The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of allegorical reading of sacred texts in the Tibetan tradition and in the early Christian period, charting the use of exegesis as a strategy to push forward doctrinal development, affirm conceptual continuity within a tradition, and setting the terms for membership within a specific community of faith. Specifically, this paper will compare the supersessionist reading of the Mosaic law in Origen's Homilies on Leviticus, where temple sacrifices are read as foreshadowing the work of Christ, and Tsong kha pa's textual taxonomy in the Legs bshad snying po (Essence of True Eloquence), where he reads non-Madhyamaka texts as anticipations of later philosophical developments that require a specific hermeneutic. The discussion will outline the points of contact, but also the difference between the use of allegory in these two traditions, foregrounding their distinctive anthropologies and soteriologies.