| Citation (boundary verse) | Gospel | Ammonian § | Canon | Ammonian section range | Boundary type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mt 4:11 | Matthew | 17 | 6 | Matthew 4:11 | Start and end (single-verse section) |
| Mt 4:17 | Matthew | 20 | 6 | Matthew 4:17–18 | Start |
| Mt 5:17 | Matthew | 33 | 10 | Matthew 5:17 | Start and end (single-verse section) |
| Mt 13:24 | Matthew | 136 | 10 | Matthew 13:24–30 | Start |
| Mt 13:36 | Matthew | 140 | 10 | Matthew 13:36–53 | Start |
Nothing in Comm. Matt. 10.1–3, restricted to the boundary-citations isolated here (Mt 13:36; Mt 13:24; Mt 5:17; Mt 4:17; Mt 4:11), compels the conclusion that Origen is using an Ammonian apparatus in the same “apparatus-driven” way that Theodore’s author is. At most, these verses happen to coincide with section-initials in an Ammonian segmentation; the Greek technique by which Origen deploys them is the ordinary lemmatic procedure of commentary and thematic cross-reference, not an explicit boundary-navigation method.
In Origen, the controlling signal is not a boundary-formula but the exegetical lemma itself. Comm. Matt. 10.1 opens on the Matthean narrative hinge “Τότε ἀφεὶς τοὺς ὄχλους ἦλθεν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ” and then immediately frames the ensuing exposition by quoting (or paraphrasing) the disciples’ request, “φράσον ἡμῖν τὴν παραβολὴν τῶν ζιζανίων τοῦ ἀγροῦ (13, 36[–43]).” That parenthetical range is the editor’s verse-range, not Origen’s own internal reference system, and Origen’s Greek proceeds by conceptual linkage: he contrasts Jesus “μετὰ τῶν ὄχλων” with Jesus “ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ,” and he uses that narrative relocation to generate an ascetical-epistemological contrast between “ὄχλοι” and “μαθηταί.” The proof that he is tracking a pericope boundary would have to lie in boundary-marking diction—some overt cue like “μετὰ τὸ …” + “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως …,” or a deliberate anchoring at a recognized incipit because it functions as an index-point. But Origen’s method here is instead the standard commentary move: take the opening words of the lemmatic unit (here Mt 13:36) and unfold their meaning; when he ranges beyond it (as he does, e.g., by invoking Johannine “Τῇ ἐπαύριον…” material), it is in the service of analogy and doctrinal elaboration, not to demarcate where one documentary unit stops and another begins.
The same is true when the boundary-verse is a single-verse unit in the Ammonian list (e.g., Mt 5:17). A single verse can be both “start” and “end” in a segmentation, but that fact alone is not an apparatus-use. For apparatus-use, the author must treat the incipit as a navigational key—either by quoting precisely the incipit as a label, or by chaining incipits as a sequence, or by setting explicit “from–to” limits. Origen’s lemmatic practice does quote and sometimes re-quote incipits, but that is a feature of commentary-as-scholarly-genre: the lemma marks what is being explained, not what is being “looked up” in a cross-index. Likewise Mt 13:24 (“Ἄλλην παραβολὴν παρέθηκεν…”) and Mt 4:17 (“Ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο…”) are intrinsically strong narrative/discourse hinges in Matthew; they are “good starts” for any segmentation system precisely because they are already good rhetorical boundaries in the text. Their appearance in Origen therefore has an obvious, non-apparatus explanation: they are structurally salient Matthean turns that a commentator naturally uses as entry-points.
By contrast, to Theodore is saturated with boundary-navigation language that is recognizably “apparatus-shaped.” The author does not merely cite a verse; he cites a sequence position by incipit and then declares a limit: “Ἀμέλει μετὰ τὸ ἦσαν δὲ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ ἀναβαίνοντες εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα, καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως, μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας ἀναστήσεται.” Three things matter here. First, “μετὰ τὸ …” explicitly treats a quoted incipit as a boundary-marker, i.e., a known point in the narrative to which one can refer without re-narrating. Second, “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως …” supplies an explicit range delimiter: not “this is the verse,” but “from this incipit through the following until that other phrase.” Third, the author then adds a procedural cue: “Ὧδε ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν,” introducing what follows as a verbatim insertion governed by the previously declared boundary-range. This is precisely the kind of language one expects when someone is working with a documentary aid that subdivides the Gospel into retrievable units—whether that aid is Ammonian-style sectionalization, a marginal incipit index, or a lectionary-like set of “beginnings” and “endings.” In other words, Theodore’s author performs boundary-management in the sentence itself: he defines where he is in the text and how far he will run before switching to another insertion.
That difference in Greek technique is decisive for the narrow evidentiary question. In Comm. Matt. 10.1–3, the “boundary verses” identified do not come accompanied by boundary-formulas of the Theodore type. Origen does not say “μετὰ τὸ … καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως …,” he does not flag “Ὧδε ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν” to indicate an excerpt keyed to a boundary-range, and he does not present a chained series of incipits functioning as a coordinate system. Instead, he reads continuously and exegetically from a lemma, and he ranges to other texts by thematic association. Therefore the strongest statement that the Greek permits, limited to these instances, is modest: Origen’s lemmata often coincide with verses that later (or elsewhere) serve as section-initials, because both commentary and sectional apparatus gravitate toward the same naturally articulated narrative hinges; Theodore’s author, by contrast, deploys explicit incipit-and-range formulas (“μετὰ τὸ … καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως …,” “κατὰ λέξιν”) that look like the use of an indexing system rather than mere selection of a rhetorically salient verse.
