The Word in the City: Biblical Scholarship and Reading Culture in Origen's Psalm Homilies from the Codex monacensis Graecus 314 (original) (raw)
Origen of Alexandria's biblical exegesis has been the subject of substantial scholarly attention. However, it has been only recently that scholars have begun to pay attention to the broader intellectual and socio-cultural context in which he conducted his exegesis. In this dissertation, I explore Origen's biblical exegesis in a recently discovered collection of homilies he preached on the Psalms to his Christian community in Caesarea Maritima. I am concerning less with note gratitude to Miriam DeCock with whom I had very many productive discussions about these homilies. My supervisor, Fr. T. Allan Smith at the Faculty of Theology, University of St. Michael's College and the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies also deserves mention. It was his idea that I work on these homilies. I am especially for gracefully putting up with my constant questions and requests for meetings. I must also thank Arlin Nikolas for cultivating in me the love of learning. Most of all, however, I wish to express my eternal thanks to my parents, who supported me throughout this process. I left a stable job to pursue my doctoral studies and without their emotional and financial support, I would not have been able to accomplish this dream of mine.
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Scripture and Christian Formation in Origen's Fourth Homily on Psalm 77(78)
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2019
In order to gain a better understanding of the theology behind early Christian biblical interpretation and preaching, we must go beyond mere intellectual factors, and investigate the phenomena that informed those practices. One such cultural phenomenon that can help us with such endeavors is the use or role of texts within communities. Early Christian biblical exegesis, especially as performed in the act of preaching, was intimately linked to a community's identity formation. Brian Stock employed the term "textual communities" to encapsulate how emerging communities were formed around particular understandings of texts. This paper will apply this theoretical model to Origen's Fourth Homily on Psalm 77(78), in order to determine its utility in understanding Origen's preaching activity. I will show how Origen's concern to alter the behavior of his Caesarean audience informed his interpretation of the "manna" from Psalm 77. In conclusion, this model provides us with valuable insights into Origen's attempt to form a Christian culture in the third-century church. 1. This can also be said for any early Christian exegete.
Discovering Origen’s Lost Homilies on the Psalms
This article deals with the circumstances in which some homilies of Origen were discovered at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich. In April 2012, Marina Molin Pradel, while preparing after two centuries a new catalogue of the Greek manuscripts of the library, discovered that one of them – the Codex Monacen- sis Graecus 314, an anonymous collection of 29 homilies on the Psalms from the beginning of the 12th century – included four homilies on Psalm 36. Their text essentially corresponded to the first four homilies of Origen on this psalm trans- lated by Rufinus into Latin. The original Greek had been so far preserved only by some catenae on the Psalms, albeit in rather few and tiny fragments. Excerpts from other homilies of the same Codex occurred elsewhere in the catenae under the name of Origen. Perrone confirmed that the new series of 29 homilies on the Psalms is now the largest corpus of Greek sermons by Origen at our dispos- al. Adding to them the Latin translations made by Rufinus of a fifth homily on Psalm 36, two homilies on Ps 37 and again two on Ps 38, we have a total of 34 homilies (to which we can add an excerpt from the Homily on Psalm 82 reported by Eusebius in the Ecclesiastical History). This article offers a preliminary over- view of the new homiletic corpus, also relying on Jerome’s list of the writings of Origen in Letter 33 to Paula, and adds an important witness to the external evidence supporting the attribution of the new homilies to Origen: an excerpt from the 2nd Homily on Psalm 15 has been inserted by Pamphilus in his Apology of Origen (142-145), later to be translated into Latin by Rufinus.
Four years ago Marina Molin Pradel found that a ms. with 29 Greek homilies at the Staatsbibliotek in Munich by Origen, who preached over a hundred homilies on Psalms ranging over the entire Psalter, from Psalm 3 to Psalm 149. Up until then these had been considered lost except for a few fragments and nine homilies on Psalms 36, 37 and 38 (in the LXX numeration that I shall be using) that Rufinus translated. The presence of four homilies translated by Rufinus in the Greek selection facilitated their identification. This discovery constitutes, not just a substantial addition to Origen's corpus, but to ea rly Christian literature. Origen had a lifelong interest in the Psalms, expressed as well in commentaries, scholia, and in finding mss. of two previously unknown Greek versions.1 Until now, because so little survived, Origen's Psalm interpretation has played a marginal role in studies of his thought. A notable exception is Karen Torjesen's 1986 work, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen's Exegesis. She settled on Origen's homilies on Psalm 36, in Rufinus's translation, as the best texts from Origen's corpus to illustrate how his exegetical procedure was intended to further the transforming activity of Christ in the human soul.2 The newly discovered Psalm homilies vindicate her intuition. Lorenzo Perrone, at the University of Bologna took a leading role in confirming the discovery. In an article first available in Spanish, he explained why homilies must be by Origen. He also argued that a discrepancy with Contra Celsum indicates that they postdate that work, datable to 248. making them, as far as we know, Origen's last work, "el último Orígenes". They are the subject of articles in the most recent issue of Adamantius, the Origen journal Perrone edits. Mark James, in his just completed dissertation at the University of Virginia, focuses on the same process that interested Karen Torjesen and shows how Origen's teaching about our appropriation of the divine logos relies on Stoic language theory, in which there is a natural connection between words and what they represent. Last year Perrone, with the assistance of Pradel and others, published a 652-page critical edition of all 29 homilies as volume 13 in the GCS edition of Origen's works. Perrone's apparatus underscores his arguments for authenticity, now the Einleitung, by quotations similar passages elsewhere in Origen's corpus, so many that they occasionally take up more room than the text itself. For someone made an acquaintance with Origen a while ago, reading the homiies is like meeting up again an old friend. He is still the same guy, impatient with stupidity, opening up conversations rather than closing them down, achieving remarkable consistency by unpredictable means. I find nothing in the homilies to modify the judgment of Marguerite Harl that one finds the principal ideas of Peri Archon all the way through Origen's oeuvre, even to his last works.3. On the contrary, Perrone's edition already provides additional evidence, through the erudition of its apparatus, is of the overall coherence and consistency of Origen's work, in its interpretation of the Bible and in its understanding of the grand sweep of the divine oikonomia. But, as when one meets and old friend, one often learns new things. Origen apparently did not sing (although he knows music theory) and that he was more savvy than one might have expected about wine connoisseurship and the about the theater. As soon as one attempts to translate Origen an issue arises: what word or words do I use to translate λογος and, with the word θεος as well, when, if ever, do I capitalize them? Λογος is customarily translated [capital-w], "Word" when it refers to Christ. In other contexts, it is rendered as "reason", "discourse" or "oration", although rarely as [small-w] "word". But
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