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TIBOR FABINY
idiosyncrasy inspired by the Greek Fathers, but reflects a wide-ranging, text¬
oriented proposal common to a perception of textuality of Scripture during the
post-Reformation period in Europe, England and New England.??
This implies that by means of the “scope” the sensus litteralis is being expand¬
ed: the scope is the figural dimension of the literal sense. For William Perkins
and for other Reformers, both the proper and figural expositions belong to the
literal sense, which he called “the full sense of the Holy Ghost”.*4
Tyndale acknowledged the existence of allegories within Scripture, but he
was keen to emphasise that these allegories always serve the literal meaning.
How different is this type of allegory is from the one which is imposed upon
the text while the literal is taken away. Tyndale complains that the Pope took
away the literal sense, locked it up with his traditions and the four senses of
scripture. Tyndale mocks the tropological sense as “chopological” and says that
both tropological and anagogical are ultimately allegorical. When Tyndale uses
“allegorical” modern literary criticism would, in most cases, use “metaphori¬
cal”. He defines allegory as “strange speaking and borrowed speech”.”®
“Neverthelater, the scripture useth proverbs, similitude, riddles, or allegories, as all
other speeches do; but that which the proverb, similitude, riddle, or allegory signi¬
fieth, is ever the literal sense, which thou must seek out diligently: as in the English
we borrow words and sentences of one thing, and apply them unto another, and give
them new significations.””*
Tyndale recognizes that the last Book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation is
highly metaphorical book and we have difficulty of finding its literal sense. The
apocalypse, or revelations of John, are allegories whose literal sense is hard to
find in many places.”
Tyndale, not unlike Luther, came to reject the four senses of Scripture and
claimed that the letter and the spirit cannot be separated from one another. For
Luther the literal meaning was basically the only meaning, but his interest was
not exclusively in the sensus litteralis, as in the case of Lyra and the rabbinic
exegesis, but in the sensus litteralis propheticus and therefore, his interpretation
SHEPPARD, Gerald T., Between Reformation and Modern Commentary: the Reception of the
Scope of Biblical Books, in G. T. Sheppard (ed.), William Perkins, A Commentary on Galatians,
New York, The Pilgrim Press, 1989, LXIV.
24 Tbid., LXI.
25 "IYNDALE, Obedience, 156.
26 TYNDALE, Obedience, 156.
27 TyNDALE, Obedience, 157.