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Abstract
Origen’s Peri Archon was one of the most comprehensive and influential works of early Christian theology—but despite its extraordinary influence, it was condemned as heretical in the fifth century. Although the Greek original does not survive apart from a handful of quotations, it had (fortunately for us) been translated into Latin by the fourth-century theologian Rufinus of Aquileia. His Latin version, De principiis, survives, but only in a small number of faulty, lacunose manuscripts. The most authoritative edition of De principiis, Paul Koetschau’s 1913 edition, is profoundly inadequate. Koetschau had correctly determined that one family of manuscripts, the alpha branch, preserved the most accurate text, but he used only one manuscript from this branch (one from Reichenau). Four more manuscripts from the superior alpha branch have since been identified, but three have been neither collated nor cited in any edition of the work. Their existence alone would necessitate a thorough study of these manuscripts; but additionally, my research indicates that Koetschau’s edition does not cite the Reichenau manuscript systematically, nor does he identify the sources for a number of his variant readings. There is no edition of Rufinus’ text, then, that accurately incorporates evidence from all the available manuscripts from the superior alpha branch—not just the Reichenau manuscript, but also those from Avignon, Berlin, Weissenburg, and Fulda.
This dissertation is the first study of all of the alpha manuscripts, and it lays the groundwork for a more complete and more accurate edition of De principiis. Scholars of theology, patristics, and ecclesial history will benefit from an improved edition of Rufinus’ work, through which they will have a better understanding of one of the most important dogmatic works of early Christianity, Origen’s Peri Archōn.
