Golden Epistles of the Ancient Christians

[Ori]genes, whose life, history, and writings are described in various chapters of the 3rd, 4th, and 6th books of the Church History original: "Kirchen-Historie"; the author refers to the seminal work by Eusebius of Caesarea; the ancients indeed preserved a great number of his letters. Eusebius counts about 100 of them, including some addressed to the Emperor Philip Philip the Arab, Roman Emperor (r. 244–249 AD), who was rumored by some early Christian writers to be a secret believer and his wife, and others directed to various martyrs and the like, which were therefore quite edifying.

2. However, almost nothing remains of them today, except perhaps three. First is the long letter to Africanus Julius Africanus, an early Christian historian and contemporary of Origen, which deals with the History of Susanna A story found in the Book of Daniel in the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon; Africanus doubted its authenticity, while Origen defended it and is thus mostly historical and theoretical, as published by J. R. Wetstein Johann Rudolf Wetstein (1647–1711), a Swiss scholar of Greek and theology alongside the Dialogue against Marcion original: "Dialogo adversus Marcionem"; a work defending orthodox Christianity against the Marcionite heresy p. 220 seq.; but we did not wish to fill the space here with it, especially since more necessary and useful matters appear in other letters.

3. Next, there is an epistle which he himself incorporated into his book called the Philocalia A celebrated anthology of Origen's writings compiled by later Church Fathers Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus in Chapter 13, p. 41 (Cambridge Edition, 1677, quarto), which is translated here for the sake of students and is addressed to Gregory of Neocaesarea Also known as Gregory Thaumaturgus or "the Wonderworker," a devoted pupil of Origen. (While we do have a so-called "Canonical Epistle" from Gregory, it contains nothing particularly edifying.) Furthermore, Eusebius preserved a small fragment from so many letters in his Church History, Book VI, Chapter 2, which, as short as it is, gives a precious testimony to the patience and faith of the ancient saints.

XIIX.

Attached to this is a letter from the same period, which was likewise preserved by Eusebius in Book VI, Chapter 14, and also concerns Origen,