Book 2: Discerning and Discovering The Meaning of Holy Scripture
Part 1: Discerning the Meaning of Scripture
Treatise 2: The Meaning of Scripture in Specific
Section 3
Allegories
In this section, we need discuss under separate headings: 1. The definition of the word, or nomenclature, and of the thing referred to. 2. Certain categories.
Article 1
Definition of Allegory
The definition of the term includes (1) Etymology; (2) Synonyms; (3) Polysemy
1. Etymology. Allegory (from the Greek, I allegorize, as if saying, I speak or say something else, I signify something beyond the meaning of the words, or, as Quintilian says, “I say one thing, but mean something else”), according to the full force of the term, signifies that kind of speech where one thing is said, and another signified. The meaning differs from that which the words would suggest. Galatians 4:24 says, these things are spoken allegorically, that is, they contain yet another meaning, which is spiritual or mystical, beneath the veneer of the literal meaning.
2. Synonyms. In the same passage concerning allegory (in Galatians 4), the term correspondence is used, in verse 25, “For Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to what is now called Jerusalem.” Things are called correspondent with each other when they are akin, cognate, and associated with each other. So you could say that man corresponds with the other animals insofar as he is mortal, and even that man is correspondent with the other animals insofar as he makes use of an irrational soul, as Budaeus says (p.632). Therefore the meaning of the Apostle’s words is that Hagar, with respect to her mystical meaning, also has a correspondence with Jerusalem, and this is because she signifies the Jewish people, whose capital is Jerusalem. For just as Hagar had been a slave girl in the house of Abraham, and had finally been cast out from there, so the Jews in the time of the Apostle were in slavery to the law and, because they wanted to be justified through works of the law, were cast out from the house of God.
Elsewhere, the term ‘mystery’also applies to allegory, as in Ephesians 5:32, which the old translation renders ‘sacrament’ (this verse also produced the seventh sacrament of the church of Rome), but which is better rendered by ‘a hidden matter’ or ‘a matter signifying something hidden and spiritual’.
3. Polysemy. Use of the term ‘allegory’ is well established in two spheres: that of words, and that of things. Dr. Sandaeus (Grammat. profano comm. 19, p. 852) calls the former ‘rhetorical’ and the latter ‘theological’. The former, as teachers of rhetoric define it, is simply a sustained metaphor. We are not treating this here, since it pertains to our teaching on figures of speech, but we are here considering that which is described above.
Definition of the thing.
Sandaeus (I refer you to p. 853) gives a definition for the allegory of things: “When the mysteries of the New Testament are signified by the things that occurred in the Old law. From here we get the allegorical meaning of Scripture.”
This definition, when compared with the papal understanding, is at odds with Bellarmine, who says in De Verbo Dei (book 3, ch. 3), “The allegorical meaning is also found in the New Testament”, while Augustine in Sermon 122 on John gives an allegorical explanation of that catch of fish, when the net began to tear (Luke 5). Although he confuses this same allegory (properly and specifically so-called) with type, strictly speaking, we should distinguish between the two.
We would rather define it, therefore, as:
A representation of something mystical or spiritual by means of something else that is told in Scripture.
The following distinctions will make all of this clearer.
Article 2
The Categories of Allegory
There are two kinds of allegory: innate and imported.
The innate is expressly handed down to us in scripture itself and, properly speaking, this is the mystical meaning of Scripture. Jerome and others, however, are right to caution us that allegories do not occur in holy Scripture as frequently as do types. Thus, in the passage of law, Deuteronomy 25:4, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain”, there is an allegorical meaning, about feeding the ministers of the Church, which Paul sets out in 1 Corinthians 9:9. Some people say that the apostle is not in this passage setting forth the mystical meaning of these words of the law, but that he is only using them by way of example and constructing an argument of the lesser to the greater based on them. The logic is that if, according to the law, we are not allowed to muzzle the mouth of the ox that is treading out the grain, then all the more need we not deny salaries to ministers of the Word. The tone of the Apostle’s words, however, points in a different direction, as does the emphasis. “For our sake (he says) it (that law) was written, because the ploughman should plough in hope,” etc. In the same way, the historical passage (Ex. 34:29 sqq.) about the radiant face of Moses and about the veil placed over his face contains an allegorical meaning that the Apostle sets out in 2 Corinthians 3:7, 13-14, concerning the glory of the Old Testament and the blindness of the Jews when it comes to understanding the scriptures of the Old Testament. Then there are the words of Psalm 19:5, that discuss the works of creation. Paul in Romans 10:18 relates these allegorically to the preaching of the Apostles. Ephesians 5:31-32 expounds the institution of marriage in Genesis 2:24 with a mystical meaning about the spiritual union of Christ with his Church, to which the prophet also alludes in Hosea 2:19. Luke 17:32 explains the account of Lot’s wife, when she was leaving Sodom and looking back, with the allegorical meaning that, once we have departed from our spiritual Sodom, we should not look back and allow ourselves to fall back into sin and impenitence. One should look at Augustine on Psalm 75, and in the City of God X.8. Then there is God’s ordinance concerning the eating of unleavened bread at the feast of Passover, which Paul in 1 Cor. 5:7-8 expounds allegorically concerning the renewal and sanctification of the saints. In Galatians 4:22, by use of an allegorical meaning, he relates the account of Abraham’s two wives to the two testaments and their respective properties.
An imported allegory is one that scripture itself does not indicate, but is imported by interpreters. Allegories of this kind are like paintings, while literal interpretations are like stone walls. A house gets its strength from its stone walls; the paintings do not contribute at all to the strength. They are showpieces (allegories), by which the substance of man cannot be nourished, so says our master, Wolfgang Franz, in De interpretatione Scriptuarum (oratio 123). Benedict Pererius puts it well in his commentary on Genesis (Vol.1, p.5), “The mystical and allegorical meaning, besides the fact that it is not something that should be taught and not sufficiently proper and firm to be approved of, is also inconsistent, manifold and doubtful, and consists of as much variation as there is skill and plentiful genius among men for inventing such meanings.”
About this kind of allegory we need still to mention 1. the logic of pursuing it; and 2. subdivisions.
Article 3
The Discipline of Pursuing Allegory
Usually, there are a lot of rules for how far we should go in the study of allegories, and how we should go about it. We may formulate and divide these according to the principle that we should see in allegories three characteristics: rarity, correspondence, and usefulness.
Canons Pertaining to Rarity
Canon 1
Special care should be taken to quarry out the literal meaning from the words and the context itself.
Augustine says in his work on Genesis [book 8, ch. 7] that in an account of historical events, we ought first understand the events themselves, how they are told, and only then is it fitting for us to investigate whether they signify something else. Luther writes, in On the Babylonian Captivity, “I would not want a theologian to deal with allegories until he has become perfect when it comes to the legitimate and simple meaning of scripture. Otherwise, as was the case with Origen, his theologizing will be fraught with danger.” According to Jerome [Ep. 129.6], the truth of history is the foundation of spiritual understanding, and from this Nicholas of Lyra rightly surmises that whatever is, like a building, leaning to one side from its foundation, is destined for ruin. Thus, a mystical exposition that disagrees with the literal meaning should be considered inappropriate and incompetent.
Canon 2
We should not think it permissible for us to present to the public allegorical interpretations that are drawn from any passage we like, since such boldness significantly undermines the authority of Scripture.
Those who hear such things infer from them that we do not consider any passage to be indisputable and that anyone is free to stitch any interpretation he likes onto any passage he likes. Peter Cunaeus put it well [Hebrew Republic 3.5], “Digging out mysteries from all kinds of plain and everyday events is for those who despise wisdom, and is an all too common trend among men. Often, this business ends up being diseased and stinky. As for me, I like hard facts, not cleverly devised inventions.”
Canon 3
We should not look for allegories in moral commandments, promises, admonitions and passages that discuss doctrines.
Jerome writes, in chapter four of his commentary on the Galatians, that allegory should not be looked for in the commandments that concern one’s way of life, or in those passages that are manifestly clear.
Canon 4
We may cautiously and soberly look for allegories, particularly in the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament (which were shadows of things to come, Heb. 10:1) and in certain passages of history, so long as the truth of the historical account remains intact.
So the cleansing of lepers and its rite, which are described in Lev. 14, may be applied allegorically to spiritual healing, or to our own justification and renewal, and we can in a number of ways make a beautiful comparison between the two. In the same way, the victory that David won over Goliath may be applied to the Christian, who by the power of Christ his champion subdues and conquers the desires of his flesh and the remaining host of the enemy. At the same time, the fact needs to remain that long ago David truly did knock down and defeat Goliath.
Canon 5
Allegories when mentioned briefly, artfully, and with a certain sweet pungency are truer than when they are drawn out.
Paul demonstrates this in 1 Cor. 9:9-10, 2 Cor. 3:13, Eph. 5:32, and so on.
Canon 6
When interpreters explain the same passage by means of different allegories, we should use only that which is more graceful, more conventional, and preeminent in its clarity.
Augustine writes, in his Commentary on the Psalms, “This rule must be applied for every allegory: that for the meaning of any given passage we should bear in mind what is said according to its likeness.”
Canons Pertaining to Concinnity
Canon 7
We should only apply allegories when they are suitable, well balanced and fitting analogies of faith, and concern Christ the almighty (who is the source, scope and center of Scripture), with his office and works, his kingdom and so on, and likewise allegories that concern the members of the mystical body of Christ, believers, and which pertain to their state and condition.
Canon 8
We should take care to make the sources of an allegory clearly drawn from scripture itself.
For a single word is often the key to opening up the allegorical meaning. In this way we can apply most of the parts of the law concerning the Passover lamb to Christ and his faithful people, since Paul in 1 Cor. 5:7 says, “Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us”, and so on.
Canon 9
An allegory should be brief and intelligible.
Obscurity not only hinders our understanding and does away with any usefulness, but also becomes wearisome for those who are listening.
Canons Pertaining to Usefulness
Canon 10
If the Holy Spirit himself should interpret anything in the Scriptures allegorically, then we would safely agree with the allegory, not only concerning its sweetness, but also concerning the dogma, which should be approved as useful.
Canon 11
When it comes to all other allegories, even when interpreters apply them with sound reasoning, we should value them not as steadfast proof texts for dogmas, but only as secondary embellishments and illustrations.
Canon 12
And so we should use them not when we are refuting enemies of the truth, but when we are educating the people from the speaker’s platform, or in sermons, in which allegories could, if employed tastefully and in moderation, be pleasing and interesting and stave off boredom, for which reason they are especially useful for prologues.
For more, see Flacius, Clavis (part 2, tract. 1, ch. 79) and Gerhard, De interpret. Script. (section 139 and following).
Article 4
Imported Allegory: the Main Subdivision
Allegory imported into the Scriptures can be classified into two categories. The first kind is derived from its quality, the second kind from its efficient cause, that is, those who use the allegorical method of interpretation.
Accepting the distinction made above [between innate and imported allegory], imported allegory is either demonstrated or strained and convoluted.
Demonstrated allegory is one that has a likely foundation in the literal meaning and has an analogous similarity of events, as well as being in conformity with the rule of faith. We will give a few examples of this. In Gen. 6:14 and following there is a description of Noah’s ark. The Lord spoke to Noah and said, “Make for yourself an ark out of polished wood (“gopher” in Hebrew). You will make little chambers in the ark and you will coat it with pitch on the inside.” Some people apply this to the Church in this way: the ark signifies the Church, which is built out of believers who have been polished up through the Word and Sacraments. In this ark the little chambers, the different states of believers, are their different vocations. But in order that they might all connect together well, each in a different vocation, and that the entire church may be secure, that foreign and outside teachings do not allow the waters of trials and persecutions to seep in, and that they do not make them sink, they should be coated with the tar and glue of love, harmony and peace. In a marginal gloss on Genesis 8:11, “The dove, returning to Noah, brings a twig of an olive tree to the ark”, Luther allegorized and noted, next to the twig of the olive tree, ‘Gospel’, which the Holy Spirit wanted to be preached in the Church.
In Genesis 15:11 Abraham did not give up on the sacrifice that he was offering, even when he saw birds coming down to get in his way, but he diligently continued to drive them away, and persevered in his holy work until the sun rose. Allegorically, we should not give up on a good work, at least while we still have the strength to complete it, despite whatever birds come down, that is, whatever difficulties present themselves because of the malice and deceit of men. Against such hindrances we should say, with David in Psalm 11:1, “I trust in the Lord”, and so on.
In Genesis 24, the slave of Abraham, intending to procure a bride for Abraham’s son, took with him ten camels and a number of precious items from the goods of his master Abraham, so that he might show by them that he was not some meager servant of a poor master, and thereby make the girl more eager to follow him. Allegorically, when the Son of God wanted to draw to himself through the apostles his bride, the Church of the New Testament, he gave to his servants, from the goods of his Holy Spirit, all kinds of precious things, and in this case from heaven. For in this way, the souls of all men, even of the most savage, might more easily be won over.
In Genesis 24:2, Abraham did not want a wife for his son to be taken from among the Canaanites, but from his own people. Allegorically, let not your soul be troubled by the things of this world, but strive on for your heavenly home.
In Genesis 30:37 and following, the sheep of Jacob, upon seeing the spotted and stripy sticks, produced the same kind of lambs. Allegorically, the movements of the soul operate in this manner, according to the examples that we observe, be they good or bad.
In Genesis 32:24 and following, Jacob was leaving behind his idolatrous father in law, and after he had wrestled with the Angel of the Lord and had seen God and was named Israel, began to walk with a limp in one foot. Allegorically, whoever says goodbye to the world and has received faith from God and has seen the glory of God through faith, he is at once lame to the world, he is offensive, and he seems idiotic and mad. Or understood another way, the soul that recognizes the excellence of God’s goodness should be lame in its love for the world.
In Genesis 34:1, Dinah, when she leaves the home of her father, is violated by Shechem. Allegorically, the soul, when it passes over to the pleasures of the world, is cast headlong into sin and death by the infernal Shechem.
In Genesis 42:20 and 43:3, Joseph commanded his brothers, as they were returning to the land of Canaan, to bring with them his brother Benjamin, if they wanted to return to him: “Unless you bring your brother Benjamin, you will not see my face.” Allegorically, when we want to approach God in prayer, and ask for our daily bread, to petition God for harvest and food, unless we bring our brother Christ (for this is what he wanted to become and was willing to call us. See Mt. 28:10 and Heb. 2:11) as we speak, unless we ask in his name, we will not see the face of God, we will succeed in getting nothing from God the Father despite our prayers.
In Exodus 3:5, before he could get closer to see the bush that was burning but not consumed, Moses is ordered to untie his sandals from off his feet. Allegorically, love for worldly things must first be cast aside, so that love for heavenly things may be allowed into the soul, and so on.
In Exodus 10:24, when Pharaoh is finally going to allow the sons of Israel to leave, he says to them, “Go, sacrifice to the Lord. Only let your sheep and your flocks stay put.” But Moses replied, in verse 26, “All the flocks will go with us. Not a hoof from among them will stay behind. They are all needed for us to worship our God.” Allegorically, we should consecrate and offer up our entire selves to the worship of God, and no hoof, not any part of us, should be left behind for the devil.
In Exodus 13:10 and following, and 23:29, God commanded that every firstborn both of man and beast be dedicated to him or else redeemed for a price, and he wanted the first fruits of all the crops and fruits of the land to be dedicated to him. Allegorically, he wanted to teach by this very thing that our heart is owed to him. For the heart is the first thing that is produced in man (see Galen, De usu partium, book 6, and Albertus, De animal. book 9, tract. 2, ch. 4) and the last thing that dies in man, as experience teaches us. Therefore to give to God our first fruits and our firstborn is to offer to God our heart and the whole passion of our heart. According to the same symbolism, in the time of the Old Testament, priests were also firstborn and set apart for the worship of God. For this reason, in Proverbs 23:26, Wisdom says, “Give me your heart”. Not the head, not the hand, not the foot, not other body parts, but the beginning of all the parts, the root and fount of human life, which is the heart, does God demand that we give him.
In Exodus 28:34 and following, God commands that the cloak of the high priest be decorated down at the edge with miniature bells, “And it will be over him for ministering, and the sound of him will be heard when he goes in to the sanctuary before the Lord and when he goes out, and he will not die.” Compare this with Sirach 45:11. Allegorically, for as long as believers, who are “kings and priests before God” (Rev 1:6), go in and out from before God, that is, for their whole lives, which the “going in” and “going out” signifies (Psalm 121:8), they should wear little bells on the border and extremity of their clothes, so that they may be continually warned about the end times, and so the commandment of Sirach 7:36 may always be sounding in their ears and hearts, “In all your words, remember your end, and forever you will not sin.” In Leviticus 2:11, God forbade honey to be burned in the sacrifice, because he wanted flattery and feigned love to be far removed from every good work.
In Leviticus 17:11-12, “The life of the flesh is in the blood”, and so the blood had to be offered up to God. Allegorically, the spiritual blood of the soul is love, since love is the life of our soul. Therefore, we should not eat it, that is, direct the passion of love back to ourselves, but to offer it up to God.
In Leviticus 19:19, God commanded the sons of Israel, “You shall not sow your field with mixed seed; you shall not put on a garment that is woven from two kinds of thread.” Allegorically, he forbade hypocrisy by these words, since he who speaks about good things but does bad things sows with mixed seed. He has corn in his mouth but weeds in his heart. He appears respectable but lives like a playboy. Because he judges another man, he condemns himself. The hypocrite clothes himself in the garment of virtue before men and with the garment of impiety before God.
In 1 Kings 3:26-7, the one prostitute said, “Let not the baby be yours or mine, but let it be cut in two.” The true mother does not suffer her child to be divided. Allegorically, the true Christian does not allow his heart to be divided between earthly and heavenly matters, but clings to God alone.
In 1 Kings 6:4, it is said concerning the windows of the temple that they were “closed windows”, designed for looking out and closed, that is, broad on the inside and narrow on the outside, so that one could see out of them fairly easily and conveniently, but less conveniently could one look in. Allegorically, the spiritual man judges all things and is himself judged by no man.
In a marginal gloss on Ezekiel 46:10, Luther writes, “The Lord commanded that whoever went into the temple should go out by another gate and not turn his back on the mercy seat when he left the temple.” Allegorically, that ritual taught that whenever we receive a blessing from God, we ought not turn our backs on him in forgetfulness.
From the New Testament:
In Luke 15:18, the prodigal son found nothing but work and misery outside of his father’s house, and he was unable to find rest again until he returned to his father’s house. Allegorically, our soul finds rest in God alone and in nothing created.
In Luke 1:39, after Christ was conceived, Mary went into the hill country to visit Elisabeth. Allegorically, when Christ has been spiritually conceived, the soul begins to go up into the hills (see Psalm 15:1 and 27:51), it scorns worldly things, and it crosses over from vanity to the peace of God (for Elizabeth notes the peace of God).
In Matthew 27:51, we read, “And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn into two parts, from the top to the bottom.” Jerome (as Peter Cunaeus uses him in Hebrew Republic book 3.8) discusses these words and learnedly gives us a mystical exposition for them, from the mystical sense: “According to anagogy, we should say that, as Jesus was crying out and releasing his spirit, the curtain of the temple was torn and all the mysteries of the law were unveiled, so that those things which had previously been kept hidden might be published to the nations. Moreover, into two parts means into the Old and New Testament. And from the top to the bottom: from the beginning of the world when man was created, until the end of the world, and all else that holy writ says happened in between. Need we also ask whether the curtain of the temple that was torn was on the inside or the outside? It seems to me that, in the passion of the Lord, the curtain in the tabernacle was torn at the same time as that which was positioned in the outer temple and was called exterior. For now we see in part and we know in part. When the perfect comes, however, then the inner curtain will also be rent asunder, so that we may see all the Holy Things of the house of God, which are now hidden from us.” Such words are both learned and piously considered. We could supply many more examples of imported allegory, which are both suitable and in agreement with the rule of faith, but these few should suffice. Whoever wants others should go to those who preach on passages of Scripture and explain the Gospel texts.
Strained and convoluted allegory is that which abandons the likely foundation in the literal sense, too greatly disagrees with the event from which it is taken, is intended for an unsuitable and depraved purpose, or is otherwise too far removed from the analogy of Scripture. There are such people who explain, albeit boorishly, that Noah’s ark and the Song of Songs allegorically concern the Virgin Mary. Jerome in this way interprets the unclean animals in Noah’s ark as virgins and the unclean animals as those who have been married; no less inappropriately does he call virgins ‘vessels for honour’ and the married ‘vessels for dishonour’. The same author also explains that the hundred-fold crop is the virgins, the sixty-fold crop the widows, the thirty fold crop the married, and those who are twice married are entirely excluded, about which he says (Ep.123.9, De Monogamia), “They certainly do not grow in the good soil, but among the thickets and thorns of pleasures.” For the grain of this Scripture passage, the vain-speaking followers of Paracelsus Theophrast give embellished explanations, which they pawn off as being the spiritual and inner meaning. Other such passages are Psalm 110:1, “Sit at my right hand”, words that Weigel in his Postille II, p.284, explains in this way: “Come down, be born a man, redeem the human race, take on human nature, and in your ways and clothing become like the race of Adam, until all your enemies lie subject to your power and the very last of your enemies is dead.” Matthew 15:11, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man”, is interpreted in the Philosophia Mystica (p. 226), in the following way: whatever is outside my heart (he is, however, speaking about Christ not through imputation, but through an essential and justifying indwelling) neither cleanses nor defiles me, neither saves nor condemns me, and so on. In 1 Cor. 13:10, we read, “When that which is perfect comes, that which is in part will pass away”, that is, when the kingdom of God comes to me and when I find and feel in myself and taste God, who is the perfect and true good, I despise everything that is in part, that is, I deny myself, I consider myself worthless, together with all creatures, in comparing them to the unimaginable store of treasure that I see. Weigel (in Philosophia Mystica, p. 149) explains the atrium of the tabernacle of Moses, in which livestock were sacrificed, in this way, that it signifies the body of man, made from the mud of the earth, and that it is right for it to be sacrificed, offered up and put to death in Christ, and that otherwise it is not permitted for us to enter into the Holy place with the priests, and so on. In Tractatus de Tabernaculo B.2. For a more substantial example of convoluted allegory, see Article 6 On Allegories of the Papal Writers. To this I must surely add the words of Luther from his sermons explaining Luke 17 (which Thomas Morton uses in Apologia Catholica book 5, ch. 5). “If there is no clear indication of a figure in the New Testament, then we should not look for it. For instance, if a bright and creative demon is toying with figures and happens to come across someone who twisting the Scriptures into unfounded allegory, then he usually throws allegory around like dice, just as the Scholastic teachers invent their whorish figures in Canon Law and declare that the Pope is signified by the sun and Caesar by the moon. There are, however, three ways to indicate a figure. First, when Scripture itself indicates an allegory, such as when Peter signifies Baptism through Noah’s ark, and Paul signifies Baptism through the red sea, and when Christ signifies his own cross through the serpent in John 3. Indications of this kind must be taken as articles of faith. Second, when human ingenuity introduces a figure and fits it together, through its comparable likeness, with a number of other clear passages of Scripture, just as Augustine on this passage (Luke 17:12) explains that heresy is signified through the leprosy, although Scripture itself does not say so, but does mention heresy elsewhere. This figure, therefore, does no violence to our faith. For if it is torn apart, the foundation of Scripture nevertheless remains unshaken, to which he had brought that second meaning. The third is a naked indication constructed in someone’s head, where the figure is on its own, and whatever they want to be signified by it is not anywhere in Scripture, just as when they want the Pope to be understood by Aaron, even though not even the tiniest dot of Scripture makes any mention of Pope or Papacy.” So says Luther.
Article 5
Concerning Allegorizers (those who employ the allegorical method of interpreting): Church Fathers
So far we have discussed the first category of allegories. The other category remains, which derives from those who employ the allegorical method of interpreting or who use allegories in their writings. Here we shall consider, in order, 1. Church Fathers; 2. Pontifical teachers; 3. Jews and Rabbinic Cabbalists; 4. Some other allegorical interpreters of stories. In this article we will treat of the Church Fathers, whose enthusiasm for using allegories is partly tolerable and partly intolerable.
Intolerable is the overconfidence of Origen Adamantios, that ancient interpreter of scripture, who changed everything everywhere, however simply it had been stated, into allegories. For this reason Jerome, in his Letter to Pammachius, quite rightly complains about Origen, that he allegorizes the earthly Paradise in such a way as to do away with the truth of the historical account, since he understands angels instead of trees, the powers of heaven instead of rivers, and interprets Adam and Eve’s animal skin garments as human bodies, as if before sin they had lived without a body. The same author (Jerome), in his Preface to the ten visions of Isaiah to bishop Amabilis, writes, “Origen deviates from the free realms of allegory and makes his own brains into the sacraments of the Church.” And another famous Church Father (referring to Flacius, column 64) says, “Origen hawks the toys of his own invention as if they were the sacraments of God.” And the Pontifical writers themselves assess this extravagant freedom of allegorizing in Origen. Bellarmine, in book 3 of De Amissione Gratiae, says that Origen, in his own unique manner, turned everything that seemed to him absurd into allegory. Francisco de Ribera in his introduction to Malachi writes “In this way Origen sinned greatly. He was a bold and reckless man, and such a stubborn lover of his own errors that he considered whatever came to his mind to be fitting and put it down in writing as if it were a great mystery handed down to him by the Holy Spirit.” Acosta writes about that defect of allegorizing in Origen and in those like Origen, in his preface to book one of De temporibus novissimis: “I can hardly express how strongly it offends me.” And it is this principle for interpreting, or rather, for distorting the Scriptures that led Porphyry to mock Christian doctrine and write that it considers nothing to be certain, in so far as, like the stories of poets, everything can be changed into meanings different to the grammatical meaning.
More tolerable is the principle of other Church Fathers for interpreting the Scriptures allegorically. They (though at times they employ twisted and foreign allegories, some examples of which have been provided above, in Article 4) have little patience with Origen’s boldness. Augustine, in book 15, chapter 27 of the City of God, explains, “we should not agree with those who accept the historic account alone without the allegorical meaning, nor with those who defend the figures alone but deny the historic truth.” In book 17, chapter 3, he writes, “They seem to me to be making a serious mistake who think that none of the historical events in this kind of literature signifies anything other than what and how things happened. In the same way, they seem to me too bold who persistently argue that everything there is implicated with allegorical significations.” John Chrysostom writes that the historic account is not opposed to a higher contemplation but the opposite, that it is the basis and foundation of the loftier ways of understanding it. Gregory Nazianzen says in Oration 42 (for Easter) that he walks a middle road between those who are of an altogether more obtuse mindset and those who get carried away with too much enthusiasm for contemplation and allegory, and that thereby he neither remains completely lifeless and stagnant, nor again becomes more curious than he should and departs and strays from the point at hand. Gregory the Great, in homily 40 on the Gospels, says that, in the words of holy writ, the historical truth is to be preserved first, and only afterwards is the spiritual understanding of an allegory to be found. And this is because the fruit of allegory is most sweetly enjoyed when it first grows by the nourishment of history through the roots of truth. The same author in homily 15 on Ezekiel calls the literal meaning the outer threshold of holy Scripture, and the allegorical meaning the inner threshold, because we move from the literal to the allegorical. Here I will refrain from piling on any more sayings of the Fathers.
Paul of Burgos states the reason why the Fathers were moved in so many instances to add an allegorical meaning to the literal meaning, namely because in each case where one thing is true, another is even more so. And whatever the literal meaning, it exists for the sake of the mystical. Therefore the mystical meaning is worth more. Likewise, it is because the literal meaning relates to the mystical like a foundation to a building, and a building is superior to a foundation.
However, just as we concede that the spiritual meaning is worth more in those allegories that are contained and expounded in the Scriptures themselves, so we deny that by any reasoning the same may be said for other allegories that are imported to scripture by non-canonical writers. Moreover, we deny that the literal sense has a lesser purpose and exists (or, more properly, “derives its worth”, for it would have had to be understood this way, since the axiom for the most part speaks not to its existence but to its quality) for the sake of the mystical meaning, namely, in imported allegories. For it exists and derives its worth from the Holy Spirit who is speaking, and for the sake of expressing his meaning and will. If anything other than an exposition of the scripture passage itself is quarried out by means of a mystical rationale, it is secondary, and should in no way be given a place of equal worth to the literal meaning. Add the fact that not every building is superior to its foundation, as Paul of Burgos says; for Christ is the foundation (1 Cor. 3:11), and the Church is the building (Eph. 2:20). Surely the Church is not superior to Christ?
Article VI
Allegorizers: Pontifical Writers
Salmeron the Jesuit in his Commentary on 2 Cor. 3 expresses the following complaint, “The Protestants consider of little value the arguments we take from allegories, from which it is evident that they think the Holy Spirit, by whom they can penetrate the hidden depths of the Scriptures, is absent.” Yet we do not also renounce imported allegories in their entirety, as is clear from article 4 (above), but we condemn that malignant practice of allegorizing in which we catch even the highest Pontifical writers working, including the most faithless among them, the Jesuits.
We add here some examples of this phenomenon, by which it will clearly emerge that they are so addicted to allegories that, like Camels (Pliny says this about them), they never start to drink from the clear spring (of Scriptures), but first dip their foot in and stir up the water.
Innocent III allegorically interprets the words of Genesis 1:16, “God created two great lights, the sun and the moon, the greater to rule the day, the lesser to rule by night” in this way (written for the emperor in Constantinople, in the usual chapter, concerning primacy and obedience, which Becanus also attributes to Gregory, in Theol. scholast. part 2, vol. 2, chapter 3, question 6): “God made two great lights, that is, he established two seats of power, the authority of the Papacy and the majesty of the king. But that which rules the day, that is, over spiritual matters, is greater than the other, which rules the nights, that is, over the things of the flesh, so that we should recognize as much difference between popes and kings as there is between the sun and the moon.” When Luther mentioned this allegory in his commentary on Genesis 9 (folio 148), he added, “What reckless impudence! What depraved corruption!”, and (folio 149), “Not only is the application incompetent and stupid, but also the foundation is destructive and wicked. Not by the Holy Spirit, therefore, but by the Devil and the spirit of falsehood are such allegories conjured up and invented.”
Luther recalls another allegory (p.148 of the same work), “It is like when (on Gen 7, concerning Noah’s ark) they liken the ark to their Church, in which there is the Pope with the cardinals, bishops and prelates. The laity, however, are swimming in the sea, that is, they are ensnared in worldly affairs, and would not be saved, if they themselves as helmsmen of the ark (or the Church) were not extending to the swimmers either boards or planks by which they haul them up to themselves and into the ark. Monks paint the same picture of the Church all the time.”
In Genesis 2:7 we read, “He breathed into his face the breath of life, man was made into a living soul” and from this Johannes de S. Geminiano (in serm. funeb. dist. 5. serm. 2) tailors the following allegory, “He – God – breathed into his face – the church’s face – that is, into the college of those who elect the highest priest – the cardinals, whose college is rightly called a face, because the face is the nobler and more prominent part of the body, and in the same way the nobler and more prominent part of the Church is the college of cardinals. That face should therefore have an eye for providence, hear with obedience, smell of prudence, speak with eloquence, show the teeth or righteousness, and have the taste of wisdom. It befits this face also to be clean, without a spot of greed, luxury or pride, or else it will be said to the Church, “wash your face!” There is no doubt that, as long as this face was clean, it received from God the breath of life to choose its own Shepherd, and in this way the Shepherd, that he might be a man, was made into a living soul. That he might be a man, I say, not a dumb beast, and having a soul, that is, a conscience, and to be living and not dead” and so on.
Stapleton (in promtuar[ium] Cathol. part 1, p.482) allegorizes the history of the golden calf that Moses reduced into dust (Ex. 32:20) like this: “Moses ground the golden calf into the finest dust, and gave it to the people to drink of it, teaching that no amount of sin at all should remain in the heart.”
And on Leviticus 8:17, he says, “God wants not only the flesh but also the remains of a sacrifice for sin to be thrown out into an unclean place, so that no remnants of sin and no trace of it remain.”
One Pontifical teacher made the words of 1 Samuel 2:8, “The pillars of the earth (in Hebrew “stations of the earth”) are the Lord’s” into a figure for the cardinals, saying, “For just as a door is governed by its hinge, so the Roman Church is governed by the council of cardinals.” Polydorus Virgil refers to this interpretation (de invent. rer. book. 4, ch. 9) and quite rightly adds, “Behold, in the same way those experts of the Law frequently distort the holy texts to mean whatever they want, and like cobblers they are usually stretching out their paltry leather with their teeth.”
Antony the Bishop of Florence (part. 3. tit. 22. cap. 5 no. 1) explains the words of Psalm 8:7 and following like this, “God has subdued all things under his feet, that is, the feet of the Roman Pontiff, including sheep, that is, Christians, and cattle, that is, Jews and heretics, and herds of the field, that is, pagans. As for the fish of the sea, they are souls in purgatory.”
The Disciple of the Time (serm. 110) explains the words of Psalm 74:13, “You crushed the heads of the snakes in the waters” in this way, “This means that the holy water sprinkled by priests puts demons to flight and casts them out.” When he is asked why a priest should be chaste, he replies (distinct. 43, q. 1), “Because in the Song of Songs the girl’s cheeks, that is, preachers, are likened to a turtle dove.”
Pererius (comment. in Daniel. book 5, fol. 260) interprets the unharmed root of the tree that appeared toNebuchadnezzar in a vision in Daniel 4:12 (verse 15 in English editions) as the Virgin Mary who was undefiled by the sin of Adam.
Antony the Bishop of Florence (in historia part. 3, tit. 23) allegorically applies the words of Zechariah 11:7, which prophesied about Christ, to monastic orders, in these words: “Zechariah in chapter 11 spoke in the person of God about Dominic and the Dominican Order: I have taken to myself two staffs; one I have called Beauty, the other I called Bond. Beauty is the Order of Preachers. Bond is the Order of the (friars) Minor, since they are clearly tied by a bond.”
The words of Christ in Matthew 5:15, “A light ought not to be hidden under a basket, but placed on a stand”, and so on, according to an explanation by Pope Eugenius, have this mystical meaning: “The saints should be added to the number of the gods and canonized, so that they can be adored.”
Innocent III (in sermon 2 on the festival of Saints Peter and Paul) allegorizes the words of Luke 5:4, “Put out into the deep” like this: “The Lord says to Peter ‘Put out into the deep’, that is, go to Rome and move with your family to the city that has dominion over all peoples, and there release your nets for the catch.”
Baronius (in annal. Ecclesiasticis, ann. 31, num. 63) allegorically expounds the same fishing episode of Peter, described in Luke 5, and from it does his best to establish the primacy of Peter and the Pope’s sacred teaching that the Catholic church is founded on him. Casaubonus rightly upbraids and refutes him (exerc. 13, ch. 32).
Luther writes unambiguously about these and other interpretations of the divine oracles that are brought back from the papal tripod (tract. adv. Papatum), “Do you hear these things, you reader? Here you need to check your laughter, lest you also, as happened to me, develop a persistent cough. For this reason, beware of laughing at matters so serious, and remember to treat the Pope seriously and not to be deceived when you interpret scripture, as you have seen here.”
And in Agrippa’s De vanitate scientiae 92, “These are marvellous and hidden mysteries that some Roman pontiffs have produced who, when turning to the holy Scriptures, sometimes adulterating them, conforming and adapting them to their own inventions, have made serious errors.” Thus we have treated the pontifical writers.
Article VII
Allegorizers: Rabbinic Scholars and Cabbala
That which in the Papist Church is called “traditions” is known in the Jewish Synagogue as “Cabbala”, which likewise means “tradition” or rather its correlative term “reception” (since a different word properly denotes “tradition”), from the Hebrew qābbal, “he accepts” or “he receives” with the hands or spirit. It is pointless, however, for us to speak here of true, pure and honest Cabbala, which is nothing other than a mystical understanding of the Holy Scriptures, as is discussed above [p.349]. We may rather speak of Jewish Cabbala as spurious, unclean, vain and deluded. This term, however, is mostly used in two ways: 1. Concerning the aurally-transmitted or acroamatic law, which they say is an exposition of the written law, they assert that for those forty days and nights on Mount Sinai, Moses taught it from the mouth of God, and that without it we cannot understand many amiguous, obscure and occasionally conflicting precepts of the law, and that it was later written down in the Thalmud. See Galatinus (De arcan. Cath. Verir. book 1, ch. 2; book 4, ch. 4.), Petrus Crinitus (l. 25. De honest discipl. C. 5.) and Schindler (in Lex. P. 1578). 2. Concerning the hidden teaching and mysteries, which both ancient more sobre-minded Jews and more recent superstitious Jews look for in the writings of Moses and the Prophets, who do so for different reasons. Reuchlinus (book 3, Cabbalae) describes it like this, “Cabbala is nothing other than, if I may speak like a Pythagorean, a theology of symbolism, in which not only the letters and words are signs for things, but also the things are signs of other things.” They call it Cabbala, however, because in the past they kept those hidden things secret and did not entrust them to just anyone, much less divulge them publicly by writings, but only by an oral tradition and to a succession of wise men did they continue the tradition. In this next section I would like to discuss Cabbala at somewhat greater length, because it agrees with the allegorical method of interpreting Holy Scripture (as I said, of the sort that the Pontifical writers produce), insofar as both methods look for a meaning apart from the mind and intention of the Holy Spirit or Holy Scripture (even if each has a different moderating principle). First, however, we must consider more precisely its reasoning. Afterwards, I will make clear what conclusions should be drawn.
Concerning the First Part
So that we may pass a more accurate judgment on the Cabbalistic method of interpretation, I will give (1) a few distinctions within the genre, and (2) some examples. These are the main distinctions that we meet:
1. Some divide Cabbala into theoretical and practical categories. Elias Lev [ref. in Thisbi lit. qaf], despite his doctorate in letters, openly admits his ignorance with these words, “And I, certainly, am not worthy to explain its full import. For on account of my sins, I have not learned that wisdom, and I neither know nor understand the knowledge of those holy things.”
2. Others divide Cabbala into categories of numbers and names. [as Mirand. testifies in 900 conclusions, as Capnione cites him in book 2 of Cab. p.64]
3. Others divide it into five parts, which are correction, combination, speech, utterance and counting. See Reuchlinus.
4. Many of them, deriving their reason from Prov. 22:20 (where it is said, “Have I not written to you shalishim, [which some translate “in threes” and others translate “three times”], etc., …) posit a threefold division of Cabbala, which Reuchlinus explains like this, that “one replaces saying for saying, or letter for saying, or letter for letter.”
5. Others mark the threefold division of Cabbala under the following headings, the first being Gematria, the second Notarikon and the third Temurah, the meaning of which we will explain in order, through examples.
The first kind of Cabbala, Gematria, is said to have received its name from the Greek word, geometry (Elias in Thisbi calls it counting and number), because it is exclusively concerned with measuring out letters or passages of Scripture, like a mathematical equation, and from there drawing out whatever mysteries lay hidden. In short, it is a mathematics of Scripture, or an examination of letters or passages. Since, however, the math is done both for the limited quantity or number and the continuous quantity, for this reason there are also two ways of doing Gematric Cabbala.
(1) The first way assesses letters that occur in the holy text numerically and from that number draws out a certain doctrine. For example, in the first and last verse of their books, Gen 1:1 and the last verse of 2 Paralipomenon, the letter aleph appears six times in both places. From this, they surmise through their Cabbala that the world will last for 6,000 years, since the aleph is the symbol for a millenium, according to the tradition of the family or school of a certain Elias, who is mentioned in the Thalmud [tract. Sanhedrin, ch. 2]. In the same way, through Cabbala they explain that the first words of the books of Moses, “In the beginning he created”, go together with some other words, “It [the world] was created in the beginning of the year [which at that time began in September]”, because in each phrase the same number (1,116) results from the value of the letters when they are added up. Similarly, in the words “Shiloh will come” (Gen 49:10), Baal Turim finds the word “Messiah”, since those Hebrew letters add up to the number 358, which is also the number contained in the word for Messiah. By the same rationale, they want the number of the years of servitude in Egypt, 210 years (though an accurate calculation yields 215 years), to be signified when Jacob says “go down”, in Gen 42:2, since the letters of this word are 210, according to their numberical value. In the book of Racanath p.35, the word “Amen” (truth) is explained through Cabbala to equal the number 91 and in the following way, they show that it signifies the true God who is the fount and source of all truth. Deut 6:4-5 repeats the word “Yahweh” three times, and that, together with the word “one” adds up to the same number 91. And this very evidence shows that the ancient Hebrews were no strangers to our teaching concerning the Holy Trinity. For why else would they have united the three repetitions of the word “Yahweh” with the word “one”? Helvicus [in vind. locor. Scriptur. ad Deut. 6] writes that Haggai 1:8 also pertains to this, where it is written one way and pronounced another. There they say that the absence of the letter He (which is the symbol for five) symbolizes the absence of five things in the second temple, namely, the ark of the covenant, the Urim and Thummim, the supernal fire, the presence of God and the Holy Spirit. See Schindler on the word CBD. In this way, in Zech 3:8, “For behold, I will bring forth my servant Zemach”, what did Zemach mean to people back then? The letters of the word add up to 138, which is the same value as Menachem, the word for “comforter”. Cabbalists and Thalmudics, however, count the title Menachem among the names for the Messiah, and thereby through Cabbala they understand “Messiah” in the passage where it reads “Zemach”. Just as also the Chaldaean translates it as Messiah. So in Gen 25:21, “And Rebecca his wife conceived”, what did she conceive? Cabbalism replies “fire and stubble”, in accordance with Obad. 18, “The house of Jacob will be fire . . . and the house of [Esau] will be stubble.” Both add up to the number 707, which is also the Cabbalistic and numerical rationale for predicting the demise of the Turks, from Dan 12 and Ps 2. See John-Baptist Nazarus, John Wolff [tom. 2. lection. memorab. p.888.].
(2) The other method of Gematria may again be divided into two kinds: simple and composite. The former considers the mathematical force or value of the simple letters that are in the text. The latter considers the building and assessment of entire constructions.
The first way, which they call Zuriith, is a figurative Cabbala that involves three aspects. (1) It gives the mystical reasons why certain letters in the Hebrew text are written in majuscule or are worth more than the others.
For example, in Deuteronomy 6:4, a majuscule letter occurs, both in the first word, for “hear,” and in the last word, for “one” (Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One). They say that the first of these rouses souls to consider that great teaching, as if it is saying, “he who has ears for hearing, let him hear.” They want the other to indicate that the eternal Lord is one God in the four parts of the world (because the Hebrew letter indicates this by its numeric value), that is, He is everywhere and in the whole world present. When the two majuscule letters in this sentence are joined, they make up the Hebrew word for “witness,” as if Moses wanted to warn us by it and teach: “Hear, O Israel, and you will be my witness that I have warned you in earnest about the one true eternal God,” as it says in Isaiah 43:10, “You are my witnesses, says the Lord,” that in turn God will be a witness against them, if they do not hear, as it says in Micah 1:2, “And may the Lord God be a witness against you.”
In the same way, one letter in the word for “and he cast them” is in upper case, where Deuteronomy 29:28 reads, “and he cast them out into another land,” in order to signify the greatness and seriousness of this casting out into a foreign land, then also to signify that he would throw them out forever (as if the letter in majuscule implicitly signified ‘forever’), if they did not repent. The same word is written defectively, without a letter in the middle, which has a numerical value of ten, to indicate that God would take ten tribes out from the body of his people, and because of their impiety and idolatry cast them out into a foreign land, so that the remaining body of the people would forever stay incomplete, maimed and defective.
In the same way, one letter in the word for ‘foreign’ exceeds the others in its numeric value, where Exodus 34:14 says, “You shall not prostrate yourself before a foreign god,” to show the seriousness of the sin of worshipping an alien god and to bring to mind the difference between ‘foreign’ and ‘one’, as in that passage, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Therefore we should be very careful not to serve any alien or made up god and so on. The entire alphabet of these majuscule letters is set forth in the Masora in the first book of Moses and in 1 Chronicles. The Cabbalists give the reasons for individual instances, but some of them are useless and trivial.
(2) [Second aspect of Zuriith] When the reasons are given why some letters are written as miniscule characters. For example, in Genesis 2:4, one letter is miniscule in the word for “when they were created” (namely, the heaven and earth), to show that all created things would diminish and die. And just as that letter is written with lines that are unjoined and separate from one another, so all created things will be dissolved, as it is written in Isaiah 51:6, “The heavens will disappear like a mist”, etc. Others say that the miniscule form of this letter indicates that it switches places with another letter, so that from the word for “when they were created” we get the word for “because of Abraham,” that is, because of the faithful, the world was created, because they alone praise God for the wonderful works of creation. There are thirty three of these miniscule letters, which are mentioned in alphabetical order in the Masora in the vestibule of Leviticus and in the beginning of the last book of the Masora.
(3) [Third aspect of Zuriith] When the reasons are given why certain letters are upside down and some are suspended. For example, in Numbers 10:35, there is a word that means “in setting out,” where the inverted letter is said to signify that every enemy of the Israelites is driven back, like this letter. In this place in the Masora a note reads, “There are nine verses that have an inverted letter [nu] like this.” In the same way, in Judges 18:30, it reads, “And Jonathan the son of Gershom, the son of Mannaseh,” and here one letter of ‘Mannaseh’ is suspended. The Cabbalists teach that the prophet was very much opposed to calling Gershom the son of Moses, because it would have been disgraceful for Moses to have had a wicked son. Instead, he wanted to call him the son of Manasseh, with one letter suspended, that is, raised higher, to show that it could be there or not, so that he could be the son of Manasseh or of Moses. He is son of the former because of his love and imitation of impiety, but son of the latter according to his family and birth. There are four raised letters like this, according to the Masora (in this place). The others are Psalm 80:14 and Job 38:13 and 15, in which a different letter [ayin] is suspended.
The other way [of doing the second method of Gematria] measures and accounts for the framework and arrangement of entire construtions (of which mention is made in the holy books). Because every part of Scripture contains some profound wisdom or teaching (the Jews say, “In the law there is not a single letter, on which the greatest mountains do not depend.”), therefore also when they are describing constructions, they (who do Cabbala in a Christian way) argue that something mystical lies hidden. They try to extract it, therefore, through this Gematria, and in different ways. For example, in Genesis 6:15, Noah’s ark is said to have been 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. Here the Cabbalists first divid the length by the height, which gives 10, the number that corresponds with the letter Yod. Then they add to that the same length 300, with which the letter shin corresponds. Lastly they divide that by the width, and get 6, which corresponds with the letter vav. In this way, they end up with the name of the Savior: Jesu.
In the same way, in 1 Kings 6:2, we are told that the Temple of Solomon was 60 cubits long, 20 wide and 30 high. Here the Cabbalists first subtract the width from the height, and are left with 10, which again equals yod. Then they multiply this remainder by the height and come out with 300, that is, shin. Finally they divide the length by the same remainder and get 6, or vav. When you put these together, again they make the same “Jesu.”
The second kind of Cabbala is Notarikon. R. Elias writes about this in Thisbi (under the letter nu), “People usually pronounce this word Notar-yeKON, and in Aruch, Notarikon is explained as when one letter is written as the sign of an entire thing … But I heard from a certain cardinal that the word is Greek. And even in Latin, scribes are called ‘notarii’, and the Rabbis also use this word, from which comes Notarikon, which means the same thing as ‘letters’, or in German, Cantzleyisch. For this is what scribes do; they write two or three letters, each of which constitutes a word.” From what he says, we can see some of the reasoning behind this kind of Cabbala. There are two options for this kind of Cabbala: either (1) a word is constructed from the first or sometimes the last letters of words, or (2) several words are assembled by taking the individual letters of one word and making them the first letters of their own words.
The first method is done using aphaeresis or, as the Cabbalists call it, Rashe Theboth (‘heads of the words’ or the initial letters). Or one can use apocope, which they call Sophe Theboth (i.e. the ‘ends of the words’ or the final letters). The Cabbalists usually mark these with a segol (three dots) over the top.
Here are some examples of Rashe Theboth. In Genesis 22:8, from the first letters of the words: “the Lord will provide for himself,” the Cabbalists derive the name of the victim that Abraham offered up to God in Isaac’s place, which is the ram of verse 13. From the words of Jacob about the Messiah in Genesis 49:10, “Shiloah comes” and so on, by putting together the initial letters, one gets the name “Jesus.” Galatinus (book 3. de arc. cath. verit. ch. 20) takes this from Rabbi Haccadosch. They treat the words of Psalm 72:17 (“may His name increase and bless him,”) in the same way, as if they are expressly concerned with this holy name. In Psalm 96:11, from the words for, “the heavens rejoice and the earth exults,” they derive the name of God, and in verse 12, from the words for, “the fields and all things exult,” and so on, they get the name “Jesus.” This is the way that Judah Maccabbee is once said to have got his name. For when he was about to go into battle against Antiochus, upon being instructed by an angel to compose himself like a man and to trust in God, he is said to have delivered to his fellow soldiers the words of Exodus 15:11 (“Who among the gods, O Lord, is like you?”), written in abbreviated form on their banners, for a military password. And since the crowd of soldiers superstitiously supposed the reason for their happily acquired victory to be in this sign, and did not understand the reasons for this hidden passage of Scripture, they added vowels to these consonants, in order to pronounce them, and read it as “Ma Ca Bi,” and thereafter they gave Judah himself that name. (Source: Reuchlinus l.3. Cabbal. Mercerus in abbrev. Ebraeor. Schickhardus in bechin happerusch. p. 67) (There are, however, those who think that the name Maccabbee came from the verb for “snuff out,” so that it sounds like “the extinguisher,” just as Darius was called ‘the compeller’ and Xerxes ‘the warrior’. See Drusius, book 11, observ. ch. 14) Related to this is the contrived name for God, “AGLA,” which Galatinus explains (book 2, ch. 15) as derived from “You are strong forever, O Lord.” They say that this also contains the mystery of the Trinity, because ‘A’ stands for 1, ‘G’ stands for 3, and the remaining letters ‘A’ and ‘L’ signify almighty God.
Here are some examples of Sophe Theboth. In Genesis 2:3, the Cabbalists want the word ‘truth’ to be secretly woven into the words, “God created and made”, (as also in 1:4, 21, 27, and 31.). This would correspond with that saying in Psalm 119:160, “The beginning of your Word is truth,” as if Moses, being the wisest writer of all time, had wanted to commend his book by this contrived arrangement of letters and to imply that he is conveying the utmost truth as he learned it from God. So says the Baal HaTurim on Genesis 1. In the same way, from the question that Moses proposes the Hebrews might ask (“and if they say to me, “what is his name,” what should I tell them?” in Exodus 3:13), and in particular from the last letters of some of the words (these words are “… to me “What is his name?” What …”), the Cabbalists look for the reply, that his name is ‘Jehovah’. In the same way, the Cabbalists think Juhach is the name of the angel in charge of the guardians of mankind. They take this name from the last letters of these words, “For he will command his angels concerning you” (to guard you in all your ways, Psalm 91:11).
These two types come about through aphaeresis or apocope. Some add a third type, which comes about through syncope, so that a word is sometimes put together from the middle letters of words, or from a middle letter and a last letter. Some Cabbalists play around with the words for man and woman like this. In Genesis 2:23, they say that the two words, which mean ‘man’ and ‘woman’, contain in themselves the name of the author of marriage, who unites the spouses, namely, Jah or Jehovah. The first letter is in the middle of the first word, and the second is at the end of the other. But when one letter is cut out of ‘man’, and another out of ‘woman’, so that ‘God’ who unites and joins the spouses is absent, or so that the true recognition, calling upon, love and fear of God is absent, what remains? In each word, all that remains are the letters for ‘fire’. For there, between married couples like this, a fire is burning, of anger, quarrels and disputes. These fires are rarely ever put out, and they burn all the way to the ends of hell. This Cabbala is contained in the book entitled Fasciculus myrrhae (in Parascha shayny Lev. 11) and Aben Ezra refers to it (in annot. Prov. 2.17).
The other method is the opposite of what we just described. Here the individual letters of a word each become the first letters of their own words. They also call this Rashe Theboth, the ‘heads of the words’, and so on. Here are some examples of this. In Genesis 1:1, they explain the first word of the Bible, “In the beginning,” according to the number of letters, with the six other words that begin with those same letters: “He created the firmament, the land, the heaven, the sea, the abyss.” In Isaiah 65:16, we read, “Whoever blesses himself will bless by God of Amen, and whoever swears will swear by God of Amen.” But who is this God? The Cabbalists, who interpret the text with Rashe Theboth, reply that it is the ‘Lord, king, faithful’, because the first letters of these words are contained in the word ‘Amen.’
In the same way, R. Salomus (as he is quoted by R. Elias in Thisbi, under the heading for Notaricon) explains the proper name Naphtali as “this curse of mine was received before God.” In the same cabbalistic way, some people divide up the word for sermon (which is cognate with the regular epithet for the Messiah in the Chaldean paraphrase of the Old Testament), saying that the middle letter stands for ‘Messiah’, who is the mediator, while the first letter stands for ‘Father’ and the other letter for ‘Holy Spirit’. They say that this reveals to us, for each person, both the Father and the Holy Spirit, his own essence and will, that is, the eternal Trinity.
In the same way, in the word for ‘created’ in Genesis 1:1, they try to find the three persons of God: one letter for Father, one for Son and one for Holy Spirit. The Son, through whom all things were made, is given first place, after whom the Spirit comes immediately, because these two persons (Son and Spirit) are both sent and show the Father. And if you join the last of the three letters to the first (this is what happens in metathetic Cabbala, which we will discuss later), then you immediately get the word for Father. Then, if you double the consonant that starts the word, you get the phrase ‘in the Son’ or ‘through the Son’. For the Father created the heaven and the earth through the Son. The doubling of that consonant indicates that we should seek and find the humanity and flesh, that is, the nature assumed by the Word and united to the Word, not outside, but inside the Word, and so on.
In the same way, the word ‘man’ is another name for Christ (and the best examples for his being so called are in Genesis 4:1, Exodus 15:4, Acts 2:22 and Hebrews 1:3), who carries on his shoulders the earth, sea and heavens [the first letters of these words spell ‘man’], and that man is the ‘preserver,” “Lord,” “almighty” according to his divinity; he is also “man,” “Jesus,” “Solomon” or else “Father,” “precious,” “of peace.” Without this “Jesus,” [that is, the letter that begins his name] we have nothing except “fire” and damnation, because when the Yod is taken out of the word for man, we have neither Jehovah, nor Jesus, that is, no God and no savior. So says D. Selneccer (in append. ad. libell. de voce Chald. Memera).
In the same way, some people, when they are talking about the movement of souls through three bodies (which the Platonizing Greeks call metempsychosis), say that the soul of Adam moved through the body of David, and turned from there to the body of the Messiah. They think that what I just mentioned is in the three letters of the word ‘Adam’, so that, through Rashe Theboth, the first letter signifies Adam himself, the second signifies David, and the third the Messiah, which they call ‘volutation’. See Drusius (part. 2. annot. in Nov. Test. ad Matth. 16,14). But this is mere superstition. The Thalmudic writers (in tract. Sota fol. 5) more agreeably and skillfully devise that the word for man means “ash, blood, bitterness” that is, “ash” because it decays, “blood” because it is alive, and “bitterness” because it comes to an end.
This kind of Cabbala, however, flowed on down to the Pontifical writers. For Holocollus, the Oxford theologian, writes like this (lib. Sap. in ch. 17, lect. 195), “Ave Maria, and so on. ‘Eva’, the mother of the curse, is transformed into ‘Ave’. The one word, composed of three letters, signifies the Trinity in unity. The letter A, which comes first in every alphabet, signifies God the Father. V signifies the truth of the Word. E signifies eternity, the name that may be spoken on high, and lifted up in perpetual devotion.”
The papists dream a similar dream for the word Alleluia, in which (according to this Cabbalist reasoning, whereby each syllable stands for an entire word) they find this mystery: ‘Al’ stands for ‘highest’, ‘le’ stands for ‘lifted up on the cross’, ‘lu’ stands for ‘the Apostles grieved’, and ‘ia’ stands for ‘now he is risen’. In just about the same way, Jacob de Valentia speculates concerning the letters of the holy name “Jesus,” about which Pererius the Jesuit, on Genesis 6, says, “I do not approve of this, no matter how many embrace it.” See Th. Morton (part. 2. apol. Cathol. book 5, ch. 5, p. 581).
The third kind of Cabbala is called Temurah, that is, a change or rearrangement. There are two main methods of doing this. Indeed, the first is done through simple metathesis and rearrangement of the same letters, but the second is through an exchange (or rotation) of the letters of the alphabet.
An example of the first method is in Psalm 21:2, “Lord, in your strength shall the King rejoice,” where the Cabbalists say that this speech concerns the Messiah, so that the meaning is “Lord Jehovah, in your strength (that is, in the strength of the tetragrammaton), the Messiah King (comes or works). By this method of Cabbala, they take the word for “shall rejoice” to be “Messiah,” because by rearranging the letters, you get “Messiah.”
In the same way, in Exodus 23:23, where God says “my angel will go before you,” who is this angel? They reply, through the Cabbala that rearranges letters, that it is Michael. Some people, concerning the creator of all things, take a moderate and reverent delight, when there is the question, “who created everything?” (such as in Isaiah 40:26, where the question is “who created these things?”) and they reply, through a slight and subtle rearrangement of letters, from Genesis 1:1, that “God created.” Indeed, even “in the beginning” (this pertains to Rashe Theboth), where the Cabbalists say that “son” is signified by the first letter, “Spirit” by the second, “Father” by the thirst, “name” by the fourth and “perfect” by the fifth, so that it makes “Son, Spirit, Father, the perfect name of the Lord.”
Some people want Job to be employing this kind of rearrangement in Job 13:24, “you have considered me to be an enemy,” as if he is saying “you changed my name from Job to enemy.” Also seeming to pertain to this is Isaiah 61:3, “that he may give them jewelry instead of ashes,” and Genesis 6:8, “Noah found grace.” The same explanation is given for “man,” which is made from “earth.”
In the same way, “anathema” is by metathesis “wretchedness.” In another order, the letters of this word stand for the number 248, which is the number of parts in the human body. Indeed, if someone who has been anathematized returns to his senses and earnestly repents, then insteate of “anathema” he finds “mercy.” If he does not return to his senses, then the anathema grows stronger and enters into the 248 parts of his body and destroys the whole man.
Likewise, “Bilham, Balac” are by metathesis “valley of confusion.” “Death” is by metathesis “perfection,” because the death of the saints is the beginning of true perfection.
Finally, in the same way, a good many roots that consist of the same letters, when they are differently arranged, have related meanings, such as “lamb,” “he was pierced,” “he was stupid,” “he was afraid,” and so on. These are like Hebrew anagrams.
Here is the reasoning for the second method (which some call “combination”), which is said to take place by means of a rotation of the alphabet. The Hebrew alphabet is divided into two equal parts, and the letters are written facing each other in parallel rows, in such a way that the second part of the alphabet is written beneath the first, according to the regular and natural order, like this:
C Y T H Z W H D G B A
T S R K T P H S N M L
or with the second part in the reverse order, like this:
C Y T H Z W H D G B A
L M N S H P T K R S T
(The first way is called Albam, and the second is called Athbas, because of the connection between the first letters that are written opposite each other.) Then one letter is taken and read for another, the one above for the one below, and vice versa. This takes place both analytically, when they look for some kind of meaning in Scripture using the aforementioned Cabbalistic method, then also synthetically, when in letters to each other they express their thoughts using the same method, so that no one else can read and understand what they write. So in Isaiah 7:6, where mention is made of a certain Tabeel, the Cabbalists understand this proper name to be Ramalah (because the letters make this when they are rearranged or transposed by Albam Cabbala), the son of Remaliyah, king of Israel. But Aben Ezra, on the same passage, adds that this explanation is total rubbish.
In the same way, in Jeremiah 51:1, the prophet calls the Chaldeans “the heart of those who rise against me,” (God) and these words, when their letters are exchanged by the Athbas method, becomes the word meaning “Chaldeans,” as R. Salomo and Aben Ezra explain, whereby the Thargum also renders Chaldeans similarly; the Greeks made it into “Chaldeans.”
In the same way, in Jeremiah 25:26, there is the word “Sheshak,” which they explain through Athbas Cabbala, so that then the word “Babel” emerges, about which the prophet is speaking. In the Chaldaic version, this translated as “and the King of Babylon.” Thus both Schindler (col. 1778) and Jerome once said (in comm. Scaliger autem lib. 6. de emend. temp. p.276), “Sheshak is the name of a Goddess in Jeremiah 51, because Sheshak is not Babylon through Athbas, as the worst of the Rabbis call it.” More is written on this (on the proper name, see Grammat. Sacra obs. 13. p.1334.).
The name of God is treated in the same way. Instead of the regular tetragrammaton, they render it with the four letters “Mazpaz.” The very name of God, through Athbas (the second type of exchange of letters) is metamorphed or transformed into Mazpaz.
Likewise the name “Sarah,” through Athbas, is written “Bagatz,” and these letters amount numerically to 95. Another proper name, Iskah, which appears in Genesis 11:29, has the same value, for which reason they claim that Sarah and Iskah are the same name, and that people called Sarah by the name Iskah.
For more examples of Cabbala, see Reuchlinus, Sixtus of Sienna (book 3 of Bibliothec. sanctae), M. Schickard (in his introduction to Bechinath Happeruschim, on Bereschith, etc.), and Buxtorffius (De abbreviaturis Heb. p.55. seqq.).
Concerning the Second Part
What conclusions should be drawn, we ask, concerning these Cabbalistic methods of interpreting the Scriptures?
We reply:
(1) We must make a distinction between the Cabbalistic uses that are erudite and agree with the rule of faith, and those that are superstitious, wicked and depart from the rule of faith. We can approve of, or at least tolerate the former, but the latter we must send back to its superstitious and human inventors, especially that kind which they use for the magic arts. For although sorcerers do not want to admit it, and they claim that Cabbala is different to their Magic art, saying that one has the good intention of saving the human race, while the other puts out something bad and harmful, nevertheless, however, they do attribute a real magical power to letters (for this reason Kirstenius, in Gramm. Arab. p. 76, justifiably calls Cabbala ‘the essence of the accursed Magic art’). For example, they write the first letters of the first five verses of Genesis on the rough outer surface of a piece of leather and the final letters of the same five verses on the other side, and hang it around someone’s neck, which is supposed to be the best phylactic against evils, according to Reuchlinus (De arte Cabbal., close to the end of book 3), whose work describes more absurdities of this kind. Related to this is the Cabbala that Luther discusses (tom. 8. Jenens. p. 124 et seqq.) in his Treatise on the Shemhamphorasch [the Tetragrammaton]. We accept it in the same way as we are accepting of allegories that are imported into the Scriptures, if they are pious and agreeable, but reject them if they are wicked, convoluted and inconsistent.
(2) We must make a distinction between a certain explanation of the Scriptures, and a playful passing thought. In other words, we must distinguish between the fixed meaning of passages of Scripture, and the clever way of speaking, or the interplay between certain words. The Cabbalistic explanations belong to the latter category (at least those that are not wicked or superstitious), but not to the former. And of course, when we are looking for the meaning of passages of Scripture, we do not resort to changing, rotating and adding up the forms of the letters at will (in which there is only uncertainty), but things other than this (and more certain) provide us with the tools we need, which we will discuss at greater length below, God willing. Here especially we should note that this foundational principle of interpreting Scripture is responsible for the generation of those despicable ‘Eons’ of the Valentinians and Gnostics, about which Epiphanius writes (in haeres. 21) and Irenaeus says (book 1, ch. 13), “They are worthy of punishment, who so coldly and violently distort such great reverence for the ineffably powerful truth. They distort its greatness, and by means of letters and numbers they distort the mighty acts of God. They are all cut off from the church and they believe in these empty fables; truly they have condemned themselves!” Tertullian likewise reminds his reader about a certain Marcus and Colarbasus, both heretics (lib. de praescript. ch. 50), saying, “Since they drew many inept and dangerous teachings from the order of the letters of the alphabet by some kind of Cabbalistic game, in this respect they did violence to the example of Christ, who said in Revelation 1:8, “I am the alpha and the omega”, and so on.”
(3) We must distinguish between considering the Cabbala that others have used, and making a fresh, meticulous investigation into it. As for those who have explained the Scriptures by this method, we may consider their writings and measure them on the scales of truth, as the Apostle advises us to do in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, “All things are to be tested, and what is good should be kept.” But when he himself or anyone else by some new and unique boldness wants to break into Scripture and thereby discover mysteries through the Cabbalistic method, then no Christian must be persuaded, when for this reason he easily falls back into fanatical and heretical opinions. Many people, even in our own lifetime, have witnessed this happen. Our time is certainly far better and more fruitfully spent, when it is focused on healthy meditation of holy Scripture according to the guidance and meaning of the Holy Spirit himself. This is as much as we will say about this.
Article 8
Concerning the Allegories of Stories
It remains for us to consider that fourth category, of the allegorizers who interpret not only the sayings of Scripture, but also the stories and profane histories of the poets, and apply them to explaining or confirming the mysteries of the faith.
Augustine reprehended these people in De Doctrina Christiana (book 2, ch. 17.), as did Salmeron (tom. 1. proleg. 16. can. 21.) and Erasmus (chil. 2. cent. 8. adag. 78.), saying, “There was once this way of studying things, by which men not only drew the stories of poets into Christian allegory, but also themselves fabricated new stories, which they explained to us allegorically, as if the truth could not be learned unless attached to a lie.” In the same place, he adds a ridiculous example from Greek etymology, in a poor explanation and allegorical application of the word for “gluttons.”
A certain Peter Berthorius of Poitiers, of the Benedictine order, excelled in this method. He allegorically and mystically expounded the events of Roman history, including the legends of the church fathers and other old wives’ tales. Let us consider only one of them, so that we may discern the lion from his claws, as they say, whose hair would be the remainder of the work. He writes like this in chapter 170, “A certain gambler met St. Bernard as he was riding and said to him, “Father, I want to play dice with you, and wager my soul against your horse.” Hearing this, St. Bernard immediately got down from his horse and said, “If you roll higher than I do, my horse will be yours. If I roll higher, your soul will be mine.” The gambler agreed. Immediately he threw his three dice and rolled an eight. After doing so, he took the reins of the horse as if it were already his. St. Bernard said, “Son, I can still get more than that with three dice.” Taking them, he threw an eighteen – ten more than the hustler. When he saw this, the gambler gave himself in obedience to his father Bernard and after living a holy life and coming to a blessed end, he made his way to the Lord.” He continues with the moral of the story, “Dearly beloved, this gambler is the worldly man, given over and subject to vanities, while St. Bernard is the wise Prelate or Confessor, who acts with utmost prudence in gambling, by showing to him his life, which is the game and joy of the soul. One ought to wager one’s horse, that is, to risk one’s heart and soul in laboring to draw the wanderer into the way of truth. This is what the Apostle says, “Just as Christ laid down his life for us, so also we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” For we are all brothers descended from the one father, Adam, for which reason we rightly owe love to one another. The three dice are the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who have many dots, that is, limitless joys, which should be shown and recounted to sinners. Whereby it says in the Gospel, “In the house of my Father are many mansions.” Indeed, there are so many joys there, which eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and the imagination of man cannot describe, which God has prepared for those who love him” and so on. Salmeron provides other examples (in the aforementioned work).
Indeed, some people teach that the creation of man from the mud of the earth and the breathing into him of the breath of life are in the story of Prometheus, who fashioned man from mud and brought him to life with the fire he had stolen from heaven. They say that Christ, who is twice born – of the Father [from eternity] and of his mother – is prefigured in Bacchus, who is fabled to have been born of his mother Semele, and born a second time from Jupiter. They show that he was born of the Father without a mother from the story about Minerva, who is fabled to have been born from the brain of Jupiter. But they confirm that he was born of a virgin from the story about Danae, the girl who was locked in a tower, to whom Jupiter came down in the form of gold through the impluvium of the house, and from whom Perseus was born. One preacher thought that the persecution and death of Christ was prefigured in Actaeon, who was torn apart by his own hunting dogs. But he confirms that Christ rose from the dead and came to life again on the third day with the tragic story by Lycophron, because he refers to the fact that Hercules, as he was sailing back from the [voyage for the] golden fleece, suffered shipwreck and was thrown into the sea. A fish swallowed him and spat him up alive on the third day onto the shore. There are more examples in the morals on the fifteen books of Ovid’s Metamorphoses by Thomas of Wales, in which the bad practice of mixing the heaven with the earth and the sacred with the profane may be observed in abundance.
In opposition to all of this, we cite this one verse by Peter in his second epistle (2 Pet. 1:16, 19), “We did not follow learned fables when we spoke to you of the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ … We have a surer prophetic utterance, which you would do well to listen to, as to a lamp shining in a place of darkness” and so on.
For the flourish at the end of the chapter, here I want to add the words of Luther from his commentary on Genesis (ch. 30), who says:
“Even in the land of the Turk, there are many religious people who are busy about this one task of interpreting Mohammed’s Koran allegorically, so that they might be held in higher esteem. For allegory is like a beautiful, high-class prostitute, who flatters men is such a way that she cannot be loved, especially by those despicable men who are without temptation. Such men think that they are in the midst of Paradise and in God’s bosom whenever they indulge in these speculations. And indeed, these first started with dull, lazy monks and in time wound their way so far and wide that some people turned Ovid’s Metamorphoses into allegories. They made the laurel tree Mary and Apollo Christ, and although these things are ridiculous, at least when they are suggested by inexperienced youth, yet when they are put out by scholarly men of letters, they are initially very pleasing, and so people surrender themselves entirely to these interpreters. Thus, so far as I am concerned, I hate allegories. If anyone, however, wants to use them, let him make sure that he handles them judiciously.”
So Luther says, where by ‘allegories’ – which he says he hates – it is crystal clear that he means not the innate kind, which appear and are explained in the holy words themselves, but the unwritten allegories that are imported into Scripture, especially when they are contorted, foreign to the text and too frequent.