Scriptures are not allegories

   Though this journal reflects New Testament study, it is fitting to address another issue of the "Old Testament" here at the outset, because the "Old Testament" was really the leading Scripture. God did not start His revelations at the birth of Jesus, rather He prepared people with revelations and prophecy leading to the arrival of Immanuel! And then we received revelations straight from the Messiah Himself.
   The issue was raised in class last Wednesday concerning the claim of some people that the early chapters in Genesis are an allegory. Such a statement even has New Testament implications because the genealogy of Jesus given in Luke 3:23-37 goes all of the way back to Adam.
   May my conviction be clear that in the entire Bible, where symbolism and metaphors are used consistently, there is no section that is an "allegory" by the academic definition. This is an important issue, since it is a matter of separating fact from fiction. Some consider the "parables" given by Jesus as allegories, thus saying that allegories are embedded in the Bible. I think they need to be more specifically classified as "parables." The difference between an allegory and a parable is that an allegory is a fictional story where the characters and actions are used to symbolize an experience, truth, or even a moral, whereas the parable is a fictional story where the action and sometimes the characters are used to symbolize a "religious" truth or moral. Note that parables are usually more limited in scope, giving a single message, and there is less symbolism involved with the characters. Also note that some allegories are religious yet giving more of a general expression of "religious" reality than a parable.  The bottom line about allegories is that they are often so abstract in symbolism that two people can come away with extremely different interpretations about what the author is attempting to say.  God has not given us the Scriptures to be a book that is impossible to interpret.  Granted there are sincere Christians who interpret certain passages very differently.  Yet Christianity has be a blessing for two thousand years because there has been plenty of agreement on the central doctrines of the Bible.
   Even "Revelation," which has so much symbolism that it is in a literary realm of its own, is not an allegory. The key Person is God. And angels, creatures, and people are described as worshipping God, with direct quotes given, throughout the book. God, the folks, and the worshipping are not symbolic, rather the great end all in the midst of the final tribulation on earth, which is described with much symbolism within a "vision."
   When studying for my first degree at Virginia Tech, during spring quarter of my junior year in 1988, I took an English class called "Fantasy Literature." The professor was a woman who was extremely nice and very encouraging to dedicated students. I really liked her. I learned in that class that even though some academically renowned fictional literature can be what I would classify as bizarre, there are still literary boundaries. Pieces were never part "fairy tale" and part "historical fiction" for example.
   One May when I attended the annual Colorado Christian Writer's Conference at the YMCA at Estes Park, I attended a panel of writers who took questions from the attendees. One of the writers was a Jewish Christian woman who was a screenwriter in California. In answering a question, she stated how combining "non-fiction" with an allegory within a script is something that is never accepted.
No part of Genesis is an allegory, though there could possibly be a metaphor with the term "day." 2 Peter 3:8 states: "...With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day" (NIV). Whenever there is symbolism in the Bible, we need to discover what that symbolism is representing, understanding that it was given for a reason. Praise be to God that He was not trying to be elusive.
Hunter Irvine