But allegorical narratives are frequently left to explain themselves, especially when the resemblance between the immediate and ultimate representation is sufficiently apparent to make an explanation un necessary. Of this kind we cannot have a more striking example than that beautiful one contained in the Both Psalm: Thou broughtest a vine out of Egypt,' etc.
The use of allegorical interpretation is not, how ever, confined to mere allegory, or fictitious narra tives, but is extended also to history, or real narratives. And in this case the grammatical meaning of a passage is called its historical mean ing, in contradistinction to its allegorical meaning. There are two different modes in which Scripture history has been thus allegorized. According to one mode, facts and circumstances, especially those recorded in the Old Testament, have been applied to other facts and circumstances, of which they have been described as representative. According to the other mode, these facts and circumstances have been described as mere emblems. The former mode is warranted by the practice of the sacred writers themselves; for when facts and circumstances are so applied, they are applied as types of those things to which the application is made. But the latter
mode of allegorical interpretation has no such authority in its favour, though attempts have been made to procure such authority. For the same things are there described not as types or as real facts, but as mere ideal representations, like the immediate representations in allegory. By this mode, therefore, history is not treated as allegory, but converted into allegory. That this mode of interpretation cannot claim the sanction of St. Paul, from his treatment of the history of Isaac and Ishmael, has already been shewn : the considera tion, however, of the allegorical modes of dealing with the real histories of Scripture is a different subject from that of allegories and their interpreta tion, and belongs to another place (Lowth, De Sac. Foes. Heb. Pr. so ;. Davidson, Sacred Hermen. p. 305). [INTERPRETATION, BTBLICAL.]-j. K.