Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity. Porphyry of Tyre and the Pagan-Christian Debate

Publié le par Luciana Soares

Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity

Porphyry of Tyre and the Pagan-Christian Debate

Michael Bland Simmons, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015

Description

This study offers an in-depth examination of Porphyrian soteriology, or the concept of the salvation of the soul, in the thought of Porphyry of Tyre, whose significance for late antique thought is immense. Porphyry’s concept of salvation is important for an understanding of those cataclysmic forces, not always theological, that helped convert the Roman Empire from paganism to Christianity. Porphyry, a disciple of Plotinus, was the last and greatest anti-Christian writer to vehemently attack the Church before the Constantinian revolution. His contribution to the pagan-Christian debate on universalism can thus shed light on the failure of paganism and the triumph of Christianity in late antiquity. In a broader historical and cultural context this study will address some of the issues central to the debate on universalism, in which Porphyry was passionately involved and which was becoming increasingly significant during the unprecedented series of economic, cultural, political, and military crises of the third century. As the author will argue, Porphyry may have failed to find one way of salvation for all humanity, he nonetheless arrived a hierarchical soteriology, something natural for a Neoplatonist, which resulted in an integrative religious and philosophical system. His system is examined in the context of other developing ideologies of universalism, during a period of unprecedented imperial crises, which were used by the emperors as an agent of political and religious unification. Christianity finally triumphed over its competitors owing to its being perceived to be the only universal salvation cult that was capable of bringing about this unification. In short, it won due to its unique universalist soteriology. By examining a rival to Christianity’s concept of universal salvation, this book will be valuable to students and scholars of ancient philosophy, patristics, church history, and late antiquity.

(Text from the publisher) 

Table of contents

Part I Porphyry of Tyre and the Quest for a Pagan Counterpart to Christian Universalism

1 Porphyry of Tyre

2 Contextualizing a Porphyrian Soteriology

3 De Philosophia ex oraculis

4 The Contra Christianos in the Context of Universalism

5 Eusebius and Porphyry

Part II The Historical and Cultural Context of Universalism

6 The Meaning of Salvation in a Greco-Roman Milieu

7 The Philosophia ex oraculis

8 Porphyry and Iamblichus

9 Eschatological Salvation

10 Historical Context

11 Religious Universalism

12 Conclusions

Link

https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190202392.001.0001/acprof-9780190202392

 

Conversion and Initiation in Antiquity

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Conversion and Initiation in Antiquity

Shifting Identities – Creating Change 

Birgitte Secher Bøgh (Editor), Peter Lang Verlag, 2014

Description

For decades, Arthur D. Nock’s famous definition of conversion and his distinction between conversion and adhesion have greatly influenced our understanding of individual religious transformation in the ancient world. The articles in this volume – originally presented as papers at the conference Conversion and Initiation in Antiquity (Ebeltoft, Denmark, December 2012) – aim to nuance this understanding. They do so by exploring different facets of these two phenomena in a wide range of religions in their own context and from new theoretical and empirical perspectives. The result is a compilation of many new insights into ancient initiation and conversion as well as their definitions and characteristics.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

Theme 1. The choice: reasons, motivations, and results.

Becoming Christian in Carthage in the Age of Tertullian

Conversion in the oldest Apocryphal Acts

Theme 2. Agency and agents: The context of decision.

Ontological Conversion: A Description and Analysis of Two Case Studies from Tertullian’s De Baptismo and Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis

Agents of Apostasy, Delegates of Disaffiliation

Theme 3. The change: the nature of reorientation.

‘The Devil is in the Details’. Hellenistic Mystery Initiation Rites: Bridge-Burning or Bridge-Building?

Conversion, Conflict, and the Drama of Social Reproduction: Narratives of Filial Resistance in Early Christianity and Modern Britain

There and Back Again: Temporary Immortality in the Mithras Liturgy

Theme 4. Education: instructing and guiding the convert.

The Role of Religious Education in six of the Pagan Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Period

Educating a Mithraist

Observations on Late Antique Rabbinic Sources on Instruction of Would-Be Converts

The Role of Philosophy and Education in Apologists’ Conversion to Christianity: The Case of Justin and Tatian

General Index

Index Locorum

Link

https://www.peterlang.com/document/1050447

Manuel de critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Manuel de critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament Introduction générale

Anne Boud’hors, Dominique Gonnet, Didier Lafleur, Christian-Bernard Amphoux, Éditions Safran, 2014

Description

La critique textuelle est l’étude des documents à partir desquels on établit le texte d’une oeuvre transmise par des manuscrits. Le Nouveau Testament nous est parvenu à travers de nombreux manuscrits entre lesquels il existe d’innombrables variantes. Certaines, les plus nombreuses, sont de simples fautes de copie ; mais des milliers d’autres sont les indices de l’évolution du texte des évangiles et des autres écrits du recueil. Le texte du Nouveau Testament a donc une histoire et, par cette histoire, une diversité dans sa transmission. Le premier volume de ce manuel propose une introduction générale qui rassemble les informations principales concernant le matériau dont nous disposons (manuscrits grecs, versions anciennes et citations patristiques), la méthode de traitement de ce matériau et ce que nous savons de l’histoire du texte du Nouveau Testament, d’abord manuscrit, puis imprimé à partir du XVIe siècle.

(Texte de la maison d’édition)

Table de matières

Avant-Propos

Introduction – Qu’est-ce que la critique textuelle ?

Première partie. Les sources

Chapitre 1. Les manuscrits grecs (Christian-B. Amphoux)

La notion de manuscrit; Le répertoire des manuscrits grecs; Le classement par type de texte; Liste des manuscrits grecs; Bibliographie

Chapitre 2. Les versions anciennes (Jean-Claude Haelewyck)

Les versions latines (Vetus latina et Vulgate); Les versions syriaques; Une version christo-palestinienne; Les versions coptes; Les versions arméniennes; Les versions géorgiennes; Les autres versions; Bibliographie

Chapitre 3. Les citations patristiques (Jean Reynard)

Les auteurs grecs; Les auteurs latins; Les auteurs syriaques (avec la collaboration de D. Gonnet);

Les auteurs coptes (par A. Boud’Hors)

Chapitre 4. L’Ancien Testament du Nouveau Testament (Gilles Dorival)

Les instruments de travail; Le texte de la LXX dans le Nouveau Testament; Le rôle déterminant de la LXX; Indications bibliographiques

Deuxième partie. La méthode

Chapitre 5. Le traitement des variantes (David Pastorelli)

La critique verbale; La critique externe; La critique interne; La méthode éclectique; Bibliographie

Annexe : Le traitement d’un lieu variant (Christian-B. Amphoux)

Critique verbale; Critique externe; Critique interne; Application : Marc 1,40-45 (Jean-Claude Haelewyck)

Troisième partie. L’histoire du texte

Chapitre 6. Histoire du texte grec manuscrit (Christian-B. Amphoux)

Les hypothèses historiques; La question du texte «occidental»; La période primitive; La période du texte alexandrin; Le texte byzantin; Conclusion; Annexe : Du texte «occidental» aux sources des évangiles; Bibliographie

Chapitre 7. Histoire du texte grec imprimé (J. Keith Elliott, avec la collaboration de C.-B. Amphoux et D. Lafleur)

L’ère du «texte reçu»; L’ère du texte alexandrin; Bibliographie;

Annexe 1 : Liste des manuscrits de Mill et Wettstein;

Annexe 2 : Le répertoire des manuscrits grecs du NT

Index

Index scripturaire; Index des textes et auteurs anciens; Index des auteurs modernes; Index des manuscrits

Link

http://www.safran.be/proddetail.php?prod=LCA22

Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Religious Competition in the Third Century CE:

Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World

Nathaniel DesRosiers,‎ Jordan D Rosenblum,‎ Lily Vuong, (eds), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Supplement edition, 2013

Description

The essays in this work examine issues related to authority, identity, or change in religious and philosophical traditions of the third century CE. This century is of particular interest because of the political and cultural developments and conflicts that occurred during this period, which in turn drastically changed the social and religious landscape of the Roman world. The specific focus of this volume edited by Jordan D. Rosenblum, Lily Vuong, and Nathaniel DesRosiers is to explore these major creative movements and to examine their strategies for developing and designating orthodoxies and orthopraxies. Contributors were encouraged to analyze or construct the intersections between parallel religious and philosophical communities of the third century, including points of contact either between or among Jews, Christians, pagans, and philosophers. As a result, the discussions of the material contained within this volume are both comparative in nature and interdisciplinary in approach, engaging participants who work in the fields of Religious Studies, Philosophy, History and Archaeology. The overall goal was to explore dialogues between individuals or groups that illuminate the mutual competition and influence that was extant among them, and to put forth a general methodological framework for the study of these ancient dialogues. These religious and philosophical dialogues are not only of great interest and import in their own right, but they also can help us to understand how later cultural and religious developments unfolded.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of content

Acknowledgements

Introduction

I: Assessing Religious Competition in the Third Century : Methods and Approaches

Daniel C. Ullucci – What Did He Say ? The Ideas of Religious Experts and the 99 %

Heidi Marx-Wolf – Pythagoras the Theurgist Porphyry and Iamblichus on the Role of Ritual in the Philosophical Life

Arthur P. Urbano – Narratives of Decline and Renewal in the Writing of Philosophical History

Steven J. Larson – The Trouble with Religious Tolerance in Roman Antiquity

Kevin M. McGinnis – Sanctifying Interpretation The Christian Interpreter as Priest in Origen

Andrew B. McGowan – Rehashing the Leftovers of Idols Cyprian and Early Christian Constructions of Sacrifice

II: Ritual Space and Practice

Gregg E. Gardner – Competitive Giving in the Third Century CE Early Rabbinic Approaches to Greco-Roman Civic Benefaction

Nathaniel P. DesRosiers – Oath and Anti-Oath Alternating Forms of Community Building in the Third Century

Jordan D. Rosenblum and Daniel C. Ullucci – Qualifying Rabbinic Ritual Agents Cognitive Science and the Early Rabbinic Kitchen

Lily C. Vuong – The Temple Persists Collective Memories of the Jewish Temple in Christian Narrative Imagination

Jacob A. Latham – Battling Bishops, the Roman Aristocracy, and the Contestation of Civic Space in Late Antique Rome

III: Modes of Competition

Karen B. Stern – Inscription as Religious Competition in Third-Century Syria

Gil P. Klein – Spatial Struggle Intercity Relations and the Topography of Intra-Rabbinic Competition

Ari Finkelstein – The Use of Jews in Julian’s Program “Dying for the Law” in the Letter to Theodorus – A Case Study

Todd S. Berzon – Heresiology as Ethnography Theorising Christian Difference

Todd C. Krulak – The Damascian Dichotomy Contention and Concord in the History of Late Platonism

Ross S. Kraemer – Gendering (the) Competition Religious Competition in the Third Century : Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World

List of Abbreviations

Collected Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index

Link

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-ecclesiastical-history/article/abs/religious-competition-in-the-third-century-ce-jews-christians-and-the-grecoroman-world-edited-by-jordan-d-rosenblum-lily-c-young-and-nathaniel-p-desrosiers-supplements-to-journal-of-ancient-judaism-15-pp-260-gottingen-vandenhoeck-and-ruprecht-2014-7999-978-3-525-55068-7/CE317EF95CAE3D39D64AB1AEE9D941CF

Priests and Prophets among Pagans, Jews and Christians

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Priests and Prophets among Pagans, Jews and Christians

Dignas B., Parker R., Stroumsa G.G. (eds), Leuven: Peeters, 2013

Description

The emperor Julian pointed out that the duties of priesthood were better understood among ‘the impious Galileans’ (i.e. Christians) than among his pagan contemporaries. Like the emperor, the essays in this volume look in both directions. Its pages are populated by very diverse figures: Plutarch, Aelius Aristides, Alexander of Abonouteichos, Daniel the Stylite, Gregory of Nazianzus, Shenoute of Atripe, Mani, Muhammad, and a host of anonymous Greek and Roman priests, prophets, and diviners. The priests of second temple Judaism are considered too. Both in the Greco-Roman and the early Christian worlds the neat division between priests and prophets proves hard to sustain. But in terms of fame and influence a strong contrast emerges between Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian prophets; this is why it is only among Jews and Christians that ‘false prophets’ are feared. Two recurrent preoccupations are the relation of priests and prophets to secular power, and the priest/prophet not as reality but as idea, an imagined figure. Leading scholars of the religions of antiquity come together in this wide-ranging and innovative volume.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Preface

Notes on Contributors

R. PARKER, Introduction

J. SCHEID, Priests and Prophets in Rome

T. RAJAK, Investment in/of the Jerusalem Priesthood in the Second Temple and Beyond

N. MCLYNN, Aelius Aristides and the Priests

B. DIGNAS, Greek Priests in the First Three Centuries CE: Traditional, Diverse, Wholly New?

N. BELAYCHE, Priests as Diviners: An Impact on Religious Changes in Imperial Anatolia?

J.N. BREMMER, The Representation of Priests and Priestesses in the Pagan and Christian Greek Novel

S. ELM, Priest and Prophet: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Concept of Christian Leadership as Theosis

K. TRAMPEDACH, Daniel Stylites and Leo I: an Uneasy Relationship between Saint and Emperor

G.G. STROUMSA, False Prophets of Early Christianity

Index of names, subjects and passages.

Link

https://www.degruyter.com/database/byz/entry/byz.62473d6d-6bbf-47c0-812e-b03d7390da1d/html

Apocalypse of the Alien God

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Apocalypse of the Alien God

Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism

Dylan M. Burns, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014

Description

In the second century, Platonist and Judeo-Christian thought were sufficiently friendly that a Greek philosopher could declare, « What is Plato but Moses speaking Greek? » Four hundred years later, a Christian emperor had ended the public teaching of subversive Platonic thought. When and how did this philosophical rupture occur? Dylan M. Burns argues that the fundamental break occurred in Rome, ca. 263, in the circle of the great mystic Plotinus, author of the Enneads. Groups of controversial Christian metaphysicians called Gnostics (« knowers ») frequented his seminars, disputed his views, and then disappeared from the history of philosophy—until the 1945 discovery, at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, of codices containing Gnostic literature, including versions of the books circulated by Plotinus’s Christian opponents. Blending state-of-the-art Greek metaphysics and ecstatic Jewish mysticism, these texts describe techniques for entering celestial realms, participating in the angelic liturgy, confronting the transcendent God, and even becoming a divine being oneself. They also describe the revelation of an alien God to his elect, a race of « foreigners » under the protection of the patriarch Seth, whose interventions will ultimately culminate in the end of the world. Apocalypse of the Alien God proposes a radical interpretation of these long-lost apocalypses, placing them firmly in the context of Judeo-Christian authorship rather than ascribing them to a pagan offshoot of Gnosticism. According to Burns, this Sethian literature emerged along the fault lines between Judaism and Christianity, drew on traditions known to scholars from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Enochic texts, and ultimately catalyzed the rivalry of Platonism with Christianity. Plunging the reader into the culture wars and classrooms of the high Empire, Apocalypse of the Alien God offers the most concrete social and historical description available of any group of Gnostic Christians as it explores the intersections of ancient Judaism, Christianity, Hellenism, myth, and philosophy.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

ABBREVIATIONS

Introduction

CHAPTER 1 – Culture Wars

CHAPTER 2 – Plotinus Against His Gnostic Friends

CHAPTER 3 – Other Ways of Writing

CHAPTER 4 – The Descent

CHAPTER 5 – The Ascent

CHAPTER 6 – The Crown

CHAPTER 7 – Between Judaism, Christianity, and Neoplatonism

APPENDIX: READING PORPHYRY ON THE GNOSTIC HERETICS AND THEIR APOCALYPSES

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Link

https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15230.html

Marius Victorinus entre gnosticisme et néoplatonisme

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Marius Victorinus entre gnosticisme et néoplatonisme

Description et organisation

L’iniziativa dei seminari sul Neoplatonismo latino (coordinati da A. Galonnier e H. Casanova Robin) è particolarmente importante per gettare luce su un aspetto meno conosciuto della filosofia platonica, che di solito privilegia il mondo greco. Per quanto riguarda Mario Vittorino, dopo gli studi magistrali di Pierre Hadot, la ricerca ha ulteriormente messo in evidenza quanto profondamente influenzato dalla filosofia platonica fosse stato lo scrittore, che elabora in tal modo una visione particolarmente originale del cristianesimo niceno. Inoltre, Vittorino nella sua speculazione serba traccia di influenze meno ‘ortodosse’, vale a dire dottrine caldaiche e gnostiche. Pur se poco conosciuto, questo autore è un testimone eloquente dell’osmosi tra filosofia neoplatonica e correnti esoteriche, senza tralasciare l’applicazione di tale schema alla dottrina cristiana. Non a caso Agostino ne traccia un ritratto all’inizio del libro 8 delle Confessioni, quasi a voler dimostrare che cristianesimo e filosofia possono interagire tra loro.

Je voudrais signaler que dans la journée du 05 avril 2014 (salle D116 – 1er étage) à 15h 45 je ferai une conférence ayant comme titre : « Marius Victorinus entre gnosticisme et néoplatonisme » (Chiara O. Tommasi Moreschini – Université de Pise).

Cette conférence aura lieu à la Maison de la recherche de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 28 rue Serpente 75006 Paris et se déroulera dans le cadre du séminaire « La tradition du néoplatonisme latin au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance » organisé par Hélène Casanova-Robin et Alain Galonnier, avec la collaboration d’Alice Lamy, et avec le soutien de THETA (CNRS – Centre Jean Pépin) et EA 4081 « Rome et ses renaissances » (Université Paris-Sorbonne). Voici le propos de ce séminaire : « La réalité d’une école néoplatonicienne latine fait débat depuis de nombreuses années. Les interrogations se bousculent donc à son sujet : a-t-elle vraiment existé, structurée par une tendance doctrinale et des représentants conscients d’y appartenir, ou n’y eut-il que des auteurs d’expression latine dispersés, qui se sont référés, chacun à sa manière, avec des objectifs et des résultats différents, aux penseurs néoplatoniciens grecs ? Dans quelle mesure les multiples emprunts faits à ces derniers que l’on peut y repérer trahissent-ils une adhésion plus ou moins profonde au système qui les sous-tend, ou une réception superficielle et une pure instrumentalisation ? Peut-on concevoir un tel mouvement en dehors du commentarisme strict ? Le néoplatonisme chrétien serait-il le seul à avoir constitué une tradition, renvoyant le courant païen à la nébuleuse évoquée ? C’est à ce genre de questions, et à certaines autres, que nous nous efforcerons de répondre, en parcourant, sous divers éclairages, plus de mille ans d’histoire de la pensée occidentale ».

Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam

Mayer, Wendy & Neil, Berlin: De Gruyter, Bronwen, 2013

Description

Conflict has been an inescapable facet of religion from its very beginnings. This volume offers insight into the mechanisms at play in the centuries from the Jesus-movement’s first attempts to define itself over and against Judaism to the beginnings of Islam. Profiling research by scholars of the Centre for Early Christian Studies at Australian Catholic University, the essays document inter- and intra-religious conflict from a variety of angles. Topics relevant to the early centuries range from religious conflict between different parts of the Christian canon, types of conflict, the origins of conflict, strategies for winning, for conflict resolution, and the emergence of a language of conflict. For the fourth to seventh centuries case studies from Asia Minor, Syria, Constantinople, Gaul, Arabia and Egypt are presented. The volume closes with examinations of the Christian and Jewish response to Islam, and of Islam’s response to Christianity. Given the political and religious tensions in the world today, this volume is well positioned to find relevance and meaning in societies still grappling with the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Abbreviations

Religious Conflict: Definitions, Problems and Theoretical Approaches

Setting the Record Straight at Galatia: Paul’s Narratio (Gal 1:13–2:14) as Response to the Galatian Conflict – Elmer, Ian J.

Early Christian Polemic against Jews and the Persecution of Christians in Rome by Nero – McLaren, James S.

The Use of Isaiah 28:11–12 in 1 Corinthians 14:21 – Theophilos, Michael P. / Smith, A.M.

Conflict in the Canon: The Pauline Literature and the Gospel of Matthew – Sim, David C.

Rewriting: The Path from Apocryphal to Heretical – Piovanelli, Pierluigi

Inter-City Conflict in the Story of St Michael of Chonai – Cadwallader, Alan H.

John Chrysostom and the Anomoeans: Shaping an Antiochene Perspective on Christology – Laird, Raymond J.

Media Manipulation as a Tool in Religious Conflict: Controlling the Narrative Surrounding the Deposition of John Chrysostom – Mayer, Wendy

Zosimus and the Gallic Churches – Dunn, Geoffrey D.

Religious Conflict between Antioch and Alexandria c. 565–630 CE – Allen, Pauline

Christian-Jewish Conflict in the Light of Heraclius’ Forced Conversions and the Beginning of Islam – Gador-Whyte, Sarah

The Earliest Greek Understandings of Islam: John of Damascus and Theophanes the Confessor – Neil, Bronwen

Muhammad the Eschatological Prophet – Casey, Damien

List of Contributors

Index of Names and Places

General Index

Link

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110291940/html

From Shame to Sin

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

From Shame to Sin

The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity

Kyle Harper, New Jersey: Harvard Univeristy Press, 2013

Description

When Rome was at its height, an emperor’s male beloved, victim of an untimely death, would be worshipped around the empire as a god. In this same society, the routine sexual exploitation of poor and enslaved women was abetted by public institutions. Four centuries later, a Roman emperor commanded the mutilation of men caught in same-sex affairs, even as he affirmed the moral dignity of women without any civic claim to honor. The gradual transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian marks one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center of it all was sex. Exploring sources in literature, philosophy, and art, Kyle Harper examines the rise of Christianity as a turning point in the history of sexuality and helps us see how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution. While Roman sexual culture was frankly and freely erotic, it was not completely unmoored from constraint. Offending against sexual morality was cause for shame, experienced through social condemnation. The rise of Christianity fundamentally changed the ethics of sexual behavior. In matters of morality, divine judgment transcended that of mere mortals, and shame — a social concept — gave way to the theological notion of sin. This transformed understanding led to Christianity’s explicit prohibitions of homosexuality, extramarital love, and prostitution. Most profound, however, was the emergence of the idea of free will in Christian dogma, which made all human action, including sexual behavior, accountable to the spiritual, not the physical, world.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Preface

Introduction: From City to Cosmos

  1. The Moralities of Sex in the Roman Empire
  2. The Will and the World in Early Christian Sexuality
  3. Church, Society, and Sex in the Age of Triumph
  4. Revolutionizing Romance in the Late Classical World

Conclusion: Sex and the Twilight of Antiquity

Abbreviations

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Link

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660014

Christians, Gnostics and Philosophers in Late Antiquity

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Christians, Gnostics and Philosophers in Late Antiquity

Mark Edwards, London: Routledge, 2012

Description

Gnosticism, Christianity and late antique philosophy are often studied separately; when studied together they are too often conflated. These articles set out to show that we misunderstand all three phenomena if we take either approach. We cannot interpret, or even identify, Christian Gnosticism without Platonic evidence; we may even discover that Gnosticism throws unexpected light on the Platonic imagination. At the same time, if we read writers like Origen simply as Christian Platonists, or bring Christians and philosophers together under the porous umbrella of « monotheism », we ignore fundamental features of both traditions. To grasp what made Christianity distinctive, we must look at the questions asked in the studies here, not merely what Christians appropriated but how it was appropriated. What did the pagan gods mean to a Christian poet of the fifth century? What did Paul quote when he thought he was quoting Greek poetry? What did Socrates mean to the Christians, and can we trust their memories when they appeal to lost fragments of the Presocratics? When pagans accuse the Christians of moral turpitude, do they know more or less about them than we do? What divides Augustine, the disenchanted Platonist, from his Neoplatonic contemporaries? And what God or gods await the Neoplatonist when he dies?

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Preface

Part I Christians and Pagans in Dispute: Quoting Aratus: Acts 17.28

Some early Christian immoralities

Justin’s logos and the word of God

Satire and verisimilitude: Christianity in Lucian’s Peregrinus

Xenophanes Christianus?

Pagan and Christian monotheism in the age of Constantine

Notes on the date and venue of the Oration to the Saints

Dracontius the African and the fate of Rome.

Part II Gnostic Thought and its Milieu: Gnostics and Valentians in the church fathers

Neglected texts in the study of Gnosticism

Pauline Platonism: the myth of Valentinus

The tale of Cupid and Psyche

Porphyry’s Cave of the Nymphs and the Gnostic controversy

Part III Christianity and the Platonic Tradition: Socrates and the early Church’ Origen’s Platonism: questions and caveats

Ammonius, teacher of Origen

Birth, death and divinity in Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus

Porphyry and the intelligible triad

The figure of love in Augustine and in Proclus the neoplatonist

Index

Link

https://www.routledge.com/Christians-Gnostics-and-Philosophers-in-Late-Antiquity/Edwards/p/book/9781138115682