This chapter first investigates the meaning of ‘revelation’ in ancient Christianity and ancient non-Jewish and non-Christian religions, especially in ‘pagan’ Platonism of the early imperial period. ‘Revelation’ was characterised by the stress on authoritative sources of revealed knowledge (e.g., the Bible, the Chaldaean Oracles). The objective is to argue that ‘pagan’ Platonists faithful to Plato (and commenting just on Plato) cannot be simplistically opposed to Jewish or Christian Platonists faithful to the Bible (and commenting exclusively on the Bible). The chapter examines how philosophical allegoresis was applied by Stoics and Platonists – ‘pagan’, Jewish, and Christian Platonists – to their authoritative texts and revelations. This study provides an accurate examination of the conceptual and methodological intersections between the works of ‘pagan’ and Christian Platonists, and points to cases that break the binary between ‘pagan’ commentaries on ‘pagan’ authoritative texts and Christian commentaries on Scripture. It will also suggest that Amelius commented on the Prologue of John in light of his previous knowledge of Origen’s Commentary.

Heliodorus’ Ethiopica, discussed in Chapter 10, still awaits its discovery by scholars of ancient aesthetics. The latest of the five fully preserved ancient Greek piercingly reflects on the aesthetics of deception. After a close reading of a passage from book 3 that sharply juxtaposes deceit and aesthetic illusion and simultaneously intimates their similarity, I will explore their blending together in the Athenian novella. The aesthetics of deception also pertains to the Ethiopica themselves, which are designed to enthral the reader and simultaneously threaten to dupe her. A Platonic intertext that evokes the condemnation of poetry in the Republic highlights this danger. At the same time, Heliodorus recasts the aesthetics of deception differently from Plato and suggests an allegorical reading of his novel that envisages aesthetic illusion ultimately as a means of overcoming deception.

Like meaning, interpretation is a slippery notion. This chapter discusses three different accounts of interpretation. First, I discuss the allegoresis account, according to which some texts have a deeper meaning hidden below the text's surface meaning. I then explore what is required if an allegorical interpretation is to be justified, and I argue that two kinds of interpretative knowledge must be distinguished: (1) knowing through interpretation that what a text (or its author) says is p, and (2) knowing through interpretation that what the text (or its author) says, viz. p, is true. Second, the traditional account of interpretation is discussed, according to which interpretation consists in clearing up textual obscurities – this is called the difficulty account of interpretation. A number of possible obscurities are identified, and I show what is required to clear them up in a justified way. Finally, the modernist view of interpretation is discussed, according to which reading inevitably involves interpretation. The most natural development of this view is that all reading involves disambiguation, and that to disambiguate is to interpret. Here, too, I discuss what is required for justified disambiguations.