| Origen locus | Citation kept (because it hits an Ammonian boundary) | Gospel | Ammonian pericope # (from your file) | Canon | Ammonian range in your file | Boundary hit (why it stays) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MAT.COM 12,40 | Mt 16:16–17 | Matthew | 166; 167 | 1; 10 | 166 = Mt 16:13–16; 167 = Mt 16:17–19 | Mt 16:16 is the end of 166; Mt 16:17 is the start of 167 |
| MAT.COM 12,40 | Mt 16:20 | Matthew | 168 | 2 | Mt 16:20–21 | Start of 168 |
| MAT.COM 12,40 | Mt 16:22 | Matthew | 169 | 6 | Mt 16:22–23 | Start of 169 |
| MAT.COM 12,40 | Mt 16:23 | Matthew | 169 | 6 | Mt 16:22–23 | End of 169 |
| MAT.COM 12,40 | Mt 26:31 | Matthew | 287 | 4 | Mt 26:31a | Start of 287 (your file splits 26:31 into 287 = 26:31a and 288 = 26:31b–32; Origen’s citation hits that seam) |
| MAT.COM 12,40 | Mt 26:69–75 | Matthew | 314; 315; 316 | 1; 1; 2 | 314 = Mt 26:69–70; 315 = Mt 26:71–74; 316 = Mt 26:75 | This citation runs across multiple pericopes, and therefore touches boundaries at 26:69 (start of 314), 26:71 (start of 315), and 26:75 (start/end of 316) |
| MAT.COM 12,40 | Jn 7:39 | John | 81 | 10 | Jn 7:34–39 | End of 81 |
| MAT.COM 12,41 | Mt 17:9 | Matthew | 172 | 2 | Mt 16:28–17:9 | End of 172 |
| MAT.COM 12,41 | Jn 1:14 | John | 5 | 3 | Jn 1:14 | Exact pericope (single-verse unit: it is both start and end) |
| MAT.COM 12,43 | Mt 27:52–53 | Matthew | 345 | 10 | Mt 27:51b–53 | End of 345 |
| MAT.COM 12,43 | Mt 17:14 | Matthew | 174 | 2 | Mt 17:14–18 | Start of 174 |
| MAT.COM 12,43 | Mt 16:20 | Matthew | 168 | 2 | Mt 16:20–21 | Start of 168 (reappears here in Origen’s running cross-reference) |
| MAT.COM 12,43 | Lk 19:41 | Luke | 236 | 10 | Lk 19:41–44a | Start of 236 |
In the relevant portions of the Commentary on Matthew the distinctive feature is not simply that Origen quotes Gospel words, but that he repeatedly selects verse-forms that coincide with the edges of recognized narrative units. When the citations align with seams—where one episode closes and another begins—Origen’s procedure looks less like free associative prooftexting and more like consultation of a segmentation scheme that marks stable pericope starts and ends. The “boundary effect” is clearest where the quotation either terminates exactly at a unit’s close or begins at the first words of the next unit. In other words, the evidentiary value lies in the placement of the cited words rather than in their theological content: the citation functions as a coordinate. This is precisely what an Ammonian apparatus is designed to supply: a grid of short, repeatable lemmatic anchors that allow a reader to relocate a passage and, crucially, to align it with parallels without rewriting narrative order.
The Greek texture of Origen’s practice supports this reading insofar as his citation behavior often favors “hinge language”—short clauses that are maximally indexable because they are minimally paraphrasable. Where an author cites a long stretch, the unit-boundary signal is diluted; where he quotes a brief, recognizably fixed opening or closing, the unit-boundary signal strengthens. Origen, in these loci, regularly exploits short anchors of precisely that kind. Such anchors are particularly diagnostic when they correspond to inflection points in the storyline (e.g., a completed scene followed by the first clause of the next), because they are the very places a pericope system must decide to cut. A reader working with an Ammonian segmentation does not need to reproduce whole narratives; it is enough to cite the opening words that uniquely identify the unit. Origen’s selections repeatedly behave like that kind of retrieval key.
Against that background, the Letter to Theodore’s transitional formulas are rhetorically more explicit and, as Greek, more revealing of an apparatus-conscious mindset. Two features deserve emphasis.
First, the letter uses overt boundary markers of the “after X … and the following until Y” type: Ἀμέλει μετὰ τὸ … καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως … (“in any case, after ‘…’ and the following up to ‘…’”). This is not ordinary narrative citation; it is indexing language. The phrase καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως is effectively a directive for locating and delimiting a block without reproducing it. The writer is telling the reader where a unit begins (μετὰ τὸ …) and where it ends (ἕως …). That is exactly the kind of metalanguage that grows naturally in a milieu where texts are navigated by sectional boundaries rather than by continuous reading. A pericope apparatus, whether in the form of marginal section numbers, a table of correspondences, or a set of “capitulation” markers, habituates readers to speak this way: cite a recognizable incipit, then define the span with a terminus.
Second, the letter’s repeated “here he adds verbatim” formula—Ὧδε ἐπιφέρει κατὰ λέξιν—frames what follows as a controlled insertion keyed to a boundary. Κατὰ λέξιν is not merely a claim of accuracy; in this context it functions to guarantee that the quoted incipit is reliable as an identifier. Apparatus-use rewards verbatim reproduction of incipits because the apparatus assumes stability at those points; any drift undermines the coordinate system. Thus, the combination of (i) a boundary directive (μετὰ τὸ … καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἕως …) and (ii) a claim of verbal exactitude (κατὰ λέξιν) produces an exceptionally strong “navigation” signature: the text is being handled as a set of locatable units.
At the same time, the letter’s method differs from what one would expect if the writer were simply following an Ammonian cross-reference table in the strict technical sense. The Ammonian system, as later crystallized in Eusebian form, is fundamentally a parallel apparatus: section numbers exist to allow movement across Gospels. The Letter to Theodore’s language, by contrast, is chiefly intra-textual: it is concerned with demonstrating what comes “after” and “then,” and with policing what is “found” or “not found” (οὐκ εὑρίσκεται). That is perfectly compatible with the use of section boundaries, but it does not by itself demonstrate that the writer is consulting a parallel-table. It demonstrates, rather, a reader trained to navigate by delimited textual blocks and to argue from the placement of those blocks.
How, then, should the comparative evidentiary weight be judged—Origen versus Theodore—for the specific question of Ammonian use?
If the question is “Who gives stronger evidence for familiarity with a segmentation apparatus that partitions the Gospel into units with identifiable edges?”, the Letter to Theodore is the stronger witness, because the Greek explicitly performs the operations of such an apparatus: it points to an incipit, indicates a span by a terminus, and asserts verbatimness in order to secure the coordinate. Those are not accidental turns of phrase; they are technical habits of textual navigation.
If the question is “Who gives stronger evidence for the use of Ammonius specifically (i.e., the kind of pericope segmentation that stands behind Ammonian/Eusebian sectioning)?”, Origen’s evidence can be competitive, but it is more inferential. Origen rarely speaks in overtly sectional metalanguage in these loci; the argument must be made from patterns—his propensity to land on pericope edges, his preference for anchor-clauses, and the way citation placement behaves like coordinate-selection rather than like free quotation. That can be a strong cumulative case, but it remains circumstantial unless accompanied by explicit references to sections, canons, or parallel-navigation practice.
Put sharply: Theodore supplies explicit apparatus-like language; Origen supplies apparatus-like behavior. The former is rhetorically conspicuous and therefore, as philological evidence, immediately legible; the latter requires statistical or distributional demonstration across many loci to exclude coincidence and genre effects (e.g., that authors often quote beginnings of scenes simply because they are memorable). Where Origen can surpass Theodore is precisely where the behavior is too systematic to be explained by memory: repeated targeting of seams that are not rhetorically privileged in the argument but are structurally privileged in a segmentation scheme. Where Theodore surpasses Origen is that it makes the segmentation operation transparent in Greek.
A final nuance is necessary. Theodore’s apparatus-like phrasing can be produced by several navigational cultures: marginal kephalaia, lectionary incipits, harmonizing synopsis habits, or Ammonian sections. The letter’s Greek does not name Ammonius; it displays “unit-navigation” as a practice. Origen’s boundary-hitting, on the other hand, is more diagnostic of a numbered sectional system precisely because it functions well even when the writer does not reproduce the intervening text. The strongest scholarly formulation, therefore, is comparative and modest: Theodore provides a clear witness to pericope-aware navigation and delimitation; Origen provides suggestive, potentially strong cumulative evidence for consultation of a pericope segmentation compatible with the Ammonian tradition, but the identification of that segmentation as “Ammonian” rather than another early system must rest on broader patterning and, ideally, on places where Origen’s cross-Gospel alignment presupposes a fixed segmentation rather than an ad hoc recollection.
On that formulation, Theodore is the stronger single passage for “apparatus consciousness” in Greek; Origen is the stronger long-game witness for “Ammonian-type segmentation in use,” if—and only if—the boundary-alignment pattern holds across a sufficiently large sample of citations and can be shown to cluster at those very seams that an Ammonian apparatus, as reflected in later witnesses, actually marks.
