Note 13 — Chapter I

The parallel between Hagar and Sarah is drawn out at full length after the rabbinical method in Basnage's History of the Jews (Taylor's translation), book iii., ch. 22; in Lightfoot's Galatians, pp. 178, 179, 189-99, and Farrar's St. Paul, ch. iii. Philo in his writings uses the very same illustration. Perhaps it may be well to add the concluding words of Bishop Lightfoot when discussing on p. 197 of his Galatians, the similar use made by St. Paul and by Philo of this illustration of Hagar: "At the same time we need not fear to allow that St. Paul's method of teaching here is coloured by his early education in the rabbinical schools. It were as unreasonable to stake the Apostle's inspiration on the turn of a metaphor or the character of an illustration or the form of an argument, as on purity of diction. No one now thinks of maintaining that the language of the inspired writers reaches the classical standard of correctness and elegance, though at one time it was held almost a heresy to deny this. 'A treasure contained in earthen vessels,' 'strength made perfect in weakness,' 'rudeness in speech, yet not in knowledge,' such is the far nobler conception of inspired teaching, which we may gather from the Apostle's own language. And this language we should do well to bear in mind. But, on the other hand it were mere dogmatism to set up the intellectual standard of our own age or country as an infallible rule. The power of allegory has been differently felt in different ages, as it is differently felt at any one time by diverse nations. Analogy, allegory, metaphor—by what boundaries are these separated the one from the other? What is true or false, correct or incorrect, as an analogy or an allegory? What argumentative force must be assigned to either? We should at least be prepared with an answer to these questions before we venture to sit in judgment on any individual case."