The life and work of Origen (c186-c254 CE) have always been considered important in relation to the transmission of the New Testament text. This is not just because he was a prolific writer who referred constantly to biblical texts, but also because of his geographical location in two of the most important centres of early Christian education, Alexandria and Caesarea. The task of collecting his citations and mapping these against known manuscripts is an important task and this book contributes to this process by looking specifically at the citations from the synoptic gospels that occur in the works of Origen that have survived in Greek.
The citations, lemmata, adaptations and allusions have been collected and citations and lemmata compared against a selection of known manuscripts representing major text types including the so-called Caesarean text type. Statistical analysis has been undertaken to establish the level of agreement between Origen’s text and known manuscripts, with further analysis undertaken to establish levels of agreement between the different manuscripts.
The evidence suggests that Origen did not use one type of text for any one gospel. Indeed his works reveal instead the range of available text traditions in Caesarea at his time of writing.
Acknowledgements ................................................................. vii
List of Tables ........................................................................... ix
Abbreviations of Origen’s Works .............................................. xi
Summary of Sigla and Abbreviations Used in the Text and
Apparatus ....................................................................... xiii
Preface..................................................................................... xv
Chapter One. The Life of Origen ............................................... 1
Origen as a textual critic ................................................. 10
Chapter Two. Methodology ..................................................... 19
Statistical Analysis .......................................................... 28
Chapter Three. The Text of Matthew in the Writings of Origen .... 31
Chapter Four. The Text of Mark in the Writings of Origen .... 257
Chapter Five. The Text of Luke in the Writings of Origen ...... 307
Chapter Six. Data Analyses ................................................... 413
Data Analysis—Matthew ............................................... 413
Data Analysis—Mark ..................................................... 430
Data Analysis—Luke...................................................... 444
Origen and Codex Bezae (05) ........................................ 454
Origen and Clement of Alexandria ................................. 458
Conclusion .................................................................... 459
Bibliography ......................................................................... 465
Indices .................................................................................. 473
Main Index .................................................................... 473
Index of Biblical Passages .............................................. 475
Index of Manuscripts ..................................................... 476
