Homelies sur les Nombres (review)

This volume brings us the first ten of Origen’s celebrated Homilies on Numbers in Rufinus’s Latin translation. In keeping with belief in Scripture’s continuing usefulness, Origen finds in the biblical text lessons on church order and on spiritual progress. These have provided rich material for subsequent historians, notably Adolf Harnack. For example, a reference to virgines and continentes provides one of our earliest indications of an ordered religious life. In the process, Origen revealed his own ascetic ideals, railing against Christians who spend their time on worldly matters and only devote two hours (!) of each day to God. He was always ready to draw theological lessons as well. Numbers 17, where Moses intercedes for the people after they attempt to kill him, demonstrates for the consistency of the two testaments. Moses and Aaron were “disciples, more of the gospel, than of the Law,” loving their enemies and praying for those who persecute them. Thus, he concludes, “the law does not become ‘Old Testament’ except for those who would understand it carnally,” and “for the sinner and for those who do not preserve the bonds of charity, even the gospels grow old.”

The “avertissement” that opens this volume, the first of three projected, recounts its checkered history. It replaces what was originally Sources chrétiennes 29, a 570-page volume by André Méhat that appeared with an extensive introduction and notes but no facing Latin text. Étienne Fouilloux, in his fascinating history of the series (La collection “Sources chrétiennes”: Éditer les Pères de l’Église au XX^e siècle [Paris: Cerf, 1995]) writes that Méhat’s manuscript suffered unspecified “mésavantures” before being published in 1951 and that it raised eyebrows at the Vatican when it was. Unlike Henri de Lubac, who had earlier introduced Origen’s homilies on Genesis and Exodus (the former translated by Louis Doutreleau), Méhat made no attempt to downplay aspects of Origen’s thought—notably his esotericism and his charismatic understanding of authority—that a pre-Vatican II Magisterium would find offensive. (Such sensitivity is one reason why the homilies, perceived as spiritual writings with little doctrinal content, were initially preferred for the series to weightier works such as Peri Archon and the Commentary on John.)

Although a capable scholar, Méhat, a devout Catholic layman, produced a volume primarily intended for a general readership, much like the volumes in our Classics of Western Spirituality. His introduction provided a still helpful overview of Origen as a spiritual writer, his translation was readable and idiomatic, and his extensive notes dealt capably with matters of theological and philological interest. Nonetheless, as the series took on a more consistently academic orientation, the lack of a Latin text dictated revision. After decades in which his revised edited was listed as “in preparation,” Méhat abandoned the idea of producing it himself. Marcel Borret, a Jesuit who had already edited numerous Origen volumes, took it up but died before completing the revision. It then passed to another veteran Jesuit, Louis Doutreleau. Doutreleau wrote a new introduction and revised and supplemented Méhat’s notes, making use of Dorival’s commentary on the Septuagint version of Numbers (La Bible d’Alexandrie, vol. 4). He also produced a new, more literal translation (remarking unfairly that Méhat had been as free with Rufinus as Rufinus had been with Origen). The result reflects the vicissitudes through which the volume has passed. Thus, for example, Doutreleau (or the series editor) understandably chose to omit Méhat’s excellent but dated introduction, but the notes still refer to it. We may grateful that an important text is now more accessible and, incidentally, for the opportunity to observe how Sources chrétiennes has matured.