From: "Stevan Davies" <miser17@epix.net>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Date:          Mon, 16 Feb 1998 19:25:37 +0000
Subject:       Re: Definitions of Allegory

> From:          "Mark Goodacre"
 > John Drury has the following definition: "a concatenation of symbolic
> persons, places, things and happenings, which signifies a parallel
> concatenation in the actual world" (*Parables in the Gospels: History
> and Allegory* (London: SPCK, 1985), p. 5).

Yeah. I like that one a lot. Bill Arnal has hinted that for one to 
know that a text is doing this one really should be able to point to 
places where the text says it's doing this. Then (as with the virgins
in Matthew) one can move forward to infer that the text is also doing
it in similar places where the text does not explicitly say it's 
doing this. 

A. If a text says some parables are allegories
B. Then you can infer that similar parables are probably allegories
C. Although even then you are not entitled to infer that all parables
in that text are allegories

but

A. If a text does not say that some parables are allegories
B. Then you cannot infer that any parables are allegories.

By which I mean that it is entirely possible that some texts contain
parables that are not allegories and other texts contain the same
parables that are allegories, depending on whether the author of the 
text in question does in fact allegorize. 

I would like to have given an example of an allegorical parable
that we can be confident that Jesus meant as an allegory.
I'd not be terribly surprised to find one, but I can't think of one.

Steve