Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria

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University of California Press, Apr 28, 2023 - Literary Criticism - 356 pages
Allegorical readings of literary or religious texts always begin as counterreadings, starting with denial or negation, challenging the literal sense: "You have read the text this way, but I will read it differently." David Dawson insists that ancient allegory is best understood not simply as a way of reading texts, but as a way of using non-literal readings to reinterpret culture and society. Here he describes how some ancient pagan, Jewish, and Christian interpreters used allegory to endorse, revise, and subvert competing Christian and pagan world views.

This reassessment of allegorical reading emphasizes socio-cultural contexts rather than purely formal literary features, opening with an analysis of the pagan use of etymology and allegory in the Hellenistic world and pagan opposition to both techniques. The remainder of the book presents three Hellenistic religious writers who each typify distinctive models of allegorical interpretation: the Jewish exegete Philo, the Christian Gnostic Valentinus, and the Christian Platonist Clement. The study engages issues in the fields of classics, history of Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism, literary criticism and theory, and more broadly, critical theory and cultural criticism.

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Contents

Pagan Etymology and Allegory
23
Ancient Myth and Stoic Etymology
24
Reading Homer as an Allegorical Poet
38
Oppoisition to Etymology and Allegory
52
PHILO THE REINSCRIPTION OF REALITY
73
Jewish Allegory and Hellenism
74
Representation and Textualization
83
The World within the Text
113
CLEMENT THE NEW SONG OF THE Logos
183
Logos Theology as Allegorical Hermeneutic
186
The Antecedent Voice of Cultural Classics
199
Sectarianism and Dometicated Gnōsis
219
AFTERWORD
235
NOTES
241
BIBLIOGRAPHY
297
GENERAL INDEX
319

VALENTINUS THE APOCALYPSE OF THE MIND
127
Allegorical Interpretation as Composition
129
Mystical Vision and Allegorical Revision
145
Christian Initiation and the History Within
170
SCRIPTURE PASSAGES CITED
333
ANCIENT PASSAGES CITED
335
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About the author (2023)

David Dawson is Assistant Professor of Religion at Haverford College.

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