The origins of Christian exegesis are obscured by ancient authors' lack of differentiation between verbatim quotations, summaries, explanatory paraphrases, and mere assertions. Carl Johan Berglund discerns what we can know of Heracleon's literary-critical Gospel commentary from Origen's presuppositions of Gnostic heresies.

In this monograph, Carl Johan Berglund reassesses Origen's references to the second-century philologist Heracleon, without presuming that Heracleon's exegesis is determined by views described in heresiological sources or that every reference is equivalent to a verbatim quotation. The author uses variations in Origen's attribution formulas to categorize almost two hundred references as either verbatim quotations, summaries, explanatory paraphrases, or mere assertions. Heracleon's views are assessed by considering the over fifty quotations and seventy summaries so identified in a context of literature to which Heracleon refers - John, a gospel similar to Matthew's, a collection of Pauline epistles, and the Preaching of Peter. The author concludes that Origen is likely to have inferred views he knew from his exegetical opponents (the heterodox and "those who bring in the natures") that were never expressed by Heracleon.

Autorentext
Born 1973; 1997 Master of Science in Engineering, KTH, Stockholm; 2007 Bachelor of Theology, Stockholm School of Theology; 2008 pastor, Swedish Mission Covenant Church (now Uniting Church in Sweden); 2019 PhD (Faculty of Theology) in New Testament Exegesis, Uppsala University; since 2019 Director of Studies at University College Stockholm (Stockholm School of Theology).