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exegesis of the Bible, then expounded in almost daily sermons as part of the
Church’s liturgical cycle,^97 and in teaching catechumens—not just a book
learning to be dictated, copied, and distributed, but also an intensely practical
and oral spirituality against a background of sporadic persecution and mar-
tyrdom, as for Origen’s father and at least seven of his pupils. (Recall the mar-
tyr bearing cross and codex marching toward a gridiron beside a cabinet full
of Gospel books, in a mosaic in the mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna.)
Origen was not the first Christian exegete: the Gospels themselves fre-
quently allude to the Jewish scriptures, not to mention Paul. But Origen was
the first to deploy the spectrum of available erudition on the Bible, and write
systematic commentaries in the manner of the philosophers, exhibiting the
scripture’s underlying coherence and rationality—therefore also compatibil-
ity with philosophy.^98 Indeed, it is arguable that Eusebius sees in Origen an
outstanding exemplar of the fact that Christianity is to be located, histori-
cally and intellectually, not only—as in chapter 3—against the backdrop of
Rome (Ecclesiastical history) and earlier empires and civilizations (Chronicle),
but also (Preparation for the Gospel) as a development from Greek philoso-
phy, Plato in particular. And Greek philosophy derived, in its turn, from the
wisdom traditions of the ancient Hebrews.^99
Being so deeply versed in philosophy, especially Platonism, Origen found
much in the Bible that escaped those who stayed on the text’s surface. He
keenly studied scripture’s literal meaning, in Hebrew as well as Greek: on the
Jewish Bible he consulted his Jewish or rabbinic contemporaries, and unlike
them was much influenced by Philo. But behind the philolog y he always
sought hidden, spiritual doctrine. Scripture’s many obscurities, absurdities,
or lapses of taste—God strolling in his garden, Lot lying with his daughters,
Jesus viewing all the kingdoms of the world—made this allegorical style of
exegesis (which had a long pedigree) seem defensible, and left Origen a free
terrain on which to construct a philosophical, rationalizing Christianity. He
was also much given to finding foreshadowings of the new, Christian dispen-
sation in the Jewish scriptures—a “typological” approach that helped make
sense of the difficult relationship between Judaism and the Church, while
typifying the Christian tendency to see primarily history and prophecy in
the Jewish Bible, where the parallel exegetical tradition saw primarily law,
framed in history.
97 On recent growth of interest in homiletics, see W. Mayer, “Homiletics,” in Harvey and Hunter
(eds), Early Christian studies [6:92] 565–83. This will be intensified by the April 2012 discovery in the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, of an eleventh/twelfth-century manuscript with the previously un-
known Greek text of twenty-nine sermons on the Psalms by Origen: http://www.uni-muenster.de/FB2
/origenes/spektakulaererfund.html.
98 Fürst [5:41], in IBALA.
99 C. Fraenkel, “Integrating Greek philosophy into Jewish and Christian contexts in Antiquity:
The Alexandrian project,” in Wisnovsky and others (eds), Vehicles of transmission [3:18] 23–47.