None of the Fathers knew and appreciated Judaism as well as Origen. His capacious theology resolved all apparent contradictions to affirm the unity of the Old and New Testaments, the old and new people of God, thus sealing the defeat of Marcionism. Christ’s teaching cannot come from human wit but only from “the epiphany of God, with manifold wisdom and manifold powers first establishing Judaism (Ioudaismos), and after it Christianity (Christianismos)” (CCels 3.1-1). Origen’s attention to the historical and theological bond between the two religions ensured that Christians would treasure their roots in ancient Israel and their spiritual unity with the patriarchs and prophets, who participate in their struggle and aid them with their prayers (HomLev 7.2; HomNum 26.6; HomJos 3.1;l6.5; 26.2). His study of Judaism, which gave Jewish learning a crucial place in Christian theology, has many facets: the pervasive influence of Philo, his major precursor as exegete and allegorist, whose works he probably saved for posterity; his study of Hebrew (which may well have gone beyond a rudimentary level); his labor on the Hexapla, in consultation with Jewish scholars (ComJn 6.212; ComPs 3:8); his use of tips from Jewish exegetical lore (PArch 4.3.14; ComMt 11.9; HomGn 2.2; HomNum 14.1 27.12; HomEz 10.3), some acquired from personal contact (HomNum 13.5; Homls 9), notably with Hillel the younger, son of the Patriarch Gamaliel III (ComPs Praef. 1 [PG 12.1056]), and with a converted Jewish immigrant in Alexandria (EpistAfr 7; HomJr 20.2), who is probably the person cited at the start of his first public scriptural commentary (ComPs Praef. [1080]); his occasional attention to Judaeo-Christian traditions (PArch 1.3.4). The great halakhists of the academy of Rabbi Hoshaya were his contemporaries in Caesarea. His public debates with learned Jews were challenging and instructive (ComJn 10.163), though he presents himself as emerging victorious (CCels 1.45; 55-56) or as finding confirmation of Christian claims (CCels 2.31).
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All this study served also to bolster Origen’s theological claim that only in Christianity does Jewish tradition attain its proper fulfillment. Jews who fail to convert to Christ are in a tragic dead end, abandoned by God (though with a prospect of eschatological restoration). Thus, while Origen can correct the crude anti-Judaism of earlier and later theologians, the negative impact of his own account proved all the more dangerous for the future, in that it is so thoroughly argued, on a broad textual basis. A catena of his remarks seems to form an oppressive anti-Jewish vision, though it is questionable, perhaps, to take these out of their specific exegetical contexts so as to combine them in a system. Indeed, efforts to critique them can scarcely avoid tackling key New Testamental sources themselves, such as Matthew 21:43: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom,” which Origen sees as referring to a central purpose of the coming of Christ (CCels 4.3; 42; 5.58) and which provides the salvation-historical framework for comments on Judaism in the ComMt (especially ComMt 17.6-11). Paul often turns out to be a primary source of his anti-Judaistic apologetic. All of this is increasingly disturbing to his contemporary readers, who with the hindsight of the traumatic events of the twentieth century are less and less able to share the serenity of those Christian scholars who have reported Origen’s anti-Judaistic apologia without criticism, or even accentuated it, treating those views even as intrinsic to Christian orthodoxy.
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Sometimes Origen gives rationalistic accounts of the election of the Jews, seeing it as merited by their virtues. The Jews did not sin at the time of the tower of Babel and so kept the language of Adam and remained under immediate divine protection, while the other nations were consigned to the guidance of angels (CCels 5.31-32; HomNum 11.4). To be born in Israel, it is hinted, could be the reward of merit in a prior life. As in Philo, the excellence of the Jews is described in terms of Platonic ideals: “Even the last of the Jews fixes his eyes on the one God above all.” For Origen, the privileges of Jews have been transferred to Christians for a corresponding reason, the moral falling away of the Jews. The same logic applies to Gentiles: we must learn from Israel’s mistakes (HomJr 4.5; HomEz 7.1; HomLev 13.2; HomPs 36.3.10) and avoid the same fate of rejection, ons that Origen fears for the tepid and overpopulous church of a time without persecutions.
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The transferral of true religion (translatio religionis) from Jews to Christians is evoked in Platonic terms, the Jews remaining trapped in the fleshly world of shadows and images, while Christians have broken through to the spiritual level: “The whole of religion has been transferred from Jews to Centiles, from circumcision to faith, from letter to spirit, from shadow to truth, from carnal to spiritual observance” (ComRm 9.1). The obsolescence of Mosaic revelation in light of Christ’s surpassing glory (2 Cor. 3:7-17; ComJn 32.336-37; ComRm 3.11) is thought of as the obsolescence of Platonic “images” when the true reality appears. The earthly Jerusalem was destroyed when the heavenly appeared; one doesn’t keep the clay model of a statue when the statue has been formed. Retention of the old cult, despite or because of its splendor (HomNum 23.1), would cause confusion and scandal (HomLev 10.1; HomJos 17.1), though the scriptural record of the old system retains a pedagogic and inspirational value (ComCt 2 [PG 13.136]). Origen insists that there is no function for a symbolic priesthood and temple when the true high priest has come (ComMt 16.3), yet Jews cling to the “sketch and shadow” (Heb. 8:5) and reject the reality itself (cf. Heb. 10:1) as a lie (HomLev 12.1). They boast in their birth, he says (echoing the apologetic sketched out in John 8:32f.), fascinated by the shifty world of becoming, like the daughter of Herodias who celebrated a birthday with a sinuous dance (ComMt 10.22). Here, in painful irony, a polemic of Philo against the Egvptians, accusing them of chameleonic inconstancy (Philo, Ebr. 36; 208), is transferred to the Jews. Jews cling to ancestral tradition, just as the Egyptians do to their custom of worshiping beasts, and so cannot open themselves to the higher doctrines taught by Jesus (CCels 1.52). Origen even develops an entire pathology of Jewish stubbornness, bad faith, and self-blinding (ComMt 11.13-14; SerMt 27; Homls 6.5-6).
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His vision of Jewish sinfulness culminates in the slaying of the prophets and of Christ. In punishment, their filial adoption and special divine protection have been withdrawn and are now transferred to Christians (HomLev 12.5). The New Testament signifies Christ’s “bill of divorce” to the synagogue, which now consorts with the devil and has been replaced by a new Gentile spouse(ComMt 14.19). The contrast between Jewish defeat and shame and the triumphant worldwide progress of Christianity proves that “their father has spit in their face” (Num. 12:14; HomNum 7.1). “The descendents of Israel are no longer Israel” (ComJn 28.94), and Christians are the “true Israel” (cf. Justin, Dial. 130.3; 135.3), “who with pure mind and sincere heart sees God” (ComRm 8.7). All this language is perhaps less offensive if we note that for Origen it is Christ in the first place who is the “true Israel” (ComRm 8.11’), and that the true Israel is fully realized only in the heavenly community, which embraces Jews and Gentiles, humans and angels (HomNum 1.3; HomJos 9.4).
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The increasingly hostile tone of the remarks in his later writings may also be contextualized in terms of attempted, and failed, exercises in interreligious dialogue at Caesarea. The late text, Contra Celsum, written shortly after the more polemical Commentary on Matthew, is invoked by those who see Origen as friendly to the Jews of his day. In reality, although the work defends the faith shared by Jews and Christians alike and magnifies the Old Testament saints and prophets, Origen still signals that the old economy is surpassd in the new (CCels 5.42-51) and formulates a negative judgment on the Jews of his time, who are, he says, entirely abandoned, having nothing of what they formerly held sacred, not even a sign that there is anything divine among them,” and who are “punished more than others” (CCels 2.8) for their failure to recognize the one their prophets had foretold. The just punishment of the Jews is an important plank in Origen’s apologetic argument (CCels 1.47; 2.13, 78; 4.32, 73; 5.43; 7.26; 8.47, 69).It might be argued that his vision of the Jewish people, the elder brother of the Church (ComCt 2 [PG 13.142]), is tinged with pity and respect; except that here again the reference is not to contemporary Jews.
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For Origen, all Jewish parties to the death of Jesus are punished; the scribes’ punishment is that they are now blind to the intent of the Scriptures (ComMt 16.3). Christians, through allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, can recuperate the entirety of Jewish experience. Origen thus saves the Hebrew Scriptures for Christian use, but only by interpreting them in terms that few Jews would recognize as having any basis. With 2 Corinthians 3:12-16 as his warrant, he seeks Christ in the Scriptures under the veil of the letter. Jews, imprisoned in the letter, and missing the grace of a pneumatic reading of Scripture, are condemned to an infinite exile in their interpretative efforts. For Christians the Torah is no longer a troubling foreign document; rather it is the Jews who understand the Law poorly and so do not accept Christ. The literal sense rarely satisfies Origen’s need for a pneumatic, christological understanding of Scripture. Unless taken in a spiritual sense, the words of Leviticus signify impediment and ruination to the Christian religion (HomLev 5.1). Not to follow the Pauline method of spiritual interpretation would be to become a disciple of the Jews and an accomplice of the enemies of Christ (HomEx 5.1).
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The letter of the Law is bitter and consigns the Jews to a bitter lot, but it is changed to sweetness by spiritual understanding (HomEx 7.1-2). For Origen, the Jews are always learning but never arrive at knowledge of the truth (ComRm 2.14) and are afflicted with stupidity, their minds befogged (HomNum 6.4; ComMt 11.11), unable to grasp the sense of their own laws. Their development has been aborted (HomNum 7.3). They have the scriptural books, yet the Scriptures are taken away from them, since they do not understand them (HomJr 14.12). They are victims of a blind Torah positivism; if asked the reason for their laws, they reply: “Such is the good pleasure of the Legislator; no one argues with the Lord” (HomLev 4.7). Christians honor the Law more, “by showing what depth of wise and mysterious teachings are found in those letters which the Jews have not well contemplated in their superficial reading that remains attached to fables” (CCels 2.4). “What the Jews have now is all fable and futility, for they lack the light of the knowledge of the Scriptures” (CCels 2.5). We have fled “the mythologies of the Jews” for “mystical contemplation of the Law and the prophets” (CCels 2.6).
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The mystery of Jewish blindness can be understood only by God. Reading prophetic addresses to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as referring to the present situation of Israel and the Gentiles, Origen rejoices in the Pauline idea that the stumbling of Israel was providential, allowing the Gentiles access to salvation (HomJr 4.2). Israel’s present stony hardening is only a temporarv condition (HomEx 6.9). Christ will take back his unfaithful spouse at the end (ComMt 14.20). Israel is a barren fig tree only until the fullness of the Gentiles has been gathered in (ComMt 16.26). Like Miriam, the synagogue is in a leprous condition, but her expulsion is temporary; at the end of time she will come back to the camp (HomNum 6.4). The Jews’ meditation of the Law (albeit fruitless) and their zeaI for God are both admirable even if misguided (HomPs 36.1.1; 5.3), and they are a pledge of the final restoration, when Jews, converted to Christ (per fidem), will fill up the number of the elect (ComRm 8.9; 12; ComMt 17.5). Just as Origen’s idiosyncratic theory of pre-existence lurks in the background of what he says about the election of Israel, so his idiosyncratic theory of post-existence may underlie his statements about Israel’s ultimate destiny. “All Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26) seems to have a partial fulfillment at the end of this world, but complete fulfillment only in the final apokatastasis (HomJr 5.4). In this sense, his retrieval of Paul’s positive ideas about Israel’s final destiny is something that distinguishes Origen from most of the Fathers and even makes him a precursor of contemporary Christian-Jewish dialogue.
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Joseph S. O'Leary, from John A. McGuckin, ed. The Westminster Handbook ot Origen, Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.
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