that in olden days the ordinary Christians believed in the literal truth of the Bible while a small powerful elite didn't take the Bible literally is not viable. If people were told by their priests that the Bible shouldn't be taken literally, that's what they believed. Why should they care? They had fields to tend and livestock to raise. For an illiterate farmer, what is the difference between a Bible taken literally and a Bible not taken literally?
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

Post by GakuseiDon »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 11:27 amThere must have been a 'church' that Origen belonged to. There were mostly illiterate people who took religion literally. Jesus did X, Y or Z and that means 1, 2, 3 for me. It wasn't like Origen presided over an 'allegorist' Christian community.
I think that Origen was indeed part of an 'allegorist' Christian community. Origen was asked to compile a response to Celsus as a knowledgeable elder for the Church. And Origen seems to be clear that his own allegorical views were part of the main stream. As Origen writes in "De Principiis", Book 4:

This is Origen, Third Century Christian:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04124.htm

But, that our meaning may be ascertained by the facts themselves, let us examine the passages of Scripture. Now who is there, pray, possessed of understanding, that will regard the statement as appropriate, that the first day, and the second, and the third, in which also both evening and morning are mentioned, existed without sun, and moon, and stars— the first day even without a sky? And who is found so ignorant as to suppose that God, as if He had been a husbandman, planted trees in paradise, in Eden towards the east, and a tree of life in it, i.e., a visible and palpable tree of wood, so that anyone eating of it with bodily teeth should obtain life, and, eating again of another tree, should come to the knowledge of good and evil? No one, I think, can doubt that the statement that God walked in the afternoon in paradise, and that Adam lay hid under a tree, is related figuratively in Scripture, that some mystical meaning may be indicated by it.

"Who is found so ignorant" and "No-one can doubt" makes it sound like these were common-place views within the educated parts of the church in Origen's time.

No doubt some Christians had a more literal view of the statements in the Bible. But was there a separate secret set of allegorical beliefs for the educated and a more 'literal' set of beliefs for the less educated that were kept from the uneducated? I just don't think there is evidence for that. I think there is evidence that they didn't care whether the uneducated held literal beliefs, but the question is: if a common uneducated Christian in Origen's time decided to believe that Genesis held some kind of allegorical meaning rather than a literal one, would that have been denied by the Church leaders? I just don't see it.
Secret Alias
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Re: Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

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There were mostly illiterate people who took religion literally.
Poor choice of words on my part. "Perhaps an ignorant people who took their religion at face value." Does that work better?
Secret Alias
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Re: Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

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Origen was asked to compile a response to Celsus
It's not that simple. The author of Against Celsus admits that we possess a 'second rewrite' of the original treatise. Written by Origen or Eusebius? Who knows for sure.
Secret Alias
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Re: Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

Post by Secret Alias »

The idea that in olden days the ordinary Christians believed in the literal truth of the Bible while a small powerful elite didn't take the Bible literally is not viable.
But surely they lacked the sophistication of Origen. Irenaeus says as much where he lauds the illiterate masses:
To which course many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without paper or ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, by means of Christ Jesus, the Son of God; who, because of His surpassing love towards His creation, condescended to be born of the virgin, He Himself uniting man through Himself to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again, and having been received up in splendour, shall come in glory, the Saviour of those who are saved, and the Judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform the truth, and despise His Father and His advent. Those who, in the absence of written documents,(4) have believed this faith, are barbarians, so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, manner, and tenor of life, they are, because of faith, very wise indeed; and they do please God, ordering their conversation in all righteousness, chastity, and wisdom. If any one were to preach to these men the inventions of the heretics, speaking to them in their own language, they would at once stop their ears, and flee as far off as possible, not enduring even to listen to the blasphemous address.
The stop their ears bit is the exemplified by Polycarp. So these are Polycarp's adherents. I am not sure how we should take the reference to 'barbarians.' Is this non-Greek speakers? Not Jews or non-proselytes? I would think 'barbarians' would be an anachronism. Is he talking about Germans? I don't think Christianity spread that far.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

Post by GakuseiDon »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 10:05 pm
There were mostly illiterate people who took religion literally.
Poor choice of words on my part. "Perhaps an ignorant people who took their religion at face value." Does that work better?
Yes, but take what at face value, if they couldn't read the Bible themselves? Wouldn't it have been what they were being told by their priests? If the priests were telling them that the Bible could be taken allegorically, then that's what they would have believed. I'm guessing most would have just shrugged their shoulders and thought "whatever, dude" at that point. Why should they care?

I'm guessing that the important parts for most Christians, both then and now, were the practical applications around salvation, such as how God could be motivated to improve their current life and their after-life. This did involve a literal belief in Jesus's resurrection. But whether Genesis was literally true or not would not have been a concern. Why should it? What would it matter to most uneducated Christians?
Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 10:11 pmBut surely they lacked the sophistication of Origen.
Origen was educated in the philosophy of the day, and tailored his arguments towards similarly educated pagans and Christians. He DID care.

Again, I'm not saying that all Christians were allegorists. Later educated Christians had problems with how far Origen pushed his claims of allegory in the Bible. And I'm sure that there were uneducated Christians who treated things literally that Origen and others claimed were allegorical. But it appears it just didn't matter to the educated Christians until a reading became a point of heresy.
Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 10:11 pmThe stop their ears bit is the exemplified by Polycarp. So these are Polycarp's adherents. I am not sure how we should take the reference to 'barbarians.' Is this non-Greek speakers? Not Jews or non-proselytes? I would think 'barbarians' would be an anachronism. Is he talking about Germans? I don't think Christianity spread that far.
I thought the origin of the word came from a Greek word derived from how non-Greek speakers sound when they speak - "bar bar"! So any non-Greek and non-Roman speaker, I guess. Tatian seems to have called Christianity and Judaism the products of "barbarians" in his "Address to the Greeks": http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... dress.html

BE not, O Greeks, so very hostilely disposed towards the Barbarians, nor look with ill will on their opinions. For which of your institutions has not been derived from the Barbarians? The most eminent of the Telmessians invented the art of divining by dreams; the Carians, that of prognosticating by the stars; the Phrygians and the most ancient Isaurians, augury by the flight of birds; the Cyprians, the art of inspecting victims. To the Babylonians you owe astronomy; to the Persians, magic; to the Egyptians, geometry; to the Phoenicians, instruction by alphabetic writing. Cease, then, to miscall these imitations inventions of your own...

I happened to meet with certain barbaric writings, too old to be compared with the opinions of the Greeks, and too divine to be compared with their errors...

But now it seems proper for me to demonstrate that our philosophy is older than the systems of the Greeks. Moses and Homer shall be our limits, each of them being of great antiquity; the one being the oldest of poets and historians, and the other the founder of all barbarian wisdom...

So, bidding farewell to the arrogance of Romans and the idle talk of Athenians, and all their ill-connected opinions, I embraced our barbaric philosophy... These things, O Greeks, I Tatian, a disciple of the barbarian philosophy, have composed for you.

Last edited by GakuseiDon on Sat Jan 29, 2022 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
schillingklaus
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Re: Why Did Alexandrian Christianity Embrace Allegorism So Much?

Post by schillingklaus »

In illiterate times,the major concern for the mob was their role in the celebration of the Eucharist. Acts 2:42 f describes the scheme for these events in pagan/monastic environments: listening to apostolic teachings, sharing of goods, breaking of bread, prayers for the community members living and dead. This pattern was stable and has not been changed in the history of the Catholic church. 2:456 shows the concurring pattern for Jewish family man-style believers, a pattern which has disappeared already early.
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