3rd PhD Comprehensive Examination

Table of Contents Abstract

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1) Introduction

3

2) Methodology

5

3) Survey of Secondary Literature

10

4) Introduction to the Themes a) Precursors: i) Heraclitus ii) Stoic Philosophy iii) Wisdom Literature

19 22 24

b) Creation i) Philo ii) Origen

26 27

c) Logos i) Philo ii) Origen

29 32

d) Sophia, Scientia, and Gnosis i) Philo ii) Origen

35 38

5) Conclusion

41

6) Bibliography

44

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Abstract The following paper deals generally with ideas about revelation in two thinkers from Alexandria: Philo and Origen. This will necessitate also a close examination into a number of related issues, particularly those of creation, logos, and the nature of scripture. It will be proposed that these ideas coalesce into the fashioning of a worldview which is both rich in its treatment of history, and which provides alternatives to the dualisms which are sometimes present in thought which engages that of earlier Greek and Roman philosophy.

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1. Introduction Generally speaking, the following paper is concerned with notions of revelation as such has been presented in the writings of two early thinkers from Alexandria in Egypt, namely, Philo and Origen. To speak more particularly, their concepts of revelation will be probed by means of exploring a number of ideas which these men utilized, which they believed comprise fundamental elements or components of the divine act which has come – in much more recent times than late antiquity – to be referred to as revelation. These include: creation, logos, and scripture. With respect to this last element, I will not spend much time at all with the usual route in consideration of the different sorts of interpretation that have been utilized throughout any given time, or the questions surrounding genre; I will be much more concerned with their notions of what exactly scripture is. My question is far less ambitious than those concerned with the difficult matters of genre and interpretation; I seek to come to some understanding of what precisely these Alexandrians believed they were handling when they took up and considered their respective scriptures; what is the very nature of scripture itself as it was understood by these men? To return to the matter of revelation. On the whole, as it is used in the present context – and it seems to have been so with our Alexandrians – revelation is here something quite different from the popular, modern conception of the same. In common parlance the idea seems fundamentally to be a passive one, something to which an individual is subject. Such is of course implied in the word itself; the Latin revelare suggesting the reversal, i.e., removal ‘re’ of a veil ‘velum’, somewhat in the manner with which a museum curator might remove a veil covering a featured work of art at the launching of an exhibition. The results of the present work, however, have revealed a different perspective in the work of the Alexandrians. Perhaps a useful word here

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might be expression. The act of creation as expression of Godself, and the formation of a worldview which proceeds from such knowledge; this statement captures the essence of my understanding of both Philo and Origen. I believe the etymology of the word express suits well the manner with which both Philo and Origen view the matter; to provide out (ex + praestare). Both authors would likely view any distinction between doctrines of creation and revelation to be false. Indeed both authors go so far as to posit something of an essential relation between creation and scripture; the latter is not simply one act or movement superadded onto that of the former. In the thinking of the Alexandrians, while all of creation is viewed as an expression of Godself, scripture is a peculiarly acute, lucid, articulate, eloquent expression of a fundamental inner dynamic of divinity which – always mindful of the limits of the conceptual efficiency of language – is analogous to ‘reason.’ The analogy is unfolded via the many layers of logoi which have at their center the divine Logos. Yet these logoi seem to transcend the sort of mere approximation which analogy is and provides. I am tempted to say that in these thinkers, the logoi are not one thing while the Logos is another, in the manner, say, that one’s thoughts of God are one thing, while God is another; the logoi themselves – “are” is too strong a word here – the logoi themselves are engaged by divinity; creation, in turn, participates in these logoi, and sentient creation does so in a particular way, hence my proposing that revelation is not fundamentally passive. Both Philo and Origen seem to proclaim – cautiously, if not tentatively – an essential relation between God and scripture, but the claim seems – for a contemporary reader at least – to buckle under the weighty mass of the verb “to be.” This will have, of course, to be fleshed out at the proper time and place below.

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