| Comm. Matt. | Boundary citation | Gospel | Ammonian pericope # | Canon | Range (per your list) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11.8 | Mt 15:1–2 | Matthew | 154 | 6 | Matthew 15:1–11 |
Origen’s Greek would amount at most to an indirect (and therefore relatively weak) signal of Ammonian-style navigation, whereas To Theodore contains direct and self-conscious pericope-indexing language that sounds like someone thinking in “apparatus units.”
The reason is simple: an Ammonian apparatus is, in the first instance, a way of entering the Gospel at stable incipits and treating what follows as a bounded block. If, in Comm. Matt. 11.8, Origen reopens the Matthean narrative precisely at a known Ammonian incipit (in your table, the incipit that corresponds to Matthew §154, Mt 15:1–11), that alignment is compatible with apparatus-use. But compatibility is not demonstration. Greek narrative-resumption formulas are part of ordinary exegetical diction and can be generated without any external sectional technology. Unless Origen’s phrasing does something specifically documentary—for example, explicitly delimiting the excerpt, explicitly naming the unit, or explicitly marking “the following up to…”—the most you can claim is that his choice of re-entry point coincides with a sectional boundary.
That is exactly where To Theodore differs in kind, not merely in degree. The author’s Greek does not merely “resume narrative” or “cite Scripture.” It performs the operations that an apparatus performs, and it verbalizes them. The sequence Ἀμέλει μετὰ τὸ … καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως … is boundary-language: it anchors the citation by an incipit (“after the ‘ἦσαν δὲ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ…’”) and then explicitly drives forward through a span (“καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως …”). That is exactly how a user of sectional tables thinks when the point is not a single verse but a controlled stretch of text with a defined terminus. The formula Ὧδε ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν is equally diagnostic: it is meta-textual direction—“here he adds, verbatim”—which treats the Gospel as a source to be excerpted with conscious attention to the letter. Then Ἐπὶ μὲν τούτοις ἕπεται … καὶ πᾶσα ἡ περικοπή explicitly names the unit as a περικοπή and treats what follows as the rest of that block; and Μετὰ δὲ τὸ καὶ ἔρχεται εἰς Ἱεριχὼ ἐπάγει μόνον repeats the same technique at the next hinge, again by incipit (“after the ‘and he comes to Jericho’ he adds only…”). In other words, the passage is saturated with language that presupposes a segmentation regime and makes that regime audible: incipit-citation, span-control (ἕως), verbatim flagging (κατὰ λέξιν), and unit-naming (πᾶσα ἡ περικοπή).
By comparison, even if Origen’s Greek at Comm. Matt. 11.8 introduces Mt 15:1–2 with a resumptive formula of the ordinary kind (the sort of thing one commonly finds in commentary prose: a transition like “after this,” “then,” “the text says,” followed by the incipit), that does not itself amount to apparatus-talk. It is consistent with a reader who knows where the next “episode” begins; it is also consistent with someone simply following the biblical text or a lectional/exegetical rhythm. The evidentiary force, therefore, depends on whether Origen’s Greek looks merely like narrative resumption, or whether it exhibits the specifically documentary features that To Theodore foregrounds—most importantly, explicit delimitation (a forward-range marker like ἕως / “up to”), explicit unit terminology (περικοπή), or explicit “verbatim” handling (κατὰ λέξιν) that frames the Gospel as a block to be lifted intact.
So, on these terms, To Theodore is the stronger witness to “apparatus-thinking” because its Greek openly enacts the segmentation: it not only quotes but indexes and bounds quotations using hinge phrases as handles. Origen, in the single boundary instance you have isolated, would be (at best) a weaker witness: he may be choosing an incipit that matches an Ammonian boundary, but unless his Greek also performs the bounding operation in the way Theodore does, the conclusion remains probabilistic—“consistent with,” not “objectively compels.” If you want the argument to be “objective” rather than “compatible,” the burden is to show in Origen not just boundary-alignment by reference, but boundary-management by meta-textual Greek.
