The Life of Jesus in the Writings of Origen of Alexandria [Hardcover]

This book explores the dawn of critical reading of the Gospels in the writings of Origen of Alexandria.This study demonstrates that Origen of Alexandria believed the Gospel writers themselves were figurative readers of the life of Jesus. Origen thus found no contradiction between discerning the truth of the Christian Gospels and facing the critical challenges of their literary form and formation.This study demonstrates that Origen of Alexandria believed the Gospel writers themselves were figurative readers of the life of Jesus. Origen thus found no contradiction between discerning the truth of the Christian Gospels and facing the critical challenges of their literary form and formation.Origen of Alexandria stands at the headwaters of the entire history of Gospel reading. In this study of the earliest extant Gospel commentaries, Samuel Johnson explores questions, often associated with modern Gospel criticism, that were already formative of the first moments of the Christian interpretative tradition. Origen's approach to the Gospels in fact arose from straightforward historical and literary critical judgments: the Gospel narratives interweave things that happened with things that did not. Origen discerned that the Gospels depict events in Jesus's life not merely as matters of historical fact, but also figuratively. He did not just interpret the Gospels allegorically. Johnson demonstrates that Origen believed the Gospel writers themselves were figurative readers of the life of Jesus. Origen thus found no contradiction between discerning the truth of the Christian Gospels and facing the critical challenges of their literary form and formation. Johnson's study shows how they constitute a single unified vision.Part I. First Principles: What is a Gospel, According to Origen?: 1. What is a Gospel? Reintroducing Origen; 2. Literary form: impediments and impossibilities; 3. Literary formation: seeing in the spirit; Part II. A Sign for This Generation: Reading the Gospels withl“V