Origen, a church father of the 5th century, was the king of allegory. He believed in three levels of meaning: literal, moral, and spiritual, which was the most important. One example is his interpretation of the parable of Good Samaritan, which he assigns new meanings to the various people, places, and objects of the parable.

The man who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the Law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience, the beast is the Lord’s body, the [inn], which accepts all who wish to enter, is the Church. … The manager of the [inn] is the head of the Church, to whom its care has been entrusted. And the fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Savior’s second coming.

But he did not stop here. He used this hermeneutic in the Old Testament as well. He took the exodus of the children of Israel and saw it as an allegory of the Christian life. Thus leaving Egypt is the initial salvation of the believer and then crossing over the Jordan river into the promise land as going into heaven.

I find it interesting that many of the spirituals seem to come from this interpretation of Scripture. In the midst of the slavery of early America, the slaves passed on their theology through song and they seemed to view their lives as traveling through the wilderness and they lived with the hope that one day they would “cross over Jordan” and enter the Promised Land (heaven). Note some of the song titles:

• Wings over Jordan
• Roll Jordan Roll
• Get Away Jordan
• On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand

I find it interesting to see the allegorical interpretation of Origen in the 2nd century so embedded into Christianity through the centuries. We even talk about going through the wilderness in some of our language today.

This idea is not too far off track as the wilderness or desert is typically viewed as symbolically representing a time of testing. For Israel was tested in the wilderness (Deut. 8:2) and Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1) and Jeremiah uses the analogy of the dry desert verses the lush land as a portrayal of a wicked life verses a righteous life.

Anyway, the more I study the history of the church, the more I see many seeds of modern Christianity planted in prior centuries. It’s really fascinating.