2 - The interpretation of the biblical record

Summary

Išo'dad of Merv, a ninth-century Nestorian bishop, commenting on the creation narrative in Genesis, writes, ‘It is necessary to know that first Origen, and after him Basil and others, have claimed that the waters above the firmament are spiritual powers.’ What is noteworthy about this comment is that Išo'dad, in tracing the course of a piece of biblical interpretation which he regards as mistaken, should find its source in Origen, six centuries before his own date. Such was the power of Origen that he could still, so long afterwards, be identified as the originator of the type of exegesis that the Antiochenes regarded as being at least dangerous: that is, the use of a biblical text as a springboard from which to leap to higher and more spiritual meanings than might appear on the surface of the text.

Origen had not in fact invented this practice. The Homeric myths had been subjected to this treatment and Philo of Alexandria had habitually treated the Jewish Scriptures in this way, giving the narratives a new lease of life. Philo, however, hardly treated his search for spiritual meaning in Scripture as but one element in a great system, as Origen came to do. In Christian exegesis, Justin, Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria had paved the way for Origen. He sometimes gives the impression that incidental difficulties in the biblical text oblige him to treat it in a non-literal, nonhistorical fashion. Thus he finds it necessary to treat contradictions between the gospels as matter for spiritual interpretation, and suggests that the biblical writers could falsify historical fact in order to bring out the spiritual significance of an event or situation.