Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume I/Church History of Eusebius/Book VI/Chapter 6

Clement of Alexandria.

having succeeded Pant&#230;nus, had charge at that time of the catechetical instruction in Alexandria, so that Origen also, while still a boy, Stephanus, Stroth, Burton, Schwegler, Laemmer, and Heinichen, following two important and the translation of Rufinus, omit the words &#960;&#945;&#8150;&#948;&#945; &#8004;&#957;&#964;&#945; &#8220;while a boy.&#8221; But the words are found in all the other codices (the chief witnesses of two of the three great families of being for them) and in Nicephorus. The manuscript authority is therefore overwhelmingly in favor of the words, and they are adopted by Valesius, Zimmermann, and Crus&#232;. Rufinus is a strong witness against the words but, as Redepenning justly remarks, having inserted this chapter, as he did, in the midst of the description of Origen&#8217;s early years (see note 1), the words &#960;&#945;&#8150;&#948;&#945; &#8004;&#957;&#964;&#945; would be quite superfluous and even out of place, and hence he would naturally omit them. So far as the probabilities of the insertion or omission of the words in the present passage are concerned, it seems to me more natural to suppose that a copyist, finding the words at this late stage in the account of Origen&#8217;s life, would be inclined to omit them, than that not finding them there he should, upon historical grounds (which he could have reached only after some reflection), think that they ought to be inserted. The latter would be not only a more difficult but also a much graver step than the former. There seems, then, to be no good warrant for omitting these words. We learn from chap. 3 that he took charge of the catechetical school when he was in his eighteenth year, within a year therefore after the death of his father. And we learn that before he took charge of the school, all who had given instruction there had been driven away by the persecution. Clement, therefore, must have left before Origen&#8217;s eighteenth year, and hence the latter must have studied with him before the persecution had broken up the school, and in all probability before the death of Leonides. In any case, therefore, he was still a boy when under Clement, and even if we omit the words&#8212;&#8220;while a boy&#8221;&#8212;here, we shall not be warranted in putting his student days into the period of his maturity, as some would do. Upon this subject, see Redepenning, I. p. 431 sqq., who adduces still other arguments for the position taken in this note which it is not necessary to repeat here. was one of his pupils. In the first book of the work called Stromata, which Clement wrote, he gives a chronological table, bringing events down to the death of Commodus. So it is evident that that work was written during the reign of Severus, whose times we are now recording.