Introduction to This Volume

How this book is arranged

This is the eleventh volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This volume holds Origen’s Commentary on Romans and his homilies on 1 Samuel.

Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.

The translations

The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. The sermon On the Witch of Endor is printed in the modern English version prepared for SermonIndex; the other works are printed in older public-domain translations.

In this volume

Origen wrote his Commentary on Romans in Greek in fifteen books, but the Greek is lost apart from fragments. The commentary survives in the Latin translation of Rufinus, who condensed it to ten books about AD 405. It is the earliest full commentary on Romans, and it was read closely by later writers such as Augustine and Jerome. It is printed here in two parts.

The second part of the volume holds Origen’s homilies on 1 Samuel, sermons preached to a congregation, and his sermon on the witch of Endor, which survives in Greek. The story of Saul and the woman of Endor was disputed in the early Church, and Eustathius of Antioch wrote a famous reply to Origen’s reading of it.

Dates and authorship

Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is uncertain.