Thursday, January 22, 2026

Origen's Use of Ammonius in Commentary on Matthew [Part Eighteen]

WorkPassageGreek textual indicators of Ammonian-style pericope / unit useStrength as witness for Ammonius-style unit thinking
Origen, Commentary on Matthew15.10 (Matt 19:16–30; rich man: “τί ἀγαθὸν ποιήσω…;” ends “πολλοὶ… πρῶτοι ἔσχατοι…”)Clear pericope-range packaging in explicitly “table-like” language: “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς, ἕως τοῦ … (19, 16–30)”. That is exactly the kind of incipit → explicit delimitation that matches an Ammonian habit of treating a gospel episode as a bounded unit. The lemma begins with a stable incipit “Καὶ ἰδοὺ εἷς προσελθὼν…” and Origen proceeds as if the unit is already fixed (no boundary anxiety, no re-starting the narrative). Synoptic comparison appears inside the unit rather than to construct its edges: “ὁ μὲν οὖν Ματθαῖος… ὁ δὲ Μᾶρκος καὶ Λουκᾶς φασι…”—used to align semantic/theological force (τί ἀγαθὸν ποιήσω vs τί με λέγεις ἀγαθόν), not to relocate the narrative. There is no canon-numbering, no “μετὰ ταῦτα… καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως” used to jump between units; instead the one explicit boundary marker is the bounded scope statement.Moderate (5–6/10) — stronger than 15.9/15.6 as a formal witness because Origen himself marks the passage as a bounded block (“καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς, ἕως τοῦ…”). But the internal work is overwhelmingly semantic/theological, not segmentation-driven: the unit boundary is stated, not used operationally to stitch parallels or manage sequence the way Ammonian cross-indexing would.


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