Homélies sur les Nombres Vol. 2 (review)

Origène. Homélies sur les Nombres. Vol. 2. Sources Chrétiennes 442. Edited and translated by Louis Doutreleau. Paris: Cerf, 1999. Pp. 417. 232 F.

With this volume, Sources Chrétiennes almost completes a project as old as the series itself: publishing Origen's 226 extant homilies in the original text and in French translation. Nine more remain on Numbers plus the nine on Isaiah. All but twenty-one, including these on Numbers, survive in fourth-century Latin translations by Rufinus or Jerome. This book, including homilies XI-XIX, helps replace the André Méhat's one-volume translation of all twenty-seven homilies, with introduction and notes, but without Latin text, published in 1951. Doutreleau retains and supplements Méhat's explanatory notes and supplies a new translation. The Latin text is from W. A. Baehrens' 1921 Griechische christ-lichen Schriftsteller edition.

We get a taste of Origen's allegory from a section of Homily XIII on Numbers 21.27: "Therefore they say enigmatically, 'Come to Heshbon that it may be built.'" Following supposed Hebrew etymologies, Origen has identified Heshbon as "intentions" and Sihon, king of the Amorites, as Satan, since the name means "barren tree" or "prideful." This facilitates a benign reading of what we might otherwise have considered an episode of ethnic cleansing:

The first Heshbon fell, or, rather, was overthrown and burnt, and another is to be rebuilt. How does this happen? We shall use an example to show. If you see a pagan living a dishonorable life or erring in religion, do not hesitate to call him a city of Heshbon in the Kingdom of Sihon, for a king who is barren and proud reigns in his thoughts. If Israel, that is, a son of the church, comes up to this person and throws at him the spears of God's word and attacks him with the sword of the Spirit, he destroys in him all the defense works of pagan belief and burns away the haughtiness of his arguments with the fire of truth. Let him say that, in that man's case, Heshbon, a city of Sihon, has been destroyed. But the one in whom pagan beliefs have been destroyed, is not left deserted and desolate. It was not the Israelites' custom to leave devastated the cities they destroyed, but after they had undermined and overthrown someone's bad thoughts and impious interpretations, they constructed in that person's heart a replacement for what they destroyed; they brought in good thoughts, pious interpretations and true doctrines; transmitted rites of true worship; taught a way of life involving upright morals and demonstrated what statutes were to be observed.

The Balaam episode in chapters 22-24 occupies almost all of Homilies XIII-XIX; Homilies XI and XII cover chapters 11-21. (Doutreleau discusses how the homilies relate to the liturgical reading of the biblical text one of his four appendices.) As he does elsewhere, Origen finds the Bible itself to be concerned, to a large extent, with its own interpretation and exposition. In Homily XII digging wells means interpreting Scripture and the kings who excavate wells in rock symbolize the Apostles and their successors who open up the deep meaning of the otherwise impenetrable letter. (There is a similar discussion of wells in Commentary on John XIII.) Likewise, Origen interprets Numbers 23.24b--"they shall not rest until they have eaten prey and shall drink the blood of the wounded"--as a prophecy of the eucharist, itself understood as the assimilation of good doctrine. A notable passage in Homily XVII, interpreting Numbers 24.5--"how beautiful, Jacob, are your dwellings, your tents, Israel"--anticipates Gregory of Nyssa in postulating an infinite spiritual progress identified as the "straining" of Philippians 3.13. Other homilies deal with evil as a part of God's plan, angelology and demonology, magic, the inherent power of words, and the nature of prophecy.

Joseph W. Trigg
Christ...