Neoplatonic Saints The Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by their Students

Edwards, Mark

doi:10.3828/978-0-85323-615-3

Cited by 138 publications

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“…36 First, both of the comparative works were written after Mark's gospel, with Lucian's Alexander being penned after 180 AD, 37 while Porphyry's Life of Plotinus was not written until the beginning of the forth century AD. 38 Although this is not catastrophic to his argument, it does beg the question of why he could not find any other earlier examples. With both of his examples coming at least a century after the writing of Mark, and Furthermore, Bauckham claims that this source inclusio is a literary convention in order to highlight the importance of the witness.…”

Section: Lucianic Comparisons and The New Testamentmentioning

confidence: 84%

Lucian and the New Testament: An Evaluation of His Life, Work, and Relationship to New Testament Studies

Adams¹

2010

The Expository Times

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This article commences with a brief introduction to the life and works of Lucian of Samosata and his literary milieu of Atticism and the Second Sophistic movement. In light of this, there is an evaluation of recent scholarship’s utilization of Lucian as literary model and source for the New Testament with particular focus on Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. This article concludes with some cautions and considerations for utilizing Lucian to evaluate the texts of the New Testament.

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Section: Lucianic Comparisons and The New Testamentmentioning

confidence: 84%

Lucian and the New Testament: An Evaluation of His Life, Work, and Relationship to New Testament Studies

Adams¹

2010

The Expository Times

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“…Armstrong, remarking that 'need imply no more than the correction of the spelling and supply of punctuation', does not comment on the connotations of , despite the word order in which the latter immediately precedes the former. 18 As we will see later, his conjecture is all the more convincing in that it captures the anagogical path on which the treatises unfold the essence of Plotinus' universe, 19 because Porphyry believes that his editorship is central to the teaching, promotion, and preservation of Plotinus' philosophy. 16 At first glance, Porphyry's organisation of the treatises from the easiest to the most difficult topics does not directly reflect the division of philosophy into ethics, physics and logic that governs Plato's collections.…”

Section: Porphyry and The Enneadsmentioning

confidence: 95%

UNITY OF THOUGHT AND WRITING: ENN. 6.6 AND PORPHYRY'S ARRANGEMENT OF THE ENNEADS

Slaveva-Griffin¹

2008

The Class. Q.

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In Vita Plotini 24.11-14, Porphyry's statement, 'So I, as I had fifty-four treatises of Plotinus, divided them into six sets of nine (Enneads)-it gave me pleasure to find the perfection of the number six along with the nines', 1 has garnered many slighting remarks in the pages of Neoplatonic scholarship. Armstrong criticises Porphyry for taking 'a most unfortunate liberty' in creating 'an extremely unsystematic presentation of a systematic philosophy', 2 Gerson finds the arrangement to be 'a seriously disruptive division', 3 and O'Meara dismisses it as 'wholly artificial and sometimes misleading'. 4 Consequently scholars suggest two alternative organisations of the Enneads. The first reconstructs the conceptual unity of certain treatises, such as Die Großschrift (Enn. 3.8, 5.8, 5.5, 2.9), which Porphyry disperses throughout the collection. 5 The second reads the treatises in Porphyry's chronological order (listed in VP 4-6) in an attempt to show the development of Plotinus' philosophy itself. 6 While the communis opinio of Porphyry's arrangement stems from our analytically trained perception of how philosophical writing should be organised, I think we must also try to understand his work within the context of both Plotinus' thought and the Neopythagorean fashion of the time. Porphyry's arrangement does not simply embellish Plotinus' corpus like the Muses' ennead, crowning the nine books of Herodotus' Histories: 7 as a student of Plotinus and a former member of the Neopythagorean school, Porphyry would have understood his task to be editing and arranging his master's works in an order complying with the tenets of the philosophy being presented. This study, therefore, will examine Porphyry's arrangement of the Enneads in relation to Plotinus' concepts of multiplicity and number (presented in Enn. 6.6) and the late Neopythagorean thought of The Theology of Arithmetic. Furthermore, I suggest that Aristotle's silence about the hexad and the ennead in Met. A and M grants the arrangement a programmatic significance for Neopythagorean number symbolism. 8 277

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“…88 His attitude toward writing was much different. The "Pythagorean pact" 89 he made with his fellow students involved a nondisclosure of Ammonius' doctrines which extended to the written word. When Erennius and Origen broke this pact it was significantly through writing.…”

Section: Plotinus: Communicator and God-manmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Phaedrus and the Life of Plotinus

Sabo

2014

Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture

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A perusal of Plato's dialogue the Phaedrus sheds much light on Porphyry's Vita Plotini. The similarities between the two works are impressive, and it can be argued that Porphyry wrote his text with the dialogue in mind. These similarities include their use of medicine, their structural disunity, and their cast of characters, among which must be included the impalpable but pervasive entity the supernatural. Two of the key themes of the Phaedrus-communication and the godlikeness of the pre-fallen soul-also inform the present discussion of the Vita. Plotinus had difficulty with both spoken and written communication, but his godlikeness allowed him to triumph over them.In the conclusion to Plotinus' Enneads as his disciple Porphyry has arranged them the philosopher writes, "This is the life of gods and godlike and blessed men." 2 This reminds one of such references to likeness to God as we encounter in the Platonic dialogues, especially in the Phaedrus. In its central section Plato writes, "This is the life of gods," and he goes on to speak of the souls that are most like them. A little later he refers to participation in God insofar as is possible.3 The notion of likeness to God is a major factor in Porphyry's hagiographical life of Plotinus, and I believe that he wrote it with much of the Phaedrus in the back of his mind. 4 As a Platonist he would 1 I would like to thank Mark Edwards, Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, and the anonymous reader for their help with this article.

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Neoplatonic Saints The Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by their Students

Cited by 138 publications

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Lucian and the New Testament: An Evaluation of His Life, Work, and Relationship to New Testament Studies

Lucian and the New Testament: An Evaluation of His Life, Work, and Relationship to New Testament Studies

UNITY OF THOUGHT AND WRITING: ENN. 6.6 AND PORPHYRY'S ARRANGEMENT OF THE ENNEADS

The Phaedrus and the Life of Plotinus

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