Dubious or Spurious Writings.
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Gregory Thaumaturgus
Gregory Thaumaturgus
213 CE–270 CE · Caesarea
Gregory Thaumaturgus ("the Wonderworker," c. 213–270 CE) was a bishop of Neocaesarea in Pontus and one of Origen's most celebrated students. Born Theodore into a pagan family in Neocaesarea, he traveled to Caesarea Maritima in Palestine to study under Origen for roughly five years, producing a renowned Panegyric in Origen's honor upon departure. Returning to Pontus as bishop around 238–240 CE, he is credited with the dramatic Christianization of the region; later hagiographic tradition claims he found only seventeen Christians on arrival and left only seventeen pagans at his death — a figure not attested in early sources and best read as a rhetorical emblem of his missionary achievement.
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Stop 2 of 3233–238Theological Studies
CaesareaקיסריהLand of Israel, Roman period
What they did here
Studied under Origen at Caesarea Maritima for approximately five years (c. 233–238 CE), an experience he documented in his surviving Panegyric to Origen — the primary source for this period of his life.
About Caesarea
# Caesarea Built by King Herod the Great in the 1st century BCE on the Mediterranean coast and named to honor the Roman emperor, Caesarea became one of the most magnificent cities in the Roman East, ruled directly by imperial governors who made it their administrative center. The city commanded a dramatic coastline where the sea breeze tempered the hot, arid climate of the Levantine coast, while Herod's engineering marvels—an artificial harbor, grand theaters, temples, and a hippodrome—transformed raw shoreline into a cosmopolitan port. Though predominantly pagan and Greco-Roman in character, Caesarea hosted a substantial Jewish population whose status reflected the city's political importance; here lived both prosperous merchants and scholars who engaged deeply with Greek learning and Roman law, creating a unique intellectual culture where Jewish and Hellenistic thought intersected. The city served as a crucial center for Jewish legal discussion and interpretation during the tannaitic period, and its harbor made it a gateway through which Jewish travelers, ideas, and texts flowed to communities throughout the Mediterranean world. The massive stone amphitheater, still partially standing, echoes with the memory of both Roman spectacles and the crowds who gathered to hear great teachers debate the intricacies of Torah in this strangest of Jewish cities—one where Torah scholarship flourished in the shadow of pagan temples and imperial power.