Origen (c. 185-c. 253) · CatalogOrigenOrigen (c. 185-c. 253) · CatalogAlexandrian Christian scholar, teacher and biblical critic; author of On First Principles and Against Celsus.
Author
Origen
c. 185-c. 253 · Alexandrian Christian scholar, teacher and biblical critic; author of On First Principles and Against Celsus
Origen (c. 185–c. 253) was the most learned Christian scholar of the third century. Born in Alexandria, he lost his father Leonides to persecution in 202 and was soon teaching new converts in the city. He wrote commentaries on most of the Bible, compiled the Hexapla, a six-column comparison of Hebrew and Greek versions of the Old Testament, and in about 231 moved to Caesarea in Palestine after a quarrel with his bishop. He was imprisoned and tortured in the persecution under Decius and died a few years later, probably at Tyre. Some of his speculative ideas were condemned by church councils long after his death, but his biblical scholarship shaped later Christian theology in both East and West.
On First Principles is the first attempt by a Christian writer to set out the whole of the faith as an ordered system. Origen wrote it in Alexandria in the 220s, while he was head of the city's school for Christian instruction.
Against Celsus is the most important defence of Christianity written before the conversion of Constantine. Around 248, Origen's friend and patron Ambrose asked him to answer The True Discourse, an attack on Christians by the Greek philosopher Celsus, written some seventy years earlier, probably in the 170s.