Philosophy and Salvation in Greek Religion

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Philosophy and Salvation in Greek Religion

Vishwa Adluri (ed), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013

Description

Ever since Vlastos’ “Theology and Philosophy in Early Greek Thought,” scholars have known that a consideration of ancient philosophy without attention to its theological, cosmological and soteriological dimensions remains onesided. Yet, philosophers continue to discuss thinkers such as Parmenides and Plato without knowledge of their debt to the archaic religious traditions. Perhaps our own religious prejudices allow us to see only a “polis religion” in Greek religion, while our modern philosophical openness and emphasis on reason induce us to rehabilitate ancient philosophy by what we consider the highest standard of knowledge: proper argumentation. Yet, it is possible to see ancient philosophy as operating according to a different system of meaning, a different “logic.” Such a different sense of logic operates in myth and other narratives, where the argument is neither completely illogical nor rational in the positivist sense. The articles in this volume undertake a critical engagement with this unspoken legacy of Greek religion. The aim of the volume as a whole is to show how, beyond the formalities and fallacies of arguments, something more profound is at stake in ancient philosophy: the salvation of the philosopher-initiate.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Vishwa Adluri – Philosophy, Salvation, and the Mortal Condition

Miguel Herrero de Juregui – Salvation for the Wanderer: Odysseus, the Gold Leaves, and Empedocles

Arbogast Schmitt – Self-Determination and Freedom: The Relationship of God and Man in Homer. Translated by Joydeep Bagchee

Walter Burkert – Parmenides’ Proem and Pythagoras’ Descent. Translated by Joydeep Bagchee

Alberto Bernabé – Ὁ Πλάτων παρωιδεῖ τὰ Ὀρφέως Plato’s Transposition of Orphic Netherworld Imagery

Barbara Sattler – The Eleusinian Mysteries in Pre-Platonic Thought: Metaphor, Practice and Imagery for Plato’s Symposium

Stephen Menn – Plato’s Soteriology ?

Vishwa Adluri & John Lenz – From Politics to Salvation through Philosophy: Herodotus’ Histories and Plato’s Republic

John Bussanich – Rebirth Eschatology in Plato and Plotinus

Luc Brisson – Memory and the Soul’s Destiny in Plotinus. Translated by Michael Chase

Svetla Slaveva-Griffin – Between the Two Realms: Plotinus’ Pure Soul

John Finamore – Iamblichus, Theurgy, and the Soul’s Ascent

About the Contributors

Bibliography

Index of terms

Link

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110276381/html

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity

Publié le par Luciana Soares

Gnostic Religion in Antiquity

Roelof van den Broek, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013

Description

Gnostic religion is the expression of a religious worldview which is dominated by the concept of Gnosis, an esoteric knowledge of God and the human being which grants salvation to those who possess it. Roelof van den Broek presents here a fresh approach to the gnostic current of Late Antiquity within its historical and religious context, based on sources in Greek, Latin and Coptic, including discussions of the individual works of preserved gnostic literature. Van den Broek explores the various gnostic interpretations of the Christian faith that were current in the second and third centuries, whilst showing that despite its influence on early Christianity, gnostic religion was not a typically Christian phenomenon. This book will be of interest to theologians, historians of religion, students and scholars of the history of Late Antiquity and early Christianity, as well as specialists in ancient gnostic and hermetic traditions.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Preface page vii

List of abbreviations viii

1 Gnosis and gnostic religion 1

2 Gnostic literature I: tradition 13

The Greek tradition 13

The Coptic tradition 16

3 Gnostic literature II: texts 25

Classification 25

Non-gnostic or hardly gnostic writings in gnostic collections 29

The Gospel of Thomas and related texts 37

The Barbelo myth and the gnostic exegesis of Genesis 44

The Barbelo myth and heavenly journeys 71

Valentinian texts 91 Polemical texts 108

Other mythological traditions 116

4 Anti-gnostic literature 126

Irenaeus 126 Hippolytus 129

Epiphanius 132

Plotinus and his pupils 133

5 Gnosis: essence and expressions 136

The gnostic experience 136

God and his world 150

Mankind and its world 168

Salvation 184

6 Backgrounds

206 The quest for the source

206 Greek philosophy (Platonism)

207 Judaism 211

Christianity 220

The spirit of the age 226

Bibliography 232

Index of ancient sources 248

Index of names and subjects 253

Link

https://www.cambridge.org/br/academic/subjects/religion/religion-general-interest/gnostic-religion-antiquity?format=HB&isbn=9781107031371

Mystical Monotheism: A Study in Ancient Platonic Theology

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Mystical Monotheism

A Study in Ancient Platonic Theology

John Peter Kenney, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2010

Description

In this engaging and provocative study, John Peter Kenney examines the emergence of monotheism within Greco-Roman philosophical theology by tracing the changing character of ancient realism from Plato through Plotinus. Besides acknowledging the philosophical and theological significance of such ancient thinkers as Plutarch, Numenius, Alcinous, and Atticus, he demonstrates the central importance of Plotinus in clarifying the relation of the intelligible world to divinity. Kenney focuses especially on Plotinus’s novel concept of deity, arguing that it constitutes a type of mystical monotheism based upon an ultimate and inclusive divine One beyond description or discursive knowledge. Presenting difficult material with grace and clarity, Kenney takes a wide-ranging view of the development of ancient Platonic theology from a philosophical perspective and synthesizes familiar elements in a new way. His is a revisionist thesis with significant implications for the study of Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian thought in this period and for the history of Western religious thought in general.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Preface

Introduction

I The Foundations of Hellenic Monotheism

1 Degrees of Reality

2 Divine Ideas

3 The Emergence of Hellenic Monotheism

4 The Demiurgic Theology of Plutarch

5 Early Platonic Theism

II The Demotion of the Demiurge

1 Numenius and the Degrees of Divinity

2 The Didaskalikos of Alcinous

3 The Exemplarism of the Athenian School

4 Middle Platonic Theology

III The Mystical Monotheism of Plotinus

1 Divine Simplicity

2 Intellect and Ideas

3 Hid Divinity

Conclusion: Mystical Monotheism

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Link

https://www.persee.fr/doc/assr_0335-5985_1996_num_96_1_1049_t1_0101_0000_2

Religion in the Ancient Greek City 

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Religion in the Ancient Greek City 

Louise Bruit Zaidman , Pauline Schmitt Pantel, Paul Cartledge (trans.), New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000

Description

This book is an English translation of the French work La Religion Grecque. Its purpose is to consider how religious beliefs and cultic rituals were given expression in ancient Greece. The chapters cover first ritual and then myth, rooting the account in the practices of the classical city while also taking seriously the world of the imagination. For this edition the bibliography has been substantially revised to meet the needs of a mainly student, English-speaking readership. The book is enriched throughout by illustrations, and by quotations from original sources.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

List of illustrations

Author’s preface to the English translation

Translator’s introduction

List of sources

PART I – Introduction: How should we study Greek civic religion?

1 – The necessity of cultural estrangement

2 – Some fundamental notions

3 – Sources of evidence

PART II – Cult-practices

4 – Rituals

5 – Religious personnel

6 – Places of cult

7 – Rites of passage

8 – Settings of religious life

9 – Religion and political life

10 – The festival system: the Athenian case

11 – The Panhellenic cults

PART III – Systems for representing the divine

12 – Myths and mythology

13 – A polytheistic religion

14 – Forms of imaginative projection

PART IV – Envoi

15 – Concluding reflections

Appendixes

I – The classical Greek temple

II – The monuments of the Athenian Akropolis

Bibliography

Index

Link

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/religion-in-the-ancient-greek-city/3A56C349D252A6B46555121CFCB26513

Greek Thought. A Guide to Classical Knowledge

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Greek Thought

A Guide to Classical Knowledge

Jacques Brunschwig and Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd (eds), Catherine Porter (trans.), New Jersey: Harvard University Press, 2000

Description

Ancient Greek thought is the essential wellspring from which the intellectual, ethical, and political civilization of the West draws and to which, even today, we repeatedly return. In more than sixty essays by an international team of scholars, this volume explores the full breadth and reach of Greek thought — investigating what the Greeks knew as well as what they thought about what they knew, and what they believed, invented, and understood about the conditions and possibilities of knowing. Calling attention to the characteristic reflexivity of Greek thought, the analysis in this book reminds us of what our own reflections owe to theirs. In sections devoted to philosophy, politics, the pursuit of knowledge, major thinkers, and schools of thought, this work shows us the Greeks looking at themselves, establishing the terms for understanding life, language, production, and action. The authors evoke not history, but the stories the Greeks told themselves about history; not their poetry, but their poetics; not their speeches, but their rhetoric. Essays that survey political, scientific, and philosophical ideas, such as those on Utopia and the Critique of Politics, Observation and Research, and Ethics; others on specific fields from Astronomy and History to Mathematics and Medicine; new perspectives on major figures, from Anaxagoras to Zeno of Elea; studies of core traditions from the Milesians to the various versions of Platonism: together these offer a sense of the unquenchable thirst for knowledge that marked Greek civilization—and that Aristotle considered a natural and universal trait of humankind. With thirty-two pages of color illustrations, this work conveys the splendor and vitality of the Greek intellectual adventure.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Translators’ Note

Introduction: On Home Ground in a Distant Land

Maps

Philosophy

The Philosopher

Images of the World

Myth and Knowledge

The Question of Being

Epistemology

Ethics

Politics

The Statesman As Political Actor

Inventing Politics

Utopia and the Critique of Politics

The Sage and Politics

The Pursuit of Knowledge

Schools and Sites of Learning

Observation and Research

Demonstration and the Idea of Science

Astronomy

Cosmology

Geography

Harmonics

History

Language

Logic

Mathematics

Medicine

Physics

Poetics

Rhetoric

Technology

Theology and Divination

Theories of Religion

Major Figures

Anaxagoras

Antisthenes

Archimedes

Aristotle

Democritus

Epicurus

Euclid

Galen

Heraclitus

Herodotus

Hippocrates

Parmenides

Plato

Plotinus

Plutarch

Polybius

Protagoras

Ptolemy

Pyrrhon

Socrates

Thucydides

Xenophon

Zeno

Currents of Thought

The Academy

Aristotelianism

Cynicism

Hellenism and Christianity

Hellenism and Judaism

The Milesians

Platonism

Pythagoreanism

Skepticism

Sophists

Stoicism

Chronology

Contributors

Illustration Sources

Index

Link

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674002616

Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy. An Introduction

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy

An Introduction

Stephen Clark, London: Bloomsbury, 2013

Description

Although the Greeks were responsible for the first systematic philosophy of which we have any record, they were not alone in the Mediterranean world and were happy to draw inspiration from other traditions; traditions that are now largely neglected by philosophers and scholars. This book tells the story of ‘Greek Philosophy’, paying due attention to its historical context and the contributions made by Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians and even barbarians from northern Europe. Stephen Clark provides a narrative history of the philosophical traditions that took shape over several centuries in the Mediterranean world and offers a comprehensive survey of this crucial period in the history of philosophy. The book includes a thorough historical and philosophical overview of all the key thinkers, events and ideas that characterized the period and explores in detail central themes such as the contest of gods and giants, the contrast between the reality and appearance, and the idea of the philosopher. Ideal for undergraduate students, this concise and accessible book provides a comprehensive guide to a fascinating period in the history of philosophy.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Map

1. Beginnings

2. Influence from Outside

3. Inspired Thinkers

4. Travellers and Stay-at-Homes

5. Divine Plato

6. The Aristotelian Synthesis

7. Living the Philosophical Life

8. Ordinary and Supernatural Lives

9. Late Antiquity

10. An End and a Beginning

Endnotes

Recommended Reading

Works Cited

Index

Link

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ancient-mediterranean-philosophy-9781441123596/

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

Dreams as Divine Communication in Christianity: From Hermas to Aquinas

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Dreams as Divine Communication in Christianity

From Hermas to Aquinas

Koet B.J., Leuven: Peeters, 2012

Description

In the book presented here, one encounters dreams and visions from the history of Christianity. Faculty members of the Tilburg School of Theology (TST; Tilburg University, The Netherlands) and other (Dutch and Flemish) experts in theology, Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages present a collection of articles examining the phenomenon of dreaming in the Christian realm from the first to the thirteenth century. Their aim is to investigate the dream world of Christians as a source of historical theology and spirituality. They try to show and explain the importance and function of dreams in the context of the texts discussed, meanwhile making these texts accessible and understandable to the people of today. By contextualizing those dreams in their own historical imagery, the authors want to give the reader some insight into the fascinating dream world of the past, which in turn will inspire him or her to consider the dream world of today.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Preface

Notes on Contributors

B.J. KOET, Introducing Dreaming from Hermas to Aquinas

J. VERHEYDEN AND M. GRUNDEKEN, The Spirit Before the Letter: Dreams and Visions as the Legitimation of the Shepherd of Hermas. A Study of Vision

K. DE BRABANDER, Tertullian’s Theory of Dreams (De anima 45-49): Some Observations towards a Better Understanding

V. HUNINK, ‘With the Taste of Something Sweet Still in my Mouth’: Perpetua’s Visions

B.J. KOET, Jerome’s and Augustine’s Conversion to Scripture through the Portal of Dreams (Ep. 22 and Conf. 3 and 8)

G. DE NIE, ‘A Smiling Serene Face’: Face-to-Face Encounters in Early Christian Dream Visions

A. SMEETS, The Dazzle of Dawn: Visions, Dreams and Thoughts on Dreams by Gregory the Great

W. VERBAAL, Mysteria somniorum: Bernard of Clairvaux and the Pedagogic of Dreaming

K. PANSTERS, Franciscus somnians: Dreams in Late Medieval Franciscan Biography

G.P. FREEMAN, Clare of Assisi’s Vision of Francis: On the Interpretation of a Remarkable Vision

H. GORIS, Thomas Aquinas on Dreams

List of Abbreviations

Index of names, subjects and passages

Link

https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014.05.47/

Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety

Publié le par Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety

Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine

E. R. Dodds, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1965

Description

Interest in the world of Late Antiquity is currently undergoing a significant revival, and in this provocative book, now reissued in paperback, E. R. Dodds anticipated some of the themes now engaging scholars. There is abundant material for the study of religious experience in late antiquity, and through it Professor Dodds examines, from a sociological and psychological standpoint, the personal religious attitudes and experiences common to pagans and Christians in the period between Marcus Aurelius and Constantine. He looks first at general attitudes to the world and the human condition before turning to specific types of human experience. World-hatred and asceticism, dreams and states of possession, and pagan and Christian mysticism are all discussed. Finally Dodds considers both pagan views of Christianity and Christian views of paganism as they emerge in the literature of the time. Although primarily written for social and religious historians, this study will also appeal to all those interested in the ancient world and its thought.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

FOREWORD BY HENRY CHADWICK

PREFACE

KEY TO REFERENCES

Dedication

I – MAN AND THE MATERIAL WORLD

II – MAN AND THE DAEMONIC WORLD

III – MAN AND THE DIVINE WORLD

IV – THE DIALOGUE OF PAGANISM WITH CHRISTIANITY

INDEX

Link

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pagan-and-christian-in-an-age-of-anxiety/1922795632A358AAC795C531BEA05F51

A Companion to Second-Century Christian ‘Heretics’

Publié le par Luciana Soares

A Companion to Second-Century Christian ‘Heretics’

Petri Luomanen & Antti Marjanen (eds), Leiden: Brill, 2008

Description

The book illuminates “the other side” of early Christianity by examining thinkers and movements that were embraced by many second-century religious seekers as legitimate forms of Christianity, but which are now largely forgotten, or are known only from the characteristics attributed to them in the writings of their main adversaries. The collection deals with the following teachers and movements: Basilides, Sethianism, Valentinus’ school, Marcion, Tatian, Bardaisan, Montanists, Cerinthus, Ebionites, Nazarenes, Jewish-Christianity of the Pseudo-Clementines, and Elchasites. Where appropriate, the authors have included an overview of the life and significant publications of the “heretics,” along with a description of their theologies and movements. Therefore, this volume can serve as a handbook of the second-century “heretics” and their “heresies.” Since all the chapters have been written by specialists who wrestle daily with their research themes, the contributions also offer new perspectives and insights stimulating further discussion on this fascinating—but often neglected—side of early Christianity.

(Text from the publisher)

Table of contents

Basilides the Gnostic

Author: Birger A. Pearson

Pages: 1–31

Sethianism

Author: Michael A. Williams

Pages: 32–63

The School of Valentinus

Author: Ismo Dunderberg

Pages: 64–99

Marcion

Author: Heikki Räisänen

Pages: 100–124

Tatian the Assyrian

Author: William L. Petersen

Pages: 125–158

Bardaisan of Edessa

Author: Nicola Denzey

Pages: 159–184

Montanism: Egalitarian Ecstatic “New Prophecy”

Author: Antti Marjanen

Pages: 185–212

Cerinthus

Author: Matti Myllykoski

Pages: 213–246

Ebionites

Author: Sakari Häkkinen

Pages: 247–278

Nazarenes

Author: Petri Luomanen

Pages: 279–314

Jewish Christianity of the Pseudo-Clementines

Author: F. Stanley Jones

Pages: 315–334

Elchasaites and Their Book

Author: Gerard P. Luttikhuizen

Pages: 335–364

Notes on Contributors

Editors: Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen

Pages: 365–367

Index of Modern Authors

Editors: Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen

Pages: 369–373

General Index

Editors: Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen

Pages: 374–385

Link

https://brill.com/view/title/17867