To read the Bible allegorically is to read it as a living text that reveals inner, spiritual meaning—not only describing events that happened long ago, but unveiling truths meant to awaken and transform the one who reads. In early Christianity, allegorical interpretation was understood as essential because Scripture was seen as a vehicle of revelation, not merely information. Beneath the surface of stories, laws, images, and symbols lay a deeper invitation: to encounter God within the movements of the soul itself. When readers today ask what does allegory mean in the Bible, they are touching an ancient conviction—that Scripture speaks on multiple levels at once, and that its deepest purpose is not simply to be understood, but to be lived, embodied, and allowed to change us.

When Scripture is read literally, its meaning is located primarily in historical events: what happened, to whom, and when. This way of reading matters, but on its own it often leaves contemporary readers at a distance, as though the text belongs to another people in another time with little direct relevance to the interior life of the twenty-first-century reader. Allegorical reading, by contrast, assumes that Scripture speaks through history rather than remaining bound to it. Its concern is not only what happened long ago, but what is always happening within the human soul. In this way of reading, the Bible becomes a mirror rather than a museum—revealing patterns of bondage, awakening, resistance, and liberation that are meant to be recognized and lived from the inside.

A clear example of this difference can be seen in the story of the Flight of the Israelites from Egypt, told in the book of Exodus. Read literally, it recounts the liberation of an enslaved people, their escape from oppression, and their long journey toward a promised land. Read allegorically, the story discloses something far more intimate: Egypt becomes the inner condition of bondage to fear, false identity, and habitual patterns of separation; Pharaoh represents the inner authority that resists change; Moses becomes the stirring of divine summons within the heart; and the wilderness is the necessary passage through uncertainty as the old self loosens its grip. In this reading, the journey is not about a people crossing a desert, but about the reader being led—slowly and often unwillingly—toward the experience of coming home to their true self, where freedom is no longer external, but lived and embodied.

Read in this inner way, the Exodus is not primarily a lesson about morality or self-improvement, but a revelation of how God makes Godself known within human experience. Revelation, in Scripture, is rarely about the delivery of new information; it is about unveiling what has always been true but not yet seen. The inner Exodus names this unveiling as a passage from unconscious captivity into conscious freedom, from identification with a constructed self into remembrance of one’s true Being. The plagues, the crossing of the sea, the long wandering in the wilderness, and even the resistance to freedom are not obstacles to revelation but its very terrain. In allegorical reading, revelation happens not when the story is explained, but when the reader recognizes their own interior landscape within the text and allows that recognition to become transformative.

When allegorical meaning is set aside and Scripture is read only through a literal lens, its power to reveal and transform can quietly collapse into prediction, control, or fear. A clear example appears in the way the Book of Revelation is often approached. Read literally, its visionary language is treated as a coded forecast of future events—maps of global catastrophe, timelines of judgment, and signs of an imminent end. Many Christians are taught to fix their attention on what are called the “end times,” preparing for what is often described as the Rapture, rather than allowing the text to speak to the inner condition of the reader in the present moment. In this way, Revelation becomes something to decode or survive, rather than something to receive.

Read allegorically, however, the Book of Revelation discloses itself as exactly what its name suggests: an unveiling. Its symbols, beasts, plagues, and cosmic upheavals are not predictions meant to terrify, but images meant to awaken—describing the collapse of false identities, oppressive inner systems, and fear-based ways of seeing reality. The “end” it proclaims is not the destruction of the world, but the ending of a way of Being rooted in separation, violence, and illusion. When Revelation is reclaimed as an interior apocalypse, it no longer drives readers to withdraw from the world or brace for escape; instead, it invites them into deeper Presence, courage, and faithfulness here and now. Literalism, when it stands alone, can turn Scripture into a source of anxiety. Allegory restores it as a path of revelation—one that does not predict the future, but transforms the present.

Seen in this light, allegory is not a technique for clever interpretation, but a way of meeting Scripture as a living invitation. It allows the Bible to speak again—not as a closed record of the past or a fearful script for the future, but as a present-moment disclosure of the Divine life seeking to awaken within the reader. To read Scripture allegorically is to consent to be addressed, uncovered, and led inward, where revelation unfolds not as doctrine but as transformation. This reflection is offered as one doorway into that way of reading. In the Understanding Scripture series that follows, each meditation continues this invitation—listening beneath the surface of the text for the movement of awakening, and tracing the quiet, persistent call of the Christ within, who has never ceased speaking through Scripture to those willing to read with open eyes and an open heart.