Abstract
Very few homilies survive from before Origen’s time, and Lienhard suggests Origen could be called ‘the father of Christian homily’. Every day, in his time, the church would gather daily from Monday to Saturday for morning readings and preaching on the Old Testament, while on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays there would also be reading and preaching on Old Testament and Gospel texts closing with the Eucharist. The setting required discourses that were significantly briefer, gentler and less esoteric than some of Origen’s treatises. Thus, although the homilies are less well known than Against Celsus or On First Principles, they offer the modern reader some of Origen’s most engaging and enriching spiritual insights. Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his ‘primordial role’ in lectio divina.
Neither the homilies on Luke nor those on Judges survive extensively in Greek. Lienhard works primarily with Jerome’s translation, Lauro with Rufinus’. The former’s Homilies on Luke was originally published in 1996 in the Fathers of the Church series, and now appears in paperback, while Lauro’s version of the Homilies on Judges is the first ever translation into English. Both translators offer interesting and helpful introductions, sketching Origen’s significance, the history of his life, the historical context for his homilies and their translation into Latin, and they discuss the character of the interpretations he offers. In keeping with the quality of the Fathers of the Church series, both translations are fluent and highly readable; a general index and an index of passages is included in each volume.
These two sets of homilies probably addressed slightly different audiences, since in Origen’s day the gospel was not read before catechumens, who heard only the Old Testament. His interpretation of the Old Testament, however, speaks to the Christian audience, as he understands Joshua son of Nun as a type of Jesus, and the battles he faced as the struggle between virtue and vice in the Christian soul. In the Homilies on Luke, there are a few addresses to the catechumens, but these are probably to those who are soon to be received into the church. Both sets of homilies will reward not only academic specialists in patristics, but also those seeking nourishment through Fathers’ spiritual reading of scripture.