Allegory in the Bible by David E. Teubner

The public has been befuddled for centuries concerning the Bible and its various stories. Today the Genesis story, for example, seems implausible from a scientific perspective. Yet, I suggest (along with others) that the stories in the Old Testament should not be taken literally, but are best understood as allegory. The Ancients (for example, the Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, the  ancient Americans) knew the allegories very well and embedded their esoteric knowledge into narratives for safekeeping. The written language had yet to be systematized, thus a narrative was an excellent way to communicate to the culture at large the beliefs of the shamans or the priests.

My goal, in this short paper, is to discuss some biblical stories as allegory, not history, and see if they can speak to us today. What insights were the Ancients attempting to communicate and preserve? First, let us explore what the word Allegory means.

What is an Allegory…

The dictionary describes an allegory as the representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition).

There are many secular examples of allegory, from John Bunyan's, Pilgrim's Progress to Herman Melville's, Moby Dick. More recently, the movie The Matrix, presented a powerful allegory about a young man in a dead-end job who gets an "inkling" and follows it through, discovering his inner strength in the process.

A more playful example of an allegory is Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack is the hero of the allegory. Jack takes a chance on a promise made by an old man Jack meets on the way to the market. You see, Jack was going to the market to sell his mother's last possession, the family cow. But the old man captured Jack's imagination concerning some magic beans. The boy decides to sell his cow to the old man for the magic beans. Later, upon returning home with his "bounty" Jack's mother is furious and sends Jack to bed without dinner. The mother throws the beans out the kitchen window in disgust. Yet, in the morning when Jack awakes, he finds an enormous beanstalk just outside his bedroom window. He immediately starts to climb it...

The Bible as Allegory...

So if the Bible is allegorical after all, and not necessarily historical, what are the ideas and principles that are being described in it? Let us take a whirlwind tour through the Old Testament and explore the text as allegory and not history.

The ancients believed in a dualistic (two-part) aspect of the divinity. The female was know as the Void, Mother, Matter (mater, in Latin) Water or Mary and was seen as the Cosmos. It was believed that the male part of the divinity could not interact directly with the female because the male was thought to be Eternal and Unchangeable. Thus, many ancient myths, describe the god as "sending his seed" or "sending his breath" to effect the Void (the Mother). Other myths talk about the male aspect of the divinity being cut up or fragmented, in effect, planted like a seed into the Material, feminine Void. (see Genesis Explained for more about the creation story).

For reasons that will not be fully explained here, some ancient people believed that the male divine impulse was shattered into fragments (the Big Bang?). These fragments fell through the seven celestial spheres, each of the seven spheres polluting the soul in some way. As a result of decending through the spheres, the fragments became forgetful of their heavenly home. They became "polluted" as they passed through the spheres and entered human (animal) bodies.

As a result, humans became forgetful of their divine inheritance. This divine inheritance was the spark that made us divine, the mixture of breath (Father) and material (Mother). (The pattern, or papa that was laid on the material, mama.)

The Ancients symbolized our very own human body as EGYPT. Egypt was the metaphor for human life as incarnate in an material body. Our bodies contained something divine, planted in effect, in a material (clay) vessel.

Therefore, allegorically speaking, Egypt became the land of bitterness and slavery, the land of forgetfulness:

[The Egyptians] made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly. Exodus 1:14

The divine sparks were embedded into the female yet lost their memory of their true source. (The result of the deity being "torn asunder" is what Buddhist call Forgetfulness, or Ignorance.) Who will awaken the forgetful, slumbering sparks of the divine male-force that has been hidden in the female? For the Israelites it was Moses.

Out of Egypt and the story of Moses...

Egypt became a "glyph" or metaphor for the divine sparks living in an animal body, that is, in the human breast. Humans needed to be reminded, so the allegory states, of their original home. That home was symbolized as the Promised Land or Jerusalem. In this land there is rest, a land flowing with milk and honey.

These descriptions are allegorical and did not necessarily happen in the historical sense. Nevertheless, they do talk of humanity's unique place in creation and our desire for unification with our Source, namely the Father (we have the mother constantly in the material world, yet the Father is the illusive one, the one we have an inkling for).

So Moses is "sent" by the Father to gather the 12 lost fragments together (the number twelve refers to the 12 houses of the zodiac, which the souls fell through on their way to earth). Moses is sent to remind the 12 tribes of Israel of their true identity. Moses does rescue the 12 legions of the Father and brings them to the Mount of God, that Primordial Hill. There the Israelites receive the instructions of the male aspect of deity and receive specific instructions on how to get back to the Promised Land. The Promised Land is not necessarily a literal place, but an allegorical one which we can touch anytime. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The 12 tribes of Israel represent the 12 initial fragments of the divine that were torn asunder and entered the world as fragments. These 12 tribes had become forgetful and now were being delivered from Egypt (remember, Egypt is a metaphor for the human condition).

Alvin Boyd Kuhn writes in The Lost Light: An Interpretation of Ancient Scripture:

For the god came to earth not in his entirety, not in his single deific unity, but torn into hosts of fragments, grouped in twelve principal divisions. How could he hope to enter every mortal life, to tabernacle in every breast, if he came as one unit? This is just the mistake that Christian doctrinism made, fatal to humanity at large. It is a matter of simple logic. To be the divine guest in every human life he had to suffer fragmentation into as many portions as there were to be mortal children for him to father, in order that each might possess a share of his nature.

You've just read part of one of the 11 Essays available in my book:
Who Told You That You Were Naked?

Get this entire essay plus 10 more by ordering the book "Who Told You That You Were Naked?" This is a great introduction to an alternate reading of Scripture. If you've been troubled by religion or need a positive interpretation of the Bible, this is a must read. Book mailed within a week.
 

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