until modern science (and, specifically, biological evolution) arose and challenged it. This view is not the consensus view, however, as demonstrated below: According to Rowan Williams: "[For] most of the history of Christianity there's been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God, is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time." Some religious historians consider that biblical literalism came about with the rise of Protestantism; before the Reformation, the Bible was not usually interpreted in a completely literal way. Fr. Stanley Jaki, a Benedictine priest and theologian who is also a distinguished physicist, states in his Bible and Science: However, the Russian Orthodox hieromonk Fr. Seraphim Rose has argued that leading Orthodox saints such as Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom and Ephraim the Syrian believed that Genesis should be treated as a historical account. Ancient Christian interpretations Finding allegory in history Maxine Clarke Beach comments Paul's assertion in that the Genesis story of Abraham's sons is an allegory, writing that "This allegorical interpretation has been one of the biblical texts used in the long history of Christian anti-Semitism, which its author could not have imagined or intended". Other New Testament writers took a similar approach to the Jewish Bible. The Gospel of Matthew reinterprets a number of passages. Where the prophet Hosea has God say of Israel, "Out of Egypt I called my son," (), Matthew interprets the phrase as a reference to Jesus. Likewise, Isaiah's promise of a child as a sign to King Ahaz () is understood by Matthew to refer to Jesus. Later Christians followed their example. Irenaeus of Lyons, in his work Against Heresies from the middle of the 2nd century, saw the story of Adam, Eve and the serpent pointing to the death of Jesus: In the 3rd century, Origen and others of the Alexandrian school claimed that the Bible's true meaning could be found only by reading it allegorically. Origen explained in De Principiis that sometimes spiritual teachings could be gleaned from historical events, and sometimes the lessons could only be taught through stories that, taken literally, would "seem incapable of containing truth." Days of creation Early Christians seem to have been divided over whether to interpret the days of creation in Genesis 1 as literal days, or to understand them allegorically. For example, St.