Origen

Origen was born around 185 in Alexandria, into a Christian family; his father Leonides was martyred in 202. While still young he was put in charge of the city’s catechetical school, and he devoted his life to study, teaching and ascetic discipline. The historian Eusebius reports that in youthful zeal he castrated himself, taking a saying of Jesus literally; the story is doubted by some.

He was the most learned Christian of his age. His Hexapla set the Hebrew text of the Old Testament beside several Greek versions in parallel columns, and he wrote commentaries and homilies on almost every book of the Bible, as well as On First Principles, the first systematic Christian theology, and Against Celsus, a reply to a pagan critic. Much of his work survives only in fragments or in Latin translations, especially Rufinus’s.

After conflict with the bishop of Alexandria, he settled around 231 in Caesarea in Palestine, where he taught and preached for twenty years. Imprisoned and tortured in the persecution under Decius in 250, he died some years later, probably at Tyre. Long after his death, some of his speculations, on the pre-existence of souls and the final restoration of all things, were condemned, but his methods of interpretation shaped all later Christian mysticism.