Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/64

Rh 52 ORIGENES. mystical or proplictical, and moral Bignificance. (Orig. Homil. XVII. in Genesim, c. 1.) His desire of finding continnally a mystical sense led hirn frequently into the neglect of the historical sense, and even into the denial of its truth. This capital fault has at all times furnished ground for depreciating his labours, and has no doubt ma- terially diminished their value : it must not, how- ever, be supposed that his denial of the historical truth of the Sacred Writings is more than occasional, or that it has been carried out to the full extent which some of his accusers (for instance, Eusta- thius of Antioch) have charged upon him. His character as a commentator is thus summed up by the acute Richard Simon {Hist. Critique des Piincipaux Commentateurs du N. T. ch. iii.) : — given to digressions. He commonly says every thing which occurs to him with respect to some word that he meets with, and he affects great refinement in his speculations (il affecte de pa- roitre subtil dans ses inventions), which often leads him to resort to airy (sublimes) and allegorical meanings. But notwithstanding these faults, we find in his Commentaries on the New Testament profound learning and an extensive acquaintance with every thing respecting religion ; nor is there any writer from whom we can learn so well as from him what the ancient theology was. He had carefully read a great number of writers of whom we now scarcely know the names." His proneness to allegorical and mystical interpretations was probablj' derived from, at least strengthened by, his study of Plato, and others of the Greek philosophers. III. OtJier Works. The exegetical writings of Origen might well have been the sole labour of a long life devoted to literature. They form, how- ever, only a part of the works of this indefatigable father. Epiph.anius affirms {Haeres. Ixiv. 63) that common report assigned to him the composition of " six thousand books " (^^uKio-xiAtous ^iSKous) ; and the statement, which is repeated again and again by the Byzantine writers, though itself an absurd exaggeration, may be taken as evidence of his exuberant authorship. Jerome compares him to Varro, the most fertile author among the Latins (Hieron. ad Paulam Epistol. 2.9, ed. Benedictin, 33, ed. Vallars., et apud Rufin. Tnvectiv. lib. ii. 19), and states that he surpassed him and all other writers, whether Latin or Greek, in the number and extent of his works. Of his miscellaneous works the following only arc known : — 1. 'ETTjo-ToXai, Epistolae. Origen wrote many letters, of which Eusebius collected as many as he could find extant, to the number of more than a hundred {H.E. vi. 36). Most of them have long since perished. Delarue has given (vol. i. p. I — 32) those, whether entire or fragmentary, which remain. 2. Ileft dvaffTafffws^ De Resurredione. Euse- bius says this work was in two books {H. E, vi. 24), and was written at Alexandria before the Commentaries on the Lamentations of Jeremiah, in which they are referred to, Jerome (ibid.) adds that he wrote two other Dialogi de Resur- redione ; and in another place {Ad Pammach. Epistol. 61, edd. vet., 38, ed. Benedictin. ; Lib. Contra Joannem Jerosolymitanum., c. 25, ed. Val- larsi) he cites the fourth book on the resurrection, as if he regarded the two works as constituting one. The works on the resurrection are lost, ORIGENES. except a few fragments cited by Jerome or by Pam- philus, in his Apologia pro Origene, or by Origen himself in his De Principiis (Delarue, vol. i. pp. 32—37). 3. Sxpco/xaTet? s. '^Tpoifxarewv Xoyoi i. Stro- matewv (s. Stromutum) Libri A'"., written at Alex- andria, in the reign of Alexander Severus ( Euseb. H.E. vi. 24), in imitation of the work of the same name by Clemens Alexandrinus. [Clemens Alexandrinus.] The tenth book was chiefly- composed of Scholia on the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians. Nothing is extant of the work, except two or three fragments cited in Latin by Jerome. (Delarue, vol. i. pp. 37 — 41.) 4. Ilepl dpxoeu, De Principiis. This work, which was written at Alexandria (Eusebius, H. E. vi. 24), was the great object of attack with Origen's enemies, and the source from which they derived their chief evidence of his various alleged heresies. It was divided into four books. The first treated of God, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit ; of the fall, of rational natures and their final restoration to happiness, of corporeal and incorporeal beings and of angels : the second, of the world and the things in it, of the identity of the God of the old dispensation and of the new, of the incarnation of Christ, of the resurrection, and of the punishment of the wicked : the third book, of the freedom of the will, of the agency of Satan, of the temptations of man, of the origin of the world in time and of its end : the fourth, of the divine original and proper mode of studying the Scriptures. The heterodoxy of this work, according to the standard of the day, or rather perhaps of the next generation, was as- cribed by Marcellus of Ancyra to the influence of the Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato, which Origen had been recently studying, and had not taken time maturely to consider. Eusebius replied to Marcellus by denying the Platonism of Origen, and Pamphilus, in his Apologia pro Origene., attempted to prove that he was ortho- dox. On the outbreak of the Arian controversy, Origen was accused of having been the real author of that obnoxious system ; and Didymus of Alexandria, in his Scholia on the Ilepl dpxoiv of Origen, in order to refute this charge, endea- voured to show how far he differed from them. [Didymus, No. 4.] But as the limits of orthodoxy became more definite and restricted, this mode of defence was abandoned ; and Rufinus, no longer denying the heterodox character of many passages with respect to the Trinity, affirmed that they were interpolations. When, therefore, at the close of the fourth century, he translated the Uepl dpx(2v into Latin, he softened the objectionable features of the work, by omitting those parts re- lating to the Trinity, which appeared to be liete- rodox, and illustrating obscure passages by the in- sertion of more explicit declarations from the author's other writings. On other subjects, however, he was said to have rather exaggerated than softened the objectionable sentiments. (Hieron. Contra Rufin. i. 7.) Such principles of translation would have seriously impaired the fidelity of his version, even if his assertion, that he had added nothing of his own, were true : but as he did not give reference to the places from which the inserted passages were taken, he rendered the credibility of that assertion very doubtful. Jerome, therefore, to ex- pose, as he says (Ibid.), both the heterodoxy of tbo writer and the unfaithfulness of the translatoj^
 * 'Origen is every where too long and too much