 Philo’s name has almost become a byword for allegory (Sellin 2011). There are many arguments to defend this association, but it would be an error to affirm that he was merely an allegorist. In many passages he defines with precision what can be called his methodology of allegory. In Praem. 61–65, he says that there are secret meanings, reachable only with God’s help. He distinguishes three cases by which a secret meaning may be ascertained: (a) directly by divine illumination, or (b1) indirectly in the shadow of literal interpretation, and/or (b2) by allegorical interpretation. It must be added that he not only uses the word allegoria, but also uponoia, a Platonic term which by this time may have been somewhat archaic. The two terms are not exactly synonymous for him. In Opif. 157, he posits that Biblical tales are not the kind of myths in which poets and sophists rejoice but are in fact “indications of character types which invite allegorical interpretation through the explanation of hidden meanings”. Nevertheless, according to Philo, it is an error to exclude literal meanings. As he notes in Migr. 89–93, 