The Problem of Hebrews and OT Interpretation

To state the obvious, the interpretation of the Old Testament is a vital component of the Letter to the
Hebrews. One can argue that the whole letter is fundamentally an explanation of the fulfilment of
God's purposes in a New Covenant via exposition of the revelation of the Old Covenant.

Insofar as that's true, how we understand the interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures in our letter is
going to be very important. But here – perhaps inevitably within academia! - we run into
fundamental disagreements about the type of interpreter our author. Take one of the most famous
problem texts of the letter – the whole matter of Jesus as a priest after the order of Melchizedek
(5.6; 6.19-7.19, especially 7.1-3).

Is it outright “allegory”, in the sense defined in fourfold medieval interpretation (thus e.g. Spicq,
Peake, Hering)? Is it rather typological (Sowers, Williamson)? Does it represent a claim to an
outright Christophany (Ellingworth)? And – should we grant that it is allegorical in that
spiritualising, philosophical sense – is it explicitly Platonic (Spicq) or rather Palestinian and
Rabbinic (as Hanson suggests)?

To some degree this question may seem old-fashioned, with whatever it is being a non-literal or
figural type of reading, and there's the end of it. As Nathan Macdonald put in his introduction to one
of the St Andrews Conference volumes:
“These non-literal modes of interpretation can include what twentieth-century
scholarship sought to distinguish as typological and allegorical modes of reading.
Hebrews knows nothing of this distinction and is happy to move between them”1.
What I want to argue in this paper, however, is that: (1) allegory, specifically, is a useful diagnostic
term once redefined as ancient writers and readers would have understood it; (2) it accurately
describes a variety of early Christian interpretive work, specifically in Paul, Barnabas, and
Hebrews; and (3) Paul and Barnabas provide useful mirrors for us understanding how Hebrews
interprets Scriptures – that is, in an “allegorical” manner.

The Meaning of “Allegory” in the Ancient World

A few years ago in this seminar I presented on the meaning of the word allegory and its cognates in
the ancient world. Rather than entirely recapitulating that paper, I will instead summarise it in two
specific claims, evidenced only as necessary; you will need to take it on trust that I might have a
point if you weren't here a few years ago!

The claims are these:

(1) We may, to a large degree, apply statements made about the term allegory – allēgoria – to a
group of related words, such as huponoia, hieros logos, hierologos, hierologesthai, ainigma,
ainittontai, and sumbolon. I say this because the ancient authors connect them both
explicitly and verbally. Four short examples:
(a) Plutarch says what was once called huponoia is now called allēgoria.
(b) Plato uses both huponoia (“under-sense”)2 and ainittontai (in context, “their riddling way”)3, in
separate places, to describe the alleged encoded meanings of poets whose work is, at surface level,
frivolous or blasphemous. This encoding is done by the author; Plato muses upon making his own,
better myths with huponoia attached, (Xenophon also has Socrates describe the huponoia of Homer
– he is less sceptical of their existence4.)
(c) The Classical-period Derveni Author uses the ainigma and hierologos word-groups when
describing the under-sense meanings of Orpheus' poems.
1
McDonald, N. “Introduction”. Hebrews and Christian Theology edited by R. Bauckham et al. Grand Rapids, Mi.:
Eerdmans, 2009: 7.
2
Republic II.378d-e.
3
Lysis 214d.
4
Xenophon's Symposium 3.6.
(d) Philo, of course, uses both huponoia and allēgoria, in a manner which largely crosses over.
We can see, then, that there's a great cross-over in the use of these terms; a “riddle” can also
be an “under-sense” which can also be a “sacred word” which can also be an “allegory”.
(2) The term allegory itself – which is how those in the late-Hellenistic/early-Christian era refer
to the whole type of interpretive activity encompassed by the above terms – is a literary
term, not a philosophical one. Again, three short examples will suffice:
(a) Cicero defines it as a string of metaphors5 and Quintillian agrees.
(b) Heraclitus of Alexandria, the passionate philosophical allegorizer of Homer, defines the term
thus: “For the trope which says [agoreuōn] one thing but signifies something other [allos] than what
it says receives the name ‘allegory’ precisely from this”6. He proceeds to give two examples of
extended metaphor in Classical Greek poetry.
(c) Demetrius the Rhetorician also defines allegory as a literary trope; when speaking of Dionysius
of Syracuse's threat to his enemies that 'their cicadas shall chirp from the ground', Demetrius says
this: In the phrase actually used the speaker has shrouded his words, as it were, in allegory
(allēgoria) . Any darkly-hinting expression is more terror-striking, and its import is variously
conjectured by different hearers7.

What can we say then? When a non-Christian author in the ancient world argued that a text had a
huponoia or another of the related terms, when they were reading a text as an allēgoria, they
understood themselves to be engaging with a literary text in a literary manner – properly
understanding its author intent and so forth. We have no reason to expect this was different for
Christian authors.

Allegory in Paul
This is important when we come to the appearance of the word allēgoroumena in Galatians 4.24,
the NT hapax legomen of the word-group. If we wonder what Paul means by “allegorically” here,
we ought not look at 12th century AD interpretive practice, but that of the 1st century BC. Paul
means that the story of Hagar and Sarah from the book of Genesis – interpreted in Galatians 4.21-31
– has a metaphor intentionally embedded in it, or an under-sense, or a dark hint; if we understand
this as a literary activity, presumably embedded by the text's author. Is the author in this case
Moses? Well, twice in the passage from Galatians Paul uses the formula “For it is written” (v22 and
v27) – referring to Genesis 21 and Isaiah 54.1 respectively. Here Paul is not emphasizing the human
authors who literally (in Paul's view) wrote those books – Moses and Isaiah. “It is written”
emphasizes both the literary nature of his quotations, and that the metaphor or allegory in Genesis
was put there by the ultimate author of both texts, God.

This same idea comes up in the text where Paul is most apparently “allegorizing” the Old Testament
– in 1 Corinthians, specifically in 9.8-14 (where he applies Mosaic laws about feeding labouring
oxen and about the temple bread to his own ministry) and in 10.1-11 (where he finds
foreshadowings of salvation, baptism, and communion in the Exodus story). Here the Mosaic texts
– both legal texts and narrative texts – are applied to the new situation in Christ. Paul says, in 9.10
and 10.11, that these texts were “written” for the Christian - “It was written for our sake” (9.10),
“Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction,
on whom the end of the ages has come.”

There is a historical aspect to the narratives Paul refers to – the historic reality of Hagar and Sarah
matters in Galatians 4, punishments really did come upon the “baptised” Israelites to teach them –
but we can say in all three cases here, the texts were written for the Christian – by, as 1 Corinthians
9.9 implies, God, albeit through Moses (and Isaiah too, in the Galatians passage). This is an

5
Cicero. Orator ad M. Brutum, 94. Quintillian. Institutes 8.6.44.
6
Homeric Problems 5.
7
On Style 99-100.
important discovery for our dealings with Hebrews.

Allegory in Barnabas
Now to our final comparator. That there are interesting parallels between the pseudonymous Letter
of Barnabas and Hebrews goes back to Westcott and beyond; to our purpose, in Carleton Paget's
relatively recent key work on Barnabas, the case is strongly made that Hebrews may be the closest
parallel to Barnabas in the New Testament corpus8. The parallels relate to provenance (probably
Alexandrian in both cases), to language, and even to specific texts selected for interpretations – both
deal with the red heifer sacrifice and the Sabbath rest of God. Not only are similar Scriptural texts
chosen, but both authors are often perceived as “allegorizing” them.

In the case of Barnabas, there's little doubt that the author fits in with the broader trend of finding
secret or spiritual meanings hidden in sacred texts – take, for example, the numerological
interpretation of Abraham's 318 men as pointing to Christ (Barnabas 9.7-8). This numerological
artefact – where the exact way the number is recorded is vital to the interpretation – is seen as
finding fulfilment in the physical shape of the Cross of Christ.

Indeed, really the whole of Barnabas 5-17 can be read as an extended explanation of how every
aspect of the Scriptures – for that is how Barnabas sees the Hebrew Bible – is in fact a
foreshadowing of Christ. The penalty for fasting and the ritual of the scapegoat, for instance, are
shown side-by-side in Barnabas 7 as a “prefiguring” of Christ. But not only were they
prefigurations – the prefiguration was the only intended meaning, missed by the Jewish people. To
take one example, in Barnabas 10.9, the author states that Moses had received three doctrines
(dogmata) concerning food and “spoke of them in the Spirit”, but the Jews “received them as really
referring to food, owing to the lust of their flesh”; in the next verse, Barnabas demonstrates that
David, in the Psalms, had been talking of exactly the same spiritual doctrines, without using food as
an image. The actual observance of the Jewish Law was never in Moses' mind, at least as far as
Barnabas is concerned. The Law was only ever a shadow or hint or metaphor for what was to come.
It was, in the rhetorical usage of the time, an allegory. Who was the author of these allegories?
Moses “spoke of them in the Spirit” - of God.

Allegory in Hebrews
We can see many points of commonality between Hebrews and the various Classical, Hellenistic,
Jewish, and Christian authors who we have identified as understanding their sacred texts as using
the rhetorical trope of “allegory”. From the very first emergence of the idea of huponoia, the idea of
sacred authors – whether Homer, Orpheus, or Moses – encoding secret or higher meanings within
their works had been present, and this was very naturally understood by later antique writers as
being a rhetorical technique of the same species as a politician utilising a dark metaphor as a threat.

An apparent problem emerges when we consider that Hebrews repeatedly emphasizes that Scripture
is the speech of God (as in the Prologue or the Warnings, e.g. 1.1, 4.7) – but given Hebrews is a
written document unfolding the “speaking” of the Son, given that “long ago” the speaking of God
was accomplished through the prophets (long-dead and represented by their scrolls in the
synagogue), and given other potential rhetorical purposes of the idea of “speaking”, we need not be
so hasty.

At any rate, the way in which Hebrews establishes Scripture as God's speech – even where the
original text is explicitly in the mouth of a human (e.g. 1.8-9, 10-12) – points toward the “text” of
Scripture as ultimately intended and defined by God in a similar manner to how we've seen Paul
define that which “is written”. Whether Scripture is read or heard, it is still a matter of
communication – and the rhetoricians were just as concerned with oration as writing.
8
Carleton Paget, J. WUNT 2 – 64: The Epistle of Barnabas. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994: pp214-225.
What interpretive moves in Hebrews might be usefully explained by this idea of “allegory” as a
rhetorical trope, often applied to sacred texts?

(1) The Mosaic Law has but a skian, shadow, of the good things that have come in Christ (10.1);
the earthly temple is also only a shadow of the true temple (8.5). Though of course the
matter of Platonizing language is relevant here – how Platonic is this language, does it relate
to Philonic ideas, and so forth – it is not of prime importance. Discovering Platonic truth
hidden in the seams of the sacred text/speech is a case of understanding the trope of allegory
– just as it is allegory when Cicero encodes a letter so his friend will understand it but his
enemies won't if they intercept it9. God spoke to Moses, and the literal external observance
required by the Law – in its sacrifices, in the building of the temple – were only pointing to
higher matters. This is what Hebrews' opponents misunderstand; the doctrines of “maturity”
(6.1) are precisely about understanding the finer points of God's rhetoric.

(2) As a further specific instance of the Law's “under-sense”, the Sabbath rest – a matter of
external observance both prior to Sinai and then codified in the Fourth Commandment – is
interpreted as referring ultimately to the state of the Christian believer who “has also rested
from his works as God did from his” (4.10). Interestingly, Hebrews does not refer directly to
the Fifth Commandment, even though it is impossible that it was not in mind. Space
precludes a longer treatment, but one suspects that the Commandment itself is a parallel, if
not quite the same thing, as the Aaronic priesthood within Hebrews' system of thought –
fulfilled in the new covenant. But that is the point – the external observance of the Fifth
Commandment is actually to be truly understood by the explication of several verses of
Psalm 95 (a parallel to Barnabas interpreting food laws by Psalms). The Jewish people never
really benefited from that line of the second tablet of the Law; unlike Barnabas, we needn't
think they weren't meant to observe the Law itself, but rather, they were also meant to see
what it metaphorically, rhetorically points towards (consider how Philo sees law observance
as an aid to understanding the spiritual sense, in contrast to the hyper-allegorists10).

(3) Jesus is cast as the red heifer purifying God's people of their sins (13.11-12). Here again, the
real meaning of the heifer in Numbers 19 is in the allegorical meaning of the passage – as
intended by its speaker, God.

(4) Finally, we return to Hebrews 7. Arguably our author begins his musings about Melchizedek
in Psalm 110, as the priesthood “after the order of Melchizedek” gives the Son of God an
independent ritual competence to the Aaronic priesthood – this is a fairly central strut to the
argument. However, the baffling text for is the use of Genesis 14 – we easily grasp the
objective of the text, but we are reasonably left asking what kind of interpretation it requires.
It is not 12th century allegory – it really does matter that Melchizedek is concretely in the
narrative, and the comparison to Christ is by nature of a parallel, not of complex interpretive
gymnastics. On the other hand, if it is a “typology”, Melchizedek is too effective a
forerunner of Christ, rendering Him unnecessary – and a Christophany ignores the face
value wording of Christ being a priest after the order of Melchizedek. “Melchizedek” does
not simply mean Christ; the historic personage in Genesis 14 who received tithes from Levi
is the bedrock of Christ's claim to sacerdotal sufficiency.

How to solve the issue? To take a leaf from John Calvin's commentary, the point here is that our
author does not seek to fill in God's silence; the great orator and writer God has not given
Melchizedek a genealogy, regardless of how important they otherwise are, so we ought not fill that
9
Cicero. Epistulae ad Atticum, 2.20.3.
10
De migratione Abrahami 89-93.
in – not because Melchizedek the historic personage was eternally existent, but because, in Paul's
word, “these things were written for our instruction”. The historic event happened for their benefit;
the recording, the transmission, for ours. The two are sometimes distinct.

This means that Hebrews is reading into a silence in Genesis 14 something he does not believe to be
historically true but he does believe to be eternally true – God left the gap for us to use it to
understand Psalm 110.4, also spoken by God, which demonstrates the way in which Jesus is a fit
High Priest. This is not mysticism to our author, but literary studies.

With that, we have now embedded Hebrews in the literary context of its time, but also connected its
author's mindset to the closest parallel Christian authors of the time – Paul and Pseudo-Barnabas.
(We might also consider 1 Peter and its discussion of baptism as the next most relevant early
Christian text.) We can see that for all of them, the Old Testament was God's speech or writing; that
it was “written for us”, that is, for Christian believers at that time; that it was – in terms of form –
fundamentally a piece of rhetoric or literature, just as Homer's works were for Heraclitus of
Alexandria; and that the right way to interpret it involved understanding literary tropes, and
intelligently drawing out its true meaning thereby.

Negatively, this merely allows us to blur the edges of the term “allegory”; but more positively, it at
least allows us to see how important other ancient authors are in our attempts to understand
Hebrews – we cannot fully understand its central process of interpreting the Old Testament without
some knowledge of Classical and Hellenistic rhetoric.

This discussion also allows us to see that “allegory” is not just not opposed to “typology” -
typology, as with the red heifer example, is a type of allegory – but also that “allegory” is not
opposed to “literal”. After all, for Barnabas, the only literal meaning of the Mosaic Law is the one
he gives to it; it was never meant to be practised, and only fleshliness led to that (apparently
obvious) mistake. Nor is allegory merely the finding of philosophical higher meanings – the law
regarding oxen eating grain was recorded so that many years later churches might reward their
teachers. Hardly Platonism.

To sum all that up in a few short phrases – Allegory is the literary trope of an author hinting at or
hiding a truth in another statement; to Paul, Barnabas, and Hebrews, the author (or speaker) of
Scripture is God; God has communicated truths in hints and pictures in the Scriptures, and even in
gaps where He does not give information; right understanding of Scripture involves good literary
reading(/hearing) skills. On the importance of the last point, even if we sometimes come to different
conclusions, we are not so different to the author of Hebrews.