page_title: Allegorical interpretations of Genesis
section_title: Church historians on allegorical interpretation of Genesis
hierarchical_section_title: Allegorical interpretations of Genesis / Interpretation / Church historians on allegorical interpretation of Genesis
context_page_description: Allegorical interpretations of Genesis are readings of the biblical Book of Genesis that treat elements of the narrative as symbols or types, rather than viewing them literally as recording historical events. Either way, Judaism and most sects of Christianity treat Genesis as canonical scripture, and believers generally regard it as having spiritual significance.
  The opening chapter of Genesis tells a story of God's creation of the universe and of humankind as taking place over the course of six successive days. Some Christian and Jewish schools of thought read these biblical passages literally, assuming each day of creation as 24 hours in duration. Others read the story allegorically, and hold that the biblical account aims to describe humankind's relationship to creation and the creator, that Genesis 1 does not describe actual historical events, and that the six days of creation simply represents a long period of time.
  Genesis 2 records a second account of creation. Chapter 3 introduces a talking serpent, which many Christians believe is Satan in disguise. Many Christians in ancient times regarded the early chapters of Genesis as true both as history and as allegory.
context_section_description: The literalist reading of some contemporary Christians maligns the allegorical or mythical interpretation of Genesis as a belated attempt to reconcile science with the biblical account. They maintain that the story of origins had always been interpreted literally until modern science (and, specifically, biological evolution) arose and challenged it. This view is not the consensus view, however, as demonstrated below:
  According to Rowan Williams: "[For] most of the history of Christianity there's been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God, is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time."
  Some religious historians consider that biblical literalism came about with the rise of Protestantism; before the Reformation, the Bible was not usually interpreted in a completely literal way. Fr. Stanley Jaki, a Benedictine priest and theologian who is also a distinguished physicist, states in his Bible and Science:
  Insofar as the study of the original languages of the Bible was severed from authoritative ecclesiastical preaching as its matrix, it fueled literalism... Biblical literalism taken for a source of scientific information is making the rounds even nowadays among creationists who would merit Julian Huxley's description of 'bibliolaters.' They merely bring discredit to the Bible as they pile grist upon grist on the mills of latter-day Huxleys, such as Hoyle, Sagan, Gould, and others. The fallacies of creationism go deeper than fallacious reasonings about scientific data. Where creationism is fundamentally at fault is its resting its case on a theological faultline: the biblicism constructed by the [Protestant] Reformers.
  However, the Russian Orthodox hieromonk Fr. Seraphim Rose has argued that leading Orthodox saints such as Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom and Ephraim the Syrian believed that Genesis should be treated as a historical account.
caption: Adam and Eve, by Albrecht Dürer (1507).
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