"There is nothing unreasonable in our seriously studying all possible means of tracking down the benefit to be had from the divinely inspired scripture. If indeed the literal meaning, understood as it is spoken, should offer some benefit, we will have readily at hand what we need to make the object of our attention. But if something that is said in a hidden fashion, with certain allegories and enigmas, should yield nothing of benefit according to the readily apparent sense, we will turn such words as these over and over in our mind. ... When it comes to the insightful reading of such passages that comes via the elevated sense, we shall not beg to differ at all about its name—whether one wishes to call it tropologia, allegoria, or anything else—but only about whether it contains meanings that are beneficial."
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Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs, as translated by Margaret M. Mitchell in Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (2010), p. 1.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretation_of_the_Bible
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Allegorical interpretation of the Bible
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