I read my friend’s notes on Origen today. He said that Origen, in his interpretation of Scripture, followed the techniques of pagan exegesis in six ways: text-criticism, explanation of words, explanation of points or facts, metrical and stylistic criticism, identification of the person speaking in the text, and clarifying the Bible with the Bible (the pagans did this with Homer).
But is this distinctly pagan? It sounds like the sort of exegesis that many interpreters do.