Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Latin, Greek
Original Language: Latin, Greek
From the Publisher
Origen of Alexandria (b. ca. A.D. 185) is one of the most influential of the church fathers and ranks among the most prolific writers and teachers in the history of the Church. He preached on most of the Bible, and his homilies influenced Christian writers and theologians for centuries after his death. Origen's approach to the Bible was to analyze passages word by word, and this is reflected in his homilies, which regularly begin with a literal reading of the text. For Origen, the key to the meaning of a word in the Bible is often the use of that same word elsewhere in Scripture. He assumed that each word has a meaning that is both profound and relevant to the reader, for the Holy Spirit is never trite and what the Holy Spirit says must always touch the listener. Thirty-nine of his homilies on the Gospel of Luke survive in Jerome's Latin translation, and here they are translated into English for the first time. A selection of more significant fragments of Origen's commentaries on Luke, relating parts of the Gospel not covered by the homilies, has been translated from Greek. The first thirty-three homilies treat chapters one through four of Luke's Gospel; the remaining six treat passages from the tenth to the twentieth chapters. Origen preached these homilies in Caesarea, perhaps around the year 234 or 240, to a congregation of catechumens and faithful. Most of the homilies are short, discussing, on the average, about six verses of the Gospel, and each would have lasted between eight and twelve minutes. Origen's homilies are the only extant patristic writing devoted to Luke's Gospel before Ambrose's Exposition on Luke, written ca. 390. Homilies 1 to 20 also constitute the only extant commentary from the pre-Nicene Church on either Infancy Narrative. This is the fifth volume of Origen's writings to be translated in the Fathers of the Church series.
Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., earned the degree of Dr.theol.habil. at the University of Freiburg (Germany), with works on Paulinus of Nola and Marcellus of Ancyra. He is professor of theology at Fordham University.
