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M J Edwards, Theologische Orakel in der Spätantike. Edited by Helmut Seng und Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 68, Issue 2, October 2017, Pages 769–772, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flx107
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Extract
In an essay which might serve as a manifesto for this learned and original collection, Luciana Santoprete appraises the difficulties and prospects of ‘Tracing the Connections between “Mainstream” Platonism and “Marginal” Platonism’. She takes note of some recent studies on Plotinus and the Gnostics, on relations between Numenius and heterodox Christianity, and on Christian appropriation of the Hermetica (to which we might say ‘appropriation from whom?’). She applauds recent studies on the Chaldaean Oracles and the anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides, which suggest that both are equally coloured by Gnostic thought, although one would typically be assigned to the mainstream and the other to the margins. She concludes by announcing a ‘triple digital project’, which will encompass ancient commentaries on philosophical texts, modern conjectures on their ‘interaction’ with the more penumbral literature, and the ‘philosophical references present in the Gnostic, Hermetic and Chaldaean corpuses’ (p. 31).
In the next contribution, ‘“Sources” et “principes”: Universalité et particularité dans les Oracles Chaldaïques’, Adrien Lecerf and Lucia Sandelli show that the dichotomy between mere theurgy and true philosophy cannot be sustained, because the Oracles not only share the anatomy of an intellectual system with Iamblichus, but introduce a distinction, unknown to Plato, between a ‘principle’ and a ‘source’, which was to furnish Damascius with an axiom of his metaphysics. The third piece is by John Turner, but its title, ‘The Chaldaean Oracles: A Pretext for the Sethian Apocalypse Allogenes?’, reveals only half of its content. While he certainly argues that the Oracles, the Allogenes, and the Commentary on the Parmenides are closely akin in their ‘metaphysical principles, structures and ontogenetic schemes’ (p. 99), he also regards the two later texts as a Platonizing revision of the Oracles, which prefer fire to light as an image of the transcendent and do not employ the intelligible triad of being, life, and mind. We should note that, while he assumes the chronological priority of the Oracles, Lecerf and Sandelli argue that they underwent a redaction after Iamblichus, which would leave little time, if any, for the subsequent composition of both the Allogenes and the Commentary. This theory, however, assumes the completeness of our present knowledge, which has been thrown into doubt by the discovery of these texts.
