Notes

A Note on Translations

, pp. 223–60.

. Hammond Bammel, ed., Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes: Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins, Buch 1–3, Freiburg, Herder, 1990.

1 The Making of a Scholar and Theologian

, Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983.

. Barnes in Constantine and Eusebius, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1981, and Henri Crouzel in Origen: The Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian, tr. by A. S. Worrall, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1989.

6.2.10–11.

, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, ed. and tr. by Robert Kraft, Gerhard Krodel et al., Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1971, pp. 44–60.

. H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979, and A. Rousseau and L. Doutreleau, eds, Irénée de Lyon, Contre les hérésies, Bk 3, vol. 1 (= SC 210), Paris, Cerf, 1974, pp. 126–31.

. 6.15.124.5–131.1, where he uses both terms and ascribes this tradition to the apostles, and commends it as a rule for the interpretation of Scripture. See also 6.18.165.1, 7.7.41.3 and 7,15.105.5 on the rule of the church and 7.17.108.1 on the united testimony of the apostles to the church’s tradition.

. C. Hanson, Tradition in the Early Church, London, SCM Press, 1962, pp. 75–129.

, Pronoia und Paideusis: Studien über Origenes und sein Verhältnis zum Platonismus, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1932, p. 309.

4.3.

, First Apology 29.

4.8.

, p. 414.

, Origenes als Philologe = Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissemchaft 18, 2 vols, Basel, Friedrich Reinhardt, 1987.

, A history of Education in Antiquity, tr. by George Lamb, New York, Sheed and Ward, 1956, pp. 229–34.

, Les Commentaires patristiques du Psautier (IIIe–Ve siècles), vols 1 and 2 = Orientalia Christiana Analecta 219 and 220, Rome, Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1982 and 1985, esp. vol. 2, pp. 21–135.

and metrikon, I follow Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, pp. 202–46.

, p. 397, n. 236.

, pp. 276–85.

8.111.

. An excellent essay on a particular case, Origen’s reliance on medicine in his discussion of God’s therapeutic hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, is found in Amneris Rosselli, “ ‘O τεχνιτης θεoς: la pratica terapeutica come paradigma dell’operare di Dio in Phil. 27 e PA III 1,” in Lorenzo Perrone, ed., Il cuore indurito del Faraone: Origene e il problema del libero arbitrio, Bologna, Marietti, 1992, pp. 65–83.

6.2.13–14.

, M. Grant, Heresy and Criticism: the Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature, Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.

, Gnosis als System: Zur Rezeption der valentinianischen Gnosis bei Origenes = Forschungen zur Kirchen- and Dogmengeschichte 56, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1993, p. 23. Other authors who have dealt with Origen’s relationship to Gnosticism are Hans Jonas, in Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, vol. 2, Von der Mythologie zur mystischen Philosophie, ed. by Kurt Rudolph, reprint, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1993, and Allain le Boulluec in “Y-a-t-il des traces de la polémique antignostique d’Irénée dans le Péri Archôn d’Origène?” in Gnosis and Gnosticism: Papers read at the Seventh International Conference on Patristic Studies (Oxford, September 8th–13th, 1975), ed. Martin Krause, Leiden, Brill, 1977, pp. 138–47 and in La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque IIe–III^e siècles, vol. 2, Paris, Études Augustiniennes, 1985.

. C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971.

, Le Pédagogue, Livre I, Paris, Cerf, 1960 = SC 70, p. 102).

. 1.5.28.3.

. Stroumsa. Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism, Leiden, Brill, 1996.

, see Gunnar af Hällström, Fides Simpliciorum according to Origen of Alexandria, Helsinki, Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1984,

. 4.2.4.1.

. Trigg, “Receiving the Alpha: Negative Theology in Clement of Alexandria and its Possible Implications,” in SP 31 (1997), 540–45.

, pp. 293–302.

. Daley, “Origen’s ‘De Principiis’: A Guide to the ‘Principles’ of Christian Scriptural Interpretation,” in John F. Petruccione, ed., Nova et Vetera: Patristic Studies in Honor of Thomas Patrick Halton, Washington, DC, CUA Press (forthcoming). The comment is on Str. 4.1.3.1–3.

, Clement of Alexandria and his Use of Philo in the Stromateis: An Early Christian Reshaping of a Jewish Model, Leiden, Brill, 1988.

. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey, Assen, Van Gorcum and Minneapolis, Fortress, 1993, p. 156.

, Mysterienterminologie bei Platan, Philon und Klemens van Alexandrien, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1987.

20.2.

, pp. 132–3, 417.

. M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in Jewish– Christian Relations in Third-Century Palestine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976.

6.19.6.

, Life of Plotinus 3, 14 and 20.

, see Joseph W. Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-Century Church, Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1983, pp. 259–60.

, Theaetetus 176b. This passage is cited as Plato’s definition of the purpose (telos) of human existence in Alkinoos, Didaskalos 28. The Didaskalos, written as a handbook of Platonic doctrine during the early Imperial period, provides our best witness to the Platonism of Origen’s time.

, Origène.et Plotin: Comparaisons doctrinales, Paris, Pierre Téqui, 1991.

7.106

, Philosophy as a Way of Life, tr. by Michael Chase, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1995, esp. pp. 264–76.

6.3, 6–7. See Plato Republic 3.400d.

, Dialogue with Trypho, 8.

, among numerous examples, Str. 1,13.57.6, 1.16.77.4, 2.2.5.1, 5.14.96.5, and 8.1.1.2.

13–14.

, Prologue 3 where Proverbs = ethics, Ecclesiastes = physics, and the Song of Songs = enoptics (the mystical knowledge of God bestowed on the initiated).

6.3.1–7.

fr. DV–DVI and HJer 20.3.

6.3.8.

6.3.8–12.

. 7.

6.8.1–2 and CMt 15.1–5.

2 The Mature Years at Alexandria

. Trigg, “The Charismatic Intellectual: Origen’s Understanding of Religious Leadership,” in Church History, 50 (1981), 5–19, reprinted in Studies in Early Christianity, vol. 9, ed. Everett Ferguson, New York, Garland, 1992, pp. 107–21 and “Origen, Man of the Church,” in Origeniana Quinta, pp. 51–6. See also Gunnar af Hällström, Charismatic Succession: A Study on Origen’s Concept of Prophecy, Helsinki, Finnish Exegetical Society, 1985.

6.14.10.

6.23,1–2.

6.19.15.

6.21.3.

6.8.5. See Nautin, p. 103.

6.2. See Nautin, pp. 366–8.

are three articles by Olivier Munnich (“Les Hexaples d’Origène à la lumière de la tradition manuscrite del la Bible grec”), G. J. Norton (“The Fragments of the Hexapla of the Psalter and the Preparation of a Critical Edition of the Hebrew Psalter”), and Pierre Jay (“Jérôme et la Septante origénienne”) in Origeniana Sexta, pp. 167–214. See also the discussion of Origen’s intentions in Adam Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 4–28 and Nautin, pp. 303–61.

6.3.

20.1, Origen, in a discussion of the potential ambiguity of Scriptural language, quotes the definition of this term in Aristotle, Categories 1.1: “ ‘Homonyms’ are things that have only the word that refers to them in common, the definition corresponding to that word being different.”

, Cautiverio y redención del hombre en Orígenes, Bilbao, Mensajero, 1973, pp. 67–86.

, “Vers le Commentaire sur Aggée d’Origène,” in Origeniana Quarta, pp. 7–15.

, On First Principles, tr. by G. W. Butterworth, London, SPCK, 1936, most recently reprinted in 1973, Gloucester, Mass., Peter Smith, 1973. Butterworth faithfully follows Paul Koetschau’s 1913 GCS edition. He does not, of course, reflect significant new understandings of Origen’s work that have emerged since its publication. Modern editions that do reflect them are Otigenes, Vier Bücher von den Prinzipien, ed. and tr. by Herwig Görgemanns and Heinrich Karpp, 3rd edition, Darmstadt, Wissenschafthche Buchgesellschaft, 1992, and Origène, Traité des Principes, ed. and tr. by Henri Crouzel and Manlio Simonetti = SC vols 252–3, 268–9 and 312, Paris, 1978, 1980 and 1984. See also the translation of Rufinus’s text by Marguerite Harl, Gilles Dorival, and Alain le Boulluec: Origène, Traité des Principes (Peri Archôn), Paris, Études Augustiniennes, 1976, particularly valuable for its documentation of subsequent controversies surrounding the work on pp. 253–300.

, pp. 368–71. See Lothar Lies, Origenes’ “Peri Archon”: Eine undogmatische Dogmatik, Darmstadt, Wissenschafthche Buchgesellschaft, 1992.

, Contra Marcellum 1.4.25.

, Ricerche sulla tradizione di Rufino del “De principiis” di Origene, Florence, La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1990.

, Preface, 2.

, Origen alludes to the Shepherd of Hermas, Mandates 1.1: “First of all, believe that God is one, who created and ordered all things and made all things to be out of what is not.” Like Irenaeus and Clement, Origen considered the Shepherd a work close, at least, to Scripture in authority.

, Preface, 4.

, which Rufinus evidently sought to conform to fourth-century standards of Trinitarian orthodoxy by translating it as natus (“born”). Jerome translated it is as factus (“made”) in Letter to Avitus 2 in order to make Origen appear heretical by those same standards. It is doubtful that Origen saw any theological difference between egenêthê andegennêthê (“begotten”); both would have implied to him that the Father was the source of the Son’s existence, the Son being clearly distinguished from creatures, properly speaking, by his sharing, along with the Holy Spirit, in God’s eternal existence, not having come into being in time.

, which Origen contrasts with death to sin, on the one hand, and to death to God, on the other. Origen also makes this distinction in CJn 13.140.

, Preface, 4.

, Preface, 5.

, Preface, 6.

, Preface, 7.

, Preface, 8.

, Preface, 10.

, Preface 3.

, Preface, 4–10.

, zusammenhängendes und organisches Ganzes, on p. 99 of their edition and translation. They justify this translation on the basis of early Christian usage, where the Greek sôma (”body,” Rufinus’s corpus) implies an organic and systematic unity. Origen himself appears to use the term with such an implication in CJn 13.302–3 where, in commenting on Jn 4:36b, “so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together,” he speaks of “one body (sôma) of truth”:

I suppose that for every art and science that involves many propositions, the sower finds the principles, which others take and elaborate, who themselves transmit the things they have discovered to others. Thanks to their discoveries, these become to their successors (who cannot discover the first principles [archas], join together their consequences, and bring to perfection their arts and sciences) that which enables them to collect, as in a harvest, the fruit of these arts and sciences which have been brought to perfection.

If this is true with arts and certain sciences, it remains to be seen how much more is it true of the art of arts and science of sciences. For after elaborating those things discovered by the very first, their successors have, with those things discovered, transmitted to those who follow them, so that they may examine them attentively, raw materials for gathering together with wisdom one body of truth.

, Preface 10.

, “Neue Untersuchungen zu Origenes ‘Peri Archon,’ ” in ZNW 40 (1942 for 1941), 236–43.

, “Remarques sur la forme du Peri Archon” and Marguerite Harl, “Structure et cohérence du Peri Archon,” in Origeniana, pp. 11–45 and, more recently, Gilles Dorival, “Nouvelles remarques sur la forme du Traité des Principes d’Origène,” in Recherches Augustiniennes 22 (1987), 67–108.

, Philosophy as a Way of Life, tr. by Michael Chase, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1995.

4.2.7–8.

, Paris, Aubier, 1962, pp. 179–215. Franz Heinrich Kettler makes a powerful case to the contrary in Der ursprüngliche Sinn der Dogmatik des Origenes = ZNW Beiheft 31 (1966).

1.3.4. On the Jewish sources of this tradition, see Gedaliahu Guy Stroumsa, Savoir et salut, Paris, Cerf, 1992, pp. 23–123.

6.18 and H1Sam 1.2 & 4.1 and Joseph W. Trigg, “The Angel of Great Counsel: Christ and the Angelic Hierarchy in Origen’s Theology,” in Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 42 (1991), 35–51.

, see Norbert Brox, “Spiritualität und Orthodoxie: Zum Konflikt des Origenes mit der Geschichte des Dogmas,” in Ernst Dassmann and K. Suso Frank, eds, Pietas: Festschrift für Bernhard Kötting = Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Ergänzungsband 8 (1980), pp. 140–54.

, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987.

1.2.2–4.

2.9.2.

, On the Decrees of the Synod of Nicaea 27.1–2

, among other passages, PA 1.3.3 and 2.1.5

, see Richard P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1988, pp. 3–27.

1.2.1. The best work on Origen’s Christology remains Marguerite Harl, Origène et la fonction révélatrice du Verbe incarné, Paris, Seuil, 1958.

, see J. Reumann, “OIKONOMIA-terms in Paul in Comparison with Lucan Heilsgeschichte,” in New Testament Studies 13 (1966–7), 147–67. On Irenaeus, see Robert M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons, London, Routledge, 1996, pp. 49–50.

2.6.2.

2.6.3.

2.6.5.

1.2.4.

2.8.3.

4.4.10.

2.1.1.

, Pronoia und Paideusis: Studien über Origenes und sein Verhältnis zum Platonismus, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1932

2.1.2.

3.6.1.

1.5.5.

. Benjamins, Eingeordnete Freiheit: Freiheit und Vorsehung bei Origenes, Leiden, Brill, 1994.

3.1.21–2.

3.1.19.

. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 47.

, p. 48.

3.6.6.

2.11.4.

2.11.6.

2.11.5–7.

2.11.6.

2.7.4.

1.6.2. See also 3.6. 3.

on Lk. 14:19–20.

2.3.1.

2.10.4

, “Clemens und Origenes als Begründer der Lehre von Fegfeuer,” in W. Nowak, ed., Theologische Abhandlungen: Eine Festgabe zum 17. Mai 1902 für Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, Tübingen, J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1902, pp. 97–120

20. On the possibility that eternal punishment is a medicinal lie, see Joseph W. Trigg, “Divine Deception and the Truthfulness of Scripture,” in Origen: His World and His Legacy, ed. Charles Kannengiesser, Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 1988, pp. 147–64 and David Satran “Pedagogy and Deceit in the Alexandrian Theological Tradition,” in Origeniana Quinta, pp. 119–24.

2.3.1.

2.3.4.

1.6.3.

2.11.2.

2.3.2.

3.6.2.

, The Hope of the Early Church, pp. 48–9.

, Les fins dernières selon Origène, Aldershot, Variorum, 1990 and Charles E. Hill, Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Future Hope in Early Christianity, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992, see esp. pp. 127–41.

, Histoire et Esprit: L’intelligence d’Écriture d’après Origène, Paris, Aubier, 1950. Richard P. C. Hanson provides an important corrective in Allegory and Event, Richmond, John Knox Press, 1959. Marguerite Harl’s discussion of Origen’s hermeneutic in her introduction to the Sources chrétiennes edition of Philocalia 1–21 (SC 302, Paris, Cerf, 1983, pp. 42–157) provides a clear and balanced account.

4.1.1.

4.1.4–6.

4.1.6–7.

4.2.1.

4.2.4. See Karen Jo Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis, Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1986.

4.2.5.

4.2.9. See Jean Pépin, “L’absurdité, signe d’allégorie,” in La tradition d’allégorie: de Philon d’Alexandrie a Dante, Paris, Études Augustiniennes, 1987, pp. 167–86. The word “planned” is ôikonomêse, the verb corresponding to the noun oikonomia. See Hendrik S. Benjamins, “‘Oικoνoμια bei Origenes: Schrift und Heilsplan,” in Origeniana Sexta, pp. 327–31.

4.2.6.

4.2.8

4.3.4

4.3.3.

See The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982, pp. 60, 60–2 and Words with Power Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature, San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990, pp. 5–6

4.3.5 and 4.3.11.

4.2.3.

, Lettera e/o allegoria: Un contribute alla storia dell’esegesi patristica, Rome, Institutum Patristicum “Augustinianum”, 1985, pp. 79–80.

, Translatio Religionis: Die Paulusdeutung des Origenes, Cologne and Vienna, Böhlau Verlag, 1990.

3 Man of the Church at Caesarea

, “Caesarea Maritima as Origen Knew It,” in Origeniana Quinta, pp. 3–25.

. Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992.

. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision, Tübingen, Mohr, 1988, pp. 337–8 and Origen, “Homily 1 on Ezekiel,” intr. and tr. by Joseph W. Trigg in Vincent L. Wimbush, ed., Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook, Minneapolis, Fortress, 1990, pp. 45–65.

. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature; A Survey, Assen, Van Gorcum and Minneapolis, Fortress, 1993, pp. 24–5.

, Remerciement à Origène suivi de la Lettre d’Origène à Grégoire, ed. Henri Crouzel, Paris, Cerf, 1959 = SC 148. Crouzel proposes the earlier date on p. 22. Pierre Nautin proposes the later date in Nautin, p. 382.

, in Nautin, pp. 83–6 and 182–97, has challenged the traditional attribution to Gregory Thaumaturgus while accepting the authenticity of the Address as a testimony by a student of Origen. Crouzel effectively defends the traditional attribution in ‘Faut-il voir trois personnages en Grégoire le Thaumaturge?” Gregorianum 60 (1979), 287–320. The question of attribution, like that of dating, remains open.

, 2.13 and 5.55.

, 4.45 and 5.48–72.

, 5.72.

. Wilken, “Alexandria: A School for Training in Virtue,” in Patrick Henry, ed., Schools of Thought in the Christian Tradition, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1984, pp. 15–30.

, 15, 175, and 179.

, 4.42. See Joseph W. Trigg, “The Angel of Great Counsel: Christ and the Angelic Hierarchy in Origen’s Theology,” in Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 42 (1991), 35–51.

, 15.174.

, 8.109.

, 8.111.

, 9.123.

, 5.59

, 7.97.

, 7.107–08.

, 14.171.

, 14.163–7

, 7.103–4.

, pp. 389–409.

are, in effect, reworked homilies by Origen. See Vittorio Peri, Omelie origeniane sui Salmi, Vatican City, Biblioteca apostolica, 1980.

, “The Role of Prayer in Origen’s Homilies,” in Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy, ed. Charles Kannengiesser and William L. Peterson, Notre Dame, Ind., Notre Dame University Press, 1988, pp. 200–14.

, see Pierre Nautin, “Origène prédicateur,” in SC 232, pp. 100–9 and Adele Monaci Castagno, Origene predicatore e il suo pubblico, Turin, FrancoAngeli, 1987.

8.4.

4.6.

36.2.

13.3.

10.1 and HJer 20.6.

, Sur la Pâque, ed. and tr. by Octave Guérand and Pierre Nautin, Paris, Beauchesne, 1979.

6.2.20.2 (on Beryllus as a celebrated author) and 6.33.1–3.

, Letters 101.32.

16.

, eds and tr., Alexandrian Christianity, Philadelphia, Westminster, 1954; in John J. O’Meara, tr. Origen, On Prayer and Exhortation to Martyrdom = Ancient Christian Writers 19, New York, Paulist, 1954; and in Rowan Greer, An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer and Selected Works, New York, Paulist, 1979. Oulton’s translation has the fullest notes. All of these volumes also include the Exhortation to Martyrdom.

5–8.1.

8.2.

9.2.

13.2–3.

12.2.

32.

12.

46. See John M. Rist, “The Magical Power of Names in Origen and Later Platonism,” in Origeniana Tertia, pp. 203–16.

13.

, pp. 411–36.

, Prologue 1.1.

, see Roland E. Murphy, The Song of Songs, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1990, pp. 12–16. Murphy stresses the paucity of evidence concerning early Jewish interpretation.

, Origène et Plotin: Comparisons doctrinales, Paris, Pierre Téqui, 1991, p. 220.

, Prologue, 1.4.

, Prologue, 1.6.

, Prologue, 1.7.

, Prologue, 2.43.

, Prologue, 2.4–19.

, Prologue, 2.2.20–27.

, Agape and Eros, tr. by Philip A. Watson, Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1953, pp. 387–92. For more recent treatments of Origen on love, see John M. Rist, Eros and Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus, and Origen, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1964; Henryk Pietras, L’amore in Origene, Rome, Institutum Patristicum “Augustinianum,” 1988; Catherine Osborne, Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. Osborne makes a strong case that Origen not only understood the Bible better than does Nygren, but he also had a better understanding of Plato.

3.1.4.

1.5.3.

in this context, see Henri Crouzel, Origène et la “connaissance mystique,” Bruges, Desclée de Brouwer, 1961, pp. 41–2.

1.5.4.

4.9–11 and 2.11.5.

2.1.

3.6.9.

1.1.11.

, “Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure: Eros and Language in Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs,” in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 54 (1986), 241–53.

, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria: The 1886 Bampton Lectures, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1913, p. 173.

. Hammond Bammel, ed., Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes: Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins, Buch 1–3, Freiburg, Herder, 1990.

, Principles of Patristic Exegesis, New York and Toronto, Edwin Mellen: 1983 and Lorenzo Perrone, ed., Il cuore indurito del Faraone: Origene e il problema del libero arbitrio, Bologna, Marietti, 1992.

, Translatio Religionis: Die Paulusdeutung des Origenes, Cologne and Vienna, Böhlau Verlag, 1990, p. 2.

,” in Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1908), 231–47, 353–72, 500–14 and 10 (1909), 29–51.

, Il Paolo di Origene: Contributo all storia della recezione delle epistole paoline net III secolo, Rome, Edizione Studium, 1992

, in Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism, Leiden, Brill, 1996, pp. 11–26, shows how Platonists used ainigma and the related verb ainittomai to speak of the true, philosophical meaning of myths.

. Grant, Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought, Amsterdam, North Holland, 1952, p. 258.

20.7. See also fr. II on 1 Corinthians in Jenkins, “Origen on 1 Corinthians,” p. 232.

, pp. 375–6.

, Subversive Virtue: Asceticism and Authority in the Second-Century Pagan World, University Park, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995, pp. 133–5.

, Streit um das Christentum: Der Angriff des Kelsos und die Antwort des Origenes, Frankfurt, Peter D. Lang, 1980, pp. 43–50.

6.38.1.

, Preface, 3.

1.28.

4.54.

8.12.

8.66.

5,27.

. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1984, p. 124. See also Michel Fédou, Christianisme et religions païennes dans le Contre Celse d’Origène, Paris, Beauchesne, 1988.

4.88.

1.9.

1.41 and 2.55.

4.54.

4.14.

2.75.

5.25.

3.5.

, Miracle and Natural Law, pp. 182–208.

2.30.

5.14–16.

5.18–19.

5.23.

. 1.28 See Marie-Joseph Rondeau, Les Commentaires patristiques du Psautier (IIIe–Ve siècles), vols 1 and 2 = Orientalia Christiana Analecta 219 and 220, Rome, Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1982 and 1985, vol. 2, pp. 51–8.

7.42. See John Whittaker, “Aρρητoς και ακατανoμαστoς” in Platonismus und Christentum, Festschrift für Heinrich Dörrie, ed. H. D. Blume and F. Mann = Jahrbuch für Christentum, Ergänzungsband 10, Münster, Aschendorffsche Buchhandlung, 1983, pp. 303–306, repr. in John Whittaker, Studies in Platonic and Patristic Theology, London, Variorum Reprints, 1984.

, Republic 330a. Seriphos is one of the smallest Aegean islands.

1.29–30.

7.48 and 3.68.

15.15.

7.44.

7.31.

, History of Dogma, tr. by Neil Buchanan, London, Williams & Norgate, 1900, vol. 2, pp. 330–80.

4.79.

4.3.

4.5.

4,71,

7.42.

6.68

EH 6.39.5. See Nautin, p. 441.

4 A Controversial Legacy

, Exégèse Médiévale: Les Quartre sens de l’Écriture, 4 vols, Paris, Aubier, 1959–64. He quotes Richard Simon, Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, 1.3.1 (1685 edn, p. 403) in vol. 1, p. 212.

, Lettera e/o allegoria: Un contribute alla storia dell’esegesi patristica, Rome, Institutum Patristicum “Augustinianum”, 1985, pp. 73–4.

, Lettera e/o allegoria: Un contribute alla storia dell’ esegesi patristica, Rome, Institutum Patristicum “Augustinianum”, 1985 and Bernhardt Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe = Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft 18, 2 vols, Basel, Friedrich Reinhardt, 1987. See also Jean-Noël Guinot, “La fortune des Hexaples d’Origène aux IV^e et V^e siècles en milieu antiochien,” in Origeniana Sexta, pp. 215–25.

, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1981.

. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 50.

, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1995.

, Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy, Macon, Ga, Mercer University Press, 1996.

, Érasme lecteur d’Origène, Geneva, Droz, 1982, pp. 449–89.

, Origin: The Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian, tr. by A. S. Worrall, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1989, p. xi.

, “La controversia origeniana,” Augustinianum 25 (1986), 7–31.

, Origenes, Darmstatt, Wissenschafthche Buchgesellschaft, 1981.

, see A. Vitores, Identitad entre el cuerpo muerto y resusitado en Orígenes según el “De Resurrectione” de Metodio de Olimpo, Jerusalem, Fransciscan, 1981 and Lloyd G. Patterson, “Methodius, Origen and the Arian Dispute,” SP 17.2 (1982), 912–23 and Methodius of Olympus: Divine Sovereignty, Human Freedom, and Life in Christ, Washington, CUA Press, 1997.

, see Joseph W. Trigg, “Eustathius of Antioch’s Attack on Origen: What is at Issue in an Ancient Controversy?” in Journal of Religion 75 (1995), 219–38.

, pp. 99–153.

. Trigg, Biblical Interpretation = The Message of the Fathers 9, Wilmington, Del., Michael Glazier, 1988 and Simonetti, Lettera e/o allegoria, pp. 140–230.

. Clark. The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992.

, “Augustinus und Origenes,” in Kleine Patristische Studien = Texte und Untersuchungen 83 (1967), 224–52. Henry Chadwick, “Christian Platonism in Origen and Augustine,” in Origeniana Tertia, pp. 217–30.

, Christ in the Christian Tradition, Volume 2: From the Council of Chalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590–604), Part Two: The Church of Constantinople in the Sixth Century, tr. by Pauline Allen and John Cawte, Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 1995. pp. 385–410.

, “Il problema delle citazioni del Peri Archon nella Lettera a Mena di Giustiniano,” in Origeniana Quarta, pp. 54–76.

, Les “Képhalaia Gnostika” d’Évagre le Pontique et l’Histoire de l’Origénisme chez les Grecs et chez les Syriens, Paris, Seuil, 1962 and Francis X. Murphy, “Evagrius Ponticus and Origenism,” in Origeniana Tertia, pp. 254–69. But see J. G. Bunge, “Origenismus – Gnostizismus: zum geistesgeschichthchen Standort des Evagrius Pontikos,” Vigiliae Christianae 40 (1986), 24–54.

, “Le Gnostique chez Clément d’Alexandrie et chez Évagre le Pontique,” in ‘AΞANΔPINA: Hellenisme judaique et christianisme à Alexandrie, Mélanges offerts au P. Claude Mondésert, Paris, Cerf, 1987, pp. 195–201.

, ed., The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, 2 vols, Leiden, Brill, 1997. See also Max Schär, Das Nachleben des Origenes im Zeitalter des Humanismus, Basel, Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1979 and André Godin, Érasme lecteur d’Origène, Geneva, Droz, 1982.

Commentary on Psalms 1–25 Fragment from Preface

, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria: The 1886 Bampton Lectures, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1913, p. 173.

. See , pp. 11– 12.

, refined silver and the Holy Scriptures. Origen generalizes this into an analogy between Scripture and the created world.

, “one who exercises skill or art (technê).”

Commentary on Lamentations Selected Fragments

, pp. 368–71.

, p. 6.

,” making it an appropriate image of the soul’s contemplative nature. See Philo, On Drunkenness 1.369 and On Sleep 3.692,

, we must assume that the “fourfold” character of the Old Testament refers to the four translations into Greek, mentioned below, which Origen arranged together in his Tetrapla or “fourfold” text.

) is also the word for letters of the alphabet.

.” See Gen. 11:9.

and philia.

, which Origen takes to refer to the punishments that sinners will suffer after death.

32.77–82 below, one of his last works, is entirely consistent with his treatment here, in one of his first. In both cases he connects the footwashing passage in John with the Old Testament examples of Moses and Joshua and in both he interprets the passage spiritually as referring to the soul. See also HJos 6.3.

. This is a term Origen often uses for disinterested love, especially God’s love of humanity. See Catherine Osborne, Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 164–84.

. See CJn 1.11.

, originally a Stoic term. The “governing faculty” is the part of the soul responsible for decisions, whether of intellect, affection or will.

, God’s punishments either purify the sinner or deter others from following his example. For a discussion of such deterrence, see HJer 12.4 below.

, which reads “he spurned.”

. See .

, a state of confusion.

13.

, Jewish War 6.5.3.

, see Jean Daniélou, Études d’exégèse judéochrétienne (Les Testimonia), Paris, Beauchesne, 1966, pp. 76–95.

, probably because the fragment drastically condenses Origen’s argument. This leaves it unclear whether Origen accepts or rejects the identification of Josiah as a type of Christ. The statement in 2 Chr. 35:25 that Jeremiah, the supposed author of Lamentations, made a lament for Josiah had apparently suggested to earlier interpreters the identification of Josiah as the subject of the lament. Although the origin of this interpretation was probably Jewish, the interpreters Origen refers to were Christians who identified Josiah as a “type” of Christ. In their interpretation, Josiah was a type of Christ because he was a righteous king who died because of the lawless behavior of the Jewish people. The reference to Neco’s unwillingness to fight, which appears to be Origen’s own, suggests that Origen accepted this interpretation. Given Origen’s consistent identification of Pharaohs as types of Satan, “the prince of this world” (see especially HEx 2.1), he may have seen in Neco’s unwillingness to fight against Josiah a reflection of 1 Cor. 2:7–8. There the princes of this world “would not have crucified the Lord of Glory” had they not been ignorant of the hidden “wisdom of God in a mystery”; by implication they, like Neco, would not have fought against him willingly.

, in this oracle, Christ must be speaking through the prophet Jeremiah (and, by implication, through all the prophets) since he is privy to a knowledge otherwise withheld from the Jewish people. To clinch this identification, Origen turns to Isaiah 52, where, according to ancient Christian tradition, the prophet, assuming the prosôpon of the coming Messiah, predicts his passion. It is thus the incarnate Christ who, in Isaiah, says “I am present, the very one who is speaking” just as he says to the Samaritan woman, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” On Christ’s effective incarnation in Scripture, see CJn 1.33–4 below.

, those who took away the Old Testament prophets, including Jeremiah, were, in effect, taking away Christ. Origen possibly found this idea in a work written c. AD 165, Melito’s On the Passover (57): “But first the Lord had planned in advance [proôikonomêsen] his own sufferings in the patriarchs and prophets and in the whole people, so that he was confirmed by the seal of the law and the prophets.”

, before the fact, to the Christian church, where their ministry continues in the church’s teachers, whom Origen endows with the prophetic role. See Gunnar af Hällström, Charismatic Succession: A Study on Origen’s Concept of Prophecy, Helsinki, the Finnish Exegetical Society, 1984, pp. 39–60.

36.2 (c. 152), of the prophets speaking, at times, in the “person” (prosôpon) of God or of Christ. Greek drama established the identification of the “person” or character speaking in a play with that character’s mask or “face”.

, the plural of prosôpon.

Commentary on Genesis, Fragment from Book 3

, pp. 370–1.

, see the Éric Junod’s introduction to the SC edition (pp. 24–65) and Hendrik S. Benjamins, Eingeordnete Freiheit: Freiheit und Vorsehung bei Origenes, Leiden, Brill, 1994, pp. 70–86.

, “Perspectives sur Origène et la littérature patristique des ‘quaestiones et responsiones,’ ” in Origeniana Sexta, pp. 150–64.

, Enneads 3.1.6.

, whom they, like the Valentinians, designate with the Platonic term Artisan (Greek dêmiourgos, the term Origen uses consistently in this passage).

) is the normal term for angelic beings.

226.152, n. 1) argues that these “Greeks” (i.e. pagans) are Academic philosophers from the Hellenistic period opposed to the early Stoics and that Origen may have known them only vaguely through handbooks. On the other hand, Benjamins (Eingeordnete Freiheit, p. 82, n. 63) argues that they were contemporary Platonists who affirmed providence as a general direction of the universe but denied that providence entails comprehensive divine foreknowledge of individual human actions.

, God knows what will happen in the future, but he knows contingent events as contingent.

, De fin. 3, 6, 21 and 10.33 and Epictetus, Diss.1.22.9ff. and 2.11.3.

, referring to God’s oikonomia.

, having demonstrated that God has good reason to blind us to the future, to clarify this difficult passage in Exodus, which could be used by Gnostics as evidence that the God of the Old Testament is cruel and arbitrary, deliberately and for no good reason making some people blind and others sighted.

2.188–90 (not in this volume). The notion of heavenly tablets played an important role in other Jewish apocalyptic literature, notably the Book of Jubilees, as well as I Enoch, and the Testaments of Levi and Asher. Origen also mentions this idea twice in CJn 1.68 and 221 below.

3.1.5.

, an astronomer of the second century BC, is known as the precession of the equinoxes. Using data from earlier astronomers, Hipparchus demonstrated, to the embarrassment of astrologers, that so-called “fixed” stars are not, from our perspective, really fixed.

) of a sign of the zodiac (i.e. a twelfth part of the ecliptic) and the actual form of the constellation. Astrologers may claim that the theoretical concept, rather than the constellation itself, determines the future, but the precession of the equinoxes means that the theoretical concept cannot be determined accurately from the actual position of the stars, which are gradually slipping eastwards so as to occupy a different place on the ecliptic.

2.188–90, where he states that, according to The Prayer of Joseph, which he describes as a Jewish apocryphal writing, Jacob was actually the highest archangel. When the Archangel Uriel meets him in Syrian Mesopotamia, Jacob fights with him for pretending to be his superior when Uriel is, in fact, eight ranks below him. This appears to be a midrash on Genesis 32, where Jacob struggles with an angel and receives the name Israel. Origen’s point is that the book that speaks of Jacob’s reading future events in the stars also ascribes to him a superhuman dignity, so that, even if he could read the stars, that does not mean that we can.

. God is uniquely an “ingenerate mind” (nous agenêtos), that is, a mind that has no origin outside itself.

, a reference to the angels as the administrators of the divine oikonomia.

Commentary on John, Book 1

. Heine, “The Introduction to Origen’s Commentary on John Compared with the Introductions to the Ancient Philosophical Commentaries on Aristotle,” in Origeniana Sexta, pp. 3–12.

, following the example of women in the old covenant and of Sarah in particular. The implication is that, since the same principles of behavior apply under both covenants, it may be presumed that the peoples of the old and new covenants are also similar in their organization. Origen often cites biblical texts this way, quoting a few words on the assumption that intelligent readers will fill in the rest of the text in such a way as to advance his argument. He may have learned the technique from Clement, who employed such fleeting allusions deliberately to hide his message from those unworthy of it.

, when they present their own tithes and first-fruits, these offerings are taken from tithes and first-fruits previously offered to them, since, by depending on offerings from the people, they have nothing to offer that is not already consecrated.

, not by episcopal ordination, but by their total dedication to studying Scripture. Pierre Nautin (Nautin, p. 467) finds here an implicit rebuke of Demetrius for not ordaining him as a presbyter.

, pp. 366–7) argues that this return to Alexandria was in 231 after a lengthy sojourn in Palestine, where Origen sought refuge after Demetrius condemned his recently published Commentary on Genesis and Peri Archon. The rapprochement was temporary and he left Alexandria permanently a year later.

. Origen seems to be pointing out that, while Paul assumes considerable authority, he avoids speaking as an oracle, as if he were simply a mouthpiece for the Holy Spirit.

, since they correspond to the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water.

, the Gospel of John deals with Christ in his human and divine natures: it speaks of the man Jesus, given a genealogy by Matthew and Luke, but it begins its account with the Logos, who, like Melchizedek in Hebrews, has no genealogy.

, but there seems to be little doubt about the point Origen is making.

). The use of the word nous, also translatable as “mind,” “sense,” or “meaning,” recalls 1 Cor. 2:l6b, “But we have the mind (nous) of Christ” cited in 24 below. The implication is that we can know the meaning (nous) of the Gospel according to John only if we have the mind (nous) of Christ.

. On Origen’s Mariology, see Henri Crouzel, “La théologie mariale d’Origène,” in SC 87, pp. 11–64. Jean Leclerq, in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (tr. by Catharine Misrahi, New York, Fordham University Press, 1961), p. 121, recounts a testimony of a nun, Elizabeth of Schönau, disturbed by allegations that Origen was a heretic. When the Blessed Virgin appears to her in a vision, she asks: “My Lady, I beg of you, kindly reveal to me something concerning the great doctor of the church, Origen, who in so many places in his works has sung your praises so magnificently. Is he saved or not?” She receives the reply:

Know only that Origen’s error did not come from bad will; it came from excess of fervor with which he plunged into the depths of the Holy Scripture he loved, and the divine mysteries which he was wont to scrutinize to an excessive degree. For this reason the punishment he is undergoing is not severe. And because of the glory his writings have given to me, he is illuminated by a very special light on each feast commemorating me. As for what will happen to him on the last day, that must not be revealed to you, but must remain hidden among the divine secrets.

. See note 11 above.

, in contrast to parousia, “advent.” The term epidêmia, from epi “to” and dêmos “humanity,” is sometimes translated “incarnation” and, more clearly than parousia, implies Christ’s assumption of humanity to be present with humanity.

, but the sense is evidently that, just as a little leaven leavens the whole loaf, so the gospel testimony transforms the whole Old Testament into a gospel by providing a key to its previously hidden meaning.

fr. CXVI.

, i.e. those who exercise God’s oikonomia on their behalf. As we shall see, these are normally angels, although spiritually advanced human beings may also exercise this ministry.

, plural) prepare the way for the Word (logos, singular) of God.

, in both dispensations, Christ is present to some more immediately than he is to others. Just as Christ was present in a way prefiguring his incarnation to certain preeminent figures under the old covenant, so, under the new covenant, he is not fully present, as God the Word, to immature souls.

. The “plan” may be God’s plan of salvation encompassing both Jews and gentiles. More likely Origen has in mind the exercise of oikonomia by the apostles themselves, who accommodate themselves to the Jews at Jerusalem. Origen goes on to argue that they acted the same way with simple Christians. In doing so they may exercise deliberate deception. See John Reumann, “’Oικoνoμια as ‘Ethical Accommodation’ in the Fathers, and its Pagan Backgrounds,” in SP 3 (1961), pp. 370–9.

. Just as Paul acted as though he accepted the law’s continuing validity in order to reach Jews, so, by implication, the person seeking to improve simple Christians should act as though there are no higher, secret teachings.

, testifying to the power of Scripture in the human heart, at least twenty-three times in his extant works.

. See , pp. 58–60. The distinction between logos (“discourse” or “word”) and dunamis (“power”), taken from Paul, echoes the contrast between logos and ergon (“word” and “deed”) that is a commonplace in Classical Greek literature.

, many years later, elaborated on this theme in CJn 32.78–83 below.

. For a discussion of epinoiai, see J. Wolinski, “Le recours aux επινoιαι du Christ dans le Commentaire de Jean d’Origène,” in Origeniana Sexta, pp. 465–92. John A. McGuckin makes the fascinating suggestion that the fourteen epinoiai from John listed in 9 and 21 determined the scope of his entire commentary. See “Structural Design and Apologetic Intent in Origen’s Commentary on John,” in Origeniana Sexta, pp. 441–57.

15, n. 12.

. How is the “joy which shall be to all people” also a “glory” “when those who have been humbled to the ground return to their rest”? Most likely Origen had in mind the glory that occurs in souls that are divinized as a result of their contemplation of God; see CJn 32.138–40, translated below. Such souls “return” to the original unity with God that they lost in a pre-cosmic fall.

, including Heracleon. See , p. 8.

, the Greek word archê cannot be translated by a single English word. In the paragraphs below it is translated either as “beginning” or “principle”. It also means “rule” in the sense of “control”. Cécile Blanc (SC 120 bis, p. 114, n. 1) points out that, in the course of these few paragraphs, Origen examines archê in terms of the four causes recognized by Aristotle: efficient, the “by which” of 110–11; material, the “from which” of 103; formal, the “in accordance with which” of 104–5; and final, the “end” here.

, and the priorities implied, is fundamental to Origen’s understanding of the Christian life.

. Here Origen does employ this term often associated with him.

, along with other heavenly bodies, was animated. In On First Principles 1.7.5 he applies Romans 8:20–22 and Philippians 1:24, cited here, to the heavenly bodies. See Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars: A History of an Idea, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991.

. This term, meaning “artisan” (literally “one who works for the people”), was applied by Plato (Timaeus 40c) to the Creator of the world. Gnostics used it to refer to an inferior Creator-God, identified with the God of the Old Testament and distinct from the God of the New Testament who is the Father of Jesus Christ. Here Origen appropriates the term to designate the Son as the one “through whom all things were made.”

, Aristotelians and most contemporary Platonists.

in the sense of a first principle of existence, a sense in which it may have been used by Anaximander in the sixth century BC. Origen clearly distinguishes himself as a Christian from the general consensus of the Greek philosophical tradition that the world came into being out of preexisting matter. He finds this position put forward in two works that were certainly marginal to the Bible as he understood it but to which he ascribed a certain authority. He correctly appeals to them, rather than to Genesis 1:1, for an unambiguous statement of creation ex nihilo.

, “the Logos was in the image (eikôn) of God.” Origen assimilates the biblical “image” (eikôn) to the Platonic “form” (eidos) by which a thing is what it is. This is already attested in Philo, Legum Allegoriae 1.53, in Irenaeus, Demonstratio 22 and in Clement, Protrepticus 10.98.4.

, depending on the translation of the key words sustasis (which I have translated “structure” but can also mean “substance”) and theôria (which I have translated “theoretical consideration”). My interpretation of the Greek noêmata as “the designs by which it [the universe] is constituted” follows Origen’s description of Wisdom in PA, a roughly contemporary work. There he wrote that “In Wisdom, subsisting by itself, are found every power and form of the future creation, both those that first came into existence and those that happened as a result of them, formed and disposed in advance by the power of foreknowledge” (PA 1.2.2). As Cécile Blanc points out (SC 120 bis, p. 118, n. 1), this is Origen’s first effort to define – and, one might add, to distinguish between – “Word” and “Wisdom” as epinoiai of the Son. Thus, as Blanc points out, “The same reality is called ‘Wisdom’ according to its essence, which is to be united to God, and ‘Word’ in so far as it inclines toward creatures.” Origen makes the same distinction in the passage from PA already referred to, writing that “Wisdom” is called “Word” in so far as it reveals to the whole creation “the meaning of the mysteries and secrets contained in the wisdom of God” (PA 1.2.3). Origen understands Proverbs 8 as providing essentially the same picture of Creation as Plato’s Timaeus. The Son as Word, acting in the capacity of Plato’s Artisan (dêmiourgos), creates the universe after an unchangeable pattern contained in the Son as Wisdom.

. The “system of designs” theoretically considered in Wisdom provides the “patterns” of the creative activity of the Word.

(the acc. plural of logos).

. That is, “created” of Prov. 8:22 is not intended in the precise sense of the term. The interpretation of this verse became a major issue in the Arian controversy.

, “life” cannot be a first principle, because being “in” the Word, “Word” is logically prior to it and therefore its first principle.

. See CLam fr. XXV, n. 12 above.

and ousia.

, in relation to this passage:

Origen is aware that the very words he uses to describe the Son, such as Wisdom, Word, and Light, which emphasize the Son’s closeness to the Father, are taken by some as grounds for denying the Son a distinct existence. But the Word is not to be thought of as existing only in the mind of God or as a mere utterance of the Father, existing as syllables. Such a conception fails to grant him a distinct υπoστασις

(The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 86)

, approached through the intellect, and becoming, approached through the senses. As we have seen in (pp. 59–60), he believes that Moses and the prophets originated this distinction.

, see the selection above from the Alexandrian Commentary on the Psalms.

. See n. 33 above. Origen interpreted Job 25:5 to mean that the stars sin. See 257 below and PA 1.7.2.

, the dignity of being greater than the heavenly beings. See 172– 3 above.

. Perhaps Origen had in mind Isa. 35, especially verse 9, where lions and other “wicked wild beasts” are excluded from the way of the redeemed, but, uncharacteristically, he did not precisely recall it.

. Note that in HLk 19.1 below Origen ascribes a similar argument, appealing to God’s glory, to those who would deny the divinity of the Savior.

. Presumably he himself would have felt a need to reconcile the Platonic philosophy so vital to his thought, in which the first divine hypostasis is not an object of knowledge, even to itself, with the Christian belief that the Son knows and reveals the Father. See Henri Crouzel’s comparison of Origen with Plotinus on this point in Origène et Plotin: Comparaisons doctrinales, Paris, Pierre Téqui, 1991, pp. 159–68. Origen appears to reject the possibility of the Son’s partial ignorance because truth cannot be lacking in knowledge. Here Origen’s faithfulness to the biblical witness pushes him toward the eventual Nicene position that accords the Son equality with the Father.

, which is vital to Origen’s Christology, one of the most significant ways in which he foreshadows later Christological developments.

13.39.

) of the Logos are vital to Origen’s Christology because they allow the Logos to have multiple effects while remaining the same essentially.

32.111–22.

, he is not subject to time, so that, from God’s perspective, “today” is eternity. This enables Origen to avoid the implication that “today” is a point in time, implying that the Son’s generation is not eternal. See PA 1.2.9.

, “L’angélologie d’Origène,” in SP 14 (1976), 79–109.

, an indication of very limited knowledge of Hebrew when he wrote this work.

, literally, “wonder of a counselor”. See Joseph W. Trigg, “The Angel of Great Counsel: Christ and the Angelic Hierarchy in Origen’s Theology,” in Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 42 (1991), 35–51.

15, n. 12.

. 12 (= HJos 20.2) Origen compares Scripture to a “drug” against serpents, understood allegorically as vices in the soul.

, already united with the Logos long before its union with human body in the Incarnation. See , p. 25.

5.7 below.

. 33 and 49 and above. Although the modern reader may take it for granted that the expression in Job is a figure of speech, we cannot be sure that it was so intended.

, another reference to Christ’s administration of the divine oikonomia.

and related words mean both “mature” and “perfect’.

. For, Origen, human reason is, in fact, a participation in the divine Logos: see PA 1.3.6. Interestingly, Origen does not use logos for “word” in its fundamental English sense, an individual unit of speech; for “word” in this sense he employs prosêgoria (“title”), onoma (“name” or “term”) and phônê (“sound”).

:22 refers to Christ’s coming as reason to all people, not to his coming in the Incarnation. There is no sin in those who have not yet reached the age of reason, when they can be responsible for their actions. See PA 1.3.6.

, possibly, “the perfection of the Word.”

, the Word becomes flesh for those who participate in the Word merely as reason, but the Word is God for those who have become perfect, a common distinction in Origen. See 43 above.

, Paris, Seuil, 1958, p. 126, n. 24) provides a helpful explanation of this enigmatic text:

We think that Origen seeks progressive stages in the growth of human reason and there is in this text an expression of Origen’s anthropology. See Plotinus, for whom man is triple, because there is, intermediate between man αισθητικoς [sensible] and man εν νω [in intellect], rational man. There is an effort to situate the soul between body and mind.

, from which is derived the word translated “announce”.

38.6–7), Theophilus of Antioch (To Autolycus 2.10.6) and Tertullian (Against Praxeas 7). Although, as we have seen, Origen provides an interpretation of this verse in case it is attributed to the Father, he rejects it on philological grounds, arguing that the ensuing words attributed to the same prosôpon are not consistent with such an identification. On the concept of “person” or prosôpon, see , p. 6.

, “Lord of Hosts.”

Commentary on John, Book 13.3–192

, La méthode exégétique d’Héracléon et d’Origène commenteurs de Jn 4: Jésus, la Samaritaine et les Samaritaines, Fribourg, Editions Universitaires, 1985.

, in CJn 6.92, characterizes this, the earliest interpretative work on a book of the New Testament, with the vague term hupomnêmata (“notes” or “treatises”). We do not know its title. It may not have been a full-fledged commentary like his, but a set of relatively brief comments. It survives only in fragments preserved here and in other books of Origen’s CJn and works by Clement of Alexandria. We must recognize that Heracleon would almost certainly appear to better advantage if we had his work in its entirety. Alain le Boulluec (La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque II^e–III^e siècles, vol. 2, Paris, Études Augustiniennes, 1985, pp. 514–19) shows how Origen, by juxtaposing brief citations with his own carefully argued interpretations, sought to make Heracleon appear arbitrary and inane

, to which he refers more than once.

1.64 above.

. See , p. 32.

, strictly speaking, beyond all human language. In his Homilies on Joshua (22.4), which he may have preached at Caesarea at about the same time as he was composing this book of the Commentary on John, Origen used 2 Cor. 6:12 to argue that, even if the reasons for the division of cities in Joshua are not explicitly given, they can be understood by someone who, like Paul, has had those reasons revealed to him by the Spirit:

It is certain that these mysteries were understood and entirely apprehended by that person who was “taken up as far as the third heaven” (2 Cor. 2:2) and while in heaven, saw heavenly things. He saw Jerusalem, the true city of God, and he saw Bethelehem, Hebron, and all these cities concerning which the division by lot is now described. And he did not simply see them, but he understood in the Spirit the reasons for them, since he testifies that he heard words and reasons. What words? “Unspeakable words,” he says, “which it is not permitted to utter.” You see, therefore, that Paul knew and understood all things in the Spirit, but he was not permitted to divulge them to men. To what men? Those, doubtless, to whom he said repoachfully, “Are you not men and walking according to man?” (1 Cor. 3:3). But he probably told them to those persons who no longer walk according to man. He told them to Timothy, to Luke, and to other disciples whom he knew to be capable of receiving unspeakable mysteries. Only he did make a mysterious allusion to them when he exhorted Timothy saying: “Remember the words which you have heard from me, which are to be conveyed to trustworthy men who are able to instruct others” (2 Tim. 2:2).

Thus what is humanly impossible is not impossible for those who, by becoming spiritual, have passed beyond the human condition (see 34– 6 below). Thus, as Peter Widdicombe points out in The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 57: “The capacity to understand the ‘ineffable mysteries’ depends on our moral condition.”

fr. III above.

,” that is, by a process of spiritual transformation.

, out of dissatisfaction with a “simpler” Christianity, is seduced by the pretensions of Gnostic groups. Earlier in the commentary, Origen had addressed his patron, Ambrosius, as someone in the same position:

You yourself, through lack of persons espousing better things, and because your love for Jesus did not permit you to put up with an irrational and ignorant faith, once gave yourself over to doctrines [logois] which you later rejected when, having accepted the intelligence that was offered to you, you properly judged them to be false.

(CJn 5.8)

. In Valentinian theology the “Fullness” is the spiritual realm from which spiritual natures in this world have been alienated. See Jn 1:16; Col. 2:9; Eph. 3:19.

, from Phil. 4:3. Gnostics, as attested in Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.21.3 and Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta 63.2, seem to have considered the “comrade” a spiritual prototype in the Fullness with whom those who are spiritual enter into a spiritual marriage.

, translated “Lord” and used as a name of God, can also be translated here as the polite form of address, “Sir.”

) because she uses the verb theôrô (”behold” or “contemplate”). The terminology harks back to the pagan mysteries and was taken over by philosophy to refer to the achievement of deeper insight.

) as creator of the world,, see CJn 1, n. 34 above.

, kanôn. On this concept, see , especially p. 4.

:6, in which of our adoption as sons of God enables us to cry “Abba, Father.” He appears to identify this ability to cry “Abba, Father” with the concept (expressed in such passages as Eph. 3:2, Heb. 4:16 and 10:19, and 1 Jn 2:28 and 3:21) that Christians can approach God with bold confidence (parrêsia). Parrêsia is the ability to speak openly and frankly, especially in the presence of a person of superior rank.

, unlike the Gnostics, those who follow the rule of the church can, by means of a spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament (the “Jewish discourses”), identify the Creator of the world as the same God as the Father of Jesus Christ.

. Whether it is the same work referred to as the Teaching of Peter in the Preface to Peri Archon is debatable.

, to Jewish rituals.

193a, and Aristotle discussed further defects of such images (Meteor 374b 16). Ancient mirrors were, in any event, inferior to ours.

, of course, sought to do precisely this himself. See, in particular, his homilies on Exodus and Leviticus.

, the spiritual natures have been lost in the material world created by the Artisan.

, perhaps because of a corrupt text. In PA 1.1.1–4, Origen argues at greater length that this verse does not imply that God is corporeal, as would be implied in a materialistic Stoic concept of spirit.

, not constituted by the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. See Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars: A History of an Idea, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 24–38.

. I follow Cécile Blanc’s reconstruction of its sense.

. 3:12, one to which Origen often recurs, the combustible wood, hay, and stubble are building materials tested by fire.

. and 1 and 2 Kings are designated 1–4 Kingdoms, so that Third Kingdoms is our 1 Kings.

spirit.

, the same word to be used of the Father’s relation to the Son in the Nicene Creed. The succeeding argument seems to indicate that Origen would not have wanted to apply the term to the relationship between the Son (or the Holy Spirit) and the Father.

v. êlimmenos. This appears to be a distinction without a difference. See Cécile Blanc, SC 222, pp. 295–6.

, often listed as the originator of a heresy. Origen’s belief that he was a Samaritan Messianic pretender, also expressed in CC 1.57 and 6.11, may be the most reliable information about him. According to the latter, only about thirty Dositheans remained in Origen’s time.

, the Samaritan woman who symbolizes heterodox thought.

Homily 12 on Jeremiah

.”

, since it suggests that God has a body.

, for instruction at the eucharist, the church at Caesarea regularly read through the entire Bible, from beginning to end, in the course of some fixed period of time. Pierre Nautin argues (Nautin, pp. 389–401) that this occurred in the course of a three-year cycle.

, that is, administering oikonomia.

, which are only accessible to more advanced Christians. See Guy G. Stroumsa, Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism, Leiden, Brill, 1996, pp. 109–31.

. It is also found in Pistis Sophia 134 and in Str. 1.28.177.2.

, that is, the Roman cursus honorum. Augustine, in Confessions 6.11, 19, confesses to having sought to become a governor (praeses), a position that conferred authority to administer a capital punishment.

2.16 Origen notes that in Rom. 13:12 (”The night is advanced, the day is at hand”), “night” signifies this world and “day” the world to come.

, while citing temperance, justice, and courage, three of the cardinal virtues of Greek philosophy, adds the specifically Christian virtues of endurance and holiness. He probably omitted mentioning here the fourth cardinal virtue, normally referred to as “prudence” (pronoia), because he intended to use the same term a little further on in the sense of “providence.” This expansion of the pagan ethical tradition is characteristic also of Origen’s teaching as witnessed in Address 12.149, where Gregory speaks of His adding “endurance” to the four cardinal virtues. While appreciating and making use of the pagan ethical tradition, Origen evidently believed that Christian tradition takes precedence over it.

) from their chief, “the Devil” (diabolos).

. See On the Passover 2.10.12, where he refers to “the fleshes of Christ, that is, I say, the Holy Scriptures.” See also CJn 32.45 below. Here Origen hints at a doctrine for the more sophisticated, who do know “what sort of thing the flesh of the Word is” in a way calculated not to disturb those whom he considers more simple.

. As we see, Origen also speaks of members of his congregation who observe the Sabbath and participate in the celebration of the Day of Atonement. On the well-attested phenomenon of Christians observing Jewish feasts, see Marcel Simon, Verus Israel, Paris, Boccard, 1964, pp. 356–93.

Homilies 19 and 20 on Luke

, pp. 406–9 and Hermann-Josef Sieben, ed. and tr. Origenes, In Lucam Homiliae vol. 1 = Fontes Christiani 4/1, Freiburg, Herder, 1991, pp. 28–31.

, “Origen’s Exegesis of the Kenosis Hymn,” in Origeniana Sexta, pp. 531–47.

, denying that Christ pre-existed His Incarnation, but holding that he was a human being adopted at some point as God’s Son and Messiah. Origen characteristically warns His hearers against various purveyors of false teaching in His homilies.

, those we know as Gnostics, is their denial that the God of the Old Testament is the God and Father of Jesus Christ. The followers of Marcion, whom Origen includes in this group, accepted only the Gospel of Luke.

Homily 5 on 1 Samuel

, SC 328, pp. 57–60.

. A. D. Smelik, “The Witch of Endor: 1 Samuel 28 in Rabbinic and Christian Exegesis till 800 A.D.,” in Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1977), 160–79. See also Patricia Cox Miller, “Origen on the Witch of Endor: Toward an Iconoclastic Typology,” in Anglican Theological Review 66 (1984), 137–47.

, along with Origen’s homily and a shorter treatise by Gregory of Nyssa, are included in La maga di Endor, ed. and tr. by Manlio Simonetti = Biblioteca Patristica 15, Florence, Nardini, 1989. See Joseph W Trigg, “Eustathius of Antioch’s Attack on Origen: What is at Issue in an Ancient Controversy?” in Journal of Religion 75 (1995), 219–38.

. The identification of the persona speaking was an important technique of classical grammar, see , especially p. 6.

, clearing the way for him to ascend the throne and establish His Messianic dynasty. Following Paul and Ignatius, Origen believed that such matters belonged to the divine plan of salvation, the oikonomia, which was a mystery deliberately hidden from the demons. Nautin (SC 328, pp. 84–6) traces the doctrine that a demon could not prophesy concerning the divine plan of salvation to Ignatius, Ephesians 19.1, which Origen cited in HLk 6.4. It could just as easily come from 1 Cor. 2:7–9, where Paul says that, had they understood the divine mystery, the (demonic) rulers of this world “would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

, but the application of Psalm 22, already made, for example, in Mt. 27:35, would appear obvious to any Christian.

, which he appears to understand allegorically.

. Apparently the former refers to Christ’s divine and the latter to His human nature.

, as Paul testifies, we achieve only partial knowledge in this life, even Isaiah, acknowledged as the greatest of the prophets, only prophesied “in part.” Nonetheless, in this particular case, Samuel’s words achieve perfection, since His posthumous oracle concerning David was entirely fulfilled. Such perfection is consistent with Paul’s promise. On the other hand, if prophets do not continue to exercise the prophetic charism after death, “the perfect” could never come.

. See CL fr. XXVII, n. 15 above.

Letter to Gregory

, On Christian Doctrine 2.40.60.

, recalling the words, en ainigmati “in a riddle” or “hint” of 1 Corinthians 13:12.

:14– 25 with Jereboam of 1 Kings 11:26–12:33.

) is exactly the wrong way to approach the Scripture. It characterizes the approach of the Gnostics, who assume that they already know what Scripture teaches before seriously considering it. Its opposite is the “attention” (prosochê) recommended to Gregory.

Commentary on John, Book 32.1–140

. 378–80) suggests 248 or 249.

to the Israelite’s journey through the wilderness.

and in the Commentary on the Song of Songs. See , pp. 41 and 47.

, but anyone who has such direct intercourse with the Word is necessarily receiving hidden and mystical teachings not revealed to the many. The account of a sumptuous breakfast occurs in the Septuagint of 1 Kings (called Third Kingdoms in the LXX) alone.

. Origen here argues that the oikonomia for all creation in Christ is consistent with God’s particular oikonomia for each individual rational being.

, Origène et la fonction révélatrice du Verbe incarné, Paris, Seuil, 1958, pp. 224–5:

God’s revelation does not irrupt in the world brusquely, without preparation or plan; this would not be in conformity with the divine pedagogy. God makes himself known “at opportune moments” and “in a certain order.” Revelation by Christ is a “moment” of revelation, it constitutes a stage, perhaps privileged and definitive, but still a stage after many others.

In the accompanying footnote she cites CC 2.66, where Origen describes God as “with a certain judgment distributing to each what is required.”

, in fact, seem to be a Hebraism, taken over from the language of the Septuagint.

, Cécile Blanc writes (SC 385, p. 212, n. 1):

The beginning of this citation – which the reader must have in mind, since it recurs often – said: “You are gods, all of you sons of the Most High.” Origen here opposes the grandeur of every man’s vocation to a literal and meticulous observance of the Law.

. See Letter to Gregory, n. 4 above.

, within the overall context of God’s plan for His life, Peter’s succumbing to temptation is ultimately profitable to him. This is consistent with Origen’s discussion of the temptation in OP 29.15–19.

, probably Origen’s commentary on the epistle, is lost, we know from Jerome that Origen taught that Paul’s rebuke of Peter could not have been sincere, since he himself had made similar compromises, discussed in CJn 1.42 above, for the sake of oikonomia. See the discussion of this point in Augustine’s correspondence with Jerome, especially Jerome, Letter 112 and Augustine, Letters 28, 40 & 82.

, but he may also allude to Peter’s ability, in Acts 10, to overcome His initial inclinations and to baptize Cornelius.

, the Incarnate Word (logos) would not act irrationally (alogôs).

. 25:29 with Mt. 6:33 or with an unwritten saying that he and Clement of Alexandria considered genuine: “Ask for the large things, and the small ones will be added to you”. See Str. 1.24.158.2 and CC 7.44.

, “baptized”.

, later, the apostles themselves, and those who are like them, can become “another Jesus.” See CJn 1.23 above. Origen goes on to argue that human beings can and should fulfill the spiritual ministry symbolized by footwashing.

, “basis,” means, literally, “that on which one steps.”

, “aspects” of the Logos, set forth most fully in Book 1. According to this doctrine, the Logos ministers in distinct ways to different persons according to their spiritual needs at different levels of transformation.

. In HIsa 6.3 Origen restricts women’s teaching to other women. In the homily, however, Origen presents the footwashing in this passage as a symbol for all Christian teaching, including elementary instruction in morals, not, as here, for advanced teaching only. Whether the discrepancy is to be ascribed to a development in his thought or to reserve in speaking to a congregation about advanced doctrines it is hard to say.

, as in HJer 12.3 above, Origen specifies that ordination only “seems” to indicate eminence in the church.

Commentary on John, Book 32.318–67

. McGuckin, “Origen on the Glory of God,” in SP 25, pp. 316–24.

, which becomes one with the Logos, a process described in PA 2.6. On Origen’s use of Philippians 2, see Gerald Bostock, “Origen’s Exegesis of the Kenosis Hymn,” in Origeniana Sexta, pp. 531–47.

. 4:2 (3:20 LXX).

The notes in this volume provide an introduction to major work related to Origen. For further bibliography see Henri Crouzel, Bibliographie critique d’Origène and , Suppléments 1 and 2, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1971, 1982, and 1996.

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