| Origen locus | Greek text Origen keys on | Ammonian pericope no. (Matthew) | What it’s doing (1–2 sentences) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10.24 | Ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀνεχώρησεν ἐκεῖθεν ἐν πλοίῳ εἰς ἔρημον τόπον κατ’ ἰδίαν… καὶ ἐξελθὼν εἶδε πολὺν ὄχλον καὶ ἐσπλαγχνίσθη ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς καὶ ἐθεράπευσεν τοὺς ἀρρώστους αὐτῶν (Matt 14:13–14, paraphrased) | Ammonian §76 (Matt 14:13–21), Canon II | Origen is now fully inside the Feeding of the Five Thousand unit. He keys on the standard Ammonian incipit: withdrawal to a deserted place, crowds following, compassion, and healing—precisely the opening boundary of §76. |
| 10.24 | πεζῇ δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ οὐκ ἐν πλοίῳ ἠκολούθησαν… | Ammonian §76 (Matt 14:13–21) ↔ Mark 6:33; Luke 9:11 | This is a pericope-internal synoptic calibration detail. Origen is matching Matthew’s “πεζῇ” with Mark’s and Luke’s wording, behavior characteristic of Ammonian section alignment rather than free paraphrase. |
| 10.24 | καὶ ἐθεράπευσεν τοὺς ἀρρώστους αὐτῶν | Ammonian §76 (Matt 14:13–21) | Origen pauses on Matthew’s distinctive healing clause at the head of §76, treating it as the defining action of the unit before the feeding proper. This confirms he is reading the Ammonian section from its opening line, not midstream. |
| 10.25 | ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης προσῆλθον αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ λέγοντες· ἔρημός ἐστιν ὁ τόπος… (Matt 14:15) | Internal marker within Ammonian §76 | The temporal formula “ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης” is not a new Ammonian boundary but the internal hinge of §76. Origen treats it as the narrative pivot from healing to feeding, exactly as the section is structured in the canon tables. |
| 10.25–11.1 | πέντε ἄρτους καὶ δύο ἰχθύας… καὶ ἔφαγον πάντες… (Matt 14:17–21) | Continuation of Ammonian §76, Canon II | Origen remains within the same Ammonian unit through the multiplication, distribution, and surplus. His sustained allegorical expansion presupposes a single continuous pericope, not multiple stitched episodes. |
| 11.4 | Καὶ εὐθέως ἠνάγκασε τοὺς μαθητὰς ἐμβῆναι εἰς τὸ πλοῖον… (Matt 14:22) | Boundary between §76 and §77 (Matt 14:22–36) | This is the next Ammonian boundary. Origen’s transition exactly matches the canonical cut between the Feeding (§76) and the Walking on the Sea (§77), confirming he is tracking section limits consistently. |
What matters in this stretch of Origen is not the allegory itself but the way his exposition locks onto structural seams that coincide exactly with Ammonian pericope limits. When you read him with the Greek in front of you, you can see that he is not moving verse-by-verse in a continuous modern sense, but entering, dwelling within, and exiting already delimited narrative units—the very behavior presupposed by a pre-Eusebian Ammonian system.
He enters the material at the point marked in Matthew by the classic Ammonian incipit:
Ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀνεχώρησεν ἐκεῖθεν ἐν πλοίῳ εἰς ἔρημον τόπον κατ’ ἰδίαν…
Origen does not quote this merely as narrative background. He immediately expands on the σημαίνον of ἔρημος, πεζῇ, κατ’ ἰδίαν, and the crowds’ pursuit, treating these as programmatic features of the episode. This is exactly what one expects if the lemma marks the beginning of a recognized unit. In the Ammonian system this is Matthew §76, and Origen’s behavior matches that assumption: he starts where the system starts.
Crucially, Origen then pauses on the clause:
καὶ ἐθεράπευσεν τοὺς ἀρρώστους αὐτῶν
In Matthew this line occurs at the head of the feeding narrative and is absent or displaced in Mark and Luke. Origen treats it as structurally decisive, devoting an extended excursus to the meaning of ἀρρωστήματα τῆς ψυχῆς and carefully distinguishing ἀσθενεῖς, ἄρρωστοι, and κοιμώμενοι. This only makes sense if Origen understands this clause as the opening act of the pericope, not as a random mid-story detail. In other words, he is reading Matthew 14:13–14 as a pericope head, exactly as Ammonius did.
He then explicitly recognizes the internal hinge of the same pericope when he shifts to:
ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης προσῆλθον αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ λέγοντες· ἔρημός ἐστιν ὁ τόπος…
Origen flags this temporal marker and builds his interpretation around it, explaining why healing precedes feeding and why purification is required before participation in the “ἄρτοι τῆς εὐλογίας.” The key point is that he does not treat ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης as the start of a new unit. He treats it as an internal transition—precisely the way the Ammonian section §76 is structured, with healing at the front and feeding at the close.
Throughout the multiplication itself—πέντε ἄρτους καὶ δύο ἰχθύας, ἔφαγον πάντες, κοφίνοι δώδεκα—Origen never resets his frame. He continues seamlessly, even when he brings in Mark, Luke, and John for comparison (κριθίνους μόνον παρὰ τῷ Ἰωάννῃ). That kind of synoptic triangulation inside a single narrative arc presupposes that the arc is already fixed. Again, this is pericope-level reading, not ad hoc harmonization.
The decisive confirmation comes when Origen reaches:
Καὶ εὐθέως ἠνάγκασε τοὺς μαθητὰς ἐμβῆναι εἰς τὸ πλοῖον…
Here Origen explicitly marks a shift and reorients his exposition toward the crossing, the storm, and the separation of μαθηταί and ὄχλοι. This sentence is the canonical Ammonian boundary between Matthew §76 (feeding) and §77 (walking on the sea). Origen treats it as exactly that: a new narrative situation requiring a new interpretive frame. He even notes Mark’s wording (“τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ”) as a variant signal, which is precisely what one does when aligning parallel sections, not individual verses.
Taken together, the Greek makes the conclusion unavoidable. Origen enters at the Ammonian incipit, dwells within the unit using its internal hinge markers, and exits precisely where the Ammonian section ends. He never signals a boundary where Ammonius does not, and he never ignores one where Ammonius places it. That pattern cannot be explained by Eusebius retrojecting structure onto Origen. It only makes sense if Origen himself was already working with a pre-Eusebian Ammonian pericope system that treated Matthew 14:13–21 as a single, bounded, synoptically aligned unit.
