This chapter turns from the question of the Gospels’ literary form to that of their literary formation. According to David Strauss, no preceding understanding of the Gospels shared closer proximity to the emerging “mythical point of view” than “ancient allegorical interpretation” – an astonishing claim left unexamined since his Life of Jesus was first published. Strauss’s comparison of the mythical and allegorical views cuts closer to the heart of Origen’s sense of the figurative nature of the Gospels than any other account of early criticism of the Gospels. Nevertheless, I challenge Strauss’s final charge of unrestrained interpretive “arbitrariness” resulting from Origen’s view. I show instead that Origen locates the formation of the Gospel narratives in the Evangelists freely “making use” of the traditions they had received for their own purposes, freedom reflected in the distinctive (even discordant) characteristics of their narratives, which differ according to how the authors sought, “each in his own way,” to “teach what they had perceived in their own mind by way of figures.” Thus, for Origen, the Evangelists themselves were “figurative readers” of the life of Jesus.