HOMILIES ON JEREMIAH

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Origen's HOMILIES ON JEREMIAH (translated by John Clark Smith): Souls existing before their bodies, witches summoning dead prophets from the underworld, the return of the damned--and the Devil himself--to God in the end, and many other theological speculations surprise the reader of Origen's Homilies on Jeremiah and I Kings 28. The homily on I Kings 28, while not a part of the homilies on Jeremiah, deals with the Witch of Endor and has been added to this volume in virtue of its own inherent interest. In this collection, translated into English from the original Greek for the first time, Origen seeks understanding of the significance of the hostility of the Chosen People towards the Prophet Jeremiah before their captivity in Babylon. Origen in many ways identified with the great prophet and thought of Jeremiah as a type for Christ in the Hebrew Scriptures. Origen realized that Jeremiah came at a crucial time in the history of Israel, the time of captivity, and he views this event and the events around it as pregnant with meaning for the people of his time. Watching a master grapple with admittedly difficult, obscure texts and give them compelling, forceful delivery must have impressed Origen's listeners. Readers will find it no less engaging to read his homilies now and experience some of that exhilaration of hearing a true expert highlight every subtlety of the pericope and make plain what once was obscure. In this volume one can easily find a good summary of Origen’s thought.

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