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The Two Schools of Exegesis in Antiquity

Before discussing spiritual exegesis as it developed in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, especially in the Latin church, it is necessary to trace briefly the development in the East of the two types of exegesis that dominated the patristic period.

Alexandrian Exegesis

Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city in Africa in which Hellenistic culture had reached a high level of development. It was the home of Philo the Jew (ca. 20-B.C.E.,-50 C.E.), one of the most influential biblical exegetes of all time.

Philo developed a method of allegorical exegesis, the purpose of which was to demonstrate the compatibility between the spiritual meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures and the loftiest insights of Platonic philosophy.

Philo’s allegorical method is the background for the development of the exegetical school that arose in Alexandria. The school’s first major scholar was Clement (ca. 150-215), a Christian intellectual who used Philo and found in allegorical exegesis a key to unlocking the scriptural symbolism within which were hidden riches of Christian gnosis, the secret wisdom reserved for the initiates in the faith.

Clement was not primarily concerned with questions of exegesis but with humanistic Christian wisdom; his interpretations of the biblical text were often spiritual accommodations that appear fanciful to the modern reader.

Clement’s greatest student, and certainly the greatest Christian exegete of antiquity, was Origen (ca. 185-ca. 254), who developed the theory of biblical interpretation that was predominant in the church until the high Middle Ages and who applied his theory in the production of a prodigious corpus of biblical commentary and scripturally based theological reflection.

His Hexapla Biblia (ca. 240), six-column presentation of Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible, which enabled scholars to compare critically a variety of ancient versions, was an astounding scholarly accomplishment that adequately demonstrates Origen’s profound concern with what moderns would call the literal sense of Scripture as the basis of exegesis.

Origen, in his On First Principles (De principiis, book 4), developed a theory of the threefold sense of Scripture which was the ancestor of the fourfold sense that became standard I the Middle Ages. This threefold division corresponded to the tripartite composition of the human person (body, soul and spirit), as it was understood by the Greek fathers.

The literal sense (body) was the historical sense; the typological sense (soul) was the moral application to the individual; and the spiritual sense (spirit) was the foreshadowing of the new covenant in the old.

Actually, Origen frequently proceeded according to a different method, distinguishing the literal sense from the spiritual sense, which he then often applied to the individual Christian soul.

Origens’ Commentary on the Song of Songs (In Canticum Canticorum, ca. 240) interprets the love of the spouses both as the relation between Christ and the church and as the relation between the Word and the Christian soul. (Both tradition and Origen thought of the Song of Songs as the wedding son of Solomon.) It is perhaps his most sustained and inspiring exercise of this method.

Origen had a number of significant successors in Alexandria such as Dionysius (ca. 190-ca. 264), Athanasius (296-372), Didymus the Blind (313-398), and Cyril (376-444), but none was his equal in scholarship or creativity. The influence of this type of exegesis developed in Alexandria saturated the Christian Wet and retained its hegemony throughout the Middle Ages.


Antiochene Exegesis

The catechetical school in Antioch in Syria developed its characteristic approach to exegesis largely in opposition to the allegorical approach of Alexandria. Its origins in the late third century are difficult to trace because the extant works of its scholars are few ad fragmentary.

It was founded by Lucian of Samosata (d.312), who was followed by the school’s major theoretician, Diodorus of Tarsus (d. ca. 392), who was himself overshadowed in the actual practice of exegesis by his famous pupil Theodore of Mopsuestia (350-428). John Chrysostom (347-407), more a theologian than an exegete was a fellow student of Theodore and was basically Antiochene in his approach to the Scriptures.

The last great figure of the school I Antioch was Theodoret of Cyrus (ca 390-ca.458). Antioch’s influence reached the West through Julian, the Pelagian bishop of Eclanum (d. 454) and Junilius (ca. 540).

The opposition between Alexandrian (allegorical) and Antiochene (literally) exegesis has often been exaggerated. In fact, the scholars of Antioch were as adept at “more than literal” exegesis as were those of Alexandria, but their literalism that was characteristic of Jewish interpretation.

But the Christian exegetes of Antioch were, of course, also concerned with interpreting the Old Testament in a Christian sense. Thus, on the one hand, they shared the Jewish conviction that history itself was the lacus of divine revelation and that the literal (by which they meant the historical) sense was of uttermost importance, and, on the other hand, they needed a method for uncovering in the historical material a meaning that could have become apparent only with the coming of Christ.

This twofold concern let to the development of a hermeneutical theory that embraced both typology and theoria and tended to center especially on the prophetic writings of the Old Testament.

The method of interpretation called theoria, the characteristic contribution of Antioch, attributed to the biblical writer a simultaneous perception of both the actual historical events that the prophet was describing and, in and through them, the future events that they foreshadowed.

This theory presumed an ecstatic conception of biblical inspiration that grounded the attribution of revelation to every word of the sacred text, an approach characteristic also of Jewish exegesis of the period.

This, in turn, led to a profound respect for the historical (or so-called literal) sense as the starting point of all interpretation and a greater interest on the part of the exegete in the perceptions of the human author in contrast to Alexandria’s Platonic approach and its primary concern for the timeless revelation of the Holy Spirit hidden in the rather opaque grapping of the historical material.

In summary, both the school of Alexandria and that of Antioch shared a double concern: for the starting point of all exegesis in the literal sense of the text and for the termination of exegesis in a spiritual sense consisting in the Christian (i.e., for them, the true) meaning of the Old Testament, which, by definition, had to exceed in some way the material content of that text.

The primary locus of the spiritual sense for the Alexandrians was allegory (an inclusive term for all the literary vehicles of a more than literal meaning) and for the Antiochenes it was theoria, a less inclusive and flexible instrument even if one more closely tied to the historical sense.

Both schools of interpretation influenced the development of exegesis in the West. The antiochene stream, far less influential than that of Alexandria, reached the West through the writings of John Chrysostom.

The principles of Antiochene exegesis were espoused by Jerome (340-420). The most accomplished biblical scholar of antiquity in the West.

But Jerome’s work, in practice, was more Alexandrian than Antiochene. Jerome and Rufinus also translated many key works of Origen. Jerome’s contribution to understanding of the literal sense was his recognition that metaphors as such are part of the literal sense, something Origen never seemed to have realized.

Jerome’s greatest importance for the history of biblical interpretation I Latin Christianity was through his view translation, the Vulgate begun in 382, at the request of Pope Damasus. Its style and language had incalculable effects upon the history of Western spirituality down to this century.

Alexandrian influence in the West was enormous. Although Ambrose of Milan use Alexandrian exegesis, its most influential proponent was Augustine of Hippo (354-420), whose approach to Scripture is set forth in his On Christian Doctrine (De doctrina Christiana).

Augustine always commenced his exegetical work with the literal sense, that is, with Jewish history as presented in the sacred text, but he believed that all of Scripture had a spiritual sense, which was the true goal of interpretation.

Augustine’s books designed to help the clergy in their central teaching task of interpreting and preaching the sacred text, was the Magna Carta of biblical culture of the Middle Ages. The bishop’s encouragement of the use of classical learning (e.g., On Christian Doctrine 2.4) was crucial in medieval education, and his exploration of the meaning of Scripture in terms of literal and figurative signs gave a new basis for the spiritual interpretation and enabled him to enunciate as the general principle of all exegesis the maxim “Scripture teaching nothing but charity, nor condemns anything except cupidity, and in this way shapes people’ minds” (3.10).

Only interpretations compatible with charity understood as correct belief and love ordered to the enjoyment of God were legitimate, though in case of difficult passages such interpretations might well be multiple (e.g., Confessions 12. 18-31).

The bishop of Hippo remained true to this program throughout his long career as an exegete. He did not neglect the interpretation of the literal signs of the Scripture, as his great literal Commentary on Genesis (De Gensi ad litteralm, 401-414 C.E.) shows, though the letter of the creation account for him revealed primarily the metaphysical structure of the universe.

Other works, especially his lengthy Discourses on the Psalms (Enarrationes in Psalmos, ca. 390-420), which did so much to shape the prayer life of the middle Ages, were explorations of the figurative meaning of the scriptural text.

The golden age of patristic exegesis came to a close with Cyril of Alexandria (376-444), in whom occurs a certain confluence of Alexandrian and Antiohene influences.

There is no question that Alexandria exerted the greater influence on succeeding ages, but the primary concern and basic principle of both strands of the tradition can be summed up in Augustine’s oft quoted line, “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old; the Old is enlightened through the New” (Questions in Heptateuch (Quaestiones in Heptateuchum) 2.73.).