Origen’s Language: Some Research Perpectives

The biblical commentary before Origen already existed, but as a systematic work with a scientific framework it actually did not; in this sense it is not an exaggeration, in my opinion, to say he was really the primus inuentor of this literary genre. We due to some studies published in the last twenty years the close connection between Origen’s biblical commentaries, on one side, and the tradition of grammatical and philosophical commentaries, particularly of Hellenistic-Roman and Imperial age, on the other side. In fact, such a ‘commentary literature’ has offered structures, terminology and hermeneutic models to our author, who had been for many years – never we would forget it – a skilled grammarian. As an example of which could be an approach of this kind to Origen’s writings, we shall try to describe just one of these rhetorical tools, that is the so-called ‘digression’. From a detailed analysis of ‘digression’ through all its occurrences, some features emerge which permit us to sketch the typology of παρέκβασις in the origenian writings. These features are: i) first of all, the opportunity of making a ‘digression’; ii) the motivation which supports the opportuny or not of making a digression is connected with the «matter in hand»; iii) the position in which digression has to be placed; iv) the indication of the presence of a digression; v) very often, as we have seen, παρέκβασις is followed by something like a short reasoned summary. Digressions and similar rhetorical phenomena, which apparently damage the consistency of the exegetical speech, are only well-tried devices typical of literary rhetoric; they are liberally used by the authors of commentaries precisely in order to give a flexible ‘structure’ to the interpretive items, while adapting as possible their patterns to the text commented.