Tropological reading or "moral sense" is a

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

tradition, theory, and practice of interpreting the figurative meaning of the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

. It is part of biblical

exegesis Exegesis ( ; from the Ancient Greek, Greek , from , "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation (philosophy), interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Bible, Biblical works. In modern us ...

and one of the Four senses of Scripture.

Doctrine

The Christian Four Senses of Scripture are literal, allegorical/typological, tropological and anagogical. According to doctrine developed by the

Church Fathers The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical peri ...

, the literal sense, or God-intended meaning of the words of the Bible, may also have a ''tropological'' sense: it is read figuratively as a moral reading for one's personal life. For instance, in the ''

Song of Songs The Song of Songs (), also called the Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon, is a Biblical poetry, biblical poem, one of the five ("scrolls") in the ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh. Unlike other books in the Hebrew Bible, i ...

'' (also called ''Canticles'' or ''Song of Solomon''), which contains love songs between a woman and a man, the text can also symbolize the love between God and a believer. In the conception of the

, the definitions of "

allegory As a List of narrative techniques, literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a wikt:narrative, narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political signi ...

" and "tropology" were very close, until

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

where the Church made a clearer distinction between allegorical spiritual meaning, tropological

moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...

meaning and styles of interpretation. Alister E. McGrath, ''Christian Theology: An Introduction'', John Wiley & Sons, USA, 2011, p. 132

Etymology

The

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

word ''τρόπος'' (''tropos'') meant 'turn, way, manner, style'. The term ''τροπολογία'' (''tropologia'') was coined from this word around the second century AD, in

Hellenistic Greek Koine Greek (, ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during the Hellenistic ...

, to mean 'allegorical interpretation of scripture' (and also, by the fourth century, 'figurative language' more generally).Tropology, n.
,
trope, n.
, ''OED Online''. The Greek word ''τρόπος'' had already been borrowed into

Classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a Literary language, literary standard language, standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It formed parallel to Vulgar Latin around 75 BC out of Old Latin ...

as ''tropus'', meaning 'figure of speech', and the Latinised form of ''τροπολογία'', ''tropologia'', is found already in the fourth-century writing of

Jerome Jerome (; ; ; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was an early Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, theologian, translator, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome. He is best known ...

in the sense 'figurative language', and by the fifth century in sense 'moral interpretation'. This Latin term was adopted in medieval French as ''tropologie'', and English developed the form ''tropology'' in the fifteenth century through the simultaneous influence of French and Latin.

Notes

References

;Attribution * Biblical exegesis Tropes {{biblical-studies-stub

Doctrine

Etymology

See also

Notes

References