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p. 9
Differing Approaches
to Biblical Interpretation
in Antiquity

In the early church two basic approaches to the biblical text developed, which gave rise to two characteristic types of interpretation.

As we will see later, traditionally these approaches have been called the “literal” approach and the “more than literal,” or “allegorical,” approach. These terms did not mean the same thing to the ancients that they meant in later times-and certainly not what they mean today.

But they denote fundamental approaches, each of which gave rise to a tradition of interpretation that lasted until the high Middle Ages, when a philosophical approach to theology transformed the latter from biblical commentary and exposition into what finally became systematic and eventually scholastic theology.

The “more than literal” approach was developed in Alexandria in Egypt can be traced back to the middle of the second century. It was related to the midrashic, typological, and an allegorical interpretation that we find in the Old and New Testament, but it was developed into a theoretically articulated exegetical method.

The “literal” approach developed in Antioch Asia Minor, partly in opposition to what was perceived as excessive allegorizing in Alexandria. As we shall see, the real differences between the approaches had at least as much to do with intellectual heritage and temperament as with hermeneutical theory or exegetical method.

Another major tension at the heart of the development of early Christian biblical hermeneutics concerned the respective roles of scholarship and authority.

The emphasis on thoroughgoing scholarly research as the basis of the interpretation of the sacred text was more characteristic of Alexandria, which was a center of the encounter between early Christianity and the Hellenistic culture of late antiquity.

In Antioch, situated at the heart of the Jewish-Christian conflict and always beset with heterodox tendencies of more exotic kind, the role of authority in the proper interpretation of the church’s books was emphasized more even though Antiochene exegesis relied on serious historical and linguistic scholarship.

The emphasis on authority eventually prevailed, and by the sixth century exegesis had come to consist primary in the compiling of catenae (“chains”) of authorative interpretations by earlier commentators.