The number of his works is stated by Epiphanius and Rufinus to have exceeded 6,000, and although this is probably only meant as an exaggerated round number, yet the amount of writings that issued from his always busy brain and hands cannot but have been enormous. Seven secretaries and seven copyists, aided by an uncertain number of young girls, are by Eusebius reported to have been always at work for him. The great bulk of his works is lost; but among those that have survived, the most important by far are his two editions of the Old Testament, called respectively Tetrapla. (fourfold) and Herapla (sixfold). See HEXAPLA. The labor bestowed upon this work must have been immense, and no less than twenty-eight years is Origenes supposed to have been engaged upon it. On its importance for Biblical criticism it is needless to enlarge here. Fragments only have come down to us, the original having been lost during the siege and capture of Caesarea by the Arabs; and the Greek as well as the Roman clergy having almost laid an interdict upon the copying of any of Origenes's much suspected writings. Montfaueon has collected and edited these fragments (Hexa
plorum qua supersunt, 2 vols. fol. Paris, 1714), which were re-edited by C. F. Bahrdt (1769-70). Of his other partly extant, partly lost works, the chief are his books "On the Resurrection," "On Martyrdom," "Eight Books against Celsus," "On Prayer," besides Epistles, etc. He further revised and enlarged Philo's Lexicon of Hebrew Names (Hebraieorum Hominum S. Seripturceet Ifensurarum lnterpretatio), whence it has often, together with many other spurious works, been ascribed to him exclusively. Little also has survived of his many exegetical writings, commentaries, brief notes, and homilies on both Testaments. The best editions of his collected works are by Dc la Rue (Rudens), (Paris, 1733-39, 4 vols. fol.); by ObertIthr (Wurzburg, 1785-94, 15 vols7); and by Lommatzsch, which is critical and more complete (Berlin, 1831), etc.