 This pattern would appear to have been suggested not by the usual division of philosophy into ethics, physics and logic, but by a passage in Clement of Alexandria, where three edifying senses are accorded to the scriptures, the last of which is the epopteia, or discernment of the mysteries (Stromateis 1.176.1–2). Origen may also have been aware that certain teachers had sorted Plato’s dialogues into different categories, each suited to a different level of aptitude in the pupil (Edwards 1997). If, as some manuscripts indicate, he gave the name “theoric” (either instead of or in addition to “epoptic”) to the most elevated level of understanding, he may have had in mind a Platonic or Pythagorean division of philosophy into ethics, physics and theology, which is attested in a commentary by Iamblichus on Nicomachus of Gerasa’s Introduction to Mathematics. In attributing this taxonomy to the Hebrew king, however, he is making a claim for the chronological primacy of the scriptures. No Platonist before him had undertaken a sustained allegorical reading of any text, as Porphyry confessed when he inaccurately charged him with forcing Stoic techniques of exegesis on a barbarous text (Eusebius, Church History 6.19). Commenting line by line on a sacred text was not, so far as our evidence goes, a typical enterprise for a Stoic. Among the Greeks the commentator who most resembles Origen is Alexander of Aphrodisias; his concern, however, is to smooth the surface of Aristotle, not to dig beneath it (see further Bendinelli 1997). Origen’s true predecessor is Philo of Alexandria, who had teased moral and metaphysical profundities from the Torah, verse by verse, in order to demonstrate that nothing taught among the Greeks had been concealed from the Lawgiver of the Jews (see further Dawson 1992).