premodern Catholic approach were Origen and Augustine. Origen was one of the church fathers who interacted with Greek philosophy; while pursuing careful interpretation using the literary tools of his day, he also appropriated allegory for reading Scripture as a spiritual practice. In On Christian Teaching Augustine continued in this vein, carefully plundering his culture’s rules of reading and rhetoric for Christ’s sake, as the Israelites had done with the gold of the Egyptians. The resulting hermeneutics