When the first centuries of Christian history are surveyed, one of the most important developments is not only what believers confessed, but how they read the Bible to reach those confessions. As the church moved beyond the apostolic age and into the period of Greek apologists, martyrs, and emerging hierarchies, two major interpretive “schools” came to shape Christian thought: Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria.

Both cities were strategic. Each was a center of commerce, culture, and learning in the eastern Roman Empire. Both had significant Jewish populations and long traditions of scriptural study. Yet they approached the Bible in markedly different ways. Alexandria leaned toward allegorical readings that sought hidden spiritual meanings behind the literal text. Antioch stressed the grammatical-historical sense, aiming to understand Scripture in its original context and ordinary meaning.

The conflict between these methods was not a mere academic dispute. It profoundly affected how Christians viewed Christ, the Old Testament, the relationship between Israel and the church, and the nature of salvation. The seeds of later doctrinal debates—especially regarding Christology—were sown in the distinct habits of interpretation cultivated in these two schools.

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Alexandria and the Allegorical Tradition

The City and Its Intellectual Climate

Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, became one of the great intellectual centers of the ancient world. Its famous library and museum attracted philosophers, scientists, and scholars. The city’s population included Greeks, Egyptians, and a large Jewish community, many of whom read the Old Testament in Greek (the Septuagint).

Within this environment, Jewish writers such as Philo of Alexandria had already employed allegory to interpret the Old Testament. Philo, influenced by Greek philosophy, treated many narratives not primarily as historical accounts but as symbolic depictions of the soul’s journey, virtues and vices, or abstract truths. This method allowed him to reconcile biblical language with Platonic metaphysics by moving beyond the literal sense whenever it seemed unworthy of divine majesty.

When Christianity took root in Alexandria, this atmosphere of philosophical synthesis and allegorical interpretation was ready-made. The Alexandrian catechetical school, a center for training Christian teachers, emerged within a culture accustomed to subtle, symbolic exegesis.

Clement of Alexandria and the Baptizing of Allegory

Clement of Alexandria (late second and early third century) stands as one of the earliest major Christian representatives of this tradition. A convert from pagan philosophy, he sought to present Christianity as the true “gnosis” that fulfilled and corrected Greek wisdom.

Clement did not reject the historical reality of Scripture, but he regarded many passages as containing deeper, hidden meanings. For him, the “simpler” believers could remain at the literal level, while the more advanced could penetrate to spiritual insights reserved for the mature. He therefore read Old Testament laws, stories, and even specific numbers as symbols of moral states or spiritual principles.

This approach allowed Clement to find Christian doctrine everywhere in Scripture, yet often at the cost of the text’s original intent. Because he treated the Bible as a vast field of spiritual riddles, the historical context of Israel’s life under the Law, the specific circumstances of prophets and kings, and the plain sense of narratives received less attention.

While Clement affirmed many orthodox doctrines and defended the faith against pagan and Gnostic distortions, his method tilted strongly toward allegory. He passed this hermeneutic preference on to those who followed.

Origen and the Threefold Sense

Origen (early to mid-third century) gave the Alexandrian approach its most influential and sophisticated form. A brilliant scholar, he produced commentaries, homilies, and theological treatises that shaped Eastern and Western thought for generations.

Origen proposed that Scripture, like the human person, has three “parts”: body, soul, and spirit. The “body” is the literal, historical sense; the “soul” is the moral sense; the “spirit” is the higher, mystical meaning that reveals heavenly realities. In his view, Jehovah intentionally included difficulties, oddities, and even apparent impossibilities in the literal narratives to drive readers beyond the surface to the spiritual level.

When Old Testament accounts seemed unworthy of God or hard to reconcile, Origen often resolved the tension by assigning them allegorical meanings. For example, detailed descriptions of Israel’s journeys might become symbols of the soul’s progress toward God; commands about ritual purity might be transformed into metaphors for inner virtues. Events in the life of Israel were routinely treated as pictures of spiritual truths about the church, apart from careful attention to the historical covenant context.

Origen did not deny Christ’s atoning death or bodily resurrection, but his speculative tendencies and reliance on allegory sometimes led him toward questionable conclusions, including concepts about pre-existent souls and eventual restoration of all beings, which later church councils rejected. These doctrinal problems were closely connected to his habit of allowing spiritualized readings to override the straightforward teaching of Scripture.

Later Alexandrians: Athanasius and Cyril

The Alexandrian school did not remain a carbon copy of Origen. Later figures like Athanasius (fourth century) and Cyril of Alexandria (fifth century) were fierce defenders of essential biblical truths, especially the full deity of Christ and the unity of His person. Jehovah used them mightily in the controversies that culminated in the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations.

Yet even these defenders of orthodoxy preached and wrote in a largely Alexandrian manner. Their sermons and commentaries frequently employed spiritualizing interpretations, especially of the Old Testament. References to Israel, the Temple, and Zion were often read as direct figures of the church, not by tracing the historical-grammatical flow of covenants, but by overlaying spiritual parallels.

Cyril’s Christology, while insisting rightly on the one person of Christ, sometimes tended toward blending the two natures in ways that later leaned into monophysite tendencies. Part of this came from reading Old Testament passages through a lens that favored overarching spiritual themes over careful textual distinctions.

Thus, even where Alexandrian theologians upheld crucial truths, the hermeneutical habits of allegory and spiritualization remained strong. The method itself, not merely isolated conclusions, represented a significant departure from the historical-grammatical way in which the apostles had used Scripture.

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Antioch and the Grammatical-Historical Approach

Antioch: A Missionary and Exegetical Center

Antioch in Syria, located on the Orontes River, was one of the earliest and most important centers of Christian life. Here believers were first called “Christians.” From Antioch, missionaries like Paul and Barnabas were sent out to bring the gospel to the Gentile world. The city hosted a vibrant congregation that included both Jews and Gentiles, making it a natural context for careful reflection on Scripture.

By the late third and early fourth centuries, an exegetical tradition had grown in Antioch that consciously resisted the allegorical extremes associated with Alexandria. Teachers there emphasized the literal sense—the meaning conveyed by words in their historical and grammatical setting. They did not deny that Scripture reveals profound spiritual truths, but they insisted that such truths arise from the text as written, not from imaginative reinterpretation.

Diodore of Tarsus and the Defense of History

Diodore of Tarsus, active in the latter half of the fourth century, is often considered a founder of the Antiochene school. He taught that God’s revelation unfolds within real historical events and that the chief task of the interpreter is to grasp the “history” (historia) of the text.

Where Alexandrians were quick to treat Old Testament narratives as symbolic stories pointing beyond themselves, Diodore insisted that they first be understood as records of Jehovah’s acts with Israel. Only after establishing the historical meaning could one consider how a passage bears on Christian doctrine or conduct. He warned that uncontrolled allegory produces interpretations limited only by the imagination of the expositor rather than by the intention of the Spirit speaking through the human author.

Diodore did make room for a category he called theoria, a kind of prophetic or typological significance in which events or institutions in the Old Testament foreshadowed future realities. But he sought to tether this to the historical sense rather than floating free in allegorical speculation.

Theodore of Mopsuestia and Literal Exegesis

Theodore of Mopsuestia, a student of Diodore, became perhaps the most prominent exponent of Antiochene exegesis. He produced extensive commentaries on many books of Scripture. His work is characterized by close attention to grammar, context, and the flow of argument.

Theodore opposed reading Christ into every verse of the Old Testament by allegory. He distinguished between prophecies that directly foretold the Messiah and passages that spoke first of Israel’s historical circumstances. Some later critics accused him of downplaying messianic prophecy, but his concern was to avoid arbitrary spiritualizing.

He emphasized that Jehovah’s promises to Israel must be understood in their own covenant setting. While he believed that Christ fulfills God’s plan and that the church benefits from the promises, he resisted collapsing Israel and the church into a single, indistinct entity by allegory.

Theodore’s Christology stressed the real humanity of Jesus. In reacting against overly spiritualized depictions of Christ that seemed to absorb His humanity into His deity, Theodore spoke strongly of the distinction between Christ’s human and divine natures. Some later interpreters accused him of dividing Christ into two persons, feeding into the Nestorian controversy. Yet his central concern was to guard the integrity of Christ’s human nature.

John Chrysostom and Expository Preaching

Another towering Antiochene figure is John Chrysostom (“Golden-Mouthed”), whose sermons and homilies on Scripture are among the finest examples of early expository preaching. Trained in the Antiochene tradition, Chrysostom sought to explain the text clearly and apply it directly to his hearers’ lives.

His sermons move verse by verse, expounding grammar, context, and practical implications. He uses illustrations and moral exhortation, but he avoids allegorical flights that ignore the passage’s literal sense. When he interprets Old Testament narratives, he emphasizes the reality of the events and the ethical lessons they teach, rather than transforming them into symbolic stories about the soul’s ascent.

Chrysostom’s approach closely resembles what later conservative evangelicals call the historical-grammatical method. He assumes that the primary meaning of Scripture is the one intended by the human author under inspiration of the Spirit, understood in its original context. Any secondary or exemplary applications must flow from, not replace, that meaning.

In this way, the Antiochene school preserved a hermeneutic that stands much nearer to the apostles’ own use of Scripture than the allegorical tendencies of Alexandria.

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Differing Methods of Interpretation

Literal Sense Versus Multiple Senses

At the heart of the difference between Alexandria and Antioch lies the question of how many “senses” Scripture has. The Alexandrian tradition often spoke of several levels: literal, moral, and spiritual (and later in the West, an added “anagogical” sense). These levels were treated almost as separate meanings stacked upon one another.

If the literal sense seemed problematic, trivial, or unworthy, it could be bypassed in favor of the higher, spiritual sense. This allowed interpreters great freedom but loosened the tether to the inspired words as given. It encouraged the idea that Scripture’s deepest message lies not in what it plainly says but in a hidden meaning accessible only to skilled allegorists.

The Antiochene school, by contrast, insisted that Scripture has one main meaning in each passage: the literal or historical sense. Moral and theological lessons must be derived from that meaning, not invented apart from it. Where the New Testament identifies Old Testament events as foreshadowing Christ, that theoria is seen as an extension of the literal, not a contradiction of it.

From a conservative evangelical perspective anchored in the historical-grammatical method, the Antiochene insistence on a single primary sense accords far better with the nature of language and with the way Jesus and the apostles treated Scripture.

Treatment of Old Testament Narratives and Prophecy

These differing methods showed themselves especially in handling the Old Testament.

In Alexandria, almost any detail could become a symbol. The two coins of the Good Samaritan, the four rivers of Eden, the measurements of the ark, or the names of patriarchs were all pressed into service as spiritual signs. Israel’s wars might be turned into pictures of the soul’s struggles; the promised land became an image of heavenly contemplation. While some applications were edifying in a broad moral sense, they often ignored the historical reality that these texts described Jehovah’s concrete dealings with His covenant people and His unfolding plan of redemption.

In Antioch, commentators insisted on reading narratives as genuine history with specific purposes. When they considered typological connections, they sought support from explicit New Testament teaching or from clear, broad patterns rather than from incidental details. They were cautious in treating Old Testament prophecies as direct predictions of Christ unless the text itself or apostolic testimony warranted it.

In issues like the interpretation of the Song of Songs, the difference was stark. Alexandrians typically treated the book as an elaborate allegory of Christ and the church or of the soul’s love for God, with little attention to its plain celebration of marital love. Antiochenes saw it first as poetry about human marriage, from which godly lessons could be drawn without denying its original subject.

View of Israel and the Church

Because the Alexandrian method easily blurred historical distinctions, it lent itself to the idea that the church replaced or absorbed Israel in such a way that Old Testament promises to Israel became primarily spiritual descriptions of the church. This tendency contributed to a supersessionist outlook that paid little attention to Jehovah’s ongoing purposes for ethnic Israel.

The Antiochene school, by emphasizing the historical particularity of the Old Testament, tended more naturally to see Israel as a real nation with a genuine covenant role in God’s plan. Even when they lacked a fully developed premillennial understanding, their method left more room for recognizing that promises given to Israel are not simply emptied of their historical reference and reapplied in a purely spiritual form.

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The Impact on Christology and Exegesis

Alexandrian Unity and the Danger of Confusion

In Christology, the Alexandrian school’s inclination to see ubiquitous spiritual parallels fed a strong insistence on the unity of Christ’s person. Since they often read the Old Testament through a lens that saw Christ everywhere and tended to blur earthly and heavenly aspects, they stressed that in Jesus the divine and human are profoundly one.

Athanasius, defending the full deity of the Son against Arian denial, emphasized that the same Jesus who died on the cross is Jehovah’s eternal Word made flesh. Cyril of Alexandria, opposing Nestorian tendencies, insisted that Mary is rightly called “Mother of God” in the sense that the One she bore is the incarnate Word. He stressed that we must not divide Christ into two acting subjects.

These emphases were crucial in safeguarding the confession that Christ is truly God and truly man in one person. Yet Alexandrian theology sometimes expressed the unity in ways that risked confusion of the two natures. Certain later followers spoke as if Christ’s humanity were almost swallowed up by His deity, leading toward monophysite positions where the distinction of natures after the incarnation was obscured. The allegorical habit of merging earthly and heavenly meanings made it more difficult to articulate clearly how Christ can be fully divine and fully human without mixture.

Antiochene Distinction and the Danger of Division

The Antiochene school, with its concrete, historical focus, naturally emphasized Christ’s genuine humanity. Jesus of Nazareth, they stressed, is a real man who grew, learned, was tempted (yet without sin), and obeyed the Father. In interpreting Gospel narratives, they took seriously the limitations Jesus accepted in His earthly life.

This healthy concern sometimes led certain Antiochene theologians to speak of Christ’s human and divine natures in a way that made it sound as though there were two persons joined in a moral union. Theodore of Mopsuestia’s language, for example, was later criticized for giving the impression of two subjects—one human, one divine—acting together.

Nestorius, later patriarch of Constantinople and influenced by Antiochene thought, resisted calling Mary “Mother of God,” fearing it compromised Christ’s humanity. In his preaching, he made distinctions that sounded as though he separated Christ’s two natures into two acting persons. Whether he personally intended a full Nestorian division is debated, but the controversy showed how Antiochene stress on distinction, without adequate balancing language about personal unity, could be misheard or misused.

Chalcedon: A Doctrinal Middle Line, Not a Hermeneutical Merge

The Council of Chalcedon (451 C.E.) sought to draw a boundary that preserved both Alexandrian and Antiochene concerns while rejecting their extremes. It confessed one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation.

Yet even after Chalcedon, the underlying hermeneutical difference remained. Alexandrians continued to favor spiritualizing exegesis; Antiochenes remained committed to literal interpretation. The doctrinal formula provided a fence for Christology, but it did not fully resolve the tension between the two methods of reading Scripture.

From a conservative evangelical standpoint that embraces the historical-grammatical method and the Chalcedonian confession, the best elements of both schools can be appreciated: Alexandria’s firm insistence on Christ’s deity and the unity of His person, and Antioch’s emphasis on His genuine humanity and on careful exegesis. Yet the hermeneutical path that most faithfully follows the apostles is clearly that of Antioch.

Influence on Later Exegesis

The Alexandrian approach, especially through Origen and later through Augustine in the Latin West, heavily influenced medieval interpretation. The fourfold sense of Scripture—literal, allegorical, moral, anagogical—became standard in many commentaries. While some literal work was done, much preaching and teaching focused on spiritual meanings detached from historical context.

The Antiochene tradition, though overshadowed at times, did not disappear. Chrysostom’s homilies continued to be read and admired. In the long run, the Reformers and later conservative evangelicals would recover many Antiochene instincts, seeking to return to the plain sense of Scripture and to the historical-grammatical method.

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The Legacy of Two Competing Traditions

The Long Shadow of Alexandria

The Alexandrian school left a deep imprint on Christian imagination. Its allegorical readings, especially as transmitted through Latin writers influenced by Origen and Augustine, shaped medieval preaching, hymnody, and spirituality. Many believers learned to read the Old Testament almost entirely as a coded book of figures for New Testament realities, often with little awareness of its own covenant setting.

This legacy had mixed results. On the one hand, the constant Christological reading of Scripture reminded believers that the Bible is a unified revelation centered on God’s saving work through His Son. On the other hand, it weakened confidence in the sufficiency of the literal sense, encouraged fanciful interpretations, and prepared the ground for later abuses where ecclesiastical tradition could dominate over the actual text.

Even today, forms of spiritualizing interpretation rooted in Alexandrian habits remain attractive. They promise quick, exciting insights, allowing interpreters to bypass careful study of grammar, history, and context. Yet this very attraction reveals the danger: when the discipline of the literal sense is abandoned, the authority of Scripture is quietly replaced by the creativity of the commentator.

The Quiet Endurance of Antioch

The Antiochene tradition’s influence was quieter but enduring. Its insistence that the Bible must be read as coherent discourse in human languages, in real history, anticipates the historical-grammatical method embraced by faithful conservative scholarship today.

When the Reformers challenged medieval allegory, they echoed Antioch. When later evangelical expositors move verse by verse through a passage, explaining context and doctrine, they walk in the path of Chrysostom more than in the path of Origen. When sound doctrine is built by tracing the intended meaning of texts rather than by accumulating symbolic readings, the spirit of Antioch is at work.

This does not mean that Antiochene interpreters were without fault. Some of their Christological expressions needed correction. Some did not perceive the full extent of prophetic connections that later study, guided by the completed canon, can recognize. But their core hermeneutical conviction—that Jehovah’s Word is given in normal human language to be understood in its ordinary sense—is essential for maintaining biblical authority.

Lessons for Today

The story of Alexandria and Antioch offers crucial lessons for the church in every age.

First, method matters. A congregation can affirm orthodox creeds yet slowly drift if its way of reading Scripture allows tradition or imagination to overrule the text. Allegorizing may sometimes seem pious, but it subtly shifts authority from Jehovah’s Word to human interpretation.

Second, Christ-centered reading must not be separated from historical-grammatical accuracy. The New Testament itself shows how to read the Old Testament in light of Christ: by recognizing fulfilled prophecies, typological patterns rooted in history, and the unfolding of God’s plan. This is very different from free allegory that ignores the original meaning.

Third, academic sophistication does not guarantee faithfulness. Both schools existed in learned cities and boasted brilliant teachers. Yet the measure of their usefulness lies not in their philosophical skill but in how closely they adhered to the inspired Scriptures.

For believers who accept the Bible as the inerrant, infallible Word of God, breathed out by Jehovah and preserved with remarkable accuracy, the path forward is clear. We must embrace a grammatical-historical method that seeks the author’s intended meaning, relies on the Spirit’s work through the Word rather than through independent “inner voices,” and resists the allure of allegorical shortcuts.

When Christ returns before the thousand-year reign, He will not judge us by how ingenious our symbolic interpretations were, but by whether we heard and obeyed what He actually said in Scripture. The Alexandrian and Antiochene schools, standing side by side in early Christian history, remind us that faithfulness is found not in cleverness but in humble submission to the plain sense of Jehovah’s Word.

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