Mark Edwards: Origen, Didymus and the Literal Sense

It has been remarked that Origen’s heterodoxies often arise from “crude literalism” rather than from the allegorizing tendency which is usually supposed to be both his leading vice and his principal contribution to Christian thought. It has also been noted that the meaning of the term “literal” is too often taken for granted in studies of ancient allegory. The rarity in Origen of a term corresponding to “literal” compounds our difficulties (though the presence of such a term would not wholly solve them as A. Nemetz shows in “Literalness and the Sensus Litteralis”, Speculum 1959). This paper will consider three cases of possible “literalism” in Origen: the criterion of physical practicability which enables him to decide which prescriptions of Numbers and Leviticus still obtain in their obvious sense and which are only figuratively binding; his sustained attempts to unravel the “dramatic” content of the Song of Songs, notwithstanding his denial that its “bodily” sense can be profitable; and his efforts to glean an edifying lesson from both the “historical” and the allegorical readings of each pericope in his Commentary on Matthew. Finally the paper will consider whether Didymus makes use of similar methods in his Commentary on Genesis; it will also examine the hermeneutic implications of his doctrine that God is (literally?) identical with his attributes in the treatise On the Trinity (as opposed to the use of personal figures to “stand for” universal attributes in Stoic allegoresis and in the poetry of Didymus’ younger Christian contemporary Prudentius).