This session begins with a feature presentation by John Cavadini on “Word and Wisdom in Origen,” with three complementary presentations on how ancient exegetical practices influenced and/or clarify Origen’s own hermeneutics. Grant Gasse considers how Origen’s and his predecessors’ exegeses of canonical gospel texts on John the Baptist shed light on the influence of early Greco-Roman literary practices upon the canonical gospel writers. Samuel Mullins explores how Origen’s use of sequence shows that for him allegory follows certain non-arbitrary demands that rely upon rather than dismiss the letter of the text. Finally, Warren Campbell examines the tension between Origen’s resonance with Philo’s higher readings of Scripture and Origen’s recurrent criticism that Jewish readings do not “ascend beyond the literal,” by looking to Origen’s treatment of Hebrews as a Pauline letter written to a Jewish audience.
Growing scholarly appreciation for the literary character of the canonical gospels has called into question the paradigms undergirding the social-historical reconstructions characteristic of earlier New Testament scholarship. Following this recent trend, this paper considers the exegetical reception of the gospels might inform scholarly accounts of the evangelists’ literary aims. As a test case, I examine the early Christian exegetical reception of the gospels’ portrait of John the Baptist, a figure who has played a central role in the critical study of Christian origins. I attend especially to the treatment of John, across the four gospels, in the work of Origen of Alexandria and that of his exegetical predecessors. Ultimately, I contend that the earliest exegetes of the gospels offer invaluable insight into the gospels’ literary composition, inasmuch as their exegetical methods are informed by the Greco-Roman literary practices which shape the evangelists’ cultural milieu.
The aim of this paper is to explore Origen’s appropriation of the ancient literary concept of sequence (ἀκολουθία or εἱρμός), especially as it pertains to his allegorical readings of Scripture. Through an analysis of Origen’s use of the concept in *Princ.*, *Comm. Matt.*, and *Comm. Jo*, I will demonstrate its relevance to Origen’s exegesis. I will further argue that his use of sequence demonstrates that his allegorical exegesis is not an arbitrary exercise untethered from the letter of the text. Origen appeals to the concept of sequence to demand that allegories of discrete units of a passage be developed in a consistent way. He also appeals to sequence to demand that prophecies be understood as referring to the same figure throughout. Consequently, the letter of the scriptural text is relevant to Origen’s allegories.
Conceptualizing Origen's relationship with Philo's corpus is tricky, to say the least. On the one hand, similar interpretive impulses spawning from the Alexandrian tradition of reading Homer are present in both writers as they reach for the 'higher' sense of their sacred texts (cf. Conf. 38.190 with de Princ. 4.2.6). On the other hand, Origen repeatedly caricatures Jewish reading as the inability to ascend beyond the literal reference of a text. In this paper, I want to revisit this tension between indebtedness to Philo and characterizing Jewish reading as 'literal'. I suggest that Origen's relationship to Philo should be read through the lens of Origen's reception of Hebrews as a Pauline letter written to Jews in Palestina. Origen found in 'Paul' the same impulse in Philo, namely, an acknowledgement that all earthly, material features described in the sacred writings are really 'shadows' or 'copies' of heavenly counterparts (cf. Hebrews 8:5 and Mirg. 2.12).