HistoricalChristian.Faith

Origen of Alexandria on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 240 AD (the Old Testament list is from his Commentary on Psalm 1, quoted by Eusebius; the Letter to Africanus defending the church's Greek text is c. 240; d. c. 253) · Wikipedia · his New Testament canon page
Verdict on the deuterocanon: NO — but with a notable tension. Origen names the Old Testament books "as the Hebrews have handed them down" as twenty-two, the Hebrew-letter count; Tobit and Judith are absent, and the Maccabees he sets explicitly "besides these." Yet the very same Origen, writing to Julius Africanus, defends the longer Greek text the churches actually read — the additions to Daniel (Susanna) that the Hebrew lacks — refusing to "reject as spurious the copies in use in our Churches." And in his sermons and treatises he goes further still, citing Tobit, Sirach, Baruch, the Maccabees, Wisdom, Judith, and Susanna outright as "Scripture." He attests both faces of the boundary at once.

Claims & evidence

The twenty-two books "as the Hebrews have handed them down"

In his Commentary on Psalm 1 Origen gave a catalogue of the Old Testament, which Eusebius preserved in the Ecclesiastical History (vi.25.1–2). He frames it explicitly as the Hebrew reckoning — twenty-two books, matching the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet — and lists each with its transliterated Hebrew title:¹

It should be stated that the canonical books, as the Hebrews have handed them down, are twenty-two; corresponding with the number of their letters… The twenty-two books of the Hebrews are the following: That which is called by us Genesis… Exodus… Leviticus… Numbers… Deuteronomy… Jesus, the son of Nave… Judges and Ruth, among them in one book… the First and Second of Kings, among them one… the Third and Fourth of Kings in one… of the Chronicles, the First and Second in one… Esdras, First and Second in one… the book of Psalms… the Proverbs of Solomon… Ecclesiastes… the Song of Songs… Isaiah… Jeremiah, with Lamentations and the epistle in one… Daniel… Ezekiel… Job… Esther. And besides these there are the Maccabees, which are entitled Sarbeth Sabanaiel.

The deuterocanon is absent — the Maccabees set "besides these"

Measured against the disputed books the verdict is plain: no Tobit, no Judith, no Sirach, no Wisdom of Solomon, no Baruch as a separate book. The Maccabees Origen does name, but he files them deliberately outside the twenty-two — "besides these there are the Maccabees" — the same gesture by which a later age would mark a book apocryphal rather than canonical.² This is a Hebrew-sized canon, the pattern Melito had already set and that Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, and Jerome would carry further down this timeline.

The one bundled exception — "Jeremiah, with Lamentations and the epistle"

Origen's list is not perfectly clean of the Greek extras. "Jeremiah, with Lamentations and the epistle" folds in the Epistle of Jeremiah — a short deuterocanonical work (Baruch ch. 6 in the Vulgate numbering) — counted not as a separate book but as an appendix to Jeremiah, exactly as the Greek manuscripts transmitted it. So even a Father consciously counting "as the Hebrews have handed them down" carried one deuterocanonical text inside his Jeremiah, a sign of how the church's Greek Bible shaped the lists of those who formally preferred the Hebrew.² (A separate, well-known quirk: the received text of the list omits the Twelve Minor Prophets, almost certainly a scribal slip — otherwise the count falls short of twenty-two — not a judgment by Origen against them.)

The other face: defending the church's Greek text against Africanus

The same Origen who counted the Hebrew twenty-two would not surrender the longer Greek text the churches read in worship. When Julius Africanus wrote to challenge the story of Susanna — one of the Greek additions to Daniel absent from the Hebrew — as no genuine part of Scripture, Origen answered with a vigorous defense of the churches' copies:

… are we immediately to reject as spurious the copies in use in our Churches, and enjoin the brotherhood to put away the sacred books current among them, and to coax the Jews, and persuade them to give us copies which shall be untampered with, and free from forgery! Are we to suppose that that Providence which in the sacred Scriptures has ministered to the edification of all the Churches of Christ, had no thought for those bought with a price, for whom Christ died…?

— Letter to Africanus §§4–5 (defending Susanna and the wider Greek text of Daniel against the shorter Hebrew).³ Origen knows the Hebrew canon precisely — he produced the Hexapla to map it — yet he argues the church should keep what Providence handed it through the Greek Scriptures, not retreat to the synagogue's shorter text. His verdict on the deuterocanon is therefore double: a "No" by the Hebrew enumeration, a working "keep" in liturgical and devotional practice.

The same letter shows the mirror image of that "keep" — the point at which Origen declines to press the church's wider text. He explains that he masters the Jews' own readings precisely so that, in debate with them, he will not argue from a book their Bible does not contain:

And I make it my endeavour not to be ignorant of their various readings, lest in my controversies with the Jews I should quote to them what is not found in their copies, and that I may make some use of what is found there, even although it should not be in our Scriptures… For if we are so prepared for them in our discussions, they will not, as is their manner, scornfully laugh at Gentile believers for their ignorance of the true reading as they have them.

— Letter to Africanus §5.³ So the double verdict is partly a matter of audience: the churches keep and read the longer Greek Scriptures, but against a Jewish opponent Origen will reason only from what stands in the Hebrew — conceding, in that arena, the very books he elsewhere cites as Scripture. The restraint is tactical, not a demotion: he argues from premises the opponent grants while, a paragraph earlier, refusing to "reject as spurious the copies in use in our Churches." That this accommodation is a debating courtesy and not evidence the church ranked the disputed books sub-canonical is weighed on the "doctrine only from the undisputed books" argument page (assessment: contested).

The practice behind the list — citing the disputed books as "Scripture"

The "keep" is in fact stronger than the Letter to Africanus alone shows. Across his sermons and treatises Origen does not merely tolerate the deuterocanon — he reaches for these very books in argument and introduces them with the formulae he reserves for Scripture: "the scripture says," "it is written," "holy Scripture," "as Scripture declares." Six disputed books and the additions to Daniel appear this way:

• Tobit. Arguing that angels and the saints at rest pray alongside us, he cites the answered prayer of Tobit and Sarah as Scripture — "After both had prayed, the scripture says, 'The prayer of both was heard before the presence of the great Raphael and he was sent to heal them both'" (Tobit 3:16–17).⁴
• Sirach. Reproaching those who reproach the penitent, he corrects them by Scripture — "though the Scripture says: 'Do not reproach a man who turns away from sin'" (Sirach 8:5).⁵
• Baruch. He frames Baruch with the written-word formula — "the land about which it is written: Hear Israel. 'Why is it that you are in the land of enemies… You have forsaken the fountain of life, the Lord…'" (Baruch 3:9–13).⁶
• 2 Maccabees. To prove God created from nothing he appeals expressly to canonical authority — "But that we may believe in the authority of holy Scripture that such is the case, hear how in the book of Maccabees… she says, 'I ask of you, my son, to look at the heaven and the earth… to know that God made all these things when they did not exist'" (2 Maccabees 7:28).⁷
• Wisdom of Solomon. Closing a discussion of Pharaoh, he quotes Wisdom as Scripture — "'for in the hand of God are both we and our words; all wisdom, also, and knowledge of workmanship,' as Scripture declares" (Wisdom 7:16).⁸
• Judith. Illustrating a righteous breaking of faith, he reaches "for an example from Scripture" — "Judith made an agreement with Holophernes that… she also would present herself… at the marriage bed of Holophernes."⁹
• Susanna (additions to Daniel). Most pointedly, he turns Susanna against corrupt clergy and names its place in the canon directly — "it is time for us to use the words of holy Susanna against these wicked presbyters, which indeed those who deny the story of Susanna excise from the list of divine books. But we both receive it and aptly use it against them."¹⁰ This is the same Susanna he defends to Africanus, but stated here as a canon-claim: the disputed book stands "in the list of divine books," and the church "receives" it.

The tension with the twenty-two-book list is therefore not a stray exception but a settled habit. Origen the Hebraist reports a twenty-two-book Hebrew canon; Origen the preacher and theologian uses a wider Greek one, and uses it as Scripture. The list tells us what the Hebrews handed down; the homilies tell us what the church Origen served actually read and reasoned from. (On Susanna in particular he is not wholly settled: the same Letter to Africanus engages, and answers, real objections to its authenticity — he defends the book while granting the question is live.)

Reading practice: the easy books as "milk" for beginners

Alongside the list and the citations stands a third kind of evidence — Origen describing, from the inside, how the church actually deployed its books by the maturity of the hearer. In his Homily on Numbers 27 he sorts the divine reading into "milk" for beginners and solid food for the mature, and the milk — "the clearer and simpler doctrine" handed to those "starting out in divine studies" — turns out to be largely the very books a later age would file one rank below the canon:¹¹

That is why, as in the physical illustration, the food some have in the Word of God is milk, that is, the clearer and simpler doctrine. This normally consists in moral instruction, which is customarily given to those who are starting out in divine studies and who are receiving the first elements of a rational education. And so, when some such reading from the divine books is recited, in which there seems to be nothing obscure, they gladly receive it, for example, the brief books of Esther, Judith or even Tobit, or the precepts of the book of Wisdom. But if the book of Leviticus is read to him, his mind immediately stumbles and he flees from it as from something that is not his own food.

This is not a canon list and not a ranking of these books — Origen is describing church reading practice, the diet suited to a beginner, not pronouncing on which books are Scripture (he cites Tobit, Judith, and Wisdom as Scripture in his own voice, above). But it is a precise glimpse of the function that the later "read but not canon" tier would formalize: Esther, Judith, Tobit, and Wisdom as the easy, edifying milk given to newcomers. A century and a half later Athanasius would file almost exactly this set (the same books, minus Sirach) in his middle, "appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us… for instruction" rank — so Origen's homily is the earliest clear witness to the churchly practice behind that tier, and a sharpening of his own canonical-versus-read distinction. (The point is weighed on the argument page asking what divides Athanasius's tiers.)

Notes

• Knowing the Hebrew, ranking by it — yet not abandoning the Greek. Origen is the most learned Hebraist among the early Greek Fathers (the Hexapla set the Hebrew and the Greek versions in parallel columns), so his twenty-two-book list carries weight as a deliberate report of the Hebrew canon, not ignorance of the extras. The tension with the Letter to Africanus is real and honest: he distinguishes the Hebrew canon (the twenty-two) from the church's Scriptures in use (the wider Greek), and declines to collapse the second into the first. This is the very distinction — "canonical" versus "read in the churches" — that Rufinus, Jerome, and Athanasius would later sharpen into a formal two- or three-tier scheme.
• Describing the Hebrew reckoning, not prescribing a Christian exclusion. Origen's own frame — the books are twenty-two "as the Hebrews have handed them down" (ὡ Ἑβραῖοι παραδιδόασιν) — reads most naturally as a report of how the synagogue counted its Scriptures, not a dogmatic Christian verdict on what the church may read. That is exactly why the list sits comfortably beside his defense of the Greek Susanna and his graphē citations of the wider canon: Origen can record the Hebrew enumeration precisely and keep the church's Greek Bible, because the one describes the Jews' table while the other states his own practice. Set against the openly prescriptive lines further down this timeline — Cyril's "have nothing to do with the apocryphal writings," Jerome's apocrypha — his catalogue is the softer, descriptive witness, which limits how far a Protestant-canon case can lean on it. (The counter-pull, kept honest: a list relayed to a reader who asked carries some commendatory force, and the Epistle of Jeremiah bundled into his Jeremiah is no part of the Hebrew table — so even his report is already lightly Christianized, not bare stenography.)¹²
• Modern proponents who lean on this list — and one overstatement to watch. Origen's twenty-two-book catalogue is a standard prop in the modern case for the shorter Old Testament. The nineteenth-century Princeton theologian Archibald Alexander quotes it cleanly — "the canonical books are the same which the Hebrews delivered unto us, and are twenty-two in number, according to the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet" — and adds, accurately, that "Origen barely mentions the Maccabees," the very "besides these" filing noted above.¹³ Steve Christie presses the same point but overstates the exception: Origen, he writes, "rejected all of the Deuterocanonical books, except for Baruch and the epistle of Jeremiah," while accepting "all" the Hebrew books.¹⁴ That "except" is one book too generous. Origen's list, as Eusebius gives it, retains only "the epistle" — the Epistle of Jeremiah (Baruch ch. 6 in the Vulgate numbering), folded into "Jeremiah, with Lamentations and the epistle" — whereas Baruch proper (chs. 1–5) is named nowhere in the catalogue, exactly as the section above records. The most that can be said for Christie's "Baruch" is the scholarly surmise that "the epistle" might stand for Baruch and its epistle together, since the Epistle traveled as Baruch's sixth chapter; but on the text as it stands Origen keeps the short Greek appendix alone, and "Baruch and the epistle" reads the longer Vulgate unit back into a list that names only the Epistle.
• A Protestant canon-historian grants the wide usage — and keeps the same tension. That Origen cited the disputed books as Scripture is not only a Catholic reading of him. Eduard Reuss — the nineteenth-century Strasbourg professor whose History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures argued that the canon was still open in Origen's day — concedes without reserve that Origen quotes "the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and the books of the Maccabees, as the Scriptures, the Word of God" (Origen's Greek formula θεῖος λόγος, "the divine word"), "and making frequent reference to them," and notes that Origen reckoned Wisdom "among the volumes of Solomon" (citing the Homily on Numbers).¹⁵ But Reuss reads this precisely as the double verdict above does, not as a closed deuterocanon: for Origen, he writes, the church's "traditional custom… could not but be an authoritative rule in conflict with historical science" — i.e. Origen the Hebraist knew the shorter reckoning, and it was church usage, not a canonical ruling, that carried the wider Greek books into his citations. So a Protestant witness grants both faces at once: the high, Scripture-level regard and the caveat that liturgical and devotional use of Wisdom ≠ inclusion in the Hebrew canon. (One caution on how this datum travels: the sentence sometimes quoted from Reuss — that a "divine word" formula "not only indicates the intrinsic value of the passage quoted, but ought certainly to remind us of its supernatural origin" — is in fact his gloss on Theophilus of Antioch citing 1 Timothy, a different page of the same book, not a remark about Origen and Wisdom; the Origen concession quoted here stands on its own without it.)
• Why Eusebius is the source for the list. Origen's Commentary on Psalm 1 survives only in fragments; the catalogue reaches us because Eusebius quoted it. The words are Origen's, transmitted through Eusebius — the citation below is to Eusebius's text (with the parallel collation at bible-researcher.com).
• The New Testament counterpart. Origen draws the New Testament boundary on his canon page — the "priestly trumpets" enumeration of the twenty-seven and the exclusion of the apocryphal gospels. There, as here, he marks soft edges candidly while keeping the books the church received.

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