In "On the Historicity of Jesus", Richard Carrier goes through Mark trying to show that all the stories within it are either "... more likely a fiction than a historical tradition, or just as likely either way. As an example of the later, he gives Mark 15:21, the story of Simon of Cyrene being forced to carry Jesus' cross. To justify this claim, Carrier interprets Mark 15:21 as an extended allegory. Personally, I always have problems with allegorical interpretations. The fact is that humans are creative, and consequently any story can be given an allegorical interpretation by an intelligent author. Because the topic of the allegory is not previously constrained (unless explicitly stated in the original story), some other story or belief can always be found to match the structure of the text that is being allegorized - particularly if you are prepared fudge on the details. Ergo the fact that you can find an allegory has no bearing on the original intentions of the author of the story being allegorized, unless you can find independent evidence that it was intended as an allegory and the fit is perfect. In this post I intend to show the fit of Carrier's allegory is far from perfect.
