When the literate leaders of Christianity made their record, they were not interested in inquiry. They had no need to seek answers, they had only to document them. During the Christian centuries in Europe these best minds in the Church developed their own techniques for using the past. Origen (185?–254), the precocious Alexandrian Greek, at the age of eighteen became head of the leading Christian theological academy there, and reputedly wrote some eight hundred works. Because he had castrated himself to ensure his purity, he could not be ordained as a priest, but his teachings made him the
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