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Updated: July 2, 2025
They lived at a time when it had been proved that that movement led away from Judaism, and its main tenets had been adopted or perverted by an antagonistic creed. It was a tragic necessity which compelled the severance between the Eastern and Western developments of the religion. In Philo's day the breach was already threatened, through the anti-legal tendencies of the extreme allegorists.
They display the almost unbounded resources of genius and invention so richly possessed by the prince of allegorists, John Bunyan. It reminds us of the dialogue between Lucifer and Beelzebub, in that rare work by Barnardine Ochine, a reformer, published in 1549, called, A Tragedy or Dialogue of the unjust usurped Primacy of the Bishop of Rome.
Let us now listen now to Philo: "The raiment of the priest is altogether a representation and imitation of the universe, and its parts are the parts of the other. It is true that the symbolism of two allegorists is varied, but a common spirit and aim underlie their interpretations. This is true alike of their account of the ritualistic and civil law of Moses.
These sentiments do honour to the head and heart of the prince of allegorists, and should be presented in letters of gold to every candidate for church fellowship. A young man entertaining such opinions as these, however rude his former conduct, being born again to spiritual enjoyments, would become a treasure to the Christian society with which he might be connected.
Had he written only "Faust," he would be the first of philosophic poets. Had he written only "Hermann and Dorothea," the sweetest idyllist; if only the "Märchen," the subtlest of allegorists. Had he written never a verse, but only prose, he would hold the highest place among the prose-writers of Germany.
It must not be put down to the fault of the Septuagint or the allegorists or Philo that the Alexandrian development of Judaism led on to Roman Christianity.
Allegorists and high-minded philosophers might make Athena entirely noble by concentrating their minds on the beautiful elements in the tradition, and forgetting or explaining away all that was savage; he was determined to pin her down to the worst facts recorded of her, and let people worship such a being if they liked!
At length critics condescended to inquire where the secret of so wide and so durable a popularity lay. They were compelled to own that the ignorant multitude had judged more correctly than the learned, and that the despised little book was really a masterpiece. Bunyan is indeed as decidedly the first of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakspeare the first of dramatists.
Both passages deserve quotation, since they mark the fundamental contrast between Philo and non-Jewish allegorists of the law. He shows first how each of the virtues is marred by excess in either direction; virtue in fact, according to the Aristotelian formula, is "a mean."
18 'To the Greeks. Bunyan in this follows the Puritan translation. The word 'Greeks' is in the margin of the authorized Bible. Ed. 19 This is a most beautiful passage, unequalled by any ancient or modern author. Such a view of church fellowship does honour to the head and heart of the prince of allegorists.
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