Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria

Description

Allegorical readings of literary or religious texts always begin as counterreadings, starting with denial or negation, challenging the literal sense: "You have read the text this way, but I will read it differently." David Dawson insists that ancient allegory is best understood not simply as a way of reading texts, but as a way of using non-literal readings to reinterpret culture and society. Here he describes how some ancient pagan, Jewish, and Christian interpreters used allegory to endorse, revise, and subvert competing Christian and pagan world views. This reassessment of allegorical reading emphasizes socio-cultural contexts rather than purely formal literary features, opening with an analysis of the pagan use of etymology and allegory in the Hellenistic world and pagan opposition to both techniques. The remainder of the book presents three Hellenistic religious writers who each typify distinctive models of allegorical interpretation: the Jewish exegete Philo, the Christian Gnostic Valentinus, and the Christian Platonist Clement. The study engages issues in the fields of classics, history of Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism, literary criticism and theory, and more broadly, critical theory and cultural criticism. CONTENTS......Page 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 5 INTRODUCTION......Page 8 I. Pagan Etymology and Allegory......Page 30 Ancient Myth and Stoic Etymology......Page 31 Reading Homer as an Allegorical Poet......Page 45 Opposition to Etymology and Allegory......Page 59 II. Philo: The Reinscription of Reality......Page 80 Jewish Allegory and Hellenism......Page 81 Representation and Textualization......Page 90 The World within the Text......Page 120 III. Valentinus: The Apocalypse of the Mind......Page 134 Allegorical Interpretation as Composition......Page 136 Mystical Vision and Allegorical Revision......Page 152 Christian Initiation and the History Within......Page 177 IV. Clement: The New Song of the Logos......Page 190 Logos Theology as Allegorical Hermeneutic......Page 193 The Antecedent Voice of Cultural Classics......Page 206 Sectarianism and Domesticated Gnosis......Page 226 AFTERWORD......Page 242 Notes......Page 248 BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 304 GENERAL INDEX......Page 326 SCRIPTURE PASSAGES CITED......Page 340 ANCIENT PASSAGES CITED......Page 342