Rethinking the Gods
Philosophical Readings of Religion in the Post-Hellenistic Period

Studies the dominant philosophical reflections on religion and the pantheon in the Post-Hellenistic period.

Peter van Nuffelen (Author)

9781108984959, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 January 2021

281 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.381 kg

'… [Nuffelen] has provided us here with a most stimulating, well-researched and well-argued monograph on a complex of topics central to the intellectual concerns of a wide range of thinkers in the first two centuries of the Common Era.' Literaturkritik

Ancient philosophers had always been fascinated by religion. From the first century BC onwards the traditionally hostile attitude of Greek and Roman philosophy was abandoned in favour of the view that religion was a source of philosophical knowledge. This book studies that change, not from the usual perspective of the history of religion, but as part of the wider tendency of Post-Hellenistic philosophy to open up to external, non-philosophical sources of knowledge and authority. It situates two key themes, ancient wisdom and cosmic hierarchy, in the context of Post-Hellenistic philosophy and traces their reconfigurations in contemporary literature and in the polemic between Jews, Christians and pagans. Overall, Post-Hellenistic philosophy displayed a relatively high degree of unity in its ideas on religion, which should not be reduced to a preparation for Neoplatonism.

Introduction
Part I. Ancient Wisdom: 1. Tracing the origins: ancients, philosophers, and mystery cults
2. Plutarch of Chaeronea: 'History as a basis for a philosophy that has theology as its end'
3. Numenius: philosophy as a hidden mystery
4. Dio Chrysostom, Apuleius and the rhetoric of ancient wisdom
Part II. Cosmic Hierarchy: 5. Towards the pantheon as the paradigm of order
6. The Great King of Persia and his satraps: ideal and ideology
7. Dio Chrysostom: virtue and structure in the Kingship Orations
8. Plutarch: a benevolent hierarchy of gods and men
Part III. Polemic and Prejudice: Challenging the Discourse: 9. Lucian, Epicureanism and strategies of satire
10. Philo of Alexandria: challenging Greco-Roman culture
11. Celsus and Christian superstition
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA]