(B) OF THE WHOLE BIBLE A3IONG CHRISTIANS.
The history of the interpretation of the Bible is in reality the history of the principles which have underlain the study of the Scriptures.
This history is divided into the following stage-; (A) The Patristic Stage; (B) the Reformation Stage: (C) the Alodern Stage. Be tween the Patristic and the Reformation stages what is usually understood as the 31ediaval Age. which, in its spirit, is so largely a con tinuation of Patristic methods as to he in reality a part of that stage. Between the Reformation and the Modern stages lies what is generally known as the Rationalistic Age, which, as a matter of fact, is simply the bridge that carries the Reformation methods over into those which characterize the Modern Stage.
(A) The Patristic Stage.
(a) The early period, represented by Clement of Rome, c.100: the author of the so-called Episi tle of Barnabas. c.120; Justin AIartyr, c.150; and lreineus.
The Bible with which the Fathers began was the Septuagint. which was accepted as directly inspired of God, even when it differed widely from the Hebrew. On this the writings pre served from the Apostolic Age were based, and as they came gradually to be formed into a gen erally accepted group and to be received as them selves inspired, they were placed along with the Septuagint as the comprehensive Bible of the Church. In the Septuagint were included the Apocrypha, which were appealed to as scriptural equally with the other books. Under the ear lier conception of the Church as a spiritual flock, the first use of the Bible was the pastoral and homiletical, followed later, as the Church idea hardened under the rise of heresies, by the doc trinal use. Under both these views, but espe cially under the latter, the prevailing method of interpretation was the allegorical, by which the literal sense of the passage was held not to be its only sense, in fact not its more important sense, but as inferior and subordinate to the hidden, spiritual sense which, as coming more directly from the Holy Spirit, was considered the real object of the interpreter's study.
For this method the early Fathers were not primarily responsible. Indeed, they were hardly conscious of it as a method. It was the gener ally current habit of their day, to which time it had been handed down through Palestinian and Alexandrian Judaism from the Classical Age. It was. however. a method, and one that was sci entifically vicious. as it practically reduced the meaning of Scripture to whatever the interpret er's fancy conceived, or his sense of what was fitting to God determined.
(b) The Alexandrian School, represented par ticularly by Clement of Alexandria, c.200, and Uy Origen, c.185-251.
The interpretation characteristic of this school differed from that of the earlier Fathers simply in its more careful formation of the principles which had been sub-consciously in use by them. It was a process natural and quite inevitable, in view of the scholarship of those who were the leaders in the school: but its only effect was to give a greater definiteness to the allegorical idea and impart to it a further-reaching influence.
(c) The Syrian Schools. (1) The Edessa School, represented by Ephraem Syrus, c.373. (2) The Antioch School, represented by Theo dore of Mopsuestia, c.350-42S.
Contemporaneous with the Alexandrian schol ars had been a group of writers in North Africa (e.g. Tertullian, e.200, and Cyprian, d.258), who, while allegorizing, made much of the literal method. Their position. however, was not in the way of protest against the method at Alex andria. Such protest was reserved for these Syrian schools, which were really the outgrowth of a rising dissatisfaction with the allegorical extremes to which the Alexandrian methods were leading. though their scholarship was inspired by that of Alexandria itself. Their protest voiced itself in the principle that the Scriptures themselves were the basis of knowledge, and not any esoteric gnosis hidden in them. They set themselves, consequently, the task of discovering the actual historical meaning of Scripture.