The history of thought on Paul’s so-called allegory in Galatians 4:21–31 has entertained two basic choices concerning Paul’s hermeneutic: The apostle to the Gentiles was either reading typologically or allegorically.
Scholars have sometimes hesitated to charge Paul with allegorical reading because ancient allegorical interpretation is often removed from close textual issues. Those scholars have attempted to use typological reading as a middle ground. They argue that Paul’s strategy in Galatians 4:21–31 may not be literal, but it’s not allegorical either. It is typological; that is, it uses the events, persons, and institutions of the narrative to prefigure later similar entities. Defending this strategy successfully would enable scholars to help Paul avoid the common charge that he is playing fast and the loose with the text. Yet a problem remains: typology may not quite fix the problem. As Ardel Caneday complains, “To use such designation as allegorical interpretation or typological interpretation, even if unintended, . . . implies that what Paul now discovers concerning Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures is grounded in little more than his fresh revelatory bias effected by his conversion.” Typology, in other words, might still leave Paul too distant from his source text. Paul might not transmogrify Sarah into the moon, but is the Jerusalem above any better?
In light of such concerns, some scholars have returned to allegory, for the remaining alternative —understanding Paul to be reading literally—seems intellectually dishonest at best and patently false at worst. Recent research, however, has begun to make the literal option more tenable. Scholars like Kevin Vanhoozer and Darrin Sarisky have rightly recognized that what it means to read something literally depends on the nature of the text in question. There is no one-size-fits-all view of the literal because what literal means depends on the text in question. Perhaps dismissing the literal reading, then, is too hasty. In this paper, I argue that Galatians 4:21–31 can be understood as a literal reading if and only if Genesis is what Paul thinks it is. First, I develop a more nuanced account of literal reading. Second, I argue that Paul’s conception of Genesis shapes his reading and use of the text in Galatians. In arguing this point, I surmise what would have to be true of Genesis for Paul’s exegesis to be literal. In light of this reflection, Fourth, I argue that Genesis is what Paul takes it to be—the beginning of a story of redemption that points to the people of God in his day and the means by which they are marked off from everyone else.