| Work + locus | What Origen does (pericope mechanics) | Greek textual indicators (quoted) | Why this is “apparatus-grade,” not generic harmonizing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comm. Matt. 16.7–16.8 | Builds a bounded Matthean run, then maps it boundary-to-boundary onto Mark, then instructs place-based collation and order-checking | “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ…”; “τούτοις τὰ ἰσοδυναμοῦντα καὶ ὁ Μᾶρκος ἀνέγραψεν”; “ἐτηρήσαμεν… τὴν τάξιν”; “παραθεὶς τὰ εὐαγγέλια ἀλλήλοις κατὰ τοὺς τόπους τούτους καὶ συγκρίνων” | This is nearly a prose description of table-use: define a segment, find the equivalent segment in another Gospel, then compare “by places” and test τάξις across the aligned run. |
| Comm. Matt. 16.1–16.2 | Triangulates Matthew–Mark–Luke by giving incipits and shared termini (prediction endpoint), then narrows scope to Matthew | “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ… καὶ τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἀναστήσεται”; “τὰ ἰσοδυναμοῦντα”; “ὁ Λουκᾶς… δόξει τούτοις συνᾴδειν”; “ἐπεὶ τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον πρόκειται νῦν ἐξετάζειν” | The repeated incipit→terminus bracketing across multiple witnesses is exactly what a pericope apparatus formalizes. The “now examine Matthew” line reads like a commentary-scope switch after doing synopsis-work. |
| Comm. Matt. 16.4 | Matches the Zebedee request episode as a whole (not a verse) across Matthew and Mark via matching endpoints | “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ… ἠγανάκτησαν”; “τὸ δ’ ὅμοιον αὐτῷ καὶ ὁ Μᾶρκος ἀνέγραψε”; again “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ… ἀγανακτεῖν” | Boundary-to-boundary mapping (“ἕως τοῦ …”) is operationally closer to a section-table than to casual parallel citing. |
| Comm. Matt. 6.13 | Performs an explicit procedure: compare gospels for one episode, omit κοινά, extract ἴδια, and align by movement-phrases | “Ἴδωμεν δὲ καὶ τὸ τοῦ Λουκᾶ…”; “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ…”; “τὰ μὲν κοινὰ… οὐκ ἐπαναληψόμεθα, τὰ δὲ καίρια καὶ ἴδια… παραστήσομεν” | “Common vs distinctive” is the working logic of synopsis tables: you only separate κοινά/ἴδια if the pericope is already aligned as “the same place” in multiple witnesses. |
| Comm. Matt. 17.29 | Defines a pericope by incipit + terminus; then explains “that day” by the adjacent pericope-chain and explicitly marks synoptic equivalence | “Ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ… καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς, ἕως τοῦ…”; “τὰ δὲ ἰσοδυναμοῦντα τούτοις… καὶ παρὰ τῷ Μάρκῳ καὶ τῷ Λουκᾶ”; “δευτέρα… τρίτη… τετάρτη ἐπερώτησις” | Apparatus thinking shows up twice: (i) explicit pericope bracketing, (ii) treating a narrative stretch as a run of discrete Q/A “blocks” whose adjacency resolves an incipit (“that day”). |
| Comm. Matt. 10.16 | Reads a seam-formula as a boundary rubric whose scope must be decided | “Καὶ ἐγένετο, ὅτε ἐτέλεσεν… μετῆρεν ἐκεῖθεν” (treated as a delimiting closure) | The point is not the phrase itself (everyone sees it) but Origen’s range-testing of what it closes—boundary anxiety is pericope-engine behavior. |
| Comm. Matt. 16.12 | Frames a synoptic problem as “same history vs similar history,” then reads Mark’s Jericho run as a bounded unit and argues “according to the place” | “κατὰ τὸν τόπον”; “ἄξιόν γε καὶ τὰ τούτων ἰδεῖν”; Mark cited with “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς, ἕως τοῦ…” | “Same vs similar” is exactly the decision a pericope apparatus forces you to confront: are we aligning one unit or two look-alikes? Origen makes that decision framework explicit. |
| Comm. Matt. 12.15 (end) | Variant-awareness in Matthew becomes visible because Origen is reading inside a synoptic alignment; he explicitly appeals to manuscripts | “κατὰ τινα τῶν ἀντιγράφων”; Matthew reading “ἐπετίμησεν” aligns with Mark “ἐπετίμησεν” and Luke “ἐπιτιμήσας” (as Origen observes) | This is the sharpest “apparatus” signature: pericope-alignment doesn’t just interpret, it exposes textual plurality at the same slot. That is exactly what cross-indexed units do in practice. |
| Comm. Matt. 17.36 | Performs clause-scope testing inside a pericope, then marks tri-synoptic wording plus a Lucan increment | “Μετὰ ταῦτα ζητῶ πότερον…”; “ἑξῆς τούτῳ ἔστιν ἰδεῖν”; “ἀνέγραψαν Ματθαῖος καὶ Μᾶρκος καὶ Λουκᾶς”; “ὁ δὲ Λουκᾶς προσέθηκε…” | Clause-scope + “next unit” navigation + “Luke added” is table-reader behavior at micro-scale: it presupposes stable unit edges and stable parallel placement. |
| Comm. Jo. 6.24.131–6.28.147 | Describes evangelists’ epitome/omission/rewriting within the same citation-unit and defends cross-gospel joining as method | “ἐπιτεμνόμενος / ἐπιτομή”; “Μὴ ὑπολάβῃς… ἀκαίρως… εἰ γὰρ καλῶς ἐφηρμόσαμεν…” | This is the theoretical and procedural justification of pericope alignment: if you can “fit” (ἐφαρμόζειν) the join, you can legitimately move across witnesses without being “out of season.” That is basically the logic a pericope apparatus institutionalizes. |
| Comm. Jo. 10.30.191–10.31.202 | Explicitly postpones fuller treatment to the “proper” Gospel locus while still aligning the pericope across witnesses | “εὐκαιρότερον… ὅταν εἰς τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον…” (postponement); plus systematic “κατὰ” evangelist alignment | The “defer until we reach Matthew” move presupposes you have a mental index of the same pericope across gospels and know where each belongs in a controlled traversal. |
| Feature (Greek signal) | Count in the strongest set (n = 23 loci used for tallying) | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Explicit unit bracketing by span (e.g., καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ…) | 10 | 43% |
| Explicit equivalence terms (e.g., ἰσοδυναμοῦντα, τὸ ὅμοιον, συνᾴδειν) | 4 | 17% |
| Explicit place-based collation / locus language (e.g., κατὰ τοὺς τόπους, κατὰ τὸν τόπον, παραθεὶς τὰ εὐαγγέλια) | 5 | 22% |
| Explicit manuscript/variant awareness tied to the slot (e.g., κατὰ τινα τῶν ἀντιγράφων) | 2 | 9% |
Interpretation of the distribution (still “data summary”): when Origen is most diagnostic, he most often signals pericope control by span-bracketing (καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως…), and his most probative “Ammonius-like” moments are when that bracketing is paired with equivalence (ἰσοδυναμοῦντα) and/or place-based collation (κατὰ τοὺς τόπους), and in the very strongest case it even yields variant visibility at the same slot (κατὰ τινα τῶν ἀντιγράφων + synoptic alignment).
Origen’s strongest passages don’t just show that he knows parallels; they show that he handles parallels with a repeatable mechanism.
The mechanism is visible in a cluster of technical habits that are hard to explain if he is only doing occasional harmonization from memory.
First, he repeatedly treats an episode as something that can be defined by an incipit and then “run it out” to a hard terminus: καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ…. That formula is not a decorative “etc.”; it functions as a boundary operator. It presupposes that Origen expects his reader (and himself) to recognize a stable chunk whose internal content is already known as belonging to one unit.
Second, he repeatedly asserts that other gospels contain “the equivalent unit,” using explicit equivalence vocabulary rather than dependence vocabulary: τὰ ἰσοδυναμοῦντα, τὸ ὅμοιον, and the agreement register συνᾴδειν. This is exactly the semantic posture of a pericope table: not “Mark copied Matthew,” but “Mark has the matching section-unit.”
Third, he sometimes makes the synopsis-procedure explicit as instruction: παραθεὶς τὰ εὐαγγέλια ἀλλήλοις κατὰ τοὺς τόπους τούτους καὶ συγκρίνων. This is the smoking-gun procedural sentence because it names the core operation a pericope apparatus exists to support: setting texts side-by-side by place and comparing.
Fourth, in the best case (Comm. Matt. 12.15), the unit-alignment does what apparatus-reading actually does in practice: it produces textual criticism at the same narrative slot. Origen’s κατὰ τινα τῶν ἀντιγράφων plus the synoptic convergence around ἐπετίμησεν / ἐπιτιμήσας is not a generic “parallel citation”; it is variant visibility generated by pericope alignment. That is precisely the kind of phenomenon you get when you read Matthew not only as a continuous book but also as a segmented witness repeatedly checked against parallel segmented witnesses.
Taken together, these strongest loci support a single proposition: Origen is not merely “aware of parallels.” He is repeatedly operating with a workflow that assumes (a) the gospels can be partitioned into stable units, (b) those units have equivalences across gospels, and (c) those equivalences can be checked “by place,” sometimes even surfacing competing readings. That is functionally what an Ammonian-style pericope apparatus is.
Origen’s strongest evidence for Ammonian-style pericope thinking (Top 5)
1) Comm. Matt. 16.7–16.8 — explicit synopsis procedure
Greek signals
-
καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ…
-
τούτοις τὰ ἰσοδυναμοῦντα καὶ ὁ Μᾶρκος ἀνέγραψεν
-
ἐτηρήσαμεν… τὴν τάξιν
-
παραθεὶς τὰ εὐαγγέλια ἀλλήλοις κατὰ τοὺς τόπους τούτους καὶ συγκρίνων
Origen does not merely cite Mark; he defines a Matthean run, identifies the equivalent run in Mark, checks order (τάξις), and instructs place-based collation. This is prose describing the use of a pericope table.
2) Comm. Matt. 16.1–16.2 — tri-synoptic unit alignment by shared terminus
Greek signals
-
καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ… καὶ τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἀναστήσεται
-
τὰ ἰσοδυναμοῦντα
-
ὁ Λουκᾶς… συνᾴδειν
-
ἐπεὶ τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον πρόκειται νῦν ἐξετάζειν
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are aligned to the same endpoint (prediction terminus). Only after that synopsis-work does Origen narrow scope to Matthew. This presupposes a shared pericope boundary across witnesses.
3) Comm. Matt. 16.4 — boundary-to-boundary episode matching
Greek signals
-
καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ… ἠγανάκτησαν
-
τὸ δ’ ὅμοιον αὐτῷ καὶ ὁ Μᾶρκος ἀνέγραψε
-
again καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως τοῦ… ἀγανακτεῖν
Origen matches the whole Zebedee request episode, not verses, by identical termini in Matthew and Mark. That is pericope-level mapping, not thematic harmonization.
4) Comm. Matt. 17.29 — pericope bracketing + chain-of-units reasoning
Greek signals
-
Ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ… καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς, ἕως τοῦ…
-
τὰ ἰσοδυναμοῦντα τούτοις… καὶ παρὰ τῷ Μάρκῳ καὶ τῷ Λουκᾷ
-
δευτέρα… τρίτη… τετάρτη ἐπερώτησις
Origen defines the Sadducees episode by span, then explains its incipit (“that day”) by adjacent pericopes treated as a numbered run of Q/A units. That macro-organization is exactly what section systems formalize.
5) Comm. Matt. 12.15 (end) — slot-based variant awareness
Greek signals
-
κατὰ τινα τῶν ἀντιγράφων
-
Matthew ἐπετίμησεν aligned with Mark ἐπετίμησεν and Luke ἐπιτιμήσας
A Matthean variant becomes visible because Origen is reading Matthew inside a synoptic pericope alignment. This is the strongest diagnostic: pericope alignment exposes textual plurality at the same narrative slot.
One-paragraph synthesis (the “winning” argument)
Across these five passages Origen repeatedly performs the same technical operation: he defines a bounded unit with incipit→terminus language (καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως…), asserts equivalence across gospels (ἰσοδυναμοῦν / ὅμοιον / συνᾴδειν), and in the clearest case explicitly instructs place-based collation (παραθεὶς τὰ εὐαγγέλια… κατὰ τοὺς τόπους), even checking order (τάξις). This is not generic harmonization. It is a repeatable workflow that presupposes the gospels are pre-segmented into stable pericopes that can be aligned, compared, and sometimes used to surface manuscript variation at the same slot (κατὰ τινα τῶν ἀντιγράφων). Whether Origen is consulting Ammonius directly or an equivalent synoptic aid, these passages show him thinking and working as a pericope-table reader.
The Evidence for Origen's Use of Ammonius (or Something Like Ammonius's Pericope Apparatus):
Commentary on Matthew [part one][part two][part three][part four][part five][part six][part seven][part eight][part nine][part ten][part eleven][part twelve][part thirteen][part fourteen][part fifteen][part sixteen][part seventeen][part eighteen][part nineteen][part twenty][part twenty one][part twenty two][part twenty three][part twenty four][part twenty five][part twenty six][part twenty seven][part twenty eight][part twenty nine][part thirty][part thirty one][part thirty two][part thirty three][part thirty four][part thirty five][part thirty six][part thirty seven][part thirty eight]
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_38.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_86.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_74.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_67.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_42.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_20.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_37.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_14.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_45.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_92.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_62.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_15.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_5.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_52.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_2.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_3.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_27.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-his_50.html
Commentary on John
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-his_22.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-his.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary_22.html
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammonius-in-commentary.html
Other Works
https://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2026/01/origens-use-of-ammoniuss-apparatus.html
