By such methods also were revealed such historical treasures as that Og, King of Bashan, escaped the deluge by wading after Noah's ark.
There were, indeed, noble exceptions to this kind of teaching. It can not be forgotten that Rabbi Hillel formulated the golden rule, which had before him been given to the extreme Orient by Confucius, and which afterward received a yet more beautiful and positive emphasis from Jesus of Nazareth; but the seven rules of interpretation laid down by Hillel were multiplied and refined by men like Rabbi Ismael and Rabbi Eleazar until they justified every absurd subtlety.(462)
(462) For a multitude of amusing examples of rabbinical interpretations,
see an article in Blackwood's Magazine for November, 1882. For a more
general discussion, see Archdeacon Farrar's History of Interpretation,
lect. i and ii, and Rev. Prof. H. P. Smith's Inspiration and Inerrancy,
Cincinnati, 1893, especially chap. iv; also Reuss, History of the New
Testament, English translation, pp. 527, 528.
An eminent scholar has said that while the letter of Scripture became ossified in Palestine, it became volatilized at Alexandria; and the truth of this remark was proved by the Alexandrian Jewish theologians just before the beginning of our era.
This, too, was in obedience to a law of development, which is, that when literal interpretation clashes with increasing knowledge or with progress in moral feeling, theologians take refuge in mystic meanings—a law which we see working in all great religions, from the Brahmans finding hidden senses in the Vedas, to Plato and the Stoics finding them in the Greek myths; and from the Sofi reading new meanings into the Koran, to eminent Christian divines of the nineteenth century giving a non-natural sense to some of the plainest statements in the Bible.
Nothing is more natural than all this. When naive statements of sacred writers, in accord with the ethics of early ages, make Brahma perform atrocities which would disgrace a pirate; and Jupiter take part in adventures worthy of Don Juan; and Jahveh practise trickery, cruelty, and high-handed injustice which would bring any civilized mortal into the criminal courts, the invention of allegory is the one means of saving the divine authority as soon as men reach higher planes of civilization.
The great early master in this evolution of allegory, for the satisfaction of Jews and Christians, was Philo: by him its use came in as never before. The four streams of the garden of Eden thus become the four virtues; Abraham's country and kindred, from which he was commanded to depart, the human body and its members; the five cities of Sodom, the five senses; the Euphrates, correction of manners. By Philo and his compeers even the most insignificant words and phrases, and those especially, were held to conceal the most precious meanings.
A perfectly natural and logical result of this view was reached when Philo, saturated as he was with Greek culture and nourished on pious traditions of the utterances at Delphi and Dodona, spoke reverently of the Jewish Scriptures as "oracles". Oracles they became: as oracles they appeared in the early history of the Christian Church; and oracles they remained for centuries: eternal life or death, infinite happiness or agony, as well as ordinary justice in this world, being made to depend on shifting interpretations of a long series of dark and doubtful utterances—interpretations frequently given by men who might have been prophets and apostles, but who had become simply oracle-mongers.
Pressing these oracles into the service of science, Philo became the forerunner of that long series of theologians who, from Augustine and Cosmas to Mr. Gladstone, have attempted to extract from scriptural myth and legend profound contributions to natural science. Thus he taught that the golden candlesticks in the tabernacle symbolized the planets, the high priest's robe the universe, and the bells upon it the harmony of earth and water—whatever that may mean. So Cosmas taught, a thousand years later, that the table of shewbread in the tabernacle showed forth the form and construction of the world; and Mr. Gladstone hinted, more than a thousand years later still, that Neptune's trident had a mysterious connection with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.(463)
(463) For Philo Judaeus, see Yonge's translation, Bohn's edition; see
also Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 78-85. For admirable general remarks on
this period in history of exegesis, see Bartlett, Bampton Lectures,
1888, p. 29. For efforts in general to save the credit of myths by
allegorical interpretation, and for those of Philo in particular, see
Drummond, Philo Judaeus, London, 1888, vol. i, pp. 18, 19, and notes.
For interesting examples of Alexandrian exegesis and for Philo's
application of the term "oracle" to the Jewish Scriptures, see Farrar,
History of Interpretation, p. 147 and note. For his discovery of symbols
of the universe in the furniture of the tabernacle, see Drummond, as
above, pp. 269 et seq. For the general subject, admirably discussed
from a historical point of view, see the Rev. Edwin Hatch, D. D., The
Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, Hibbert
Lectures for 1888, chap. iii. For Cosmas, see my chapters on Geography
and Astronomy. For Mr. Gladstone's view of the connection between
Neptune's trident and the doctrine of the Trinity, see his Juventus
Mundi.