Well, for me the criterion for suspecting a certain miracle or event in the Bible might be allegorical is that several are paralleled by earlier Greek and Egyptian myths, and those Greeks and Egyptians had no problem making it known that their myths were indeed allegory for natural phenomenon. So when the originators of the mythic theme admit they made it up as natural allegory, and then tracings of those same myths turn up in Christian literature, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose those tracings are allegorical as well.DWill wrote:I wonder what makes a miracle seem to have content that makes it a candidate. There has to be a criterion
One quick example is that several Greek writers such as Diodorus and Cicero explained that the death, dismemberment, and resurrection of Dionysus was just an allegory for the plucking (dismemberment) and crushing of grapes for wine, and then the same vine grows new grapes, i.e. is restored or resurrected, at the following year's harvest season.
^That was written c.50 BCE, over 100 years before the first letter of the New Testament was even written. So when I read of Jesus himself using wine as an allegory for his shed blood and torn body, I can't help but be reminded of this Dionysus myth and wonder if the earliest Christians didn't have it in mind when forming their new religion.Those authors, then, who use the phenomena of nature to explain this god and call the fruit of the vine "Dionysus" speak like this: The earth brought forth of itself the vine at the same time with the other plants and it was not originally planted by some man who discovered it. And they allege as proof of this fact that to this day vines grow wild in many regions and bear fruit quite similar to that of plants which are tended by the experienced hand of man. Furthermore, the early men have given Dionysus the name of "Dimetor," reckoning it as a single and first birth when the plant is set in the ground and begins to grow, and as a second birth when it becomes laden with fruit and ripens its clusters, the god, therefore, being considered as having been born once from the earth and again from the vine. And though the writers of myths have handed down the account of a third birth as well, at which, as they say, the Sons of Gaia tore to pieces the god, who was a son of Zeus and Demeter, and boiled him, but his members were brought together again by Demeter and he experienced a new birth as if for the first time, such accounts as this they trace back to certain causes found in nature. For he is considered to be the son of Zeus and Demeter, they hold, by reason of the fact that the vine gets its growth both from the earth and from rains and so bears as its fruit the wine which is pressed out from the clusters of grapes; and the statement that he was torn to pieces, while yet a youth, by the "earth-born" signifies the harvesting of the fruit by the labourers, and the boiling of his members has been worked into a myth by reason of the fact that most men boil the wine and then mix it, thereby improving its natural aroma and quality. Again, the account of his members, which the "earth-born" treated with despite, being brought together again and restored to their former natural state, shows forth that the vine, which has been stripped of its fruit and pruned at the yearly seasons, is restored by the earth to the high level of fruitfulness which it had before.
