17 Charis,

You said:

How about?
Paul was writing this letter to Timothy and they had a shared context. Timothy could have already been familiar with the allegory.

So where would the original allegory be found? 1 Timothy was written to Timothy but it was also inspired by the Holy Spirit and so it was meant to be understood. How could a hidden allegory that was known only to Timothy and Paul have been understood to make the words worthy enough to have been saved for our benefit? You said:

Paul compares the church to Eve in 1 Cor 11:3.

Where does Paul compare the church to Eve in 1 Corinthians 11:3? Next you said:

Paul compares the relationship of Christ and the church to a marriage in Eph 5.

That doesn’t follow that the church is compared to Eve anymore than I can say that the church is compared to me because I am married.

Paul equates childbirth with the process of “Christ formed in you” in Gal 4:19.

No, that is not true. Paul is equating the pain of childbirth with the anxious concern he has for his spiritual children. He is not saying that he is giving birth to Christ in them. The pain is his pain, not Paul giving birth to little Christs within us. You said:

Paul uses Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar allegorically to describe salvation. Taking all these clues together, ancient church fathers understood Eve as a “type” of the church.

While Paul does equate Abraham and Sarah with our inheritance through faith and Hagar is equated with the old covenant that cannot bring life, you are taking unrelated verses and stringing them together to say something that the Bible never says. The Bible is not about hidden “clues” that have to be uncovered to form a secret knowledge that has been hidden. Eve is not set up to be a form of the church. This would be reading into the text rather than seeing what the text actually says.

There are many who have made a link between Eve and “mother” church even going so far as to claim that there has to be a mother God who is married to the Father God. The Personal gleanings of those who went before us are not inspired and the Bible never explicitly says that Eve is a picture of the church or that the church can be said to be in the state of deception and not yet saved.

To the understanding of Augustine, et al, add that of Katharine Bushnell: “827. The ‘childbearing’ of Revelation 12 is that same ‘childbearing’ of 1 Timothy 2:15?

It isn’t even close to being the same grammar as 1 Timothy 2:15 is a definite noun and Revelation 12:2 is a verb.