Origen’s Biblical commentaries.
At this point indeed, we may well turn for a little while from the Reply to Celsus to those Biblical commentaries of Origen where he discusses such Old Testament passages connected with magic as the stories of Balaam and of the witch of Endor or ventriloquist. The commentary of Origen upon the Book of Numbers is extant only in the Latin translation by Rufinus, who literally snatched it for posterity as a brand from the burning, for he did not refrain from this learned and literary labor, although as he plied his pen in Messina in 410 A. D. he could see the invading barbarians ravaging the fields and burning Reggio just across the narrow strait which separates Sicily from Italy.[1930]
Balaam and the power of words.
In commencing to speak of Balaam and his ass[1931] Origen implies that much has already been written on this thorny theme and that he approaches it with considerable diffidence. He prays God again and again for grace to be able to explain it, not by means of fabulous Jewish narrations—by which expression he perhaps alludes to commentaries of the rabbis such as have reached us in the Talmud—but in a sense that shall be reasonable and worthy of the divine law. To begin with he admits the power of words, and not merely that of holy words or words of God, but of certain words used by men. That such words are in some respects more powerful than bodies is shown by the fact that Balaam’s cursing could accomplish what armies and weapons could not effect. This calls to mind one of the Mohammedan tales concerning Balaam to the effect that by reading the books of Abraham he learned “the name Yahweh by virtue of which he predicted the future, and got from God whatever he wished.”[1932]
Limitations to the power of Pharaoh’s magicians.
The magicians of Egypt, too, who withstood Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh, were able to turn rods into snakes and water into blood, feats which no man could accomplish by mere bodily strength. Indeed, because the king of Egypt knew that his magicians could do such things by a human art of words, he thought, at first at least, that Moses too was doing the same things not by the help of God but by the magic art. There was, however, a very serious limitation to the magicians’ power. By the aid of demons they could turn good into evil but they could not repair the damage which they had done or restore the evil to good. The rod of Moses, on the other hand, not only devoured theirs but turned back from a snake into its original form,[1933] and it was necessary for Moses to pray to God in order to stay the other plagues.
Was Balaam a prophet of God or a magician?
Origen classifies Balaam as a magician, not as a prophet. This seems to have been the prevalent patristic and medieval view, although the Biblical account in Numbers represents Balaam as in close and constant communication with God and the Second Epistle of Peter[1934] calls him a prophet although it condemns his temporary madness in seeking “the wages of unrighteousness.” Josephus too calls him the best prophet of his time but one who yielded to temptation.[1935] A fifteenth century treatise on the translation of the relics of the three kings to Cologne tells us that “concerning this Balaam there is an altercation in the east between the Christians and the Jews”; the Jews holding that he was no prophet but a diviner who predicted by magic and diabolical arts, the Christians asserting that he was the first prophet of the Gentiles.[1936] The problem continued to exercise the ingenuity of Lutherans and theologians of the Reformed Churches, and in 1842 was the main theme of a treatise of 290 pages in which Hebrew words and quotations from Calvin abound.[1937]
Balaam’s magic experiments.
Origen remarks that magicians differ in the amount of power they possess. Balaam was a very famous and expert one, known throughout the whole orient. He had given many experimental proofs (experimenta) of his skill and Balak had frequently employed him. The translator Rufinus’s repeated use of the words experimenta and expertus here is an interesting indication of the close connection between magic and experiment.[1938]