volume 12, issue 1, 2020, pages 71-102

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64438/sbsCZBJ6908
Published online: 2020-06-01
Published in print: 2020-06-30

Abstract: In the era of oral culture the Greek epic poems could flexibly react to contemporary situation. This ability was lost after their canonization. Greek philosophers, however, found in the allegorical exegesis a means that allowed them to adapt the content of the epics to the changing situation. In the course of the Ancient Greek history there appeared several interpretive approaches that share the assumption that the poetic text “says something different” (ἄλλα ἀγορεύει). Allegorical interpretation works on the basis of analogy. It may be applied to various aspects of human experience, so there are several types of interpretation: physical, historical, moral, psychological, and mystical. Helenistic Jews in Alexandrii were in a similar cultural dilemma. In dealing with it they took inspiration from the Greek philosophers. In the exegesis of the Bible, too, allegory served as a bridge over the gap between the letter of the old texts and the new cultural situation of Hellenized Jews.