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5 - Seeing the Word

The Lukan Infancy Narrative

from Part II - A Sign for This Generation: Reading the Gospels with Origen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2025

Samuel B. Johnson
Affiliation:
Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology, Ohio
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Summary

Luke’s prologue presses the question raised in Part I (“What is a Gospel?”) into new territory: what about the many other writings that variously recorded Jesus’s life and/or teachings not included in the New Testament canon? Many of them also accrued the title “Gospel,” generally conformed to the definition outlined in Part I, and populated the literary landscape of early Christianity into Origen’s own day. This chapter considers how, in Origen’s view, one may distinguish the four received Gospels from the many others, and how he understands Luke (in particular) to have participated in this process of discernment in the way he hands on the traditions he receives. Origen cannot accept that Luke’s own language allows one to reduce his intent with these narratives to matters of plain facticity. Something, as Luke says, had “come to pass among us,” something of which he and his tradents had become fully convinced, something that had made of them all servants of its proclamation: “attendants of the word.” In other words, the very writing of these stories becomes, in Origen’s view, a form of “spiritual reading” of Jesus’s early life.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Seeing the Word
  • Samuel B. Johnson, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology, Ohio
  • Book: The Life of Jesus in the Writings of Origen of Alexandria
  • Online publication: 26 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009465571.008
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  • Seeing the Word
  • Samuel B. Johnson, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology, Ohio
  • Book: The Life of Jesus in the Writings of Origen of Alexandria
  • Online publication: 26 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009465571.008
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Seeing the Word
  • Samuel B. Johnson, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology, Ohio
  • Book: The Life of Jesus in the Writings of Origen of Alexandria
  • Online publication: 26 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009465571.008
Available formats
×