J. Hastings. ALLAMMELECH (-^5^n).— Perhaps ' King's oak,' a town of Asher probably near Acco (Jos 19-*). The site is not known.
ALLAR (B 'AXXdp, A 'AXdp, AV Aalar), 1 Es 5'". — One of the leaders of those Jews who could not show their pedigree as Isr. at the return from captivity under Zerubbabel. The name seems to correspond to Inimer in Ezr 2", Neh 7°', one of the places from which these Jews returned. In 1 Es Cherub, Addan, and Imnier appear as ' Charaatha- lan leading them and Allar.'
H. St. J. Thackeray.
ALLAT, not found in AV, is introduced by RV into Ec 10^ 'yielding allayeth (AV 'pacifieth') great offences.' The meaning seems to be tliat a spirit of conciliation puts an end to offences more completely than a strong arm. Cf. Shaks. 2 Henry VI. IV. i. 60, 'allay this thy abortive iiride.'
J. Hastings.
ALLEGE occurs but twice, Wis 18==" ' a'°« (uTTo/i^^aas, RV ' bringing to remembrance ') the oaths and covenants made with the fathers' ; and Ac 17' ' Openin" and a'"? that Christ must needs have sufl'ered, where it has the old meaning of adducing proofs (Traparidiiievo^), like Lat. nllegare, not the mod. sense of asserting. Allegiance, not in AV, is given in RV at 1 Ch 12'^ as tr. of rr\-;xi'0 ' Kept their V to (AV ' Kept the ward of) the liouse of Saul.'
J. Hastings.
ALLEOORT. — i. History of the Word.—
The substantive iWrjyopla, with its verb iX\ijyopei''a, is derived from 4XXo, something else, and iyopevoi, J s]>eak ; and is defined by Heraclitus (Heraclides ?) — probably of the first century A.D. — as follows: fiXXa ftiv iyopeiuiv rphrot frepa Si Cby X^7ei <nmaivujv iiriiivinun iXKif-^opia naXeiToi : ' The mode of speech which says other things (than the mere letter) and hints at different things from what it expresses, is called appropriately allegori/' (c. 5). Neither substantive nor verb is found in the LXX ; and the verb alone, and that only once (Gal 4"), occurs in the NT. The word, wliether substantive nr verb, appears to be altogether late Greek. Plutarch (flourished 80-120 A.D.j tells ns {De Aud. Poet. 19
E) that it was the equivalent in his day for the more ohl-fasliioned virdfoia, the deeper sense (or the figure cxjiressing it), which was a special feature in the Stoic philosojihy, with its 0epavrcia {treatment, mnvipulatimi); and Cicero had not long before introduced d\\r)yopla, in its Greek form, in two or three passages in his works (e.7. Orator 27 ; Ad Attic, ii. 2U) ; while Philo ha(i freely used sub- st.intive and verb early in the first century ; and the verb is used in Josephus {Ant. Prooem. 4) of some of the writings of Moses.
ii. Distinctive Meaning. — The provinces of allegory, tyjie, symbol, parable, fable, metaphor, analogy, mystery, may all trench upon one another ; but eacli has its speciality, and the same thing can only receive the ditl'erent names as it is viewed from the different points. Allegory differs e.sscniuilhj from tyjie in that it is not a premonition of future development, and that there is no neces- sary historical and real correspondence in the main idea of the original to the new application of it : from symbol, in that it is not a lower grade natur- ally shadowing forth a higher ; from parable, in that it is not a picture of a single compact truth, but a transparency through which the different details are seen as different truths, and in that it is not necessarily ethical in its aim ; from fable, in that its lessons are not confined to the sphere of |iractical worldly prudence ; from metaphor, in that its interpretation is not immediate and obvious, but has to be sought out through the medium of verbal or phenomenal parallels ; from analogy, because it is not addressed to the reason so much as to the imagination ; and from mystery, in that it does not await a new order of things to be specially manifested and truly discerned. All these tropes may indeed be classed under the allegorical or the figurative, so far as they all jioint to a sense different from that contained ic the mere letter. But, conventionally and in practice, allegory has a s]ihere of its own. In the non-specific sense, it has to do with the general relations of life in its external resemblances, one thing being mirrored in another according to out- ward appearance, so that the appearance of the one can serve as the figure of the other. In other words, the thing put before the eye or ear repre- sents, not itself, out something else in some way like it. Thus the fish was early used as an allegory of Christ ; it was not, strictly speaking, a symbol, or a type, or a parable, or any of the figures above compared. The resemblance was both far-fetched and outward, being evolved from the several letters of the word IxOvi as the initials of 'IijffoOt, Xpiorit, 0con, Tiis, "Luirrip. Of allegory jiroper, more or less elaborated, we have within the bounds of the sacred books very little. In the OT may be instanced the allegorv of the Vine in the 80th Psalm, and in the NT tho.se of the Door, the Shepherd (Jn 10), and the Vine (Jn 15). In the more confined, the tcehnieal and historical sense, it denoted, especially for Alexandrian Greeks and Jews, the system of interpretation by which the most ancient Greek literature, in the one case, and the OT VTitings (and subsequently the NT), in the other, were assigned their value in proportion as they meant, not what they said, but something else, and could be made the clothing of cosmo- logical, philosophical, moral, or reli;^;ous ideas. This leads us to the third and final division.