ORIGEN'S WAY

Plato is an awesome philosopher. A student of Socrates, he taught Aristotle, another icon. But Plato whom I love, and Aristotle whom I respect, both lived and taught several centuries before Jesus lived and taught. Jesus' impact upon me has been greater than both Plato and Aristotle. What they all have in common is Egypt. Plato studied there over 10 years and knows it as blessed of the gods. Aristotle relocated and lived as long there, where he allegedly wrote his 1,000 books, while vastly, heavily, incessantly "borrowing" from the Great Library of Alexander, that later was burned to the ground. Jesus was carried there to Egypt as a baby, by Joseph and Mary, when fleeing the bloody wrath of Herod. There he too remained, until the prophesy was fulfilled "Out of Egypt have I called my son." Hosea 11:1. Roughly 185 years after Jesus died, on Cavalry, there arose another exegete, philosopher, theologian named Origen in Egypt, who was raised a Christian by his father, from childhood. This man, Origen, after the Apostle Paul, who also lived after Jesus' death, had perhaps the greatest impact upon "the way," later now known as Christianity. Origen's teacher is said to be Ammonias Saccas, another priest, even more mysterious in Alexandria, Egypt. There Origen was a friend of, and a fellow student of Ammonias' with, with Plotinus, the renown author of "The Enneads." The Enneads is a work which essentially codifies the primordial "Memphite theology" of ancient Egypt. Origen was privy to this theology and to the ensuing philosophies of Socrates and Plato which arose from that ancient theology's tenets. By and through the prismatic means of all of these present and previous influences, Origen interpreted "the way" -- Old and New Testaments--his way, spiritually. By reason of his exegesis ON FIRST PRINCIPLES he was later declared a heretic by the later leaders of the orthodox Christian church, which rejected its Egyptian roots, in preferring its own doctrinal Christianity. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/origen/ I am reading ON FIRST PRINCIPLES, now, as I travel along the way.