The Law and Prophets as Origen's Gospel

[Extract] In recent years it has grown increasingly common to read ancient schools and religious groups as ‘textual communities’.2 Jane Heath, in a critical appraisal of the idea, suggests we understand a textual community as one ‘whose life, thought, sense of identity and relations with outsiders are organised around an authoritative text’.3 Applied to ancient Jewish and Christian relations, this notion of textual communities prompts several questions. For example, by what logic can ancient, gentile Christians define their own identities on the basis of authoritative writings received from and shared with their Jewish neighbours? Why did they conceive of themselves and those Jews as two textual communities and not one? While early Christian thinkers, beginning at least with the Apostle Paul, wrestled to clarify the place of the Law and Prophets in gentile Christian life and thought, few explained their appropriation of Jewish holy books with Origen of Alexandria’s precision and candour.

Copyright © John M. G. Barclay, Kylie Crabbe and contributors, 2022