Monitum ad Origenis ἐξηγητικά in Deuteronomium

ADMONITION TO ORIGEN'S EXEGETICAL WORKS ON DEUTERONOMY.

Origen, in Tome XXXII on John, no. 11, promises that he will explain Deuteronomy, and in the eighth Homily on Luke says that this was performed by him: but whether in tomes? or in scholia? or in homilies? Only homilies seem to have been published by him. Hence it is nothing wonderful if in the sixth book of his Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans he says that what is read in Deuteronomy 25:5 is to be treated more fully and at greater length in its own places. Cassiodorus in Institutions, chap. 1, mentions eight homilies of his on Deuteronomy. "I have also left for you," says he, "eight discourses of Origen on Deuteronomy, in which there is an exceedingly minute and subtle exposition." Rufinus also, in the epistle to Ursacius which he prefixed to the homilies on Numbers rendered into Latin by himself, mentions only several short discourses on Deuteronomy. "For now," says he, "out of all that I found written on the law, only the short discourses on Deuteronomy, as I think, are wanting, which, if the Lord helps and gives health to my eyes, we desire to join to the rest of the body." But he is supposed to have been prevented by death before he could execute this. However that may be, no explanation of Origen on Deuteronomy survives today, unless perhaps the following Greek fragments, which occur under the name of Origen in the manuscript Catenae of the Fathers, were part of the lost homilies.