As we saw in the last two posts, Origen and Porphyry are instrumental examples of how late-Antique exegetes tussled over how to find meaning in sacred texts. On the one hand, Origen set the tone for late-Antique Christian exegesis by leveling the playing field and considering all interpretation non-historical, i.e., either muthos or plasma. On the other hand, Porphyry attempted to set the foundation for Homeric exegesis on near total ground, i.e., the bard meant for us to read deeper no mater whether the events of his epic actually happened (historia), could have happened but didn’t (plasma), or manifestly could not have (muthos).

Both however, tried to open up interpretive space for their own readings of their sacred scriptures through their theories of the text. And despite how far ranging their theories are, there’s more: in this post, we’ll turn to consider the work of another important late-Antique exegete, Theodore of Mopsuestia, who is commonly considered the sober antidote to Origen’s fantastical (and fabricated) readings of the Christian Bible. Yet as we’ll see, Theodore is in no way strictly speaking concerned with the literal meaning of the text, as historians like Fairbairn and Farrah are, but rather is a sophisticated literary critic who has more in mind than simply trying to find the “original intent” of a text…whatever that might mean.

Let’s turn now to a close consideration of Theodore’s work with an eye towards what we’ve seen from Origen and Porphyry to better understand how we can see him as a literary critic rather than a simple apologist for the literal meaning of Christian sacred texts.

Theodore of Mopsuestia was a prolific writer, but much of his work does not survive. Particularly regrettable is the loss of his five-volume attack on allegorical interpretation, which is presumed to have been directed at Origen. Of the texts that have survived, the most important for my argument is his commentary on one verse of Paul’s: Galatians 4.24.

This verse has played a significant role in the development of Christian hermeneutics, primarily because Paul uses the participle allegoroumena in it, the only occurrence in the New Testament of any form of allegorien or allegoria.[1] For most early-Christian exegetes, his usage created interpretive space: since the apostle had no reservations about allegorizing, neither should they. For Theodore, however, this passage causes difficulties because, as I mentioned above, he wished to distance himself from the kind of interpretation done by Origen, which was also called allegoria. Had Paul not called his interpretation allegoria, I believe Theodore would have had no problem with the passage, because the kind of interpretation that Paul presents in Galatians 4.24f. is not so different from interpretations found in 1 and 2 Corinthians or Romans, the interpretive dimensions of which Theodore had no problems with.[2] Be that as it may, Theodore’s desire to discredit the kind of figurative interpretation called allegoria and promote his own brand of figurative interpretation, which he called theoria, required that he somehow account for the seeming apostolic endorsement of the former.

Unlike John Chrysostom, who simply asserts with no further justification or explanation that in Galatians 4.24 Paul uses the word “allegory” to describe what is in actuality a “type”, Theodore tackles the problem from a solidly literary-critical perspective, one which by now will be quite familiar from Grant’s work and my analysis of Origen and Porphyry in the previous two posts.[3]

Theodore begins with an attack on other interpreters of Paul, criticizing the ways that they i) explain the character of the Biblical narrative and ii) find the deeper or higher meanings in the text.

Countless students of scripture have played tricks with the sensus of the divine scriptures and want to rob it of any sensus it contains. In fact, they configure inept fabulas out of it and call their inanities allegories. They so abuse the voice of the apostle as to extinguish all the intelligence of the scriptures, and they rely on saying “through allegory” just as Paul does, and they have no idea how much difference there is between their “allegory” and Paul’s “allegory” here. [Paul] neither diminishes the historia nor is he adding new things to an old story. Instead Paul is talking about historia, then submits the story of those events to his present understanding.[4]

In this first section, Theodore is concerned not only to show that other interpreters “play tricks” with “allegories”, but that Paul, despite his usage of the term, is not doing this. Paul, according to Theodore, views the scriptures as historia rather than fabulae (Latin for muthos or plasma). To Theodore’s mind, Paul simply takes historia and interprets it (“submits it to his present understanding”).

He continues:

For example, he says in one place, “She corresponds to the present Jerusalem” (Gal 4.25) and in another, “But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit” (Gal 4.29). Above all else, Paul acknowledges the historia of the account. Otherwise he could not say that Hagar “corresponds to the present Jerusalem,” thus acknowledging that Jerusalem does exist in the here and now. Neither would he say “just as” had he referred to a non-existent person. By saying “just as” he demonstrates an analogy, but an analogy cannot be demonstrated if the things compared do not exist [i.e., are either muthos or plasma]. In addition he says “at that time,” indicating the particular time as uncertain or indefinite, but he would not have had to distinguish the particular time if nothing at all had really happened. This is the Apostle’s manner of speaking.[5]

Paul, according to Theodore, does not claim that the historia is mixed with impossible or untrue events, thereby diminishing it; neither does he take historia and add elements to it to make plasma. Paul has a baseline concern for the facts, i.e., there was a city called Jerusalem, a man and woman named Esau and Hagar. But this does not indicate Theodore’s concern for the “historical sense” over and above the figurative sense, any more than, as we have seen, Porphyry’s concern that a cave actually exists in Ithaca does. It is, instead, a concern that Paul should have undertaken his interpretation on historia rather than muthos, which is what the pagans, Jews, and Alexandrians do.

Those allegorizers, though, turn it all inside out, as if the accounts in the Bible were no different from dreams in the night. They do their exegesis of scripture “spiritually”—they like to call this silliness “spiritual interpretation”. Adam is not Adam, paradise is not paradise, and the serpent is not a serpent. I want to tell those interpreters this: if they play tricks with historia, in the end they will have no historia.[6]

This passage is extremely significant: “dreams in the night” would have suggested prophetic dreams sought in temples overnight by devotees of a god, which were shared in the morning with a priest and interpreted.[7] As such, they have not happened; they are simply like descriptions of realistic events (plasma) or like descriptions of unreal events (muthos). What they are not, Theodore here asserts, is descriptions of actual events (historia).

Next, Theodore turns to an analysis of the character of the narrative of Galatians 4.24f.:

But, if they insist on such explanations, let them answer these questions: Who was the first man made? How was he disobedient? How was the sentence of death introduced? If they have any answers from the bible, then what they call “allegory” is exposed as foolishness, because, throughout, it is proven to be over and above what is necessary. If, however, their “allegory” is true, if the bible does not retain one narration of deeds [gestarum] but truly points to something else altogether, something so profound as to require special understanding, something “spiritual”, as they wish to call it, which they have uncovered because they themselves are so spiritual, then where does their understanding come from? Whatever they call this type of interpretation, has the bible itself taught them to read it like this?[8]

Notice here that his method of separating the descriptions of real events from the description of plausible or unreal events is thoroughly literary-critical in bent: if one “plays tricks with historia“, one will have no more historia. For most ancient literary critics, as Grant points out, historia was thoroughly distinct from either muthos or plasma, which were grouped together based on their contrafactual qualities.[9] The series of questions Theodore poses is what one would expect of an ancient literary critic testing the validity of a narrative thought to be historia: the obscurity of its language, the incredible or inappropriate nature of the events described, the omission of necessary and the inclusion of superfluous details, the self-contradiction of the author, the disorder of the narrative, or the inappropriate “moral” drawn from the story.[10]

Having asked these of the text, he then asks his rival interpreters: if the Bible cannot pass this test of historical integrity, then we need allegory, but does it in fact fail to pass it? He, of course, thinks that it does pass it and closes by adding that, whatever Paul calls his interpretation, it is not the “spiritual” allegorization of muthos/fabulae done by some interpreters, but rather a submitting of the historia/factae of the Bible to his own understanding in order to “make his case”.[11]

That Theodore, in his reading of Gal 4.24f., is concerned with figurative meaning (historia vs. mythos/fabula) over against figurative meaning itself (literal/historical vs. figurative/allegorical) can be seen from his Liber ad Baptizandos, a text devoted to the proper instruction of catechumens. In it, there is a free and unrestrained application of figurative meanings to every aspect of the liturgy and sacraments. Note the following passage:

Every sacrament consists in the representation of unseen and unspeakable things through signs and emblems. Such things require explanation and interpretation, for the sake of the person who draws nigh unto the sacrament, so that he might know its power. If it only consisted of the (visible) elements themselves, words would have been useless, as sight itself would have been able to show us one by one all the happenings that take place, but since a sacrament contains the signs of things that take place or have already taken place, words are needed to explain the power of signs and mysteries.[12]

In the vital task of instructing catechumens on the verge of receiving the sacrament of baptism, Theodore portrays the very heart of the Christian faith as symbolic and figurative: the power and mystery of the sacraments require interpretation and explanation. If they did not, he argues, we would simply perform them and thereby fully understand their significance.

As he continues, he speaks more of the essentially figurative nature of Christianity and also of the Judaism out of which it developed, which are related as a shadow is related to an image.

The Jews performed their service for the heavenly things as in signs and shadows, because the law contained only the shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, as the blessed Paul said. A shadow implies the proximity of a body, as it cannot exist without a body, but it does not represent the body which it reflects in the same way as it happens in an image. When we look at an image we recognize the person who is represented in it—if we knew that person beforehand—on account of the accurately drawn picture, but we are never able to recognize a man represented only by his shadow, as this shadow has no likeness whatever to the real body from which it emanates. All things of the law were similar to this. They were only a shadow of the heavenly things, as the Apostle said.[13]

Despite the fact that in his comments on Galatians, Theodore was anxious to delimit precisely the mechanics of figurative readings of the Hebrew Bible, in Liber ad Baptizandos, he freely and unrestrainedly finds deeper, higher meanings in nearly every aspect not only of the sacraments and liturgy, but of the history of Israel as well.[14]

Thus the law contained the shadow of the good things to come, as those who lived under it had only a figure of the future things. In this way they only performed their services as a sign and a shadow of the heavenly things, because that service gave, by means of the tabernacle and the things that took place in it, a kind of revelation, in figure, of the life which is going to be in heaven, and which our Lord Christ showed to us by his ascension into it, while he granted all of us to participate in an event which was so much hidden from those who in that time that the Jews, in their expectation of resurrection, had only a base conception of it.[15]

This stance towards the events of Israelite history is found throughout the work. And, we must remember that, since the events of Israelite history came to Theodore through the texts of the Hebrew Bible, this stance is essentially hermeneutical. His discussion of the “shadow” of future events deals with the words of the text, which he claims refer to something that the original, intended audience had only a “base conception” of because it was “so much hidden” from them: the coming of Christ and the Christian church. And this is not evidence of a concern for historically accurate reading; it is the evidence of a concern to find connection between the vastly different scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. History, insofar as it is extra-textual, is not his concern; however, historia as a kind of narrative (one distinct from muthos and plasma) is.[16] As this is a literary-critical distinction, Theodore’s work must be understood squarely in the context of the kind of ancient literary-critical usage I have explored in the previous two posts.

And so, in both the exegetical and pedagogical works I’ve examined, I think it’s clear that scripture having figurative senses was never an issue for Theodore. In the Liber ad Baptizandos, we have seen just how pervasive his figurative outlook was: almost every aspect of Christian life (liturgy, architecture, sacred texts, sacraments) and Jewish history (temple, wanderings, prophecy, exiles) had symbolic import. And even in his commentary on the one occurrence of self-proclaimed allegory in the New Testament, we have seen that his concern was not to rescue the historical or literal sense from figurative interpretation, but rather to allow narratives that recorded deeds or happenings (historia/gestae/factae) to be read figuratively. His work, as this chapter has demonstrated, must be understood in light of the ancient literary critical distinctions of historia (what happened), plasma (what could have happened), and muthos (what could not have happened), rather than the strict modern dichotomy between literal and figurative reading.

And as the last two posts have also shown, in the second and third centuries AD, there was heated debate about the universal validity of allegorical interpretation, that is, did the interpretation of one sacred text, e.g., Homer, exclude the interpretation of others, e.g., the New Testament or Septuagint? Most interpreters answered in the affirmative: our texts only seem gross, and our interpretations of them are true and show them to be of the highest significance; your texts and interpretations, however, are false and ingenuine. Origen’s approach, examined in the last post, in contrast, differed from this, as we have seen. He adopted a critical, comparativist approach in the Contra Celsum, claiming that all cultures interpret their own mythical texts allegorically. Therefore, he argued, you should feel free to read yours just as we read ours—however, don’t disparage us for doing what you also do.

As we’ve seen in the past two posts, Origen’s comparative stance was challenged by important hermeneutical developments in the 100 years after he wrote. Porphyry, one of the most significant pagan scholars of late antiquity, attempted to move the interpretation of Homer off of the kind of exegetical ground so well described by Origen and undertaken on Homer by his predecessor Cronius. In the De Antro Nympharum, as we have seen, he claimed that Homer’s text had deeper meanings because it was plasma, not because it was muthos. That is, Homer’s description of the cave of the nymphs was an account of a plausible temple, and like a real temple, had symbolic import not because it was impossible, but simply because it was symbolic.

In Antioch, Theodore explored another hermeneutical avenue. He asserted that not only muthos but also historia could speak other than what it said. In so doing, he did not deny that such reading was figurative, but simply gave figurative readings taken from historia a more legitimate basis than figurative readings taken from muthos (as he claimed exegetes like Origen had done). He sometimes called these readings theoria, that is, “contemplation” or “viewing”. We should notice just how important it was for Theodore to do this, because not only had Origen claimed that everyone interprets their own myths allegorically, but the passage of Genesis that Paul considers allegorical in Galatians chapter 4 treats material not so different from the muthoi of the pagan poets: three immortals visit and dine with a family in exile; a god miraculously “helps” a barren, elderly woman to conceive; and her son, after almost being sacrificed by his father, becomes a heroic figure of immense cultural importance (wrestles a god, changes his name, and becomes the father of a nation.

For Theodore, to take a narrative like this allegorically is so very similar to what Stoics and others did to the muthoi of Homer and Hesiod that some kind of an explanation was necessary to maintain the privileged place of Christian exegesis. Hence his so-called “anti-allegorical” interpretation, which is simply allegory drawn from texts that he classifies as historia and to which he gives a different name, theoria.

ENDNOTES

[1] E.g., Kepple 1976/7 243-44; see, e.g., John Chrysostom 1994 34; Aquinas 1966 134-45; Luther 1963 435-61; Calvin 1985; Marsh 1810 18.114; Fairbairn 1855 2-4, 219; Lightfoot 1865; Burton 1920; Goppelt 1939 6, 17-18; Lampe and Woolcombe 1957 32, 40, 72; Hanson 1959 7, 62, 82-83; Daniélou 1960 57-58, 149; Greer 1961 72, 92-94; Kugel and Greer 1986 133-36; and Brosend 1993; see also the survey at Lightfoot 1865 [1957] 227-234.

[2] 1 Cor 10.1f; 2 Cor 2.1f.; Rom 6.12f.

[3] “Contrary to usage, he calls a type an allegory” (Chrysostom 1994 34).

[4] Theodore 1880 73; Trigg 1988 173. From this point forward, I will refer to Theodore’s commentary as Galat. and cite Trigg’s translation in parentheses alongside Swete’s Latin edition. I have taken Trigg’s generally sound translation and nuanced it, at some points retranslating sentences in order to highlight Theodore’s literary-critical use of historia, gestae, and facta, and at others leaving Latin terms untranslated for clarity. The following list of definitions from the LSJ and Lewis and Short dictionaries is provided as a guide to the reader interested in the rich semantic range associated with these important terms:

• Historien: to inquire into or about a thing; examine, observe; inquire of, ask; inquire of an oracle; give an account of what one has learnt, record.

• Historia: inquiry; observation; body of recorded cases [in empirical medicine]; knowledge so obtained, information; written account of one’s inquiries, narrative, history; [gen.] story, account.

• Factum: that which is done, a deed, exploit, achievement; bonum factum: a good deed, deed well done.

• Historia: = Gk. Historia; a narrative of past events, history; historiam scribere: to inform one’s self accurately of any thing, to see a thing for one’s self; a narrative, account, tale, story.

Although the feminine form of factum appears frequently in Theodore, this is somewhat peculiar; the neuter form is found more frequently in Latin literature generally (Lewis and Short 1879, s.v. factum).

[5] Galat., 73-74 (173-174).

[6] Ibid. 74 (174).

[7] See Struck 1997 157-184 for the suggestive material and formal connections between divination and exegesis in the late-antique world.

[8] Galat. 74-75 (174).

[9] Grant 1961 120-121.

[10] Ibid. 41-42.

[11] Galat. 76 (175).

[12] Liber 2 [17]. The Syriac text of this document, along with an English translation, can be found in volume six of the Woodbroke Studies (Theodore 1933). The first number refers to chapter of the text, the bracketed number to the page of the English translation.

[13] Liber 2 [17-18].

[14] See, e.g., 2 [23, 27], 3 [46], 4 [51-53], and 5 [73, 79].

[15] Liber 3 [19].

[16] See Appendix: Figure 1.1.

As we saw in the last post, Origen’s Contra Celsum leveled the playing field of exegetical polemics by asserting that all interpretation uses aporetic texts to find higher meanings, as opposed to previous exegetical polemics, which typically asserted that only opponents’ texts were aporetic (i.e., shameful and unworthy or interpretation)—our texts only seemed so if you read them wrong.

And while Celsus’ original text is lost, there is an ancient pagan text that, approached from this perspective, provides a tantalizing look into what the alternative pagan point of view to Origen’s view of textural interpretation might have been: Porphyry’s Cave of the Nymphs. With that in mind, let’s undertake a close reading of De Antro Nympharum to try to develop a better appreciation not only for what Origen achieved as a literary theorist, but what Porphyry—considered (wrongly) a B- or C-player (at best) of the classical canon—achieved as well.

To my mind, Porphyry’s De Antro Nympharum marks a watershed in the study of Homeric literature. By challenging Cronius’ reading of Homer—which rested on over eight hundred years of study of the Homeric corpus—he effectively challenges the way Homer’s poems have been read for deeper meanings since anyone started commenting on them.[1]

Of course, Homeric interpreters had been challenged before. There is a long history, at least from Plato through Cicero and Plutarch, of those who refuse to find deeper meaning in the Odyssey and Iliad.[2] Porphyry, however, is not one of them. He never doubts that Homer’s poetry has deeper, inner meanings.[3] What he does challenge is the basis on which the interpreter finds these deeper meanings. He revises the then commonly-held view that the textual stumbling blocks (aporeai) of works of literature classified as muthoi are the primary entry-way for the interpreter seeking deeper meanings in a text, which he claims was Cronius’ position.

In the place of Cronius’ reputed position, Porphyry argues that texts classified as plasma can contain figurative meanings. It’s not a simple thing for him to argue this point, and his essay is a complex and carefully formulated argument that succeeds in opening up interpretive avenues for the study of Homer that had been previously unexplored.[4]

As a consequence, De Antro Nympharum is not so much textual commentary as it is literary criticism. Porphyry concerns himself with “what the text means” only briefly and in closing. The rest of the work is given over to an asynchronous debate with Cronius about “how the text means”, i.e., how Homer conveys meaning in his work…and as a consequence, how texts “mean”. As Porphyry presents it, Cronius believed that the reader is justified in searching out deeper meanings in Homer when the text as it stands presents aporeai, that is, is confusing or puzzling. “Lovely murkiness”, “stone looms”, “amphoras and kraters filled with honey”, “paths for men and for gods”, and so on, make no sense, according to Cronius, and so both layman and scholar alike must conclude that Homer is speaking allegorically, because the text as it stands makes no sense.[5]

Therefore, as we will see, Porphyry is concerned to criticize Cronius’s aporetic explanation for Homer’s deeper significance, not his interpretations of Homer’s text per se. Porphyry nowhere presents a reading attributed to Cronius that he then contrasts with his own alternate reading. In fact, after a close reading of Porphyry’s text, one suspects that his interpretation of the olive tree is the only exegetical innovation to be found in his entire commentary.[6] Exegetical innovation, one could conclude, was not his goal.

Instead, we could see that Porphyry wishes to call into question the assumption that textual aporeai justify allegorical interpretation; and, following from that, the entire essay strives to show how reasonable and intelligible Homer’s description of the cave is. All of the elements that Cronius finds perplexing, we are told by Porphyry, have parallels in other real-world, existing temples or other religious traditions, and so Homer was not trying to confuse the reader. According to Porphyry, Homer was simply presenting a thorough and accurate description of a temple (whether real or simply real-seeming), one that incorporated images and symbols of wide-ranging and lofty spiritual significance. Our feeling of confusion must move us to research better, Porphyry argues, not allegorize deeper.[7]

Porphyry begins his reading from an entirely different premise than the one he attributes to Cronius. For him, the passage in question, far from being an unclear or obscure Homeric fabrication (muthos), is one of two things, both of which will be familiar from Origen’s arguments in the Contra Celsum and from my discussion of Grant’s work: i) a faithful description of an actual cave-temple and the elements in it (historia) or ii) a Homeric creation, in which Homer described a real cave but added the plausible temple elements himself (plasma). In either case, Porphyry argues, the elements of the temple as described by Homer are symbolic because the ancients routinely used symbols in their places of worship, and Homer was well educated in such symbolism. What is not the case, however, is that the elements are confusing or unintelligible without “forced” or “fanciful” interpretation of the sort that other interpreters (e.g., Cronius) have offered.[8]

In contrast, Cronius’s position, as Porphyry presents it, is that the passage in question is muthos and that its unreal qualities lead the reader on to find a deeper meaning.

Given that the description is full of such obscurities, Cronius concludes that it is not, in fact, a casual fiction [plasma] created for our amusement, but neither is it a geographically accurate description [historia topikos] and so the poet must be saying something allegorically here.[9]

“Lovely murkiness”, “kraters filled with honey”, “one gate for mortals and one gate for gods”, “stone looms”, and “sea-purple cloth woven by the nymphs” all challenge our understanding and, according to Cronius, force us to seek deeper meanings. Furthermore, Cronius finds no account of any cave—fantastic or otherwise—at this location in any of the geographical writings available to him.[10]

Porphyry’s first criticism of Cronius is that the passage in question cannot be myth, as a cave exists in the location that Homer describes. After citing a description of the cave taken from Artemidorus of Ephesus, he states: “It seems, then, that [the cave] is not entirely a Homeric fiction”.[11] Porphyry, moving to his second criticism, goes on to say that,

whether Homer described it as it was or added something himself, however, the aforementioned [textual] problems persist for anyone trying to track down the intention either of those who established the shrine or of the poet who made the additions.[12]

Here Porphyry equates Homer with those who established the shrine and his poetry with the shrine itself. By so doing, he attempts to blur the distinction between plasma and historia, at least in respect to this passage. That is, since the ancients set up their temples using religious symbolism, Porphyry argues, whether Homer accurately fabricated a cave-temple designed by the ancients or made plausible additions to an actual Ithacan cave, the symbolic value of its elements is beyond question: “The ancients who founded shrines would not have done so without incorporating mysterious symbols nor would Homer have described it in any random manner”.[13]

At this point, Porphyry begins his foray into comparative religious history without supporting his equation of Homer with “those who established the shrine”. He simply states:

to the extent that one undertakes to show that the business of the cave is not a Homeric creation [plasma] but rather of those, before Homer’s time, who consecrated the place to the gods, one will be establishing that the dedication is full of the wisdom of the ancients and on this account that it deserves investigation and its cult symbolism should be interpreted.[14]

He now begins his analysis of the elements of Homer’s cave, which consists chiefly of drawing parallels to various religious traditions. Although this section seems to be a rather long digression (and perhaps ancillary) to his task, this is in reality an integral part of his argument.[15] So far, he has shown that the passage in Homer cannot be muthos, because a cave exists in the Phocys harbor in Ithaca, and that therefore it is either plasma or historia; then, putting aside the former option, he addresses the latter: if the dedication is full of the wisdom of the ancients, i.e., is factually accurate, then its cult symbolism deserves investigation. What we will see, however, is that by presenting the rich meanings of the cult symbolism of the cave, Porphyry is able to render the difference between plasma and historia meaningless in respect to this passage. The symbolism of the cave-temple is so profound and there are so many parallels to it in other important religious traditions that it remains meaningful even if it is a Homeric plasma.

We can see that Porphyry hopes to persuade his audience of the significance of Homer’s plasmatic description because, as the comparative section of the piece develops, he turns his attention away from the task that ostensibly gave impetus to the comparative endeavor in the first place: “to the extent that one undertakes to show that the cave is not a Homeric plasma but rather of those, before Homer’s time, who consecrated the place, etc.”.[16] Instead, having presented an overwhelming array of examples of religious symbols, he admits both as possible:

we must now explore the intention of those who consecrated the cave (if indeed the poet is reporting historical fact), or his own riddle, if the description is his own fabrication.[17]

After he presents yet more parallels between Homer’s poetry and other religious traditions, Porphyry turns to the olive tree, which he believes to encompass the entire mystery of the cave. It was put there, Porphyry tells us, by “the theologian” (Homer) in order to symbolize the entire truth of the cosmos, which by now the reader understands to be the true significance of the cave episode. Porphyry makes no mention of the ancients who planted the tree, and the possibility that they might have actually dedicated the cave has dropped out of his line of argument.

Finally, he closes the essay by stating that:

when one takes into consideration the ancient wisdom and the vast intelligence of Homer, along with his perfection in every virtue, one cannot reject the idea that he has hinted at images of more divine things in molding his little story.[18]

Notice here, in the final few words of the essay, that there is no longer any indication that Homer might have factually described (historein) an actual cave-temple dedicated by the ancients. In contrast to the passage that began his survey of world religions, Porphyry has not undertaken to show that the description of the cave is a creation of those “before Homer’s time” and therefore symbolic.[19] Rather, as the wealth of comparative religious data has shown, Homer was a religious genius, perfect in every virtue, whose plasma has as much symbolism as any of the historical elements of actual religions that Porphyry has presented. The comparative material Porphyry marshals confirms the symbolism of the cave whether it is real or only plausible. What the symbolism is not, however, is mythic, aporetic, or purposely obscure.

For Porphyry, Homer does not simply parrot ancient symbols in literary form. He is, instead, on par with the ancient religious founders and has created a religiously significant and symbolic discourse as valid as any Mithraic initiation or Zoroastrian mystery. In fact, Porphyry leads his reader, who at the opening of the essay perhaps feels that the description must be historia to be symbolically valid, to see that Homer is a religious genius equivalent to the ancients, whether his description of the cave is historically 100% accurate or simply 100% plausible. This process of leading the reader is shown by the progression his statements make from focusing on the ancients 100%, to splitting focus 50-50 between them and Homer, to focusing 100% on Homer at the close of the essay.[20]

Because Porphyry has led the skeptical reader to appreciate Homer’s symbolic fluency and to let go of the need for the cave to have been actually established by the ancients, he becomes more expansive at the close of the essay and outlines more ambitious interpretations. Having shown the incredibly rich symbolic power of Homer’s writing in the cave passage and by showing that it is as symbolically accurate as any ancient religious tradition, he has managed to clear interpretive space for himself. Porphyry can then go on to assert that other sections of the poem that are more mythic (in the ancient literary critical sense) are also as symbolically accurate and rich. His analogy from the opening of the essay, Homer : cave = ancients : temples, is expanded to, Homer : Odyssey = ancients : temples, i.e., the whole of his poem, whether classified as muthos, plasma, or historia, is symbolic to the highest degree.[21] Because we have seen Homer describe a symbolically plausible temple in the cave of the nymphs episode—and have seen this significance through a detailed survey of world religions—we can trust that Homer is as symbolic in the rest of his work, although of course it is not all as plausible on the surface as the cave episode.[22]

And in closing, as Porphyry looks back upon Cronius’s claims, he thinks it is quite clear that Homer was not using aporetic language to draw the confused reader to read more deeply. “It is impossible that he should have successfully created the entire basis of the story without shaping that creation after some sort of truth”.[23] Homer, just like the ancient founders of temples, crafted a religious space that symbolized higher truths through its architectural elements. This is not muthos, because a cave did exist where Homer described it, but is rather rather plasma, because it is a plausible account of a sacred locale—regardless of whether it actually exists.

Determining what, if any, material or historical connections there were between Porphyry’s arguments in De Antro Nympharum and Origen’s in the Contra Celsum is problematical, primarily because Porphyry’s expicit attack on Christianity, Kata Christianon is so fragmentary.[24] We would expect to find in this text some direct mention of Origen’s Contra Celsum and, perhaps, something of Porphyry’s reaction to the work. Short of the discovery of such sections of Porphyry’s text, any attempt at reconstructing the relations between the two can be nothing more than suggestive.[25] But the possibilities are intriguing: two literary critics from different and rival religions, but both well-versed in the thought and writings of the other’s, each make ground-breaking contributions to the theory and practice of textual criticism within fifty years of each other; and their work, at least formally, can be seen as closely interrelated, i.e., Origen considers all interpretation to be the allegorization of muthoi, and Porphyry distinguishes his work by allegorizing non-mythological plasma—something unheard of in eight hundred years of previous textual interpretation.

As we’ll see in the next post, in the case of Theodore of Mopsuestia, however, it would be impossible to imagine his work, much of which is a direct challenge to Origen’s, arising independently of the Contra Celsum. Theodore was engaged, along with John Chrysostom and others, in a staunch rivalry with Alexandria (which Robert Grant has aptly likened to the rivalry between New York and Chicago), from whose interpretation and exegesis he wished to distance himself. As we will see, he argued that figurative meanings in Christian texts are not to be found in the aporeai of muthoi, as Origen claimed, nor in the author’s skillful blending of historia and plasma, as Porphyry did, but rather in everyday, “this is how it happened” details in the text, i.e., from historia. He even sometimes gave a new name to this kind of figurative interpretation in order to distinguish it from Origen’s allegoria: theoria.[26]

But we misrepresent the debate if we cast it simply as a conflict between literal and figurative or historical and a-historical modes of interpretation, despite Theodore’s rejection of the term allegoria. Origen and Theodore agreed that scriptural or authoritative texts meant more than they said and that they could be interpreted for a number of reasons: because language usage had changed, because passages were puzzling or obscure, because the divine speaks in veiled or hidden speech, or because a higher or deeper level of meaning was expected and welcomed. What was in fact at stake, and where these thinkers differed sharply, was their understanding of the mechanics of textual signification, specifically the entry-point for figurative reading. The Contra Celsum, as we have seen, by taking a kind of non-apologetic, ecumenical stance, equates Christian, Jewish, and pagan interpretation based on their figurative readings of aporeai.[27] Theodore and Porphyry, in contrast, wished to render the interpretation of their respective traditions unique and did so by distinguishing their work from others’ based on the location of figurative meanings: Porphyry in realistic fiction [plasma] and Theodore in the everyday happenings recorded in the Christian bible [historia].

ENDNOTES

[1] Struck 1997 15.

[2] The premier example of this attitude is, of course, to be found in Plato’s Republic (book 10). But see also Plato’s criticisms of Homeric interpretation in the Ion, as well as his tongue-in-cheek send-up of etymological interpretation of the gods in the Cratylus.

[3] Struck 1997 21.

[4] Contra Lamberton 1986 120.

[5] De Ant. 3 (22); I generally follow Lamberton’s translation (Porphyry 1983), except where I find it necessary to clarify Porphyry’s literary-critical usage. I cite the Greek text edited by Nauck (Porphyry 1886) with the page number of Lamberton’s English text of the De Antro Nympharum in brackets.

[6] De Ant. 32 (38).

[7] Contra Lamberton 1986 11, 9.

[8] De Ant. 36 (40).

[9] Ibid. 4 (23), emph. mine.

[10] Ibid. 2 (22).

[11] Ibid. 4 (23): That is, not as Cronius claims, made purely from poetic license. If the description of the cave were purely Homer’s creation with no basis in fact, then it could be either muthos or plasma. Since it is based on a real cave, Porphyry argues, it must be either plasma or historia. See Appendix: Figure 1.1 for a chart of these shifting relations.

[12] Ibid. 4 (23-24), emph. mine.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Contra Lamberton 1986 126.

[16] De Ant. 4 (24), emph. mine.

[17] Ibid. 21 (32)

[18] Ibid. 36 (40)

[19] Ibid. 4 (24).

[20] Ibid. 4 (24f.), 21 (32f.), 32-36 (40f.).

[21] Cp. Origen, who uses the figurative nature of muthos to argue for the figurative nature of scripture generally (see above, p. 86).

[22] Unfortunately, he “postpone[s] writing on this…and leave[s] it for treatment at some time in the future” (De Ant. 36 [40]).

[23] Ibid. 36 (40).

[24] See Hoffmann (Porphyry 1994 21-23) on the difficulties of reconstructing the text.

[25] However, see Grant’s thoughts on the matter (1973 292).

[26] In its primary sense, theoria refers to sending out a person or persons i) to consult an oracle, ii) to have an embassy with a king, or iii) to officiate at public events; it can also refer to the act of watching a public spectacle; finally, it refers to the act of contemplation or the act of viewing in general. These last senses build i) on the effort needed to decipher the content of the oracle received and ii) on the main activity one engages in at the games, i.e., looking. The application of this term to textual interpretation accords well with the primary meaning of the verb (to send an embassy to consult an oracle), since interpreters—like those who receive an oracle—are concerned with the significance of divine utterances. For the general importance of this term in Patristic hermeneutics, see Young’s excellent analysis (1997 161-185). She also critiques the simple correlation between Antioch, literal reading, and historical concerns, on the one hand, and Alexandria, allegorical reading, and philosophical concerns on the other. But as I pointed out in chapter one, in contrast to my approach, she locates the distinction between Antiochene theoria and Alexandrian allegoria in the difference between rhetorical and allegorical criticism. See Struck 1997 2-14 on the modern and ancient contours of this distinction in the practice of literary criticism.

[27] He distinguishes them, instead, according to the rhetorical complexity of their figurative meanings. See above p. 93.

You might be wondering why I use BC and AD in my posts, when the common usage today leans toward BCE and CE. Here’s why.

I assume the offensive nature of BC and AD have to do with the solidly Christian bias of these terms, i.e., Before Christ and Anno Domini (the year of our Lord). But BCE and CE (before the common era and common era) don’t solve that problem. Like AD and BC, they’re based on the reputed birthdate of Jesus (year zero), but simply change the terminology associated with it, in effect claiming that the birth of Jesus issued in the “common era”—which is more offensive to me then BC or AD could ever be. At least the older terms are open and honest about their biases.

To me, therefore, CE and BCE are more offensive than simply using the traditional terms of AD and BC. Unless we’re going to restructure the entire historical dating system and adopt an entirely different one, changing the letters we use to refer to dates does nothing to alter the fundamental prejudice and inadequacy of our system. So rather than being politically correct (but just as wrong), I opt for using the traditional terms AD and BC, in full view of the historical inaccuracies they engender.

Thoughts?