Note 108 — BOOK X SUMMARIES, AND THE WORD OF TRUTH

Cruice points out the likeness between this doctrine of the Word speaking through the Prophets, and that with which Origen begins his treatise, Περὶ Ἀρχῶν (I, § 1), that before the Incarnation “Christ, the Word of God, was in Moses and the prophets.” It was doubtless this, and the likeness between the theory of the origin of evil as given on pp. 518, 519 Cr. of our text, and that of Origen in Joann, II, 7, 8, which caused some commentator to write in the margin of the Codex, Ὠριγένης καὶ Ὠριγένους δόξα: “Origen and Origen’s opinions.” The words used in the two cases are too unlike to suggest any identity of authorship or conscious borrowing; but it is perfectly probable that Origen when in Rome communicated with Hippolytus as head of the Greek-speaking community there, and that they had many ideas in common. This would account at once for the likeness between the passages noted and for the confusion between Hippolytus and Origen as the author of the Philosophumena, while it throws new light on Origen’s condemnation for heresy.