On the First Principles

The On First Principles, written at Alexandria, is the earliest of the works of Origen that are not primarily exegetical. It exists in its entirety in Rufinus’ Latin translation of 397. Rufinus was convinced, as he states in his preface, that the work had been interpolated by heretics. He, therefore, either omitted objectionable passages concerning the Trinity, or corrected them on the basis of what he found in Origen’s other writings. Besides Rufinus’ translation there is a Greek text for books 3.1 and 4.1–3 preserved in the book of Origen’s excerpts called the Philocalia compiled by the Cappadocian Fathers in the fourth century.

Ronald E. Heine, “The Alexandrians,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 125.