| Origen (Comm. Matt. 11.8–11.16) – lemma / anchor phrase | Narrative unit Origen is treating (pericope boundary) | Matthew locus | Mark parallel locus | Luke parallel locus | What Origen does that looks “Ammonian” (unit-based cross-Gospel handling) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| «ἀποστειλάντων … καὶ ὅσοι ἥψαντο διεσώθησαν» | Arrival at Gennesaret + mass healings by touching the fringe | Mt 14:34–36 | Mk 6:53–56 | (no close Luke doublet; Luke has other “touching” healings, not this Gennesaret sequence) | Treats this as a self-contained unit that ends with the “touching the κράσπεδον” summary, and uses it as the temporal hinge for the next unit (“τότε…”). |
| «Τότε προσέρχονται αὐτῷ ἀπὸ Ἱεροσολύμων Φαρισαῖοι καὶ γραμματεῖς…» | Delegation from Jerusalem; question about handwashing / “tradition of the elders” | Mt 15:1–2 (through the dispute block) | Mk 7:1–5 | Luke has a distant analogue: Lk 11:37–38 (washing before meal), but it’s relocated and not “from Jerusalem” | He insists “τότε” is not decorative: it marks adjacency of units (Gennesaret healings → Jerusalem delegation). That is exactly how a sectional synopsis thinks: “when you finish that unit, the next unit begins.” |
| «διὰ τί … παραβαίνουσι τὴν παράδοσιν…» → «ὁ θεὸς εἶπε· τίμα…» | Jesus’ counter-charge: commandment vs. tradition; honor parents; death-penalty texts | Mt 15:3–6 (and the legal citations behind Mt 15:4–6) | Mk 7:6–13 | Luke has no direct parallel here | Origen is not “harmonizing by theme”; he is matching the same controversy unit across Matthew and Mark, then drilling into the internal subparts (citations, wording differences, compression/expansion). |
| «ὑποκριταί…» + the Isaiah quotation thread | Isaiah citation as the prophetic diagnosis of “lip-honor / heart-far” | Mt 15:7–9 (Isa 29:13) | Mk 7:6–7 (same Isa citation) | Luke has Isa 29 motifs elsewhere, but not as the same handwashing pericope | He keeps Matthew+Mark locked in the same pericope slot and treats Isaiah as the shared spine of that slot, even while noting Matthean abbreviation/retelling. |
| «προσκαλεσάμενος τὸν ὄχλον… οὐ τὸ εἰσερχόμενον…» | Public teaching: defilement comes from what comes out, not what enters | Mt 15:10–11 (to 15:20) | Mk 7:14–23 | Luke has distant analogues (speech/heart), but not this pericope as such | He preserves the crowd/disciples turn as a new internal segment while still inside the same “handwashing controversy” unit—again, pericope-sensitive, not free-associative. |
| «καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα» (Origen flags Mark here) | Mark’s editorial gloss (“cleansing all foods”) as a keyed variant inside the unit | (Matthew lacks the exact gloss; Matt 15:17 is the nearest digestive logic) | Mk 7:19 | none | This is the most “Ammonian” move in the excerpt: Origen is clearly reading Matthew’s unit with Mark’s keyed micro-variant in hand, as if both are indexed to the same sectional place, so Mark can supply a precise phrase that Matthew doesn’t carry. |
| «Καὶ ἐξελθὼν ἐκεῖθεν… εἰς τὰ μέρη Τύρου καὶ Σιδῶνος» | Transition out of the controversy into the Tyre/Sidon episode | Mt 15:21–22ff | Mk 7:24ff | Luke has no Canaanite/Syrophoenician parallel in this location | He treats “ἐκεῖθεν” as another unit boundary marker: once the controversy unit finishes, the geography shift begins the next unit, and he again checks Mark’s parallel narrative for the same transition logic. |
In the section, Origen’s procedure is intelligible only if one assumes that he is working with fixed Gospel units whose edges are already determined before he begins to comment. He does not invent those edges; he recognizes and exploits them.
The sequence begins immediately after the Gennesaret summary in Matthew: «καὶ ὅσοι ἥψαντο διεσώθησαν» (Matt 14:36). Origen treats this not as a casual concluding flourish but as the natural terminus of a narrative unit. It functions for him as a closure formula: a generalized healing summary that exhausts the episode. Only once that closure has been reached does he allow Matthew’s next temporal marker to take effect. When Matthew continues with «Τότε προσέρχονται αὐτῷ ἀπὸ Ἱεροσολύμων Φαρισαῖοι καὶ γραμματεῖς» (Matt 15:1), Origen insists on hearing τότε in its strict sense. It marks a transition between units, not a loose connective. That insistence only makes sense if Origen expects the reader to recognize that one Ammonian section has ended and another has begun.
From that point onward Origen treats the handwashing controversy as a single, coherent pericope, bounded at the front by the Jerusalem delegation and at the back by Jesus’ withdrawal to Tyre and Sidon («Καὶ ἐξελθὼν ἐκεῖθεν…», Matt 15:21). Within those bounds he allows internal articulation—accusation, counter-accusation, prophetic citation, public saying, private explanation—but he never allows the unit itself to dissolve. This is exactly how the Ammonian system behaves: internal subdivision is permitted, but the pericope remains intact until a narrative or geographic seam forces a new section.
What confirms that Origen is thinking in sectional terms rather than in free thematic association is his constant recourse to Mark at precisely the same points. When Matthew introduces the Jerusalem Pharisees, Origen immediately aligns the passage with Mark 7:1–5, treating the two not as loosely similar traditions but as parallel instantiations of the same episode. When Jesus cites Isaiah («ὁ λαὸς οὗτος τοῖς χείλεσιν με τιμᾷ…»), Origen keeps Matthew and Mark locked together again, noting their shared prophetic diagnosis while observing their verbal differences. Most revealing is his handling of Mark’s gloss «καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα» (Mark 7:19). Origen introduces that phrase not as an external theological aside but as a keyed variant belonging to the same controversy unit Matthew is narrating. Matthew lacks the gloss verbatim, but Origen treats Mark’s wording as explanatory material anchored to the same sectional slot.
Luke’s role in this passage is instructive by contrast. Origen does not attempt to force Luke into this alignment, because Luke relocates the washing-before-eating motif (Luke 11:37–38) and lacks the corban discussion, the Isaiah citation in this form, and the foods-cleansed gloss. The absence of Luke here reinforces the point: Origen is not harmonizing abstract ideas; he is matching pre-established narrative units where they actually coincide.
Finally, when Matthew signals departure with «ἐκεῖθεν» and introduces the Tyre and Sidon episode, Origen treats this as another unmistakable boundary. The controversy is over; a new pericope has begun. That sensitivity to exit formulae is the same sensitivity already visible in his handling of the earlier «τότε» and «ὅσοι ἥψαντο διεσώθησαν». Together they show a reader who expects Gospel material to be parceled into recognizable blocks and who comments by moving block to block.
Taken as a whole, the passage displays Origen operating with a pre-Eusebian Ammonian logic. He assumes fixed pericope edges, reads Matthew sequentially according to those edges, and consults Mark as a controlled parallel within the same sectional frame. Eusebius will later formalize this logic in tables and canon numbers, but the method itself is already fully at work in Origen’s commentary.
