Origen, the great Christian theologian and exegete of the third century, who labored initially in Alexandria in Egypt and later in Caesarea in Palestine, had a reputation during his lifetime and after his death for being a strong advocate of allegorical methods of interpreting the Holy Scriptures. This does not mean that Origen in principle denied the need for a thorough study of the texts of Scripture, aimed at finding out their direct, literal meaning, which could be incomprehensible to believers who were not experienced in theological, historical and philological matters. On the contrary, it was Origen who was one of the founders of Christian Biblical philology, which put at the service of studying Biblical texts the techniques and methods developed by ancient grammarians. At the same time, the literal meaning of the Holy Scriptures - both in cases where this meaning was sufficiently obvious, and when its clarification required serious analytical work - was of much less interest to Origen than the non-obvious, "mysterious" meaning of the inspired Scriptures, taught in them in a hidden, allegorical form and revealed in them. exclusively by means of allegorical exegesis. We will not discuss the question of the cultural and historical roots of the idea that every sacred text contains a teaching addressed only to the initiates, the chosen ones, who are worthy to join the higher, divine and often saving knowledge, which is why the most important characteristic and main feature of such a text is its "darkness", which allows you to protect what is being conveyed It is a teaching against profanation, but it is not an insurmountable obstacle for a wise or inspired interpreter. Suffice it to say that in the Christian community, despite the emphatically universalistic nature of Christian preaching, such an attitude towards the texts of Holy Scripture was manifested quite early and that Origen fully shared this attitude.1 Origen was willing to admit that many spiritual and e ... Read more