¹ Both Origen and Chrysostom discuss the meaning of ἀλληγορέω in their comments about Paul's hermeneutic. Origen reads Paul's use as a straightforward description of his hermeneutic (see Princ. 4.2.6). Chrysostom thinks Paul misused the word (see Hom. Gal. 4.24). Things have not changed: ἀλληγορέω often receives attention when trying to figure out how Paul was reading the narratives of Sarah and Hagar. See the following: Leonhard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, (trans. Donald H. Madvig; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982) 140; Hanson, R. P. C., Allegory and Event: A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen's Interpretation of Scripture. (London: SCM Press, 1959) 37–41Google Scholar; Provan, Iain W., The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2017) 147Google Scholar.

² See the following for examples of this translation: CSB, ESV, Betz, Hans Dieter, Galatians (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989) 239, 243Google Scholar; Longenecker, Richard N., Galatians, WBC (Dallas: Word Books, 1990) 209–10Google Scholar; Dunn, James D. G., The Epistle to the Galatians (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1993) 247Google Scholar; de Boer, Martinus C., Galatians (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2011) 295Google Scholar; Moo, Douglas J., Galatians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013) 299Google Scholar; Das, A. Andrew, Galatians (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2014) 479Google Scholar.

³ Scott and Lincoln are the closest to my argument. Provan criticises translations that use ‘allegory’, doubting that ἀλληγορέω was associated with the hermeneutic represented by Philo, but he does not investigate whether evidence bears this out. My work complements his by confirming his doubts. Scott, Ian W., Paul's Way of Knowing: Story, Experience, and the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009)Google Scholar, 239 n20, 249 n24; Lincoln, Andrew T., Paradise Now and Not Yet: Studies in the Role of the Heavenly Dimension in Paul's Thought with Reference to His Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture, 148–50 See also Oepke, Albrecht, Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater, 4th ed. (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1973) 148Google Scholar; Mußner, Franz, Der Galaterbrief, 5th ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1988) 139Google Scholar.

⁴ Most scholars point to Büchsel's article in the TDNT as the source of this view. See Friedrich Büchsel, ‘Ἀλληγορέω’, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, (ed. Gerhard Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich; vol. 1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964) 260–3. See also Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck, ‘Introduction’, in Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 2.

⁵ Matthew S. Harmon, ‘Allegory, Typology, or Something Else? Revisiting Galatians 4.21–5.1’, in Studies in the Pauline Epistles: Essays in Honor of Douglas J. Moo (ed. Matthew S. Harmon and Jay E. Smith; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014) 150.

⁶ Steven Di Mattei, ‘Paul's Allegory of the Two Covenants (Gal 4.21–31) in Light of First-Century Hellenistic Rhetoric and Jewish Hermeneutics’, NTS 1 (2006) 106.

⁷ David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) 7.

⁸ Pierre Bonnard and Charles Masson, L’épitre de saint Paul aux Galates: L’épitre de saint Paul aux Éphésiens (Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1953) 97.

⁹ Gerhard Sellin, ‘Hagar und Sara: Religionsgeschichtliche Hintergründe der Schriftallegorese Gal 4.21–31’ in Das Urchristentum in seiner literarischen Geschichte: Festschrift für Jürgen Becker zum 65 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999) 67.

¹⁰ Bruce brings up these works as examples of allegories. F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982) 215.

¹¹ Di Mattei, ‘Paul's Allegory of the Two Covenants (Gal 4.21–31) in Light of First-Century Hellenistic Rhetoric and Jewish Hermeneutics’ 106–9.

¹² The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘allegory’ as ‘a story, picture, etc., which uses symbols to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one; a symbolic representation; an extended metaphor’. Oxford English Dictionary Online. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), s.v. ‘allegory, n.’, https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.sbts.edu/view/Entry/5230?rskey=Xu0kaK&result=1#eid.

¹³ Cf. Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, Studies in Paul's Technique and Theology (London: SPCK 1974) 91.

¹⁴ This definition of metaphor attempts to the thread the needle between two different senses. On the one hand, the word metaphor refers to a specific form of figural speech like a simile. On the other hand, metaphor is an all-encompassing frame to explain how language functions. See George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Paul Ricœur, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language (London: Routledge, 2003). I am using a common-use definition of the word that is only known when seen. For a further discussion of this view of metaphor and others, see L. David Ritchie, Metaphor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 3–18.

¹⁵ At the end of the second century, the word became entangled in the hermeneutical debate between Christians and their opponents, crystallising it into a technical term. Plutarch attests to an analogous change in Greek literature when he says that ‘some forcibly distort (Homer) through what used to be called “the undersense” (ὑπονοίαις) but is now called “allegory” (ἀλληγορίαις)’ (Plutarch, Adol. poet. aud. 19F). His statement suggests that the development of the hermeneutical sense of ἀλληγορέω was decades after the time Paul wrote Galatians.

¹⁶ This scholion dates at least to the beginning of the first century bce if not back to the third (Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from Their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 31–4).

¹⁷ Most of the texts discussed were accessed using the TLG, and the translations are my own unless otherwise specified.

¹⁸ According to Trypho, μɛταφορά means metaphor, that is, something is described in light of something else based on a shared likeness (see Trypho, Πɛρὶ τρόπων 191.23–192.1).

¹⁹ Stefania Giombini uses the word ‘metaphor’ to describe the figure of speech the author refers to as ἀλληγορέω, further corroborating this connection. Stefania Giombini, ‘Μɛταφορά. The Figure of Speech before Aristotle’, Isonomia - Epistemologica 9 (2017) 29.

²⁰ Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 99.

²¹ In ancient Greek scholarship, ὁ λόγος often referred to whole sentences rather than individual words (Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 124).

²² Traditionally, this work was attributed to Demetrius, the famous student of Aristotle. Unfortunately, both this attribution and the date of the work are highly uncertain. It is likely that it was written sometime in the first century bce, making it still useful in this study. See the introduction of Aristotle, Longinus, and Demetrius, Poetics. Longinus: On the Sublime. Demetrius: On Style, trans. Stephen Halliwell et al., Rev. ed., LCL 199 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) 310–11.

²³ Note that Demetrius uses the noun ἀλληγορία and the verb ἀλληγορέω almost interchangeably. He uses the noun to introduce his discussion and the verb to introduce his example.

²⁴ Cf. Henry G. Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon, Rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) 1748; Aristotle, Longinus, and Demetrius, Poetics. Longinus: On the Sublime. Demetrius: On Style, 441 n184.

²⁵ The participle ἀλληγοροῦν is elided into the clause discussing the second metaphor ‘gulping down some gruel’.

²⁶ Di Mattei oddly calls this example an ‘allegory’. In my view, his discussion shows exactly why ἀλληγορέω does not neatly map onto the modern term ‘allegory.’ Di Mattei, ‘Paul's Allegory of the Two Covenants (Gal 4.21–31) in Light of First-Century Hellenistic Rhetoric and Jewish Hermeneutics’, 113.

²⁷ Unfortunately, Trypho's work only remains in fragments and a few extant treatises, most of which are of doubtful authenticity. According to Dickey, the best text of his work is by Spengel and can be accessed through the TLG. Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 84; L. Spengel, Rhetores Graeci, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1856).

²⁸ Given how Demetrius above and Heraclitus below both use ἀλληγορία and ἀλληγορέω to refer to the same phenomenon, Trypho discussion of the trope is still very useful, despite only using ἀλληγορία.

²⁹ The text from Spengel reads as follows: Ἀλληγορία ἐστὶ λόγος ἕτɛρον μέν τι κυρίως δηλῶν, ἑτέρου δὲ ἔννοιαν παιστάνων καθ᾽ὁμοίωσιν ἐπὶ τὸ πλɛῖστον, οἷον ἧς τɛ πλɛίστην μὲν καλάμην χθονὶ χαλκὸς ἔχɛυɛν Spengel, Rhetores Graeci, 3.193. His differs slightly from Di Mattei's, but the definition in Di Mattei communicates the same basic point. Di Mattei, ‘Paul's Allegory of the Two Covenants (Gal 4.21–31) in Light of First-Century Hellenistic Rhetoric and Jewish Hermeneutics’, 106 n11.

³⁰ Trypho's discussion shows that ἀλληγορέω fits the modern colloquial use of the term metaphor because the example he provides is an entire sentence. Thus, the trope cannot refer to a ‘metaphor’ over a simile, but neither does it refer to something as robust as a modern allegory.

³¹ Although I agree with Di Mattei when he claims that Philo's use of the term can be hard to place, I would describe the following uses of ἀλληγορέω as meaning ‘to speaking metaphorically’: Leg. 2.5, 2.10; Cher. 25; Ebr. 99, Migr. 131, 205; Somn. 2.31, 2.205; Ios. 28; Spec. 2.29; Praem. 125, 159; Contempl. 29. Di Mattei, ‘Paul's Allegory of the Two Covenants (Gal 4.21–31) in Light of First-Century Hellenistic Rhetoric and Jewish Hermeneutics’, 107 n20.

³² Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 26.

³³ Heraclitus often criticises Plato (e.g., All. 4.1). For a more detailed discussion of Plato's problem with Homer, see the introduction of Konstan and Russell's translation of Allegoriae Homericae Heraclitus, Homeric Problems, xix–xxi.

³⁴ I have only slightly modified Konstan and Russell's translation, which can be found in Heraclitus, 3.

³⁵ See All. 5.5, 5.10, 13.5, 15.2, 24.1, 24.5, 24.8, 29.4, 41.12, 59.1, 60.1, 61.3, 68.2, 69.12, 70.11. Although Heraclitus does not mention Homer by name in these examples, the context is clear that he or poets that resemble him are the grammatical subjects.

³⁶ Heraclitus begins his discussion with the verb ἀλληγορέω and then uses the noun ἀλληγορία suggesting that he thinks the terms refer to the same thing much like Demetrius.

³⁷ ‘Bei Quintilian bezeichnet ἀλληγορία eine literarische Form, bei Pseudo-Heraklit tritt der Auslegungsvorgang hinzu’ (Klauck, Allegoria und Allegorese in synoptischen Gleichnistexten (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 1978) 52).

³⁸ The TLG displays four occurrences in Plutarch's corpus, but one of those is Eusebius describing the work of Plutarch (Plutarch, fr. 157.2).

³⁹ Philo uses ἀλληγορέω to refer to a mode of interpretation nine out of the twenty-five times he uses the verb. Some of these occurrences are ambiguous. See Leg. 3.4, 60, 238; Post. 51; Agr. 25, 157; Abr. 99; Spec. 1.268; Contempl. 28.

⁴⁰ The daughters of Zelophehad are discussed in Num 27.

⁴¹ Di Mattei argues that even instances like this one should be understood as ‘speaking allegorically’, claiming that perhaps Philo thought of himself as imitating Moses. Although I sympathise with Di Mattei, his view is ultimately unprovable, and it seems prudent to simply accept that ἀλληγορέω refers to a mode of reading in certain contexts. Di Mattei, ‘Paul's Allegory of the Two Covenants (Gal 4.21–31) in Light of First-Century Hellenistic Rhetoric and Jewish Hermeneutics’, 107 n20.

⁴² It could be that Plutarch is referring to the writings of natural philosophers like Empedocles, who were more straightforward in their discussions of the world but still could not separate themselves from the language of myth, in which case the verb would again refer to a method of composition. Empedocles, for example, uses the names of gods to describe the four elements (cf. Klauck, Allegoria und Allegorese in synoptischen Gleichnistexten, 35). ‘Pay attention first to the four roots of all things: bright Zeus and life-bringing Hera and Aidoneus and Nestis, who wets the moral stream with her tears’ (fr. 6). Although this fragment provides little context, the four roots (τέσσαρα ῥιζώματα) clearly refer to the four elements of Empedocles’ philosophy, and this statement operates as a metaphor, depicting abstract concepts by personifying them as gods.

⁴³ James Carleton Paget and Simon Gathercole, eds., Celsus in His World: Philosophy, Polemic and Religion in the Second Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021) 1.

⁴⁴ The antecedent of ‘it’ (αὐτήν) is ‘the history of Moses’ (τῆς Μωϋσέως ἱστορίας), which undoubtedly refers to the text of the OT.

⁴⁵ The Greek varies toward the end of the quote depending on what version of Contra Celsum one chooses. For the Greek source I used, see R. Bader, Der Ἀληθὴς Λόγος des Kelsos (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1940). The portion that differs does not change the fact that the wise Christians and Jews (οἱ ἐπιɛικέστɛροι Ἰουδαίων τɛ καὶ Χριστιανῶν) function as the subject of ἀλληγορɛῖν.

⁴⁶ The verb χράω, for example, means something different in its active and medio-passive voices. See Hanson, Studies in Paul's Technique and Theology, 91.

⁴⁷ Sellin, ‘Hagar und Sara: Religionsgeschichtliche Hintergründe der Schriftallegorese Gal 4.21–31’, 67; Curtis D. McClane, ‘The Hellenistic Background to the Pauline Allegorical Method in Galatians 4.21–31’, Rest Q 40, No. 2 (1998) 131; Di Mattei, ‘Paul's Allegory of the Two Covenants (Gal 4.21–31) in Light of First-Century Hellenistic Rhetoric and Jewish Hermeneutics’, 106.

⁴⁸ Porter means that if an author were to change the sentence ‘Johnny throws the ball’ to ‘the ball was thrown by Johnny’, the pragmatic effect would be to highlight the ball over the action of throwing. Porter is certainly right about many cases of the passive voice, but his view does not fit Paul here. Whether the recipient or the stative result of the action function as the focal point of a passive sentence depends on which of these is in question in the surrounding context. To continue with the Johnny example, it would make sense for the author of ‘Johnny throws the ball’ to place emphasis on ‘the ball’ if readers were not sure what it was that Johnny had thrown because the context had left such a detail ambiguous. Perhaps the boy had a stick or a boomerang lying around, all of which would quite adequately serve as a projectile. However, if the action were in question in the context, then the passive sentence would place emphasis on said action. Perhaps no one knew whether the ball was thrown or caught by Johnny. In this scenario, ‘the ball was thrown by Johnny’ would focus on the action of throwing, not the ball. Such is the case above. Stanley E Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (JSOT; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992) 64.

⁴⁹ Cf. A. B. Caneday, ‘Covenant Lineage Allegorically Prefigured: “Which Things Are Written Allegorically” (Galatians 4.21–31)’, The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 14 no. 3 (2010) 53.

⁵⁰ According to Wintermute, Jubilees was originally written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek. Only fragments of the Greek text survive. This translation is taken from Hays, who helpfully brings out the Jew-Gentile dichotomy by rendering ‘nations’ as ‘Gentiles’. James H. Charlesworth, ed., ‘Jubilees’, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, trans. O. S. Wintermute, vol. 2 (Peadbody, MA: Hendrickson, 1983) 41; Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) 111.

⁵¹ Di Mattei, ‘Paul's Allegory of the Two Covenants (Gal 4.21–31) in Light of First-Century Hellenistic Rhetoric and Jewish Hermeneutics’, 108–9.

⁵² Di Mattei, 106–8.

⁵³ The Greek reads as follows: ‘Kαταχρηστικῶς τὸν τύπον ἀλληγορίαν ἐκάλɛσɛν’ (John Chrysostom, Hom. Gal. 4.24).

⁵⁴ Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture, 138.

⁵⁵ David Starling, ‘Justifying Allegory: Scripture, Rhetoric, and Reason in Galatians 4.21–31’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 9 (2015) 228.