mountainman

Are there then two Ammonius Saccas's in history?
Or is Eusebius looking for another well respected
ancient to dress up as a pre-Nicaean christian?

Toto

Give your source:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wace/biodic...onius%20saccas

eta: Wikipedia also claims that there were two Ammonius Saccas.

mountainman

Thanks Toto.

Does anyone want to defend Eusebius against the charge of fraud?
Is this in fact a case of fraudulent misrepresentation?
I am willing to argue that it is.

Eusebius has selected out one of the "fathers" of the neo-pythagorean
philosophers of the early period and made it appear that this man
embraced a fourth century fictitious set of tenets, called in the fourth
century, christianity.



Pete Brown

andrewcriddle

I'm not sure what your point is.

At face value Porphyry and Eusebius agree that Ammonius Saccas was at one time a Christian but disagree about whether he repudiated Christianity later on.

Both Porphyry and Eusebius have an agenda here, but, even if Porphyry is right asd Eusebius wrong, the important point would be their agreement that a prominent philosopher like Ammonius was, at least for part of his life, a Christian believer.

Andrew Criddle

mountainman

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wace/biodic...onius%20saccas

That the founder of the Alexandrian school of philosophy
(for such Ammonius Saccas was) should have been
at the same time a Christian, though not impossible,
seems hardly likely.

How do you reconcile this assessment from the
A Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature
with your assessment that:

the important point would be their agreement that
a prominent philosopher like Ammonius was, at least
for part of his life, a Christian believer.



Pete Brown

andrewcriddle

The pasage from Wace appears to be supporting Porphyry against Eusebius; ie arguing that it is unlikely that Ammonius was at the same time both a famous philosopher and a professing Christian. It does not seem to have problems with Ammonius having been a Christian before he became a famous philosopher.

Andrew Criddle

mountainman

The possibilities are the following:
1) A was a christian philosopher
2) A was an ex-christian philosopher
3) A was a non-christian philosopher

You agree Wace rules out option 1.

You put forward option 2. But I have huge difficulties with defining
Ammonius as an Apostate, due to the history in all subsequent
literature, of any other reference (apart from Eusebius, who himself
quotes Porphyry, but how faithfully?) in the neopythagorean and
neoplatonic literature ascribed to the descendants of the School
of Philosophy which was founded by A.

In my view, if Eusebius interploated Josephus, he'd
have no qualms interpolating Porphyry, writing facts
that are dissembling and purposefully at odds with
his own statement. Why would he do this?

For the same reason as the TF. Eusebius wants alot
of independent inferential evidence in the literature
that christianity existed prior to the fourth century.

Do you think any of the alleged disciples and apostles
of the fictional Jesus character could have risen in their
own self-evolution in order that they become leaders
of a traditional Hellenic philosophical school, recognised
by the traditions of the neopythagorean "wisdom" which
had a lineage over 500 years back to Pythagoras?

I dont think so.

I think Ammonius was made a christian by the pen of
Eusebius in the fourth century, and that Eusebius also
in the fourth century, made it appear that Porphyry
wrote against christians in the late 3rd CE.

I find this more consistent historically, than either of
options 1 or 2 above. Faith in the Eusebian inference
that there were pre-Nicaean christians is required, as
no archeological or carbon dated evidence exists for
it prior to the post-Nicaean epoch.



Pete Brown

andrewcriddle

Apart from Porphyry's work against the Christians which survives only in quotations by Christian opponents Porphyry mentions Christians in his extant life of Plotinus chapter 16 In any case if Eusebius as you suggest rewrote Porphyry about Ammonius, I'm surprised he didn't rewrite it into something more congenial to his [Eusebius'] agenda.

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

The life formed the praefatio to the Enneads, and the whole lot are online in English at http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plotenn/index.htm. (Lucky for me, as I was going to scan it if it wasn't).

Here's the whole of chapter 16, which is interesting:

16. Many Christians of this period--amongst them sectaries who had abandoned the old philosophy, men of the schools of Adelphius and Aquilinus--had possessed themselves of works by Alexander of Libya, by Philocomus, by Demostratus, and bby Lydus, and exhibited also Revelations bearing the names of Zoroaster, Zostrianus, Nicotheus, Allogenes, Mesus, and others of that order. Thus they fooled many, themselves fooled first; Plato, according to them, had failed to penetrate into the depth of Intellectual Being.

Plotinus fequently attacked their position at the Conferences and finally wrote the treatise which I have headed Against the Gnostics: he left to us of the circle the task of examining what he himself passed over. Amelius proceeded as far as a fortieth treatise in refutation of the book of Zostrianus: I myself have shown on many counts that the Zoroastrian volume is spurious and modern, concocted by the sectaries in order to pretend that the doctrines they had embraced were those of the ancient sage.

Note that one the books of Allogenes was found at Nag Hammadi, and another is in the codex Tchacos which contains the ps.Gospel of Judas.

I am told that, apart from the information in this source by his disciple, almost nothing is known about the life of Plotinus. I await with interest the suggestion that perhaps Plotinus never existed...

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

Plotinus by name was referenced by many of his (neo) Pythagorean peers.
This issue is not whether pythagoreanism existed in the pre-Nicaean epoch.
The question in my mind is whether christianity existed.

It must be clearly noted that Plotinus never mentions Christianity in
any of his works.



Pete Brown