Fragments on Genesis

Contents

PG 12:263–279 (Origen's note on the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, Exodus) are not repeated here: that text is on this site as Philocalia 27.

Reading pages: 47–71 · 73–95 · 97–115 · 117–137 · 139–167

1. 47Against those who hold that matter is unbegotten, Origen argues that God's will is able to bring substance itself into being, not only its qualities.
2. 49If matter were unbegotten and fit for God's work by itself, Providence would add nothing to chance; human craftsmen are no parallel, since Providence supplies their material.
3. 51Origen opens his treatment of Gen 1:14 by showing that astral fatalism abolishes free choice, judgment, faith, and the whole work of Christ.
4. 53Fatalism makes God the author of vice; those who posit a higher good God beside the creator cannot escape the problem either.
5. 55Fatalism makes prayer pointless; the one who foretells an event, like a prophetic book about Judas, is not its cause.
6. 57God's foreknowledge is shown from Susanna, the prophecy naming Josiah long before his birth, and Isaiah's prophecy naming Cyrus.
7. 59Further proofs of foreknowledge: Cyrus, Daniel's image and vision of the goat and ram, the prophecies about Christ, and Jesus' prediction of Jerusalem's fall.
8. 61Origen sets out four problems: foreknowledge and free choice, stars as signs not causes, the limits of human astrology, and why God made the signs.
9. 63God surveys in his mind the whole chain of events from creation to the end and knows it without causing it, like one who foresees a reckless man's fall.
10. 65An event is foreknown because it will happen, not the reverse; Judas was foreknown as a betrayer, yet could have remained an apostle like Peter.
11. 67Human beings have real powers for good and evil; God hides the future from us, as Jeremiah's “perhaps” shows, so that foreknowledge may cause neither despair nor slackness.
12. 69God made us seeing toward the present and blind toward the future (Exod 4:11); free choice works within circumstances we do not control; a configuration cannot cause what happened before it.
13. 71Astrologers claim to read a person's parents and past from the birth chart, but a present configuration cannot have caused what preceded it, so at most stars signify.
14. 73The heavens are like God's book, containing signs of the future without causing it; and one event can be read from many people's nativities, so no single chart causes it.
15. 75If many nativities contain one man's violent death, no single chart causes it; national customs like circumcision cannot be explained by the stars.
16. 77If stars caused what they foretell, so would birds and entrails; and astrologers require a precision in reading the heavens that human beings cannot attain.
17. 79Astrologers cannot fix the hour of birth precisely enough, the precession of the zodiac shifts the signs, and they cannot calculate the blending of the stars' influences.
18. 81Isaiah mocks the astrologers; Jacob read the heavenly tablets only because he was more than human, as the Prayer of Joseph shows; Origen turns to why God made the signs.
19. 83God wrote the heavens as a book for angels and holy souls to read, to display his foreknowledge and to guide the angels' ministry; evil powers act by their own choice.
20. 85Origen quotes Clement's Circuits, where Clement shows his father that astrologers can explain any outcome after the fact and cannot see free choice.
21. 87After the quotation from Clement, Origen asks why Gen 1:16–17 says first “for the rules of the day” and then “to rule the day,” using the logicians' distinction of appellative and predicate.
22. 89Logic is needed to read Scripture: those who missed that “world” is homonymous misread 1 John 5:19 and blasphemed the Creator.
23. 91A fragment on the mission fields of the apostles closes the commentary excerpts; the Selections begin with a note on punctuating Gen 1:11.
24. 93Against those, including Melito, who place the image of God in the body, Origen shows that a literal reading of God's members contradicts itself.
25. 95The image of God lies in the rational soul and is shown in actions; man was given rule over some animals, but not over sea monsters and wild beasts.
26. 97Scripture counts snakes among wild beasts; some take the six days as an order of telling, not of time; “book” in Gen 2:4 came in from Gen 5:1.
27. 99Short catena notes: the trees of paradise are not perceptible; Eden means “delight”; Gihon and Cush; paradise is the church, and death follows sin naturally, not as God's contrivance.
28. 101The garments of skin are neither literal hides nor simply bodies; the cherubim guard the way to the tree of life; Cain's words to Abel are not in the Hebrew; Cain's sins listed.
29. 103Notes on Gen 5–6: Adam's form and image; Enoch's repentance; man made in God's image is not wiped out altogether; years before pleasing God are not counted.
30. 105Notes on the flood: sin corrupts the earth; the order of entering and leaving the ark shows abstinence in the ark and marriage after; Noah knew clean and unclean by natural law.
31. 107The wild beasts that fear the righteous are evil powers; the image of God is the Saviour, who is therefore God; a Hebrew tradition that Canaan first saw Noah's nakedness.
32. 109Why Canaan, not Ham, was cursed; God's mercy toward the young after the flood; Noah's drunkenness; Nimrod the hunter; “one lip” answers those who deny the Son's own hypostasis.
33. 111Unity is the mark of virtue and division of vice; Terah's sons; Abraham sojourns while the wicked dwell; Abraham yields to Lot and receives the promise, read spiritually.
34. 113Notes on Gen 14–15: Abraham “the crosser” (Hebrew); the stars as the offspring of his soul; why he asked for a sign; the Amorites' sins not yet full; the 400 and 430 years.
35. 115Notes on Gen 16–19: Sarah and Hagar read as virtue and preliminary studies; the new names; Abraham's prayer for Ishmael and for Sodom; Lot's hospitality at the gate.
36. 117Catena notes on Gen 19–24: Lot's wife; Abimelech did not touch Sarah; Isaac carrying the wood as a type of Christ carrying the cross; the meanings of the names in Nahor's family.
37. 119Notes on Gen 24–25: silent prayer; Isaac's withdrawal and contemplation; Keturah's descendants, the Midianites, and Jethro as Abraham's descendant.
38. 121The list of name meanings continues (Keturah's and Ishmael's descendants); notes on Isaac's sojourning, Abraham's keeping the law by nature, and the wells.
39. 123Notes on Gen 26–30: Isaac's forbearance; Jacob's voice and the fragrance of virtue; fleeing persecution like Jacob; Leah's opened womb read of the soul and of the synagogue; Laban's omens.
40. 125Notes on Gen 30–31: Jacob's three rods read of the soul's powers or kinds of contemplation; returning to the father's land as departure from this life; Laban's broken agreements.
41. 127Notes on Gen 31–37: gathering stones for the spiritual house; Jacob's humility toward Esau; the one who wrestled with Jacob is the Word of God; Joseph's tunic and his brothers' hatred.
42. 129Notes on Gen 37–40: Potiphar's name; Onan as a type of those who sow to the flesh; the martyrs “sin” against the king of Egypt, not against God; the stems and baskets; Pharaoh's birthday.
43. 131No righteous man keeps his birthday; Pharaoh's standing on the river and the years of plenty and famine read as worldly prosperity that ends in bitterness, like the rich man's.
44. 133Notes on Gen 41: the wise men of Egypt; a Hebrew tradition that Pharaoh had forgotten the interpretation he had seen; Joseph begins from God; the meaning of “Abrech”.
45. 135Notes on Gen 41–42: Abrech, Joseph's Egyptian name, a Jewish tradition that Asenath was Potiphar's daughter, the names of Manasseh and Ephraim, and the grain given as a gift to Jacob's sons.
46. 137Notes on Gen 42–43: Joseph's pleading and Reuben's grief; Judah's pledge for Benjamin; the gifts for Joseph compared with the Midianite caravan; the steward's piety.
47. 139God used the brothers' sin to save many; the goods of Egypt belong to Israel; the promise “I will bring you up” points to life after death; the names Jacob and Israel distinguished.
48. 141Notes on Gen 46–47: Jacob's daughters and sons-in-law; Israel and Jacob distinguished; Joseph's life unharmed in Egypt; the order of the Septuagint corrected from the Tetrapla.
49. 143Notes on Gen 47–48: Joseph's dealings in the famine; the Egyptians offer only body and land, as flesh; Jacob and Israel in the blessing of Joseph's sons; how blind Jacob “saw”.
50. 145Jacob crosses his hands to bless Ephraim, foreseeing Joshua, a type of Christ; Judah's lion and cub signify Christ's death in the economy.
51. 161The ark was pyramid-shaped, with two lower decks for refuse and food and three upper decks for the animals, the wild beasts lowest.
52. 163Man dwelt at the top of the ark; the side door was at the lowest deck; God himself shut it, since no one outside could seal it.
53. 165Against Apelles, who rejected Moses because the ark was too small, Origen reports a Hebrew view that the cubits are geometrical “powers” (squares).
54. 167Origen gives the ark's geometry: the sides draw in by fixed amounts at each cubit of height until the top is a single cubit.