How to Read the Bible

Or any epic story, according to Dante

In 1302, Dante Alighieri was exiled from his hometown of Florence. For the next 19 years he wandered throughout Italy, going from patron to patron as he composed his magnum opus, the Divine Comedy.

One of these patrons, Lord Cangrande della Scala, once asked Dante how to best read his work. Dante’s reply was legendary — for not only did he reveal how to interpret his own epic poem, but he also highlighted the key to reading all of Scripture itself.

So how do you read the Divine Comedy? Dante’s answer is simple: exactly as you read the Bible.

Today, we look at Dante’s four main ways of reading — and how each one can be applied not just to the Bible, but to all great literature. Each mode of reading is more difficult, more mysterious, and more rewarding than the last.

The insight Dante offers is timeless, and just as relevant today as it was when he penned his letter over 700 years ago…

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1. The Literal Sense

The first step in reading the Bible, or any serious text, is to understand what is actually being said. This is the literal sense: the plain meaning, the historical narrative, and the author’s intended message. It doesn’t mean “literalist” in that you can’t have any metaphor, but fundamentally it’s about anchoring your reading in what the text communicates at the most basic level.

In Scripture, this looks like reading the Exodus story as the account of Israel’s escape from slavery — a real people rooted in a real historical moment, crossing the Red Sea and then the desert under the leadership of Moses.

While this might sound obvious, many modern readers often skip over the literal interpretation of a text. They prefer to jump straight to the deeper symbolism and meaning, but in doing so risk getting the entire reading wrong. For as Dante explains, the literal sense of the text is like the foundation of the home — if it gets skewed, the whole structure of the house shifts with it.

Others, however, err on the opposite side of the spectrum, and flatten the text by ignoring genre completely — treating parables like scientific accounts, or apocalyptic visions like a news article. Neither approach, of course, does justice to the text at hand. To get the most out of what you’re reading, you have to ask basic, almost banal, questions: What happened? Who wrote this? What did they intend to convey?

Of course, this method isn’t limited to just sacred texts. To read the Iliad well, for example, you first have to begin with its literal sense — a war fought over Helen, the rage of Achilles, the tension between fate and honor. Only once this framework is understood can the poem yield deeper meanings.

In other words, a strong understanding of the literal sense opens the door to all three remaining ways of reading a text. Or, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas:

All the senses are founded on one — namely, the literal — from which alone can any argument be drawn…

-Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.1, a.10, ad 1

2. The Allegorical Sense

Once the literal foundation is in place, the second mode of reading opens the text to deeper spiritual patterns and connections that extend beyond the immediate narrative. This is the allegorical sense, and it’s where people, events, and objects signify more than themselves. In Scripture, it most often reveals how the Old Testament prefigures Christ and his work of salvation.

Take the example of Moses leading Israel through the Red Sea: literally, it is a historical escape from slavery. But allegorically, the crossing of the Red Sea now becomes an image of baptism — a passage from death to life and from sin to grace. Water, once an agent of destruction, now becomes the means of divine salvation.

A similar pattern is visible in the story of Jonah, where his three days in the belly of the fish reflect Christ’s burial and resurrection.

Although this is not allegory in the modern sense (a more clear cut, one-to-one symbolic system imposed on a story), it is allegorical in the sense of recognizing layered meanings emerging from the text itself. It’s not so much imposed as it is discovered, often in hindsight, as later revelation sheds new light on what came before.

While secular literature doesn’t operate with the same degree of divine intentionality, the best stories still resonate with this kind of symbolic depth. In The Lord of the Rings, for example, the Ring is never directly identified as a religious symbol — yet it clearly carries the weight of temptation, corruption, and spiritual burden. Likewise, Frodo’s journey echoes a path reminiscent of Christ’s passion.

None of this occurred, however, because Tolkien tried to force an allegory. Rather, his imagination was shaped by the Christian narrative, and this allowed for the allegorical elements to emerge naturally as he first wrote it. Or, in his own words:

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.

-J.R.R. Tolkien to Robert Murray, SJ. 2 December, 1953 (emphasis mine)

But while absorbing both the literal and allegorical meanings of a text is fundamental to understanding it, unfortunately this is where most people stop.

To understand a book at the next level of depth is far more challenging. But that’s where Dante's next piece of advice comes in — and it holds the key to truly lasting transformation…