Origen: Homilies 1-14 on Ezekiel (Acw) (Ancient Christian Writers)

226 Pages·2010·6.36 MB·English

by  Thomas P. Scheck

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ristiae
THE WORKS OF THE FATHERS IN TRANSLATION
MANAGING EDITOR
Dennis D. McManus
EDITORIAL BOARD
John Dillon
No. 62
TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION
BY
THOMAS P. SCHECK
THE NEWMAN PRESS
NewYork/Mahwah, NJ
The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the Holy Bible, Revised
Standard Version, Catholic Edition. Copyright 1965 (NT), 1966 (OT) by
Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ
in the United States of America.
COPYRIGHT © 2010
BY
THOMAS P. SCHECK
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without per­
mission in writing from the Publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Origen.
[Homilies 1-14 on Ezekiel. English]
Origen : homilies 1-14 on Ezekiel / translation and introduction by
Thomas P. Scheck.
p. cm. — (Ancient Christian writers, the works of the Fathers in trans­
lation ; no. 62)
This is the first English translation of Origen’s 14 Homilies on Ezekiel,
made from the Latin translation of St. Jerome.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 978-0-8091-0567-0 (alk. paper)
1. Bible. O.T. Ezekiel—Sermons—Early works to 1800. 2. Sermons, Latin—
Translations into English. I. Scheck, Thomas R, 1964- Π. Jerome, Saint, d.
419 or 20. III. Tide.
BS1545.54.07513 2010
224'.406—dc22
2009023465
Published by The Newman Press
an imprint of Paulist Press
997 Macardiur Boulevard
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
wtvw.paulistpress.com
Printed and bound in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Genei'al Introduction..........................................................................1
Preface of Jerome................................................................................23
Homily 1, The Vision of the Prophet
(Ezekiel 1:1-6; 2:Iff.)....................................................25
Homily 2. Against the False Prophets (Ezekiel 13:1-19)..............46
Homily 3. Against the False Prophets and Elders
(Ezekiel 13:1, 17-22; 14:1-8)........................................54
Homily 4. The Famine and the Ferocious Beasts
(Ezekiel 14:12-22).........................................................64
Homily 5. Sword, Death, Vine (Ezekiel 14:13-21; 15:1-4)............78
Homily 6. Iniquities of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 16:2-16)......................86
Homily 7. The Beneficial Effects of God’s Turning Away
(Ezekiel 16:16-30).........................................................99
Homily 8. Brothels, Head and Base of Streets, Gifts
(Ezekiel 16:30-33)........................................................110
Homily 9. Iniquities, Pride, Relative Justification
(Ezekiel 16:45-52)........................................................116
Homily 10. Shame, Return, Restoration
(Ezekiel 16:52-63)........................................................128
Homily 11. The Two Eagles, the Cedar, the Flourishing
Vine (Ezekiel 17:1—7)...................................................137
Homily 12. Interpretation (Ezekiel 17:12-24).................... 147
Homily 13. The Prince of Tyre, Pharaoh
(Ezekiel 28:12-23).......................................................154
Homily 14. The Closed Gate (Ezekiel 44:1-3).............................166
Notes...................................................................................................171
Bibliography.......................................................................................191
Scripture Index..................................................................................195
General Index....................................................................................206
Index of Origen’s Works...................................................................209
ABOUT THE TEXT
The present translation is based on the Latin text printed in
Sources chretiennes (SC) 352, which is a reproduction of the critical
text established by W. A. Baehrens, OHgenes Werke VIII: Homiliae in
Regn., Ez., et al., Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller (CCS) 33
(Leipzig: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1925), 318-454. Unless otherwise indicated, I have followed the tex­
tual corrections listed in SC 352, p. 23. Marcel Borret’s French trans­
lation was a source of immeasurable help to me. The subheadings are
from this edition. I have aimed to conform the Scripture citations to
the RSV as far as possible.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND DEDICATION
I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Ralph Mclnerny, director of
the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame, who gra­
ciously awarded me a postdoctoral fellowship for the 2004—5 aca­
demic year, which enabled me to complete this project. I also wish to
acknowledge my indebtedness to Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536),
to whose writings and theological work I attribute my return to the
Catholic Church. May the Church that he endeavored to serve and
purify one day recognize the greatness and sanctity of this remarkable
priest-scholar.
This translation is dedicated to my two youngest children, Anne
and Matthew.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Origen of Alexandria (185-254) was the son of a martyr, St,
Leonides of Alexandria (d. 202), to whom he refers in the present
work in Homily 4.8.1 in these words: “Having a father who was a martyr
does me no good, if I do not live well myself and adorn the nobility of
my descent.” This admission well captures the humility and religious
seriousness of the priest whose Homilies on Ezekiel are being published
in the present volume for the first time in English translation. In spite
of his humble demurs, Origen in fact so “adorned the nobility of his
descent” from Leonides, through his own good life and holy death,
that his heroic virtue was all but universally acknowledged. Origen
died in his sixty-ninth year after he had experienced imprisonment
and severe torture. This is described in gruesome detail in Eusebius,
HE 6.39. Although Oi'igen has never been canonized and is not for­
mally considered a father of the church, since the church has never
revoked the anathemas placed on his errors, he is listed as an ecclesi­
astical writer and hence as a “partial witness of the Tradition.”1 The
esteem in which he is still held in the Catholic Church is shown by the
fact that his writings are cited at least nine times in the recent
Catechism of the Catholic Ch urch.
Origen was probably the most learned and influential theolo­
gian of the third century. Among his many scholarly productions, he
wrote the most important Christian apologetic treatise of antiquity,
Contra Celsum, a work that has lost little of its relevance, even in the
present day. There is a fresh vitality in this work that still bears pon­
dering, and many of its doctrinal defenses are still valid.2 From
Origen’s pen also came important Scripture commentaries and theo­
logical treatises, many of which were either translated into Latin (by
St. Jerome and Rufinus of Aquileia) or assimilated into the Greek and
Latin theological tradition by subsequent Christian theologians who
infused Origen’s insights into their own works.3 Three very significant
examples are St. Jerome’s commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians, and
Matthew.4 Henri de Lubac wrote of Origen’s legacy to the Middle
Ages: “More than any other figure in the fields of hermeneutics, exe­
gesis, and spirituality, he would be the grand master.”5
Origen’s homilies constitute the oldest body of Christian sermons
in existence. In their Ladn garb, diey were a rich source of spiritual
inspiration to Christians throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Saints and mystics felt an irresistible attraction to Origen’s writings, as
did exegetes and theologians. Though Origen’s theological reputa­
tion remained tainted because of the condemnation of “Origenism”
at the Second Council of Constantinople (553), this did not prevent
him from being studied, revered, and even loved. His fate in the West
was similar to that of the layman Tertullian, who, however, unlike
Origen, died outside the bosom of the church, having joined the
Montanist sect. In contrast, the priest Origen died in the church, and
some of his views were condemned some three centuries after his
death. In any case, what was sought in Origen was not so much his
doctrine as his mentality and spirit, and most of all, his way of inter­
preting Holy Scripture.0 Origen’s fiery soul, which is revealed in his
writings, and his Spirit-filled exegesis ignited a spark of divine love in
the hearts of countless Christians.7 The source of this fire was sympa­
thy for the central feature of Origen’s spirituality, namely, his “absolute
and passionate love for the Logos, which has taken on personal lin­
eaments for us in Jesus Christ, suffusing the total cosmos of men and
angels.”8
Provenance of Origen’s Homilies and of
Jerome’s Latin Translation
According to Eusebius HE 6.36, Origen did not permit his homi­
lies to be transcribed until he was over sixty years of age. This would
place the original delivery of Origen’s homilies, including these on
Ezekiel, in the year 245 at the earliest. The Eusebian tradition has been
set aside in modern times, first by Jean Scherer and more radically by
Pierre Nautin, who dates die delivery of Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel at
the church of Caesarea in Palestine around 240.9 Nautin has been fol­
lowed by Joseph Wilson Trigg.10 After making a detailed comparison
between these and Origen’s other homilies, Marcel Borret gives a date
between 239 and 242, to which we give our tentative support.11
The Latin translation of Origen’s Greek sermons was made by
St. Jerome (347-420), ca. 379-381, after he came to Constantinople
to study under Gregory Nazianzen.12 Jerome was undoubtedly one of
the most learned of the Latin fathers; his Scripture scholarship was
warmly commended at the Council of Trent and in the twentieth cen­
tury by Popes Benedict XV and Pius XII.13 Francis X. Murphy has cor­
rectly observed that Jerome is still “an indispensable witness to the
mind of the Church in dealing with the Word of God.”1,1 During his
early career, Jerome was one of Origen’s most vocal defenders; he
described Origen as the “greatest teacher of the Church after the
apostles,”15 a man endowed with “immortal genius,”16 who was of
“incomparable eloquence and knowledge.”17 Origen “surpassed all
previous writers, Latin or Greek.”18 Later, during the Origenist con­
troversies, Jerome reversed his public standpoint concerning Origen
without really altering his fundamental endorsement of Origen’s
exegetical genius. This matter cannot be discussed in detail here.18
Jerome’s dedicatee is the priest Vincentius of Constantinople,
with whom he had become acquainted in Constantinople. In 382
Jerome also dedicated to Vincentius his translation of Eusebius’s
Chronicle.'10 Jerome reports that he has just completed a translation of
Origen’s fourteen homilies on Jeremiah.21 In the preface to the trans­
lation of the sermons on Ezekiel, he says he has striven for simplicity
of language and has renounced every form of rhetorical splendor, for
he wants the content to be praised, not the style of the words. He fur­
ther assures Vincentius that he plans to translate many of Origen’s
works, a promise he never fulfilled. This task was largely taken over by
Rufinus of Aquileia.22
Origen’s Exegetical Method
Origen’s method of expounding Ezekiel’s text can best be
described by saying that Origen strives with all his might to imitate St.
Paul’s method of interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures. In
Romans 15:4 Paul says: “For whatever was written in former days was
written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encourage­
ment of the scriptures we might have hope.” Paul repeats this idea in