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Philo and Origen: a Preliminary Survey

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Philo and Origen: a Preliminary Survey CHAPTER SIX PHILO AND ORIGEN: A PRELIMINARY SURVEY 1. The ambitions of this paper are modest. Some time ago I received a request to furnish a volume for the series Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum. The task entrusted to me was to give a survey of the state of research on the use of Philo in the Christian tradition. Clearly one the most prominent Church Fathers who was well acquainted with Philo was Origen. So I had no choice but to come to grips with the scholarship that has been carried out on the subject of Origen's use of Philo. To my surprise I discovered that, despite the vast amount of literature on both authors, the status quaestionis on the relation between them was in fact in a state of some disarray. In my paper I shall say a few words about this, and at the same time give some pointers to what I regard as the more important aspects of the subject. 2. First, however, it is opportune to emphasize how much students of Philo owe to the great master and patron of this colloquium. It can be said beyond all reasonable doubt that the preservation of Philo's writings as we have them today is due to the intervention of Origen himself. Had he not taken copies of Philo's treatises with him when he moved from Alexandria to Caesarea in 233, then these would have gone lost, together with the remainder of the Hellenis­ tic:Jewish literature of Alexandria. Philo had a place in Origen's library. These books were rescued by Pamphilus and consulted by Eusebius when writing his Church history. They were preserved for posterity when Bishop Euzoius of Caesarea had them transferred to parchment in about 375. In a fascinating article presented at the famous Lyon colloque on Philo Father Barthelemy showed that mysterious Rabbinical alterations in a family of medieval Philonic manuscripts could be traced back to surreptitious activity by a Rabbi in Origen's scriptorium, probably to be identified as Origen's friend Rabbi Hoshai'a.I 1 Philon d'Alexandrie: Lyon 11-15 Septembre 1966: colloques nationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris 1967) 45-78 118 CHAPTER SIX But back to Origen himself. The question that must be posed is why Origen took the trouble to take all those rolls or codices with him. What was Philo doing in his library? This question becomes all the more pressing if we take into account the evidence of Gregory Thaumaturgus, whose letter of thanks informs us about the curriculum of the school at Caesarea.2 Mter initial training in dialectic, physics, geometry, astronomy and ethics, the pupil moves on to theology, for which first the texts of ancient philosophers and poets are read, followed by the scriptures. In a beautiful passage Gregory describes how Origen was given the remarkable spiritual gift of penetrating into the meaning of God's prophets (§173-183).3 But where was the place for Philo in this programme, if Origen moved straight from the philosophers to scripture? [334] 3. But if we want to know more about what Origen did with the Philonic books in his library, first scholarly foundations have to be laid. It must be said that this has been very patchily done, especially when compared to the way that references and allusions to Philo in the Clementine corpus have been dealt with. The annotations in the Origen texts of the GCS and SC series are very incomplete, and also hard to consult because indices are usually lacking. The best list, oddly enough, is probably to be found in Cohn and Wendland's text of Philo, which in the apparatus criticus lists some 99 cross­ references to Origen.4 The necessary tools required in order to make a sound study of the question of Origen's use of and debt to Philo are simply not available. There is thus no chance that the outstanding analysis recently made of Clement's use of Philo in the Stromateis could be emulated for Origen at the present moment.5 * 2 In Origenem oratio panegyrica (= CPG 1763). There is no need here to go into the dispute about whether the work really is Gregory's or not. 3 Interestingly this very section contains reminiscences of Philonic themes: ( 1) §176 the concept of friend of God to whom oracles are given or made clear (for Philo the great example being Moses, cf. Opif. 5, 8, Cher. 49, but also Abraham, Abr. 273); (2) §183 the negative interpretation of 'working the soil' (Gen 4:2; cf. QG 2.66, Sacr. 51, Agr. 21; unfortunately the section of the Allegorical Commen­ tary dealing with this text is lost) . * 4 But these too are not indexed; I hope to supply an index in a forthcoming issue of The Studia Philonica AnnuaL 5 A. van den Hoek, Clement of Alexandria and his Use of Philo in the Stromateis: an Early Christian Reshaping of a Jewish Model (Leiden 1988). The analysis is largely based on the apparatus of St:ihlin and Friichtel in the GCS edition. .
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