Heidi Marx-Wolf. Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority

This illuminating monograph is a contribution to the history of ideas in Late Antiquity. It focuses on the engagement of third-century Platonists with the various religious practices of the time. In particular, Heidi Marx-Wolf explores some of the extant works of Porphyry (ca. 234–305), Iamblichus (ca. 245–325), and Origen, a classmate of Plotinus (204–270), whom the author accepts, on the basis of the latest research, as identical with the Christian Origen (ca. 185–254). These are the works—polemical, practical, and theoretical—that show Greek or “pagan” philosophers trying to come to terms with the decidedly non-Hellenic religions of Alexandria and elsewhere. The period with which Marx-Wolf is dealing is on the cusp of the triumph of Christianity presaged by the persecutions of Diocletian in the first decade of the fourth century and sealed by the conversion of Constantine sometime after the Edict of Milan in 313. The underlying theme of Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority: Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century C.E. is that by the middle of the third century, Platonism had overwhelmed all of the other ancient Greek philosophical schools. There were no Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans, or Skeptics left or at least sufficiently prominent for us to know about them. Consequently, Platonists of this time were the lone champions of high Hellenic culture, fighting an increasingly rearguard action against its opponents. This is not to say, of course, that ancient Greek philosophers were themselves indifferent to religious practices and to what we might call “spiritual exercises.” Nevertheless, increasingly, under Christian pressure, the Platonists wanted to demonstrate that they, too, had ritual practices conducive to salvation and scriptures more ancient and illuminating than their competitors. The timing of the rising dominance of Christianity explains, by the way, why Plotinus, generally regarded as the originator of “Neoplatonism,” plays only a very small role in this book. For him, Christianity represented only a minor bizarre curiosity.

Aesthetics · Art · Church Fathers · Early Christianity · Extant taxon · Gnosticism · Late Antiquity · Literature · Period (music) · Platonism · Skepticism · Stoicism · Theme (computing) · Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices