I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world—Psalm 78:2

Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable—Matthew 13:34

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself—Luke 24:27

Discussion: Matthew 13:34 says that Jesus “did not say anything . . . without using a parable.” We all know that a parable is a simple story that can be read on two levels. The parable of the sower, for instance, is about a farmer who sows seeds on different types of soil. That’s one level of the parable. Jesus then interprets the parable to mean that the different types of soil are the different ways that people will receive the teachings that Jesus “sows.” That is the symbolic meaning of the parable. Matthew 13:34 says that everything Jesus said was a parable. Can the same be said of the whole Bible? What if the whole Bible were a parable? Or another way to see it, what if the meaning of the Bible is found more in mythic resonances, and less in the historicity of it? The Bible is rich with archetypical imagery such as light and darkness, mountain-top revelations, spiritual warfare, sacred genealogies, and rituals of purity. Myth can help us understand the very problematic passage of Luke 24:27. The Gospel writer says that Jesus explained how “all the scriptures” talked about himself. Christianity recognizes that certain Psalms and certain passages in Isaiah appear to predict Christ’s life and mission. But the Luke passage says that “all the scriptures”—not just a few Psalms and passages from Isaiah—speak about Christ’s life. Thus the creation story, the patriarchs, the sacrifices, the battles, the kings, the genealogies, the prophets—all these things are about Jesus’ life, according to Luke 24:27. A most challenging point, indeed! Perhaps the great theologian Thomas Aquinas can shed light on this difficult passage. Thomas Aquinas holds that the Bible can be understood in two ways. One way is the plain, literal meaning of the words; the other is a figurative, symbolic meaning for the words. “The creator of things . . . cannot only signify anything by words, but can also make one thing signify another. That is why the scriptures contain a two-fold truth, one lies in the things meant by the words used—that is the literal sense. The other in the way things become figures of other things and in this consists the spiritual sense.” This is essentially what a parable is. The farmer sowing seeds is the literal sense of the story; the reception of Christ’s teachings is the spiritual sense of the story. Thomas Aquinas asserts that the whole Bible is a parable, with a literal and a spiritual sense. In order for the Old Testament stories to be about Jesus’ life, as Luke asserts, then they must have another meaning that lies beneath the literal sense, a meaning that describes Jesus’ life: its spiritual sense. Psalm 78 suggests this very point, “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.” Those “hidden things” are the inner sense of the Bible stories that talk about the life of Jesus. This inner sense is the Bible’s symbolic quality in which the stories are images about the inner and outer life of Jesus.

Jesus is said to be fully man and fully God. So in his humanity, Jesus went through the full depths of human experience. That means that he experienced everything we will. So when the symbols in the Bible speak about Jesus’ humanity, they would also speak about our own inner and outer life. According to the great scholar of myth, Dr. Joseph Campbell, mythic symbols image forth the great stages of human growth—the transition from childhood to adulthood, finding a place in the tribe or modern city, conjoining with another person in intimate relationships such as marriage, looking back on life in old age, understanding the meaning of death. These great passages involve the whole self, including emotions, conscious understanding, sub-conscious intuitions, thoughts about eternity, conceptions of the infinite Creator—issues that transcend discursive language. In order to speak to the whole person, myth uses a language composed of symbols much like dreams, which mediate conscious, waking life, with the emotional and sub-conscious movements of our whole being.

Understood as a set of mythic symbols, the Bible would be pregnant with spiritual meaning—much, much more meaning than we would find if the Bible stories are understood merely as historical facts. So the historical details in the Old Testament, the lists of genealogies, the different kings, all those bloody battles, and all the slaughter of tribes in the ancient near east, all these apparently historical details, and, in fact, barbaric behaviors, would be mythic symbols that speak to our inner spiritual progress. The Bible, then, is not in conflict with science, since the Bible’s spiritual meaning is in mythic language, not historical fact (though science has shown that much of the historical stories in the Bible have a basis in recorded history). For the whole Bible to have spiritual meaning, it would need to speak to all the aspects of the developing soul. And to do this, the Bible has a spiritual sense comprised of mythic symbols.