ABSTRACT
With the passage of time the apostolic deposit had inevitably borne interest in the worshipping community, and, this chapter shows, it was not always a simple matter to distinguish this spontaneous maturation from the trickle of foreign coin. Origen's master was a Jewish Christian, but his religion had little in common with the 'Jewish Christianity' that is frequently contrasted with the Gentile varieties. The author notices the supremacy of the philological method in Alexandria; he also sees that Ammonius subscribed to the fourfold canon of the gospels. The tumult of conjectures that is now called Gnosticism may be seen as an evil leaven in Egyptian Christianity, but a scholar who omits them from a study of Origen's Alexandrian background will be making bread without yeast. Hippolytus, who took over from Irenaeus the role of grand inquisitor in the early third century, reports a bifurcation in Valentinian Christology.
