allegory vs wrapper

[rmwilliamsll]

There seems to be two distinctively different ways of TE handling the ideas in Genesis.

the first is what i think of as allegory. Gen 2-5 for instance is a mythos explanatory of the deep meanings of origins in terms of a narrative. To unpack that narrative we moderns must understand the mindset of the ancient Hebrews and how God communicated with them.

the second is what i think of as H.VanTill's wrapper or vehicle metaphor. The wrapper is the packaging, the vehicle is the UPS van that delivers the package to your house. In either case the contents, the gift itself is the takehome message of Gen 2-5, stripped of this pre scientific babylonian cosmology that is being used to communicate but not taught as the actual way the universe is.

There seems to be a liberal conservative split on the issues as well. conservatives are reluctant to call it allegory and progressives all too quick to see the packing as ancient and out dated.....

 

[gluadys]

There seems to be two distinctively different ways of TE handling the ideas in Genesis.

the first is what i think of as allegory. Gen 2-5 for instance is a mythos explanatory of the deep meanings of origins in terms of a narrative. To unpack that narrative we moderns must understand the mindset of the ancient Hebrews and how God communicated with them.

I tend to shy away from the term “allegory” here, because I am looking at it not simply as being non-historical, but as being a particular literary genre, and it is not, from that perspective, an allegory. Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory. Paradise Lost is not. Jesus’ parable of the Sower is an allegory, but his parable of the Good Samaritan is not. Genesis 2-5 is myth, not allegory.

But I am being a picky English teacher when I make these distinctions, and I recognize that those not familiar with literary genres will tend to use a variety of terms (myth, allegory, metaphor, etc.) simply to mean “not factual/historical” with no intention to identify a passage by its correct literary form.

the second is what i think of as H.VanTill's wrapper or vehicle metaphor. The wrapper is the packaging, the vehicle is the UPS van that delivers the package to your house. In either case the contents, the gift itself is the takehome message of Gen 2-5, stripped of this pre scientific babylonian cosmology that is being used to communicate but not taught as the actual way the universe is.

I don’t really see a difference between these approaches. After all the identification of Gen. 2-5 as allegory/myth/whatever also sees a take home message of doctrinal and/or ethical truth conveyed through the narrative form. The wrapper/vehicle image is helpful for understanding how truth can exist apart from historical fact. But it doesn’t follow from the allegory/mythos designation of the narrative form that one sees only the form and not the message.

There seems to be a liberal conservative split on the issues as well. conservatives are reluctant to call it allegory and progressives all too quick to see the packing as ancient and out dated.....

You are probably better placed than I to track this trend. I would see both tendencies as negative and deriving from Enlightenment categories of positive, propositional truth. I do see this as a problem for the wrapper analogy. It suggests that if allegory/mythos is only a wrapper, we can throw it away and not deal with it. From the progressive perspective it is identified as ‘superstition’ that we more enlightened moderns have (and can) leave behind. A rather arrogant attitude.

For all the flak it has received (some deservedly so) I am impressed by the capacity of post-modernism to deal with myths, both ancient and modern, in a more positive way. The wrapper is an integral part of the message.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

take the issue of the pillars of the earth and the firmament overhead.

it is mythos, then the images present no problem to a modern reader.

if is it historical narrative wrapped in the cultural context of those times, the solution is not in discarding the images but in realizing that the ancient Hebrews thought in those terms, that God accommodated Himself to human means of communication and these things are important to the issue but are not binding on us to believe.

there is a difference. perhaps not a big one but something is there. OTOH they are mistaken, the earth is not flat on pillars of marble under a crystal solid firmament, but one group dismisses them as being pre scientific and unimportant to the over all messages and the other sees the context and the images as part of the message and has to accommodate the fact that some things are being used by God and some things are being taught......

 

[Willtor]

. . .

the other sees the context and the images as part of the message and has to accommodate the fact that some things are being used by God and some things are being taught......

I think I see what you are saying. A friend once told me that the "heaping burning coals" on someone's head was a medical practice. The coals never actually touched the person's head but were placed in a container that went over a person's head. I'm hesitant to bring it up because I can't verify it. But if it is so, then it is something that obviously (to our society) has no medical value. It would have been something immensely meaningful to an early reader.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

It looks a lot like the essentials and incidentals of worship argument.

God has to command the essentials: pray, preaching, praise, etc
but the incidents: singing, standing at a particular point
are upto the elders.

the problem is that it isn't clear where the cultural context ends and the transcultural must believe, taught elements begin.

for example, in worship is exclusive psalmody. in the creation evolution design debate is the idea of kinds and evolution between them.
Are we to think that God requires us to structure science with a kinds boundary or is that an artifact belonging to the cultural matrix of Gen 1.

then prove it?????

 

[Assyrian]

Hi folks mind if I join in?

I would think the kinds boundary is an artifact of modern creationism rather than anything in the text of Genesis.

We need to realise the allegory has a wide range of meanings, including the highly allegorical Pilgrim Progress, where every detail and character has a symbolic meaning, but a simpler and older form of allegory would include Parables like the prodigal son, where the son, his father and the older brother have symbolic meanings, but details like the pigs and the pods he fed them, the rings the Father put on the sons fingers, simply have significance in the story.

I think Gen 2&3 is allegorical but there are problems using the term because people often interpret it in the Pilgrims Progress sense of highly developed allegory. I prefer metaphorical though that runs into the problem of narrow definitions too.

Assyrian

 

[rmwilliamsll]

I think I see what you are saying. A friend once told me that the "heaping burning coals" on someone's head was a medical practice. The coals never actually touched the person's head but were placed in a container that went over a person's head. I'm hesitant to bring it up because I can't verify it. But if it is so, then it is something that obviously (to our society) has no medical value. It would have been something immensely meaningful to an early reader.

that's not a bad example at all to illustrate the two different ways to handle the issue.

1-burning coals are a metaphor for making a person uncomfortable and put them in an unpleasant place. Therefore loving your enemies makes them uncomfortable with their own anger and hatred towards you that was returned not in kind but in kindness.

2-there existed a cultural matrix for the first hearers of the command, where they thought of burning someone's head with coals (or whatever the exact custom was). however what is important is to understand what the command meant to it's first readers and translate the cultural artifacts, if necessary into our own language and culture as equivalently as we can. It is not a command to do a literal thing, heap burning coals on someone's head.

 

[Willtor]

Yeah, basically, a complete interpretation would include that it is both a painful and restorative measure for the person. The cultural matrix includes something that we, in our society, know is not so (that it is restorative); but that aspect of the story is no less important to the message, even if we don't draw the conclusion that this is a good medical practice to adopt.

 

[shernren]

For me (using words I discovered only in recent consideration) it seems that this difference you describe is basically a measure of how much the paradigmatic reality of a myth correlates to the historical reality of the things it describes. What comes to my mind is the image of the six days that is used in Genesis 1.

There are three degrees of interpreting the level of correlation between those six days and the historical reality of creation. There is the indicative way of looking at it - "six days" are six 24-hour periods; if God hadn't intended us to read it as that He would have said something else.

There is the allegorical way of looking at it - the detail of "six days" does not correspond indicatively and directly to some actual historical set of "six days", but it does correspond metaphorically towards a certain set of time in which God set up the universe and a certain order of doing things. I.e. OEC position.

There is finally the "wrapper" way of looking at it, what I would call a purely literary way of looking at it. The "six days" were the appropriate cultural interface by which God could communicate His message to His people of order and chaos.

To think of it mathematically, the indicative-historical method says that there is a one-to-one relationship between the paradigmatic reality of the myth and the historical reality of the world. Six days here is six days there. The metaphorical/allegorical method says that this relationship is in fact one-to-many; when reading the story "six days" means something within the context of the story and another within the context of historical reality. And the literary method insists that the range of the relationship is within the myth itself - the "six days" is a purely mythical element which corresponds only to itself in the story and does not correspond to any elements in historical reality.

Personally I find myself more between the second and the third positions.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

To think of it mathematically, the indicative-historical method says that there is a one-to-one relationship between the paradigmatic reality of the myth and the historical reality of the world. Six days here is six days there. The metaphorical/allegorical method says that this relationship is in fact one-to-many; when reading the story "six days" means something within the context of the story and another within the context of historical reality. And the literary method insists that the range of the relationship is within the myth itself - the "six days" is a purely mythical element which corresponds only to itself in the story and does not correspond to any elements in historical reality.

i think that the idea of a mapping is a useful one. worthwhile to investigate. thanks