Greek Theology

Protagoras is usually connected with the homo-mensura thesis which is interpreted as a defence of relativism, subjectivism or scepticism. A similar approach is brought to our reading of other fragments by Protagoras, for example fragment 80 B 4 DK, which is concerned with the gods. The starting point for Protagoras’ thought, however, may be the thesis that logos has a dual character. From the point of view of this thesis, Protagoras’ statement about the gods may be interpreted as an anti-logical examination of various opinions on the existence of the gods and the manifestation of their deity. This paper deals with the interpretational possibilities of Protagoras’ view of the gods. An alternative reading of fragment 80 B 4 DK in the context of the literature of the time indicates that Protagoras may not have been formulating sceptical objections to the knowledge of the gods, but may instead have been attempting to delineate an anthropological approach to religion which would lead to the need for a new role for mankind.
Keywords: Protagoras, the homo-mensura thesis, knowledge of the gods, anthropological theology.

The Philosophy of Parmenides as a system of idealistic monism (immaterialism). The Pythagorean background of Parmenides' metaphysics. The origin of the mistaken positivist interpretation of Parmenides. Plato's date of Parmenides' birth (circa 515 BC) is a literary fiction, Apollodorus' date (c. 544/541 BC) is to be preferred.

This is a more elaboret and developped version of the first paper published in Polish : M.T. Olszewski, Uwagi na temat mosaiki z Domu Aiona w Nea Paphos (Cypr), Menander XLII, 9-10, 1987, pp. 421-438 (translated to English : The Immortality of the Human Soul and the Dionysiac Mysteries in the 4th Century Allegory (In Connection with the Interpretation of the Mosaic from “House of Aion” at Paphos in Cyprus), see on academia.edu

The author proposes a new interpretation of the iconographical and iconological programme of five panels mosaic from the House of Aion at Nea Pahos in Cyprus. He proposes reading the five mythological panels (1. Leda and Zeus; 2. Dionysus on Mount Nysa; ; 3. Apollo and Marsyas; 4. The Dionysian thiasos; 5. The Apotheosis of Cassiopeia) as an allegory of the destiny of the human soul and body, starting with conception (Leda and a Swan)  and ending with the liberation of the soul and its apotheosis (the apotheosis of Cassiopeia).
The author rejects the interpretation of W.A. Daszewski, (Dionysos der Erlöser, Mainz am Rheim 1985) proposed in 1985 and his order of interpetation the five mythological pictures (1. Dionysus on Mount Nysa; 2. Leda and Zeus; 3. The Apotheosis of Cassiopeia; 4. Apollo and Marsyas 5. The Dionysian thiasos). Daszewski would like see in Dionysos - a newly born supreme god, the universal savior.
see also a new article: M.T.Olszewski, The iconographic programme of the Cyprus mosaic from the House of Aion reinterpreted as an anti-Christian polemic, in: Et in Arcadia Ego. Studia memoriae professoris Thomae Mikocki dicata, Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw 2013, pp. 207-239, Pls 74-86.

The description of god as phthoneros ('envious' , 'jealous' , 'grudging') in the works of Pindar, Aeschylus, and Herodotus has played an important role in the later understanding of archaic and classical Greek religion. This paper explores the genesis and development of several interpretations of the Greek concept of φθόνος θεῶν that have arisen since the Renaissance, and how these relate to wider debates on the relationship between Christianity and 'paganism' , including the 'jealous God' of Scripture. By exploring the intellectual climate which gave rise to the various interpretations which have dominated the last five centuries, I trace the origins of the tacit but total disagreement over the meaning of 'divine phthonos' in classical scholarship today, and encourage a return to the long-standing debates about a theme at the heart of Herodotus's Histories and our understanding of Greek religion more generally. In: Erudition and the Republic of Letters 2:1 (2017), pp.1-55

In his treatise On the eternity of the world , 4-47 Philo of Alexandria sets forth a doxography of opinions of Greek philosophers on the eternity of the cosmos contrasting  the theory of its periodical generation/destruction held by Democritus, Epicurus and the Stoics (generated and destructible) with that of Aristotle (ungenerated and indestructible) and Plato’s mediating position (generated and indestructible) which has been long ago anticipated by Moses in the Book of Genesis. In chapter 39 Philo turns to what he calls the "most demonstrative and irrefutable" argument allegedly used by myriads of philosophers. “Myriad" is a rhetorical exaggeration for “well known” or used by many, Philo’s main source is Aristotle’s lost work “On philosophy” (fr.916 Gigon). This argument is based on a trichotomic division with a subsequent refutation of all three possible assumptions: if the god destroys the present world in order to create a new one, the latter can only be worse, exactly the same or better than the former.  It cannot be worse, since as the two anonymous hexameters have it, “even a woman is not deficient in sound mind to such extent as to prefer what is worse when there is something better”. The new world cannot be the same since in this case the god would behave like a small child playing on a sea shore, erecting and destroying sand hills. The whole passage reveals a striking parallelism with the arguments in favor of the immutability of god ascribed to Xenophanes in De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia, chapter 3, as well as verbal echoes of extant authentic fragments of Xenophanes. We therefore argue that not only the two hexameters, but also the whole trichotomic argument in its archaic form (including the reminiscence of the famous Homeric simile) quoted by Philo derives from the lost monotheistic poem of Xenophanes. On p. 389 we propose a hexametric reconstruction of the original verses. An important outcome of this attribution is that the Xenophanes section of MXG,ch.3-4 is indeed based on Xenophanes’ verses, although the author of MXG omits colorful similes of Xenophanes and paraphrases them in a colorless fourth century B.C. language. The naïve and somewhat sophistic character of argumentation (the god cannot behave like a woman or a child) explains why Aristotle characterized Xenophanes a “somewhat crude” thinker (ἀγροικότερος) in comparison with the strict logic of Parmenides. Another important outcome is that Xenophanes used rationalistic dialectical argument in his monotheistic theology that resemble to some extent the Eleatic style of philosophising. Burnet’s radical separation of Xenophanes from the Eleatic school and from his second home city Elea, contradicted by all extant ancient evidence, was a serious mistake. Xenophanes can be adequately characterized as a Proto-Eleatic thinker.

Paul’s speech before the Areopagus recorded in Acts 17:22-31 serves as an echo of earlier Hellenistic sources, including Socrates’ trial in Athens in Plato’s Apology and poems by the sage Epimenides and Aratus the Stoic. It is here argued that these rhetorical and literary echoes resound also with reference to central patterns identified dialectically by the Stranger in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman. These echoes point to the men of Athens as sophists, to Paul as a stranger, and to Christ as the divinely ordained statesman. Paul’s incorporation of themes from these two Platonist dialogues highlights an ancient Christian negotiation with culture in propagation of the kerygma; it is the stranger that speaks to culture, with culture, against culture, and toward new culture; it is the stranger that identifies the sophist and the statesman, who sets aright the myth of a world turned backward.

Literature and Philosophy are habitually conceived as separate disciplines including different discursive models and audiences. This paper aims at loosening this disciplinary compartmentalisation focusing on the figures of Pindar and Xenophanes, seen as representatives of the same cultural and intellectual milieu, a one that is embodied by the Sicilian tyrant Hiero of Siracuse. It is scholarly held that the tyrant surrounded himself with a group of intellectuals (Morgan 2015, Gostoli 1999) to promote and consolidate his reign after a delicate political situation. By participating in this cultural and political scenario, Pindar and Xenophanes show not only to share formal affinities, that is the performative context of their poetry, but also ideological kinship in the way they polemically position themselves against the tradition. The paper examines some texts by Pindar and Xenophanes that can be arguably dated to the time of their Sicilian sojourn. Xenophanes' elegy D59 LM, possibly performed at the court of Hieron of Siracuse, inserts in the traditional agenda of lyric poets hints of theological assumptions by addressing some mythological stories as 'false', through the use of the craft metaphor. Pindar exploits the same metaphor in Olympian 1 to make similar claims that are arguably theologically charged, although scholars usually ascribe them to the poetics of archaic generic fittingness. Pindar's Olympian 9 and Paean 7b represent an additional point of contact with Xenophanes' speculation on the gods, as seen in fr. D8 LM: a concern with detaching human behaviours from the Olympians seems to carry, beyond the poetic agenda, epistemic scrupulous. Finally, a further speculative linguistic and hermeneutical parallel between Pindar's Olympian 1, 35 and Xenophanes' D 59, 24 LM dealing with the more 'plausible' way of envisioning the gods corroborates the ideological kinship between the two.

Aristotelov spis Περὶ ψυχῆς ni le prvo delo v izročilu zahodnega mišljenja, ki je izrecno posvečeno vprašanju duše kot oživljajočega počela živih bitij na čelu s človekom in njegovimi utrpevajočimi stanji pa tudi dejavnimi vzgibi, kot je želja, ki lahko giblje proti premišljenosti in dovzetnosti za smisel. V nasprotju s sodobno psihologijo in psihoanalizo ter iz njiju izhajajočimi terapevtskimi praksami, ki se osredotočajo predvsem na patologijo vsakdanjega življenja in potlačenost želje v nezavednem, se grški mislec kot nekdanji Platonov učenec po izčrpni obravnavi duše kot bitnosti in smotrnostne udejanjenosti človekovega naravnega telesa navsezadnje ozre še onkraj četvernih duševnih moči, ki nam omogočajo obstoj, da bi naposled uzrl dušo kot »kraj oblik«, kolikor je obdarjena z mišljenjsko dovzetnostjo zanje. S tem pa se šele zares začnejo odpirati najgloblja dušeslovna in umoslovna vprašanja glede izvora, poteka, utrpevanja in udejanjanja poslednjega smotra mišljenja, ki po Aristotelovem prepričanju človekovi duši med vsemi njenimi svojstvi najbolj pritiče. Je del duše, s katerim ona misli in spoznava, propadljiv, kot so od starostnega slabljenja čutni organi, ali obstaja kot neodvisna bitnost, ki ne propada? Se po poti mišljenja venomer giblje krožno, čeprav omejen v svojih presojah in opredelitvah? A kaj naj tedaj večno misli, kolikor krožno gibanje nima konca? Ali pa je ves čas v mirujočem stanju kakor silogizem? Je ločen od utrpevanja telesa ali ne? Se razlikuje od ostalih duševnih zmožnosti, kot sta čutno zaznavanje ali domišljijska predstava po veličini ali po dovzetnosti za smisel?  Kaj je njegova razlikovalna značilnost in predvsem kje, od kod in ne nazadnje, »kako se poraja mišljenje«?

This essay outlines the Stoic doctrine of conflagration. Its dependence on Heraclitus and his belief in conflagration and cosmogony is affirmed. The Stoics found in Heraclitus a representation of the conflagration but not a theory of it. Their contribution consisted precisely in formulating such a theory. However, since in doing this they drew upon the Ionian tradition, a tension emerged between the original core of the Heraclitean doctrine, deeply mystical and religious in nature, and the reductionist materialism implied by the aforementioned tradition. Another relevant contrast concerns the conceptual scheme by which the Stoics conceived of the conflagration. We find, on the one hand, a permanentist scheme of the Aristotelian sort and, on the other, an emanationist scheme of Heraclitean derivation. In the end, I wish to advance the hypothesis that the conflagration is a sort of crucible of Zeus’ thoughts and that time accompanies the unfolding of this supreme theoretical activity.