| Reference (boundary incipit cited) | Gospel | Ammonian § | Canon | Ammonian range | Boundary type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mt 15:12–13 | Matthew | 155 | 10 | Matthew 15:12–13 | Start of Ammonian pericope (incipit) |
| Mt 15:15 | Matthew | 157 | 6 | Matthew 15:15–23 | Start of Ammonian pericope (incipit) |
It is possible that Origen’s Greek in Comm. Matt. 11.4–7 sounds like someone who can navigate by pericope-units, but in these paragraphs the evidence is thin and indirect—much weaker than the overt “apparatus talk” in To Theodore.
What we can say, staying close to the Greek phenomena that matter for an “Ammonian” question, is this. The two Matthean places you have isolated as Ammonian incipits—Mt 15:12–13 (Ammonian §155) and Mt 15:15 (Ammonian §157)—are, by definition, points where a pericope-system gives you a clean handle: a fresh unit begins, and a reader who is using a table can “drop in” there. In Origen, when he arrives at such a point, the characteristic sign would not be a numerical citation (“§155”)—Origen never does that—but a resumptive movement into the narrative with a lemma introduced as the next textual block to be handled. In other words, the most that Origen can “show” in Greek is behavioral: he treats certain verses as entry-points and then expounds forward as though he has taken hold of a discrete unit. That is consistent with (not proof of) pericope-navigation.
But notice the limit: this kind of evidence depends on coincidence between (a) where Origen chooses to begin quoting and (b) where an Ammonian list says a section begins. That is inherently fragile, because many incipits are also perfectly ordinary narrative hinges in Matthew itself. Mt 15:15 (“Πέτρος… εἶπεν…”) is a natural restart for exposition even without any apparatus, since it explicitly marks a new conversational turn; similarly Mt 15:12–13 (“Τότε προσελθόντες…”) is a built-in seam. So if Origen is “anchoring” at these starts, the Greek does not force an apparatus hypothesis: the syntax of Matthew itself already supplies the seam.
Set against this, To Theodore is doing something categorically different, because its Greek explicitly verbalizes apparatus-operations. The hallmark phrases are not just temporal connectives, but the metatextual machinery:
It frames a unit by incipit-plus-range: Ἀμέλει μετὰ τὸ … καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως …. That is not merely “moving on in the story.” It is a reader’s way of citing a span without reproducing it all, i.e. “after the words X … and what follows until Y.” That is apparatus-style referencing in language.
It flags verbatim insertion: Ὧδε ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν. This is a bibliographical claim about how the text is being handled (“here he adds word-for-word”), which presupposes a control-text being consulted and excerpted.
It names the unit as a unit: πᾶσα ἡ περικοπή. Origen may of course use περικοπή elsewhere in his corpus, but in To Theodore it is deployed as a technical label for an extractable, transportable block, the kind of “whole pericope” one can attach after a given point.
It iterates the same “after the words…” technique again: Μετὰ δὲ τὸ καὶ ἔρχεται εἰς Ἱεριχὼ ἐπάγει μόνον…. Again: that is a bibliographic orientation cue (“after the phrase … he adds only …”), not simple narration.
So the contrast is sharp. Origen (in the slice you have restricted us to) can at best be argued to show implicit pericope-awareness: he begins where a pericope-list begins and proceeds as though treating a bounded episode. To Theodore speaks in the metalanguage of excerpting and splicing pericopes: it gives you “after the words…,” “and what follows until…,” “word-for-word,” “the whole pericope,” and a second “after the words…” seam. That is exactly the kind of phrasing one expects when someone is not merely using a Gospel as narrative, but manipulating it as a sequence of detachable textual blocks.
On that basis, the witness-value is asymmetrical. To Theodore is strong evidence for an apparatus-like conception (whether Ammonian proper or a cognate habit of pericope indexing), because the Greek openly performs the operations an apparatus exists to enable. Origen, by contrast, is weaker evidence: his practice is compatible with an Ammonian tool in the background, but the Greek does not require it, because the “incipit” points you have identified are also self-advertising seams in Matthew’s own discourse. The most that can be claimed, responsibly, is that Origen’s lemma-selection can be made to align with Ammonian segmentation; whereas To Theodore explicitly describes segmentation-and-splicing as such.
