Panayiotis Tzamalikos is an immensely productive patristics scholar, drawing on an unparalleled wide knowledge of the Greek philosophical and theological tradition – not just the classical, late antique and Byzantine tradition, but extending into the modern period. With this learning he combines a highly original approach, expressed in an uncompromising way, which brooks little challenge. His knowledge of the scholarship that bears on his interests, at the centre of which stands Origen, is doubtless exhaustive, but he seems mostly to make mention of scholars with whom he disagrees, even when he is not alone in the positions he advocates. In his view, Origen has been constantly misunderstood, both in late antiquity and in modern scholarship, and in particular he rejects the notion that Origen platonises Christian theology, introducing ideas such as the eternity of the soul, with its corollary, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and, for philosophical reasons, maintaining the final restoration of all beings – ἀποκατάστασις παντῶν – with the consequent rejection of any doctrine of eternal damnation. In this he reflects a movement in modern Origenian scholarship, represented by Mark Edwards, Ilaria Ramelli, John Behr, John McGuckin, as well as the older scholar, Henri Crouzel, who, in a much less favourable climate, presented Origen as a deeply Christian theologian, but this you would never guess from Tzamalikos's discussion: Crouzel is only mentioned to be vilified; Ramelli, McGuckin and Behr not at all; Edwards, ‘highly learned and insightful’ (p. xiii), is mentioned gratefully, though his failure to support a key notion of Tzamalikos's, namely the axial importance for Origen of Anaxagoras is registered (p. 446 n. 7).

In this book, Tzamalikos gathers together a series of reflections under the theme, ‘Origen and Hellenism’, arguing that Origen has a profound, though critical, knowledge of the Hellenic tradition, owing most to an Anaxagoran tradition, rather than to Plato, from whom he distances himself decisively (as Edwards has argued in his Origen against Plato, 2002). The chapters discuss, with learning and insight, a series of themes: the Platonic ideas as ‘thoughts of God’; the exegesis of the ‘garments of skin’, provided by God for Adam and Eve after the fall; ‘Adam’ as designating universal human nature; the notion of aethereal bodies in Neoplatonism and Christianity – all areas where Origen has been condemned, both in late antiquity and more recently – as well as Origen on castration. After a conclusion, there follows a postscript on Origen and Anaxagoras, and a couple of appendices.

The reader new to Tzamalikos might be well advised to begin with the conclusion, for Tzamalikos's account of Origen's life is somewhat different from what is generally maintained; the first sentence of the conclusion is quite clear: ‘Origen converted to Christianity when he was nearly 50 years of age, and already an illustrious Greek philosopher’ (p. 417). Eusebius’ account in HE vi is dismissed, and the two ‘Origens’ – the Platonist we know from Porphyry and the Christian exegete we know from Eusebius – are collapsed into one. Origen, then, had a thorough knowledge of the Greek tradition, on which he drew, when, after his conversion to Christianity, he sought to explore the understanding of God and the world revealed in the Scriptures. Central to his understanding of the Hellenic tradition was his profound attachment to Anaxagoras, which largely remained with him as a Christian, along with a highly critical attitude towards Plato and Aristotle. It is from this perspective that Tzamalikos interprets the themes discussed in this book. In his discussion of the Platonic ideas as ‘thoughts of God’, for instance, he sheds a good deal of light on the notion of the logoi of God, central to an Origenian tradition that leads through Evagrios to Maximos the Confessor. The long discussion of Origen's interpretation of the ‘garments of skin’ of Genesis iii. 21 runs through a series of considerations, and overall is concerned to emphasise that Origen regarded all creatures as corporeal, only God himself being incorporeal – a notion only imperfectly grasped by some who revered Origen, for example Gregory Nazianzen. Another matter considered in this chapter is the nature and role of symbolism in exegesis of Scripture; and further the origin of the idea of the human as small universe, traced again to Anaxagoras. The chapter on ‘Adam’ as universal human nature, and the next chapter on aethereal bodies, pursue key concepts in the discussion – Christian and Neoplatonic – of what it is to be human. Reading Tzamalikos's discussion is exhilarating, full of surprises drawn from the variety of resources he calls on, but actual argument seems scarce, and engagement with others approaches to these matters in fact quite rare. The four chapters just briefly characterised present Origen as a highly original thinker, both in terms of philosophy and Christian theology, freeing him from misunderstandings that are still tenacious in much thought about Origen. A fifth chapter concerns the question of Origen's self-castration. Tzamalikos takes it for granted that the story of Origen's castration is genuine, regarding his discussion of Matthew xv.1–5 in his late commentary as a tacit rebuke of his early enthusiastic literalism (H. Chadwick was more sceptical: see his Early Christian thought and the classical tradition, Oxford 1984, 67–8 with notes at pp. 148–9). Chapter v is supplemented by appendix i, which presents Tzamalikos's critical text and translation of the relevant passage from the commentary. That is preceded by a ‘postscriptum’ on Origen and Anaxagoras, and followed by appendix ii, called Cassian Who? The first of these summarises the gist of the argument of his two-volume work, Anaxagoras, Origen, and Neoplatonism (2016), the latter revisits briefly the arguments on his three books on Cassian the Sabaïte, the real Cassian, the source of the ‘Latin’ Cassian, a ‘Newly Discovered Greek Father’, to whom Tzamalikos proposes to ascribe various ‘floating’ pseudonymous texts of the fourth and fifth centuries.

There is no question that Tzamalikos's discussion of Origen and his engagement with Hellenism draws into the discussion a wealth of texts rarely considered in this context, nor that his discussion is immensely stimulating. How convincing some of the outriders of his arguments will prove to be remains to be seen.