| Origen (MAT.COM) | Boundary citation (as cited) | # in your list | Gospel | Ammonian pericope | Canon | Ammonian range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12,32 | Mt 16:28 | 5 | Matthew | 172 | 2 | Matthew 16:28–17:9 |
| 12,32 | Mk 9:1 | 3 | Mark | 87 | 2 | Mark 9:1–9 |
| 12,32 | Jn 1:1 | 1 | John | 1 | 3 | Jn 1:1–5 |
| 12,32 | Jn 1:11 | 1 | John | 4 | 10 | Jn 1:11–13 |
| 12,33 | Mt 16:28 | 5 | Matthew | 172 | 2 | Matthew 16:28–17:9 |
| 12,33 | Jn 6:51 | 1 | John | 65 | 1 | Jn 6:51 |
| 12,34 | Mt 16:28 | 3 | Matthew | 172 | 2 | Matthew 16:28–17:9 |
| 12,34 | Mk 9:1 | 1 | Mark | 87 | 2 | Mark 9:1–9 |
| 12,35 | Mt 16:28 | 3 | Matthew | 172 | 2 | Matthew 16:28–17:9 |
In Comm. Matt. 12.32–35 Origen’s Greek repeatedly behaves as if he is working with a segmentation habit: not merely “quoting verses,” but fastening interpretation to recognizably stable narrative hinges and then ranging across what he treats as a bounded unit. The most obvious signal is not a technical label (“Ammonian,” “κεφάλαιον,” etc.)—Origen does not name an apparatus here—but the way citation and exposition are synchronized with boundary-formulas that are, in the later tables, exactly the kinds of anchors one expects to function as pericope-starts.
Two features are decisive in the Greek.
First, Origen’s preferred citations in this stretch are not random lemmata but transition clauses that are intrinsically “unit-like.” In 12.32 he centers the discussion on “τινὲς … οὐ γευσόμενοι … ἕως ἂν ἴδωσι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ,” and then immediately triangulates the synoptic parallel (“τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐληλυθυῖαν ἐν δυνάμει”) with his own Johannine gloss (“κατὰ τὸν Ἰωάννου λόγον τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ”). What matters is how the hinge-phrase “ἕως ἂν ἴδωσι” becomes the interpretive peg: 12.34 then turns to a second “ἕως” boundary (“ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ μεθ’ ὑμῶν εἰμι πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας ἕως τῆς συντελείας τοῦ αἰῶνος”) precisely to argue how “ἕως” functions as a scriptural delimiter that does not terminate meaning at a temporal endpoint. In other words, Origen is reading the Gospel clause like a structural marker, and his whole excursus is an exercise in what one might call “boundary semantics”: he explicates how a clause that marks the edge of a promised interval does or does not imply reversal afterward. That is the mental world of pericope management—using short, stable phrases to locate and hold a unit in view—whether or not one names the tool.
Second, the connective idiom “καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς” appears in the same orbit of Origen’s habits elsewhere and is conceptually adjacent to what he is doing here even when the exact phrase is not printed in your excerpt: he moves as though he can range within a section without continuous quotation because the unit is already cognitively parcelled. In 12.35 he explicitly invites collation by collecting disparate “θανάτου” texts and distinguishing “γεύσασθαι θανάτου” from “ἰδεῖν,” “ἐλθεῖν,” “ἀκολουθεῖν,” “καταποθῆναι,” as if the exegete’s task is to align recurring lemmata across already separable scriptural loci. That is precisely how an Ammonian-style apparatus is used in practice: it presupposes that “places” (τόποι) are enumerable and retrievable, so that “τὰ κατ’ ἕκαστον τόπον σημαινόμενα” can be compared. Origen even writes that language—“τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον τόπον”—in 12.35, which is not technical jargon for Ammonius but is the kind of spatial indexing vocabulary that makes such a system workable.
The strongest internal evidence, then, is not that Origen cites Matthew 16:28 and Mark 9:1 (anyone can do that), but that the Greek exposition treats the Gospel clause as a unit boundary with internal stability, and then uses cross-Gospel and cross-corpus alignment in a way that is most naturally explained by (or at least comfortably compatible with) a pre-Eusebian pericope-and-parallel habit. The cluster you supplied (Mt 16:28; Mk 9:1; and then the Johannine “λόγος” material) is exactly the kind of cluster an apparatus would encourage: a synoptic saying located in a tight unit, plus a Johannine conceptual parallel introduced as an interpretive control (“κατὰ τὸν Ἰωάννου λόγον…”). Origen’s “κατὰ τὸν Ἰωάννου λόγον” is especially telling: it sounds like a reader accustomed to navigating “according to John” as a mapped domain, not merely as an occasional prooftext source.
Against this, the Theodore passage you quote presents a radically different kind of “apparatus-like” language. The surface similarity is real: Theodore’s author (whether Clement or a later hand) uses explicit boundary navigation phrases: “Ἀμέλει μετὰ τὸ ἦσαν δὲ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ… καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως…,” “Ὧδε ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν…,” “Ἐπὶ μὲν τούτοις ἕπεται… καὶ πᾶσα ἡ περικοπή,” “Μετὰ δὲ τὸ καὶ ἔρχεται εἰς Ἱεριχὼ ἐπάγει μόνον…”. This is not merely citation; it is directional stitching: the writer tells you where in Mark to look (“μετὰ τὸ…,” “μετὰ δὲ τὸ…”) and how the excerpt is spliced into the narrative (“Ὧδε ἐπιφέρει…,” “ἕπεται…”). The term “περικοπή” itself is striking. It is not an Ammonian technical label, but it is precisely the kind of bookish control-word that signals the text is being handled as a set of separable, nameable chunks.
Yet that is exactly why Theodore is, on balance, a weaker witness to Ammonius in particular, even while it is a stronger witness to some excerpting/segmentation practice. Theodore’s Greek reads like an apologetic collation designed to police falsification: “δι᾽ αὐτῶν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου λέξεων τὰ κατεψευσμένα ἐλέγχων,” “κατὰ λέξιν,” and the repeated policing formula “οὐκ εὑρίσκεται… τὰ δὲ ἄλλα… ψεύσματα.” The boundary language is instrumental: it tells you how to position the allegedly genuine “secret” material relative to the public Markan sequence so as to exclude the disputed phrases (“τὸ δὲ γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ… οὐκ εὑρίσκεται”). This is not the typical use-case of an Ammonian harmony apparatus, which is built to show correspondences across Gospels; Theodore is instead securing a textual seam within one Gospel tradition and marking what follows (“ἕπεται…”) as the continuation. Its logic is redactional and polemical, not harmonic.
Origen, by contrast, is not “sewing” an inserted narrative into Mark. He is operating with the comparative instinct that the canons are made for: synoptic alignment (the “kingdom” sayings), lexical focus (“γεύσασθαι”), and then a controlled Johannine import (“λόγος”) introduced explicitly as “according to John.” Theodore’s “κατὰ λέξιν” has the feel of a scribe or controversialist protecting the exact sequence of clauses in a copied dossier; Origen’s “κατὰ τὸν Ἰωάννου λόγον” has the feel of an exegete moving between mapped Gospel domains.
So is Theodore stronger or weaker as a witness to Origen’s use of Ammonius? If the question is strictly “does the Greek in Theodore imply Ammonian/Eusebian parallels tables,” it is weaker. Theodore’s boundary diction—“μετὰ τὸ… καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως…,” “ἕπεται…,” “περικοπή”—demonstrates a segmentation mentality and a habit of excerpt-navigation, but it does not naturally point to cross-Gospel parallelization. It is compatible with an environment in which pericope thinking exists, but it does not require Ammonius.
Origen’s evidence is the reverse: less explicit in navigational phrasing, but more deeply consonant with the comparative function an Ammonian apparatus is meant to serve. His argument in 12.32–35 shows an exegete who treats certain Gospel clauses as stable unit-markers, ranges within them, and then correlates them across multiple scriptural “places,” including explicit “according to John” framing. That is a stronger, because more diagnostic, witness to the kind of apparatus Ammonius represents: not simply “where in Mark does this go,” but “how does this unit correspond, lexically and conceptually, across the Gospel corpus.”
If one were forced to rank them as witnesses to Ammonius specifically, Origen’s Greek in Comm. Matt. 12.32–35 is the stronger witness in kind (comparative, cross-Gospel, “τόπος”-indexed), even though Theodore is more overtly “apparatus-like” in tone (seam-marking, excerpt instructions, “περικοπή,” “κατὰ λέξιν”). Theodore witnesses to editorial control and pericope stitching; Origen witnesses to pericope thinking deployed for harmonizing exegesis—the nearer neighbor to an Ammonian system.
