The great early master in this evolution of allegory, for the
satisfaction of Jews and Christians, was Philo: by him its use
came in as never before. The four streams of the garden of Eden
thus become the four virtues; Abraham's country and kindred, from
which he was commanded to depart, the human body and its members;
the five cities of Sodom, the five senses; the Euphrates,
correction of manners. By Philo and his compeers even the most
insignificant words and phrases, and those especially, were held to
conceal the most precious meanings.
A perfectly natural and logical result of this view was reached
when Philo, saturated as he was with Greek culture and nourished on
pious traditions of the utterances at Delphi and Dodona, spoke
reverently of the Jewish Scriptures as "_oracles_". Oracles they became:
as oracles they appeared in the early history of the Christian Church;
and oracles they remained for centuries: eternal life or death,
infinite happiness or agony, as well as ordinary justice in this world,
being made to depend on shifting interpretations of a long series
of dark and doubtful utterances--interpretations frequently given
by men who might have been prophets and apostles, but who had
become simply oracle-mongers.
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