page_title: Origen
section_title: Exegetical writings
hierarchical_section_title: Origen / Works / Exegetical writings
caption_attribution_description: English: Papyrus Bodmer VIII, Original: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Deutsch: Zwei Seiten aus einem Petrusbrief aus dem 3. Jahrhundert nach Christus, Papyrus Bodmer VIII, Original in der Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Italiano: Papiro Bodmer VIII - Papiro 72, originale dalla Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; fine della Prima lettera di Pietro e inizio della Seconda lettera di Pietro
context_page_description: Origen of Alexandria, also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and theologian who was born and spent the first half of his career in Alexandria. He was a prolific writer who wrote roughly 2,000 treatises in multiple branches of theology, including textual criticism, biblical exegesis and biblical hermeneutics, homiletics, and spirituality. He was one of the most influential figures in early Christian theology, apologetics, and asceticism. He has been described as "the greatest genius the early church ever produced".
  Origen sought martyrdom with his father at a young age but was prevented from turning himself in to the authorities by his mother. When he was eighteen years old, Origen became a catechist at the Catechetical School of Alexandria. He devoted himself to his studies and adopted an ascetic lifestyle as both a vegetarian and teetotaler. He came into conflict with Demetrius, the bishop of Alexandria, in 231 after he was ordained as a presbyter by his friend, the bishop of Caesarea, while on a journey to Athens through Palestine.
context_section_description: Origen was an extremely prolific writer. According to Epiphanius, he wrote a grand total of roughly 6,000 works over the course of his lifetime. Most scholars agree that this estimate is probably somewhat exaggerated. According to Jerome, Eusebius listed the titles of just under 2,000 treatises written by Origen in his lost Life of Pamphilus. Jerome compiled an abbreviated list of Origen's major treatises, itemizing 800 different titles.
  By far the most important work of Origen on textual criticism was the Hexapla ("Sixfold"), a massive comparative study of various translations of the Old Testament in six columns: Hebrew, Hebrew in Greek characters, the Septuagint, and the Greek translations of Theodotion (a Jewish scholar from c. 180 AD), Aquila of Sinope (another Jewish scholar from c. 117-138), and Symmachus (an Ebionite scholar from c. 193-211). Origen was the first Christian scholar to introduce critical markers to a Biblical text. He marked the Septuagint column of the Hexapla using signs adapted from those used by the textual critics of the Great Library of Alexandria: a passage found in the Septuagint that was not found in the Hebrew text would be marked with an asterisk (*) and a passage that was found in other Greek translations, but not in the Septuagint, would be marked with an obelus (÷).
  The Hexapla was the cornerstone of the Great Library of Caesarea, which Origen founded. It was still the centerpiece of the library's collection by the time of Jerome, who records having used it in his letters on multiple occasions. When Emperor Constantine the Great ordered fifty complete copies of the Bible to be transcribed and disseminated across the empire, Eusebius used the Hexapla as the master copy for the Old Testament. Although the original Hexapla has been lost, the text of it has survived in numerous fragments and a more-or-less complete Syraic translation of the Greek column, made by the seventh-century bishop Paul of Tella, has also survived. For some sections of the Hexapla, Origen included additional columns containing other Greek translations; for the Book of Psalms, he included no less than eight Greek translations, making this section known as Enneapla ("Ninefold"). Origen also produced the Tetrapla ("Fourfold"), a smaller, abridged version of the Hexapla containing only the four Greek translations and not the original Hebrew text.
  According to Jerome's Epistle 33, Origen wrote extensive scholia on the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Isaiah, Psalms 1-15, Ecclesiastes, and the Gospel of John. None of these scholia have survived intact, but parts of them were incorporated into the Catenaea, a collection of excerpts from major works of Biblical commentary written by the Church Fathers. Other fragments of the scholia are preserved in Origen's Philocalia and in Pamphilus of Caesarea's apology for Origen. The Stromateis were of a similar character, and the margin of Codex Athous Laura, 184, contains citations from this work on Romans 9:23; I Corinthians 6:14, 7:31, 34, 9:20-21, 10:9, besides a few other fragments. Origen composed homilies covering almost the entire Bible. There are 205, and possibly 279, homilies of Origen that are extant either in Greek or in Latin translations.
  The homilies preserved are on Genesis (16), Exodus (13), Leviticus (16), Numbers (28), Joshua (26), Judges (9), I Sam. (2), Psalms 36-38 (9), Canticles (2), Isaiah (9), Jeremiah (7 Greek, 2 Latin, 12 Greek and Latin), Ezekiel (14), and Luke (39). The homilies were preached in the church at Caesarea, with the exception of the two on 1 Samuel which were delivered in Jerusalem. Nautin has argued that they were all preached in a three-year liturgical cycle some time between 238 and 244, preceding the Commentary on the Song of Songs, where Origen refers to homilies on Judges, Exodus, Numbers, and a work on Leviticus. On June 11, 2012, the Bavarian State Library announced that the Italian philologist Marina Molin Pradel had discovered twenty-nine previously unknown homilies by Origen in a twelfth-century Byzantine manuscript from their collectio
caption: Two sides of the Papyrus Bodmer VIII, an early New Testament fragment from the third or fourth century AD containing the Epistle of Jude, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter. Origen accepted the two former as authentic without question,[109] but noted that the latter was suspected to be a forgery.[110]
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