

My purpose in this post is pretty modest: encouraging everyone to be more careful with the way that they use various terms that are commonly (mis)used when talking about the interpretation of Biblical texts—like “metaphorical,” “allegorical,” etc.

I’ll be using Genesis 1-3 as a sort of example or test case for this.

A sort of overarching term that can be used to encompass several of the following things is figurative. Figurative language includes things like simile and personification. In common usage, “figurative” is often used fairly synonymously with “metaphorical”; however there’s a distinction between them.

A metaphor—at least on a micro level—is “a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar”¹ (even if, on a literal level, the two things are otherwise dissimilar). When Romeo, in Romeo and Juliet, says “Juliet is the sun!”, he’s speaking metaphorically: in actuality, Juliet is nothing like the sun; rather, she figuratively illuminates his life.

The difference between figurative language and metaphor can be best illustrated by saying that while all metaphors are figurative, not everything that’s figurative is specifically a metaphor.

A common claim encountered these days is that the “days” of creation in Genesis 1 are figurative or metaphorical—that the “days” here doesn’t really suggest 24-hour days as we otherwise know them. A common argument here is that because we know that things in the world were formed over billions of years, these “days” must be figurative for longer periods of time.

But there are several problems with this. For one, the laymen usually making this claim are implicitly suggesting that they know how to interpret this ancient Hebrew text better than experts can. Secondly, and more importantly, this is reading the text as if it was intended as a scientific one (that its interpretation must be adjusted to conform to the findings of science).

Because of this, John Walton—the foremost modern scholar who approaches this narrative as non-literal story/mythology, from a Christian perspective—writes that

These are seven twenty-four-hour days. This has always been the best reading of the Hebrew text. Those who have tried to alleviate the tension for the age of the earth commonly suggested that the days should be understood as long eras (the day-age view). This has never been convincing. (The Lost World of Genesis One, 91)

(More on this here—beginning with “Looking at another example…”—and more in a moment; however, moving on for the time being…)

An allegory is often referred to as an “extended metaphor.” George Orwell’s Animal Farm is one of the most well-known examples of this, where one narrative of events or characters is used to represent another set of events or characters, with these often being rather direct counterparts of each other.²

Could any parts of Genesis 1-3 qualify as allegory?

There’s a certain interpretation that Adam and Eve’s transgression within the Garden of Eden, and subsequent expulsion, is thought to be a kind of cipher for the Babylonian exile—the early 6th century BCE capture of a population of the kingdom of Judah, and their deportation to Babylon, which serves as a centerpiece of several later Biblical books.

As superficially compelling as this may be, however, it’s wrought with problems—mostly centering around the lack of elements in the two events/stories plausibly corresponding to each other.³

There’s a better case, though, for at least accepting the presence of certain symbolic resonances in these narratives. Describing some these—especially referring to the work of John Walton, as quoted earlier in the post—Robert Gnuse writes that

John Walton poetically sees parallels between Eden and the Temple: in both there are cherubim, a symbolic tree of life, symbolic flowing rivers of life, an imperative not to touch holy things, and the symbolic understanding that this holy place is the center of the world (Walton 2009:185–89). Ancient Jewish literature from 300 BCE to 200 CE also believed that Eden became the later Temple (Jubilees 8:19; Psalms of Solomon 11:5; 1 Enoch 25:1-5; 4 Ezra 8:52-53). (Misunderstood Stories: Theological Commentary on Genesis 1-11, 68)

Further, speaking of Genesis 1 itself, the scheme of six days of creation and one day of rest is clearly connected with the Sabbatical week, structured identically (even down to the detail that the Sabbath begins at night and extends into the next day—just as the creation days in Genesis 1 are signified by “And there was evening and there was morning, the <n>th day”). This might actually straddle the line between “symbolic resonance” and “etiological,” discussed further below.

If we’re looking for a more overarching category for much of the narrative of Genesis 2-3, though, we could best classify this as (mythological) etiology. An etiology, in this context, is a story that tries to explain the existence of some extant phenomenon in the world by a fanciful—or even whimsical—and transparently fictional past event. This is also known as a pourquoi story: “a fictional narrative that explains why something is the way it is, for example why a snake has no legs, or why a tiger has stripes.”

In fact, Genesis 2-3 has precisely one of these latter elements. As a punishment for deceiving Adam and Eve, God says to the serpent “Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go” (Genesis 3:14). Further—with “Adam” and “Eve” as the representatives of all men and women—the story also explains how humans are not immortal (how they “lost” immortality), and why they must toil in physical labor and suffer labor pains.

In fact, at least the element of the anthropomorphic serpent of the Garden of Eden gives it a certain characteristic of fable—though fables are usually “moralizing,” and the extent to which Genesis 2-3 functions similarly is unclear. In light of this, it would be better to characterize Genesis 2-3, or really 1-3 as a whole, as more generally mythological instead.

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Notes

[1] I’m just using the definition from the Merriam Webster dictionary here.

[2] Cf. also a Roman à clef.

[3] A short analysis of this, with some decent bibliographical references, can be found in John Day’s essay “Problems in the Interpretation of the Story of the Garden of Eden” in From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (cf. the section “Does the Expulsion from Eden Symbolize the Babylonian Exile?”).