Religion and Theology

When put in simple terms, allegory refers to a way of explaining things that are very difficult to explain. This is usually done by telling a story which happens to have a deeper meaning. It can therefore be described or rather termed that human beings are known to use allegorical means to explain some of those things that are very difficult to explain. A good example is the allegories that human beings use to explain the origin and existence of human beings. (Kugel, 1999)

Allegory has been there for a very long period of time now. During the classical era, there were some two best known allegories that is the cave which was in Platos book by the mane of Republic and the one that was in the speech of Menenius Agrippa. The Hebrew Bible also had allegories which were extended in Metaphors especially in Psalms 80 in the vine.

During the Medieval age, allegories were generally accepted in the way of thinking and they were treated as the reality that underlies any fictional or rhetorical use. They were considered to be as true as facts and some of the existing allegories during that time were the Unum Sanctum when presenting theme of Unity of Christendom. There was also the enigmatic Hypnerotomachia which had some elaborate woodcut illustrations and it was used to influence themed masques and pageants. (Kugel, 1999)

In the modern society, allegories are found in a lot of stories which are sometimes known to distort the meaning that the author wanted to convey. A good example is the movie by the name of Lord of the Rings, which a lot of people see as an allegory describing the world wars.

Some of these allegories were used to explain the true situation or rather some of the reason why life is the way it is. There are a lot of allegories that are used in describing Christianity and they explain some of those believe that people have concerning their Christian views. Some of the major players in this field are Plato in the ancient times, Edwards Topsell and Hugh of St. Victor, John Ray and Galileo. (Kugel, 1999)

A good example of allegory is the story of King James and his affair with Bathsheba which lead to death of Uriah and the story of the bread where Jesus claims to be the living bread. Another example is in Genesis 44 on the story of Joseph who ordered a Cup to be planted in the sack that was meant to be his brothers. It is difficult to understand why he would like to implicate his brother as a thief. From the names of Joseph which means God will add a son and Benjamin which means the right hand son, we understand that there was a deeper meaning on giving of the cup as later on God himself gave a similar cup to Jesus when he asked him to come and save the earth. (Kugel, 1999)

There was a need for interpretation of the bible during the ancient times. However, the interpreters had a problem especially in understanding the meaning of the book of Genesis. This book had no laws or commandments and therefore it only had a collection of stories concerning the ancestors of Israel. As there was no proper understanding of this book, a number of answers were given to some question that existed during that time. The book of genesis was therefore viewed as moral exemplars but there was a problem when it came to the story of Jacob and his family. (Kugel, 1999)

Jacob began his life as a sharp-star by first cheating his brother Esau out of his inheritance. Later on, he tricked his father and was given paternal blessing which was also intended for Esau. This is totally immoral and unethical and can not be used as an example. In addition, this alone goes against what the interpreters had believed to be the main purpose of the book. Apart from these, there are other more examples of the immoral nature of the story of Jacob. When Josephs sons seize the youngest of the brother by the name of Joseph, they had a main intention of killing him when they threw him into a pit after stripping him. From these stories, it would be difficult to claim that in deed this family or rather this story of Jacob and his sons was meant to act as moral exempla by which human beings should steer their own course in the world. (Kugel, 1999)

There were therefore some assumptions that had to be made by the interpreters on some of these books. The first one is that most of the Bible spoke cryptically. This means that most of the parts of the bible said the opposite of what they meant. There was also an assumption that all that was in the bible was relevant and not just a remainder of the ancient past. There was a third assumption that the stories of the bible are harmoniously perfect irrespective of the difference in period of writing. The forth and the last assumption that was also applied in the story of Jacob and his sons is that all the information from the Bible come from God or it is written at Gods command. (Kugel, 1999)

These are the assumptions that the ancient interpreters use to solve the possible problems that they encounter in the line of their interpretation.  Christianity is known to originate from the Jewish religion and therefore the Jewish religion is more concerned about these problems than Christians. The reason is that they deem their religion very holy and therefore they would like to have a perfect religion. They are therefore too much concerned in eliminating these problems that seem to be there during interpretation. This is the reason that they put into practice the four major assumptions in their interpretation. The Greeks speaking philosophers are also interested in this problem as it would help them while making interpretation of the Bible into Greek.