If you have ever had a conversation with your friends, family, or colleagues about reading the Bible, you may have heard at least one person in your life say, “The Bible isn’t meant to be taken literally”, or “The Bible is just a lot of allegory and parables.” Or some of your more scholarly acquaintances may even point out how they learned that Jesus was” just a wise teacher”, and that the Gospels are just myths that have a similar, big picture meaning to pagan myths or divine messengers from other established religions.
Yes, those are certainly some ways to explore allegory. And we cannot deny that there are symbolic truths in many stories throughout the world, ancient to present. Carl Jung, the famous depth psychologist during the 20th century, once wrote: “Myth is preeminently a social phenomenon: It is told by the many and heard by the many.”
Jung wrote so extensively on this subject, that I could write a book about his books! A lot of ground to cover! In short, though, Jung was ultra-fascinated with allegory and myth in stories, and he centered much of his research around archetypes. For example, the hero archetype, which is the bread and butter of most stories throughout the world, is central to understanding a story’s metaphors and allegories.
For instance, here is one way Jung summed up the importance of the hero archetype and how it relates to conquering what we Catholics refer to as sin: “He is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterward that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the ‘treasure hard to attain’”.
In other words, allegory is frequently a staple in storytelling. One famous example is the book, Animal Farm by George Orwell: The central problem between the animals on the farm is, in an allegorical way, points to what can happen to society when a pernicious ideology rises to power.
Another great example – and which intentionally uses allegory about Christ to show the allegory of Christ revealed in the Gospels (yes, a little mind-bending) – is The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
Yet when we talk about allegory in the Bible, and according to Catholic Christian teaching, we are not just talking about the moral of the story, or lessons that turn into meme-like, self-help platitudes: The major allegories throughout the Bible are typologies that point to Christ’s death and resurrection – and, ultimately, our salvation.
In 117 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church explains the allegorical sense in the following way, and includes an example: “We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christ’s baptism.”
And so that we have our definition in order about typology, Catechism 128 – 130 describes it as follows, and including how it unites the Old and New Testaments:
128 – The Church, as early as apostolic times, and then constantly in her Tradition, has illuminated the unity of the divine plan in the two Testaments through typology, which discerns in God’s works of the Old Covenant prefigurations of what he accomplished in the fullness of time in the person of his incarnate Son.
129 – Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen. Such typological reading discloses the inexhaustible content of the Old Testament; but it must not make us forget that the Old Testament retains its own intrinsic value as Revelation reaffirmed by our Lord himself. Besides, the New Testament has to be read in the light of the Old. Early Christian catechesis made constant use of the Old Testament. As an old saying put it, the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.
130 – Typology indicates the dynamic movement toward the fulfillment of the divine plan when “God [will] be everything to everyone.” Nor do the calling of the patriarchs and the exodus from Egypt, for example, lose their own value in God’s plan, from the mere fact that they were intermediate stages.
That said, allegories in the Bible have powerfully transcendental messages about Christ. That is because each “type” revealed in the Bible ultimately represents Christ. It’s as I have heard explained throughout my Catholic journey, and even as I have explained in past videos: If you read the entire Bible as God’s ultimate Covenant – salvation through Jesus Christ – the allegories show the relationships to this crucial message.
Which leads to an important point as you read the Bible: We are also not just talking about prophecies in the Old Testament that Christ fulfilled. Sure, prophecies contain allegory as well, and they have a key relationship with the Gospels.
However, it is just as important to recognize the central figures in the Old Testament, whose own Divinely appointed missions were allegorical mirrors to Christ. Hence one of the reasons why Jesus is referred to as the “new Moses”, or the “new Adam”, or the “new Elijah”, and so on. Jesus *is* the new *Covenant*. He fulfills the prior Covenants; and through his sacrifice and resurrection, He establishes a final, everlasting Covenant with humanity.
Therefore — and as Mark Shea points out in Making Senses Out of Scripture – the image of Christ is in the story of Jacob and the ladder of angels. The wedding at Cana, in the Gospel of John, represents Christ wedding to His bride, the Church. When God says to the serpent in Genesis 3:15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; they will strike at your head while you strike at their heel”, this a rich allegory, as it points to Mary giving birth to Christ, who then conquers the serpent/sin through his sacrifice and resurrection.
The links below have many more examples!
https://www.catholic.com/qa/a-primer-on-biblical-typology
https://www.catholicfaithandreason.org/understanding-bible-typology.html