It is known that Philo of Alexandria often speaks of the direct dependence of the Greek philosophers on Moses. For example, Heraclitus of Ephesus, according to him, borrowed from Moses the idea that opposites come from the same whole (Her. 214) and that life in the body is death (LA I. 108). Stoick
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Zeno owes his ideas about slavery to Moses (Prob. 53-57). The Cynic Antisthenes follows Moses in understanding wisdom and folly (Prob. 28-29).
However, all these references are more or less random in comparison with the deep dependence that is reconstructed, rather, from the totality of Philo's ideas and is not limited to pointing to one or two specific contexts. We are talking about the Moses - Pythagoras - Plato relationship, which was rightly noted by John Dillon 1 . Suffice it to say that, apart from Moses, the epithet sacred , which indicates an exceptional closeness to the divine, is applied by Philo only to Plato and the Pythagoreans (Prob. 2: the Most Sacred thias of the Pythagoreans Prob. 13: according to the most sacred Plato, but Aristotle must also be added to this series, since Philo , in accordance with the prevailing Platonic tradition in the school environment at that time, 2 considered Aristotle as the most faithful and consistent student of Plato. Philo makes this point quite clearly in Aet. 16: "And Aristotle bears witness to this about Plato, [and it is true], because he could not lie about anything, honoring the title of philosopher, and because no one can bear witness to a teacher better than a student, and especially one who did not consider himself a philosopher." education is a random business, guided by an easily quenched curiosity, but having tried to surpass the finds of the ancients, for the first time discovered some of the most important things for each part of philosophy. " 3
On the question of the creation and annihilation of the world (to which the treatise "On the Eternity of the World" is devoted) Philo, of course, is well aware of the difference in the views of the teacher and the student. And although, as Philo points out, Plato's point of view actually agrees with Moses, nevertheless Aristotle's ideas, which he allegedly borrowed from the ancients (and the Pythagoreans are called ancient: cf. Aet. 12), are also called pious and sacred In the treatise "On the Eternity of the World" (12-19), two lines of dependence are depicted: 1) Moses - (Hesiod) - Plato-Aristotle and 2) the Pythagoreans - Aristotle. At the same time, in the treatise "That every virtuous person is free" (2.13), Moses, the Pythagoreans and Plato are united in one circle. It should be concluded that, depending on the specific topic under consideration , the line of communication may change somewhat for Philo, as a philosophically well-educated person4, but the general trend remains unchanged. It consists of the sequence: Moses - Pythagoreans-Plato-Aristotle. Therefore, when Questions on Genesis (QG 3.16) show that Pythagoras and Aristotle followed Moses in their ideas of happiness, we must take these two names as the extreme links of a single chain, in which Plato's name is missing in this case.
However, the most interesting feature for the historian of philosophy is that almost all specific references to the names of Greek philosophers and their dependence on Moses come mainly from Philo's non-biblical treatises - "On the Eternity of the World " (De aeternitate mundi) and" That everyone who is virtuous is free " (Quod omnis probus liber sit). There are different opinions about what period of life
1 Ср. Dillon J. The Middle Platonists (80 B.C. to A.D. 220). Ithaca, New York, 1977 (1992 2 ). P. 143: "His basic principle was that Moses was the greatest philosopher, Plato was a follower of Pythagoras (as Eudorus and certainly Posidonius pointed out), and Pythagoras was a follower of Moses." See also Runia D. Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. Leiden, 1986. p. 535: "Philo certainly shows a constant desire to present Moses as a philosophizing sage of the Greek type, superior to Pythagoras or Plato."
2 As evidenced by Antiochus in Cicero's Academicians. See Cic . Acad. Pr. IV. 17.
3 Translation by the author of the article. Also in other cases where the translator is not specified.
4 To prove this thesis, it is enough to refer only to the treatise "On the Eternity of the World", in which Philo reveals an exceptional knowledge of the philosophical tradition - academic (Aet. 14), stoic, in which he highlights Boethes of Sidon and Panetius (Aet. 76) and peripatetic, in connection with which he quotes Theophrastus in detail (Aet. 117) and Kritolaya (Aet. 55).
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Philo refers to them, but mostly recognizes that they are written as a rhetorical exercise in the form of double speeches. [5 ] This practice involves listening to or reading similar developments on a given topic by fellow students or students, or simply by the public within the walls of a Greek higher education institution. And if this is the case, then the question itself arises: why does Philo think it possible to refer so freely to Moses as the ancestor of the Greek philosophers and to use the biblical text in support of completely unbiblical theses, as he does, for example, in the case of the proof of the indestructibility of the world (Aet. 19)? Perhaps in order to better understand what historical and philosophical situation could have given rise to this view of Moses, and therefore create the theoretical prerequisites for the emergence of a philosophical commentary on the Septuagint as a text that is in a certain sense archetypal for Greek philosophy, it is worth taking a closer look at the environment in which Philo worked and wondering if there was whether the name of Moses is natural or at least not unexpected for her in this philosophical context.
It is interesting that Philo's only predecessor in the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, Aristobulus, also left a number of similar historical and philosophical sketches. Aristobulus was a Jew, and may have been the court philosopher of Ptolemy VI Philometor (181-146 B.C.); at any rate, fragments of the allegorical commentary come from an extensive philosophical work addressed to this monarch. According to Fr. 3 (Denis = F3 Walter = Eus. Pr. Ev. 13.12.1-2), Plato followed Moses: "It is obvious that Plato followed our legislation, and it is obvious that he processes everything that is in it." According to Fr. Za (Walter = Clem. Alex. Strom. I. 150. 1-3), he did this on the model of Pythagoras: "So it is clear that the above-mentioned philosopher borrowed a lot, [because he was a scholar], just as Pythagoras transferred a lot of ours into his philosophy." According to Fr 4 (Denis = Fr 4 Walter = Eus. Pr. Ev. 13.12.4-8), Moses was followed by Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Orpheus: "It seems to me that, having processed all this, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato followed him when they say that they hear the voice of God. For they clearly saw that the constitution of all things was created by God and is continually maintained by Him. And also Orpheus in the verses that he wrote about the Sacred Word, so tells...". According to Test. 4 (Walter = Clem. Alex. Strom. V. 14. 97.), in his allegorical commentary Aristobulus showed that all peripatetic philosophy depends on Moses and the prophets: "From Aristobulus, who lived under Ptolemy Philometor... there are many books in which he proves that peripatetic philosophy depends on Moses and other prophets." This message is confirmed in part by Fr. 5 (Denis = Fr. 5 Walter = Eus. Pr. Ev. 13.12. 9-16), which mentions "some representatives of the peripatetic school in connection with their teachings.
On the basis of these fragments of Aristobulus, we can state that he is characterized by the same line of dependence of the Greek philosophers on Moses as Philo: the key names in it are Pythagoras (or the Pythagoreans), Plato, and Aristotle (or the Peripatetics).
In the case of both authors - Aristobulus and Philo - one can speak of a professional philosophical commentary on the Pentateuch6 from the Greek point of view , but the specific way in which the Greeks ' dependence on the Septuagint is implied by both is embodied, oddly enough, in exactly the same line dictating the succession of Moses - Pythagoras - Plato - Aristotle.
It is precisely in connection with historical and philosophical ideas that presuppose the primacy of Jewish wisdom, embodied, before the Greek, in a concrete world.
Runia D. 5 Philo's De aeternitate mundi: the Problem of its Interpretation / / VChr. 1981. 35. P. 105-151; Levinskaya O. L. On therapists and the philosophical tradition of reasoning in utramque partem / / Mathesis. From the History of Ancient Philosophy, Moscow, 1991, pp. 176-193.
6 Ср. Denis A.M. Introduction aux pseudepigraphes grecs d'Ancient Testament. Leiden, 1970. P. 281.
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a philosophical monument, the Septuagint, and mentions Aristobulus and Philo, speaking of those who held the same view, Clement of Alexandria. At the same time, he, unexpectedly for all researchers, 7 gives the first the epithet peripatetic, and the second-the epithet Pythagorean (Strom. I. 15. 72-73): "And that of all of them the most ancient is the Jewish people, and that their philosophy, being written down, preceded the philosophy of the Greeks, is proved in detail by the Pythagorean Philo, and not by the Greek people. not only him, but also the peripatetic Aristobulus and many others, whom I will not list by name."
We believe that the historical and philosophical views of both can be considered within the framework of a single, Greek perspective, and the above message of Clement will help to outline it correctly.
We will first make a small digression, in which we will show that Philo's most general views on Jewish philosophy in its relation to Greek philosophy are closely related to the original Greek ideas on this question. This will create an appropriate background against which other features of his approach will naturally be perceived.
Let us take in a slightly broader context the above-mentioned message of Clement. At the beginning of the first book of Stromatus, Clement gives various accounts of the preeminent antiquity of barbarian philosophy, which are derived from Greek sources. In referring to the Jewish philosophy, he mentions, as we have seen, the names of Philo and Aristobulus, but if we continue the quotation, we find that he also mentions Megasthenes (Clem. Alex. Strom. 1.15 72-73): "And that of all these the most ancient is the Jewish people, and that their philosophy, when recorded, preceded that of the Greeks, is proved in detail by the Pythagorean Philo, and not only by him, but also by the Peripatetic Aristobulus, and many others, whom I will not enumerate by name. And most clearly of all, the writer Megasthenes, a contemporary of Seleucus Nicator, writes in the third book of the History of India: "So everything that the ancients said about nature is also said by philosophers outside of Hellas: something in India by the Brahmanas, something in Syria by the so-called Jews."
It should be noted that by naming, in addition to Aristobulus and Philo, only Megasthenes, a scholar of the beginning of the third century BC (and even as the most significant author , cf.: ), Clement puts Aristobulus and Philo in the Greek perspective, since there are no other Jewish authors besides them. If we compare the content of Megasthenes ' report on Jewish philosophy as one of the subspecies of barbarian wisdom with Philo's idea, the relationship between the two descriptions will be obvious.
Megasthenes mentions 1) the Jews along with the Indians, 2) both together along with the most ancient Greek philosophers, 3) says that their field of study is physical philosophy
In fact, we find exactly the same historical and philosophical picture in one of Philo's non-biblical treatises-Prob. 73-75; 80. Immediately before this, the text says that there are few fair and reasonable people, but they still exist. It follows: "[73]. And the Greek and barbarian land is a witness to this. After all, in the first flourished those who were wrongly called the seven sages, although before them, and later, there were, of course, others, the memory of whom is still alive.-
7 The definitions that Clement gives to Aristobulus and Philo have caused and continue to cause confusion and some internal resistance of researchers. Walter believes that the attempt to place the Jew Aristobulus in one of the Greek philosophical schools seems meaningless (Walter N. Der Thoraausleger Aristobulus. V., 1964. P. 12). In recent years, the same view has been expressed by Runia in an article specifically devoted to the problem of interpreting these names (Runia D. T. Why Does Clement of Alexandria Call Philo "The Pythagorean"? // V Chr 49. 1995. P.8-10). He writes: "From my point of view, the epithet 'Pythagorean' that Clement applies to Philo is unexpected "(p. 10). "The fact that Clement gives Aristobulus the designation 'peripatetic' is perhaps even more surprising than the fact that Philo is 'Pythagorean', because the surviving fragments are clear they suggest a belief similar to Philo's, that Greek philosophy is later than Moses and depends on him" (p. 8-9).
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some of them, in the case of older ones, have disappeared due to the antiquity of time, and in the case of those who are still young, they are erased due to the widespread neglect of contemporaries. 74 But in a barbarous land, where deeds are valued above words, there are innumerable regiments of noble men. Among the Persians are the magi, who, while they search the affairs of nature for the knowledge of truth, are introduced in silence, by visions clearer than words, into the sacred mysteries of the divine virtues. Among the Indians there are gymnosophists who, in addition to practicing physical and ethical philosophy, practice virtue all their lives. [75] But Palestinian Syria, which is inhabited by a large part of the Jewish people,is also not barren with nobility... [80]. Leaving the logical part of philosophy, as not necessary for the acquisition of virtue, to the hunters of words, and the physical part, as exceeding the possibilities of human nature, to the astrologers (with the exception of that part which speaks of the existence of God and the origin of the world), they especially strive in the ethical part...".
In this lengthy quotation, as well as in the brief report of Megasthenes, three main points are highlighted: 1) Greek and barbarian wisdom are presented in parallel development: before the seven sages there were other sages, and not barbarians; 2) the Jews are named among other Eastern peoples, namely, the Persians and Indians; 3) all three are characterized by physical philosophy, although as we move from the Persians to the Jews, its share seems to decrease, giving way more and more to ethical philosophy. (Why the Jews left one part of physical philosophy to the astrologers, and deal only with the question of God and the creation of the world, is also quite understandable and will be discussed below, here we note that the physical part of philosophy is still an integral part of their studies.)
The similarity between these two descriptions is obvious, although they are separated by almost three centuries, and they seem to be signs of a certain approach within the Greek philosophical tradition, which tended to include barbarian wisdom in the general history of philosophy, then in a more moderate form, as we see in Philo, recognizing it as no less important., than for Greece, antiquity, and then in a rather uncompromising way, claiming that it is much older than Greek. We find a description of the latter point of view in Diogenes Laertius (1.1. 5-11), who himself, I must say, does not adhere to it (1.3). Representatives of this view he identifies in a special group: "The study of philosophy, as some believe, began for the first time among the barbarians: namely, the Persians had their magicians, the Babylonians and Assyrians - Chaldeans, the Indians-gymnosophists, the Celts and Gauls-the so-called druids and Semnotheans (Aristotle writes about this in his book "On Magic" and Sotion in the 13th book of "Successions" (1.1) (translated by M. L. Gasparov). Further: "Those who attribute the discovery of philosophy to the barbarians also point to the Thracian Orpheus..." (1.5) (translated by M. L. Gasparov). Also: "Proponents of the barbaric origin of philosophy also describe the form it had in each of the peoples") (1.6) (translated by M. L. Gasparov). This is followed by descriptions of the Gymnosophists, Chaldeans, Magicians, and Egyptians, which largely coincide with the characteristics given by Philo in Prob. 73-80. According to Diogenes, each of these groups is characterized by the worship of the gods and reasoning about them, and in Greek philosophy this topos traditionally refers to the physical part. In particular, the magi " discussed the nature and origin of the gods... they claimed that the gods appeared to them personally, and in general the air is full of sights "(I. 6-7) (translated by M. L. Gasparov). (Obviously, the expression corresponds to the expression of our treatise (Prob. 74).
But who are these historians of philosophy who have insisted on the preeminent antiquity of barbaric thought? There is no doubt about the answer to this question: if we talk about the philosophical, school attitude to the problem (we deliberately leave aside Ionian history and Herodotus), then this tradition will be designated primarily as peripatetic.
Although its philosophical origins, of course, are in the Platonic Academy, and
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Plato himself repeatedly speaks with the greatest reverence about Eastern wisdom, giving it the palm of primacy (Tim. 22b; cf. also Phaed. 78a), however, the ideas of the antecedence of barbarian wisdom were formed in a scientific form only in the school of Aristotle .8 It is through this source that they seem to have influenced later Greek historiography and doxography. Thus, Diogenes Laertius, speaking about those who hold the point of view of the barbaric origin of philosophy, as his main source, twice mentions the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise "On Magic" (D. L. 1.1, 8). Aristotle, in accordance with the principle correctly noticed by himself - the most revered is the oldest - also compiled the first scientific descriptions of Eastern philosophers: the Egyptians are the oldest of all people (Mete. 352 b 21), and mathematics was first created among them (M. 981 b 23), and astronomy has long been practiced, as among the Babylonians (Cael. 292 a 8; Mete. 343 b 10); in the dialogue "On philosophy" he calls the magi the most ancient (D. L. I. 8) and gives a brief outline of their teachings (M. 1091 b 10).
Aristotle's closest disciples were Theophrastus, Aristoxenus (Hippol. Haer. 1.2.11, 18; Eus. Pr. Ev. XI. 3.8), Eudemus (D. L. 1.9). and Clearchus contribute to the development of these topics. At the same time, Theophrastus and Clearchus already mention Jewish philosophers. Theophrastus in " De Pietate "(Porph. De Abst. II. 26) speaks of them as a community of philosophers, and describes their philosophy as physical: "And they perform this (sacrifice), spending the days preceding it in fasting. And all the time - because they are philosophers by birth-they talk to each other about the divine, and at night they watch the stars, looking at them and calling on God in prayers."
Clearchus of Sol, in his De Educatione, ranks the Indian gymnosophists as magicians (D. L. I. 9), and in the dialogue De Somno, in which he introduces Aristotle in conversation with a Jew, ranks the Jews as gymnosophists (Jos. Ar. 1.179).
Let us dwell a little more on Clearchus ' views, because fragments of his writings reveal the same pattern of relations between Jewish philosophy and other Bavarian traditions that is found in Philo. As we remember, Philo in Prob. 73-80 the Jews are mentioned last after the Gymnosophists and magicians, and on the way from magicians to Jews, the share of physics consistently decreases and the share of ethics increases. According to Diogenes (D. L. I. 9), Clearchus regards the Gymnosophists as disciples of the magi, and " others,"he adds," ascribe even Jews to the Magi." However, Josephus (Ar. I. 179) quotes Clearchus 'dialogue De Somno, in which this opinion is expressed:" And this very man was a Jew from Cilicia, and the inhabitants there are descendants of Indian philosophers Say that the Indians call philosophers Kalans, and the Syrians-Jews, getting the name from the place: after all, the place they inhabit is called Judea."
So, according to this fragment, the same Clearchus says that the Jews descended from the Gymnosophists, that is, for Clearchus, the scheme "magi - Indians - Jews" is fixed, and each subsequent one is like a disciple of the previous one. Although Philo does not speak directly about discipleship, he does show a clear progress in wisdom when moving consistently along the same pattern.
In the third century B.C., the peripatetic Hermippus continued to develop his views on the predominant antiquity of barbarian (and Jewish) philosophy (J. Ar. I. 164-5; Or. Cels. I. 15). He ascribed Pythagorean wisdom to the Jews and Thracians (recall the remarks of Diogenes Laertius, I. 5): "Those who attribute the discovery of philosophy to the barbarians also point to the Thracian Orpheus" (translated by M. L. Gasparov).
In line with peripatetic scholarship, philosophical doxographies and historical works are formed, which are focused on the predominant antiquity of the Eastern peoples, which, of course, included the Jews. So, thanks to St.
8 См. Dirlmder F. Peripatos und Orient // Antike. 1938. 14. S. 126.
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Hippolytus of Rome and Diogenes Laertius reconstruct the doxographic compendium of the third-century B.C. peripatetic Sotion of Alexandria, which assigns the 13th book to barbarian philosophy .9 This work of Sotion was also revised and re-published by the Alexandrian Heraclides Lembus, probably a younger contemporary of Aristobulus (respectively II century BC) .10 And Heraclides ' secretary, the peripatetic Agatarchides of Cnidus (II c. B.C.), wrote a history of the East in 10 books, which dealt with the Jews, described their customs and beliefs (Phot. Vibl. 213; 250 p. 460b 3; Jos. Ant. XII 5; p. Ar. I. 205 sqq).
Finally, for the first century B.C. it is necessary to name the peripatetic Nicholas of Damascus, who at the court of King Herod wrote a history consisting of 144 books, which dealt with the most ancient barbarian and Greek history, of course, including Jewish history (J. Ant. I. 94, 159; VII. 101 etc.).
We can draw the first important conclusion: in his general views on the history of philosophy (the division into the Greek and barbarian parts, within which the Jews are also thought of), Philo of Alexandria fully fits into a certain Greek pre-cosmographic tradition, and we should by no means think that the recognition of a certain primacy in wisdom for the Jews could sound like"that was an unprecedented innovation for the Greek ear. A sufficient number of sources (mostly peripatetic) indicate that barbarian (including Jewish) philosophy was given a corresponding place of honor, and sometimes even attributed primacy. Only the strength of Philo's emphasis on this idea can be considered non-Greek here.
Now we must pay attention to the following very important fact for us. Within the framework of such an approach to barbarian wisdom, more than just doxographic toposes can be formed with a description of a particular barbarian philosophical community (which, since the time of Theophrastus (see above), began to form for Jewish philosophers and contemplators of heaven who lead an ascetic lifestyle (cf. also Hecat. Fr. Gr.Hist. 264 f6; Strabo. XVI. II. 35) 11 ) but also to create a "chain" of dependence of this or that Greek philosopher, on this or that barbaric teaching or people. As we recall, for Aristobulus and Philo, we witnessed a similar "chain" in which, in one way or another, Moses comes first, then Pythagoras (or the Pythagoreans), immediately followed by Socrates, Plato, as well as Aristotle and the Peripatetics.
As for the Greek part of the sequence "Pythagoras-Plato-Aristotle", it definitely points in the direction of the Academy and Peripatum, being a traditional," home " doxography of both schools. Therefore, we will have to focus on the first element of the chain and find out what is the dependence of Pythagoras on Moses. Should we treat it as an innovation introduced by Aristobulus, who in this case was guided more by his own national interests, or is it already formed in the depths of the tradition we are talking about, and by accepting it, Aristobulus simply develops ready-made stereotypes? The answer to this question is that Aristobulus, of course, cannot be considered the inventor of this dependence, because examples of the connection of Pythagoras with the Jews are found in peripatetic authors before him.
So far, we have said that in the peripatetic school there was a constant reverent scientific interest in barbarian wisdom. Now we must remember that the "Pythagorean legend" as such, i.e., the stories about the life and teachings of Pythagoras, first receive literary processing and exist for a long time
9 Doxographi Graeci / / Coll. N. Diels. V., 1929 2. P. 147.
10 Ibid. P. 148-150.
11 ' According to Hecataeus (Fr. Gr. Hist. 264 F6): the Jews "believe that only the heaven that surrounds the earth is God and lord of all things." According to Strabo's account (XVI. II. 35), which probably dates back to Posidonius: "For in his [Moses'] opinion, there is only that one God who embraces all of us, both the earth and the sea - that which we call the sky and the cosmos and the nature of everything."
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mostly in the environment of peripatetic authors. The peripathetics had a strong scientific interest in Pythagorean teaching, and some of them even officially combined both philosophical lines in their teaching (Aristoxenus. Fr. 11-41 Wehrli), so that the appeal of "peripatetic" - let us take this name for granted for the time being-by Aristobulus to the Pythagorean theme is in principle a normal phenomenon within this school. This trend begins with Aristotle, who wrote "On the Pythagoreans", "On the Archaic Philosophy" and " Objection to the Pythagoreans "(D. L. V. 1. 25). His direct disciple Aristoxenus compiled The Life of Pythagoras, and Heraclides of Pontus, Eudoxus, and Dicaearchus also wrote about Pythagoras .12 Even the very first of them repeat and develop versions that the roots of the Pythagorean teaching are in Eastern wisdom. Thus, Aristoxenus (he belonged to the first generation of Aristotle's disciples) reports that Pythagoras studied with the Chaldeans (Hippol. Haer. I. 2. 11): "Aristoxenus the musician says that Pythagoras went to the Chaldean Zarathus, and Aristobulus' predecessor, the Peripatetic Hermippus, traced the teachings of Pythagoras to the Jews, which is attested by several sources. Josephus, referring to the authors of the biographies of Pythagoras, writes (pp. Ar. I.164-5): "The most famous of them is Hermippus, who took the trouble to compile a complete biography of him [Pythagoras]. So, in the first book of this work on Pythagoras, he reports that "Pythagoras, when a disciple of his named Calliphon, a native of Croton, died, said that his soul accompanied him day and night, and that it commanded him not to pass through the place where the donkey stumbles, but to abstain from thirst-inducing food water and avoid all slander." To these words he [Hermippus] adds the following: "so he spoke and acted, imitating the beliefs of the Jews and Thracians and assimilating them to himself" (translated by A.V. Vdovichenko). Origen also testifies to the book of Hermippus (Cels. I. 15): "It is said that Hermippus, in his first book On the Lawgivers, says that Pythagoras brought his philosophy to Greece from the Jews
However, before we saw how Hermippus directly combined Pythagoras with the Jews, we noticed that Aristoxenus had already associated him with the Chaldeans. Given the specific occupation of the Chaldeans, it is easy to explain why they were considered teachers of the Pythagoreans. Starting with Aristotle (Cael. 292 a 8; Fr. 251 Rose) the Babylonians and Chaldeans were assigned the sphere of astronomy, and this characteristic became a common place of philosophical and ethnographic descriptions (Cic. De fat. 15 sqq.; Sext. Emp. Math. V. 87; 89; 91; Jos. Ar. I. 1 29; Strabo. XVI. 1. 6; Plut. De Is. et Os. 370 c 6. Diod. Sic. Bibl. II. 30-31, etc.) 13, but the Pythagoreans are also characterized by a special interest in astronomy, which was already attested for Pythagoras and especially for his pupil Archytas of Tarentum. It is possible, however, that it was the connection of Pythagoras with the Chaldeans, which seems to have been one of the common themes of Pythagorean literature (cf. Porph. V. P. 6, 11), that made it natural for Pythagoras to be associated with the Jews at some point: the fact is that in Hellenistic times The Jews may have been mixed up with the Chaldeans in the Greek view, and their main distinguishing feature in the field of wisdom was also considered astronomical no-knowledge .14
Levy I. 12 Recherches sur les sources de la legende de Pythagore. P., 1926.
13 The ideas of Philo of Alexandria are also fully in line with this tradition. In The Migration of Abraham (Abr. 177), he writes: "Everyone knows that the Chaldeans have developed astronomy especially deeply, in comparison with other people, and are able to calculate the time of birth of people, combining the earthly with the sublime and the heavenly with what is on earth."
14 Astronomical knowledge was very important for the whole of Hellenistic Judaism, both for the non-Hellenized part of it, which was probably the Essenes, and, to an even greater extent, for the Hellenized part. As for the Qumran manuscripts, there are astrological texts whose ideas are raised to the authority of Moses (see Hengel M. Judentum und Hellenismus. Wiss. Unters. zum NT 10. Tiibingen, 1973 (1961). N 838. P. 236 sqq.). As for the Hellenized Jewish texts, which include, for example, the Samaritan anonymous or Artapan, the idea of the primacy of Jews in astronomy takes on a pronounced character and is deliberately emphasized. Samaritan anonymous considers the inventor of astronomy Enoch, and the second parent-Abraham (Ens. Pr. Ev. IX. 17-18), Artapan - Abraham (Eus. Pr. Ev. IX. 18). Apparently, to emphasize and justify this idea, Abraham is constantly referred to as a Chaldean. These ideas are also common in later texts - Nicholas of Damascus, Josephus ( Jos . Ant. I. 168) - and they are even more important for Philo of Alexandria: Abraham and Moses are carriers of the so-called "Chaldean knowledge", while both Abraham and Moses, and the Jews in general, he, as, perhaps, Varro (Joann. Lyd. De mens. 4.53 (Wiinsch)), often called Chaldeans (Mos. 1. 5; Virt. 212; Praem. 31.1). On the basis of these examples, it becomes clear that the combination of Jews and Chaldeans may have been quite familiar to Greek ears (cf.] Coh. Gr. 12 a7-c6; Porph. De philos. ex or. haur. 141. 14).
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It can be assumed that in this case, the Jews should naturally have been included in the list of teachers of the Pythagoreans, since the Chaldeans had already been there before them.
So, with regard to historical and philosophical concepts, the epithet peripateticus, given to Aristobulus by Clement of Alexandria, fully justifies itself, since what this author tells us about the philosophical biography of Pythagoras fits well into the perspective of a peripatetic doxography about this philosopher. In other words, it is typical for a peripatetic to turn to Pythagorean themes, and it is natural to combine Pythagorean wisdom with barbarians in general, and with Jews in particular. It may be objected, however, that before the Jew Aristobulus we met only one Peripatetic who directly combined Pythagoras with the Jews (and even mixed them with the Thracians), and that before Aristobulus the name of Moses is not directly mentioned, so perhaps the strengthening and concretization of this-quite possibly intended by the previous tradition - This connection must be attributed to the Jewish origin of our author. Of course, here you should not "go too far" and deny this natural and logical explanation. However, we would like to point out that it is not necessary for a historian of philosophy to attach too much importance to this "traditional" line of thought. There are two considerations here. The first is that, although the idea of the Jews as philosophers, as we have seen, existed already at an earlier period, but, of course, the ideas about the connection of Pythagoras with Jewish philosophy could hardly have been developed much earlier than the translation of the Septuagint was carried out. This event occurs at the earliest in the third century B.C., and it is only a confirmation, not a refutation, of our theory that we immediately receive the peripatetic testimony of Hermippus about Pythagoras ' connections with the Jews. Another consideration against Aristobulus '" innovation "is that the name of Moses seems to have been known to the Greeks even before the second century B.C., and from some point onward it was constantly included in the Greek catalog of" Eastern sages", just as the Jews were certainly included in the list of Eastern peoples. The earliest mention of Moses is found in the Early Hellenistic historian Hecateus of Abdera (Fr. Gr. Hist. 264 F6 = Phot. Bibl. 224 p. 380a7); then Posidonius (Fr.133 Edelstein-Kidd), Nicholas of Damascus (Jos. Ant. I. 95) speak of him. Moses is known to the anonymous author of the work "On the Exalted" (I century A.D.). He presents him as the recipient of the divine law and puts him above Homer (De Subl. 9. 9). Other, later texts speak of a very broad, almost legendary existence of this name. Apuleius, in his Apology (90), names him among other famous Eastern sages: "... let me be the notorious Karmend, Damigeron... Moses, John, Apollobecus... " (translated by S. Markish). Pliny mentions Moses in a similar context (NH. XXX, 1 sqq.) 15 . The same picture appears on the basis of Origen's testimony. According to him, Celsus deliberately excluded the Jews from the list of the oldest and wisest peoples (p. Cels. I. 14), and Moses from the list of wise men: Celsus, according to Origen, motivated this by the fact that Moses allegedly did not say
Abt A. 15 Die Apologie des Apuleius von Madaura und die antike Zauberei. Giessen, 1908; Heinemann I. // RE. XVI. Sp. 363.
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nothing new ," that Linus and Musaeus and Orpheus and Pherecydes and the Persian Zoroaster and Pythagoras spoke about it [the same as Moses. - E. M.} and their teachings are recorded in books and have been preserved to this day "(p. Cels. I. 16). (Note that Celsus ' words also clearly echo the connection between Moses and the Orphic - Pythagorean tradition. He tries to interpret the relationship between them, which is well known to him, in favor of the primacy of Pythagoras and his non-Jewish predecessors. However, it is obvious that the real Greek history of philosophy, at least in a certain direction, sought to give the opposite picture of dependence).
So, we talked about the fact that the peripatetics form a specific attitude to the Eastern, including Jewish wisdom, and in their midst they create descriptions of the Pythagorean teaching, which say that Pythagoras borrowed his wisdom from the Eastern peoples, in particular from the Jews. We believe that this may also explain the epithet peripateticus, given to Aristobulus by Clement-nota bene-precisely in connection with his doxographic ideas.
But how is Philo of Alexandria connected with this tradition, who in the same quote of Clement receives the epithet Pythagorean? Before giving a concrete answer to this question, we need to say a few general words about the relationship between these two branches of Greek philosophy-the Peripatetics and the Pythagoreans. In this case, it is necessary to emphasize that at a certain period in the history of Greek philosophy, a close and, as it were, continuous connection arises between them. The beginning of this period is most likely during the lifetime of Aristobulus (II century BC), and the process can most likely be considered completed by the time of Philo of Alexandria (the first half of the first century AD). From approximately the second century BC, collections of neo-Pythagorean texts, the so-called pseudepigraphs, begin to appear, consciously focused on peripatetic philosophy. On the other hand, the peripatetic tradition also produces similar products at the same time. So, the famous treatise "On the World" is signed with the name of Aristotle, but, in addition to the peripatetic ones, it also contains ideas extremely close to the neo-Pythagorean philosophy of the mentioned Pythagorean pseudo-epigraphs. It can be said that between two originally separate currents of Greek philosophy, a bond of a single philosophical environment is established at some point. Philo of Alexandria himself seems to be no stranger to this environment: the content of his treatises is extremely close to neo-Pythagorean pseudepigraphs, revealing a bizarre interweaving of Pythagorean and peripatetic ideas.
The continuity between the Peripatetic and Pythagorean traditions can also be clearly traced in the narrow sphere of doxography. Taking over the baton from the Peripatetics, the neo-Pythagoreans continue to develop the views we have indicated on barbarian wisdom in general and on its connection with Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in particular. Of course, due to the spread of the Septuagint and its entry into the field of reading of the Greeks, information originating from neo-Pythagorean circles, as later, will be more specific and meaningful. So, the peripatetic Hermippus, as we remember, connected the Pythagorean teaching with the Jews because of the ideas about the immortality of the soul. However, the idea of the immortality of the soul was not reserved exclusively for the Greeks and Jews. They were a distinctive feature of Eastern wisdom in general, and in particular were attributed to the Chaldeans (Paus. IV. 32. 4). But, for example, Clement of Alexandria (Strom.I. 15. 71), apparently referring to one of the Pythagorean sources 16, already reports: "The Roman king Numa, although a Pythagorean, was instructed by the books of Moses to forbid the Romans to depict god as a human or animal in Clement's mind.
Augustin. 16 Civ. Dei 4.31 = Varro, fr. 59 Agahd.; Gabrielsson J. Ober die Quellen des Clemens Alexandrinus. Uppsala- Leipzig. 1906. S. 8.
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connect with the opposite conjunction: "although he was a Pythagorean, but from the books of Moses." Meanwhile, it is easy to guess the original "Pythagorean" structure of thought, for which such a connection should be rather natural: the Pythagorean Numa received instructions from the books of Moses.
An excellent illustration of what we are talking about is the example of Numenius from Apamea. Numenius is a neo-Pythagorean of the already Platonic type, who regarded Plato as a consistent Pythagorean, and Platonic philosophy as growing out of Pythagorean teaching. Meanwhile, behind Pythagoras for Numenius is barbaric, including Jewish, wisdom and religion. He expresses his philosophical program in the following words :" And for this it will be necessary that the one who has spoken and confirmed [his words] with Plato's testimonies should step back and connect it with the speeches of Pythagoras, and also call upon the illustrious nations, introducing their sacraments and teachings and institutions, the purpose of which is exactly the same as that of Plato - those who were founded by the Brahmins and the Jews and the Magi and the Egyptians "(Fr. la Des Places = Eus. Pr. Ev. IX. 7.1).
Thanks to the testimonies of Origen and Eusebius, we know that Numenius paid special attention to the Septuagint. Origen often says that he, like Philo of Alexandria, combines the text of the Old Testament with the teachings of Plato by means of an allegorical interpretation. In fragment lb (Fr. Ib. Des Places = Or. Cels. I. 15) we read: "... the Pythagorean Numenius, who in the first book of his work On the Good, speaking in connection with the discussion about the incorporeality of God, about the [barbarian] peoples, also counted the Jews among them, not disdaining to use them in the same way. and the words of the prophets and interpret them figuratively." Also in fragment 1c (Fr. lc. Des Places = Orig. C. Cels. IV. 51) we find similar information: "And I also know that the Pythagorean Numenius, who interpreted Plato much better and was very well versed in the Pythagorean teaching, in many places of his writings quotes the words of Moses and the prophets and it does not give them an improbable interpretation, as, for example, in the so-called "Hoopoe" and in the book "On numbers" and "On place".
Numenius seems to have been interested in the basic principles of Platonic philosophy in their comparison with the philosophical foundations of the Septuagint 17 . According to Eusebius, Numenius has a famous saying: "What is Plato but an Attic-speaking Moses?" (Fr. 8 Des Places = Eus. Pr. Ev. XI. 10.12-14: Let us repeat once again that this view of Numenius was dictated by his Pythagorean education, thanks to which he regarded Plato as a faithful Pythagorean, and Pythagoras as a true Pythagorean. a disciple, including Jews.
In the Life of Pythagoras, written by Porphyry, there is also an idea of the connection of Pythagoras with the Jews, but it is expressed in a more general form than that of Numenius (11): "He went, according to Diogenes, and to Egypt, and to the Arabs, and to the Chaldeans, and to the Jews (there he went). I also learned to interpret dreams") (translated by M. L. Gasparov).
Finally, the last echo of this tradition is found in the eponymous work of the pupil of Porphyry Iamblichus, whose passion for Pythagoreanism is well known (V. R. 3.14): "He [Pythagoras] sailed to Syria for two reasons: because he found out that this was his natural home, and because he rightly believed that it would be easier for him to go to Egypt from there. And there, meeting with the descendants of Thisiologus and the prophet Mox, as well as other Phoenician hierophants, he was initiated into all the divine mysteries.
17 См. Whittaker J. Moses Atticizing // Phoenix. 1967. 21. P. 196- 201. Whitaker writes: "Since Numenius' use of the term , as we have seen, is a deliberate allusion to the Septuagint expression, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that he interpreted it in terms of platonic concepts, and either believed, like Ps.-Justin, that Plato borrowed his concept of being from Moses, or held the opinion that Plato's teaching is basically one with the teaching of Moses, without implying the dependence of the former on the latter. Both approaches are consistent with what we know about Numenius 'attitude toward non-Greek religions, especially Judaism" (p.200).
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the sacraments that are performed primarily in Bybla, Tyre, and many parts of Syria... Immediately he went [to Egypt. - E. M. ], using the services of some Egyptian carriers, which immediately landed on the coast in the vicinity of Mount Carmel in Phoenicia."
According to this text, Pythagoras spent a lot of time in Syria (which is the place of residence of the Jews for Hellenistic historians ) with the followers of Mochus, the "Phisiologist and prophet". Most likely, the name Moss is a distorted form of the name of Moses. Moreover, according to Iamblichus, Pythagoras even came from those places.
So, from our point of view, the doxographic representations of Philo the Pythagorean should not be taken separately from the neo-Pythagorean evidence presented. Apparently, during Philo's lifetime, the Pythagorean ideas about the connection of their teaching with the Jews reached their peak. He himself, in his treatise "That Every Virtuous Person Is Free," describes the Essenes as a completely Pythagorean community (Prob. 75-87). A detailed analysis of this description in comparison with the Greek canons of the Pythagorean description is given by M. Petit, the publisher of this treatise in the R. Arnaldes series. The researcher notes that almost all the essential attributes of the Pythagorean tias are among the features of the Essene community .19 Josephus also speaks of the Essenes in the same way, saying that they live the life that Pythagoras taught the Greeks (Ant. XV. 10. 4) .20 Without specifying in this context who exactly influenced whom, in another passage, Josephus, referring to the majority opinion, asserts that Pythagoras borrowed a lot from the Jews (Jos. Ar. I. 166): "After all, it is said that this man transferred many of the views of the Jews to his philosophy." (translated by A.V. Vdovichenko). No matter how enthusiastic the Jews themselves may have been about this view, a review of the evidence we have presented shows that, first of all, these ideas could have been developed in the Pythagorean doxography itself by the Pythagoreans themselves.
The presented line of evidence about Pythagoras ' Jewish connections corresponds to the history of the formation and development of the so-called "Pythagorean legend" as a whole, i.e., stories about the life of Pythagoras and his teachings. According to I. Levi21, it first appears in peripatetic and continues to exist in neo-Pythagorean authors, not all of whose names were mentioned by us, since we limited ourselves only to those that are directly related to the topic under consideration. In all this series, neither the figure of the Peripatetic Aristobulus (II century B.C.) nor the Pythagorean Philo (I century A.D.) should be perceived either in isolation from each other or outside the specifically Greek historical and philosophical tradition. The philosophical epithets of Aristobulus and Philo are milestones denoting its stages. The influence of Pythagoreanism increases to Philo (recall Eudorus of Alexandria and Posidonius of Apamea, who already have a very strong interest in Pythagoreanism), and soon this trend becomes dominant. Philo therefore appears already under its auspices, while Aristobulus falls at the very beginning of the Neo-Pythagorean period.-
18 Theophr. ar. Porph. De Abst. II. 26; Klearch. ap. Jos. Ap. I. 179; Phil. Alex. Prob. 75.
19 Quod omnis probus liber sit / Intr., text, trad. et notes par М. Petit. P., 1974 // Les Oeuvres de Philon d'Alexandrie. Poubliee par R. Arnaldez. T. 28. P. 60-62.
20 There are researchers who want to see evidence in descriptions and references of this kind that Judaism in this era was strongly influenced by Pythagoreanism (Levy I. Recherches pythagoriciennes et esseniennes. Geneve, 1965; Gorman P. Pythagoras Palaestinus // Philologus. 1983. 127. P. 30-42). But this line of thought is not supported, as far as we know, by any independent historical evidence, whereas the constant and long-standing desire of the Greeks to adapt Eastern wisdom in general, and Jewish wisdom in particular, makes us see in such descriptions the realities of the literary and, more specifically, doxographic tradition of Hellenistic origin. We therefore agree with Hengel's cautious judgment: in such references, the main interest is not the supposed Pythagorean influence on the Jews, but the fact that in Greek literature the Essenes may have been represented as Jewish Pythagoreans.
Levy. 21 Recherches sur les sources.
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rioda and is still called a peripatetic. Very schematically, the doxographic tree, of which we consider Aristobulus and Philo to be branches, can be represented as follows: :
In conclusion, we will point out some of the prospects that open up as a result of this research. The analysis of the doxographic representations of both authors is only one of the possible interpretations of the problem of the correlation of two epithets that we have outlined. One might think that both of them have a deeper meaning and thus still need to be adequately interpreted. The fact that Aristobulus and Philo belong to a single and precisely defined current of Greek thought is a thesis that can be considered from completely different points of view and find its confirmation not only in the formal, but also in the content aspect. The more we realize this, the more accurate our understanding of Philo's place in the history of Greek philosophy and the nature of his literary and philosophical activities will become, and perhaps the reasons that prompted both authors, as well as Numenius later, to turn to commenting on the Old Testament text will be revealed in a new way.
PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA AND GREEK DOXOGRAPHY
Ye.D. Matusova
The names of Peripatetic and Pythagorean, given by later authors to Aristobulus (2 nd с. ВС) and Philo of Alexandria (1 st c. AD) are to be explained by their views upon the history of philosophy. Both authors believe that the teaching of Moses was accepted by Pythagoras, followed by Plato and Aristotle. It was not unusual for the first generation of Aristotle's disciples to connect the Pythagorean doctrine, of which they produced the first systematic descriptions, with the Orient in general and with Judaea in particular. Later these ideas became very popular with Neopythagoreans whose literary and philosophical activity was closely connected with the heritage Peripatos. The epithets of Peripatetic and Pythagorean, given by Clemens to Aristobulus and Philo in strong connection with their historico-philosophical concepts, feature the two periods (Post-Aristotelian and Neo-Pythagorean) of this doxographic tradition.
22 Italics indicate those who are called peripatetics in the sources, and the Pythagoreans are underlined with a dash.
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