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have maintained that the prophets adapt themselves to the mode of thinking of the masses and use parables and legends to express their views. The sacred texts, they say, are written in a way which contains a double meaning, the one is the surface meaning, which can be understood by the masses, and the other is the inner or hidden meaning meant for the initiated. The Sophists and Stoics resorted to the method of allegorically interpreting Greek mythology to meet the attacks of sceptical criticism. The Alexandrian Jewish and Christian theologians, Philo and Origen, spoke of the literal and spiritual meanings of the sacred books. The first, they wrote, was the bodily part of the text meant for the majority and the second was its spiritual part which was understood by those few who could find the revealed kernel, hidden by God in the outer textual shell. The Gnostics and the Neo-Platonists thus attempted to explain Oriental and Occidental myths by allegorical interpretation. The Ismailis, the Sect of the Seven and other schools that flourished in Iran from the ninth century, called themselves the Bātinis or the esoterics as opposed to the Zāhiris or the exoterics or literalists. Their method of interpreting the sacred texts on the allegorical basis is called tā'wil.

This method of interpreting religious texts persists throughout the various periods of the history of the religions of the world. Legends and myths, traditional dogmas and superstitious customs, historical errors and textual discrepancies, primitive beliefs and practices are all invested with the mysterious meanings. Statements which often repel both intelligence and conscience find an easy expedient in allegory. The esoterics generally seek in the sacred texts what their own thinking is willing to find and read in them what is rooted in their minds. They read the subjective meaning into the texts and draw unwarranted implications from them. Forces of nature, animate or inanimate objects are all given a new meaning and explained as symbolizing some ethical idea, some aspects of man's consciousness, some expression of the divine in man. Rational explanations are attempted for apparently absurd customs to preserve them against rational criticism. Symbolic significance is attached to puerile legends. Unbridled by the canons of reason and undeterred by any regard for historical sense and critical acumen, the esoteric interpreters of religions generally produce allegorizing extravagances.