Introduction

One key dichotomy that has historically dominated the study of the Epistle to the Hebrews is that of
its “Greek” or “Jewish” nature – which ethnicity was the author, which the audience, which the key
intellectual context, and so forth. Within that wider dichotomy, one smaller dichotomy has often
been utilised – whether specific interpretive moves made by the author are typological or allegorical
(which terms are themselves assumed to be dichotomous, being essentially mutually exclusive).
Within this smaller dichotomy, typology is more “Jewish” whilst allegory is more “Greek”. Who
argues for which solution sometimes divides along suspiciously partisan lines – take, for instance,
two positive giants in the field of Hebrews. The evangelical scholar F.F. Bruce argues that in our
Epistle, “The Old Testament writings are treated by our author as a mashal, a parable or mystery
which awaits its explanation, and the explanation given in the pages of the epistle takes the form of
messianic typology”1. The Roman Catholic Ceslas Spicq, on the other hand, argues that the author
of the epistle is a disciple of Philo converted to Christianity, and that the epistle contains explicit
allegorical interpretation2 – both of which, for Spicq, speak of Hellenization.

Whatever the cause of the typology/allegory division in scholarship, its orthodoxy has been under
assault in the 20 years since the release of Bruce's revised edition. Nathan MacDonald wrote in
2009 of hermeneutics in Hebrew that:
“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”3
There have been some key efforts in the field – at both the general level of the study of ancient
interpretation and of the study of Hebrews in particular – to reassess the exact nature of allegory in
the ancient world. These range from Paul Ellingworth's conciliatory noises about Philonic influence
on Hebrews in his 1993 NIGTC commentary4, to recent thoroughgoing reassesments of the relevant
hermeneutical backgrounds to Hebrews, notably Peter T. Struck's Birth of the Symbol in 20045,
which excellently traces the development of symbolic thought in the ancient world, and Susan
Docherty's The Use of the Old Testament in Hebrews in 20096, which analyses in detail the Jewish
interpretive influences on the epistle.

My own approach is to analyse what the ancients believed themselves to be doing. One way of
avoiding false dichotomies imposed by relatively modern concerns is to seek to give the ancient
writers a voice in proceedings. On that basis, I'm going to first discuss what allegory meant to the
ancients, before briefly touching on the wider Jewish/Greek dichotomy, and then analysing
interpretive techniques found in Hebrews, finally concluding by answering my paper's question:
does Hebrews contain Jewish allegory?

Ancient Allegory
So, what did allegory mean to the ancients? Well, the term as used in English scholarship actually
covers a variety of terms, not just allēgoria but also huponoia, sumbolon, and ainigma7. Indeed,
allēgoria itself turns up late in the day, in the 1st century BC – when we identify Plato as criticising
allegory, we refer thereby to huponoia; when the Derveni writer allegorizes, he is discovering the
1 F.F. Bruce. p27
2 Ceslas Spicq. L'Epitre aux Hebreux. Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1953: I.91 and II.183.
3 Nathan McDonald. “Introduction”. Hebrews and Christian Theology edited by R. Bauckham et al. Grand
Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2009: 7.
4 Paul Ellingworth. NIGTC: The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text. P47. Grand Rapids,
Mi./Carlisle,: Eerdmans/Paternoster Press, 1993: 47. Bruce preferred to say it was Philonic language, not influence,
in play.
5 Peter T. Struck. Birth of the Symbol. Princeton: PUP, 2004.
6 Susan Docherty. WUNT 2.260: The Use of the Old Testament in Hebrews. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009.
7 Obbink, D. “Early Greek Allegory”. The Cambridge Companion to Allegory edited by Rita Copeland and
Peter T.
Struck. Cambridge: CUP, 2010: pp18f.
ainigma in the sacred text. Though investigating the use of these terms does allow us to conclude
they are somewhat interchangeable by the 1st century AD, if we are careful we will not want to
assume the weight of these other terms too readily when we read Philo or Paul describing
themselves as allegorizing. We ought initially to investigate the term's development in the 1st
centuries BC and AD.

We can securely date to the 1st century BC four users of the term allēgoria or its cognates: an
anonymous Alexandrian writer who describes one epistolary form as allegorical8; the Epicurean
Philodemus who upbraids young men for defining rhetorical figures such as allēgoria or metaphora
rather than using them (a warning to future academics, perhaps)9; the Academically-inclined
anonymous author of Rhetorica Ad Herennium, who, drawing from a Greek original, uses the Latin
word permutatio, which tends to translate the Greek allēgoria. This author offers three types of
permutatio – employing several metaphors from the same domain together; employing a
comparison in order to magnify or lessen an object; and employing a mocking comparison10.
Finally, Cicero uses the phrase in two contexts, first describing a sub-species of metaphor called by
the Greeks allēgoria, where “When many metaphors succeed one another uninterruptedly the sort
of oration becomes entirely changed”11. He also uses the phrase when writing to Atticus during his
extended clashes with Clodius. He addresses the concerns of letters being intercepted by saying
that, in future, he will clothe talk of politics “in allegory” - he uses the Greek term allēgoriais12.
Atticus would, presumably, know how to decode this; Clodius' partisans would not.

However, where we might expect Cicero and others in the 1st century BC to use the phrase – in
philosophy – we do not find them doing so. Cicero himself, when criticising Stoic “spiritualized
interpretation” - probably in the case involved reconstruction of ancient wisdom from flawed poems
– he does not talk of them allegorizing, but rather saying that they seek “to provide an explanation
of the legendary stories, and to set forth the reasons for the form of each proper name”13. He credits
them with apologetic intent and describe them etymologizing, but this not bring the term allēgoria
to mind. Nor do the Stoics of the time use the term when describing “spiritualized interpretation”.
The geographer Strabo and the slightly later theologian Cornutus – both of whom believe ancient
wisdom can be reconstructed from myths, and of whom Strabo particularly respects Homer – avoid
the term entirely, preferring terms such as ainigma – rather obviously meaning, enigma – or
sumbolon – symbol.14

Though in the 1st century AD Cornutus still eschews the term, some of the rhetoricians do begin to
develop a definition of allēgoria which goes beyond a specific rhetorical use of metaphor –
Longinus, whilst still seeing allegory as related to metaphor, does suggest one purpose some have
for allegory is the defence of scandalous myths15. Demetrius, probably writing around the same
time, seems to go a little further again in a different direction – allegorical writing is a way of
cloaking one's meaning and leaving it as a dark hint. He says:
“99. There is a kind of impressiveness also in allegorical language. This is particularly true of such
menaces as that of Dionysius: 'their cicadas shall chirp from the ground'.
100. If Dionysius had expressed his meaning directly, saying that he would ravage the Locrian
land, he would have shown at once more irritation and less dignity. In the phrase actually used the
speaker has shrouded his words, as it were, in allegory. Any darkly-hinting expression is more

8 Cited via Weicherts in R.P.C. Hanson. Allegory and Event. Louisville, Ky., 2002: WJK Press: 38.
9 Philodemus. De Rhetorica., I.164; I.171,2; I.181.
10 Rhetorica ad Herennium, IV.34,46. See also Silva Rhetoricae. http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/P/permutatio.htm.
Brigham Young University: accessed 30/11/2014.
11 Cicero. Orator ad M. Brutum, 94. Quintillian in Institutes 8.6.44 follows this definition.
12 Cicero. Epistulae ad Atticum, 2.20.3.
13 Cicero. De Natura Deorum, III.24.
14 Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium. Strabo. Geographica, I.2.3, X.3.23.
15 Longinus. On The Sublime, XXXIII.7.
terror-striking, and its import is variously conjectured by different hearers.”16
Allegory now is a way of cloaking meaning, partly for dramatic effect, partly to confuse hearers.
Demetrius even offers an almost philosophical reason for why allegory is particularly appropriate –
that it veils what ought to be impressive, giving you glimpses of it rather than exposing it to an
unsympathetic gaze.

Heraclitus of Alexandria offers a “little technical account of allegory” at the start of his Homeric
Problems – “The word itself, which is formed in a way expressive of truth, reveals its own
significance” – which is a typically Stoic way of looking at the nature of language – “For the trope
which says [agoreuōn] one thing but signifies something other [allos] than what it says receives the
name ‘allegory’ precisely from this”17. He proceeds to give two examples of extended metaphor in
Classical Greek poetry. His central claim is that Homer had written his epics allegorically;18 by
comparing Homer to the Classical poets, he uses the term allegory in a rhetorical context, the
rhetorical device being extended metaphor, as with the earlier rhetoricians. Heraclitus himself
decodes Homer using various techniques, notably etymology, metonymy, and physical substitution
– ie, where a poetic term represents a physical reality. For instance, he decodes Apollo's rage against
the Greeks as actually being a plague brought on by the heat of the sun via both the popular maxim
“the sun's Apollo, and Apollo the sun” and via multiple etymologies19. Homer is saved from
anthropomorphizing Apollo via etymology, appeal to tradition, and physical substitution.

Philo Judaeus, meanwhile, uses several terms to describe the information encoded by Moses in
Scripture, including words relating to ainigma20, sumbolon21, huponoia22, and, importantly,
allēgoria23. The terms all relate to the same process of writing and reading; Moses intended hidden
meanings – symbols, under-senses, speaking otherly – and Philo discovers them. This is an
essentially rhetorical as much as it is a mystical way of viewing the text, which lines Philo up with
his contemporaries and predecessors. Philo also utilises a variety of techniques in this decoding, but
the problem of the Greek/Jewish dichotomy mentioned already come to the fore here – in Legum
Allegoriae 3.107, for instance, where Philo continues his explication of Genesis 3.14-15 by
considering other examples of curses in the Law24, is Philo performing gezerah shavah and
explicating texts by resort to shared words, or is he mimicking the scholars of the Museum and
letting Moses read Moses? Again, when he etymologizes the names Abram and Abraham in De
Mutatione Nominum 66, is he relying on the great tradition of Hebrew name interpretation, or on
Stoic belief in the inherent truth in language? And in the next verse, where he utilises the etymology
to exalt Abraham, is he offering a Derash interpretation or a Hellenistic allegorical one?

Setting that question aside for a moment, let us finally briefly consider St Paul. Paul, in Galatians
4.24, declares the story of Hagar and Sarah to be allēgoroumena – speaking allegorically. He
certainly performs what might seem to us be an allegory elsewhere, too – declaring the true
meaning of provision for oxen in the Law to be how church leaders are to be provided for, in 1
Corinthians 9.9-1125. He also seems to use etymology half-punningly, half-earnestly, with Onesimus
in the letter to Philemon, and perhaps also with Syzygus in Philippians 4.3. The self-declared
allegory, in Galatians, is of a peculiar type. It begins as substitionary allegory – the two children
really represent the two covenants (Galatians 4.24). But that sounds a lot like a “typological”
16 Demetrius. On Style, 99f.
17 Heraclitus. Homeric Problems, 5.
18 Ibid. 1.
19 Ibid. 7.
20 XXX
21 E.g. Philo. Legum Allegoriae I.1.
22 E.g. Philo. De Agricultura 97.
23 E.g. Philo, De Migratione Abrahami 131.
24 The Serpent is not given a chance to argue his case as required in Deuteronomy; this is because he allegorically
means pleasure.
25 Thiselton considers this essentially typological.
prefigurement of the Messianic event, and Paul then turns to what has been called “similar-situation
typology” – Isaac's persecution both mirrors and foreshadows the persecution of his Christian
hearers. Interestingly, Philo too interprets Hagar and Sarah – not as the slave covenant and the free
covenant, as Paul does, but in a parallel manner, as lower and higher learning26 Allegory for Paul
can even include that form of interpretation we often call typology – even though typology is
thoroughly Jewish in instinct, being most often Messianic and/or apocalyptic, as at Qumran27. Of
course, if we understand Paul to be using “allegory” as a rhetorical term, describing God or Moses
encoding additional meanings or Messianic prophecies into texts, the tension dissipates. Allegory, in
this situation, is a descriptive not a mystic term.

Jewish or Greek?
Are Philo and Paul using Jewish or Greek techniques? Well, they use both – an interest in name-
meanings, typology and Scribal methods are Jewish, whilst thoroughgoing etymology, the use of
philosophical ideas to explicate texts, and the term allegory are the latter. It's also very difficult to
trace the evolution of some of these techniques – how much did the Jewish background of Aristeas
and Aristobolus affect their allegory, and how much did that in turn affect later Hellenistic
Alexandrian allegory? As we cannot know in every detail, we must demonstrate some humility in
the face of the silence of history. We can say, however, that Hellenistic spiritually-interpretive
tendencies – from the Presocratics onwards – and certain Jewish techniques may be said to have
achieved a convergent evolution in Philo and Paul. That a form of etymology was legitimate and
encouraged in both contexts will only have validated it further; the same with gezerah shavah and
Homer reading Homer. And this need not have caused any fatal crisis of identity for the Jew in
question – as John Barclay so conclusively demonstrated, a 1st century Jew could consider
themselves loyally and essentially orthodoxly Jewish whilst embracing many elements of
Hellenistic culture – from its education to its philosophy. All truth was God's truth.

Interpretation in Hebrews
Having laid my groundwork thoroughly, I'll now consider the Epistle to the Hebrews. The text has
Hellenistic elements – the epistolary framework it takes in the form we have it; the literary Greek
style, full of compounds and neologisms; the specialist Greek vocabulary, both philosophical and
theological. It also has Jewish elements – its homiletic style is based on an appeal to an authoritative
text, not formal logic; it offers lengthy exposition of that text; it gives dire warnings against
apostasy; it produces specific catena of Scripture (1.5-14) as we see at Qumran28.

Our author does not describe his interpretive programme. He neither programatically – as Heraclitus
– nor incidentally – as Philo and Paul – declares himself to be allegorizing. He doesn't appeal to
Jewish authorities. He rather carefully integrates his interpretation into his homiletic task, leaving us
to work out what he thought he was doing – and this silence does have a genuine impact on our
interpretation of Hebrews, as questions about his thought background and his intent mar attempts to
clearly explain the use of Melchizedek in chapter 7 or the use of demi-Platonic language in chapters
8 and 10 and the apocalyptic presentation of chapter 12. By considering the individual interpretive
techniques, I intend to demonstrate that a rhetorician or Philo or Paul would have described
Hebrews as offering allegorical interpretations – and that the author would have, too.

Necessarily I must be selective and brief in my comments. Attridge notes that in 1.7, our author
interprets an ambiguous passage to offer a plain meaning in favour of his contention – that Jesus is
higher than the angels29. In 4.1-11, Hebrews interprets the Wilderness narrative described in Psalm
95 as having either a continuing or primary meaning in his own era – the era of the church.

26 Philo. De Congressu, De Ebrietate, and De Cherubim.

27 As with the Teacher of Righteousness being typologically represented in the OT.
28 Attridge 1238.
29 Ibid.
However, that true hidden meaning does not erase its plain meaning relating to God's judgement on
wandering Israel – it thereby also offers a “same-situation typology”. Gezerah shavah is on display
in this chapter, too, drawing together Genesis 2 and Psalm 95 on the basis of the word “rest”.

Our author uses etymology in 7.2, explaining “Melchizedek of Salem” as “King of Righteousness
and Peace” - a parallel etymology to Philo30 and Josephus31. He follows this by drawing in Genesis
14 to explicate Psalm 110.4, as both contain Melchizedek. Whoever we hold Melchizedek to be or
to represent, Hebrews' declaration of him as αγενεαλογητος and all the rest depends on the textual
silence of Genesis 14 as to the antecedents of a revered King – no small matter. This has been
argued to be an essentially Rabbinic principle – an example of Rabbinic ultra-literalism, perhaps, or
the Rabbinic principle of quod non in Thora non in mundo32. This remarkable declaration about
Melchizedek includes what looks to be Hellenistic theological language, making Melchizedek an
eternal true god rather than a deified hero with an earthly generation33. Interestingly, Philo makes a
similar observation of Sarah on the basis of Genesis 20.12 – that she is amatOr, without mother, as
she allegorically stems only from wisdom, the paternal inheritance.

In chapter 11, we see Old Testament characters used as exemplars, as in other Jewish hortatory
literature the Second Temple era – in Sirach 44.19-21, 1 Maccabees 2.52, or in the Jewish Christian
sermon presented in Acts 7.2-8. But these characters are not simply exemplary – they are also
obviously often prophetic or typological of Christ. Christ is presented at the end of this portion as
the ultimate hero of faith; in that light Abel's blood evidently prefigures Christ's blood, and Isaac's
pseudo-resurrection from sacrifice is a forerunner of Christ's once and for all sacrifice and
resurrection. Many other incidents can easily be seen in the same way, though they are less
obviously intended as such – as for instance Moses' preferring shame to earthly glory, or Abraham's
pushing on for the Heavenly city rather than the earthly one. There is a parallel here to the
assonance in Paul's writings of Abraham's obedience and Christ's obedience.

Finally, in the discussions of the earthly and heavenly temple and of the apocalyptic inauguration of
the end, which dominate chapters 8-12, we see a variety of interpretive techniques in play –
physical locations as indicators of higher truths, for instance, with the earthly temple being a hint
towards the heavenly one, and that very earthly temple being associated with the covenant at Sinai
in chapter 8; and earthly Mount Zion and Jerusalem being associated with the heavenly Temple and
City in chapter 12. The former covenant and mountain, the failed covenant and mountain of doom,
represented by contemporary physical places, are replaced by a sufficient covenant and a festal
mountain, again represented by contemporary physical places. On the one hand, this seems
somewhat typological; but on the other hand, the idea of things being sketched from ultimate, true
forms of the same has the ring of Platonism about it, which is reinforced by the use of Greek
philosophical language in this discourse – skia, αντιτυρος, ύποδειγμα and its cognates, αιωνιος and
εικον. However, in my view at least, the author does stop shy of Platonism proper, which leaves
some ambivalence about the discourse. Important here is that Hebrews' equation of Sinai and Zion
as the two covenants is, of course, fairly equivalent to Paul's allegory in Galatians 4, where Hagar is
Sinai and the slave covenant whilst Sarah is Jerusalem and the covenant of freedom.

Conclusion
Our initial question was whether there was Jewish allegory in Hebrews; to answer that, it was
necessary to define allegory as understood by the author of Hebrews, and to explore how allegory
fit into the Jewish/Greek dichotomy.

30 Philo. Legum Allegoriae 3.79.

31 Josephus. Jewish War 6.438.
32 F.F. Bruce. NICNT: The Epistle to the Hebrews. Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 1964: 136.
33 Bauckham, R. “The Divinity of Jesus Christ in the Epistle to the Hebrews”. Hebrews and Christian Theology
edited by R. Bauckham et al. Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2009: 29.
Well, allegory was, in the 1st century AD, fundamentally a rhetorical term, initially simply extended
metaphor used for effect, later sometimes as the encoding of spiritual meaning in religious texts via
a series of rhetorical techniques. Those who sought to decode these alleged meanings drew their
techniques – substitutionary interpretation, etymology, metonymy, and so forth – from a variety of
places, both Hellenistic sources and, at least for Jewish practitioners, Jewish sources. For a Jewish
allegorical interpreter, Stoic etymology, Hebrew name-meanings, gezerah shavah, Homer reading
Homer, mythological elements representing philosophical ideas or physical facts, physical elements
representing philosophical ideas or prophetic and typological counterparts, and more generally
fulfilment and same-situation typologies – all these could reasonably be called allegory, at least if
we are to trust our best sources. Allegory is not a Hellenistic or Jewish “property”; it's descriptive
term, and so can reasonably be used by a self-defining loyal Jew.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is written by a Greek-speaking Jew of the 1st century AD, embedded in
both Hellenistic and Jewish cultures. The letter utilises a whole range of techniques, most of which
are used by self-described allegorists, often explicitly as allegories – as for instance etymology,
gezerah shavah, or the explanation of physical locations as “types” of higher truths. The Epistle
even offers an interpretation which closely parallels what is elsewhere in the New Testament called
an allegory. So we must ask two questions: Would the author of Hebrews have understood himself
as an Jewish author? Yes. Would he have understood himself as an allegorist? People in parallel
situations using identical methods did. Though he does not use the term allegory, self-described
allegorists do not always do so – Paul doesn't call his other typologies allegories, for instance, and
Philo uses a variety of terms. Our author very probably knew the term, as a respectable and
reasonably well-known piece of Greek rhetorical terminology; though we cannot be sure, the
balance of probabilities that, if asked whether he understood the Law to contain allegorical
meanings, in the sense we have discussed, he would have answered yes. On that basis, we may
identify him as a Jewish allegorist, and his epistle as containing Jewish allegory.