The Christian Schools of Alexandria [pp. 354-365]

The Christian Schools of Aklexandria.
From The Dublin Review.
THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.-ORIGEN.
Origenis Opera Omnia, Ed. DE LA GreeKs who are concerned in the
RUE, accurante J. P. MIGNE. story. The part of Aristeas's narra Parisiis. S. Gregorii Thau- tion which regards the separate cells,
maturgi, Oratlo Panegyrica min and the wonderful agreement of the
Origenem (Opera Omnia), accu- translations, is curtly set down by St.
rante J. P. MIGNE. Parisiis. Jerome as a fiction. It seems proba ble, moreover, that the translator of
LAST July we commenced a sketch the Pentateuch was not the same as
of the history and labors of Origen. the translator of the other parts of the
We resume our notes on those twenty Old Testament. In the midst of unyears (211-230) which he spent with certainties and probabilities, however,
little interruption at Alexandi'la, en- four things seem to be tolerably
g,aged chiefly in the instruction of the clear; first, that the version called
catechumens. We have already the LXX. was made at Alexandria;
seen what he did for the New secondly, that it was the work of difrTestament; let us now study his ferent authors; thirdly, that it was not
labors on the Old. inspired; fourthly, that it was a holy
The authorship of that most famous and correct version, quoted by the
Greek version of the Old Testament, apostles, always used in the Greek
the Septuagint, seems destined to be a church, and the basis of all the Latin
mystery in literature. The gorgeous editions before St. Jerome's Vuland circumstantial account of the Jew gate.
Aristeas, with all its details of em- All the misfortunes that continual
bassy and counter-embassy, of the transcription, careless blundering, and
seventy-two venerable sages, the cells wilful corruption could combine to
in the rock, the reverence of the Ptol- inflict upon a manuscript had fallen
cmy, and the wind-up of banquets, to the lot of the Septuagint version at
gifts, and all good things, seems, as the time when it was handed Origen
Dom Montfaucon says, to "savor of to be used in the instruction of the
the fabulous." There is some little faithful and the refutation of Jew and
difficulty about dates in the matter of Greek. This was only what might
Demetrius Phlalerius, the literary have been fully expected from the
minister under whose auspices the fact that, since the Christian era, it
event is placed. There is a far more had become the court of appeal of
formidable difficulty in the elevation two rival sets of controversialistsof Philadelphus, a cruel, sensual des- the Christian and the Jew. Indeed,
pot, into a devout admirer of the law from the very beginning it had been
of Moses, bowing seven times and defective, and, if we may trust St.
weeping for joy in presence of the Jerome, designedly defective; for the
sacred documents, and in the sudden Septuagint translation of the propheticonversion of all the cultivated cal books had purposely omitted pas
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