Historia y Alegoría

This article traces a shift in Augustine’s conception of history and its relation to allegory through an analysis of his two complete Genesis commentaries: De Genesi aduerus Manicheos (388/89) and De Genesi ad litteram (ca. 401–416). I will begin by turning to an early anti-Manichean work, De utilitate credendi (391), in which Augustine sets forth a comprehensive hermeneutical theory. This theory is idiosyncratic in Augustine’s corpus: it appears neither in his earlier nor in his later works. I argue that in De utilitate credendi, Augustine is struggling to understand history and its relation to allegory; as such, he offers an internally inconsistent explanation of interpretation secundum historiam and interpretation secundum allegoriam. I then turn to Augustine’s earliest commentary on Genesis, De Genesi aduersus Manicheos and his mature commentary on Genesis, De Genesi ad litteram in order to exhibit the shift in his conception of history and its relation to allegory. I conclude that by the time he wrote his mature Genesis commentary, Augustine had resolved for himself the relationship between history and allegory and therefore abandoned here his earlier hermeneutical theory set forth in De utilitate credendi.