Around A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria (a Church Father, c. 150-215) taught that just as God gave the Law to the Jews, so he gave philosophy to the Greeks--as an instrument to lead them to Christ. God’s eternal Word (Logos) was the source of both. Clement believed the truth was to be found in Scripture, but sometimes it was hidden, and could only be discovered through allegorical interpretation. Clement did insist, however, that the Scriptures had a literal, historical sense--a primary meaning--that had to be respected. But allegorical reading could find further, "spiritual" meanings containing universal and eternal truths, an idea reflecting Plato.
Clement’s idea of God as transcendent, beyond all knowledge or definition, is also Platonic, although his Christian faith affirmed God’s Word (Logos), the source of all creation and all knowledge, especially the knowledge of God. The Logos was incarnate in Jesus, the Son of God. The Holy Spirit functioned to attract the believer to God, to seek true knowledge. Such knowledge was the true gnosis, characterized by faith, not to be confused with the false gnosis of the heretics, which was incomplete because it was not grounded in knowledge of the Scriptures.
Clement left Alexandria during the persecutions of Emperor Septimius Severus [left], and not much is known of him then except that he died about a dozen years later. His teaching and theological work was given to the young scholar Origen (185-254), who presided over the Alexandrian school for the next thirty years. Origen’s father was martyred under Severus, and his mother hid the youth’s clothes to keep him from joining the martyrs.
Origen’s writings were some of the most influential in the early church.
He developed more fully Philo’s and Clement’s ideas of allegorical interpretation, understanding three levels of interpretation within a text that corresponded to three aspects of the human being. Literal, moral, and spiritual meanings corresponded to the body, soul, and spirit, in ascending order of importance. The literal meaning of the historical events was the least important for the Christian, just as the body was less important than the soul or spirit (two different things, psyche and pneuma, in Greek). More important were the underlying meanings which could only be perceived allegorically. Even Jesus was less important as a historical figure than as the mystery of Christ present to believers in the church and the sacraments.
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/alexandria.stm