Freethought & Rationalism Archive

stephan huller · 12-09-2011, 09:27 PM

Quote:

the use of the word is very rare in pagan texts (about 5 passages) and all these records date from late antiquity; we ﬁnd the oldest pagan example in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus, an author who worked in the early third century ad, and this is—as we shall show—younger than the oldest Christian records. We also have to point out that the pagan épostolikÒw is used in a very speciﬁc literary meaning: it is a kind of song, the apostolikon (i.e. m°low), sung upon the departure of a diplomatic delegation or written by someone abroad who sent his poem afterwards.[1] So, Christian literature does not have the monopoly of the word; it is also a fact that apostolikon is allotted there to a totally diﬀerent context. http://ixoyc.net/data/Fathers/616.pdf

This is part of a very interesting article on the meaning of the term apostolic.

mountainman · 12-10-2011, 05:53 PM

Three of your blogs, including The Platonic Gospel of Mark, turned up in a google search on plato "Apostolikon ".

Quote:

I am more interested in sticking with the Alexandrian tradition and understanding how it was that Clement and Origen and their predecessors could have taken lofty Platonic ideals and thought they were present in a gospel which now survives as things written on toilet paper.

Philo of course began this process of 'Platonizing' scripture but could carry this out because he had the Law - a much grander and more eloquent masterpiece. Yet the Alexandrian Church that grew up around his efforts and embraced 'the gospel.' What gospel was this?

Plato's?

The key to your OP and which also includes questions and issues related to both Alexandria and Origen in the apostolic lineage of the Alexandrian Platonists who fan out in the 3rd century from Ammonius Saccas, often regarded as the "Father of NeoPlatonism".

"The pagan use of the word Apostolikon."
What precise meaning are you giving to the word Apostolikon?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arnaldo Momigliano

"One kind of account in pagan historiography Pagan historiography could help Eusebius considerably. That was the history of philosophical schools - such as we find in Diogenes Laertius.

****

(1) the idea of succession was equally important in philosophical schools and
and in Eusebius' notion of Christianity. The bishops were the diadochoi
of the Apostles, just as the scholarchai were the diadochoi of
Plato, Zeno, and Epicurus.

(2) Like any philosophical school, Christianity
had its orthodoxy and its deviationists.

(3) Historians of philosophy in Greece used antiquarian methods and quoted documents
much more frequently and thoroughly than than their colleagues, the political historians.

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