On Origen's Commentary on Matthew Employing Ammonius's Lost "Diatessaron" Gospel (Ninth Part)

Origen locus Greek text Origen keys on Ammonian pericope no. (Matthew) What it’s doing (1–2 sentences) 10.25 (transition into the feeding scene) ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης προσῆλθον αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ λέγοντες· ἔρημός ἐστιν ὁ τόπος καὶ ἡ ὥρα παρῆλθεν ἤδη· ἀπόλυσον οὖν τοὺς ὄχλους… (14, 15[–21]) §76 (Matt 14:13–21) Origen re-anchors the exposition on the narrative incipit of the pericope (“ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης… προσῆλθον…”)—the kind of lemma that, in the Ammonian/Eusebian apparatus, functions as a section-head rather than a mere proof-text. 11.4 (next narrative unit) Καὶ εὐθέως ἠνάγκασε τοὺς μαθητὰς ἐμβῆναι εἰς τὸ πλοῖον καὶ προάγειν αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ πέραν, ἕως οὗ ἀπολύσει τοὺς ὄχλους (14, 22[–36]) §77 (Matt 14:22–36) This is an unmistakable pericope reset: Origen starts a fresh exposition exactly where the tradition’s sectioning starts a fresh unit (departure by boat / walking-on-water sequence and its sequel). The “Καὶ εὐθέως ἠνάγκασε…” lemma behaves like a canonical boundary marker. 11.3 (synoptic cross-keying inside the unit) «Καὶ ἐπέταξεν… συμπόσια συμπόσια… πρασιαὶ πρασιαὶ…» (Mark) ; «κατακλίνατε… κλισίας ὡσεὶ ἀνὰ πεντήκοντα» (Luke) Still §76 (Matt 14:13–21), aligned across gospels Origen does not merely “harmonize”; he explicitly sets Mark and Luke alongside Matthew at the same narrative moment, treating them as parallel witnesses for the same episode. That is exactly the kind of cross-gospel alignment the Ammonian/Eusebian system formalizes—one pericope, multiple attestations.

What this shows, in the Greek itself, is not casual quotation but section-driven exegesis—i.e., the habit of restarting commentary at exactly the narrative seams the Ammonian units presuppose.

First, Origen’s lemmata are not arbitrary snippets. At 10.25 he begins from the distinctive narrative hinge “ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης … προσῆλθον …” and then proceeds to build a long interpretive digression (diseases of the soul, 1 Cor 11, etc.) while still treating the Matthean story as the governing frame. That is precisely how a commentator behaves when he has mentally “entered” a pre-divided pericope: the pericope supplies the stable textual location; the exposition can range widely without losing its anchor. In an Ammonian world, that anchor is §76 (Matt 14:13–21), the feeding complex.

Second, Origen then performs a clean reset at 11.4—“Καὶ εὐθέως ἠνάγκασε … εἰς τὸ πέραν …”—and the text itself flags that this is a new narrative movement, not the continuation of the feeding. That restart corresponds to the next standard unit, §77 (Matt 14:22–36). The fact that Origen keys on the incipit (not on an interior clause) is exactly what you look for when asking whether a writer is operating with pericope-boundaries rather than simply citing memorable phrases.

Third, within the feeding unit (11.3), Origen explicitly juxtaposes Mark’s and Luke’s wording (“συμπόσια … πρασιαὶ …” / “κλισίας … ἀνὰ πεντήκοντα”) as co-witnesses to the same episode. That is pericope-level correlation, not free association: he is doing, in prose, what the later Eusebian canon tables do in paratext—keeping one unit in view while registering the synoptic parallels attached to it.

So if the question is whether Origen’s Greek shows contact with a pre-Eusebian sectioning logic (the “Ammonian” habit of thinking in numbered gospel units that can be aligned), the strongest internal indicators here are (a) the choice of incipits that are natural unit-heads, (b) the conspicuous reset at the next unit-head, and (c) the explicit tri-gospel alignment inside one episode. That combination is exactly what you would expect if Origen is already reading and commenting with an Ammonius-style pericope framework in the background, later made visible and fully systematized by Eusebius.