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

 

Work	Passage	Greek textual indicators of Ammonian-style pericope / unit use	Strength as witness for Ammonius-style unit thinking
Origen, Commentary on Matthew	10.19 (Nazareth pericope: “not many mighty works” / “could do no mighty work”)	Origen begins with an explicit pericope-local deictic: «ἔστιν ἰδεῖν… ἐκεῖ» and immediately anchors the exegetical problem to a single scene-slot (“there,” i.e., the Nazareth episode). The pericope-engine shows up as a precision alignment of Matthew with Mark at one narrative coordinate: Matthew’s «οὐκ ἐποίησεν ἐκεῖ δυνάμεις πολλὰς διὰ τὴν ἀπιστίαν αὐτῶν» is set directly against Mark’s parallel «οὐκ ἠδύνατο ἐκεῖ οὐδεμίαν ποιῆσαι δύναμιν». Origen’s method is then microscopically lexical: «Πρόσχες… οὐ γὰρ εἶπεν “οὐκ ἤθελεν” ἀλλ’ “οὐκ ἠδύνατο”»—a distinction that only matters if these are treated as strictly corresponding pericope reports rather than loosely similar themes. He reads the Markan “inability” as a pericope-internal constraint (recipient faith as συνεργία / συμπρᾶξις), and he then insists on Mark’s own intra-unit qualifier: «Εἰ μὴ ὀλίγοις ἀρρώστοις… ἐθεράπευσε», which modulates “could do none” into “could do only a limited amount,” yielding a tight reconciliation with Matthew’s “not many.” The comparative network that follows (disciples’ failure: «Διὰ τί οὐκ ἠδυνήθημεν…» / Jesus’ answer «Διὰ τὴν ὀλιγοπιστίαν ὑμῶν»; Peter: «Ὀλιγόπιστε…»; hemorrhaging woman and «δύναμιν ἐξελθοῦσαν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ») functions as a set of parallel “faith–power” units deployed to explain this unit; they are invoked because they share the same pericope-logic, not because Origen is prooftexting at random. He closes with an overt “calibration” claim about evangelists’ diction: «ἀκριβῶς… ὁ Ματθαῖος καὶ ὁ Μᾶρκος…»—they choose wording to display that δύναμις “can” operate even amid ἀπιστία, but “not to the same extent” as amid πίστις. That is a classic canon-table habit: meaning extracted from micro-variance inside a fixed pericope correspondence.	High — Not a unit-incpit passage (“Ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ καιρῷ…”) but still strongly Ammonian in operation: Origen treats “Nazareth” as a bounded pericope, aligns Matthew/Mark at the exact same narrative slot, and builds his interpretation out of their lexical variance (“οὐκ ἐποίησεν… πολλὰς” vs “οὐκ ἠδύνατο… οὐδεμίαν,” plus Mark’s “εἰ μὴ…” qualifier). This is pericope-comparison logic all the way down.