Porphyry, the Philosopher, to Marcella

Porphyry, the Philosopher, to Marcella PDF Author: Porphyry
Publisher: Society of Biblical Literature
ISBN: 9781555401399
Category : Philosophy
Languages : el
Pages : 185

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Porphyry, the Philosopher, to Marcella

Porphyry, the Philosopher, to Marcella PDF Author: Porphyry
Publisher: Society of Biblical Literature
ISBN: 9781555401399
Category : Philosophy
Languages : el
Pages : 185

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Book Description


Porphyry's Letter to His Wife Marcella

Porphyry's Letter to His Wife Marcella PDF Author: Porphyry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
With an introduction to the life of Porphyry and an overview of Neoplatonic thought by David Fideler.

Porphyry, the Philosopher, to His Wife, Marcella

Porphyry, the Philosopher, to His Wife, Marcella PDF Author: Porphyry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs in its Intellectual Context

Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs in its Intellectual Context PDF Author: K. Nilüfer Akçay
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004408274
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Neoplatonic allegorical interpretation expounds how literary texts present philosophical ideas in an enigmatic and coded form, offering an alternative path to the divine truths. The Neoplatonist Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs is one of the most significant allegorical interpretation handed down to us from Antiquity. This monograph, exclusively dedicated to the analysis of On the Cave of Nymphs, demonstrates that Porphyry interprets Homer’s verse from Odyssey 13.102-112 to convey his philosophical thoughts, particularly on the material world, relationship between soul and body and the salvation of the soul through the doctrines of Plato and Plotinus. The Homeric cave of the nymphs with two gates is a station where the souls descend into genesis and ascend to the intelligible realm. Porphyry associates Odysseus’ long wanderings with the journey of the soul and its salvation from the irrational to rational through escape from all toils of the material world.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy PDF Author: Edward Craig
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415187121
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 920

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Book Description
Volume seven of a ten volume set which provides full and detailed coverage of all aspects of philosophy, including information on how philosophy is practiced in different countries, who the most influential philosophers were, and what the basic concepts are.

Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith

Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith PDF Author: Martin Laird
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019153322X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Scholars of Gregory of Nyssa have long acknowledged the centrality of faith in his theory of divine union. To date, however, there has been no sustained examination of this key topic. The present study fills this gap and elucidates important auxiliary themes that accrue to Gregory's notion of faith as a faculty of apophatic union with God. The result adjusts how we understand the Cappadocian's apophaticism in general and his so-called mysticism of darkness in particular. After a general discussion of the increasing value of faith in late Neoplatonism and an overview of important work done on Gregorian faith, this study moves on to sketch a portrait of the mind and its dynamic, varying cognitive states and how these respond to the divine pedagogy of scripture, baptism, and the presence of God. With this portrait of the mind as a backdrop we see how Gregory values faith for its ability to unite with God, who remains beyond the comprehending grasp of mind. A close examination of the relationship between faith and mind shows Gregory bestowing on faith qualities which Plotinus would have granted only to the `crest of the wave of intellect'. While Gregorian faith serves as the faculty of apophatic union with God, faith yet gives something to mind. This dimension of Gregory's apophaticism has gone largely unnoticed by scholars. At the apex of an apophatic ascent faith unites with God the Word; by virtue of this union the believer takes on the qualities of the Word, who speaks (logophasis) in the deeds and discourse of the believer. Finally this study redresses how Gregory has been identified with a `mysticism of darkness' and argues that he proposes no less a `mysticism of light'.

The Hope of Glory

The Hope of Glory PDF Author: Walter Wilson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004267344
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This study explores the background, character, and function of Colossians as a form of theological education and appeal in the Pauline tradition. A historical, literary, rhetorical, and narrative analysis of the text shows how its theological affirmations and claims were presented so as to engage the life of its readers in practical ways and in practical contexts, especially in order to direct their moral formation as Christians and their self-understanding as a Christian community in a time of controversy. The specific strategies adopted by the author in designing his message and instructing the readers are familiar from Hellenistic conventions of moral and spiritual guidance, particularly those conventions associated with philosophic paraenesis, or moral exhortation for recent converts.

Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination

Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination PDF Author: Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009302876
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
In Egypt during the first centuries CE, men and women would meet discreetly in their homes, in temple sanctuaries, or insolitary places to learn a powerful practice of spiritual liberation. They thought of themselves as followers of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary master of ancient wisdom. While many of their writings are lost, those that survived have been interpreted primarily as philosophical treatises about theological topics. Wouter J. Hanegraaff challenges this dominant narrative by demonstrating that Hermetic literature was concerned with experiential practices intended for healing the soul from mental delusion. The Way of Hermes involved radical alterations of consciousness in which practitioners claimed to perceive the true nature of reality behind the hallucinatory veil of appearances. Hanegraaff explores how practitioners went through a training regime that involved luminous visions, exorcism, spiritual rebirth, cosmic consciousness, and union with the divine beauty of universal goodness and truth to attain the salvational knowledge known as gnôsis.

Body and Gender, Soul and Reason in Late Antiquity

Body and Gender, Soul and Reason in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Gillian Clark
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100095000X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
What does it mean to say that a human being is body and soul, and how does each affect the other? Late antique philosophers, Christians included, asked these central questions. The papers collected here explore their answers, and use those answers to ask further questions, reading Iamblichus, Porphyry, Augustine and others in their social and intellectual context. Among the topics dealt with are the following. Humans are mortal rational beings, so how does the mortal body affect the rational soul? The body needs food: what foods are best for the soul, and is it right to eat animal foods if animals are less rational than humans? The body is gendered for reproduction: are reason and the soul also gendered? Ascetic lifestyles may free our bodies from the limitations of gender and desire, so that our souls are free to reconnect with the divine; but this need must be balanced with the claims of family and society. Philosophers asked whether life in the body is exile for the soul; Christians defended their claim that body as well as soul would live after death, and even the smallest fragment of a martyr's body is proof of resurrection.

Subversive Principles

Subversive Principles PDF Author: David H. Aaron
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 559

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Book Description
Avot, a tractate in the Mishnah (c. 220 CE), is the single most studied and commented upon Jewish text outside the Hebrew Bible. Commonly published as a stand-alone volume with the title Pirke Avot (“Chapters of the Fathers” or “Ethics of the Fathers”), Avot is also included in Jewish prayer books to encourage group and home study in every form of Judaism. A number of scholarly studies over the past three decades have reconceptualized the historical purpose and stylistic character of tractate Avot, which is unlike any other in the Mishnah. Some scholars have recognized that Avot’s content reflects the ideological positions of an elitist fellowship originally formed according to paradigms established by Greco-Roman schools of philosophy. Subversive Principles furthers the argument that Avot was composed to facilitate the formation of such a fellowship by engaging the analytical insights of Pierre Bourdieu regarding symbolic language and other theorists elucidating the role of exchange theory in religions. This volume explores an ethics of reading and the matter of historical relativism as such concerns influence the historical-critical interpretation of a canonical text.