Wednesday, September 14, 2005
(3:04 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Preliminary Assessment: Origen's Commentary on Romans
I'm about 2/3 of the way through the first volume (thus 1/3 of the way through the whole thing, which I am going to read), and I must say -- whatever faults Origen may have as an expositor of Scripture, inadequate attention to detail is not one of them. In fact, despite himself, he keeps catching Paul in errors, particularly in his account of Abraham (Romans 4). First, Paul uses the wrong name in one of the promises of God, which was made when Abram had not yet had his name changed to Abraham; Origen supposes that this might be a scribal error. Second, Paul says that Abraham's body was as good as dead (i.e., infertile) when he received the promise that Isaac would be born to him, but after Sarah's death, Abraham remarries and has six other children (Gensis 25:1-2). This second objection is placed in the mouth of an imagined detractor, perhaps to insulate Origen from having to directly claim an error in Scripture. He resolves the problem by saying that Abraham was "dead to sin" in a spiritual sense, which clearly doesn't fit with the sense of the passage.Although we might not agree that the "allegorical" method was the best solution, it's pretty clear that Origen was learning from experience that straight-up literalism was not going to work, because he appears to have a more detailed command of Scripture than any living person I've ever known. This study is also leading me to the conclusion that modern Bible scholars who claim that early expositors weren't interested in the actual meaning of Scripture are probably incorrect.
