Origen on Isaiah and Ezekiel

About this time Origen was also writing his commentaries on Isaiah, and at the same time those on Ezekiel. Of the commentaries on the third part of Isaiah, up to the vision of the four-footed beasts in the desert, thirty volumes have come down to us. On Ezekiel there are twenty-five, and these are all he wrote on the whole prophet. Being at Athens at that time, he finished the work on Ezekiel [a] and began his commentaries on the Song of Songs, which he carried there as far as the fifth book. After returning to Caesarea he brought these also to completion, ten books in all. [d]

But why make an exact catalogue of the man’s writings here, when it would need a work of its own? I have also recorded it in my account of the life of Pamphilus, the holy martyr of our own time. There, in showing how great Pamphilus’s zeal for the things of God was, I set out the catalogues of the library he gathered of the works of Origen and of the other church writers. From these anyone who wishes can learn most fully which of Origen’s labors have come down to us. But now we must go on with the course of our history. [e]