Shaul Tor
Biographic Data
| ID | 5626566 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shaul Tor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shaul |
| FAMILY NAME | Tor |
| SIGNATURE | TOR S |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7229-092X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Belief in Greek and Roman Religion
For the Greeks and Romans, the world was full of gods, but this fundamental aspect of their experience poses major challenges to modern understanding. The concept of belief has been central to meeting those challenges but has itself been hotly debated, and has at times even been rejected as a supposedly Christianising anachronism. Others, meanwhile, have argued that a culture-neutral model of belief is both possible and essential, while the adven…
Personal Religion in the Ancient Greek World
Much is known about the manifold ways in which ancient Greek religious beliefs and practices map onto the social and political structures of the ancient Greek polis. The way in which the individual served as the basic unit of ancient Greek religion, and the personal dimension of ancient Greek religion associated with it, is much less well understood. This book offers the first comprehensive study of ancient Greek personal religion since the major…
Heraclitus on First (and Further) Hearings
The words τὸ πρῶτον in Heraclitus B1 have been subjected to competing construals, yet this dilemma, and its stakes, are almost never discussed. We argue that the common translation of ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον , ‘when once they have heard it’, faces insurmountable philosophical, stylistic, and linguistic objections. We make a new case for the alternative construal, ‘after they have heard it for the first time’. This yields a linguistically better acco…
Early Greek Philosophy
Language and doctrine in Parmenides’ Way of Reality
As early as Plato and as recently as current scholarship, readers of Parmenides have diagnosed tensions of one sort or another between his ontological views and the language through which he expresses those views. In the first instance, this article examines earlier claims for such tensions and argues that they are predicated on problematic assumptions concerning Parmenides’ ontological commitments or his strictures regarding the use of language.…
Empedocles the Wandering Daimōn and Trusting in Mad Strife
This article argues that Empedocles’ trust in Strife (DK31 B115.14 = LM22 D10.14) is not, as the prevailing interpretation has it, only a past misjudgement and failure. Rather, trust in Strife still, and to his own lament, infects Empedocles’ mind and informs his life. This detail then offers a fresh perspective on Empedocles’ self-conception and on how, through the daimōn ’s cosmic peregrinations, Empedocles raises and pursues questions of agenc…
Early Greek Philosophy
Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology
Xenophanes of Colophon wrote his verses in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. By his own account (DK21 B8, B45), Xenophanes spent most of his adult life travelling all around Greece, moving from city to city, performing his works and offering his wide-ranging reflections. Our own focus in this chapter will be his thoughts on the question of divine disclosure. We will ultimately see, though, how Xenophanes aims to locate the mortal as a…
Heraclitus on Apollo’s Signs and his own
This chapter will examine one of Heraclitus’ most arresting theological pronouncements (B93): The lord whose oracle is the one in Delphi neither says nor conceals but gives a sign. What kind of theology and theologising are at play in this abstracted and generalised reflection about Delphic Apollo and how does this reflection relate to and engage with the more implicit theological conceptions of Apollo conveyed in the Delphic traditions (as we fi…
Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion
Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to re…
Sextus and Wittgenstein on the End of Justification
Following the lead of Duncan Pritchard’s “Wittgensteinian Pyrrhonism,” this paper takes a further, comparative and contrastive look at the problem of justification in Sextus Empiricus and in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty . I argue both that Pritchard’s stimulating account is problematic in certain important respects and that his insights contain much interpretive potential still to be pursued. Diverging from Pritchard, I argue that it is a signific…
Parmenides’ Epistemology and the Two Parts of his Poem
This paper pursues a new approach to the problem of the relation between Alētheia and Doxa . It investigates as interrelated matters Parmenides’ impetus for developing and including Doxa , his conception of the mortal epistemic agent in relation both to Doxa ’s investigations and to those in Alētheia , and the relation between mortal and divine in his poem. Parmenides, it is argued, maintained that Doxastic cognition is an ineluctable and even ap…
Early Greek Philosophy
Early Greek Philosophy
Parmenides’ Epistemology and the Two Parts of his Poem
This paper pursues a new approach to the problem of the relation between Alētheia and Doxa . It investigates as interrelated matters Parmenides’ impetus for developing and including Doxa , his conception of the mortal epistemic agent in relation both to Doxa ’s investigations and to those in Alētheia , and the relation between mortal and divine in his poem. Parmenides, it is argued, maintained that Doxastic cognition is an ineluctable and even ap…
Sextus and Wittgenstein on the End of Justification
Following the lead of Duncan Pritchard’s “Wittgensteinian Pyrrhonism,” this paper takes a further, comparative and contrastive look at the problem of justification in Sextus Empiricus and in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty . I argue both that Pritchard’s stimulating account is problematic in certain important respects and that his insights contain much interpretive potential still to be pursued. Diverging from Pritchard, I argue that it is a signific…
Parmenides’ Epistemology and the Two Parts of his Poem
This paper pursues a new approach to the problem of the relation between Alētheia and Doxa . It investigates as interrelated matters Parmenides’ impetus for developing and including Doxa , his conception of the mortal epistemic agent in relation both to Doxa ’s investigations and to those in Alētheia , and the relation between mortal and divine in his poem. Parmenides, it is argued, maintained that Doxastic cognition is an ineluctable and even ap…
Heraclitus on Apollo’s Signs and his own
This chapter will examine one of Heraclitus’ most arresting theological pronouncements (B93): The lord whose oracle is the one in Delphi neither says nor conceals but gives a sign. What kind of theology and theologising are at play in this abstracted and generalised reflection about Delphic Apollo and how does this reflection relate to and engage with the more implicit theological conceptions of Apollo conveyed in the Delphic traditions (as we fi…
Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion
Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to re…
Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology
Xenophanes of Colophon wrote his verses in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. By his own account (DK21 B8, B45), Xenophanes spent most of his adult life travelling all around Greece, moving from city to city, performing his works and offering his wide-ranging reflections. Our own focus in this chapter will be his thoughts on the question of divine disclosure. We will ultimately see, though, how Xenophanes aims to locate the mortal as a…
Early Greek Philosophy
Empedocles the Wandering Daimōn and Trusting in Mad Strife
This article argues that Empedocles’ trust in Strife (DK31 B115.14 = LM22 D10.14) is not, as the prevailing interpretation has it, only a past misjudgement and failure. Rather, trust in Strife still, and to his own lament, infects Empedocles’ mind and informs his life. This detail then offers a fresh perspective on Empedocles’ self-conception and on how, through the daimōn ’s cosmic peregrinations, Empedocles raises and pursues questions of agenc…
Language and doctrine in Parmenides’ Way of Reality
As early as Plato and as recently as current scholarship, readers of Parmenides have diagnosed tensions of one sort or another between his ontological views and the language through which he expresses those views. In the first instance, this article examines earlier claims for such tensions and argues that they are predicated on problematic assumptions concerning Parmenides’ ontological commitments or his strictures regarding the use of language.…
Heraclitus on First (and Further) Hearings
The words τὸ πρῶτον in Heraclitus B1 have been subjected to competing construals, yet this dilemma, and its stakes, are almost never discussed. We argue that the common translation of ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον , ‘when once they have heard it’, faces insurmountable philosophical, stylistic, and linguistic objections. We make a new case for the alternative construal, ‘after they have heard it for the first time’. This yields a linguistically better acco…
Early Greek Philosophy
Personal Religion in the Ancient Greek World
Much is known about the manifold ways in which ancient Greek religious beliefs and practices map onto the social and political structures of the ancient Greek polis. The way in which the individual served as the basic unit of ancient Greek religion, and the personal dimension of ancient Greek religion associated with it, is much less well understood. This book offers the first comprehensive study of ancient Greek personal religion since the major…
Belief in Greek and Roman Religion
For the Greeks and Romans, the world was full of gods, but this fundamental aspect of their experience poses major challenges to modern understanding. The concept of belief has been central to meeting those challenges but has itself been hotly debated, and has at times even been rejected as a supposedly Christianising anachronism. Others, meanwhile, have argued that a culture-neutral model of belief is both possible and essential, while the adven…
Classical Philosophy and Thought (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (8 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Ancient philosophy (5 works) · Art (5 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)