| Boundary citation | Gospel | Ammonian § | Ammonian range | Boundary type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mt 13:54 | Matthew | 141 | Mt 13:54–56 | Start |
| Mt 13:57 | Matthew | 142 | Mt 13:57–58 | Start |
| Mt 13:58 | Matthew | 142 | Mt 13:57–58 | End |
| Mk 6:1 | Mark | 50 | Mk 6:1–3 | Start |
| Mk 6:4 | Mark | 51 | Mk 6:4–6a | Start |
| Lk 1:35 | Luke | 2 | Lk 1:35 | Start and end |
| Mt 5:10–12 | Matthew | 29 / 30 | Mt 5:7–10 / Mt 5:11–12 | End of §29; start/end of §30 |
| Lk 6:22–23 | Luke | 49 | Lk 6:22–23 | Start and end |
It can sound like Origen is “doing Ammonius,” but the Greek shows two very different kinds of control over Gospel text. In Origen (Comm. Matt. 10.1–3) the unit is governed by Matthew’s continuous narrative and by Origen’s normal lemmatic procedure; in Theodore (Letter to Theodore §2 as transmitted) the unit is governed by an explicit excerpting syntax—a set of mechanical markers that treat the Gospel as a chain of detachable blocks, navigated by incipits and termini (“μετὰ τὸ … καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως …”). That latter idiom is exactly what an Ammonian apparatus needs.
In Origen’s Comm. Matt. 10.1, the opening is itself the Matthean seam: Τότε ἀφεὶς τοὺς ὄχλους ἦλθεν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν (Mt 13:36). Origen does not cite this as a “handle” for jumping; he takes it as the narrative hinge that explains why the disciples now ask φράσον ἡμῖν τὴν παραβολὴν. The interpretive paragraph that follows is built by intra-Matthean logic (“Ὅτε μὲν… οὐκ ἔστιν… ἔργον ἐστὶ…”) and then by the characteristic Origenian move of gathering parallels as proof of a spiritual pattern rather than as navigational coordinates: συναγαγέτω τις ἀπὸ τῶν εὐαγγελίων ὅσα περὶ τῆς οἰκίας Ἰησοῦ εἴρηται. That verb συναγαγέτω is a hermeneutical injunction, not a table-instruction. He then adduces John 1 material (“Τῇ ἐπαύριον…,” “Ἦν Ἀνδρέας…”) as exempla of “coming to the house,” but without any of the apparatus language of “after X… up to Y… then it says verbatim…”. In short: Origen’s Greek signals commentary, not excerption: the gospel line functions as lemma; the transitions are conceptual; the cross-gospel citations are argumentative.
The same holds in 10.2–3: the interpretive thread is driven by exegetical connective tissue (περὶ ὧν… οὐδὲν ἧττον καὶ νῦν…, πρόσχες γε εἰ δύνασαι…, ἀναγκαίως ἐκθησόμεθα…) rather than by pericope-navigation formulae. Even where Origen ranges widely (Mt 26:41; Jn 1:2; Dan; 1 Cor), the discourse is not “here begins / here ends,” but “this passage coheres with that passage.” That is why the few places where the Matthean text itself sits on a seam (e.g., Mt 13:36 as the move “into the house”) are not treated as apparatus boundaries; they are simply the narrative joints that any reader of Matthew has to traverse. The Greek does not mark the Gospel as a string of numbered modules; it marks it as a textual continuum being interpreted.
The Theodore excerpt is the opposite: it is written in a register that presupposes detachable, indexable blocks. The key signals are the stacked procedural particles and the strict incipit/terminus framing. First comes the forensic premise: δι᾽ αὐτῶν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου λέξεων… ἐλέγχων—not “by reasoning from the passage,” but by using the Gospel’s own words as evidentiary units. Then the navigational formula: Ἀμέλει μετὰ τὸ… καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως…. This is not normal citation style; it is a routing instruction: start reading after the incipit (ἦσαν δὲ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ…) and continue through the terminus (μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας ἀναστήσεται). The phrase καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως is the classic “skip-string” used by excerptors and compilers: it defines a bounded run without reproducing it.
Immediately after, the text doubles down: Ὧδε ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν…—“here it adds verbatim.” That adverbial policing (κατὰ λέξιν) is exactly what one expects when someone is validating a reading against a stable, segmented reference system: the claim is that this is what the gospel says at that point, in the very wording. Then come further stitching cues: Ἐπὶ μὲν τούτοις ἕπεται… (“upon these things follows…”), Μετὰ δὲ τὸ… ἐπάγει μόνον… (“after the ‘and he comes…’ it adds only…”). These are not interpretive transitions; they are index transitions. They treat the Gospel as a sequence of units whose boundaries can be located by formulaic incipits (often beginning with καί + historical present / aorist) and whose adjacency can be asserted (“ἕπεται,” “ἐπάγει”). Even the label πᾶσα ἡ περικοπή is telling: “the whole pericope” is not a casual word for “story,” but the explicit naming of a unit as such.
So the contrast, at the level of Greek, is sharp. Origen’s text gives you the kind of boundary-awareness that any careful commentator inevitably has—he notices narrative hinges (“Τότε…,” movement into the house), and he can marshal parallels. But he never writes like a table user. He does not cite by “after X… up to Y…,” does not authenticate by “here it adds verbatim,” does not step through sequence by “upon these follows,” and does not validate absence/presence by reference to pericope-sized blocks. Theodore §2, by contrast, is saturated with precisely those procedural markers. If one wanted a specimen of Greek that “sounds like Ammonius,” it is not Origen’s lemmatic exposition but Theodore’s apparatus-style chaining: μετὰ τὸ … καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως … Ὧδε ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν … Ἐπὶ μὲν τούτοις ἕπεται … Μετὰ δὲ τὸ … ἐπάγει—a grammar of segmentation, adjacency, and verification.
