Nesterova Olga

Origen’s doctrine of three senses of Holy Scripture in its relation to ancient models of threefold division of philosophy

Abstract

This article deals with origins of Origen’s conception of three senses of the Scripture and, specifi cally, with the alleged infl uence of ancient systems of the threefold division of philosophy on the formulation of this conception. The Christian Alexandrian tradition was not alien to the idea that the doctrine of the church can be regarded as a comprehensive doctrine of a philosophical kind, though far surpassing pagan wisdom. And Origen was indeed interested in the possibility of establishing some correlations between the three parts of philosophy and the kinds of doctrines corresponding to the three senses of the Scripture. He also made use of some explanatory analogies cognate to those which in the pagan school tradition were employed for the vivid demonstration of relationship between the parts of philosophy (such as the image of an orchard enclosed by the wall, where the wall was associated with logic, trees with physics, and fruits with ethics). However, the analysis of the parable of the vineyard and the wicked husbandsmen (Matth 21.33–46) given in Origen’s Coommentary on the Gospel of Matthew suggests that his own interpretation of the spacial image of the orchard only partly overlapped with the interpretation of similar images that illustrated the division of philosophy. Moreover, in his methodological reasoning Origen followed diff erent models that more effi ciently described the nature of the sense levels distinguished by himself in texts of the Scripture.

Keywords

Origen, three senses of Scripture, threefold division of philosophy, Christian exegetics, Clement of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria, Holy Scripture

References

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Information about the author

Nesterova Olga

Academic Degree: Candidate of Sciences* in Philology;
Academic Rank: Senior Research Fellow;
Place of work: Institute of World Literatur e of the Russian Academy of Sciences; 25A Povarskaya Str., Moscow, 121069, Russian Federation;
Post: senior researcher;
ORCID: 0000-0001-8049-8141;
Email: adeodatus@yandex.ru.

*According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011, the degree of Candidate of Sciences (Cand.Sc.) belongs to ISCED level 8 — "doctoral or equivalent", together with PhD, DPhil, D.Lit, D.Sc, LL.D, Doctorate or similar.