Chapter 3: These Are the Scriptures That Testify About Me

Both Evangelicals and Catholics recognise the Bible as a fundamental pillar of the Christian faith. Flawless (Prov. 30:5) and God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16), Holy Scripture is our guide and our teacher. Nothing we say must contradict it; and everything we believe must accord with it. This is the Catholic faith, as much as it is the faith of any Christian. 

So, if that is the case, why don’t we all agree on everything? It has to do, not with the level of authority which we accord to Scripture (which is absolute and non-negotiable), but with the manner in which we interpret what Scripture is saying to us. 

Now, some Christians have said to me, “We don’t interpret Scripture. We just believe what it says.” But most recognise that whilst it would be convenient if it were so simple, it isn’t, and it can’t be. Belief and interpretation are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are complementary, and mutually essential. Interpretation is choosing how to understand something. It is the interpretation of Scripture which allows us to understand it, and therefore to believe it correctly. Every verse in Scripture demands that we make choices about how to understand what it means, and about what God is trying to tell us, or achieve in us, through it. 

It would be wonderful if it were possible to interpret Scripture in a completely unbiased manner. However, we all read the Bible through the different lenses of our own worldviews. As Anglican bishop and theologian Tom Wright explains, if someone claims to be completely objective in his interpretation, “normally this simply means that their agenda is so large that, like a mountain which blots out the sky, they forget that it is there at all. There is no such thing as a point of view which is no-one’s point of view.” [1] We will, in later chapters, look in more detail at several of the many good and holy ways in which Christians have read, understood and interpreted the Bible. However, let us start by looking at one of the most important of them: literalism. When some Christians claim not to ever interpret Scripture, what they often mean is that their way of interpreting Scripture is a literal one. Many Christians claim that the best way to understand the Bible is literally. Let’s take a closer look at this idea now. 

Literalism 

If you read something in the Bible literally, you believe that what you are reading is giving you factual information about exactly what happened. Now Catholics, as much as other Christians, believe that many things in Scripture are best understood literally, for at least two main reasons. First, many things in the Bible were clearly written in order to make a point which is lost if they are not interpreted literally: interpreting them in a different way nullifies what the Bible writers were trying to say. Second, many things in Scripture are such that there is no good reason to disbelieve their literal truth: interpreting them some other way satisfies only the sceptic, and adds nothing to our Christian faith. 

For example, Scripture contains innumerable accounts of the miracles God has performed. These accounts were included in the Bible precisely to make the point that God is one who works miracles. They show that God is master of the world He has created, and that He only has to speak and a thing is done – regardless of the laws of physics or biology! To interpret these accounts in a non-literal way serves only to satisfy those who believe that God ought not to be able to work miracles, because He is not really the Creator of the universe. But those of us who have met the living God in our lives know that He can, literally, work miracles, and therefore does, literally, work miracles! 

The greatest miracle of all in the Bible is the resurrection of our Lord. If we attempt to read this event in a non-literal way, i.e. by suggesting that Jesus did not bodily rise from death, but perhaps only in some symbolic, visionary sense, then we destroy the whole point of the Resurrection. Indeed, we destroy our faith, for “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Cor. 15:14). 

We also know that Jesus often said things absolutely literally, e.g.: 

         We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the                 teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be             mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to new life!” (Matt. 20:17-            19) 

Jesus is the Word of God (Jn. 1:1-14). If the Word of God, in the man Jesus, speaks literally, then we can be sure that the Word of God, in the pages of Scripture, also speaks literally. 

Origen of Alexandria (c. 184-254 A.D.), one of the most brilliant of early Christian scholars, helped to enunciate the position of the Church of his time, which has not changed since: 

Let no one, however, entertain the suspicion that we do not believe any history in Scripture to be real, because we suspect certain events related in it not to have taken place; or that no precepts of the law are to be taken literally,… or that His commandments are not to be literally obeyed. We have therefore to state in answer, since we are manifestly so of opinion, that the truth of the history may and ought to be preserved in the majority of instances. [2] 

However, note the caveat: “in the majority of instances.” In other words, not necessarily always. Origen and his contemporaries had the wisdom to see that the inflexible espousal of literalism could cause serious problems. For instance: 

The Jews think, also, that it has been predicted that the wolf – that four-footed animal – is, at the coming of Christ, to feed with the lambs, and the leopard to lie down with kids, and the calf and the bull to pasture with lions, and that they are to be led by a little child to the pasture; that the ox and the bear are to lie down together in the green fields, and that their young ones are to be fed together; that lions also will frequent stalls with the oxen, and feed on straw [cf. Is. 11:6-7]. And seeing that, according to history, there was no accomplishment of any of those things predicted of Him, in which they believed the signs of Christ’s advent were especially to be observed, they refused to acknowledge the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ… Now the reason of the erroneous apprehension of all these points… is no other than this, that holy Scripture is not understood by them according to its spiritual, but according to its literal meaning. [3] 

Though Origen lived 1800 years ago, he had the prescience to see that the dogged espousal of literalism in the reading of Scripture could, and would, lead to some terrible acts of self-deception. For example, five centuries ago, certain factions within the Catholic Church were convinced that the earth was the immovable body at the centre of the universe, because certain parts of the Bible, [4] when read literally, appeared to say so. So when a scientist called Galileo Galilei dared to challenge this particular interpretation of Scripture, he was persecuted for it. Some modern Christians appear not to have learnt from the Catholic Church’s mistakes, and insist that the universe is only a few thousand years old, because certain parts of the Bible, when read literally, appear to say so. This attitude is tragic, because the automatic assumption that the literal meaning of Scripture is the only valid one makes Scripture a totally unnecessary enemy of science, and an object of ridicule in the world at large, leading ultimately to disbelief in Christ – just as Origen predicted. [5] 

Important as literalism was to the Bible writers, they did not write only to impart literal truths. They had many other reasons for writing, and many other ways of writing. These do not deny the validity of reading the Bible literally, but they can immensely enrich our understanding of Scripture, and therefore of our faith. 

Allegory 

Sometimes, in order to get across a particular point, the Bible writers did not say what they wanted to say straight out, literally. Instead they made their points using symbols, or allegories. This is a way of writing, and consequently a way of interpreting Scripture, which has fallen out of common use to a certain extent since the Renaissance. Many modern-day Christians are happy with reading the Bible literally, because it ties in neatly with our post-Renaissance, rationalist, “Greek” mindset, which likes to reach clear and unequivocal theological conclusions which follow inexorably from any given scriptural premiss. Symbolic or allegorical interpretations of Scripture can seem altogether less reliable for a rationalist era. 

However, we ignore the symbolic implications of Scripture at our peril, for the very simple reason that this is one of the ways in which God speaks. We know this because this is one of the ways in which Jesus speaks in the Gospels: He tells parables. 

For example, try reading in your own Bible the parable of the prodigal son (Lk. 15:11-31). When Jesus first told this parable, I doubt if anyone listening wondered whether there really was a father somewhere with two sons, one of whom stayed at home and the other of whom went off and lived a dissolute life. I doubt if anyone asked. And I doubt if any of us has ever stopped to wonder the same, because we know that that really is not the point. Literalism, in this case, is simply irrelevant and useless. What Jesus is doing, instead, is giving us a picture of what God is like, and of how God relates to us. The same can be said for most of Jesus’s parables. Jesus may have said, “There was a man who…” (Lk. 15:1) or “There was a rich man who…” (Lk. 15:19) or “There was a judge who…” (Lk. 18:2), but it does not matter to us whether there literally was or not. 

In other words, when God wants to talk about God, He often doesn’t, indeed often cannot, speak to us literally – because we do not have the language to understand literally the things of God. Instead, He speaks in symbols, because that is the only language which will help us to understand those things for which humanity has no words. Allegory is one of God’s ways of speaking to mankind, especially when He has something really important to say. 

The New Testament writers recognised this fact, which is why they too wrote in symbols much of the time. Here is Paul in a particularly allegorical mood: 

If the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. (Rom. 11:16-18) 

Here Paul communicates his meaning to us so compellingly precisely because of the vivid symbols he chooses to use. And our understanding of the meaning of this passage is enhanced by the fact that Paul does not attempt to speak to us literally. Instead, the image of the olive branch is the perfect way to express succinctly the dependency of the New Covenant upon the Old, the fact that the Christian faith depends for its life (“nourishing sap”) upon the Jewish. 

Here is another important allegorical statement by Paul: 

Now the body is not made of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.” (1 Cor. 12:15-16) 

Here, Paul’s elaboration of the image of the Church as the body of Christ gives us visceral reasons to work for unity among Christ’s people: how indeed can a foot or an ear tear itself away from the body, and how terribly would the body be maimed if it were to do so! Symbols can thus help us to realise how things which might otherwise seem distant and theoretical are in fact real, immediate and essential for us as Christians. 

These examples are relatively straightforward, because there is little doubt, when reading the passages quoted above, what their authors actually meant by them. We can be quite confident, when we read Luke’s account of the parable of the prodigal son, or Paul’s use of the image of the human body to represent the Church, that we understand fairly well what the original meaning of these writers – what we often call the “plain” meaning of Scripture – was, whether they were writing literally or allegorically. However, whilst working out what the human authors of the Bible meant by what they wrote is always a highly enlightening way of reading Scripture, it does not necessarily reveal to us all that God, the divine author of the Bible, wants to teach us by it. The books of the Bible had many human authors, but only one divine author. It is His meaning, which might not have been entirely apparent to the human writers through whom He worked, that matters the most. Scripture, therefore, resembles the Trinity: many “persons”, but one essence. It is towards understanding the essence of Scripture, its underlying unity, its spiritual meaning, God’s meaning, that we must strive. For this, we need to dig deeper still, deeper sometimes than the “plain” meaning and the human authors’ intentions, whether literal or allegorical. 

Midrash and pesher 

This is not a new task. We mentioned in the last chapter how the Jews have long been reconciled to the notion of a variety of scriptural interpretations (midrash). This is because, unlike many modern-day Christians, they have never expected Scripture to reveal only one, “correct”, “plain” meaning, overtly recognised and sanctioned by its human authors. They have always fully expected any passage of Scripture to reveal a variety of potential meanings, depending upon the context in which it is interpreted. Evangelical theologian Peter Enns points out that in ancient Jewish scriptural commentary 

biblical tensions and ambiguities are solved in multiple – even contradictory – ways, and these solutions are allowed to remain side by side… The stress seems to be not on solving these problems once and for all but on a community upholding a conversation with Scripture with creative energy. [6] 

Language and poetry scholar Gerald Bruns explains why: 

There is no conflict of authority in this conflict of interpretations, because it is the whole dialogue which is authoritative, not just the isolated interpretations that emerge from it. Midrashic interpretation is… holistic as a social practice; no one interpretation stands by itself, because no one rabbi speaks as a solitary reader… Interpretations are not logical propositions concerning which we have to decide for and against, true or false. They are modes of participation in the dialogue with Torah. [7] 

This is a very different way of thinking about biblical interpretation from the one which we may be used to – and that is because the modern Western way of reading Scripture has developed relatively recently. The Renaissance began to introduce into European scriptural interpretation a far more rationalistic mindset, which sought to extract clear, unequivocal meanings from the text of Scripture. The Jewish mode of scriptural interpretation, however, goes back to the most ancient days of their faith. And for the ancients, as Baptist theologians Robert Sloan and Carey Newman explain, “the text was a treasure trove into which they could run their exegetical hands time and time again without ever emptying the text of its jewels.” [8] 

Perhaps we will understand this concept better if we look at how Jesus and His apostles, themselves Jews, interpreted their Scriptures, the Old Testament. One of the biggest challenges for the earliest Christians, including the New Testament writers, was to try to understand the significance of the Old Testament writings in the light of Christ. These Scriptures were God’s word, to be sure, and reading them for their “plain” meaning was informative enough. But what was their spiritual significance, for example, to a non-Jewish Christian? The answer lies in the words of Christ. Jesus was a Jew, and a rabbi, and steeped in midrashic practice. Therefore He felt no reluctance to re-interpret the Hebrew Scriptures in the light of His own life and mission, in a manner which their original human authors might never have expected – a technique which the rabbis call pesher (meaning “interpretation”). And so, for example, on the road to Emmaus, 

beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Lk. 24:27). 

And shortly thereafter, back in Jerusalem, He said: 

“Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. (Lk. 24:44-45) 

The only Scriptures in existence at this time were the Old Testament – “the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms”; Christ was therefore proclaiming that the Old Testament, “all” of it, had always, in one sense, been really about Him. This was not the “plain” meaning of Scripture as His listeners would have understood it; still less was it the literal interpretation. No, Jesus had to “open their minds” before His disciples could understand this fact: because God’s meaning is sometimes not “plain”, but operates at many levels, which different interpreters can unveil for us.

One of the most remarkable re-interpretative statements Jesus made was this: 

These are the Scriptures that testify about me… If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.” (Jn. 5:39,46) 

In what manner did Moses write about Jesus? Well, apparently not literally, and not with any overtly-expressed knowledge that he was doing so. But the early Christians realised that, if they were to be faithful to Christ, they had to continue to use some of the interpretive skills of the rabbis to understand who He was. Just as “the task of midrash is… always productive of new understanding,” [9] so too would the advent of Christ enable and require them to re-interpret the Old Testament in a way which its original authors might never have imagined. 

Origen explains how: 

The Scriptures… have a meaning, not such only as is apparent at first sight, but also another, which escapes the notice of most… Respecting which there is one opinion throughout the whole Church, that the whole law [i.e. the Torah] is indeed spiritual; but that the spiritual meaning which the law conveys is not known to all, but to those only on whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is bestowed in the word of wisdom and knowledge. [10] 

In other words, Scripture, especially the Torah (the “Law”), needs to be understood at a deeper, “spiritual” level, in order to reveal its full meaning: 

The splendour of Christ’s advent, therefore, illuminating the law of Moses by the light of truth, has taken away that veil which had been placed over the letter (of the law), and has unsealed, for every one who believes upon Him, all the blessings which were concealed by the covering of the word. [11] 

Here are a few more examples of New Testament pesher: Jesus tells us that the story of the bronze snake in the desert (Num. 21:4-8) is a prefigurement of His crucifixion: 

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. (Jn. 3:14-15) 

And according to Peter, in the days of Noah (Gen. 6-9) 

only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolises baptism that now saves you also. (1 Pet. 3:20-21) 

And the story of Hagar and Sarah (Gen. 16, 21:8-19) is, according to Paul, 

an allegory: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery… But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. (Gal. 4:24,26, RSV) 

According to the writer to the Hebrews, the whole of the Torah is a “shadow” of what is to come in the New Testament: 

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves. (Heb. 10:1, cf. 8:5) 

One of the most exciting examples of a pesher interpretation of the Old Testament by a New Testament writer comes in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, where he takes up a theme which we encountered in the last chapter courtesy of Philo of Alexandria. We have seen how Philo, though not himself a Christian, saw manna as representing the Word (“He nourishes us with his own word”) [12] and the rock as representing Wisdom (“Of it he gives drink to the souls that love God”) [13] – both identified as the “Son of God”. [14] Now Paul takes this re-interpretation a step further, recognising that, because Word and Wisdom were made flesh in Jesus, the manna and the water from the rock are none other than Christ Himself: 

Our forefathers… were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. (1 Cor. 10:1-4) 

Here Paul shows that whilst these stories from Exodus can perfectly properly be interpreted according to their “plain” meaning, they have other implications which are only apparent to Christians: the passing through the Red Sea (Ex. 14) prefigures baptism; the eating of manna (Ex. 16) prefigures Jesus as the bread of life (Jn. 6:25); and the water from the rock (Ex. 17:1-7, Num. 20:1-13) prefigures the living water which comes from the side of Christ (Jn. 4:7-15, 19:34) – itself representing baptism (1 Pet. 3:21). 

“Mysteries”, “images”, “patterns”, “shadows” and “types” 

Origen agrees with Paul, telling us that many of these Old Testament stories are “the forms of certain mysteries [sacramentorum], and the images of divine things.” [15] And he goes on to explain: 

Now a “spiritual” interpretation is of this nature: when one is able to point out what are the heavenly things of which these serve as the patterns and shadow… [cf. Heb. 8:5, 10:1]; or… what is that wisdom hidden in a mystery [mysterio] which “God ordained before the world for our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew” [cf. 1 Cor. 2:7]. [16] 

Here Origen, echoing Paul and the writer to the Hebrews, has hit upon an absolutely crucial point, and in doing so has lifted the whole discussion about scriptural interpretation to a new level. Origen recognises that the deepest and most important purpose of Scripture (which he calls the “spiritual” interpretation) is to explain to us mortal beings what are the “heavenly things” or “mysteries” of which the events described in the Bible are the “images”, “patterns” and “shadows”. The Bible is our introduction to the Triune God, and to the realm in which He lives, our true home, our destiny, which is Heaven. Yes, the events of the Torah symbolise and prefigure those of the Gospels. Yes, the New Testament re-interprets the Old in the light of Christ. But even more than that, both the Old and the New Testaments are full of images (or “patterns” or “shadows”) of a deeper, less tangible, but ultimately more important reality, which is that of the living God, our Father in Heaven. Note the words which Origen uses to describe these heavenly realities: sacramentorum, mysterio. “Mystery”, therefore, is the most important reality, that reality which resides at least partly in Heaven; the so-called “plain” meanings of the biblical stories are patterns and images – shadows which point towards the greater realities of the divine mystery. [17] 

We shall discuss further implications of the “spiritual” interpretation of Scripture in Chapter Five. But for now, it is sufficient to recognise that squabbling about whether things really happened exactly the way they are written in the Bible is to totally miss the point – just as there is no point fussing about whether the prodigal son really existed. Similarly, there is little point worrying about whether the writer of Exodus knew that the events he recorded – the passing through the Red Sea, the water from the rock, the manna in the desert – prefigured Christ; the fact is that God knew. The really important thing is that the Bible accounts tell us, in their many different ways, what God is like. The primary purpose of both Old and New Testaments is not to give us information, whether literally or allegorically, about things which happened on earth many years ago (though they may also do that). Rather, it is to initiate us into the ways of Heaven. The Lord “opens his mouth in parables” (Ps. 78:2) – so that we might know those things which 

            no eye has seen,
            no ear has heard,
            no mind has conceived. (1 Cor. 2:9) 

So, for example, what can we learn from Noah’s ark (Gen. 6-9), the passing through the Red Sea (Ex. 14), the water from the Rock (Ex. 17:1-7, Num. 20:1-13), the crossing of the Jordan (Josh. 3-4), the cleansing of Naaman (2 Kgs. 5), Isaiah’s invitation to the waters (Is. 55:1), Ezekiel’s description of the great river from the Temple (Ezek. 47:1-12), the baptism of the Lord (Matt. 3:11-17, Lk. 3:21-22), Jesus on the subject of “living water” (Jn. 4:10-15, 7:37-38), the water issuing from Christ’s side (Jn. 19:34-35), Christ’s “great commission” (Matt. 28:18-20), Paul’s teaching on baptism (Rom. 6:3-11), and John’s vision of the river of life (Rev. 22:1-2)? Individually, their various human authors may have meant different things by these passages, but taken together, as the Word of God, these biblical accounts tell us that our God is one who sanctifies, who leads us through death into new life, who washes us clean of our defilement, in preparation for our life together with Him in eternity. 

And what can we learn from Melchizedek of Salem (Gen. 14:18-20), the Passover (Ex. 12), the manna from Heaven (Ex. 16), Moses’s heavenly banquet (Ex. 24:9-10), Isaiah’s prophecy of the eternal banquet (Is. 25:6), the parables of the banquet (Lk. 14:15-24) and the marriage feast (Matt. 22:1-14), the feeding of the five thousand (Matt. 14:15-21, Mk. 6:35-44, Lk. 9:12-17, Jn. 6:5-14), Jesus’s sermon on the bread of life (Jn. 6:26-58), His words at the Last Supper (Matt. 26:26, Mk. 14:22, Lk. 22:15-19), His supper on the road to Emmaus (Lk. 24:28-35), and Paul’s teaching on the Eucharist (1 Cor. 11:23-24)? Taken separately, they may all have originally meant different things, but when put together, we can hear God telling us that He is the one who feeds us with food which never perishes, and which therefore will bring us to eternal life. 

From Moses, through the prophets, through Wisdom and Ben Sira, to Jesus, to John and to Paul. The same stories, re-interpreted again and again in different ways in each new generation. The same mundane images (water, rock, bread, cloud, sea etc.) revealing, through symbol and allegory, through “patterns and shadows”, deeper and deeper truths for us in our Christian journey. Anglican theologian Tom Wright describes the process beautifully, as 

bringing two sets of ideas close together, close enough for a spark to jump, but not too close, so that the spark, in jumping, illuminates for a moment the whole area around, changing perceptions as it does so… and nothing will ever be quite the same again. [18] 

The word commonly used by ancient theologians for this type of “spark-jumping” scriptural interpretation is “typological” – and though you may never have consciously read this word in the Bible, it is in fact deeply scriptural. The New Testament writers called these multi-faceted Old Testament images “types”, from the Greek typos (plural typoi), meaning “model” or “pattern” or “example”. And so Paul, when writing about Exodus, the passing through the Red Sea, the manna from Heaven and the water from the rock, explains: 

These things happened as examples [typoi] to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things. (1 Cor. 10:6, cf. 10:11) 

And when writing about Adam, he says: 

Death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by the breaking of a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern [typos] of the one to come. (Rom. 5:14) 

In the Bible, the Christian realities signified by these “types” are called “antitypes”. And so, for example, Peter, writing about Noah and the ark, calls water the antitypos that, in baptism, “now saves you also” (1 Pet. 3:21). 

“Types” and “antitypes”: Noah’s ark and baptism; the Red Sea and baptism; the rock and Christ; Adam and Jesus; Hagar and the Law; Sarah and the New Jerusalem. This ancient and profoundly biblical way of interpreting Scripture continued to prevail in both Judaism and Christianity for at least the first 1500 years of the Christian era. In the grand scheme of things, the modern rationalist demand for the extraction of clear, single, “plain” meanings from Scripture is the exception, rather than the norm. Pope Benedict XVI shows himself to be a spiritual descendant of both Paul and Origen when he explains that we should read Scripture 

with him in whom all things have been fulfilled and in whom all of its validity and truth are revealed…; and from him (and not from some subsequently discovered trick) we know what God wished over the course of centuries to have gradually penetrate the human heart and soul. Christ frees us from the slavery of the letter, and precisely thus does he give back to us, renewed, the truth of the [biblical] images. [19] 

It is important to notice, in all the examples above, that because the greatest purpose of Scripture is to describe divine realities (not just earthly ones), the writers we have quoted are not much concerned about declaring overtly whether the truth of the events they are writing about is literal or figurative. Because they have a higher, “spiritual” objective, in respect of which the distinction between literalism and symbolism is relatively unimportant, or at the very least blurred, all the Biblical writers routinely mix the language they use, sometimes writing their accounts using apparently literal language, sometimes apparently allegorical. 

Therefore, Jesus did not preface each and every parable He told with a disclaimer saying either: “This story really truly happened,” or “This one I made up!” – because that was not His point. Similarly, when we read in the Gospel of John that “whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst,” (Jn. 4:14) or “I am the bread of life,” (Jn. 6:35) we can be sure that, however we believe Jesus meant these things, John knew that when he met Him face to face again in Heaven all these semantic distinctions would pale into insignificance, and the difference between literal and allegorical would barely matter any more. John knew that the Lord does truly give us living water, and He is truly the bread of life, in a way that as yet we can barely imagine. 

Similarly, when the apostle Paul wrote, in apparently literal language: “They were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and the sea” (1 Cor. 10:2), and: “That rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4), and: “The Jerusalem above… is our mother” (Gal. 4:26, RSV), he was not being sloppy or ambiguous. He knew, having heard the Lord’s voice from Heaven (Acts 9:4-6), and having been told “inexpressible things, things that a man is not permitted to tell” (2 Cor. 12:4), that in that Good Place all earthly realities would be transformed by the greater reality which is Christ, and then we would all see that, in a manner more profound than anything we could ever dream of, Christ truly is our rock, and the New Jerusalem truly is our mother. 

Inexpressible things that a man is not permitted to tell. This is what our Bible is full of, for this is what our Bible is, largely, for: to open for us the gates of Heaven. And, by definition, inexpressible things cannot be written literally, or even “plainly”. This is what that great Christian writer J. R. R. Tolkien recognised when he wrote: 

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time…
I will not tread your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art. [20] 

Tolkien dedicated this poem to a man who started out saying that allegories (or “myths”) were “lies and therefore worthless, even though ‘breathed through silver’.” [21] That man was C. S. Lewis; and it was partly Tolkien’s explanation of the inherent truthfulness of non-literal story-telling which helped Lewis to overcome his objections to Christianity, and in due course to write some of the greatest Christian allegories ever. [22] As Origen had pointed out centuries before, it was the recognition of the inalienability of the spiritual meaning of the biblical accounts which enabled an unbeliever like Lewis to pass from scepticism to Christian faith. 

Once again, this is the genius of our hybrid faith, the miracle of Jew and Greek unified in Christ (Gal. 3:28, 1 Cor. 1:24). Without the rationalism of Greek philosophy, Christianity might have ended up merely as a repository of miracle stories, ignoring the cosmic significance of the Word made flesh. But if we ignore the Jewish-inspired understanding of how stories work, in all their multi-faceted, typological, literal-and-allegorical complexity, full of shadows, patterns, mysteries and “types”, then we run the risk of deeply impoverishing our faith. As Tolkien might have put it, “this and that” can denote all sorts of things other than “this and that”: Jesus is not bread, yet He is the bread of life; the Israelites were not baptised in the sea, and yet they were; the rock in the desert was not Christ, and yet it was. The Bible says so! We may baulk at these apparent contradictions, yet we must embrace them, as surely as we must embrace both Greek and Jew. Biblical truth does not depend upon a one-to-one correspondence between bits of text and bits of fact; it is far more complex, and far more important, than that. 

Nor does our affirmation of biblical truth depend upon our understanding how, or in what manner, something is true. Jesus is the bread of life. Whoever drinks the water He gives will never thirst. The Israelites were baptised in the cloud and the sea. The rock in the desert was Christ. The Jerusalem above is our mother. We do not need to understand how these things are true in order to affirm them. Someday we may understand these “inexpressible things”, but until then it remains nevertheless our holy duty as Christians to affirm them, and to teach them to ourselves and to others. 

The Holy Spirit 

But perhaps the most important issue regarding scriptural interpretation which we need to examine can also be found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: 

We speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory… God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. (1 Cor. 2:7-8) 

As Paul points out (and Origen over a century and a half later), it is God’s Spirit who reveals the meaning of His Word, “destined for our glory before time began.” It is He who interprets Scripture for us – if we know how to listen to Him. For 

the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no-one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. (1 Cor. 2:10-12) 

But how exactly does God do this? And to whom, and to what extent? This is one of the questions which has dogged Catholic-Protestant relations for centuries, and one which we will return to over and over again in this book. Let us examine some possibilities. 

Some Christians claim that every individual has the right to interpret Scripture, relying only on the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit, and divorced from the teaching of any church. This was not the conviction of the first Protestant reformers like Luther and Calvin, but tragically it has, since the Reformation, been adopted by some Christians of lesser wisdom, so as to lead to a progressive fracturing of Christianity into ever more and smaller factions, as each group of Christians which holds a different interpretation from the majority on some point of Scripture breaks away and sets up a new church. 

Such things can easily happen. The apostle Peter warns us that parts of Scripture 

contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort..., to their own destruction. Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men. (2 Pet. 3:16-17) 

Peter is of course right: passages from Scripture have been used by various groups at various times, to justify institutionalised racism (Gen. 9:27), war crimes (e.g. Deut. 20:16-17, Josh. 8:24-29, 1 Sam. 15:3, Ps. 137:9), or even the capital punishment of sinners (Ex. 35:2; Lev. 20:9-16, 24:15-17; Num. 15:32-36). Individual goodwill is clearly not always sufficient to ensure the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in interpreting Scripture. Paul may have said that “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit (1 Cor. 2:8)”, but it is clear that the Spirit’s infallible guidance is not automatically available to every individual Christian at the drop of a hat – nor even to every group of Christians who set themselves up as a church. [23] 

The abuses need not be so dramatic, of course. Often it is as simple as placing greater emphasis on the verses which appear to be in happy accord with our own opinions and conveniently ignoring those which don’t. Take a look at this pair of verses: 

“Righteousness from God comes from faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Rom. 3:22) 

“A person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone” (Ja. 2:24) 

And this pair: 

“You have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15) 

“the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15) 

In each of these contrasting pairs there is, as Evangelical theologian Anthony Lane puts it, a “biblical tension”. [24] We cannot ignore or disown either side of any of these tensions. The challenge is to bring together and interpret these different verses in such a way as to reflect God’s overall testimony, and not just one side of it. Faith and works may seem, on the surface, to be non-overlapping concepts, even opposed to each other; as may Scripture and the Church. But all these concepts are biblical; therefore they are God’s concepts, and therefore we must value them all. Just as “we are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28), and just as in Christ Jew and Greek, “signs” and “wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:22-25), Peter and Paul come together in reconciled unity, so too must we seek, in Christ, the unity which underlies the apparently disparate injunctions of Scripture. 

C. S. Lewis describes the challenge with his customary wit: 

The teaching of Our Lord Himself, in which there is no imperfection, is not given us in that cut-and-dried, fool-proof, systematic fashion we might have expected or desired… He preaches but He does not lecture. He uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even (I mean no irreverence) the “wisecrack”. He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another… He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, “pinned down”. The attempt is (again I mean no irreverence) like trying to bottle a sunbeam. [25] 

It is small wonder, then, that Christians can often recoil, on principle, from the very notion of interpreting Scripture, and retreat into the simple certainties of automatic literalism. But, as we have seen, this is not God’s way. Nor, as we have seen, is it the way that the Bible has generally been interpreted during the long course of its history. The ancients did not try to bottle sunbeams, and, as Benedict XVI points out, 

only at the beginning of the modern era was this dynamic forgotten – this dynamic that is the living unity of Scripture, which we can only understand with Christ in the freedom that he gives us… The new historical thinking wanted to read every text in itself, in its bare literalness. Its interest lay only in the exact explanation of particulars, but meanwhile it forgot the Bible as a whole. In a word, it no longer read the texts forward but backward – that is, with a view not to Christ but to the probable origins of those texts. [26] 

So, how then do we read the Bible “forward” rather than “backward”? How do we ensure that our understanding of Scripture reflects the will of the Holy Spirit? How do we read the Bible “as a whole” (kata holon) and “with Christ in the freedom that he gives us”? Let us dig yet deeper into what the Bible itself says about the interpretation of Scripture. 

Paradosis 

Let us start with the witness of the apostle Paul. Take a look at the following instructions he gave to the Thessalonians: 

Stand firm and hold to the traditions [paradoseis] which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter. (2 Thess. 2:15, RSV) 

Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition [paradosin] that you received [parelaben] from us. (2 Thess. 3:6, RSV) 

to the Corinthians: 

I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions [paradoseis] even as I have delivered [paredoka] them to you. (1 Cor. 11:2, RSV) 

For I delivered [paredoka] to you as of first importance what I also received [parelabon]. (1 Cor. 15:3, RSV) 

and to Timothy: 

The things you have heard me say… entrust [parathou] to reliable men who will be qualified to teach others. (2 Tim. 2:2) 

Notice the words for which I have given the original Greek version. They all begin with the prefix para- or pare-, which means “beside”, “across” or “over”. [27] The equivalent prefix in Latin is tra- or trans-, which has made its way into English words like “traverse” or “transfer”. The Greek word paradosis means, literally, “handing over” or “passing on” or “delivery”, and becomes, in Latin, traditio; in English, “tradition”. Tradition, therefore, is, according to Paul, the God-given key to interpreting the Good News of Jesus Christ reliably. We are to “hold on to” it, and to “keep away from every brother who… does not live according to” it. 

The word “tradition” has had a bad press in modern times, principally because it is so easily misunderstood. These days we often use the word to refer to inconsequential things, matters of tribal custom, which have no intrinsic spiritual value. And there are times when our Lord Himself uses the word in this way: 

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men… You nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. (Mk. 7:8,13) 

This has led some Christians to distrust anything at all which calls itself “tradition”. But this is to miss both Christ’s point and Paul’s. Our Lord rightly condemns the “traditions of men” which displace the “commands of God”. [28] But according to Paul there are also traditions “of first importance”. In the verses above, Paul deliberately chooses the word “tradition” [29] because, as he says, he is not making anything up himself; he is, rather, “handing over” or “delivering” what he himself received. 

Tradition, then, in Paul’s sense, is an essential, and scriptural, engine of our faith. The Bible demands that we “hold to” and “deliver” our interpretation of our faith. Tradition, when done right, does not oppose biblical truth, but preserves and reinforces it. Without Tradition (and I will capitalise this word from now on when I use it in this positive sense, to distinguish it from mere lower-case “traditions”), we would each be doomed to try to re-interpret Scripture from scratch – and there’s no knowing what theological cul-de-sacs that might lead us into! 

Word of mouth 

There is another important point to notice about Paul’s instructions to the Thessalonians quoted above. Note that he says that we also have the responsibility to continue to pass our Christian Tradition on to succeeding generations, whether we have received it by word of mouth or by letter. In other words, there may be authoritative apostolic Tradition which was passed on orally without being written down, and which therefore may never have made it into the Bible. This fact is borne out by other comments Paul makes. For example, when preaching to the Ephesians, he refers to “the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’” (Acts 20:35) – even though we have no written record elsewhere of Jesus ever having said anything like this. Writing to the Corinthians and to the Thessalonians he refers to his preaching to them personally on previous and future visits (1 Cor. 2:3-4, 11:34, 15:1; 2 Cor. 13:2; 1 Thess. 2:13, 4:1; 2 Thess. 2:5). Writing to the Galatians, he refers to instructions previously given – of which we have no written record (Gal. 1:8,11). Paul makes no bones about the fact that he expects Christians to take his (and Jesus’s) teaching – whether written or verbal or by example – very seriously: 

Whatever you have learned or received [parelabete] or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. (Phil. 4:9) 

And we thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God. (1 Thess. 2:13) 

In these instructions Paul echoes the last verse of John’s Gospel (Jn. 21:25): knowledge of Jesus is not confined to those things written down in books or letters. 

Indeed, when one stops to think about it, how could it possibly be otherwise? The very first Christians had no New Testament. They had no Gospels, no apostolic letters; for any specifically Christian teaching they only had word of mouth to depend upon. And they clearly did depend upon it and regarded it as authoritative, as they “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42). Oral Tradition, therefore, is the most ancient form of Christianity. The first-century Christian leader Papias (c. 70-163 A.D.), disciple of the apostle John, [30] was not alone in regarding it as well worth taking very seriously: 

I shall not hesitate to furnish you, along with the interpretations, with all that in days gone by I carefully learned from the presbyters and have carefully recalled, for I can guarantee its truth… Whenever anyone came who had been a follower of the presbyters, I inquired into the words of the presbyters, what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or Matthew, or any other disciple of the Lord… For I did not imagine that things out of books would help me as much as the utterances of a living and abiding voice. [31] 

It does not stop there of course. For as the gospel spread, it was being preached to people who had no written language (or at least, could not read Greek) and so could not read the Bible even if they wanted to. The second-century Christian leader Irenaeus (c. 120-202 A.D.), pupil of another of the apostle John’s disciples, [32] made the very important point, echoing the apostle Paul (2 Thess. 2:15), that in such situations, written texts were of limited value and oral Tradition was absolutely essential. The gospel preached orally was in no way deficient, because it was being passed on, as Paul said it should be, by word of mouth: 

For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition [traditionis] which they handed down [tradiderunt] to those to whom they did commit the Churches? To which course many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without paper or ink [cf. 2 Cor. 3:3], and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition [traditionem]… Those who, in the absence of written documents, have believed this faith, are barbarians, so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, manner, and tenor of life, they are, because of faith, very wise indeed. [33] 

These days, in the world of post-Renaissance, post-printing-press modernism, where literacy is taken for granted and regarded as the essential key to knowledge, we have lost respect for oral Tradition, embodied in the spoken word. But if we want to understand the mindset of the ancient Jews, Greeks and Christians, we have to recapture it. Our old friend Philo of Alexandria was not unusual, for his time, in saying that 

customs are unwritten laws, being the doctrines of men of old, not engraved on pillars or written on paper which may be eaten by moths, but impressed in the souls of those living under the same constitution… For the man who obeys the written laws is not justly entitled to any praise, inasmuch as he is influenced by compulsion and the fear of punishment. But he who abides by the unwritten laws is worthy of praise, as exhibiting a spontaneous and unconstrained Virtue. [34] 

Of course, even modern rationalists like us can understand why in those ancient days, within living memory of the first generation of disciples, people like Paul, John, Papias and Irenaeus regarded oral Tradition as at least as reliable as the apostolic writings. Admittedly, though, things are not quite so clear-cut many centuries later. These days, if we want to interpret Scripture and Tradition in a manner which is faithful to the Holy Spirit, and if we want, as we must, to “pass on” our faith (given to us “by word of mouth or by letter”) to others, we are left with two big questions. First, how do we know that we are receiving reliable Tradition, truly faithful to Christ and the apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, unsullied by corruptions which may have crept in unnoticed over the centuries? Second, what and where is this oral Tradition which Paul speaks of, and which he clearly believes is so important? If we are to answer these two questions satisfactorily, we need to investigate the biblical testimony concerning Christian Tradition more deeply. We can only do that if we first look at what Scripture says about the role of the Church in “holding to”, interpreting and “passing on” the gospel. It is to that subject that we will now turn.

BIBLICAL SUMMARY of Chapter Three 

Scripture is flawless and God-breathed.
Prov. 30:5, 2 Tim. 3:16 

Jesus is the Word of God.
Jn. 1:1-14 

Sometimes Scripture requires a literal interpretation...
Matt. 20:17-19, 1 Cor. 15:14-19 

... sometimes an allegorical one.
            Is. 11:6-9, Lk. 15:11-31, Rom. 11:16-18, 1 Cor. 12:12-26 

A pesher: the Old Testament is about Jesus.
Lk. 24:27,44-45, Jn. 5:39,46 

parables, allegories, types and antitypes:
Ps. 78:2; Rom. 5:14; 1 Cor. 2:7-10, 10:6-11; Heb. 8:5, 10:1 

the bronze serpent and the Son of Man
            Num. 21:4-8, Jn. 3:14-15 

Hagar and Sarah, old and new Jerusalem
            Gen. 16, 21:8-19; Gal. 4:22-26 

living water
            Gen. 6-9, Ex. 14, 17:1-7; Num. 20:1-13, Josh. 3-4, 2 Kgs. 5, Is. 55:1, Ezek. 47:1-12,
            Matt. 3:11-17, 28:18-20; Lk. 3:21-22; Jn. 4:7-15, 7:37-38, 19:34-35; Rom. 6:3-11, 1 Cor. 10:1-4,
            1 Pet. 3:20-21, Rev. 22:1-2 

bread from heaven
            Gen. 14:18-20; Ex. 12, 16, 24:9-10; Is. 25:6; Matt. 14:15-21, 22:1-14, 26:26;
            Mk. 6:35-44, 14:22; Lk. 9:12-17, 14:15-24, 22:15-19, 24:28-35; Jn. 6; 1 Cor. 10:3, 11:23-24 

Scripture contains inexpressible things...
2 Cor. 12:3-4 

... whose meanings are revealed by the Holy Spirit...
            1 Cor. 2:6-16 

... things difficult to understand...
            2 Pet. 3:16-17 

... full of “biblical tensions”.
            Rom. 3:22 / Ja. 2:24
            1 Tim. 3:15 / 2 Tim. 3:15 

There are bad traditions...
Matt. 15:1-9, Mk. 7:1-13, Col. 2:8 

... but there is also good Tradition...
            1 Cor. 11:2, 15:3; 2 Thess. 2:15, 3:6; 2 Tim. 2:2 

... some of it passed on by word of mouth.
            Jn. 21:25; Acts 2:42, 20:35; 1 Cor. 2:3-4, 11:34, 15:1; 2 Cor. 13:2; Gal. 1:8,11, Phil. 4:9;
            1 Thess. 2:13, 4:1; 2 Thess. 2:5

---

[1] N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (SPCK, London, 1992), pp. 85-86

[2] Origen, Origen de Principiis IV:I:19, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org

[3] Origen, Origen de Principiis IV:I:8-9, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org

[4] e.g. 1 Chr. 16:30; Ps. 93:1, 96:10, 104:5; Eccl. 1:5

[5] echoed by Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.): “The shame is... that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.” [Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis I.1.19 (Paulist, Mahwah, 1982), on books.google.co.uk]

[6] Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Baker, Grand Rapids, 2015), p. 62

[7] Gerald L. Bruns, “Midrash and Allegory”, in The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter & Frank Kermode (Fontana, London, 1987), p. 632

[8] Robert B. Sloan Jr. & Carey C. Newman, “Ancient Jewish Hermeneutics”, in Biblical Hermeneutics: A Comprehensive Introduction to Interpreting Scripture, ed. Bruce Corley, Steve W. Lemke & Grant I. Lovejoy (Broadman & Holman, Nashville, 2002), p. 70

[9] Gerald L. Bruns, “Midrash and Allegory”, in The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter & Frank Kermode (Fontana, London, 1987), p. 629

[10] Origen, Origen de Principiis Pref. 8, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org

[11] Origen, Origen de Principiis IV:I:6, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org

[12] Philo, Allegorical Interpretation III.175, in Charles Duke Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H. G. Bohn, London), on www.earlychristianwritings.com

[13] Philo, Allegorical Interpretation II.86, in Charles Duke Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H. G. Bohn, London), on www.earlychristianwritings.com

[14] Philo, On the Life of Moses II.134, in Charles Duke Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H. G. Bohn, London), on www.earlychristianwritings.com

[15] Origen, Origen de Principiis Pref. 8, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org

[16] Origen, Origen de Principiis IV:I:13, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org

[17] cf. Rom. 16:25-26, Eph. 3:9, Col. 1:26-27

[18] N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (SPCK, London, 1992), p. 40

[19] Joseph Ratzinger, “God the Creator”, in “In the Beginning…”: a Catholic Understanding of Creation and the Fall (T&T Clark, New York, 1995), p.16

[20] J. R. R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia, on home.ccil.org/~cowan

[21] quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings (Harper Collins, London, 2006), p. 43

[22] e.g. the Chronicles of Narnia, and his “science fiction” trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength)

[23] “The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” (William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I sc. 3)

[24] Anthony N. S. Lane, Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant Dialogue (T&T Clark, London, 2002), pp. 132-135

[25] C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (Fount, London, 1998), p. 97, on korycapps.files.wordpress.com

[26] Joseph Ratzinger, “God the Creator”, in “In the Beginning…”: a Catholic Understanding of Creation and the Fall (T&T Clark, New York, 1995), pp.16-17

[27] See also 1 Cor. 11:23, 1 Tim. 6:20, 2 Tim. 1:12, 2 Tim. 1:14.

[28] See also Matt. 15:1-9, Col. 2:8.

[29] as opposed to “teaching”: didache (e.g. Rom. 6:17, 16:17; 1 Cor. 14:6,26) or didaskalia (Rom. 12:17; 1 Tim. 1:10, 4:13, 4:16, 5:17; 2 Tim. 3:10,16)

[30] Eusebius, The History of the Church III.39 (Penguin, London, 1989)

[31] Papias, The Sayings of the Lord Explained Pref., quoted in Eusebius, The History of the Church III.39 (Penguin, London, 1989)

[32] Irenaeus, To Florinus, on Sole Sovereignty, or God Is Not the Author of Evil, quoted in Eusebius, The History of the Church V.20 (Penguin, London, 1989); Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics XXXII, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org

[33] Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.IV.1-2, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Phillip Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org

[34] Philo, The Special Laws IV.XXVIII, in Charles Duke Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus (H. G. Bohn, London), on www.earlychristianwritings.com