gyamby, giamblico

.........................4. Christ as Perfect Embodied Mediation 229
5. Eucharist as Sign: A Sign Theory of Language Applied to Cult 239
Chapter VI: Conclusion 256
Bibliography 261
v
List of Abbreviations
Abst. Porphyry, de Abstinentia
agon. Augustine, De agone christiano
Ascl. Asclepius
C.Cels. Origen, Contra Celsum
CMAG Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs
cod. Photius, Bibliothecae Codices
of discourse cannot endure a picture of
differentiation and flux, and dictate a retrenchment to the linguistic conventions of
“Christianity” and “Antiquity” as reasonably fixed quantities that can be observed in
“highly intense encounters.” The relatively nebulous “discontinuity and continuity …
destruction and conservation” can quickly become quickly the poles in a balanced
dialectic, where Christianity and Antiquity confront us yet again, each with its strange
21 Markschies (2006) 22, who goes on to show the vagary that has often attended subsequent
attempts to define the relationship between the categories, “Antiquity” and “Christianity.” For
Leopold Zscharnack (1877‑1955), they are “two basic elements that have freely merged so as to
become inseparable” (L. Zscharnack, Antike und Christentum, in 2RGG 1 [1927], 378‑390 [378]). For
Heinrich Kraft, Christianity “experienced a radical change” in its confrontation with Antiquity:
“it has itself become antiquity.” (H. Kraft, Antike und Christentum, in 1RGG 1 [1957], 436‑449
[436]).
22 Adopting the language of Jacques Fontaine, “Christentum ist auch Antike,” JAC 25 (1982) 5‑27,
he observes that the process of interaction must be understood “not only as Auseinandersetzung,
that is, as opposition and confrontation between the culture of the Greco‑Roman world and
Christianity, but also as their Ineinandersetzung, that is, as “intraposition,” integration and new
creation (1998) 6.
23 Betz (1998) 7.
25
insistence on singularity.24 It may be difficult at times to differentiate, on the one hand
“merging with” or “becoming” Antiquity offered by some scholars, 25 and, on the other
hand, Betz’s broad “concept of ‘Antiquity and Christianity’” that seems intent on fusing
the two categories. In like manner, it may be hard to distinguish between Dölger’s
“rejection” and “adjustment” and Betz’s “destruction and conservation.” But then
again, merely to submerge Betz’s thought in that of his forbears may be unfair. Surely
he is innocent of positing or assuming a primordial “pure” Christianity susceptible to
von Harnack’s corruptions or to Dölger’s constructive engagement, just as he seems to
recognize that the notion of Christianity “becoming” Antiquity runs the risk of banality.
Certainly Betz can be taken to mean that insofar as we must employ the terms – and we
must – we ought to do so in a modest way, guarding against the dangers of
“hypostasizing” Christianity or Antiquity as stable entities, and noting carefully where
we can discern parallel phenomena, apparent similarity, conscious or unconscious
difference; we may see Christianity as a complication that enters into the Mediterranean
world, and in part explicable in terms of Auseinandersetzung and Ineinandersetzung,
discontinuity and continuity, destruction and conservation.
Betz does in fact attempt to illustrate something very like this approach, showing
that the earliest identifiable Christianity emerges from within a pre‑existent engagement
of Judaism and Hellenism, where John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth are Jews
concerned about the theological and practical integrity of obedience
toward the will of God as revealed in the Torah, concerns heightened in
view of the external and internal provocations and challenges by the
culture in the heartland of the Jews.
24 This is essentially the critique of Betz offered by Markschies (2006) 23, who sees his approach as
fundamentally differing little from that of his forbears. It may be difficult at times to discern the
difference between Zscharnack’s “merging with” or Kraft ‘s “becoming” Antiquity on the one
hand, and Betz’s broad “concept” of “Antiquity and Christianity” that seems intent on blending
them. In like manner, it may be hard to distinguish between Dölger’s “rejection” and
“adjustment” and Betz’s “destruction and conservation.” To be fair, Markschies does
acknowledge the ubiquitous need for reducing “the eternal richness of a life lived” to “types for
didactical purposes” (32): howsoever conscious of reduction we may be, we will inevitably lapse
into using them.
25 Zscharnack and Kraft’s terms, respectively.
26
In this telling, “Christianity” does not simply appear, and then variously resist or
assimilate aspects of surrounding polytheism. The Jews are already so engaged with the
Greco‑Roman world, and the “teachings and activities [of Jesus] occurred as his
response to the question of how the kingdom of God could be manifest in the midst of
the Roman occupation and under the influence of pagan life in Palestine.”26 To be sure,
Christianity rapidly moves beyond a particular rabbi’s contribution to the Jewish
engagement with Roman political and cultural hegemony, inasmuch as its focus shifts
from such preoccupations to the person of Jesus himself. This much Betz readily grants;
but surely valid is his argument that from its shadowy origins Christianity is already a
variation on a theme, a phase in provincial response to diverse cultural phenomena that
may reasonably be classed as Greco‑Roman “Antiquity.” In other words, pace
Markschies, it is not clear that Betz is as guilty of “isolating ‘Antiquity’ and ‘Christianity’
as two stable and originally independent entities.” His “Christianity” is hardly stable,
even from its inception. And perhaps, finally, his approach is not at odds with the
admonition that “the danger [of positing Christianity and Antiquity as separate, stable
entities] is only removed when antique Christianity is firmly regionalized and also
considered as constituting different groups with particular identities.”27 Betz’s intricate,
if brief account of a Jewish pre‑Christianity in Palestine is surely consistent with such a
program; and to such a program there is surely no alternative if we are to do justice to
Christianity in all of its local diversity, avoiding excessive generalization.
Whatever construction we choose, we must retain a basic awareness that would
isolate Christianity as a “unique” phenomenon tends to paralyze comparison, tainting
scholarship with a false notion of what comparison involves. We have already seen how
many earlier attempts at comparing Christianity with ambient religions really involved
the project of comparing Christianity with itself, that is, of comparing it with, and by
definition isolating it from, its own later “corrupt” forms, which are themselves either
“Catholic” or influenced by “pagan” religious forms. This tendency remains prominent
26 Betz (1998) 8.
27 ibid. 30.
27
in later scholarship, where the primary motivations are no longer anti‑Catholic, but
where the governing assumptions still work to protect Christianity from association
with mystery religions of late antiquity. This modern approach blends an absolute
ontological claim for the incomparability of the “Christ event,” defined as the “death and
resurrection of Jesus,” with an historical claim for the incomparability of the Christian
kerygma itself, a shift described by Smith as an “illicit transfer” of a “theological
affirmation of absolute uniqueness to an historical statement that, standing alone, could
never assert more than relative uniqueness, that is to say, a quite ordinary postulation of
difference.”28 The Protestant polemics are gone, but a genuine comparative exercise is
paralyzed by placing not only primordial Christianity, but all of its subsequent
articulations, behind a redoubt of “uniqueness” that is essentially a category of
incomparability. Identification and assessment of “ordinary,” relative difference is
simply swallowed by such assumptions. Within the parameters of such an approach,
“the only possibilities for utilizing comparisons are to make assertions regarding
dependence,”29 where Christianity is generally asserted not to be “dependent” on some
other religious form. The central category in this discussion is genealogical relationship,
which is posited in order to be denied, so that Christianity may be preserved free from
pollution.30 The questions posed are, does Christianity borrow? Is it dependent? The
28 Smith (1990) 39.
29 ibid. 47.
30 An intriguing and somewhat benign example is supplied by Paul Bradshaw’s reading of the
liturgical material in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas. He rejects the argument that the repeated
invocations of divine agencies in the epiclesis derive from Greek magical formulae, arguing rather
that such invocations more likely stem from the Aramaic formula marana tha, “Our Lord, come!”
attested twice in the New Testament and once in the Didache. Bradshaw grants the possibility of
magic’s influence, but asserts the Christian formula as “the most likely antecedent” (2004, 126).
He cites no reason, though the argument that Christian communities would grant priority to
Christian texts is implied; but this gets us nowhere when we consider that Christian texts, too, are
in some sense a product of the Greco‑Roman religious imagination. The formative influences
behind a Christian text – or behind an invocation like marana tha – may lie also behind other
documents. Bradshaw’s approach arguably reflects the instinctive tendency among many
scholars to isolate the “Christian” and the “pagan” from one another, precisely in the interest of
protecting Christianity from genealogical association with “influences” that are not Christian.
Bradshaw acknowledges that the argument about magic may have some merit, but prefers the
28
answers presume absolute difference, and the singularity of Christianity.31 But only the
idea of relative difference, conceived as part of an approach that regards Christianity as
different from other phenomena, but which guards against attempts to consign it to the
category of “uniqueness,” opens up the possibility of actual comparison.
The aversion to analogical comparison, and the embrace of genealogical
comparison – if only to deny its plausibility in the case of Christianity32 – work on the
false assumption that comparison is natural, that it works to unfold the “true” relations
between things. “Likeness” is assumed to reside within the things themselves, rather
than within the mind of the scholar; but as Smith points out, whenever comparisons are
made, the observer is always implicitly including a tertium quid – a third, less similar
element that also stands in some relation to whatever may be the scholar’s interest. As
he puts it, the scholar never observes truly that “x resembles y,” as if the elements x and
y subsisted in a vacuum. In fact, since x and y subsist among many other things, the
scholar is really saying that “x resembles y more than z with respect to….” In other
words, the drawing together of x and y in the scholars mind is an intellectual exercise
determined by an antecedent scholarly interest. X and y are juxtaposed because certain
of their aspects serve a larger theoretical interest, to cast light upon a particular item that
is posited as interesting. In the case of theurgic ritual and Christian sacrament, say, we
might assert a likeness between certain aspects of the two not necessarily because they
are genealogically connected, but because they manifest traits that can be taken to
support an argument for a gradual legitimization of the idea of material mediation of
transcendence in the late third and early fourth century. In respect to such an interest,
Christian cult practice in the late third century (x) may be more like theurgy (y) than the
implied reasoning that anything Christian may be best explained by appealing to safely Christian
texts.
31 Also interesting is the suggestion that this strategy is “as old as the recorded history of religious
comparison. It is the notion of autochthony as present in Herodotus.” There, Egyptian practices
constitute a pristine original, indebted to no external source or influence. Greeks borrow from
the prestigious Egyptians; Persians indiscriminately from everyone (47‑48).
32 As Smith puts the matter, “The thought appears to be that, from the standpoint of protecting
the privileged position of early Christianity, it is only genealogical comparisons that are worthy
of note, if only, typically, insistently to be denied“ (1990) 47‑48.
29
religious theorizing of Porphyry (z) is like theurgy (y) with respect to the ways in which the
divine may be mediated to the human. Such a comparison asserts nothing causal or
genealogical; in fact, one tends to find evidence for the overt adoption of theurgic theory
only in much later Christian thought. The claim of likeness works in the service of a
larger end, with neither the protection of “pure” Christianity nor assertions of mere
“syncretism” (cover language for “corruption”) in view. As Smith puts it, comparison
does not necessarily tell us how things ‘are’ (the far from latent
presupposition that lies behind the notion of the ‘genealogical’ with its
quest for ‘real’ historical connections); like models and metaphors,
comparison tells us how things might be conceived…. A comparison is
a disciplined exaggeration in the service of knowledge. It lifts out and
strongly marks certain features within difference as being of possible
intellectual significance, expressed in the rhetoric of their being ‘like’ in
some stipulated fashion. Comparison provides the means by which we
‘re‑vision’ phenomena as our data in order to solve our theoretical
problems.33
Such an approach is absolutely necessary if we are to protect ourselves from
methodologies with latent tendencies toward attacking or defending Christianity in its
various ancient forms. The agenda must be to assert something about cult practice or
religious culture in the late antique world, where a matrix of ideas, beliefs and practices
give rise to both the theurgic strain of Neoplatonism and an emergent Christian
sacramental system. That is to say, the comparison made must be analogical, where
analogy is not seen as a menace to the “uniqueness” of Christianity. In the present case,
the purpose of the analogical comparison must be to illuminate the theurgic aspect of
late antique intellectual culture that vindicated material cult in the face of philosophical
abstraction, and that likewise may have enabled some third and fourth century Christian
interrogations of eucharist.
Such an approach does not necessarily require the devotion to particularity that
Betz prescribes. There is no doubt that Christianity is characterized by considerable
diversity at every point in its early development, but even in light of this fact we are
33 Smith (1990) 52.
30
surely not compelled to regard only those studies as legitimate that focus on the
archaeology of local communities. There is plenty of evidence, even in the second
century, both for a desired unity among Christians, and for a desired assimilation into
the intellectual culture of the Greco‑Roman world. If there is “particularity”
emphasized in this present study, it is to be found in my focus on two particular
intellectuals – Origen and Augustine – whose thought cannot be taken otherwise than as
a broad engagement with a pagan intellectual world. It is precisely their milieu that
may help us to understand their particular rhetoric and arguments. Observations of a
general kind about Christian engagement with intellectual culture may thus be made,
not so that we may simply level the particular, but rather so that we may understand it
in its larger context. “Christians intellectuals in the Roman Empire” is not an illegitimate
category, as the pattern suggested by the second century Christian apologists suggests.
The works of the apologists are worthy of summary consideration not simply on
grounds of their intellectual content, but rather because their attempts to legitimize
Christian thought within the context of pagan learning gives rise to a tension between
rhetoric and actuality that will characterize a great deal of subsequent Christian
discourse, giving rise to, among other things, Tertullian’s celebrated rhetorical question.
This tension emerges as the product of a need to maintain the appearance of difference –
of Christianity’s “uniqueness” – while simultaneously laying claim to the intellectual
traditions of antiquity. When we move to consider the work of Origen and Augustine,
we shall note the same tendency: a strategy of asserting radical difference while quietly
developing a theory of eucharistic mediation that functions analogously to theurgy.
3. Christian Thinkers in the Roman Empire: the Greek Apologists
Extensive analysis of the apologists’ indebtedness to forms of Greek thought and
culture is here unnecessary. Their texts plainly take their form from Greek rhetorical
conventions and their intellectual content from Stoicism and Middle Platonist thought.
Of greatest importance to the present argument is their tendency to assume rhetorical
31
postures that variously assert or conceal their engagement with Greek culture in their
attempt to make Christianity a legitimate part of a Greco‑Roman world. Initially,
circumstance might well have dictated a rhetorical strategy emphasizing assimilation
rather than difference. Prejudice against Christians had increased in Asia after the reign
of Hadrian, and evidence suggests that the Antonine emperors were being urged to
revert to the more measured policies of their predecessors.34 Internal and external
threats to the empire during the Antonine era perhaps exacerbated the problem.
Military instability on the northern frontier, revolt in Egypt, plague, the Bar Kochba
rebellion in Palestine, the rise of Montanist extremism in Asia – all created a situation in
which Christian thinkers who shared in the empire’s cultural and intellectual heritage
would experience a natural enough impetus to work toward Christianity’s
normalization.35 Events significant for Christians, such as the martyrdom of Polycarp (c.
156) and the imperially sanctioned massacre of Christians at Lyons (177) would surely
have added urgency. The rise of a more integrated intellectual resistance to Christianity
was doubtless a further stimulant, with Celsus as its most articulate and thoughtful
representative.36
The apologists were thus uncomfortably required to ingratiate themselves with
authority while often brusquely claiming a more venerable cultural pedigree for
Christianity. Some would exotically claim that the emergence of Christianity was even
34 From a certain practical perspective, a rhetorical strategy emphasizing assimilation rather than
difference might seem most reasonable for such men. Prejudice against Christians had increased
in Asia after the reign of Hadrian, and evidence suggests that the Antonine emperors were being
urged to revert to the more measured policies of Trajan and Hadrian. Justin’s mission, in part,
was to persuade the imperial authority to revert to former policies, which were somewhat less
prejudicial to Christians. For the classification of Justin’s first Apology as just such a piece of
deliberative rhetoric, see Keresztes (1965).
35 Norris (2004) 40.
36 Celsus is devoted to the accusation that Christians may constitute a serious threat to the
stability of the Empire’s social and political order. Were others to follow the Christians’ anarchic
lead, “there would be nothing to prevent [the emperor] from being abandoned, alone and
deserted, while earthly things would come into the power of the most lawless and savage
barbarians, and nothing more would be heard among men either of your worship or of the true
wisdom” (C.Cels. 8.68. Trans. Chadwick [1953] All subsequent translations of Contra Celsum are
Chadwick’s unless otherwise noted). Text cited in Norris 2004 (41).
32
providential for the empire, while others combatively rejected Greek philosophical and
literary culture as exhausted and moribund, asserting the superiority of a barbarian
wisdom – all while remaining indefatigably within a Greek idiom. But whatever
rhetorical stance we encounter, such thinkers are always engaged in the formulation of a
place for Christianity within the Greco‑Roman cultural topography. Whether one
argues that Christianity represents the intellectual apogee of Hellenistic culture, or the
entirely appropriate rejection of that culture, one is really doing the same thing, since for
this set of thinkers Christianity is already incorrigibly Greek, and manifests itself as a
function of the Roman world. This conclusion is true regardless of thinker and
regardless of locale, whether Melito of Sardis or Tatian of Assyria. In either case, we
confront the enlistment of a Hellenistic rhetoric in the cause of Christian self‑definition,
accommodationist in the former case, rejectionist in the latter, but finally an assimilation
of Christianity to Hellenistic culture for both.
The earliest figures traditionally grouped with the second century apologists fall
roughly in the reign of Hadrian, who had inherited Trajan’s difficulties with Christians
in the province of Asia.37 Associated with this period are Quadratus and Aristides.38 The
argument of the latter is of greater interest, since he is concerned to place Christians
alongside Jews and pagans as a third genos.39 He criticizes pagans for their worship of
37 His rescript to Minicius Fundanus, governor of the province in 122/123, suggests his desire to
continue a moderate, disciplined approach to the problem, primarily emphasizing the avoidance
of mob action and false accusations moved by malicious informers. Justin quotes the letter at
Apology 1.68; Eusebius at 4.9. Melito of Sardis also appealed to it, a fact known to us only through
Eusebius (4.26.10). Melito also claims to have letters from Antoninus Pius ordering the
continuation of the same cautious policies. (Grant [1988] 34‑35).
38 The Chronicle of Eusebius mentions the two apologists in the context of Hadrian’s visit to
Eleusis. Allegedly he was presented with works of these two men while in Athens. Though
precise motives are difficult to discern, there was perhaps an interest in extracting further
concessions from an emperor already concerned to retain the moderate policy of his predecessor.
Grant (1988) 135. Only one fragment of Quadratus survives, concerned with the reality of the
savior’s miracles (EH 4.3.2).
39 A Greek text, and some Armenian fragments, are defensibly dated to the reign of Hadrian; a
longer Syriac version is addressed to Antoninus Pius. A superscription in the Syriac text
identifies the author as Aristides, “an Athenian philosopher.” The work is initially occupied with
a concise exposition of some middle Platonist theology; but the author’s more pressing concerns,
which will occupy him for much of the work’s length, quickly emerge. He posits four races of
33
idols and the elements, ridicules the immorality of the gods in conventional manner,
and undermines pagan attempts to find transcendent unity beneath the violent surfaces
of myth. Jewish monotheism is a better option, as is Jewish morality; Jewish deficiency
lies in their complicity in Jesus’ execution.40 The assertion of Christian superiority is
curiously based on adherence to a moral code that is, in fact, profoundly Jewish, as if
Christians are upright people who are not Jews – perhaps an important point considering
the Jewish revolts across the empire (114‑117) quelled at the beginning of Hadrian’s
reign. No harm could thus follow from asserting superiority to Jews, and as for pagans,
the apology’s dismissive tone might class it as a conventional attack on traditional pagan
myth and piety, and therefore not especially offensive – especially in the cultural context
that produced a series of works in ancient comparative religion, such as Plutarch’s On
Isis and Osiris, and Pallas’ lost On the Mysteries of Mithras.41 Viewed thus, Aristides’
apology appears tantamount to a claim to good citizenship based on an argument for
superior tribal affiliation.42 Aristides’ Christianity is a third genos, a new race that can
stand alongside others, claiming a genealogy much as they do. Such a positioning of
Christianity enables the placement of its founder alongside other, traditional “founders”
of pagan and Jewish religious culture as a parallel case within a familiar web of ideas.
A generation later, Justin Martyr makes a considerably more elaborate attempt at
claiming a share of Greek culture for Christians.43 Openly assuming the posture of a
men: barbarians, Greeks, Jews, and Christians. The Greek text reduces the taxonomy to three
races, essentially pagans, Jews and Christians, with the pagans further subdivided into
Chaldeans, Greeks, and Egyptians (Grant [1988] 35‑37).
40 Included also is the interesting claim that in many of their observances the Jews worship
“angels” rather than God, a point that Aristides does little to explain.
41 Grant (1988) 37.
42 In its peroration, the Syriac text does make reference to those who “utter vanity and harass the
Christians,” though it may be difficult to situate such a reference in the reign of Hadrian. In any
case, the Syriac texts is addressed to Antoninus Pius, and internal references may reasonably
place it during that later reign (Grant [1988] 38‑39).
43 He himself was of Hellenized background in the eastern part of the empire, Flavia Neapolis
(Shechem) in Samaria. His apology, divided in the manuscript tradition into a “first” and
“second” that do not appear to correspond neatly to the two apologies noted by Eusebius, was
probably written in Rome around 156 or 157 (For a defense of this dating, see Grant [1988] 52‑53),
and may have been occasioned by the martyrdom of Polycarp at Smyrna. The mob action
34
philosopher, he addresses himself to Antoninus Pius and his two adopted sons, Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus, addressing the latter two specifically as “philosophers,” a
gesture predicated on the assumption of shared culture.44 Like Aristides, Justin supplies
the conventional rebuke to pagan worship, given force by means of a litany of farcical
examples.45 He argues that evil demons are to blame for the prosperity of such beliefs,
as for the persecution of Christians, who promise to commit no injustice, and are not
atheists as some philosophers scandalously are. Blaming daemonic powers for
persecution is perhaps a way of deflecting censure from rulers whom he is ready to
regard as “pious philosophers” and “guardians of justice.”46 However much he may
attack traditional culture or decry the irrationality and injustice of Roman legal practice,
attending Polycarp’s summary trial and execution could have prompted an apologist’s response,
particularly one urging a return to the more measured and judicious policies of Trajan and
Hadrian. The Martyrdom indicates that the old man had been the target of a search, and the
victim of mob action – both of which practices were repudiated by previous emperors
(Martyrdom of Polycarp 6‑7; 12. Cited in Grant [1988] 53‑54). That the opening chapters of the First
Apology present a direct claim against Roman judicial abuses, particularly the condemnation of
Christians on other charges merely because they confess to the name of Christian, suggests that
such tendencies were troubling Christian communities. (First Apology 1‑4).
44 Athenagoras’ work, an embassy or plea, (πρεσβεία), is addressed to Marcus Aurelius during his
co‑rulership with Commodus, (Schoedel [1972] x). Imperial titulature – Ἀρμενιακοί and
Σαρματικοί, conquerors of Armenia and Sarmatia (Mommsen and Schwartz proposed
Γερμανικοί for the former. [Schoedel (1972) xi.]; is secondary to the emperors’ pre‑eminent
standing as philosophers (τὸ δὲ μέγιστον φιλοσοόφοις). Athenagoras himself is described in the
work’s title, much like his predecessor Aristides, as an Athenian philosopher. In antiquity, only
Methodius knows his work (De Res. I.36, 37); Epiphanius appears to know it only through
Methodius. (Schoedel [1972] ix). Like Melito of Sardis, he protests the loyalty of Christians as
citizens of the Empire, and often with florid rhetoric: Legatio 1.1‑2; 2.1‑3; 2.6; 6.2; 16.2; 18.2; 37
(Schoedel [1972] xvi). Principally, though, he is concerned to exonerate Christians from the
charge of atheism, arguing that although they reject much that was conventional in Roman
religion, their thought draws deeply upon philosophy. He argues that insofar as Christians
embrace monotheism, they can claim a serious intellectual pedigree and form a meaningful part
of the intellectual tradition of the empire. At the very least they should not be singled out for
abuse in an empire that could boast more than enough distinctive religious forms (Legatio 1).
45 “…we consecrate ourselves to the unbegotten and impassible God, who, we know, never
descended with sexual desire upon Antiope, or other such women, or Ganymede; nor was he
liberated by a hundred‑handed giant whose assistance Thetis obtained; nor was he solicitous, in
return for such aid, that Achilles, the son of Thetis, because of his concubine Briseis, should
slaughter so many Greeks. We feel sorry for those who believe these things….” (First Apology 25,
Falls trans.)
46 First Apology 2.2
35
his entire defense must rest upon the assumption of shared intellectual culture and
idiom. Imperial “philosophers” must be co‑participants in this shared civilization. Such
a posture is sensible given Justin’s primary assertion of Christianity as both source and
culmination of Greco‑Roman intellectual tradition.47 It culminates the tradition, since
Christ is the latter day manifestation of the Logos of Greek philosophy; it precedes that
tradition, inasmuch as the Hebrew prophets – of greater antiquity than Greek thinkers48
– foretold Christ, grasping the Logos before any Greek philosopher had approached it.49
Plato comprehends the workings of God only through Moses and the other prophets,
through whom the Logos and the “prophetic spirit” originally speak.
Appropriation of the Greek philosophical tradition is further evident in Justin’s
Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. The dialogue is already a normative literary form, and here
Justin exploits it by assuming the familiar posture and rhetorical gesture of a
philosopher, casting himself in the role of a philosopher who is approached by Trypho, a
Hellenized Jew, who greets Justin out of deference to his philosopher’s pallium. In
response to Trypho’s respect, Justin asks why he, as a Jew, cannot see that his own
tradition’s “lawgiver and prophets” are superior to what competing schools of
philosophy can offer.50 Justin then recounts his own conversion in terms of a passage
through Stoic, Peripatetic, and Pythagorean schools until his exposure to a Platonist
teacher, probably at Ephesus, proved enormously fruitful.51 His daily advance in
studies led him finally to “perception of incorporeals” and the “contemplation of ideas”
that “gave wings to his soul.”52 He converts to Christianity after an exchange with a
47 See Norris (2004) 39.
48 First Apology 44.
49 The Logos works through the prophets – “our teachers” – to inspire later philosophical
reflection: “So that you may understand that it was from our teachers – I mean from the Logos
speaking through the prophets – that Plato took his assertion that God made the world by
working upon formless matter, listen to the actual words spoken by Moses, the first prophet …
and older than all of the Greek writers, through whom the prophetic spirit revealed how and
from what God first crafted the world.” (First Apology 58.1).
50 Asserting the priority of the Hebrew tradition, as in the First Apology (Dialogue 1).
51 The pattern of moving from one “school” to another, until a satisfying truth is found, can also
be discerned in Galen and Lucian. See Grant (1988) 51.
52 Dialogue 2.6, with language plainly derived from Phaedrus 249D.
36
Christian holy man, who elucidates the failures and internal contradictions of
Platonism,53 and touts the Hebrew prophets as “blessed men who were just and loved
by God … [who] alone knew the truth and communicated it to men.” Whoever reads
them rightly “will profit greatly in his knowledge of the origin and end of things, and of
any other matter that a philosopher should know.”54 As in the Apologies, Judaism stands
as the source of wisdom, prior to Greek elaborations of philosophy – a claim vindicated
by the evident holiness and accuracy of the prophets.
Beyond the substantive claims of philosophy, Justin’s Apologies implicitly invoke
the canons of rhetoric, presenting his arguments in the appropriate, conventional idiom
of a prosphonesis,55 as befits a venerable, shared intellectual culture. This rhetorical genre
is explained in detail by the rhetorician Menander in the late third century.56 Justin
follows such tactics as Menander would later prescribe, suggesting that a failure to
address injustices against Christians might undermine imperial claims to probity,
tainting the authorities with charges of “violence and tyranny,”57 the qualities opposite
those designated for praise in the rhetorical tradition. Justin will elsewhere employ
different rhetorical terminology, referring to his work as an enteuxis, “petition,” and to
53 Justin contends that corruption and degeneration have tainted the development of
philosophical schools; otherwise different “schools” never would have emerged. Properly
conceived, philosophy is a pristine whole that has fractured only because of disloyalty to an
initial deposit or tradition (Dialogue 2). This principle finds its probable roots in the lost work of
Numenius, On the Infidelity of the Academy toward Plato, a fragment of which asserts that Plato’s
successors “did not hold to the primitive heritage but rapidly divided, intentionally or not” (Frg.
24 Des Places = Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica 14.5.1. Cited in Grant [1988] 51). Justin himself
would produce a work in the soon to be very popular genre of heresiology, with his principles
derived in part from this pagan source. Christianity appeals to Justin as a way of transcending
such problems – though ironically, the rhetoric of censure represented by Numenius’ tract would
be borrowed by apologists like Justin and other, more systematic Christian thinkers, and would
mark them as co‑participants in their own world of competing “schools.”
54 Dialogue 7.
55 First Apology 1.1. Eusebius also terms it a logos prosphonetikos (EH 4.18.2). See Grant (1988) 54‑
55 for references and discussion.
56 Menander’s model recommends that praise of the subject’s actions should fall under the
categories of “wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage.” Under the heading of justice, he urges:
“you should include humanity to subjects, gentleness of character and approachability, integrity
and incorruptibility in matters of justice, freedom from partiality and from prejudice in giving
judicial decisions….” Menander Rhetor, Russell and Wilson (1981) 167.
57 First Apology 3.2.
37
portions of it as exegesis, “explanation,” and apodeixis, demonstration” – all familiar
nomenclature for a dicastic speech.58
Justin, then, as a self‑described philosopher and a practiced rhetorician, as a man
who never rejected the pallium that he donned at the time of his first conversion to
philosophy, seeks openly to assimilate Greek culture within a Christian vision,
appropriating even the iconic Socrates, for whose death evil demons are to blame.
Socrates employed reason (logos) to dissuade people from belief in false gods, just so the
Logos itself, having assumed the form of a man, did the same for non‑Greeks.59 Justin is
urgent to align the Christian Logos with the logos of pagan learning, that he will even
assert that many ancient thinkers were in point of fact Christians prior to the incarnation
of the Logos:
We have been taught that Christ was the first‑begotten of God and we
have indicated above that he is the Word of whom all mankind
partakes. Those who live by reason are Christians, even though they
have been considered atheists: such as, among the Greeks, Socrates,
Heraclitus, and others like them.
Those who “lived by reason” include “Abraham, Elias, Ananias, Azarias, Misael, and
many others….”60 The prophets and sages of Hebrew tradition, then, are the primordial
possessors of the logos; Greeks, such as Socrates and other sages, are their epigones;
Christians are those who have embraced the latter day form of what those prophets and
philosophers always knew: the Logos of God, now made flesh. Justin’s assertion of the
universality of the Logos enables the rhetorical gesture of assimilating both Jewish and
Greek sages into a Christian pantheon. The hallmark of this strategy is that an
apologetic assertion of difference – indeed, of superiority – is also integrative.
Christianity is cast as the superior wisdom tradition simply by asserting its priority to
Hellenism.
58 See Keresztes (1965).
59 Dialogue 5
60 Dialogue 46.
38
Justin’s pupil Tatian, a Christian of Assyrian origins, adopts a far more
combative position than his master.61 His particularly hostile tone may derive from the
imperially sanctioned slaughter of Christians at Lyons in 177.62 At times his surviving
apologetic work, Address Against the Greeks (πρὸς Ἕλληνας) suffers from what seems an
excess of invective against Hellenism, a scornful litany with designs on persuasion
merely by dint of cumulative force. Here is the obviously Hellenized man who becomes
an alien to both mainstream Christianity and the intellectual traditions of the empire – a
religious extremist, in short, a Hellenized barbarian turned fringe zealot. Going far
beyond Justin’s treatment of the problem of diversity and disagreement in philosophy,
he indulges his contempt for tradition in a parodist’s treatment of philosophical
hypocrisy:
What are your philosophers doing of any significance or note? They
leave one shoulder bare and wear their hair long and grow beards,
sporting the nails of wild beasts. And they say they have no needs, but
in fact like Proteus they want a leather dresser for the wallet, a weaver
for the cloak, a woodcutter for the stick, and for gluttony rich men and
a chef. You, sir, behave like a dog, you have no knowledge of God and
have sunk to imitating irrational creatures!63
For Tatian, Hellenistic culture is defunct, and serious truth‑seekers should look
elsewhere. Such an approach is anything but ingratiating, and Tatian’s tactics seem not
to have earned him friends, except perhaps on the boundaries of religious culture; but
his tactics are revealing insofar as they represent one of the many postures that one
61 Tatian is perhaps best known for his harmony of the gospels (Diatesseron), though perhaps
more interesting for his final separation from Christianity’s normative schools and his association
with the radical ascetic Encratites, who rejected marriage and the consumption of meat, and who
may have assimilated a number of Valentinian beliefs as well. See Whittaker (1982).
62 Grant (1988) 112ff.
63 On other occasions he directs his ire toward competing schools and inner contradictions. After
cataloging the moral outrages of Diogenes, Aristippus, Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Zeno,
Empedocles and others, he asks: “Who would not rather stop his ears to such arrogant and crazy
talk, and turn to a serious quest for the truth? So do not be swept away by the august crowds of
those who love noise rather than wisdom. They express views that contradict one another, and
each say whatever comes into his head. And there are many causes of friction between them, for
each one hates his fellow and they hold different views, each taking up an exaggerated positions
out of self‑importance.” (Oratio ad Graecos 26.18‑26; 4.10‑17, trans. Whittaker).
39
might assume: that of the Hellenized barbarian rhetorically rejecting Hellenism, and
doing so, inevitably, in a familiar Greek idiom, a “consciously mannered style that
reflects the rhetorical tastes of his era and the sorts of learning it valued.”64 At times
Tatian appears to be arguing for cultural assimilation, noting, for instance, his
willingness to pay taxes and “perform service,”65 but this is weak protest. At its heart
his apology is more a rhetorical attempt to define Christianity as distinct from its
Hellenistic context. If other apologists were concerned to show that one could be Greek
and Christian, Tatian seems to embrace his cultural alienation.66
But Tatian is incorrigibly Greek. Numerous scholars have attempted to place his
Address within a particular genre, some suggesting that it should be viewed as a kind of
inaugural address for his school at Antioch – a logos eisiterios – and others that it falls
within the more general category of epideictic oratory as a specimen of vituperation.67
Speculation abounds, with emphasis on modes of invective – or deliberate inversion of
categories of praise.68 Even Tatian’s abuse of philosophers has a clear Greek context
64 Norris (2004) 43.
65 Oratio ad Graecos 4.20‑25: φόρους τελεῖν … δουλεύειν … καὶ ὑπηρετεῖν.
66 In a sense, Tatian’s non‑integrative approach may be viewed as a more extreme version of the
standard trope associated with other apologists, such as Aristides, who designates Christians as a
“third race” (γένος) alongside Jews and Gentiles, a notion that also occurs in the Κήρυγμα
Πέτρου (“Peter’s Message”) a document quoted by Clement of Alexandria. In like manner, a
certain Miltiades and Apollinaris of Hierapolis (both lost to history but for Eusebius) seem to
have written in conformity with a contra gentes / contra Iudaeos program, with Christians emerging
distinctly as a third party. See Norris 2004 (37; 40‑41). The same pattern holds for the Epistle to
Diognetus, in which Diognetus is systematically urged to reject the practices of Greeks, on the one
hand, and Jews on the other. The author commends Diognetus’s interest in Christians, who
“neither [give] credence to those thought to be gods by the Greeks nor [keep] the superstition
(δεισιδαιμονία) of the Jews”; he similarly commends his inquiry into “just why this new race
(καινὸν τοῦτο γένος) or new way of life came into being now and not before…” (Diogn. 1,
Ehrman 2003 trans.) Theophilus’s To Autolycus, of late Antonine date, uses the same
argumentative scheme. See Norris (2004) 43.
67 Kukula (1900); Alfonsi (1942), whose views are noted by Grant (1988) 115‑116.
68 Robert Grant locates the work within a category described by Menander Rhetor as a “leavetaking”
address, in which, for Tatian, the praise for the city that one is departing is obviously
replaced by venom. He is, quite literally, saying farewell to Greek culture, as the first chapter of
the address shows (as does chapter 35, in which he states explicitly that he is abandoning the
Greeks for a philosophy that they regard as “barbarian” [35]. See Grant [1988] 115.); but the
conventions later described by Menander – that a city be praised for its various political, aesthetic
40
with an ample supply of precedents. Anecdotal slurs against philosophers were
commonplace material from Lucian, Athenaeus, and Diogenes Laertius.69 Even where
rhetoric of alienation is at its sharpest, we seem to be confronting a sort of cultural pout
– an exasperated outpouring of frustration at the rejection of Christianity by a broader
intellectual culture.
Other texts are more subtle in their insinuations of Greek culture. The Epistle to
Diognetus70 presents rejection in stark terms, while furtively insinuating a great variety of
traditional philosophical ideas. The author urges the pagan Diognetus:
… Come, purge yourself of all the notions that previously constrained
your understanding, leave behind your misguided habit of thought,
and become as it were a person made new (καινὸς ἄνθρωπος) at the
beginning, one who is about to hear a new teaching (λόγου καινοῦ),
just as you yourself have admitted.71
In insisting on the “newness” of this “word” (λόγος), the author seems intent on
stripping it of any of its philosophical genealogy. Here is an apparent commitment to
establishing distance between the “new” teaching and the erroneous theological
speculations of the philosophers.72 The author’s complaints align to some degree with
and intellectual achievements – are quite simply reversed by Tatian, whose address might
therefore be read as a kind of obverse to Aelius Aristides’ Panathenaic Address, in which Aristides
celebrates Athens as a redoubt against barbarism, praising Athenian attributes that Tatian elects
to scorn. In much the same vein, Tatian’s work can be located squarely with a tradition of Greek
satire, and seems to be drawing upon Lucianic material at various points, as may be suggested by
his references to grammarians who “set the letters of the alphabet at war,” and his fondness for
accumulating proverbial examples (Grant links Tatian’s alphabetic interests to Lucian’s
Consonants in Court, and finds in chapters 26 and 27 proverbial material of which Lucian was
demonstrably fond).
69 See Grant (1988) 120.
70 This work is traditionally included in the corpus of the Apostolic Fathers, but long
acknowledged to be of second century provenance. For the various arguments over precise
dating, see Tanner (1984) 495‑96. Reasonable grounds for dating it roughly in the middle of the
second century are provided by Ehrman (2004) 127.
71 Diogn. 2.1. trans. Ehrman.
72 “For what person had any conception of what God was like, before he came? Or do you accept
the vain and ridiculous teachings of those specious philosophers, some of whom asserted that
God was fire (where they themselves are about to go this is what they call God!), and others
water, and others one of the other elements created by God? … But these ideas are illusions and
the deception of tricksters” (Diogn. 8.1‑2,4. Ehrman trans.)
41
those of Tatian. Philosophers are “tricksters” with fanciful ideas, men who can agree on
nothing. The letter’s rhetoric of difference can become rather heated, but its reliance
upon some fairly stock philosophical assumptions and terms gradually becomes
evident. Just when the writer is attempting to insulate Christianity from the corruptions
pagan philosophy, and to locate the content of Christian revelation beyond this world, he
lapses into a rather worldly terminology. He claims that the new revelation is no
“mortal idea,” no “administration of merely human mysteries;” that it is the “truth and
the holy wisdom from heaven, which cannot be comprehended by humans.”73 But
despite this claim to uniqueness, the author claims that God conveyed this revelation
through
the craftsman (τεχνίτης) and maker (δημιουργός) of all things himself,
by whom he created the heavens, and by whom he enclosed the sea
within its own boundaries … by whom all things are set in order and
arranged and put into subjection.
The passage seems to posit a blending of the Stoic πῦρ τέχνικον and the Platonic
demiurge, hardly an originally conceived agent of mediation.74 It appears that the new
revelation will employ some old forms. A similar reliance on the familiar can be seen in
his handling of Jewish religious practices. Although the Jews are superior to the Greeks
in their acknowledgement of the “one God,” they are fools to believe that their sacrifices
afford him anything that he requires.75 Plato shares the same convictions about divine
impassivity, and in any case, long before the Epistle such insights had become a Pauline
trope.76
73 θνητὴ ἐπίνοια … ἀνθρωπίνων οἰκονομία μυστερίων … ἀπ᾿ οὐρανῶν ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ὁ
λόγος ὁ ἅγιος ἀπερινόητος ἀνθρώποις
74 Later in the document, interestingly, God himself, rather than his envoy, is called “master and
creator (δημιουργός) of all” (8.7).
75 “The one who made heaven and earth and all that is in them, and who supplies all of
us with what we need, is himself in need of none of the things that he himself provides to
those who suppose that they are giving them.”
76 “The God who made the world … does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by
human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath
and everything.” (Acts 17:24‑25, RSV). Cf. Euthyphro’s question, “Why you don’t suppose,
Socrates, that the gods gain any advantage from what they get from us, do you?”
42
The Pauline connection, moreover, provides an entry into deeper more subtle
allusions, some suggesting the possibility that the Epistle, in addition to its loose
appropriation of stock philosophical vocabulary and argument, also conceals a playful
exchange between two philosophically learned men.77 The Epistle’s opening, κράτιστε
Διόγνητε, possibly echoes the κράτιστε Θεόφιλε that commences the Luke‑Acts
narrative. In Acts, Paul’s speech at the Areopagus employs a quotation of the very
popular – and frequently translated – Phaenomena of the Stoic poet Aratus, τοῦ γὰρ καὶ
γένος ἐσμέν, “for we are indeed his offspring” – where the quote itself likely hearkens
to Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus (ἐκ σου γὰρ γένος ἐσμέν) – making of the speech a
presumptive appeal to Stoic listeners. The Epistle echoes this Stoic‑biblical language of
genos with its adoption of the trope of Christians as a third genos – “this third race.”78
Drawing further upon Stoic interest in amphibolic lexis, the author urges Diognetus to
be “born again” into a new race, “becoming as it were a person made new at the
beginning, one who is about to hear a new teaching, as you yourself have admitted.”79
“Diognetus,” who is “Zeus‑born,” i.e., of Zeus’ genos, is to become like a “new person,”
that is, by a new birth that would supply a new genos in a Christian lineage – by
becoming a hearer of a “new logos.” Diognetus is to become the descendent of an
entirely different god: “Diognetus is being exhorted to cease being Dio‑gnetus in order to
be reborn in baptism as Christo‑gnetus.”80 But the conversion of name (and religion) is
predicated on another amphiboly connected the teaching that will constitute the “new
logos.” The “new word” may be read plainly as λόγου / καινοῦ, or as λόγου / καὶ / νοῦ.
What Diognetus has thus conceded, in assenting to a “new logos,” is that he will engage
in dialogue, that he will accept an account that is in accord with argument and rationality,
77 The following observations on the Stoic / Platonic content of the letter summarize the treatment
of Tanner (1984).
78 καινὸν τοῦτο γένος. This resonates with Aristides claim that Christians are a third γένος
descending specifically from Christ, while other traditions claim their descent from other, less
important figures.
79 γενόμενος ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς καινὸς ἄνθρωπος, ὡς ἂν καὶ λόγου καινοῦ, καθάπερ καὶ αὐτὸς
ὡμολόγησας, ἀκροατὴς ἐσόμενος.
80 Tanner (1984) 499.
43
to which the author’s witty riposte is that in order to do so, he will need to adapt himself
to a new argument, a new logos – logos and nous. The appeal, then, might be read as that of
one Stoic to another, based playfully on the presupposition that “homonymy in
language corresponds to real association in nature.”81 Stoic material that follows in the
rest of the Epistle supports such a reading.82 What is striking here is that the author
couches his rhetorically overt rejection of philosophical tradition in terms of an almost
playful philosophical banter. To heed a “new logos” becomes merely a matter of
approaching an older logos with fresh eyes.
The Epistle to Diognetus, like Tatian’s Against the Greeks, finally conceals its
Hellenism only rhetorically; but for our purposes the posture is just as important as the
content, where alienating rhetorical approaches insist on Christianity’s singularity by
means of a strong differentiating posture toward Hellenistic and Roman Culture.83 In
81 Tanner (1984) 499.
82 The risk associated with pagan idols, which are simply the inert artifacts of human
craftsmanship, and as such lack psychic pneuma, is that one can become assimilated to them, a
claim rooted in the Stoic doctrine of assimilation, oikeiosis. If one is so assimilated into false
worship, psychic aesthesis can be damaged. Tanner (1984) 501‑504, further suggests that the term
εἰρωνεία as employed at 4.1 requires Chrysippus for its proper exegesis (S.V.F Chrysippus 630),
and that the Christian polity envisioned in section 5 has roots in Zeno and Panaetius. Chapter 6.2
ff., with its analogy between Christians who are “scattered” (ἔσπαρται) through the world as the
soul is through the body, thought by Marrou (1951) to be Stoicizing, he argues as more likely
indebted to Plato, Phaedo 65c‑d, and Plutarch de Anima (fr. 178 Sandbach); R. Joly (1973) locates it
within an Orphic‑Pythagorean context. The argument of 6.3 that Christians are to the world as
the soul is to the body is reminiscent of the σῶμα / σῆμα distinction of Phaedo 62b, just as
Christians taken as the world’s “soul,” opposing the fleshly (world = σάρξ, 6.5) desires of the
world, might be read in the context of the second primary impulse of Stoic ethics, love of self.
The “truth and holy word” of 7.2 (τὴν ἀλήθειαν καὶ τὸν λόγον τὸν ἅγιον) recall “the
Neoplatonist Logos or ‘second god’ who has become man in Jesus Christ,” the logos that is
already well‑developed in Numenius.
83 Other apologists, such as Melito of Sardis, would take precisely the opposite rhetorical position,
asserting that the empire’s prosperity could be attributed to Christianity’s rise. Likewise
Apollinaris of Hierapolis, who famously attributed the salvation by thunderstorm of a Roman
army on the Danube to the prayers of Christian soldiers. EH 4.26.7‑10; 5.5.4. See Norris (2004) 41.
Melito, in what Eusebius describes as his “book to the emperor,” pointedly refers to Christianity
as a “philosophy,” which, though barbarian in origin, experienced a flowering exactly
contemporary with the growth of a “great and splendid” Roman power. He also notes that the
emperor’s predecessors had honored it “in addition to the other cults” (πρὸς ταῖς ἄλλαις
θρῃσκείαις). Only Nero and Domitian are exceptions to this beneficent attitude, which was
resumed by Hadrian, whose particular good offices are noted, along with those of Antoninus
44
large part, the approaches of both Tatian and the Epistle to Diognetus are shaped by the
fact that neither is addressed to persons of authority, an important distinction.
Aristides, Justin, and Athenagoras, who addressed themselves to emperors, could afford
little in the way of vitriol; but their rhetoric, too, insists on deploying a series of
appropriations to define Christianity as a distinctive and superior option. No thorough
treatment of the second century apologists is intended here; merely a summary look at
the rhetorical postures that they employed in attempting to manage the problems raised
by their struggle to assimilate themselves and their communities to the ambient Greco‑
Roman world. What unites them is that regardless of stance, their persistently Greek
context and content is inescapable. In these texts we are always confronting the
contorted process of Christians struggling with their position in the established
intellectual culture of the empire; or, to put the matter more precisely, we are
confronting Greek – or Hellenized barbarian – thinkers becoming Christians, and
attempting to negotiate the retention of their prior intellectual traditions in the process.
4. The Case of Anatolius and Alexandrian Intellectual Culture
In the seventh book of his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius mentions a certain
learned Anatolius as the successor to the episcopal see of Laodicea in Syria:
[He … was] by race an Alexandrian, who for his learning, secular
education and philosophy had attained the first place among our
most illustrious contemporaries; inasmuch as in arithmetic and
geometry, in astronomy and other sciences, whether of logic or of
physics, and in the arts of rhetoric as well, he had reached the
pinnacle.84
Pius. Melito claims to know even that Marcus’ attitude is even more “philanthropic” and
“philosophical” than that of his predecessors. He vigorously assimilates Christianity into its
Greco‑Roman religious and philosophical context and calibrates his remarks for imperial
consumption.
84 …γένος μὲν καὶ αὐτὸς Ἀλεξανδρεὺς, λόγων δ᾿ ἕνεκα καὶ παιδείας τῆς Ἑλλήνων
φιλοσοφίας τε τὰ πρῶτα τῶν μάλιστα καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς δοκιμωτάτων ἀπενηνεγμένος, ἅτε
ἀριθμητικῆς καὶ γεωμετρίας ἀστρονομίας τε καὶ τῆς ἄλλης, διαλεκτικῆς εἴτε φυσικῆς,
θεωρίας ῥητορικῶν τε αὖ μαθημάτων ἐληλακὼς εἰς ἄκρον (EH 7.32.6. trans. Oulton) His
45
Because of his learning he was deemed worth by the citizens of Alexandria to establish a
school in the Aristotelian tradition.85 As evidence of this learning Eusebius quotes a
lengthy passage from a treatise on Pascha, then catalogs other works, to include an
Introduction to Mathematics consisting of ten whole treatises, as well as other “indications
of his learning and great experience concerning matters divine.”86 Eusebius’ account
provides a glimpse of a polymath whose credentials were sufficient to attract the
attention of Theotecnus, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, who ordained him to the
episcopate, intending to place him as his own successor upon his death. Eusebius
relates that Anatolius leaves Caesarea only when summoned to the Council of Antioch
(268), and that he was pressed into service as bishop “by the brethren” at Laodicea,
where he was passing after the conclusion of the council. Eusebius invokes Anatolius’
extraordinary learning, as well as alleged wartime heroics in Alexandria (272)87 to
support his claim that Laodicea was to receive the finest of men as bishop. Despite
Eusebius’s confused chronology, his narrative reveals much about the fluidity that
might attend the career of an intellectual turned Christian in the late third century. His
account supplies no hint that the ordination of an accomplished peripatetic philosopher
output as known to Eusebius was sufficient to reveal “his eloquence and his great erudition.” τό
τε λόγιον καὶ πολυμαθές (EH 7.32.13).
85 Though Anatolius hardly could have “established” the peripatetic tradition at Alexandria.
Ample evidence points to teaching by peripatetics at the Museion 60 years earlier. (Dio Cassius
77.7.3) Cited in Grant (1970) 141.
86δείγματα τῆς περὶ τὰ θεῖα σχολῆς τε αὐτοῦ καὶ πολυπειρίας (EH 7.32.20).
87 EH 7.32.20‑21. The council concerning Paul of Samosata at Antioch was in 268. If Anatolius
was dragooned into episcopal service after the council, it would likely have been difficult for him
to perform the wartime exploits at the siege of Brucheion in Alexandria that Eusebius describes
(273). As often, chronology is not Eusebius’ strength. Dillon (p. 867) is inclined to reject
Eusebius’ claim that Anatolius settled in Laodicea immediately after the Council of Antioch,
arguing rather for 274 or later, based on Eusebius’s Chronicle. He attributes Zeller’s proposal of
270 for the assumption of the bishopric to excessive confidence in the compressed narrative of EH
VII.32.21, where Anatolius’s selection as successor to Theoctecnus, his ordination, the jointpresidency
at Caesarea, his attendance at the council at Antioch, and his recruitment as bishop of
Laodicea are handled in a manner that makes reasonable dating impossible. Dillon’s reading,
though supportable, is likely also prompted by the appealing idea of having Anatolius in
Caesarea for a while, to assume, if for a brief time, the role of a minor Origen, to whom aspiring
students might repair.
46
to the episcopate was in the least strange, but implies rather that such a change could be
regarded as normal and legitimate, suggesting that a Christian leader’s credentials were
even burnished by association with traditional intellectual pursuits.
Eusebius possibly even suppresses Anatolius’ philosophical attainments in the
interest of a more carefully hedged account, perhaps motivated by the need to deflect
the charge of excessive devotion to pagan philosophical pursuits. Alexandria in the
second century displays a pronounced tendency toward philosophical syncretism, a
state of academic affairs that a Christian hagiographer might want to mute. There and
elsewhere, philosophers could begin to term themselves “eclectic.”88 Numenius, for one,
was called a Pythagorean by both Origen and Clement.89 Porphyry implies that
Ammonius Saccas, master of both Plotinus and the Christian Origen, trained his pupils
in a curriculum of Neopythagoreans such as Numenius, Cronius, Moderatus, and
Nicomachus.90 We also know from Eusebius that when Origen turned to Ammonius
Saccas for instruction, Heraclas, another Alexandrian Christian and later bishop, had
already been his student for five years – a period that perhaps mirrors the five‑year
silence imposed as part of Pythagorean instruction.91 Perhaps also, the preliminary
schooling said to have been offered in later years by Origen at Alexandria – in
“geometry and arithmetic and other preliminary subjects” – reflects what Justin Martyr
identifies in the previous century as the Pythagorean preliminaries for study: music,
astronomy, and geometry.92 As for other intellectuals, apart from Gnostic movements,
even Pantaenus, the first Alexandrian Christian teacher granted orthodox status by
Eusebius, and sequenced as Clement’s predecessor in the “school” succession, was
termed Pythagorean by Philip of Side. Some scholars speculated that Pantaenus was “a
88 Diogenes Laertius 1.21; Strom. 1.37.6. Texts cited in Grant (1970) 136.
89 Grant (1970) 136: Strom. 1.150.4; C.Cels. 1.15, 4.51, 5.38, 57.
90 Porphyry quoted in EH 6.19.8. Cited in Grant (1970) 139.
91 Grant (1970) 139.
92 EH 6.18.3; Dial. 2.4, cited in Grant (1970) 139. Justin, in the course of his conversion narrative,
recounts how a Pythagorean had asked him whether he had studied these subjects, prerequisite
for drawing the mind away from “objects of the senses” and rendering it fit for the intellectual,
“in order that it may contemplate what is good and beautiful.”
47
great synthesizer of Stoic and Pythagorean ideas on a Christian foundation.”93 Clement
himself, for that matter, plainly regarded his own thought and methods as akin to the
Pythagoreans in some ways, and his work shows a fairly open engagement with some
aspects of their thought, and a certain willingness to adopt some of its approaches as his
own.94 Origen’s program of teaching later implemented in Caesarea, as described in the
panegyric written by his pupil Gregory Thaumaturgus, seems also to conform at times
to what might be read as a Pythagorean pattern. By Eusebius’ account, the headship of
the Alexandrian catechetical “school” could be traced back from Origen to Clement and
Pantaenus, it is not without reason that modern scholars have concluded that
“Neopythagoreanism or Middle Platonism constitutes the milieu which gave Origen his
philosophical formation.”95
Eusebius would have little motive for emphasizing the particular formation a
figure like Anatolius might have received in such an environment. His narrative
hagiographical is contrived to allow for certain intellectual appropriation by
conspicuous Christians, while preserving a safe distance between their orthodoxy and
their pagan intellectual background. Eusebius is surely please to have a distinguished
peripatetic in his camp – and he can by no means conceal his pleasure that an important
philosopher embraced the superior path of Christianity – but his rhetoric also struggles
with the tension between praising Anatolius for his attainments while insulating him
from poisonous associations.
Eunapius of Sardis, on the other hand, the fourth century hagiographer of
philosophers and sophists, would have no such motive. He names an Anatolius, who
“ranked next after Porphyry,” as the teacher of Iamblichus, who is said to have studied
with him prior to himself becoming the student of Porphyry.96 Under Anatolius’
93 A Theory put forth by H. Langerbeck, JHS 77 (1957) , 71‑73. Cited in Grant (1970) 137.
94 Grant (1970) 138.
95 ibid. 138, citing Crouzel (1962) 49.
96 VS 457.
48
instruction, he “attained to the highest distinction in philosophy.”97 Many scholars have
posited an identity between the Anatolii described by Eunapius and Eusebius. I have no
intention to decide the issue, but if we assume their identity for the moment, we can see
how Eusebius’ account conforms to Euapius’ impressive claim that Anatolius “ranked
next after Porphyry” among philosophers of the time. The mathematical treatises
attributed to him by Eusebius actually survive; they are in fact a Neopythagorean
numerological interpretation of the first ten numbers. Likewise, the contents of his
Canons on Pascha reveal the sort of astronomical learning required in a Neopythagorean
curriculum. If the identity is accurate, then Anatolius could very well be a product of
the Alexandrian intellectual milieu, and Eusebius could be muting his philosophical
attainments, or least privileging his Christianity.98 The young Alexandrian Anatolius
could plausibly have met Porphyry in Athens where both were pupils of Longinus – a
possibility supported by Porphyry’s later dedication of his Homeric Questions to an
Anatolius. It is not unreasonable to suppose that he later became a teacher in his own
right at Alexandria, subsequently embraced Christianity, then removed to Caesarea in
the years after the war in Alexandria, before accepting the job in Laodicea. The
devastation of Alexandria, combined with the prestige of Caesarea as a center for
scholarly activity in its own right, might have prompted such a man to resettle, and the
result could well have been that he accepted a position in society similar to that adopted
by Origen 40 years earlier.99 If a rough lifespan of c. 240‑325 is accepted for Iamblichus,
which would make him old enough to have studied in Palestine before Anatolius
assumed his episcopal office, he could have been a student in Caesarea before his later
97 The phrase “ranked next after Porphyry” – ta deutera pheromenos – may also be rendered “was
Porphyry’s deputy,” where the phrase is translated in the manner of Photius cod. 181. See Clarke,
et al., (2003) xxi. Much of the disagreement of Clarke, et al., with Dillon’s theory as here set forth
is based upon reading this phrase in the manner of Photius, where Anatolius is “Porphyry’s
deputy” at a school established presumably at Rome. This “school” is unknown, and the authors
find it implausible that Iamblichus, even as a well‑heeled provincial, would have attended it, but
they give no reason for reading the phrase in the manner of Photius.
98 Grant (1970) 141.
99 Dillon (1987) 867.
49
departure, perhaps to Rome, to study under Porphyry.100 Under this admittedly
controversial construction, the career of Anatolius is linked to those of Porphyry and
Iamblichus, a state of affairs that would lend credibility to the argument that Eusebius
might want to mute the secular chapters of Anatolius’ career, insulating him from the
menacing anti‑Christian Porphyry, as well as from the devoted pagan Iamblichus. Such
balancing acts are part of Eusebius’ method – his way of laying claim to a substantive
intellectual culture while maintaining a rhetoric of differentiation. If the picture of
Alexandrian intellectual culture that has begun to take shape is accurate – regardless of
the precise identification of the assorted Anatolii – then we should not be surprised to
find Eusebius sheltering other Christian thinkers from the implications of their own
education, suppressing the particulars of their philosophical attainments, and tending to
reduce the traditional curriculum to a preparation for the gospel, a set of mental
exercises that prepare the young scholar for the tasks of scriptural exegesis. We must
read through this rhetoric if we are to grasp accurately the extent of Christian and pagan
interaction. As Dillon rightly notes, in the second century, except in times of active
persecution, the particular religious practices of any philosopher would have been of
little consequence to his students, so long as he was of acknowledged expertise.
Whether or not Iamblichus’ teacher, the philosopher‑bishop of Laodicea, and the
dedicatee of the Homeric Questions are the same man, speculation on the question reveals
a intellectual culture characterized by a great deal of open association and mutual
influence, and open to the kind of fluidity of career we see in the case of Eusebius’
philosopher bishop. 101
100 Dillon (1987) 865‑67. The traditional date of the birth of Iamblichus is 265‑80, a determination
based largely on the fact that Suidas locates his floruit in the reign of Constantine. Bidez (1919)
and Cameron (1968) are invoked by Dillon against Eduard Zeller (1868) and Gustav Wolff to
support an earlier dating for Iamblichus’s birth. Their arguments seem to have gained wide
acceptance.
101 Much of the disagreement of Clarke, et al., with Dillon’s argument as here set forth is based
upon reading the phrase “second to Porphyry” in the manner of Photius, where Anatolius is
“Porphyry’s deputy” at a school presumably established at Rome. This “school” is unknown,
and the authors find it implausible that Iamblichus, even as a well‑heeled provincial, would have
50
The case of Anatolius thus becomes an illustrative paradigm for thinking about
Christian and polytheist interaction outside of the clear boundaries implied in the
narratives of polemicists like Eusebius, who display a tendency to decontextualize
Christianity, constructing it as a single, sui generis, coherent phenomenon struggling to
purify its own precincts of the baleful pagan and heretical influences. Figures like
Anatolius, Clement, and Origen constitute ample evidence for the already vigorous
enculturation of Christianity in a Greco‑Roman context. The present discussion will
offer no decisive argument for the identification of all these Anatolii; it will rather
attempt to establish the credibility of the underlying premise that the boundaries
separating the world of traditional philosophy from Christian thought and practice were
more permeable than we might be accustomed to think – even when we acknowledge that
Christianity is an inescapably Hellenistic phenomenon early on.
The career of Origen supports this hypothesis. Since his view of Christian
eucharist, which derives from his own theory of ideal mediation, but takes much of its
shape and substance from a dispute over the efficacy of pagan rites, will be central to the
present argument, it is worth considering how his outlook was shaped by his
participation in the shared intellectual culture of Alexandria.
5. A Third Century Christian Intellectual: Origen of Alexandria
The account of Anatolius’ career102 may be speculative, but its plausibility
depends on what we know to be true of the intellectual culture of Alexandria in the
third century. It is well known that as home to a number of centers of learning in the
empire, Alexandria was exemplary in offering men of learning opportunities to associate
attended it. They are certainly right to suggest that the theory is speculative. See Clarke, et al.,
xxi. Others, such as Grant (1970) p. 141, seem to take the identification more or less for granted.
102 It is possible that Eusebius’s sketch of Anatolius’s career is based on the template of Origen’s.
For Anatolius to have functioned as a kind of philosopher‑theologian‑cleric alongside bishop
Theotecnus in Caesarea would make him almost another incarnation of Origen, presiding in like
manner over the same seat of learning in the East. See Dillon (1987) 867.
51
in a number of contexts, regardless of their creeds and convictions.103 Many Christian
thinkers obviously became men of culture, and there is no reason to suppose that they
did so otherwise than by attending the same schools of rhetoric and philosophy
attended by others.104 In one sense, it is simply obvious that Christian thinkers draw
upon the rhetorical and philosophical terms of Hellenistic culture.105 Origen’s own
work, without reference to the culture of which he was a part, bears the obvious
markings of considerably philosophical influence.106 What requires constant emphasis is
that such characteristics of their work are the mark of shared culture, and not simply
imitation or literary affectation. Despite the frequent outbursts of violence throughout
the city’s history, often between religious communities, it is clear that Alexandrian
Pagans and Christians were not always defined by the terms of a religious polemic, but
that they were also co‑participants in shared economy of ideas, and bearers of the
imprint of a common culture.107
Eusebius’s account of Origen’s career should be read against this background. It
works obviously within the conventions of hagiography,108 and his intellectual
attainments are therefore presented under a distinctively Christian aspect. Eusebius
cannot suppress Origen’s devotion to philosophy, but he does engage in a kind of
rhetorical appropriation of philosophy’s terms, and an subordination of classical
learning to a Christian rule of faith – as well as narrative deferral in certain instances
103 For a thorough sketch of the history of the Royal Library, the Serapeum library the Mouseion –
with interesting attention the latter’s relation to the Athenian model of a philosophical school –
see Watts (2006) 145‑151.
104 ibid. 154, and n.68 for Alexandria’s importance as a venue for rhetorical study in the second
and third centuries.
105 Clement’s Paedagogus is the perfect example. Written to enjoin certain habits of life upon
Christians, it draws extensively on classical rhetorical conventions and philosophical ideas in so
doing. See R. Lane Fox (1986) 305‑06, Lilla (1971) 96‑97, as cited in Watts (2006) 154‑55, n. 69.
106 See Chadwick (1966) 66‑95, Rist (1981).
107 For Alexandria’s reputation (often deserved) as a place prone to civic violence, see Watts
(2006) 151‑52. Noteworthy also are his arguments on the facts of social and economic life that
would have tended to unite people from across the creedal spectrum, especially in the form of
professional collegia (152).
108 On the biography of Origen imbedded in EH, see Cox (1983) 69‑101; Grant (1977) 635‑49;
Nautin (1977).
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where critical information reveals much about the degree of Origen’s involvement in the
intellectual life of Alexandria. Thus, even from this tendentious account we may obtain
some accurate notion of how a thoroughly Hellenized Christian not only employed the
tools of philosophy, but even quite openly taught others – with decidedly Christian
aims, of course – working from the conviction that no contradiction attended being both
a philosopher and a Christian.
Eusebius’ account of Origen’s early formation reveals clearly his strategy of
differentiating the Christian from the pagan by subordinating a traditional pagan
educational curriculum to religion. We are told that his father urged biblical learning
upon him, “exacting from him each day learning by heart and repetition” – a discipline
enjoined “in addition to the customary curriculum.”109 The narrative emphasis falls on
scripture,110 which is prioritized before “Greek learning,”111 but Eusebius is quite clear
that the categories do no exclude one another. Origen’s father is concerned with
“memorizations and repetitions,”112 and is amusingly chagrined to discover his son’s
evident dissatisfaction for “the simple and obvious meanings of the texts”, and his
penchant for the “deeper contemplation”113 of scriptural obscurities, and for vexing his
elders with his constant seeking after “the inner meaning of the inspired scripture.”114
Eusebius’s account is obviously fanciful anachronism, depicting the youthful Origen
already performing elaborate allegorical exegesis, but it does reflect Eusebius concern to
show from the beginning that Origen’s intellectual attainments were always guided by
the church, and subordinated to the church’s theological project of exegesis. Even in this
amusingly anachronistic bit of narrative, we can see what, in Eusebius’ view, is
109 πρὸς τῇ τῶν ἐνγκυκλίων παιδείᾳ (EH 6.2.7‑8).
110 θεῖαι γραφαί
111 Ἑλληνικὰ μαθήματα
112 ἐκμαθήσεις καὶ ἐπαγγελίας
113 τὰς ἁπλᾶς καὶ προχείρους τῶν ἱερῶν λόγων ἐντεύξεις … βαθυτέρα θεωρία. The whole
scenario is perhaps best viewed as an amusing conflation of the procedures of the earliest stages
of Greek education and the far more sophisticated modes of critical exegesis employed by Origen
in his career as a theologian. For a detailed treatment of the approahces and techniques of the
former, see Cribiore (2001) 160‑84.
114 τὸ τῆς θεοπνεύστου γραφῆς … βούλημα. EH 6.2.8‑9.
53
philosophy’s proper place,115 and within what safe framework Origen’s father is to be
praised for later having furthered his son’s secular, philosophical studies, which Origen is
said to have pursued even more vigorously after his father’s death. Though deprived of
his father’s aid, and impoverished by the confiscation of the estate, he lived by the
patronage of an unnamed wealthy woman, he attained finally to such a degree of
education that he was able to earn his own living, finally displaying such intellectual
aptitude that he was eventually appointed head of Alexandria’s “catechetical school” by
the bishop Demetrius.
Eusebius’ narrative compresses a number of years, and tellingly suppresses any
account of Origen’s involvement with circles of pagan intellectuals, but his brief
description of the unnamed woman’s household presents a fascinating picture of the
encounter between a Christian culture and the other “schools” of thought that
characterized Alexandrian intellectual life, and further reveals Eusebius’ insistence on a
rhetorical definition of boundary even within a world of diversity. In this instance, the
“other schools” in question are comprised of heretical Christians. In an atmosphere
suggestive of an intellectual salon, Eusebius notes that “heretics” and “our people”
regularly assembled together, drawn by the persuasive rhetoric of a certain heretic of
Antioch named Paul, who happened also to be the adopted son of the hostess.116
115 In addition to insisting on philosophy’s subordination to a rule of faith, Eusebius also engages
in a deliberate appropriation of the terms of a philosophical life. His fortitude in the face of the
persecution of Aquila exemplifies “the right actions of a most genuine philosophy” (EH 6.3.6).
When he resigns his teaching position and sells his precious books, embracing a life of radical
ascesis, Eusebius describes such gestures as follows: “For many years he lived in this manner as a
philosopher (φιλοσοφῶν) … persevering as much as possible in the most philosophical life (βίῳ
… φιλοσοφωτάτῳ),” fasting and sleeping on the floor. His behavior was a “proof” (ὑπόδειγμα)
of a philosophical life so genuine that many consequential people were persuaded to follow his
example, drawn from the unbelieving gentiles (ἄπιστοι ἔθνα) and those devoted to “learning
and philosophy” (παιδεία καὶ φιλοσοφία). Eusebius’ strategy appears to entail both the
subordination of philosophy to a rule of faith, and an appropriation of the meaning of terms of
philosophy. Where philosophy is subject to the norms of biblical exegesis, and repeatedly
presented strictly in terms of disciplined ascesis, it has been adequately sanitized for Christian
use.
116 EH 6.2.12‑15. People attracted to Paul “because of his apparent skillfulness in speech”
(Oulton), διὰ τὸ δοκοῦν ἱκανὸν ἐν λόγῳ. The Greek text emphasizes more effectively Eusebius’s
point: Paul’s seeming. As a rhetorician or dialectician he is all surface, all charm. Origen, on the
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Eusebius insists that Origen is not tainted by this contact, though his anxious
characterization of Paul would suggest that many were. Great numbers of both heretics
and orthodox come to hear him, but Origen resists his wiles, “[giving] clear proofs of his
orthodoxy, at that age, in the faith,”117 evidenced principally by his refusal to pray with
Paul. Eusebius is careful to maintain this boundary, which enables him to depict Origen
as in a certain world, but not of it. He can engage a non‑Christian culture – and the even
more perilous culture of heresy – and still engage in the learned disputes required of a
successful philosopher and man of letters, distinguishing between Paul’s seeming ability
in “logos” (τὸ δοκοῦν ἱκανὸν ἐν λόγῳ), while perfecting his own mastery of “logoi”
under spiritually perilous conditions.
Origen’s progress in intellectual pursuits is said to correspond perfectly to his
time in his patron’s household, where he “applied himself wholly with renewed zeal to
a literary training, so that he had a tolerable amount of proficiency in letters.”118
Eusebius thus depicts him as rather neatly completing his education in much the same
way that he began it, by subordinating Greek learning to the correct formulation of
Christianity – to the “orthodox faith” and “the rule of the church.”
Eusebius grants us a limited glimpse into the world of Alexandria, which in the
third century was composed of many independent communities with fairly permeable
boundaries. Even the notion of an Alexandrian “catechetical school” should be seen in
such a context.119 Eusebius argument that such a “school” existed, and that is was neatly
other hand, is alert to his wiles, preserving throughout their accidental association “orthodox
faith” in accordance with the “rule of the church,” κανὼν ἐκκλεσίας.
117 τῆς ἐξ ἐκείνου περὶ τὴν πίστιν ορθοδοξίας ἐναργῆ παρείχετο δείγματα.
118 τῇ περὶ τοὺς λόγους ἀσκήσει ὅλον ἐπιδοὺς ἑαυτὸν, ὡς καὶ παρασκευὴν ἐπὶ τὰ γραμματικὰ
μετρίαν ἔχειν….
119 EH 6.3.1‑3. The question of the “catechetical school” is complex, especially its relationship to
the emergence of a monarchical episcopate in this period. Most persuasive, as Watts (2006) notes
(p. 162, n. 107) is Scholten’s argument (1995) that the “catechists” worked more or less as
independent scholars who under the auspices of hierarchy. Origen may have codified the
approach of this rather loosely conceived organization, imposing a curriculum that mirrored that
of Platonic philosophical schools, where preliminary training would normally have been
followed by study of the Platonic dialogues. Origen replaced the dialogues with scripture, thus
55
subordinated to monarchical Episcopal authority, is almost surely anachronism. For all
that he insists on succession as the guarantor of legitimacy,120 we see the beginnings of a
monarchical episcopate at Alexandria probably only with the return of Demetrius after
the persecution under the prefect Aquila,121 and his attempt to bring Christian
instruction under the bishop’s control.122 It was only at that time that Origen could have
been appointed head of the school, precisely when it may have been coming under
stricter management, and even then it is by no means clear how successfully Christian
teaching was subordinated to the bishop’s authority. When we discount Eusebius’
soothing myth of episcopal management, intellectual life in Alexandria looks rather
more anarchic, marked by encounter between conflicting sects and schools, many of
which might come in to open conflict or collusion in purely private contexts.
Much the same claim might be made about Origen’s own career as an
intellectual, as becomes clear in the light of information that Eusebius occludes in the
earlier chapters of his hagiography, deferring it until his later account of Origen as the
established Christian teacher. The program of instruction offered by Origen within his
circle points strongly to an emphasis on traditional philosophical training, and suggests
the likelihood that Origen himself was regarded as a serious thinker regardless of his
creed – a significant influence on heretics, other philosophers, and educated people in
general. After an account of his conversion of a Valentinian Gnostic, we are told that
other cultured persons (ἄλλοι δὲ πλείους ἀπὸ παιδείας) seek him out “to make trial of
establishing a kind of Christian philosophical school (Watts [2006] 162‑3). See also Le Boulluec
(1987), van den Broek (1995), van den Hoek (1997).
120 Demetrius assumes the episcopacy from a “Julius” of whom nothing is known (EH 6.2.2), and
Origen himself is said to occupy a place in a similar “succession” of teachers after Pantaenus and
Clement.
121 EH 6.3.3
122 Behr (2001) 164‑5. Eusebius’s fractured narrative, characterized, as often, by frequent
suppression and deferral of information – generally in Origen’s favor – may obscure here the
conflict between Origen and the bishop Demetrius. The precise nature of the conflict is uncertain,
but it may be a result of the strains that might well arise between the institutional authority of a
monarchical bishop and the intellectual authority of Christian thinkers who may have been
schooled in a time of less consolidated leadership.
56
[his] sufficiency in the sacred books” (ἱεροὶ λόγοι). In Eusebius’s judgment, one might
justly claim that the many who have sought him out were educated by him in secular
philosophy (τῆς ἔξωθεν φιλοσοφίας) as well as in matters sacred.123 It seems plain that
Origen’s approach to teaching heavily emphasized philosophical training, and in this he
mirrors the Alexandrian tradition before him.124 The result was a rising reputation as a
philosopher:
For he used to introduce to the study of philosophy as many as he
saw were naturally gifted, imparting geometry and arithmetic and the
other preliminary subjects, and then leading them on to the systems
which are found among philosophers, giving a detailed account of
their treatises, commenting upon and examining into each, so that the
man was proclaimed as a great philosopher even among the Greeks
themselves. 125
Origen thus seems to have offered a fairly substantive curriculum. Comments by his
own student, Gregory Thaumaturge, tend to support such a claim. In his panegyrical
Address to Origen, he provides substantial insight into the content of the curriculum, and
particularly into Origen’s subordination of philosophical teaching to the study of
scripture.
Such an approach is famously what Porphyry found intolerable, as Eusebius
notes. Porphyry found Origen’s application of Greek modes of criticism to biblical texts
absurd, refusing to grant any standing to biblical texts:
Origen, a Greek educated in Greek learning, drove headlong toward
barbarian recklessness; and making straight for this he hawked
himself and his literary skill about; and while his manner of life was
Christian and contrary to the law, in his opinions about material
things and the Deity he played the Greek, and introduced Greek ideas
into foreign fables.126
123 μυρίοι δὲ τῶν αἱρετικῶν φιλοσόφων τε τῶν μάλιστα ἐπιφανῶν οὐκ ὀλίγοι διὰ σπουδῆς
αὐτῷ προσεῖχον, μόνον οὐχὶ πρὸς τοῖς θείοις καὶ τὰ τῆς ἔξωθεν φιλοσοφίας. (EH 6.18).
124 Pantaenus particularly seems to have drawn heavily on his Stoic doctrines in the course of his
Christian teaching in Alexandria. See Watts (2006) 161‑2, and n. 106.
125 EH 6.19.1. In the works of these unnamed philosophers, we find “frequent mention” (πολλὴ
μνήμη) of Origen; he was also, it seems, a frequent recipient of book dedications.
126 EH 6.19.6‑7. See Watts (2006) 158.
57
Eusebius’ purpose in citing Porphyry is to defend Origen against his charges, a task at
which he spectacularly fails, neglecting ever to address the problem of whether biblical
texts constitute the proper subject of serious philosophical or even literary study. What
he does accomplish is to expose the extent of Origen’s learning, acknowledged in the
otherwise contemptuous texts of Porphyry, where we learn that Origen did not simply
“play the Greek,” but rather wasted a perfectly good classical education:
For he was always consorting with Plato, and was conversant with
the writings of Numenius and Cronius, Apollophanes and Longinus
and Moderatus, Nicomachus and the distinguished men among the
Pythagoreans; and he used also the books of Caeremon the Stoic and
Cornutus, from whom he learnt the figurative interpretation, as
employed in the Greek mysteries, and applied it to the Jewish
writings.127
Eusebius supplies no substantive answer, insisting only that Porphyry, “for lack of
argument … turned to deride and slander the interpreters [of scripture], and among
these Origen especially.”128 He suggests that Porphyry indulges in character
assassination, “at one time accusing [Origen] as a Christian, at another describing his
devotion to philosophy.”129 What strikes one about these passages from Porphyry,
though, is his genuine exasperation that a pupil of the legendary Ammonius Saccas,
“who had the greatest proficiency in philosophy in our day,” and who was prudent
enough to reject the Christianity of his upbringing in favor of the philosopher’s life,
would have the temerity to embrace Christianity, though himself “a Greek educated in
Greek learning.”
Origen’s involvement with the circle of Ammonius Saccas is surely of the
greatest significance for his intellectual formation. 130 This was the famous teacher of
Plotinus, the teacher with whom he spent eleven years after first vainly seeking out t.................................