Footnote 56:[(return)]
See preface to vol. iv. of the Benedictine edition.
We will first look to the external evidence bearing on the passage in question, and then to the internal character of the passage itself.
Origen's Commentaries on Ezekiel were divided into no fewer than twenty-five volumes, which he is said to have begun in Cæsarea of Palestine, and to have finished in Athens. Of these only one single fragment remains, namely, part of the twenty-first volume[57]. Jerome says that he translated fourteen of Origen's homilies on Ezekiel. Of these not one passage in the original language of Origen is known to be in existence. We must now, therefore, either receive the existing translations generally as Origen's, (whether they are Jerome's translations or not,) or we must consider Origen's homilies on Ezekiel as altogether lost to us. But supposing that we receive these works as containing, on the whole, traditionary translations of Origen, the genuineness of any one passage may yet become the subject of fair criticism. And whilst some persons reject whole masses of them altogether, the history of his works cannot but suggest some very perplexing points of suspicion and doubt.
Footnote 57:[(return)]
See Benedictine edition, vol. iii. p. 351. and Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. lib. vi. c. 6. there referred to.
The great body of his homilies, Origen probably delivered extempore in the early part of his ministry to the Christians of Cæsarea. Eusebius tells us, that not before Origen had reached his sixtieth year did he sanction the notaries (persons well known to history and corresponding to the short-hand writers[58] of the present day) in publishing any of his homilies. [Eccles. Hist. lib. vi. c. 36.] But the Benedictine editor, De la Rue, conceives that those men might surreptitiously and against the preacher's wishes have published some of Origen's homilies. Be this as it may. Suppose that the homilies on Ezekiel were published by Origen himself, and were translated by Jerome himself, our doubts are not removed even by that supposition. The same editor in the same preface tells us, "It is known to the learned that it was Jerome's habit, in translating Greek, sometimes to insert some things of his own[59]." Not that I for a moment conceive the passage under consideration to have come in its Latin dress from the pen of Jerome; for my conviction being that it is an interpolation of a much later date, I mention the circumstance to show, that even when Jerome, with his professed accuracy, is the translator, we can in no case feel sure that we are reading the exact and precise sentiments of Origen.
Footnote 58:[(return)]
The Latin word "notarius" (notary) does not come so near as our own English expression, "short-hand writer," to the Greek word used by Eusebius,—"tachygraphus," "quick-writer." The report of Eusebius as to the homilies of Origen having been delivered extempore, and taken down by these "quick-writers," is confirmed by Pamphilus the martyr, as quoted by Valesius, in the annotations on this passage of Eusebius.—Apol. Orig. lib. i.
Footnote 59:[(return)]
Cui in vertendis Græcis sciunt eruditi solemne esse nonnulla interdum de suo inserere.
Ruffinus, his celebrated contemporary, accused Jerome of many inaccuracies in his translations; and yet what were the principles of translation adopted by Ruffinus himself, as his own, we are not left to infer; for we learn it from his own pen. His voluntary acknowledgment in the peroration which he added to Origen's Comment on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, strongly and painfully exhibits to us how little dependence can safely be placed on such translations whenever the original is lost; how utterly insufficient and unsatisfactory is any evidence drawn from them, as to the real genuine sentiments and expressions of the author. Ruffinus informs us, that with regard to many of the various works of Origen, he changed the preacher's extemporary addresses, as delivered in the Church, into a more explanatory form, "adding, supplying, filling up what he thought wanting[60]."