The Modern Editions of Peri Archon

The Modern Editions of Peri Archon
Peter W. Martens
Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 28, Number 2, Summer 2020, pp.
303-331 (Review)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/757108
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]
The Modern Editions
of Peri Archon
PETER W. MARTENS
Merlin, Jacques. Operum Origenis Adamantii, Tomus 4. Paris: Jean Petit

and Josse Bade, 1512 (fols. 111 to 158 in 1522 repr.).
Delarue, Charles. Origenis Opera omnia Quae Graece vel Latine tantum
exstant. Paris: Jacobus Vincent, 1733, 1:42–195.
Koetschau, Paul. De Principiis. GCS 22, Origenes Werke 5. Leipzig: J. C.
Hinrichs, 1913.
Görgemanns, Herwig, and Heinrich Karpp. Origenes: Vier Bücher von
den Prinzipien. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976;
2nd ed. 1985; 3rd ed. 1992.
Crouzel, Henri, and Manlio Simonetti. Origène: Traité des Principes.
5 vols. SC 252, 253, 268, 269, 312. Paris: Cerf, 1978, 1978, 1980,
1980, 1984.
Rius-Camps, Josep. Orígenes: Tractat dels Principis. 2 vols. Barcelona:
Fundació Bernat Metge, 1998.
Fernández, Samuel. Sobre Los Principios. Fuentes Patrísticas 27. Madrid:
Ciudad Nueva, 2015.
Behr, John. Origen: On First Principles. Oxford Early Christian Texts.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Origen, when he was around forty-five years of age, interrupted his bur-
geoning program of scriptural exegesis to write Peri Archon (CPG 1482).1
In this work he provided a unified discussion of Christian teachings so
that his readers could probe more deeply into the church’s rule of faith
I would like to thank James O’Donnell, Samuel Huskey, John Behr, and Samuel
Fernández for their instructive remarks on previous drafts of this essay.
1. The modern scholarly editions of Peri Archon that I examine in this essay are
listed above in chronological order. I exclude from this essay those editions that
Journal of Early Christian Studies 28:2, 303–331 © 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press
304 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
and discriminate among conflicting scriptural interpretations that were

swirling through Alexandria in the late 220s (Princ. praef.10; 4.4.5). After
completing this treatise, Origen resumed his biblical scholarship, likely
viewing Peri Archon as a detour, perhaps even a necessary one, but nev-
ertheless still a detour from his larger project of scriptural interpretation.
This treatise became far more consequential than Origen likely ever imag-
ined. Among its many late antique readers, some drew deep inspiration
from the work, others were agitated and even scandalized by its claims,
but most, I suspect, vacillated between admiration and suspicion as they
negotiated this pioneering tome. Peri Archon is an abundantly paradoxical
work. Anchored in the firm conviction of the truth of the church’s rule, it
simultaneously explores tentative proposals and leaves important ques-
tions unanswered. The treatise is patterned by a two-part structure, but
it is also an untidy work, full of excurses, parentheses, and digressions.
Peri Archon is, as its title announces, about “principles” (whatever Origen
might have meant by these). But it is also a work in which we find narra-
tives, such as autobiographical hints, accounts of the life of Christ, and the
rudiments of an epochal story of the soul’s journey through many worlds.
In its four books readers encounter lofty philosophical ruminations about
the nature of God; these are juxtaposed with sobering and down-to-earth
reflections about children born blind. This treatise also has a recurring
polemical orientation, aimed against the followers of Valentinus, Marcion,
and Basilides. But it is simultaneously apologetic, a defense of its author
against accusations of heresy—sometimes the very heresies he criticized.
Peri Archon is also bitterly ironic. While the third-century Origen vigi-
lantly expressed his own orthodoxy through this treatise, this same work
eventually became the petard on which he was hoisted by his sixth-century
critics. It drew the ire of bishops and an emperor because it expressed
views incompatible with their orthodoxies: the subordinationism of the
Son to God the Father, the pre-existence of souls, and certain views on
the resurrection of body and scope of salvation. Origen would eventu-
ally be condemned at a council convened in Constantinople (553) by the
Byzantine emperor, Justinian, for teachings ostensibly expressed in Peri
Archon. Under gathering imperial and ecclesiastical gaze—this council
would eventually achieve ecumenical status—Peri Archon slowly withered
in the Greek east. But this would not mark the end of its story. Origen’s
reprint or only slightly rework the text of an earlier edition (though these books are
noted along the way). Most books that only provide translations are also excluded.
MARTENS / MODERN EDITIONS OF PERI ARCHON 305
opponents actively suppressed the work, ensuring its patchwork survival

for future generations of readers. But his many admirers, both before and
after this council, drew strength from it, excerpting, translating, comment-
ing, and transmitting large blocks of this work to subsequent generations.
Medieval scribes denied Justinian the last word, for which we are grateful.
This treatise has attracted and repulsed readers over its nearly 1800-year
history. Peri Archon is one of the most magnificent and ambiguous trea-
tises of the Christian tradition.
Yet it is also an extraordinarily difficult work since all efforts to examine
it take their point of departure from an uncertain and highly-contested text.
The ninth-century patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, appears to have
been the last person who saw and described a complete Greek version of
this treatise (Cod. 8). The third-century autograph of Peri Archon no lon-
ger survives, but the loss of an original is hardly an unusual situation for
early Christian writings. The chief difficulty in this case is that apographs
(copies) of the complete original, such as what Photius had before him,
also do not survive. Instead, what remains is a cache of witnesses to the
text of Peri Archon from the indirect manuscript tradition: a hodgepodge
of translations, excerpts, paraphrases, and reports about its contents that
were mediated through other late antique authors who often had axes to
grind. These authors created a manuscript tradition that has presented
Origen’s readers, from late antiquity to our day, with many challenges.
By grasping these challenges we appreciate the dilemmas editors have
faced, as well as the decisions they have made. John Behr’s recent edition of
Peri Archon occasions this essay, but his contribution stands in a long line
of modern editions of the treatise that do not represent a uniform strategy
for wrestling with the evidence at hand. Readers might also fairly wonder
why five editions of this treatise have been produced in a little over forty
years. Legitimately different approaches to editing its text exist, though
not all, in my opinion, have been executed successfully. Some editions,
especially Paul Koetschau’s pathbreaking contribution, have been unduly
maligned. Nor have the modern editions of this treatise exhausted all edi-
torial possibilities. The complexity of the manuscript evidence allows us
to imagine what different editions of the treatise might look like in the
future. Familiarity with the indirect manuscript tradition also helps readers
determine what edition will best suit their interests, as well as how differ-
ent editions facilitate alternative readings of the treatise. I also believe that
the complexities of the manuscript tradition, themselves rooted in bitter
partisan disputes of the fourth and sixth centuries, invite us to become
different kinds of readers of the treatise. Too often we have been asked to
trust: to trust either how Origen’s friends (mainly Rufinus) presented the
text of Peri Archon, or to trust how his foes presented the text (mainly
Jerome and Justinian). But this invitation is beguiling, since it promises
to untangle a thicket of problems in exchange for the reader’s simple alle-
giance, as if one or the other side were our sure guide to the original form
of Peri Archon. When faced with compromised evidence such as we are,
we are not invited to trust, but to examine and discern and, in not a few
cases, embrace uncertainty.
THE MAIN WITNESSES AND THEIR COMPLICATIONS
I begin with a cursory overview of the main sources for the text of Peri
Archon and the challenges they present modern readers. Rufinus produced
a Latin translation in 398 amidst what we sometimes today call the “first
Origenist controversy.”2 This is far and away our longest witness to the
treatise, though it is misleading to consider it complete, since Rufinus
openly acknowledged in his translator’s prefaces that he had transformed
Origen’s treatise.3 This procedure was necessary, he insisted, because many
passages in Peri Archon were “inconsistent with and contrary to his [i.e.,
Origen’s] own teaching.”4 And so, whenever Rufinus found anything irrev-
erently stated about the Trinity in the Greek copy of Peri Archon before
him, he says that he “either omitted it as a corrupt and interpolated pas-
sage,” or “reproduced it in a form that agrees with the doctrine which I
2. For more on the Origenist controversy, and Rufinus’s place in it, see Elizabeth A.
Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian
Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 11–42. In 397, Rufinus translated
Pamphilus’s six-book Apologia pro Origene, within which twenty-six citations from
Peri Archon still survive. The translations of these citations were used (and slightly
modified) by Rufinus the next year when he began work on his full translation of the
treatise. For the differences between the texts of these citations, see Koetschau, lxxxv;
Gustave Bardy, Recherches sur l’Histoire du Texte et des Versions Latines du De Prin-
cipiis d’Origène (Paris: Édouard Champion, 1923), 106–11. For the wider manuscript
tradition that transmits Rufinus’s translation of Peri Archon, see Koetschau, xcv–c;
Görgemanns and Karpp, 39–41; Fernández, 55–57; Behr, 1:xci–xciv.
3. Görgemanns and Karpp, 33, on this translation transmitting the “complete”
work (so too Crouzel and Simonetti, SC 252:23). Oddly, a team of French transla-
tors claimed that Koetschau erred by “assuming that” Rufinus’s translation contained
lacunae and other changes, whereas in fact Rufinus explicitly states that this was so
(Origène, Traité des Principes, intro. and trans. by Marguerite Harl, Gilles Dorival,
and Alain Le Boulluec [Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1976], 15).
4. Rufinus, Princ. praef.2 (Koetschau, 4.23–24; G. W. Butterworth, Origen on First
Principles [Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973], lxiii.).
have often found him affirming elsewhere.”5 For “novel” teachings about
rational creatures, the policy was similar: many were removed, though
not all (Princ. 3.praef.). Finally, Rufinus noted that Origen “occasionally
expressed himself obscurely in the effort to be brief,” and so, to make
these passages clearer, he “added such remarks on the same subject as I
have read in a fuller form in his other books.”6 Yet none of these changes
should be regarded as corruptions, Rufinus maintained, but rather correc-
tions, since malignant copyists were responsible for the heretical notions
that had crept their way into the copies of Peri Archon.7
Rufinus presents his readers, both ancient and modern, with challenges
for which there are not always easy solutions. We know that he changed the
text of Peri Archon—he commendably announced his translation policy in
his prefaces to books one and three of the treatise. But his transparency had
limits. He never indicated in his translation where or how he changed his
text. As far as we can tell, no text-critical sigla were introduced that would
alert readers to his changes. Nor did he present readers with the Greek
wording that he regarded as spurious or unclear and that had prompted
his re-writes. Thus, short of competing evidence from other witnesses,
we usually find ourselves in a fog about the original shape and wording
of Peri Archon. When Rufinus added text, how much did he add—a few
words, a few lines, or larger blocks of material? Did he only change pas-
sages that talked about the Trinity (as he claimed), or were other sections
about other doctrines also changed? How much offensive material was
omitted? And how extensive were the re-writes and from what sections
of Origen’s corpus were they inspired? This was the mystifying situation
in which Rufinus thrust his initial readers.
And so one year after Rufinus completed his translation of Peri Archon
Jerome produced his own translation at the request of Pammachius and
Oceanus (Jerome, Ep. 83). They expressed the wish that Jerome render
the treatise “exactly as it was brought out by the author himself” and
that Jerome “make evident the interpolations” which Rufinus had clan-
destinely introduced.8 Jerome obliged with a fresh translation according
5. Rufinus, Princ. praef.3 (Koetschau, 5.13–15; Butterworth, Origen, lxiii).

6. Rufinus, Princ. praef.3 (Koetschau, 5.15–18; Butterworth, Origen, lxiii).
7. This scribal hypothesis was elaborated roughly a year earlier in 397 in his trea-
tise, On the Falsification of the Books of Origen, where Rufinus cited a letter by
Origen who had discovered that his writings were being corrupted by his opponents.
In 401, a few years after his translation of Peri Archon, Rufinus again discussed
the circumstances motivating the translation of the treatise (see his Apology against
Jerome, esp. at book 1, sections 10–16).
8. Jerome, Ep. 83 (Isidorus Hilberg, CSEL 55:120.8–10; NPNF 6:175).
to the rule “that I should neither add nor subtract but should preserve in
Latin in its integrity the true sense of the Greek.”9 It was clearly intended
as a corrective to Rufinus’s “misrendering.”10 While Jerome’s translation
is unfortunately lost,11 a number of fragments survive in his Epistula 124
(ad Avitum) which was written about ten years after he first made his
translation.12
In this letter Jerome highlights what he regarded as the dubious and het-
erodox assertions Origen made in Peri Archon, sometimes offering quick
summaries of what Origen said, sometimes paraphrases, and sometimes
citations from his earlier translation of the work—the distinction between
the latter two intertextual strategies is not always easy to determine. It is,
however, usually clear from what sections of Peri Archon these reports
were drawn, since Jerome moves sequentially through the treatise and his
material can often be juxtaposed to the corresponding section of Rufinus’s
translation. There are a few cases where Jerome and Rufinus transmit text
of similar length and wording.13 But there are usually more significant dis-
crepancies between the two.14 And finally, there are cases where Jerome
claims to provide text from Peri Archon, but it does not correspond to
anything Rufinus transmitted.15
At first glance, this auxiliary evidence is alluring since it rises to meet
the very expectations Rufinus himself set when he announced a transla-
tion policy that included omissions, additions, and re-writes. That is, when
Jerome presents texts not found in Rufinus’s translation, the reader’s first
9. Jerome, Ep. 85.3 (Hilberg, CSEL 55:136.22–137.1; NPNF 6:182).

10. And shortly thereafter: “give the true sense of the Greek and should set down
the writer’s words for good or for evil without bias in either direction” (Jerome, Ep.
124.1 [Hilberg, CSEL 56:96.4–8; NPNF 6:238]). On his fidelity as translator of this
treatise, see also Jerome, Apol. contra Rufinum 1.6–7.
11. On Jerome’s translation, see Koetschau, lxxxviii–xcv; Bardy, Recherches,
154–202.
12. Over fifty citations survive from Ep. 124, and a few extracts survive in some
of his other writings: see Koetschau, xcii–xciii.
13. E.g., compare Ep. 124.6 (Restat—visibilis erit) with Rufinus at Princ. 2.4.3.
14. E.g., compare Ep. 124.9 (Divinitus—in spe) with Rufinus at Princ. 3.5.4; Ep.
124.9 (Quem rerum—collocare) with Rufinus at the start of Princ. 3.5.5; Ep. 124.6
with Princ. 1.6.3; Ep. 124.5 with Princ. 2.3.7.
15. E.g., Ep. 124.4 (In fine—fiant), likely slotted in Princ. 1.7.5; Ep. 124.7 (Nisi
forte—sumet exordia), likely belonging at the end of Princ. 2.10.8; Ep. 124.9 (Illud
quoque—vivendum est) probably goes toward the end of Princ. 3.6.1; Ep. 124.10
(Nec dubium est—amisere virtutem) belongs somewhere in Princ. 3.6.3. For a tabular
overview comparing the surviving sections from Jerome’s translation with Rufinus’s,
see Koetschau’s chart on xciii–xcv.
instinct might be to consider these the very passages Rufinus told us he

omitted; when Jerome presents texts that are different from Rufinus, we are
encouraged to see these as the very passages Rufinus considered spurious
and re-wrote; and when Jerome provides material shorter than Rufinus,
this would seem to be where the latter expanded the Greek text. Jerome
invites us, in short, to consider his translation a corrective of Rufinus’s
translation and a reliable window onto the original Greek text of Peri
Archon. But this invitation has met with widely different responses. Paul
Koetschau famously went so far as to claim that, were the whole transla-
tion available, a retrograde translation into Greek would basically give us
the original.16 But this is an unusually one-sided assertion that very few
scholars have followed. It requires, after all, an unstinting trust in Jerome
whenever his translation differed from Rufinus’s. If skepticism can be
directed toward a friend, whom we suspect wanted to sanitize Origen for a
later orthodoxy, why, we might ask, could doubts not also be cast against
a sometime foe who wished to highlight, and perhaps exacerbate, Origen’s
heresy? When Jerome’s translations challenge Rufinus’s, particularly on
a contentious issue, and we have no other witnesses that corroborate his
competing renderings, we find ourselves in the same position as with Rufi-
nus’s stand-alone translations on contentious matters: authenticity must
be measured against what Origen said elsewhere.
Another important witness to the original Greek text of Peri Archon
comes from Justinian’s Epistula ad Menam (543), his edict against Ori-
gen and Origenists.17 This letter claims to provide twenty-four citations
from Peri Archon.18 Not all of these citations, however, are prefaced with
information about the part of the treatise from which they are drawn, and
when information is provided, it is sometimes inaccurate. Nor are the cita-
tions organized sequentially as they are in Jerome’s Epistula ad Avitum.
It is thus not always clear where these excerpts belong in Peri Archon,
a lack of clarity exacerbated by the fact that a number of these excerpts
do not correspond to any of the material transmitted by the other main
16. “. . . für den Fall, daß die genaue Hieronymus-Übersetzung vollständig über-
liefert wäre, mit deren Hilfe . . . eine Wiederherstellung des Originals durch Retro-
version versuchen” (Koetschau, cxxviii). In a similar vein: “. . . haben wir damit ein
wichtiges Korrektiv gegenüber Rufin” (Görgemanns and Karpp, 43).
17. For the context of this edict, see Richard Price, The Acts of the Council Con-
stantinople 553, with Related Texts on the Three Chapters Controversy, vol. 2, Trans-
lated Texts for Historians 51 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 270–74.
18. On the fragments from Justinian’s letter, see Koetschau, cv–cxv; Bardy, Recher-
ches, 49–74.
witnesses. The patterns we observe with Justinian’s fragments mirror those

we discovered with Jerome: some excerpts from Justinian’s letter are very
similar to Rufinus’s text—in these cases the Greek text is plausibly the
wording Rufinus translated (Koetschau frgs. 5, 8, 10, 14, etc.). But there
are also more significant differences between the two (e.g., in frg. 11 Jus-
tinian transmits a shorter version than what is found in Rufinus, whereas
in frg. 12 the situation is reversed and Justinian transmits more text than
the corresponding material in Rufinus). And then we have several cases
where Justinian transmits material that does not occur at all in Rufinus’s
translation (e.g., frgs. 4, 7, 32, 38); in some of these situations Justinian’s
supplementary material is corroborated by additional sources (e.g., frgs.
9, 30, 39, 40). The main challenge here, as with the other witnesses, is to
determine which of Justinian’s excerpts lead us closer to the original text of
Peri Archon and which take us further away. We cannot assume, of course,
that these are authentic simply because they are in Greek. Heighted scrutiny
is required for the fragments that differ from other sources, especially when
they alone transmit a passage that ventures into contested teachings. The
great value in Justinian’s excerpts is that those deemed authentic—unlike
the authentic sections of Rufinus and Jerome’s translations—provide us
with Peri Archon in its original Greek.
The final major source for the text of Peri Archon, also the earliest of
the four main sources here discussed, is the Philocalia, a Greek anthology
traditionally attributed to Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus from
around 358. This anthology was drawn almost exclusively from Origen’s
writings and contains two lengthy Greek excerpts from Peri Archon: section
3.1 (= Philocalia 21) on human freedom, and section 4.1–3 (= Philocalia
1.1–27) on how to interpret Scripture. Neither of these sections ventures
deep into the doctrinal themes which would become so contentious in
later centuries and would invite textual corruption. The wording in these
excerpts is generally considered reliable since its tracks quite closely with
the corresponding material from Rufinus’s Latin translation.19 In these
19. For more detailed comparisons of the two sections of the Philocalia that cor-
respond to Rufinus’s translation, see: Koetschau, ciii–cv; Bardy, Recherches, 41–48;
Henri Crouzel, “Comparaisons précises entre les fragments du Peri Archôn selon la
Philocalie et la traducion de Rufin,” Origeniana: Premier colloque international des
études origéniennes, Montserrat, 18–21 Septembre 1973, ed. Henri Crouzel, Genn-
aro Lomiento, and Josep Rius-Camps (Bari: Università di Bari, 1975), 113–21; John
Rist, “The Greek and Latin Texts of the Discussion on Free Will in De Principiis,
Book III,” Origeniana, 97–111; Nicola Pace, Ricerche sulla traduzione di Rufino del
“De principiis” di Origene (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1990).
cases, the Philocalia usually gives us the original Greek of Peri Archon.
Yet it too presents the editor with challenges since it often has more or
less material than Rufinus, and in many of these cases it is not clear whose
reading should be followed. For example, at 3.1.7 the Philocalia has more
text than Rufinus: it transmits Gal 5.8, whereas this verse is missing from
Rufinus’s translation. Koetschau thinks this citation is authentic and was
mistakenly omitted by Rufinus, whereas Görgemanns and Karpp think
the verse was an interpolation by the editors of the Philocalia.20 Not all
discrepancies, however, are debated. For instance, at 4.3.9 the Philocalia
is certainly missing material that is supplied by Rufinus—a number of
the Greek manuscripts signify the lacuna with the words καὶ μεθ᾽ἕτερα.21
In addition to these four major sources, a significant number of shorter
fragments have been unearthed from a variety of mostly Greek sources.22
Some of these witnesses to the text of Peri Archon correspond to material
Rufinus translated, and in some cases, likely point to the original word-
ing behind his translation.23 But there are also a number of other osten-
sible witnesses which offer material that allows for no comparison with
any another textual tradition mentioned above. For example, Athanasius
does not refer to Peri Archon by name at De Decretis 27.3, but transmits
unique material that a few editors believe is authentic and belongs in sec-
tion 4.4.1.24 Another more contentious example is a set of three fragments
from Koetschau’s edition. Frgs. 15 (a composite text from multiple sources,
inserted at 1.8.1), 17a (a composite text with passages from Gregory of
Nyssa, inserted at 1.8.4), and 23a (Anathemas 2–6a likely promulgated
20. Koetschau, ciii, and Görgemanns and Karpp, 485n30, 842. Another debated
case is the conclusion of Princ. 3.1.10: here the situation is reversed and it is the Phi-
localia which has less text than Rufinus. Koetschau considers Rufinus’s text authentic
(ciii–civ), whereas Görgemanns and Karpp consider the shorter text in the Philocalia
authentic (495n40).
21. For other examples, see the closing paragraphs of Princ. 4.3.6 where the Phi-
localia transmits a large block of material that is widely regarded as authentic, even
though it is not found in Rufinus (Koetschau, civ; Görgemanns and Karpp, 749n16;
Fernández, 893n139). Similarly, in Princ. 3.1.23 the Philocalia is almost certainly
missing material, since both Rufinus and Jerome (Ep. 124.8) transmit very similar
versions of the missing text.
22. For orientation, see the tabular overview of the forty Greek fragments identi-
fied by Koetschau, cxxv–cxxvii.
23. For instance, the passages labeled by Koetschau as frgs. 1, 2, 3, 12a, 16, 31,
33, 36, and 37.
24. Koetschau frg. 34 (350.14–17), also judged authentic by Görgemanns and
Karpp, 787, and Rius-Camps, 2:189, but not so by Fernández, 933n13.
on the eve the Council of Constantinople in 553,25 inserted at 2.8.3) have

become notorious in the Origenian scholarship and are now considered
of little relevance for reconstructing the text of Peri Archon. It should be
noted that Koetschau himself indicated uncertainty about the authenticity
of each of these fragments, clearly flagging them as conjectural on his chart
of Greek fragments.26
The foregoing survey might suggest that the manuscript tradition only
presents readers with intractable difficulties. This too is not the case. There
are certainly straightforward situations, such as the large sections of Peri
Archon that have multiple sources attesting to the same, or very similar,
text. There are also cases that are not quite as straightforward, but also not
deeply consequential. For instance, a passage that is witnessed by Rufinus
alone and that does not raise a contentious doctrinal issue usually inspires
confidence that something close to Origen’s text is being represented, albeit
in a Latin translation. But the aforementioned manuscript tradition cer-
tainly presents readers with a number of complications. I highlight four.
First, the transmission strategies of late ancient scholars and scribes do
not always support the goals of an editor or reader trying to reconstruct
the original wording of Peri Archon. While some witnesses cite the origi-
nal Greek text, many are a step or two removed: they paraphrase, sum-
marize, or translate into Latin, thereby putting readers at an inescapable
interpretive distance from the wording of their source. Second, none of
the indirect witnesses provides a complete text of Peri Archon, nor does
gathering all the witnesses together allow us to confidently identify the
textual borders of the treatise. The longest witness, Rufinus’s translation,
is the closest we have to a complete version, but by his own admission,
he did not trace the boundaries of the original exactly. With the excep-
tion of the Philocalia, the other witnesses transmit the treatise in highly
piecemeal fashion—a few sentences here, a short paragraph there. Often
these fragments present versions of the text that differ from what we find
in Rufinus: they are shorter, longer, or simply do not correspond to any-
thing in his translation. Each scenario raises the question of who should
be followed: Rufinus or the fragmentary witness? And then there are all
the other cases where Rufinus stands alone, without any other witness to
25. For more on the fifteen canons against Origen from 553, see Price, Acts of
Constantinople 553, 2:270–2; 275–80.
26. Koetschau, cxxv–cxxvii (noting “vermutungsweise” and “vermutet” in his col-
umn titled, “Bemerkungen”). Consider as well the tentativeness with which he discusses
these conjectural fragments in the introduction of his edition (Koetschau, cxv–cxxv).
corroborate his translation. We are left to speculate about how he might

have expanded or contracted the passage, especially when he ventured into
contentious territory. There are almost certainly original sections of Peri
Archon that do not survive among our witnesses, and among these same
witnesses, erroneous passages attributed to the work.
Third, the kinds of changes made to the text of Peri Archon often involve
gentler alterations in wording designed to clarify or simplify Origen’s argu-
ments. But witnesses were also capable of tampering with the text in more
striking and consequential ways, especially when Origen was deemed by
his readers to be running afoul of later orthodoxies. Especially difficult are
those cases where a minor modification yielded a major distortion. Origen
might qualify a view as hypothetical or adversarial, but if this qualification
was suppressed, the witness subtly transformed a tentative or problematic
view into a definitive Origenian teaching. Of this we are sure: friends often
sanitized worrisome passages whereas foes often exacerbated them. The
result is that readers sometimes encounter radically different assertions
about the contents of the treatise. A final challenging feature of the indirect
manuscript tradition is its lack of transparency about how it relates to the
text of Peri Archon. While some witnesses claim to represent the wording
or content of the treatise, there are occasionally good reasons for think-
ing that this is not the case. Alternatively, some make no explicit claim to
represent the text of Peri Archon but there are good reasons for thinking
that they do. Rarely do late antique authors announce their transmission
strategies or flag where and how they introduce changes.
CLASSIFYING THE EDITIONS
The modern editors of Peri Archon have responded to the aforemen-

tioned challenges in two different ways. One group primarily prints Rufi-
nus’s translation, whereas a second group prints a mosaicked text of Peri
Archon, constructed from Rufinus’s translation as well as a range of other
witnesses. While the similarities between the editions in both groups are
often considerable, each pursues a fundamentally different project.
Group One
Three editions fall into the former group, beginning with the sixteenth-century
editio princeps by Jacques Merlin. He presents a text of Peri Archon based
exclusively upon Rufinus’s translation. While Merlin titles his work, Orige-
nis, De principiis seu Peri Archon, it is solely an edition of Rufinus’s trans-
lation. No other source for the text of Peri Archon is mentioned or printed.
The edition by Henri Crouzel and Manlio Simonetti also falls into
this first category.27 They title their work, Origène: Traité des Principes,
however the subtitle is more accurate: Introduction, Texte Critique de la
Version de Rufin, Traduction. They too offer the text of Rufinus’s transla-
tion, printed continuously without any interruptions, though they differ
from Merlin in their decision to print Photius’s Greek section headings and
the two relevant sections of the Philocalia directly above the corresponding
sections of Rufinus’s translation. All other putative witnesses to the text of
Peri Archon, if they are discussed at all, are mentioned in the accompany-
ing commentary volumes. This approach to the supplementary witnesses
often creates inconsistencies. For example, Eusebius of Caesarea preserves
the opening lines of Origen’s preface to Peri Archon.28 Crouzel and Sim-
onetti agree that Eusebius transmits the Greek text Rufinus translated,
but they do not print this text alongside his translation where we would
expect it, based upon how they handle the similarly authentic materials
from the Philocalia. Instead they only mention this fragment—and do not
cite it completely—in a separate commentary volume.29
John Behr’s edition rounds out this first category. He too presents a con-
tinuous and complete text of Rufinus’s Latin translation, along with the
two relevant sections from the Philocalia. Unlike Crouzel and Simonetti,
Behr locates Rufinus’s translation above, not beneath, these two excerpts, a
typographical arrangement that makes clear to the reader that this is funda-
mentally an edition of Rufinus’s translation. One of the strengths of Behr’s
approach is that he resolves the aforementioned inconsistency in Crou-
zel and Simonetti’s edition by printing all sources that parallel Rufinus’s
translation at the bottom of the page upon which Rufinus’s corresponding
material occurs, such as the fragment from Eusebius mentioned above.30
The editions, then, by Merlin, Crouzel and Simonetti, and Behr pres-
ent readers with a continuous or seamless text of De Principiis, Rufinus’s
Latin translation of Peri Archon, and if they choose to print additional
material alongside this text, it is only because it corroborates or closely
27. Manlio Simonetti’s Italian translation of Peri Archon does not fall into this
category. He reconstructs the text from a wide range of witnesses, sometimes prefer-
ring other sources over Rufinus’s translation (I Principi di Origene [Turin: Unione
Tipografico Editrice Torinese, 1968]).
28. Marcell. 1.4.26 (GCS 14 23.11–18).
29. “Ce début est conserve en grec—Rufin a traduit littéralement—par Eusèbe,
C. Marcellum I.4. Marcel d’Ancyre a cite l’expression οἱ πεπιστευκότες καὶ πεπεισμένοι
comme empruntée à Platon . . .” (SC 253:11n1).
30. Behr, 1:xcvii, 10.
resembles Rufinus. These editions respond to the challenges presented

above by steering clear of them: they focus on a single witness for which
there is an abundance of manuscript evidence. There is far less contro-
versy around these editions than those in the next category, since they
set an attainable goal of editing a cultural artefact for which we have an
abundance of manuscript evidence. Today there is wide agreement and
reasonable confidence about how Rufinus’s translation should read. Since
these editions also do not attempt to reconstruct a better version of Peri
Archon, they have the decided benefit of suspending scholarly judgment
around all the issues flagged above and, thus also, of excluding a riot of
textual witnesses that would clutter their pages. As the titles to these edi-
tions indicate (attributing the treatise to “Origen,” not “Rufinus”), their
editors consider his translation a very close approximation to the Greek
autograph. But such a view does not circumscribe the value of these edi-
tions to only those who share their optimism. Whether readers view
Rufinus with credulity (i.e., wherever he differs from other witnesses, his
report is to be trusted and not theirs), or skepticism (i.e., wherever he dif-
fers from other witnesses, their reports are to be trusted), or more likely
somewhere in between, these editions are of value to anyone interested
in the text of this late fourth-century translation. At the same time, these
editions are not without limitations. By focusing primarily on Rufinus,
or what closely resembled his translation, unsuspecting readers might not
know how profoundly contested his translation would become. But the
chief limitation of this editorial approach is that if readers wish to consult
the full range of witnesses to the text of Peri Archon beyond Rufinus’s
translation and discover how these yield alternative reconstructions of the
treatise, they will have to turn to the next group of editions. These adopt
a different approach.
Group Two
To this second group belong the editions by Delarue, Koetschau, Görge-
manns and Karpp, Rius-Camps, and Fernández. The key difference between
this group and the previous is that its editors print a heterogeneous text
of Peri Archon: each edition provides a text constituted not simply by
Rufinus, but also by a wider range of evidence. Jerome, Justinian, and an
assortment of shorter fragments from other authors, which are usually
excluded from the group one editions because they regularly provide evi-
dence for the text of Peri Archon that differs from Rufinus’s translation,
surface in these editions. What unites this second group of editors, then,
is their attempt to correct Rufinus’s version by providing readers with a
version that is closer to the Origenian autograph. As such, these editors

lean into, and not away from, the challenges created by the diverse pool
of evidence surveyed above. But it is important to underscore that, despite
presenting a mosaicked text of Peri Archon, these editors still provide
readers with the full translation by Rufinus, the main achievement of the
group one editions. No parts of his translation are suppressed, and in most
cases, it is printed continuously.
There are, however, important differences among the editors in this
second group. They disagree about what sources ought to be considered
relevant for reconstructing the text of Peri Archon, and thus differ on
what the reconstructed text might have looked like. They also differ in
the degree to which they correct Rufinus. Some make minimal interven-
tions (e.g., Fernández, whose text comes very close to the more recent
editions in group one), while others are more assertive (e.g., Koetschau,
Görgemanns and Karpp, and Rius-Camps). Among these editors, deci-
sions are also announced differently. Delarue is reticent in expressing his
judgments. He makes some remarks in his footnotes that are critical of
Rufinus’s translation, but more often than not he presents an array of
evidence and leaves it to readers to decide which, if any, source should be
followed.31 Görgemanns and Karpp and Rius-Camps similarly present an
array of evidence for the reader’s consideration, and it is only from their
facing translations where we learn how they have reconstructed the text of
Peri Archon. Koetschau and Fernández, by contrast, print a reconstructed
text that reflects their editorial preferences.
Yet the difference that immediately strikes even the casual reader of
these editions is how divergently they present their sources. With only a
few exceptions, Delarue presents Rufinus’s translation as a seamless whole,
which has the benefit of allowing us to read the text continuously from
beginning to end. This translation is printed in a double-column format and
most auxiliary evidence is similarly arranged: it is either printed in its own
column next to the corresponding section of Rufinus’s translation, or it is
embedded into the column of Rufinus’s text, so that his translation wraps
around this other, usually shorter, witness to which it corresponds. This is
how the opening lines of the treatise, preserved in Greek by Eusebius, are
31. E.g., Delarue informs the reader that he has moved two citations from Jerome’s
Ep. 124 to the end of book one, since these cannot be juxtaposed to any passages in
Rufinus’s translation as he had suppressed them: Duo haecce sequentia fragmenta ad
calcem libri primi rejecimus, quoniam interpretationi Rufini qui ea suppressit, adjungi
e regione non potuerunt (note marked with an asterisk [*] on p. 76).
presented.32 Materials not corresponding to text in Rufinus’s translation are

printed in appendices or are inserted where Delarue suspects they belong.
Some parallel materials are placed in the apparatus at the foot of the page.
Koetschau built directly upon Delarue’s edition by bringing a number
of additional sources into consideration.33 He presents this rich dossier of
evidence with a far more complex mise-en-page than either his predeces-
sors or successors, which taxes before it rewards the patient reader. Some
sources that merit consideration are placed in an apparatus beneath the rel-
evant section of Rufinus’s translation. Others, like the Philocalia, are placed
immediately above Rufinus’s translation. But the complexity that Koetschau
introduced, inconveniencing and sometimes confusing many of his later read-
ers, was his interruption of the sequence of Rufinus’s translation, a direct
consequence of not putting auxiliary sources in a distinct parallel column or
relegating them to an apparatus. For example, immediately under Rufinus’s
title for the preface to book one of Peri Archon Koetschau does not print,
as we might expect, Rufinus’s opening lines of the treatise, but rather inserts
the aforementioned Greek fragment from Eusebius. Immediately beneath
this fragment he resumes with Rufinus’s text, printing his version within
double brackets ([[ and ]]). Here, as elsewhere, Koetschau introduces into
the body of Rufinus’s translation materials that parallel or supplement his
version. Thus as readers move from the top to the bottom of Koetschau’s
page they often find Rufinus’s translation interrupted by other sources.
Now it is easy to exaggerate the danger of Koetschau’s editorial interven-
tion, as if he suppressed or re-arranged materials from Rufinus’s translation,
which was not the case. The full translation is present and in proper order.
It is also easy to present Koetschau as an outlier among the modern editors
of Peri Archon in adopting such an arrangement of evidence, though he
was not alone in this decision: both Delarue and Fernández occasionally
break up the flow of Rufinus’s translation by introducing auxiliary mate-
rials that they believe he omitted from his translation. Where Koetschau
distinguishes himself is by interrupting the progression of Rufinus’s trans-
lation so frequently.
32. Delarue, 47.

33. Koetschau’s reconstruction of Peri Archon was also indebted to an earlier Ger-
man translation of the work by Karl Fr. Schnitzer, Origenes über die Grundlehren der
Glaubenswissenschaft: Wiederherstellungsversuch (Stuttgart: Imle and Krauß, 1835).
Koetschau credits the author with collecting a range of witnesses, integrating them
“smartly and astutely” into Rufinus’s translation, and presenting readers with a recon-
structed version of Peri Archon in good German. “The book has been an invaluable
help to me in the establishment of the text” (Koetschau, clvi).
Görgemanns and Karpp responded to this critique of Koetschau’s mise-

en-page by returning to the dominant editorial practice of printing Rufinus’s
text as an unbroken whole.34 The Philocalia is also printed continuously
above Rufinus’s corresponding translation. All other Greek and Latin
witnesses which might contribute to the reconstruction of the original
are printed not within or alongside Rufinus’s translation as Delarue and
Koetschau had done, but separately in the first apparatus immediately
under the relevant section of Rufinus’s text. Additional witnesses flagged
by Koetschau as relevant are relegated to separate appendices if Görge-
manns and Karpp think they don’t aid the reconstruction. To return to
our running example of Eusebius’s Greek passage: an asterisk in Rufinus’s
translation sends the reader to the apparatus at the foot of the page where
his fragment is located.35 Yet Koetschau’s attempted reconstruction of the
original text of Peri Archon is still pursued by Görgemanns and Karpp:
they use their German translation, which faces the Greek and Latin texts,
as the vehicle for this project. Here they provide a seamless text that reflects
their own reconstruction of the treatise. Like Koetschau, they don’t follow
any one source in the indirect tradition, but rather choose from what they
regard as the best available source at any given point, indicating a shift in
sources with a vertical bar ( | ) and identifying their sources with an autho-
rial abbreviation in the inner margin of the translation (H=Hieronymus;
J=Justinian; MC=Maximus the Confessor, and so on).36
Rius-Camps’s little-known edition closely follows the approach of
Görgemanns and Karpp’s edition. He too prints Rufinus’s translation
seamlessly and locates the two sections of the Philocalia immediately
above the corresponding sections of this translation. The major difference
is that Greek and Latin witnesses that contribute to his reconstruction of
the original are printed not in an apparatus beneath Rufinus’s transla-
tion, but in the footnotes to his Catalonian translation which occupies
the facing pages of the edition. Rius-Camps regards Eusebius’s fragment
34. Koetschau’s mise-en-page was criticized pointedly by E. Preuschen, who wanted

the various witnesses distinguished more clearly from one another (“Besprechung
von: Origenes’s Werke. 5. Band. De principiis (περὶ ἀρχῶν). Hrsg. Von P. Koetschau,”
Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift 36 [1916]: 1204–5). The French translators of
Rufinus’s version claim that Koetschau’s composite text, despite accompanying notes,
“deceives the uninformed reader” (Harl, Dorival, and Le Boulluec, Origène, Traité des
Principes, 15). A similar view is expressed by Behr who thinks Koetschau’s presenta-
tion of other sources alongside Rufinus leads the reader to conclude that these belong
to “the text of Rufinus, as if Origen himself could have written them” (Behr, 1:xxvii).
35. Görgemanns and Karpp, 82.
36. Görgemanns and Karpp, 49.
as authentic, places the translated text within | . . . | and with call-out 2

sends the reader to the bottom of the page where the Greek text is found.
As with Görgemanns and Karpp, Rius-Camps uses his translation as the
medium for reconstructing the text of Peri Archon, drawing upon a wide
range of sources and indicating through a variety of textual sigla when he
shifts from one source to another.37
Fernández’s edition prints Rufinus’s text more or less continuously,
though there are a few places where he inserts fragments deemed to be
authentic into the body of the translation. Fernández clearly demarcates
these insertions from the surrounding Rufinian text by printing them in
bold and marking them off with a vertical bar: |.38 For passages that par-
allel Rufinus’s translation, Fernández adopts two strategies: in the case
of the two lengthy sections from the Philocalia, he prints these continu-
ously above Rufinus’s corresponding material; shorter fragments, such as
Eusebius’s opening Greek lines of Peri Archon, appear in bold alongside
Rufinus’s translation in an adjacent column. The fragments’ apparatus at
the foot of the page serves to justify why a fragment is printed alongside
Rufinus or why—departing from previous editors—it is not.39
This second group of editions presents readers, then, with a composite
document, their best attempt at reconstructing the original wording and
shape of Peri Archon on the basis of a wide range of sources from the
indirect manuscript tradition. As with the editions in the first group, so too
here: the usefulness of this second group is not limited to readers who agree
with editorial assessments of Rufinus’s trustworthiness, on what counts
as a relevant text for reconstructing Peri Archon, or even their decisions
about what the original text of the treatise might have looked like. No
evidence has been suppressed or modified in such a way that the reader
could not judge otherwise and privilege a different source. The benefit of
this second group of editions is considerable. Readers still have access to
Rufinus’s translation, the main contribution of the group one editions—
indeed, as we will see below, it is actually Koetschau who produced the
editio maior of Rufinus’s translation. These editions also provide a glimpse
into the extraordinary range of claims, often competing, about the text of
Peri Archon for several centuries after it was first produced. Thus, they
37. Rius-Camps, 1:50 and 73–74, for a description of the sigla.

38. For example, Princ. 1.2.13 (Fernández, 204, 206); Princ. 4.3.13 (Fernández,
918); Princ. 4.4.1 (Fernández, 930).
39. For an example of the latter, see his discussion of Koetschau’s ninth Greek frag-
ment, drawn from Justinian’s letter, at Princ. 1.3.5, which Fernández thinks ought
not to be part of the reconstructed text of Princ. (Fernández, 224).
are indispensable for studying the reception history of this treatise in late
antiquity. And, of course, since there is evidence that demonstrates that
Rufinus’s translation cannot be equated with Origen’s autograph, these edi-
tions illustrate what a text closer to the autograph might have looked like.
In some quarters, not simply these editions, but the larger project they
represent, has been called into question. Harl, Dorival, and Le Boulluec,
for instance, challenge the “very principle” of Koetschau’s edition: the
enterprise of reconstructing Origen’s autograph is “doomed to fail.”40 Now
establishing the text of a version for which there is plentiful evidence is
certainly less conjectural than recreating a lost version out of piecemeal,
scattered, and sometimes conflicting evidence. But I would not charac-
terize such a project as ill-fated, even if there might be as many recon-
structed versions of Peri Archon as there are scholars who have attempted
to reimagine the autograph. This project is marked, rather, by plurality,
and however unsatisfactory that might be, the alternative—to encourage
Origen’s readers simply to attend to Rufinus’s translation—is far less sat-
isfactory. Indeed, not to correct this translation with the evidence at hand
is to mislead this reader.
A brief illustration: At 1.2.13 Origen reflects at length upon the biblical
passage where Wisdom is described as the “image of his [i.e., God’s] good-
ness” (Wis 7.26). This passage prompts him to reflect on the distinction
between the original (God) and the image (the Son). In Rufinus’s transla-
tion, Origen is made to sound as follows:
For the Father is, without doubt, the primal goodness, from which the Son
is born, who, being in every respect the image of the Father, may doubtless
be properly called the “image of his goodness” (Wis 7.26). For there is
no other second goodness existing in the Son, besides that which is in the
Father.41
Justinian, however, provides a lengthier version of this passage. He reports

the material italicized above in the opening sentence below, but then con-
tinues with text Rufinus has almost certainly suppressed because Origen
claims that the Son is not goodness itself:
. . . and so I consider that even the Savior is properly called an “image
of God’s goodness” (Wis 7.26), but not goodness itself. And perhaps also
that the Son is properly called good, but he is not purely and simply good.
And just as he is “the image of the invisible God” (cf. Col 1.15) and in
this regard is God, but not [the God] of whom Christ himself says, “that
40. Harl, Dorival, and Le Boulluec, Origène, Traité des Principes, 15.
41. Princ. 1.12.13 (Koetschau, 46.13–47.3, 47.9–10; Behr, 1:65).
they may know you, the only true God” (John 17.3), in this way he is the
“image of his goodness,” but is not good in exactly the same way as the
Father is.42
Each of the editors in group two regards Justinian’s fragment as genu-

ine and Rufinus’s corresponding translation as corrupt.43 The rationale for
siding with Justinian here is not some general editorial principle that the
report of an enemy should be trusted over that of a sympathizer, but rather
the presence of relevant evidence. There are rhetorical clues that this is not
a polemical report: the terms ἡγέομαι (“I consider”) and τάχα (“perhaps”)
are typically Origenian hedges. Even more striking is that Origen himself
elsewhere speaks very similarly of the relationship between the Son and
Father. Koetschau identifies a key Greek passage in his apparatus that jus-
tifies his decision to accept Justinian’s fragment as authentic: at Comm.
Matt. 15.10 Origen explicitly says that the predicate “good” is properly
attributed to only God the Father and in this context cites the same two
biblical passages we find in Justinian’s report above: Wis 7.26 and Col 1.15.
This short illustration demonstrates the importance of the larger project
that these editions in the second group pursue. To refuse on principle any
attempt to reconstruct a more original version of Peri Archon is problem-
atic, since the most plausible rendering of a passage, the rendering that
comes closest to Origen, is sometimes not to be found in Rufinus’s trans-
lation, but in some other source. Of course, this is not to suggest that all
editorial judgments will be straightforward or that everyone will agree on
what the reconstructed text of Peri Archon ought to look like. But at a
number of junctures I believe we can establish with reasonable certainty—
not wavering conjectural hope—what a corrected version of the treatise
looks like. The reconstruction of the original wording and shape of Peri
Archon is not simply important; it is often possible.
This short illustration also indicates how I believe the reconstruction of
Peri Archon ought to proceed. This treatise was transmitted by some of
Origen’s fiercest supporters and detractors, who then, as today, often elicit
strong emotions, conflicting sympathies, and wildly different assessments
of their trustworthiness. Yet these views ought not to serve as the prem-
ise of editorial work, but rather its conclusion. The decisions required to
42. Princ. 1.12.13 (Koetschau, 47.3–9; trans. mine).

43. See Delarue, 59 note d; Koetschau, 46–47; Görgemanns and Karpp, 154–55;
Rius-Camps, 1:118; Fernández, 204, 206, and 207n97. Even Crouzel, in his lengthy
note, concedes that Justinian’s report is “perhaps authentic” and that it might have been
“shortened by Rufinus in order to be understood by his Latin readers” (SC 253:54).
reconstruct the text of Peri Archon are not adjudicated by the trust, or lack
thereof, that we might have in these witnesses, but rather by a posture of
discrimination and a commitment to utilizing Origen himself as a criterion
for reconstruction. This is often achievable since he frequently revisited the
themes addressed in Peri Archon in his other writings. Only in the light of
such a reconstructed text of Peri Archon are we in a position to draw con-
clusions about how reliably this cast of characters transmitted his treatise.
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EDITIONS
What, then, are the strengths and weaknesses of these individual editions?
I survey them in chronological order and conclude with observations about
their readership.
In 1512, Jacques Merlin, doctor of theology in the College of Navarre
(University of Paris), published the editio princeps of Rufinus’s Latin trans-
lation of Peri Archon.44 The text appears in volume four of his collection of
Origen’s writings where it is printed in a double-column format. Koetschau
was able to identify Parisinus Latinus 17348 (fourteenth century) as the
manuscript that Merlin used as the basis for his text. This manuscript
was judged by Koetschau to be an inferior witness to the text because of
its numerous errors and sometimes lengthy omissions. Koetschau further
discovered that while Merlin had followed this manuscript closely, he also
departed from its readings in a number of places in an attempt to fill its
numerous gaps and correct its mistakes.45 Merlin’s edition was reissued
several times and was reprinted twice by later editors with minor varia-
tions.46 It contains interesting paratextual remarks in its margins, such as
caute lege (“read cautiously”), the more ominous caue (“beware”), and
nota (“observe”).
44. On Merlin, see James K. Farge, Biographical Register of Paris Doctors of The-
ology (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), 325–31 (no. 343).
On his edition of Origen’s writings, see Max Schär, Das Nachleben des Origenes im
Zeitalter des Humanismus (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1979), 193.
45. Koetschau, xl; clii–cliii.
46. Merlin’s text was reprinted with minor variations by Erasmus and Beatus Rhena-
nus (first published in Basel in 1536); their text, in turn, served as the basis for the
edition by Gilbert Genebrard (Paris, 1574) (Koetschau, cliii–cliv). Merlin’s text also
appears to have been reprinted by Constantius Hyerothaeus (Costanzo Gerozio) in
Sublimis Origenis opus Periarchon seu de Principiis (Venice: Lazzaro Soardi, 1514).
On the disputed publication dates of this edition, see Henri Crouzel (Bibliographie
critique d’Origène, Instrumenta Patristica 8 [The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971], 82) and Max
Schär (Nachleben, 161–168, esp. n490 and n494).
In 1733, Charles Delarue, a French Benedictine monk of the Congrega-

tion of St. Maur, produced the second edition of Peri Archon.47 It marked
a major leap forward over Merlin’s edition in at least three ways. First,
Delarue drew the reader’s attention to a range of Greek and Latin witnesses
to the text of Peri Archon beyond Rufinus’s Latin translation, including
the three other major sources (the Philocalia, Jerome, and Justinian) as
well as a number of shorter fragments. His decision, which would be fol-
lowed by every subsequent editor in varying degrees, was to print these
auxiliary witnesses alongside Rufinus’s translation. Second, Delarue estab-
lished Rufinus’s text upon a wider selection of manuscripts, though these
still belonged to the same inferior class as Merlin’s manuscript.48 Third,
Delarue offered his readers a substantial apparatus which included vari-
ant readings, parallels to other ancient texts, and explanations of certain
passages. He also identified Origen’s biblical citations in the external and
internal margins of the edition. A number of his observations and notations
would resurface in Koetschau’s edition. As with Merlin, we find numer-
ous paratextual remarks, especially the warning, caute lege.49 A number
of subsequent editions of Peri Archon reprinted Delarue’s text with only
minor changes, including: E. R. Redepenning (Leipzig, 1836); C. H. E.
Lommatzsch, Origenes Opera Omnia, vol. 21 (Berlin, 1847); and J. P.
Migne’s Patrologia, Series Graeca, vol. 11 (Paris, 1857).
Paul Koetschau published his edition in Die griechischen christlichen
Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte in 1913, the result of over a
decade of research. His achievement endures. While there have been new
manuscript discoveries over the past century, and a few legitimate criti-
cisms directed against his edition, subsequent editors of Peri Archon still
rightly regard his work as the editio maior and thus, the starting point
for serious research into the text of this treatise, even if they disagree with
how he went about some of his work.50 There are good reasons for this.
47. This Charles Delarue (sometimes de la Rue) is not to be confused with another
Charles Delarue, his older contemporary, a Parisian Jesuit. Our Delarue published the
first two volumes of Origen’s Opera Omnia in 1733. After his death in 1739, the proj-
ect was completed by his nephew, Charles Vincent Delarue, who was also a Maurist.
48. Koetschau, xlvi and clv.
49. On the cultural context of the principle of caute lege as a tool for censorship
in the early modern inquisitions, see Judging Faith, Punishing Sin: Inquisitions and
Consistories in the Early Modern World, ed. Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-
LeBeau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 169–70, 177.
50. Görgemanns and Karpp identify it as the editio minor (Görgemanns and
Karpp, ix [3rd ed.]). Harl, Dorival and Le Boulluec refer to it as “la grande edi-
tion critique” (Origène: Traité des Principes, 15). Crouzel and Simonetti write: this
“edition is fundamental for its precision and extent to which the indirect tradition
To begin with—and perhaps ironically, given his low regard for Rufinus’s
translation—Koetschau’s edition of Rufinus became, and still remains,
the benchmark. He established the text on the basis of a much wider
examination of the manuscript evidence, and in the process discovered a
group of manuscripts that had not been utilized by previous editors. This
group (α) includes a section of the treatise (1.4.3–5) not transmitted by
the manuscripts that Merlin and Delarue had utilized for their editions
of Rufinus’s translation (group γ). Koetschau’s second achievement was
to coordinate the remaining witnesses to their corresponding sections in
Rufinus’s translation. This was perhaps not as great an accomplishment
as he suggested, since while consulting Delarue I discovered that he had
already made many of these connections.51 Koetschau’s third achievement
was his “Testimonien” apparatus, which contains a wealth of information:
biblical references, references to other early Christian literature, including
parallel passages in Origen, references to important scholarly discussions,
and, of course, information about the indirect witnesses that he regarded
as relevant to reconstructing the text of Peri Archon. Finally, the lengthy
introduction to the edition deserves special mention: Koetschau provides
a clear overview of the manuscripts that transmit the text of Peri Archon,
his principles for editing, the contents and structure of the treatise, and
where his edition stands in the line of modern editions of Peri Archon.
In the intervening years, repeated inquiry into the manuscript tradition
of Rufinus’s translation has largely confirmed Koetschau’s stemma. While
later editors have disagreed, here and there, with what variants to print,
these do not amount to very serious discrepancies.52 Koetschau’s textual
apparatus remains the most substantial—readers relying on more recent
is utilized” (SC 252:54). Fernández similarly remarks: “The fundamental edition by

Paul Koetschau . . .” (Fernández, 53). Even Preuschen’s critical review concludes that
the edition made “without doubt an advance” (“Besprechung,” 1206). In the English-
speaking world, Koetschau is often summarily dismissed for some of his dubious con-
jectures. Representative of this perspective is Ronnie J. Rombs, “A Note on the Status
of Origen’s De Principiis in English,” VC 61 (2007): 21–29. The many advances in
Koetschau’s edition, however, as well as tentative nature of his conjectures, tend to
be overlooked by his critics.
51. Koetschau, clvii.
52. For criticisms of his stemma, see Preuschen (“Besprechung,” 1199–1202) and
Manlio Simonetti, “Sulla tradizione manoscritta delle opera originali di Rufino,” Sacris
Erudiri 9 (1957): 5–43, as well as the response by Görgemanns and Karpp, 38–39.
By and large, Koetschau’s classification of the manuscripts for Rufinus’s translation
has been accepted. See Manlio Simonetti, Tyrannii Rufini Opera, CCL 20 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1961), and Éric Junod, Pamphile et Eusèbe de Césarée: Apologie pour Ori-
gène, SC 464–65 (Paris: Cerf, 2002), 1:19 and 2:147–88.
editions are still advised to consult the richer list of variant readings here.
The concerns with how Koetschau presented his evidence (already noted
above) were, I believe, well-placed. Both Delarue before him and Görge-
manns and Karpp, Rius-Camps, and Fernández after him found more
transparent ways of organizing the witnesses. The most serious charge,
however, against Koetschau concerned his judgments about which frag-
ments are relevant for the reconstruction of Peri Archon. Most now believe
that he wrongly incorporated fragments that appear to have no relationship
with the wording and content of the treatise: notably, his frgs. 15, 17a,
and 23a.53 A related critique is that fragments are inserted into Rufinus’s
translation that appear to belong to Peri Archon, though it is hardly clear
where they should be inserted.54 These criticisms stand, but I believe they
must also be tempered by the recognition that Koetschau engaged in a
project that was inherently riskier than the editorial projects focused on
Rufinus’s translation. Koetschau set himself a task that required signifi-
cant judgment, and while he faltered here and there, he has not merited
sweeping dismissal. Also often overlooked is that Koetschau signaled, over
and again, where his decisions involved judgments that were tentative and
with which a reasonable reader could object.55 In this regard, Butterworth’s
English translation did him no favors. Butterworth often failed to convey
Koetschau’s tentativeness. For example, Greek frg. 15 (at 1.8.1) receives
an asterisk (*) in Koetschau’s edition, which signifies a fragment “inserted
conjecturally”—this language is missing from Butterworth’s translation.56
Also missing are the cautionary notes Koetschau placed in his apparatus
where frg. 15 was inserted: “in my opinion” and “an attempt at a partial
reconstruction,” as well as his cautionary notes about this fragment in the
introduction to his edition.57
53. See K. Müller, “Kritische Beiträge,” Sitzungsberichte der deutschen Akademie

der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1919): 616–31, and Bardy, Recherches. Subsequent
research by A. Guillaumont identified sixth-century Origenism, not Origen himself,
with the views anathematized at Constantinople (553), which Koetschau in frg. 23a
mistakenly attributed to Origen and inserted at Princ. 2.8.3 (Les “Kephalaia Gnostica”
d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’origénisme chez les Grecs et chez les Syriens
[Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 1962]).
54. Preuschen, “Besprechung,” 1205; Crouzel and Simonetti, SC 252:55.
55. See note 26.
56. On the asterisk, Koetschau, cxxv.
57. Koetschau, 95. In the introduction he clearly states, “My expansion is—I
expressly underscore it also here—only an attempt to offer, by piecing together vari-
ous materials, an idea of that which Origen might have written here” (Koetschau,
cxvi). Also misleading was Butterworth’s heading “GREEK” before Greek fragments,
Herwig Görgemanns and Heinrich Karpp published their diglot edi-

tion in 1976, with Görgemanns assuming responsibility for the text of
Peri Archon. They position their work as the editio minor to Koetschau’s
editio maior, even printing his pagination in the external margins of their
edition. They introduce a handful of changes vis-à-vis Koetschau. They
condense his critical apparatus, but add readings from a new witness to
Rufinus’s translation not known to Koetschau: Guelferbytanus 4141 (tenth
century), which belongs to the better group (α) of manuscripts that trans-
mit this translation.58 In several places, these editors also adopt different
readings from Koetschau which are discussed in their “Kritischer Anhang.”
The most obvious change from Koetschau has already been noted above:
a seamless presentation of Rufinus’s translation with all other evidence
that might contribute to the reconstruction of the text located in the first
apparatus or appendices. This presentation is far superior to Koetschau’s
and for this reason many readers will find their edition a useful entrée
to his work. A facing German translation, with annotations, presents a
reconstructed version.
Henri Crouzel and Manlio Simonetti published their five-volume diglot
edition in Sources Chrétiennes (1978–1984). Their first two volumes print
the text of the treatise with a facing French translation; the next two volumes
provide commentary; the final volume mostly contains indices. Simonetti
took responsibility for the text and apparatus, while Crouzel was respon-
sible for where auxiliary witnesses were located. Crouzel also produced
the introduction, commentary, and French translation. This edition prints
Koetschau’s text for Rufinus’s translation with only minor modifications
and considerably shrinks his critical apparatus. The two extended sections
from the Philocalia are printed immediately above Rufinus’s translation.
All other fragments are noted and discussed in the commentary volumes
(though as indicated above, they are not always printed completely). The
chief benefit of this edition lies in its translation and commentary. Particu-
larly noteworthy about the translation is its alternative organization of the
contents of the treatise, which has become an increasingly important issue
in the last few decades of research on Peri Archon.59 Koetschau standard-
ized how scholars refer to a particular text within the treatise. He divided
which could lure the unsuspecting reader into thinking that these fragments relayed
a more accurate text than the Latin translations.
58. Görgemanns and Karpp, 36–37.
59. The insight into the tripartite structure goes back to Basilius Steidle, “Neue
Untersuchungen zu Origenes’s Περὶ ἀρχῶν,” ZNW 40 (1941): 236–43. For recent
discussions, including bibliographies, see Fernández, 64–77 and Behr, 1:xxviii–lvi.
the work into four books, and further subdivided these into chapters (with
descriptive headings), and these, in turn, into numbered paragraphs (e.g.,
Princ. 1.1.2 = book 1, chapter 1, paragraph 2). While every subsequent
edition maintains his numbering system, each also explores an alternative
organization that seeks to better capture the flow of Origen’s argument.
For example, while the treatise has been transmitted in four books in the
manuscript tradition—a division that likely goes back to Origen’s auto-
graph—scholars have long recognized that such a division does not carve
at the joints, and that the treatise is, in fact, conceptually organized into
two main cycles and a short summary (cycle 1: 1.1–2.3; cycle 2: 2.4–4.3;
recapitulation: 4.4). Crouzel and Simonetti provide multiple levels of
headings in their translation, beginning with the division of the work into
these cycles, and followed by numerous subheadings that often organize
the existing chapters, as inherited from Koetschau, differently.60 Many of
these editorial insertions are not found in the manuscript tradition.
Josep Rius-Camps published his two-volume edition in 1998 with a fac-
ing Catalonian translation. As noted above, in presentation and aim it is
very similar to the edition by Görgemanns and Karpp and thus also stands
in a close relation to Koetschau’s edition. Koetschau’s text for Rufinus is
printed continuously, though Rius-Camps helpfully records alternative tex-
tual decisions subsequently made by Görgemanns and Karpp and Crouzel
and Simonetti in his textual apparatus, and occasionally adopts different
readings from preceding editors. The Philocalia is printed above the cor-
responding sections of Rufinus’s translation and fragments relevant for
the reconstruction of the treatise are located beneath his annotated Cata-
lonian translation. The value of this edition lies mainly in its translation:
here Rius-Camps presents us with a reconstruction of the treatise, as well
as an alternative arrangement of its contents that sometimes agrees with
Crouzel and Simonetti’s structure (e.g., the aforementioned cycles consti-
tute the macro-organizational schema), and sometimes differs (e.g., his
own hypothesis that the final version of the treatise was the result of four
successive redactional stages, which do not correspond neatly to either
the four-book or two-cycle arrangement).61 Readers of the translation will
immediately notice the pronounced use of editorial summaries that help
mark the flow of Origen’s argument.
60. For example, Koetschau distinguishes 1.3 (“The Holy Spirit”) from 1.4 (“Loss,
or falling away”). Compare with Simonetti and Crouzel who divide this material as
follows: 1.3.1–1.3.4 (“On the Holy Spirit”), followed by 1.3.5–1.4.2 (“On the par-
ticular action of each Person”).
61. Rius-Camps, 1:24–45, for a summary of his hypothesis.
Samuel Fernández published his diglot edition in 2015 with an annotated

facing Spanish translation. His edition rests upon an even wider exami-
nation of the manuscript tradition. The chief contribution is his collation
of Parisinus Latinus 10593 (late sixth or early seventh century), which
contains Rufinus’s translation of Peri Archon 2.6 under the title, Sermo
de incarnatione Domini. It is an important witness, independent of the
manuscripts in groups α and γ that Koetschau used to establish the text
of Rufinus.62 As with his predecessors, Fernández prints Koeschau’s text,
though with modifications here and there. The other major advance over
previous editions of Peri Archon is Fernández’s rich documentation of the
titles and chapter divisions of Rufinus’s Latin translation from the manu-
script tradition. These, in turn, inform how he organizes the treatise.63 In
his “Índice General” the reader finds the work divided into four books
(and not two cycles). But each of these, in turn, is subdivided according
to headings provided in the manuscript tradition.64 These frequently differ
from those provided in Koetschau’s edition.65 Also of value—here follow-
ing the lead of Rius-Camps and earlier French translations—is Fernández’s
provision of detailed editorial summaries that guide the reader through
Origen’s argument.
John Behr published his two-volume edition and English translation in
2017. It is primarily an edition of Rufinus’s Latin translation, drawing, as
his predecessors do, upon Koetschau’s text. Fragments that closely paral-
lel Rufinus’s translation are placed between it and the critical apparatus.
All other fragments are printed in “Appendix II: Koetschau’s Fragments.”
Appendix I conveniently collects the chapter headings for Rufinus’s trans-
lation that Fernández identified. The edition is also prefaced by a substan-
tial study on the structure and themes of Peri Archon. The main benefit of
Behr’s work lies in its fresh English translation—the previous translation
by Butterworth is now over eighty years old and, as I noted above, contrib-
uted to some significant misunderstandings about the hypothetical nature
of Koetschau’s reconstruction. A central feature of Behr’s translation, as
with a number of the preceding editions, is his alternative division of the
treatise. He provides three levels of headings: first, the arrangement of the
62. Fernández, 56.

63. Fernández, 64–77. This information was provided in a very incomplete way in
preceding editions of Koetschau, cxxxix–clii, and Görgemanns and Karpp, 851–53.
64. Fernández, 1039–48.
65. For example, Fernández lumps 1.5–8 under a single heading (“On Rational
Natures”), whereas Koetschau creates four headings for this material: 1.5 (“Rational
Natures”); 1.6 (“The End or Consummation”); 1.7 (“Things Corporeal and Incor-
poreal”); 1.8 (“The Angels”).
treatise into three parts that roughly correspond to the cycles of previous
editions;66 second, a division between “Apostolic Preaching” and “The
Church’s Preaching” (applied to the first and second parts of the treatise);
and third, chapter divisions drawn from the information unearthed by
Fernández in the manuscript tradition, though Behr occasionally departs
from Fernández in how he labels these chapter titles and their number.67
The notable difference between Behr’s division of the treatise, and his
immediate predecessors, is that he does not provide auxiliary summaries
within each chapter that guide the reader through the twists and turns of
Origen’s argument.
With all these editions at our disposal, where ought readers to turn? Today
there is little reason to utilize the editions by Merlin and Delarue, unless
one has interests in the editorial and printing practices of the sixteenth and
eighteenth centuries respectively, or how these editions were utilized by
later editors. The next major edition, Koetschau’s, establishes a point of
reference, though it will seldom be the only work consulted. Below I pro-
vide some suggestions for navigating the modern editions of Peri Archon,
based on readers’ differing needs:
• For Rufinus’s Latin text: Koetschau remains fundamental and
offers the richest apparatus of variant readings; thereafter, consult
Görgemanns and Karpp and Fernández who have re-examined the
manuscript tradition, taken manuscripts into consideration not
known to Koetschau, and captured alternative readings.
• For reconstructions of the treatise: Koetschau (source text);
Simonetti (Italian translation); Görgemanns and Karpp (German
translation); Rius-Camps (Catalonian translation); Fernández
(source text).
• For running commentary on the treatise: Koetschau (first
apparatus); all subsequent editions provide notes with their
translations.
66. Behr subdivides as follows: “Part One: Theology” (1.1–2.3); “Part Two: Econ-
omy” (2.4–3.6); “Part Three: The Inspired Scriptures” (4.1–4.3); followed by “Reca-
pitulation” (4.4). In effect, he divides the second cycle of previous editions into two
parts, following Brian Daley’s argument that 4.1–3 needs to be seen as a distinct sec-
tion (“Origen’s De Principiis: A Guide to the Principles of Christian Scriptural Inter-
pretation,” in John Petruccione ed., Nova et Vetera: Patristic Studies in Honor of
Patrick Halton [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998], 3–21).
67. For example, Behr subdivides book one as follows: “God” (1.1); “Christ”
(1.2); “The Holy Spirit” (1.3–4); “Rational Beings” (1.5–6); “Celestial Beings” (1.7);
• For varying arrangements of its contents: Crouzel and Simonetti,

Rius-Camps, Fernández, and Behr all differ from one another
in important ways, as well as from Koetschau’s widely-followed
structure.
• For a description of the manuscripts that transmit the main sources
of Peri Archon and their relationships to one another: Koetschau,
with updated information in Görgemanns and Karpp and
Fernández.
• For finding aids, a range of indices are dispersed throughout the
editions:
1. Biblical texts: Koetschau, Görgemanns and Karpp, Crouzel
and Simonetti, Fernández, and Behr
2. Proper nouns (names, places, book titles): Koetschau, Crouzel
and Simonetti
3. Non-biblical authors: Görgemanns and Karpp, Crouzel and
Simonetti
4. Greek and Latin terms: Koetschau, Crouzel and Simonetti
5. Origenian passages: Fernández, Behr
6. Passages in other ancient texts: Fernández, Behr
7. Themes: Crouzel and Simonetti
Unless important new manuscript evidence comes to light, none more
prized than the discovery of a Greek copy of Origen’s treatise, we could
be forgiven for concluding that a moratorium should be imposed on the
editing of Peri Archon. Yet should there be future stirrings for a new
edition, what might we hope for in light of this treatise’s editorial past?
Ideally, I think, a new edition would consolidate as much as possible
the achievements of past editors which are currently dispersed across an
expansive (and expensive) collection of books. Where key differences per-
sist, readers would be able to compare and contrast these in one place,
rather than scouring numerous tomes. It is no longer possible to consult
one edition when doing research on the treatise, and so the next edition
would preferably not exacerbate what is, already, a significant obstacle.
Such a compendious edition would also have to address the recurring chal-
“Angels” (1.8). Compare with Fernández’s subdivision of this book: “On the Father”
(1.1); “On the Son” (1.2); “On the Holy Spirit” (1.3); “On Rational Natures” (1.5–8).
lenge I highlighted above: how to create a useable mise-en-page out of an

often-bewildering number of witnesses. Currently, readers are required to
navigate complex apparatuses (themselves not uniform from edition to
edition), flip back and forth between appendices, and not in a few cases,
track down passages in other works that are relevant to the text at hand.
Our current page layouts are often overloaded, and only become more so
if we elevate, as I have argued above, the role of parallel passages in Ori-
gen’s other writings to aid in the reconstruction and interpretation of Peri
Archon. This new edition would require a thoughtful design that achieves
a user-friendly reading environment while providing access to the many
sources relevant to the study of this treatise.
But there is more at stake than offering readers added convenience. This
new edition would mark the next phase in the evolution of the group two
editions. These have the distinct advantage of inviting their readers to
approach Peri Archon not simply through Rufinus’s translation (the main
contribution of the group one editions), but also of allowing these same
readers to see how a whole range of witnesses has been gathered to correct
his translation. By facilitating both approaches to the treatise, this edition
would block an important fiction that the group one editions foster. Wide
swathes of the Origenian scholarship still dismiss the validity of those edi-
tions that pursue a reconstruction, or simply do not consult them because
many are not readily at hand. But equating Rufinus’s De Principiis with
Origen’s Peri Archon creates a real problem, as I briefly illustrated above,
especially when scholars happily attribute views to Origen on the Trinity
or rational creatures based upon a translator who admitted to transform-
ing passages on those very themes. The advantage of accessing Rufinus’s
translation in such a group two edition is that we will be encouraged to
address, rather than ignore, the interpretive challenges presented by the
manuscript tradition. At the same time, this compendious edition would
not reify the decisions of any particular group two editor, but rather allow
readers to compare and contrast multiple reconstructions of Peri Archon
over the last century. It would thus invite a conversation about these pro-
posals, and hypotheses about future proposals. Ongoing collaboration
might be the most beneficial feature of this new edition. Scholars could
participate in various aspects of the editorial project, such as identifying
new sources, discussing alternative assessments of competing witnesses,
or finding new parallels, such as in the newly-discovered Homilies on the
Psalms. Such an edition, should it ever emerge, might very well be born
from the digital paradigm of scholarly editing.
Peter W. Martens is Professor of Early Christianity at

Saint Louis University

The Modern Editions of Peri Archon

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Modern Editions of Peri Archon

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Modern Editions of Peri Archon

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

For additional information about this article

Merlin, Jacques. Operum Origenis Adamantii, Tomus 4. Paris: Jean Petit

and discriminate among conflicting scriptural interpretations that were

opponents actively suppressed the work, ensuring its patchwork survival

THE MAIN WITNESSES AND THEIR COMPLICATIONS

5. Rufinus, Princ. praef.3 (Koetschau, 5.13–15; Butterworth, Origen, lxiii).

9. Jerome, Ep. 85.3 (Hilberg, CSEL 55:136.22–137.1; NPNF 6:182).

instinct might be to consider these the very passages Rufinus told us he

witnesses. The patterns we observe with Justinian’s fragments mirror those

on the eve the Council of Constantinople in 553,25 inserted at 2.8.3) have

corroborate his translation. We are left to speculate about how he might

CLASSIFYING THE EDITIONS

The modern editors of Peri Archon have responded to the aforemen-

resembles Rufinus. These editions respond to the challenges presented

version that is closer to the Origenian autograph. As such, these editors

presented.32 Materials not corresponding to text in Rufinus’s translation are

32. Delarue, 47.

Görgemanns and Karpp responded to this critique of Koetschau’s mise-

34. Koetschau’s mise-en-page was criticized pointedly by E. Preuschen, who wanted

as authentic, places the translated text within | . . . | and with call-out 2

37. Rius-Camps, 1:50 and 73–74, for a description of the sigla.

Justinian, however, provides a lengthier version of this passage. He reports

Each of the editors in group two regards Justinian’s fragment as genu-

42. Princ. 1.12.13 (Koetschau, 47.3–9; trans. mine).

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EDITIONS

In 1733, Charles Delarue, a French Benedictine monk of the Congrega-

is utilized” (SC 252:54). Fernández similarly remarks: “The fundamental edition by

53. See K. Müller, “Kritische Beiträge,” Sitzungsberichte der deutschen Akademie

Herwig Görgemanns and Heinrich Karpp published their diglot edi-

Samuel Fernández published his diglot edition in 2015 with an annotated

62. Fernández, 56.

• For varying arrangements of its contents: Crouzel and Simonetti,

lenge I highlighted above: how to create a useable mise-en-page out of an

Peter W. Martens is Professor of Early Christianity at

You might also like