Overview

This book gives us a new perspective on the Philosophy according to the Chaldean Oracles by Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 232/305 CE), demonstrating that much of what we thought we knew about this work and its fragments is mistaken. Here, for the first time, the attempt is made at reconstructing the original text by following the vicissitudes of its reception and transmission from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance up to modern scholarship. The extensive and painstaking study of the surviving fragments leads to the radically innovative conclusion that this encyclopedic treatise, written by Porphyry in the last decades of the 3rd century CE, consisted of fifteen books organized in various sections. After an initial discussion of the nature of theurgy and of its subordinate role with respect to philosophy, Porphyry describes the entire history of Greek philosophy from Homer up to his own teacher Plotinus, to then go on to present “introductions” to the seven encyclical disciplines whose study is required for the comprehension of theosophy, that is, the esoteric speculation on the three parts of philosophy: anthropology-ethics, physics, and metaphysics-theology. By harmonizing the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and the Chaldean Oracles, Porphyry intends to present the complete and definitive philosophic system, with the aim of showing the universal way for the liberation of the souls of initiates and of contextually fighting the final battle of the Greco-Roman civilization against Christianity.

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9789004680067

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Pier Franco Beatrice (1948-) was Professor in Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Padua (1978-2018), and is now Senior Scholar at the same University. He is a member of several international societies and of the advisory board of the Journal of Early Christian Studies. He has authored: La lavanda dei piedi (Rome 1983); L’eredità delle origini (Genova 1992); Anonymi Monophysitae Theosophia (Leiden–Boston–Köln 2001); The Transmission of Sin (Oxford–New York 2013). He is the editor of L’intolleranza cristiana nei confronti dei pagani (Bologna 1990). He has also co-edited Chromatius of Aquileia and His Age (Turnhout 2011), and Pascha nostrum Christus. Essays in Honour of Raniero Cantalamessa (Paris 2016).

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