This chapter first investigates the meaning of ‘revelation’ in ancient Christianity and ancient non-Jewish and non-Christian religions, especially in ‘pagan’ Platonism of the early imperial period. ‘Revelation’ was characterised by the stress on authoritative sources of revealed knowledge (e.g., the Bible, the Chaldaean Oracles). The objective is to argue that ‘pagan’ Platonists faithful to Plato (and commenting just on Plato) cannot be simplistically opposed to Jewish or Christian Platonists faithful to the Bible (and commenting exclusively on the Bible). The chapter examines how philosophical allegoresis was applied by Stoics and Platonists – ‘pagan’, Jewish, and Christian Platonists – to their authoritative texts and revelations. This study provides an accurate examination of the conceptual and methodological intersections between the works of ‘pagan’ and Christian Platonists, and points to cases that break the binary between ‘pagan’ commentaries on ‘pagan’ authoritative texts and Christian commentaries on Scripture. It will also suggest that Amelius commented on the Prologue of John in light of his previous knowledge of Origen’s Commentary.

In 1932, Karl Rahner’s article ‘Le début d’une doctrine des cinq sens spirituels chez Origène’ marked the beginning of twentieth-century debate about the ‘doctrine of the spiritual senses’. In 2012, Gavrilyuk and Coakley’s The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity marked a renaissance of interest in this theme. Gavrilyuk and Coakley harked back to Rahner as the father of the debate but revised his definition of the ‘doctrine of the spiritual senses, rendering it flexible enough to include a wider range of theologians. However, they drew their further examplars only from among theologians later than Origen, without considering earlier Christian material. In this chapter, select portions of Clement of Alexandria and of the New Testament are discussed, with a view to showing that Christian material earlier than Origen uses the language of sense perception in ways that are historically and conceptually significant for the spiritual senses tradition.

This chapter explores how late ancient institutions ordered the knowledge and ways of knowing that were associated with one of the central artefacts of the Christian community: its collection of sacred writings. I spotlight Origen, who was affiliated with a number of such institutions over his lifetime in Alexandria and later in Caesarea Maritima. I will examine how his philosophical schools gave shape and style to his exegetical project. I will also briefly reflect on the other institution with which he was affiliated: the church in Caesarea, where he was ordained as a priest. In a number of ways, I argue, philosophical schools left their imprint on Origen’s scriptural exegesis.

The chapter examines the somewhat unexpected links between Origens and Iamblichus views on foreknowledge deriving from the divine. Both share a division of foreknowledge, venerating that which comes from a highest god and devaluing that which is thought to derive from the material world or lower divinities. This contributes a late chapter to a history of divination in the classical world, and to a formation story of early Christian notions of prophecy.

The three subchapters demonstrate the early attempts at Christianizing historiography. The start of history is made by the historically perceived Resurrection of Christ, as outlined by Iulius Africanus. Christians are not simply part of a long history of human development, but they mark a new beginning of human history. What existed before, Paganism and Judaism, were only ephemeral preparations for Christianity. Like Eusebius later, he draws on pseudonymous writings, particularly documents that he refers back to the archive of Edessa. Origen, before him, had already approached history from a spiritual angle, largely disregarding the historical and chronological side of it, and making use of the canonical writings of the New Testament in an allegorical way by which he dissociates Christian history from that of Jews and Pagans, and sees it guided and foreseen by God. Very similar to Origen, Tertullian in the Latin speaking world portraits Christians in fighting of Pagans and Jews, but also deviant Christians, heretics and less commited brothers and sisters which he contrasts with those prophetic Christians who are fully engaged, are prepared for asceticism, rejection of pagan pasts and are willing martyrs. Instead of canonical scriptures it is the prophetic reading of the church traditions that inform about the origins of Christianity.

The essay deploys the rhetorical trope of personification to explore the role of the Jew in the Contra Celsum, for Origen and for Celsus himself, as well as a literary figure, before considering his place within intersecting Christian and Jewish literary traditions.

The literary structure of Celsusʼ Alēthēs Logos is not immediately recognizable today, since Origen, the only transmitter of statements from this work, changed their order when he tried to refute them in Contra Celsum. This paper presents rules and patterns according to which Celsus structured his text, as well as suggestions for the reconstruction of selected passages, especially the second speech of the ‘Jew’ whom Celsus introduces in the Alēthēs Logos.

This chapter argues that there is a logical aporia at the very heart of the Chalcedonian Definition: namely, that Jesus of Nazareth contributes nothing to the constitution of the “person,” or, said differently, that he stands in no real relation to the Logos. This aporia has its origins in a twofold historical pressure: the desire to affirm a unified subject and in Gregory of Nazianzus’ declaration that “the unassumed is the unhealed.” Throughout this chapter the historical conditions for this aporia are explored in the theologies of Origen, Apollinaris, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Cyril of Alexandria. The chapter argues that the majority of the bishops at Chalcedon followed Cyril in making the preexistent Logos as such to be the “person of the union,” leading to this aporia in the Chalcedonian Definition. The chapter ends with John of Damascus’ Christology and his solution to working with the given Chalcedonian definition.

Investigates the proliferating texts and traditions about Jesus in the early church and the decision in favour of the canonical four. By examining the competing options, the decision in favour of a fourfold gospel is seen as a decision for plurality within limits: the limits sustaining the coherence of the apostolic testimony to Jesus, and the plurality allowing the richness and complexity of the truth about Jesus to be displayed.

Christian monastic literature represents a unique genre within Late-antique and Byzantine literature. Scholars have debated for centuries the diverse influences which shaped such texts, but something of a consensus has emerged that, notwithstanding the obvious and predominant influence of the Christian Bible, these texts have also been influenced by the ethical reflections of Greek philosophy.

It is impossible to deny the obvious parallels between the insights of Greek philosophers—in particular the Neoplatonists (soul-body dualism; a transcendent, otherworldly finality of human existence; a well-ordered society which sublimates individual ambition to the common good) and Stoics (to live 'in accordance with reason' or 'self-sufficiently') —and Christian monastic literature.

This chapter will argue that, although Christian monastic writers rarely had direct access to Greek philosophical texts, they nonetheless absorbed the collective wisdom of these texts as filtered through the Hellenistic Christianity of their day, many of whose chief intellectuals—such as Clement and Origen of Alexandria—had already managed a creative fusion of Greek wisdom with the Christian Gospel.

Christian Platonism is a catch-all phrase. It recognizes that Plato and his successors, including the whole of ancient pagan thought, formed part of the complex background to the emergence of a new religion. Both pagans and Christians were mutually transformed by their prolonged encounter on many issues, but especially on the questions of creation, desire, and return. The chapter begins with Judaeo-Christian influence upon major features of the Platonic tradition and then articulates a hidden conversation that lies behind Christian thinking about the Trinity, the structure of reality, and the creation of the human being.

The relation of early Christianity to ancient Platonism has been a conflicted issue in historical scholarship, bringing to the fore latent questions about the nature of philosophy and shape of Christian theology. This chapter is intended to build upon recent advances in the scholarly interpretation of both Platonism and Early Christianity, in order to disentangle some long-standing interpretive issues. It emphasizes the role of Platonism and Christianity in the emergence of monotheism in late antiquity and the importance of Platonism in the development of the philosophical idea of transcendence.