Mark J Edwards
Biographic Data
| ID | 5525354 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark J Edwards |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark J |
| FAMILY NAME | Edwards |
| SIGNATURE | EDWARDS M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8283-9015 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 29 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Fathers, Computers and Us
This essay, designed as a complement to opinions expressed by Rowan Williams and some speakers at the conference in his honour, explores features of early Christianity which suggest a positive evaluation of artificial intelligence. Noting that the fear of reducing humans to machines has been joined in the modern age by the fear that machines could become human, it takes as an example of both trends Frank Tipler’s thesis that humans are destined t…
The Christianity of Latin Christian Poetry
This chapter examines the poems of Juvencus, Prudentius, and Ausonius, not primarily as specimens of a late-antique aesthetics, but as instruments for the propagation of religious knowledge and the consolidation of Christian hegemony through the appropriation of pagan tools of art. The poems will be considered both as vehicles of acculturation and as objects of culture in their own right, expressing and fostering a new sense of moral and politica…
Modern Philosophy and Origen
This essay asks in what ways modern (i.e. twentieth‐century) philosophy can either make use of Origen or inform our reading of him. It argues in the first section that the predominantly exegetic method of Origen makes it difficult for analytic philosophy to accommodate his reasoning. In the second section it examines the comparisons drawn by John Lyons between Origen and Teilhard de Chardin, which also suggest affinities with Henri Bergson, but c…
A process evaluation of the PLAN-A intervention (Peer-Led physical Activity iNtervention for Adolescent girls)
ISCTRN, ISRCTN12543546 , Registered on 28/7/2015
Christians, Gnostics and Philosophers in Late Antiquity
Kinzig on the Creeds
In these four volumes Wolfram Kinzig has put together the largest compilation to date of texts which profess to set out the principal tenets of the Church between the second and the eighth centuries of the Christian era. In dimension it easily surpasses its German precursors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while in content it can aim to be more eclectic than the compendium which Philip Schaff addressed to the clergy and fellow-believe…
Marinus of Neapolis
The Neoplatonic philosopher Marinus of Neapolis succeeded Proclus as head of the Academy in Athens in 485 ce . His surviving works include a commentary on the Data of Euclid, and he is credited also with an erudite treatise on astrology. He owes his fame primarily, however, to his Proclus, or On Happiness , a hagiographic memoir of his predecessor, unmistakable hostile to C hristianity, which treats the life of Proclus as an exemplary progression…
Sense of body ownership in patients affected by functional motor symptoms (conversion disorder)
Image, Word and God in the Early Christian Centuries
Christianity proclaims Christ and the incarnate word of God; the Bible is described as the Word of God in both Jewish and Christian tradition. Are these usages merely homonymous, or would the ancients have recognized a more intimate relation between the word incarnate and the word proclaimed? This book investigates the concept of logos in pagan, Jewish and Christian thought, with a view to elucidating the polyphonic functions which the word acqui…
One Origen or Two? The Status Quaestionis
It has generally been assumed that there were two Origens in the early third century, both of whom were taught by Ammonius Saccas, the Alexandrian teacher of Plotinus. In recent years, it has become more common to maintain that there was only one Origen. Hermann Dörrie's theory that there were two Origens, each taught by a different Ammonius, has enjoyed little favour, and some have denied the existence of the peripatetic Ammonius, proposed as a …
Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity
Written by a group of leading scholars, this unique collection of essays investigates the views of both pagan and Christian philosophers on causation and the creation of the cosmos. Structured in two parts, the volume first looks at divine agency and how late antique thinkers, including the Stoics, Plotinus, Porphyry, Simplicius, Philoponus and Gregory of Nyssa, tackled questions such as: is the cosmos eternal? Did it come from nothing or from so…
“One Nature of the Word Enfleshed”
According to the least charitable view of Cyril's part in the “Nestorian controversy,” it was for him nothing more than that—a political scheme to eject a man whose scrutiny he had come to fear from a see whose power he had always envied. This account suggests that his apparent tergiversations tell us nothing of his theology: as a Christian he believed what the rest of Christendom believed, but as a prince of the church he turned his coat wheneve…
Macarius, Apocriticus
A new English translation of 'The Apocriticus of Macarius', with notes and introductory essays. This text purports to be the record of a debate between a pagan philosopher, and Macarius, a Christian rhetor, and is a rich, but neglected, source for the history of intellectual and cultural conflict between Christian and Hellene intellectuals
Increasing children’s physical activity through a teaching-assistant led extracurricular intervention
ISRCTN58502739
School travel mode, parenting practices and physical activity among UK Year 5 and 6 children
For girls, encouraging active travel to school is likely to be important for overall PA. Further formative research may be warranted to understand how both parental logistic support and active travel decisions are operationalized in families as a means of understanding how to promote increased PA among pre-adolescent children
John Behr, Irenaeus of Lyons
Bristol girls dance project (BGDP)
ISRCTN52882523
Why Did Constantine Label Arius a Porphyrian
Constantine stigmatised the condemned theologian Arius as a Porphyrian, though the Neoplatonist Porphyry is not represented elsewhere as the author of any Christian heresy. It is argued here that Constantine saw both Arius and Porphyry as enemies of his own understanding of Christ, the Logos or Word, as an actualised potentiality of the Father. Arius, holding the Logos to be “ from nothing”, could not embrace the notion of Christ as the logos pro…
Soul, Christian
The Greek noun psyche denotes both soul and life, and is not univocally employed in the works of the earliest Christians, any more than in the sacred texts that they inherited from the Jews. Paul, on the authority of Genesis 2:7, calls the first man a living soul (1 Cor 15:45).
Justin Martyr
Justin (ca. 100–ca. 165) was the first philosophic apologist for Christianity. By his own account, he came from Flavia Neapolis in Samaria ( 1 Apol . 1) but received a Greek education.
Logos
The word logos in Greek may signify an account, a discourse, a reckoning, a principle, an argument, a rationale, or the faculties of speech and reasoning.
Alexander of Alexandria and the Homoousion
This paper responds to recent publications which play down the role of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria in securing the adoption of the term homoousion at the Nicene Council of 325. It argues that, while the term is not employed in any surviving work from his hand, there is some reason to believe that he sanctioned the use of it by his colleagues. There is no doubt that before the Council he had already declared the Son to be "from the Father's ess…
The Fate of the Devil in Origen
Origen's prediction that death will at last be at peace with God at De Principiis 3.6.5 is generally assumed to allude to the devil, though without naming him. Eriugena (Peri Phuseon 930 Migne) is acquainted with a variant in which the devil is expressly named. This is unlikely to be the true reading, since: (a) there is no strong evidence that he had access to a superior manuscript of the De Principiis; and (b) the devil is once again camouflage…
Porphyry and the Christians
The Philosopher and Society in Late Antiquity
Portraits
Collections of articles or papers by different authors sometimes meet with prejudice among those who feel that only the mind of a single writer can give sets of ideas an acceptable unity. This viewpoint is not absurd; at the same time it is not absolutely valid. For it is a common enough practice to assign difficult problems to working-parties and discussion groups for clarification. We do this because we recognize the value of hearing a number o…
Why Did Constantine Label Arius a Porphyrian
Constantine stigmatised the condemned theologian Arius as a Porphyrian, though the Neoplatonist Porphyry is not represented elsewhere as the author of any Christian heresy. It is argued here that Constantine saw both Arius and Porphyry as enemies of his own understanding of Christ, the Logos or Word, as an actualised potentiality of the Father. Arius, holding the Logos to be “ from nothing”, could not embrace the notion of Christ as the logos pro…
The Clementina
The Clementine Recognitions and Clementine Homilies , both of which evolved between the second and the fourth centuries after Christ, are treated all too frequently as material for historians, not for critics. A book on the ancient novel is sufficiently erudite if the author shows that he has read them; the Homilies are omitted in a volume of translations under the title of Collected Ancient Greek Novels . It might be said that this is as it shou…
Philo or Sanchuniathon? A Phoenicean Cosmogony
Herennius Philo of Byblos is the subject of a notice in the Suda, which states that he was a grammarian born in Nero's time who lived to such an advanced age that he was still composing works in the reign of Hadrian. The titles listed include: On the Acquisition and Choice of Books; On Cities and their Eminent Citizens ; and On the Reign of Hadrian (= Fr. 1 Jacoby). His name, like that of Flavius Josephus, could imply the patronage of a Roman fam…
The Art of Love and Love of Art in Longus
Dans les Pastotrales qu'on attribue à Longus, les hommes se montrent plus puissants que les dieux, et les amants se trouvent plus sages que les sophistes. Daphnis, poète et rustique amoureux, ne souffre les calamités ni de Philétas, l'artiste sans passion, ni de Pan, le ravisseur sans finesse. Mais que faut-il donc dire de l'auteur lui-même, qui n'oserait jamais faire partie du monde qu'il a créé
Middle Platonism On the Beautiful and the Good
The Philosopher and Society in Late Antiquity
Scenes from the Later Wanderings of Odysseus
That the most poetic of all the Greek philosophers should also be the severest judge of the poets was a perpetual embarrassment to his disciples and an invitation to enemies who could never have found their way into the difficulties of his thought. At the hands of Colotes, an early Epicurean, Plato became the butt of his own asperities; the allegorist Heraclitus, showing equal contempt for Plato and for ‘the Phaeacian Epicurus’, found that philos…
Lucretius, Empedocles and Epicurean Polemics
Porphyry and the intelligible triad
Passages from Plato often inspired in late antiquity a speculative profusion of ingenuities that can scarcely have been intended by the author. Even in the Timaeus , however, few passages could be found which were to undergo so much elaboration as the sparse and incidental remarks in the Sophist concerning Being, Life and Mind. These terms are given some prominence in the Enneads of Plotinus, where it remains nonetheless very difficult to reconst…
A Late Use of Empedocles
Numenius, Pherecydes and The Cave of the Nymphs
The following excerpt from Proclus' Commentary on the Timaeus appears as Fr. 37 in the edition of the fragments of Numenius by Des Places.1 It is the aim of this study (1) to ascertain the original place of the fragment in his work, and (2) to show that it belongs to a second-century school of allegorical commentary on the ancient theologians, and particularly on Pherecydes of Syros, of which Numenius will have been one of the brightest luminarie…
Atticizing Moses? Numenius, the Fathers and the Jews
Middle Platonism On the Beautiful and the Good
Philo or Sanchuniathon? A Phoenicean Cosmogony
Herennius Philo of Byblos is the subject of a notice in the Suda, which states that he was a grammarian born in Nero's time who lived to such an advanced age that he was still composing works in the reign of Hadrian. The titles listed include: On the Acquisition and Choice of Books; On Cities and their Eminent Citizens ; and On the Reign of Hadrian (= Fr. 1 Jacoby). His name, like that of Flavius Josephus, could imply the patronage of a Roman fam…
Protagorean and socratic myth
This article attempts to show that the style and form of the myth in the Protagoras are suited to the speaker, and differentiate his practice from that of Socrates and other speakers whom Plato favours. After a study of general features of Platonic myth, that of Protagoras is contrasted with Diotima's, and a final section illustrates the difference of function.
The Clementina
The Clementine Recognitions and Clementine Homilies , both of which evolved between the second and the fourth centuries after Christ, are treated all too frequently as material for historians, not for critics. A book on the ancient novel is sufficiently erudite if the author shows that he has read them; the Homilies are omitted in a volume of translations under the title of Collected Ancient Greek Novels . It might be said that this is as it shou…
A Portrait of Plotinus
Porphyry's Life of Plotinus is the earliest extant memoir of a philosopher by his pupil. Historians of philosophy have embraced it as a key to the intellectual development of Plotinus, while historians of the third century have found it an invaluable supplement to the fragmentary records of this era. Yet few have cared to read it as an original work of literature, or even as the mature work of a scholar and philosopher who for centuries eclipsed …
Philo of Alexandria and the Church Fathers
The Art of Love and Love of Art in Longus
Dans les Pastotrales qu'on attribue à Longus, les hommes se montrent plus puissants que les dieux, et les amants se trouvent plus sages que les sophistes. Daphnis, poète et rustique amoureux, ne souffre les calamités ni de Philétas, l'artiste sans passion, ni de Pan, le ravisseur sans finesse. Mais que faut-il donc dire de l'auteur lui-même, qui n'oserait jamais faire partie du monde qu'il a créé
Portraits
Collections of articles or papers by different authors sometimes meet with prejudice among those who feel that only the mind of a single writer can give sets of ideas an acceptable unity. This viewpoint is not absurd; at the same time it is not absolutely valid. For it is a common enough practice to assign difficult problems to working-parties and discussion groups for clarification. We do this because we recognize the value of hearing a number o…
Aux sources de l'anti-judaïsme chrétien II e -III e siècles; Image and Reality
Numenius of Apamea
Numenius of Apamea is a thinker whom we know only from the reports of later witnesses who were anything but dispassionate historians of philosophy. Pythagorean is the most common epithet for Numenius. From the first book On the Good, Eusebius transcribes an arresting simile, which may, as its position in the arrangement of des Places implies, have served as an exordium to the main argument. Numenius can be reconciled with Plato if his cosmogony i…
The Philosopher and Society in Late Antiquity
Porphyry and the Christians
The Fate of the Devil in Origen
Origen's prediction that death will at last be at peace with God at De Principiis 3.6.5 is generally assumed to allude to the devil, though without naming him. Eriugena (Peri Phuseon 930 Migne) is acquainted with a variant in which the devil is expressly named. This is unlikely to be the true reading, since: (a) there is no strong evidence that he had access to a superior manuscript of the De Principiis; and (b) the devil is once again camouflage…
Soul, Christian
The Greek noun psyche denotes both soul and life, and is not univocally employed in the works of the earliest Christians, any more than in the sacred texts that they inherited from the Jews. Paul, on the authority of Genesis 2:7, calls the first man a living soul (1 Cor 15:45).
Justin Martyr
Justin (ca. 100–ca. 165) was the first philosophic apologist for Christianity. By his own account, he came from Flavia Neapolis in Samaria ( 1 Apol . 1) but received a Greek education.
Logos
The word logos in Greek may signify an account, a discourse, a reckoning, a principle, an argument, a rationale, or the faculties of speech and reasoning.
Alexander of Alexandria and the Homoousion
This paper responds to recent publications which play down the role of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria in securing the adoption of the term homoousion at the Nicene Council of 325. It argues that, while the term is not employed in any surviving work from his hand, there is some reason to believe that he sanctioned the use of it by his colleagues. There is no doubt that before the Council he had already declared the Son to be "from the Father's ess…
Bristol girls dance project (BGDP)
ISRCTN52882523
Why Did Constantine Label Arius a Porphyrian
Constantine stigmatised the condemned theologian Arius as a Porphyrian, though the Neoplatonist Porphyry is not represented elsewhere as the author of any Christian heresy. It is argued here that Constantine saw both Arius and Porphyry as enemies of his own understanding of Christ, the Logos or Word, as an actualised potentiality of the Father. Arius, holding the Logos to be “ from nothing”, could not embrace the notion of Christ as the logos pro…
Philosophy (32 works) · Art (26 works) · Literature (21 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (18 works) · History (17 works) · Epistemology (16 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (16 works) · Theology (16 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (14 works) · Classics (14 works)