Allegory vs. Myth

We say that there are no perceptible things in the place. By interpreting these things, he does not err in calling a myth what God is said to have created and what Moses, the most faithful servant of God, wrote; rather, from the opposites which a myth formed in the belly offers up obscurely, he confirms these things in a dogmatic writing, showing them to be true.

It is worthy to remain unshaken in the belief that the words of the belly-myth were spoken through the Holy Spirit, having sworn to seem like the Scripture; but calling the messages sent through Moses by God 'myth' fluctuates the meaning, not remaining faithful to the literal sense of the letter.

But does he not allegorize the wells dug by Abraham and those around him, and after constructing such a chain of words, does he not refute their entire reality by shifting them into another sense, even though you will still see the wells appearing in places even now? Did he not turn the matters of Isaac and Rebekah into allegories, having said that the words about the ears and the clefts were golden, but having seized the whole hypothesis and applying it to the intelligible, he acted as a slanderer? Regarding Job, instead of marveling at his endurance, he praised the labors, spoke well of his excellence, accepted the faith, expressed the examples of his patient soul, and through this encouraged the new converts to virtue, arming the combatants with a cheerful and strong wisdom to strive bravely for piety; but leaving him, he rushed meteorically toward the names of the daughters, grinding them down crudely. As for how he puffed up the name of the Day and of Cassia, or even the horn of Amalthea, he does not even say such a thing; for he is a vessel of all kinds of overflow.

Writing about Lazarus, instead of glorifying the great work of Christ and thereby clearly proving that God is the one who, by authority, sent the dead man out of the tombs and, by the release of the word, gave life to the corruptible bodies, he says nothing for this reason, but through allegory leads the friend of the Lord, Lazarus, whom he did not love unsuitably through virtue, to the one weakening and dying through sins.

No one has said or written these things against the righteous man; for the Lord would not have rejected him so severely unless he had broken the laws of a state. Furthermore, the drama of the stoning is not less a target for distortion (since he also tries to interpret this in a different way), the Gospel text being falsified by saying, 'we have not found very much, having searched in those before this, that the Jews carried stones in order to stone him' (John 10:31); then, after a little, he says: 'if they carried them again, they carried them before.' He wants to construct up and down arguments not to precede and another similarly interpretation, so that he might establish that they carried words, not stones, against him without delay, even though the Evangelist added, having said, 'so they took up stones in order to stone him' (John 10:31). But these things are written in two separate places, and it appears they were done at different times because they do not have the same complexities or pairings of words; but Origen, supposing himself to know all the Scriptures, did not read this, and in writing these things, he treats the whole Gospel as if it were merely a matter of words.

If anyone supposes that we are weaving these things, he will find nothing that we have said to be false by encountering those same Gospel decisions and the studies produced by him regarding this.

But what more is necessary to say? Everything, so to speak, by allegorizing from names, refutes the hypotheses of the facts, not even realizing this: that indeed there are many homonyms of the righteous and the unrighteous, yet it is not possible to judge the dissimilar ways of life from the one same name.

For there is Judas the traitor and another Judas the apostle; or again, Zechariah the most unjust king and another Zechariah the prophet; and not only this, but also Ananias who was thrown into the furnace of fire, and besides this, another Ananias who persecutes the church instead of being persecuted, and instead advocates for the apostle to be beaten, to whom Paul, in a word, responded: 'God is about to beat you, you wall that is plastered (Acts 22:25). And you sit judging me according to the law, and while breaking the law, you command me to be beaten?' Truly, if things are judged by name, let those who...