Brian Duvick

face of death or as frank piety for Augustine. Mackey held that language had to become most evasive precisely when it spoke about God. His “direct style” was not a concluding disclosure, but a teacher’s lure. Mackey writes about the Augustinian tradition, but he also writes as an Augustinian—in dialectically stressed solicitations of a desire, at once affective and intellectual, that might scale hierarchies of order to glimpse God, though never (yet) to reach God. Mackey speaks of his four medieval authors as instances of an “Augustinian tradition,” which he sometimes contrasts with Aristotelian-Thomistic traditions as a more convincing claimant to the title “perennial philosophy.” But his most urgent motive is not to correct Gilson and the neo-Thomists or to perform any other historiographical revision. His motive for reading exemplars of an “‘Augustinian synthesis’” (introduced with quotation marks) is to recover present capacities for philosophic speech that will rectify the souls of embodied speakers. It is a motive, in short, that only makes sense for a reader suspended between believing and understanding. Mackey hoped to find such readers—but also to make them. M a r k D . J o r d a n Harvard University

(Jn 2:1-12) He set out to go first, but took Peter with the other hand, who was the most glorious and dearest of his companions. 530 He then rushed through the city, trusting his swift feet, and all the peoples then wondered at him as he approached, because he was best and led by far the most peoples. But when they came to the glorious halls of the king, he walked quickly over the threshold into the house. 535 He found him giving a wedding feast to his many relations for his son and blameless daughter in his house. His living was unspeakable. No one had so much. They led the brides from their rooms under blazing torches through the city, and wedding music abounded 540 of jesting men and finely-belted women. (Od. 23.147) The great hall rustled about their feet. Young men, dancers whirled, and with them flutes and lyres bawled, and the women leading the dance whirled in their midst, 545 all who were wives and daughters of nobles. But the multitude I could neither tell nor name. Standing at the doors the women each marveled. In their midst a boy played a clear-toned lyre, charming music, and sang the lovely Linus song. 550 They brought wood down to the city from the lofty mountains, and from the plain they led oxen and fat sheep quickly, and supplied wine, honey to the mind,

"The Touch of Thomas" is excerpted from my translation of the Homerocentones attributed to Eudocia et al.

1. On the Genesis of the Cosmos ………………………………. 3
2. On the four rivers in paradise ………………………………...         4
3. On Adam and Eve and on the deception of the serpent ……… 4
4. On the disobedience …………………………………………..         5
5. On the economy of the salvation of men ……………………..6
6. On the counsel of the Father …………………………………..        7
7. On the obedience of the Son ………………………………….. 10
8. On the annunciation …………………………………………..         11
9. On the conception and the divine birth ………………………. 13
10. On the star …………………………………………………….                 14
11. On the gifts offered by the magi ……………………………… 14
12. On the infanticide by Herod …………………………………..         15
13. On the flight into Egypt ……………………………………….         16
14. On the return from Egypt ……………………………………...         17
15. On the precursor ……………………………………………….                 17
16. On the divine baptism ………………………………………….         20
17. On the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove ……….21
18. On the calling of the apostles ………………………………….. 21
19. On the teaching of the Christ ………………………………….. 22
20. On the Holy Triad ……………………………………………...         22
21. On the resurrection ……………………………………………..         22
22. On the following crowd …………………………………………         23
23. On the marriage at Cana ……………………………………….         24
24. On the paralytic …………………………………………………                 28
25. On the other paralytic at the stoa of Solomon ……………  30
26. On the daughter of the centurion ………………………………. 32
27. On the lame man who had a withered hand as well …  35
28. On the blind man ………………………………………………...         36
29. On the man demon-possessed …………………………………… 39
30. On the woman who was hemorrhaging ………………………  42
31. On the Samaritan woman ………………………………………... 44
32. On the seven loaves of bread ……………………………………. 48
33. On Lazarus ……………………………………………………….                 50
34. On the woman who anointed the Lord with unguents  53
35. On the betrayal …………………………………………………...         54
36. On the mystery …………………………………………………...         55
37. On the breaking of the bread ……………………………………. 56
38. On the basin ……………………………………………………..                 58
39. On the traitor Judas ………………………………………………         60
40. On the night when the Lord was betrayed …………………… 62
41. On the Lord’s prayer …………………………………………….         64
42. On the betrayal …………………………………………………..         65
43. On the arrest and mockery ……………………………………… 69
44. On Peter’s denial ………………………………………………...         70
45. On the scourging before the cross ………………………………. 73
46. On the crucifixion ………………………………………………..         74
47. On the centurion …………………………………………………         76
48. On the choking of Judas …………………………………………  80
49. On the funeral dirge ……………………………………………..         81
50. On the burial …………………………………………………….                 82
51. On the resurrection ………………………………………………         85
52. On the touch of Thomas ………………………………………… 90
53. On the ascension ……………………………………………….         92

Semantic, syntactic, and structural parallelism have long been recognized as standard features of not only biblical verse, but of a Syro-Canaanite literary tradition extending back to Ugaritic poetry as well.  It has also been argued that the method stems from oral-formulaic composition similar to that hypothesized in early performance of the Homeric poems.  The purpose of this case study is to examine the Centos chapter “On the Touch of Thomas” for the use of poetic parallelism coupled with features of Homeric verse to produce a lexical demonstration of the Thomas theology that was popular in Syro-Palestine and Coptic North Africa in the 5th century when the Thomas story was added to the Homerocentones.

“Translating Deliverance: Heroes and Believers, Trials and Miracles of the Homerocentones,” on the panel “Quilting Homer: Reading, Translating, and Remaking the Homerocentones of a Christian Bishop a Roman Empress, and a Pagan Philosopher, among Others,” Brian Duvick, Session Organizer, 116th Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, March 25-28, 2020. Cancelled due to COVID-19. Online conference: Virtual CAMWS, May 26-30, 2020.

Also See my "Patchwork Apocalypse and Universal Salvation in the Homerocentones of Eudocia et al."

While Augustine's City of God and Proclus' Commentary on the Republic are both direct responses to contemporary socio-political crises of the late Roman empire, they also represent the culmination of ongoing culture wars that extend back through the rise of Christianity and the debates over Roman Hellenism to the construction of ideal alternatives to Athenian democracy. The trial of Socrates had come to symbolize the deepest of political schisms, where the divine justice of Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanthys was set in contrast with the conventions of Athenian law, and the dialectical pursuit of truth itself was cast as the victim of the decadence of sophistic culture and its failed institutions. Cicero Romanized the genre in his De re publica, which was composed during the critical years 54-51 of the first triumvirate and heralded both the demise of the Roman Republic and the nascent rhetoric of the golden age of Caesar Augustus. Unlike Plato's ideal state, however, that of Cicero includes an imperial concord that corresponds with cosmic, social, and spiritual harmonies as well. The role of Scipio Aemilianus in the dialogue, symbolizing the final victory over both Carthage and Macedonia, underlines the dual tension of civil war and the establishment of cultural hegemony throughout the rapidly expanding empire. Cicero could not have better illustrated Roman ambivalence toward Greek culture than by appropriating Plato's literary genre, then applying it to the Roman absorption of Greece within the imperial system.

Proclus' Commentary on the Republic (In Remp) is the last of his corpus to be translated into English and has been almost entirely neglected as a source for Christian-Hellenic socio-political relations of the mid-5 th-century eastern empire. While Proclan studies have long focused mainly on his metaphysics and the traditional Neoplatonic curriculum, which reflect a more distant relationship with contemporary socio-political affairs, the purpose of my paper is to show that the In Remp is intended not only to defend Academic Neoplatonism against criticism raised by both its Hellenic and Christian opponents in the early 5 th-century culture wars, but also to promote a plan for curricular and pedagogical reform that is both consistent with current Theodosian educational legislation and proves the natural legitimacy of traditional Hellenic paideia. The historical context of the composition of Books I-II of the In Remp, which were written much earlier than the Essays, is critical to understanding the various ways in which the treatise is to be read-methodologically, hermeneutically, theologically, historically and ultimately politically. Of Lycian descent, Proclus was born in Constantinople, where his father, a Hellene, served as a successful court attorney. When Theodosius II's older sister, the devout Christian Pulcheria, became regent in 414, she dismissed the former regent, Anthemius, who was reputed to harbor Hellenic leanings and had promoted Lucius to magister militum before the latter attempted to assassinate Theodosius in a plot to become the next Julian and to restore traditional Hellenic religion. The following year, laws were passed forbidding the construction of new synagogues, supporting the demolition of those that had been deserted and excluding Hellenes from imperial service and the military. Hypatia, the diadoch of the Alexandrian

The purpose of my paper is, first, to compare and contrast Plotinus' and Levinas' treatment of the free immanence of the Intelligible in the light of its intellectual manifestation and, second, to underscore the divergence of their thought in the application of their respective findings to their given field of predominant interest: Plotinus reasons that all orders of existence are united by a common intrinsic identity independent of participation (5.5.4), but uses his realization of the closed nature of this ontological, epistemological and logical (λογική) system to explore its most transcendent extremes. Levinas similarly begins by arguing that, because the appearance (l'apparoir) of being belongs to the train of being, its phenomenality is essential. Instead of reducing this appearance "transcendentally", however, Levinas draws a distinction between the specific thematic intelligible and the state of the entire system of intelligibility (Levinas, Autrement qu'etre ou au-del de l'essence, 209). Within the interval between the two he recognizes a condition of "open becoming" (un devenir ouvert), where temporal and spatial motion, chance and the necessity of effort to harmonize them come to

En réfléchissant sur la doctrine trinitaire générée au cours du quatrième siècle après la mort de Jésus Christ, il va sans dire que l'on met l'accent sur le Père, le Fils et le Saint Esprit, bien que ces deux derniers se trouvent à l'origine d'une controverse qui met en question même leur divinité. Dans le déroulement apparemment infini des raisonnements concernant la nature et les relations entre les Personnes de la Divinité, on se tait, ou plus justement on dissimule le silence, sur le rôle du féminin dans le processus évolutif de la génération de la doctrine trinitaire orthodoxe. Aujourd'hui je voudrais jeter une nouvelle lumière sur les contributions concrètes et réelles qu'ont apportées certaines femmes cappadociennes au développement de la doctrine trinitaire, soit par leur participation directe à la vie liturgique de l'Eglise primitive, soit par leur influence cachée surtout dans les images et concepts qui en viennent à caractériser les activités du Saint Esprit et les relations entre toutes les Personnes. Des chercheurs tels que Fiorenza, Carr et Ruether parmi d'autres ont tracé la patriarcalisation progressive des institutions chétiennes du 2ème au 4ème siècles, où l'esprit prophétique de l'église primitive cédaient lentement son pouvoir à la hiérarchie épiscopale. Dans une période exigeant une forte apologétique contre les menaces religieuses, philosophiques et socio-politiques que posaient, respectivement, les adversaires juifs, grecs et romains du jeune christianisme, une telle concentration du pouvoir administratif et institutionel pourrait se justifier d'une certaine façon. Dans l'extensive propagation d'hérésies pourtant qui suivent la ferme établissement de la foi chrétienne après le Concile de Nicée en 325, l'on voit aussi que l'exercice du pouvoir épiscopale, qui se définira pleinement dans l'oeuvre de pseudo-Denys au début du

Eruditio, versu, prosaque mirifici. Quo figuris sive imaginibus viginti octo multa fidei Christianae mysteria, multi mystici numeri: angelorum, virtutum, septem donorum Spiritus sancti, octo beatitudinem, quatuor elementorum, quatuor temporum anni, quatuor evangelistarum et Agni, mensium, ventorum, quinque librorum Moysis, nominis Adam, Alleluia et Amen, aliarumque rerum vis et dignitas in formam crucis redacta, subtiliter et ingeniose explicantur.

Edited and Translated by Brian Duvick [p.2.85.3] Book ten has been divided into three main topics: the first aims to refute poetry because it is mimetic but does not instruct souls;1 the second establishes the immortality of the soul and demonstrates its relation to the divine;2 and the third presents the myth itself which reveals the providence, both the daemonic and wholly divine, over the souls as they both descend into generation and are separated from generation, and also over the manifold ways of both.3 Yet, since there are three topics, it is clear that one shows our separation from material likenesses and leads us away both from the phantasmal images of false learning, for these draw us down into the lowest extremes of the existing things, which of course are both particular and imitate existing things but do not truly exist, and generally from all superficial life. The topic arranged after that turns us back to ourselves and leads us up to our proper life and immortality, which we possess essentially, and to the 1 Cf. Rep. 595a-608d 2 Much of the above is unclear in Vat. gr. 2197.111v1 ff. Like Kroll, I rely on the reading of Morus and Holstenius. Plato's discussion of the immortality of the soul is found at Rep. 608d-614a. 3 The myth of Er is at Rep. 614b-621d.

Edited and Translated by Brian Duvick 52. The assimilative activity of the demiurgic Intellect is twofold (389a): there is the one with which the Intellect, looking to the intelligible model, institutes the whole cosmos; and the other with which it assigns names proper to each object. Timaeus gave a brief exposition of these matters (36c), but the theurgists and the utterances from the gods themselves teach us more distinctly:1 But the holy name even with unresting whirl leapt into the stellar sphere because of the rushing command of the Father (Or.Chald.87), and another oracle says, The paternal Intellect sowed symbols in the cosmos, By which it contemplates the intelligible things and is made one with ineffable Beauty (Or.Chald.108).2 The lawgiver too, as he looks to the whole cosmos, both transmits the best polity and puts the names that resemble real beings. 1 Proclus generally uses the Chaldaean oracles in support of his own theories or those handed down to him mainly by Syrianus. Proclus himself was initiated into the Chaldaean mysteries, studied the oracles under Syrianus and wrote a commentary of his own on them, which is now lost (Marinus, Proclus sive de Felic., 28, 26). 2 This passage describes the process of assimilative reversion to principles. Procession and reversion are the primary activities of the second and third hypostasis in any given hyparxis. Any real existent thus remains eternally stable, proceeds into the order subsequent to it and reverts back to its principle. See In Crat.16, note 34 and Gersh, A Study of Spiritual Motion, 30-8.