The question of whether the massively important early Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria was one and the same person as the Origen mentioned by the later Platonists as Plotinus’s colleague, a fellow student of Ammonias Saccas in Alexandria, remains one of the hottest issues of contention in the study of Patristic theology and late ancient philosophy.

The topic has been especially heated of late, given the appearance of so much new scholarship on the interaction of Hellenic and Christian philosophers in the third to sixth centuries CE, and esp. the figure of Porphyry of Tyre, Plotinus’s student. If you take the two Origens to be the same, you can rewrite some old paradigms and open up some interesting new questions. If you take them to be different, this can all look very irresponsible and distracting. All this and more will be tackled in a new volume of studies set to appear in April. Looking forward to it.

Heinz-Günther Nesselrath: Einleitung
Sektion I: Origenes – einer oder zwei?
Christoph Riedweg: Das Origenes-Problem aus der Sicht eines Klassischen Philologen – Peter Gemeinhardt: Origenes simplex vel duplex? Das Origenes-Problem aus der Sicht eines Kirchengeschichtlers

Sektion II: Der Platonismus des christlichen Theologen Origenes
Theo Kobusch: Produktive Rezeption: Zum Platonismus des ‚christlichen Philosophen‘ Origenes – Winrich Löhr: Der platonische Ideenkosmos bei Origenes – Andrea Villani: Platon und der Platonismus in Origenes’ Contra Celsum

Sektion III: Origene(i)s bei späteren Autoren
Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler: Die Origeneis des Porphyrios – Jens Halfwassen: Was wissen wir über die Metaphysik des Platonikers Origenes? – Balbina Bäbler: Origenes und Eusebios’ Chronik und Kirchengeschichte

For more, see the book’s website here.