mountainman

See WIKI's Origen (disambiguation page)

Eusebius asserts a "Christian Origen" as his origin, but classicial history needs to disambiguate Eusebius's Christian Origen from another Origen, Origen the Neoplatonist. We have precisely the same problem with the historical figure of Ammonias Saccas, the teacher of both "Origens". Classical history needs to disambiguate Eusebius's Christian Ammonias Saccas, who wrote many books, with the father of the Neoplatonic lineage Ammonias Saccas the Neoplatonist, who left no books behind him.

Eusebius appears to have "borrowed upon the reputation" of figures in the Neoplatonic lineage, or as an extremely unlikely alternative, there were actually two Origens, and two Ammonias's (their teacher), in history.



You are aware that Rufinus cites a letter of Origen, complaining that the heretics were changing his writings in his own life time.

I think the problem was that the books of the well known Origen the Neoplatonist did not mention "things christian", but Eusebius fixed this problem by finding some books of a "Christian Origen".

Rufinus and Jerome at the end of the century were still trying to sort the controversy out.
I think the controversy was the result of the "Christianization" of Origen the Neoplatonist.
And the original Origen's books - the non christian ones - kept turning up.
So the non christian library of Alexandria went down.

Roger Pearse

Toto, would you split this <edit> off?

Thanks.

Toto

Pete keeps trying to get someone to address this issue. Let this be the thread for it.

mountainman

From Neoplatonism and Gnosticism – Part Four



my notes

mountainman

Dear All,

Civility to the side, the fact remains we have two Origens in the 3rd century. This is highly suspicious and does not ring of integrity. There is Origen the Christian who is supposed to be a very important person in the saga of the direct transmission of the canonical books of the Greek NT and the Greek LXX, to our NT editor Eusebius. But there is also another Origen the Platonist, who had his own reputation amidst the circle of Greek philosophers. Having one duplicate is of course possible, but it is suspicious.

However, we have at least another two Platonists, who for some reason also have duplicates in ancient history who are also very important christians. The first is Ammonias Saccas and the second is Anatolius of Laodicea.

This cannot be a coincidence.

Would anyone like to explain this mystery? Or would you like to pretend the situation does not exist? If the latter, the classical historians are going to start laughing, since the situation does exist. If the former, it seems quite clear that the highly suspicious thing that connects and frames all these duplicate figures of history together is called "Eusebius's Church History".


Duplicates in history

From time to time there will be people who have the same name and who were born in the same year and who died in the same year and who are confounded by the subsequent historical accounts, but if they are important enough they will also be disambiguated. Here we have at least six such people to be disambiguated.

Duplicates in history are a signal that something is wrong, and the more the duplication, the greater the suspicion that there has been a systematic process at work that has given rise to an unnatural state of affairs.


Suspicion must fall on Eusebius

In the lifetime of the NT editor Eusebius, when Jesus was widely published, Plato was burnt, and the head of the Academy of Plato executed. In the lifetime of Eusebius, many ancient and highly revered PanHellenic temples and their libraries were destroyed to their foundations, and new imposing Christian basilicas were then constructed on these foundations.

In the lifetime of Eusbeius, no Platonist was left standing to complain about the fact that some of Eusebius's key, influential and philosophical academic christians all shared the same names as key philosophers in the Platonic lineage. Momigliano called it "the revolution of the 4th century".

But apparently, the Platonists just went to sleep for many centuries and are awake once more. And they are asking these important questions of the "biblical historians", and this thread is the result. Did Eusebius convert the Platonist Origen to Christianity?


Best wishes,



Pete

andrewcriddle

Assuming FTSOA that there was only one Origen, what would prevent this Origen from composing both the works attributed to Origen the Christian and the works attributed to Origen the Platonist ?

Andrew Criddle

Johnny Skeptic

What is FTSOA? Oh, I think I just got it. It means "for the sake of argument."

mountainman

Hi Andrew,

FTSOA this has what has been assumed since the beginning - that there was only one Origen. One Origen would provide a genuine historical author who has some integrity and historicity, but it would fail to explain the duplicate Ammonias (Origen's teacher) and the duplicate Anatolius. It would also fail to provide any hint of a clue about the "Origenist" controversies of the 4th and 5th century over the books of this one "Origen". These involve exchanges between Jerome and Rufinus, and involve alleged "facts" that these two authors, and their source Eusebius's Greek texts, admit into their accounts, such as the "Letter of Origen on heretics altering his texts in his lifetime". The fact that "Pamphilus's APOLOGY for Origen" was admitted partly co-authored with Eusebius is also another fact to suggest suspicion over One Origen - the Christian/Platonist identity.

If it were only that the only duplicate figure were Origen, I think I would still be very suspicious that an emminent Platonist philosopher was also at the same time an emminent Christian academic author during a century where the evidence for christianity, from an archaelogical perspective can be treated as a vaccum.

I did notice that you did specify that the two Origens were almost (but not quite) certainly different people, and that therefore you had not dismissed the idea as completely impossible.

OTOH, This is obviously a very sensitive issue, since Eusebius admits that the entire library which he inherited, presumably in Caesarea, contained the collections of books acquired by Origen, and the collection of his original works. In the transmission of both the NT and LXX canon, Origen is fundamental.

Although we cannot absolutely dismiss the possibility that Origen the Platonist was in fact the same person as Origen the Christian, this does not prevent us from exploring the ramifications to the historical account if there were in fact two separate Origen's. The possibility of the existence of two Origens appears to be a far better fit to the actual pattern of evidence before us.

BTW were you the first to point this out on your blog, or have others also questioned this?
If not, do you have any further sources or authors who discuss this issue?

Thanks for the response Andrew FTSOTA.


Best wishes


Pete

andrewcriddle

There is a long history of debate as to whether there were one or two Origens.

P F Beatrice is the most important modern scholar arguing for only one Origen. See eg Porphyry's Judgment on Origen 1992

Andrew Criddle

mountainman

Thanks for the references Andrew,

I will look at the history of that "debate" over the next few days.

Best wishes,


Pete


PS: Here are some immediate contemporary starters, although the first is actually about Ammonias, the teacher of "Origen". I included it because of the reputation of the author as an ancient historian. I was not previously aware that Edwards held this opinion on the painful necessity of disambiguating two Ammonias Saccas's.


Ammonius, teacher of Origen - The Journal of Ecclesiastical History| April 01, 1993 | Edwards, Mark


and

‘Living Like a Christian, but Playing the Greek’: Accounts of Apostasy and Conversion in Porphyry and Eusebius - Jeremy M. Schott


and

High Priests of the Highest God: Third-Century Platonists as Ritual Experts

I have not read the above paper yet but am wondering whether the author will mention the Platonic use of the term "Chrestos"