PLUTARCH and “PAGAN MONOTHEISM” Frederick E. Brenk

PLUTARCH AND “PAGAN MONOTHEISM”

Frederick E. Brenk

When the Georgian poet, Rustaveli, visited Jerusa- lem in 1192, he recorded seeing on the frescoes of the Monastery of the Holy Cross, alongside Chris- tian saints, portraits of the Greek sages “such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cheilon, Thucydides, and Plutarch, just as they are to be found in our monastery on Athos”.1

One of the great religious and philosophical aspects of late antiquity was monotheism.2 In the second century the only really well-known monotheistic religious groups were the Jews and Christians. Jews and Judaism were

1 S. Brock, “A Syriac Collection of Prophecies of the Pagan Philosophers”, in S. Brock, Studies in Syriac Christianity. History, Literature and Theology (Hampshire 1992) ch. VII (origi- nally OLP 14 [1983] 203–246 at 203). 2 See G. Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth. Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiq- uity (Princeton 1993); P. Athanassiadi & M. Frede (eds), Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford 1999) and the review by M. Edwards, JThS 51 (2000) 339–342; R. Bloch, “Monotheism”, in Brill’s New Pauly, IX (2006) cols 171–174; C. Ando “Introduction to Part IV”, in idem (ed.), Roman Religion (Edinburgh 2003) 141–146; L.W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord. Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Philadelphia 2003); J. Assmann, “Monotheism and Polytheism”, in S. Iles Johnston (ed.), Religions of the Ancient World (Cambridge 2004) 17–31; M. Edwards, “Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine”, in S. Swain & M. Edwards (eds), Approaching Late Antiquity. The Transformation from Early to Late Empire (Oxford 2004) 211–234; M. Amerise, “Monotheism and the Monarchy: The Christian Emperor and the Cult of the Sun in Eusebius of Caesarea”, JbAC 50 (2007) 72–84; P. Athanassiadi, The Gods Are Gods. Polytheistic Cult and Monotheistic Theology in the World of Late Antiquity (Ascona, forthcoming); C. Freeman, A New History of Early Christianity (New Haven–London 2009); S. Mitchell & P. van Nufelen (eds), One God. Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (Cambridge 2010); S. Mitchell & P. van Nufelen (eds), PaganMonotheismbetweenPagansand Christians in Late Antiquity (Leuven 2010); C. Guittard (ed.), Le monothéisme. Diversité, exclu- sivisme ou dialogue? (Paris 2010); F.E. Brenk, “Mixed Monotheism? The Areopagos Speech of Paul”, ibid. 131–152 (= F.E. Brenk, With Unperfumed Voice. Studies in Plutarch, in Greek Literature, Religion and Philosophy, and in the New Testament Background [Stuttgart 2007] 470–494); P. Athanassiadi, Vers la pensée unique. La montée de l’intolérance dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris 2010) at 36–37 in her chapter, “Antiquité tardive: de l’homme à Dieu ou la muta- tion d’une culture”, 21–41. 74 frederick e. brenk discredited by many because of the Jewish revolts, and many of their com- munities were in disarray or had been destroyed, including some of the most ancient ones. Christians were still a relatively small group, with their origin in Judaism probably seen as a disadvantage by many Graeco-Romans, and at times persecuted by the authorities. By the sixth century, however, mainly because of Christianity, monotheism had spread to most of the Roman Empire. A few centuries later, the Islamic conquests extended monotheism even beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. Monotheism, though, was not relegated to religion. Already in early Pla- tonism, but particularly after the advent of Middle-Platonism, the nature of God, His or its relationship to the Platonic Good, to Being, or to the One, whether Plato’s God was literally the creator of the universe, and whether there was an aloof First God and a Second God involved with the world was a matter of great discussion. For centuries Stoicism, which was popular in Rome, had been promoting its own form of a kind of spiritual/material monotheism.3 In traditional scholarship the formulation runs: the divine, God, the Logos or Intelligence of the universe, is intrinsic to the universe, with a light material body, and this God is contrasted with matter. In real- ity, the Stoic God is always composed of both mind and body (the pneuma), but one can intellectually abstract it into intellect (Logos) and matter (the pneuma [a hot gas]). However, recently this formulation has been chal- lenged.4 In the new view both matter and God are bodies, but they form an indivisible pair. God uses the pneuma to shape and maintain the universe in existence. Zeno’s innovations to previous philosophy would be the corporeality of God, His not creating the world from intellectual models (paradeigmata), and his creation from within matter, not from without, like the Platonic Demiurge (creator god).5 In his recent book, Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, J.M. Schott studies the inuence of philosophers on the

3 See R. Salles, “Introduction: God and Cosmos in Stoicism”, in idem (ed.), God and Cosmos in Stoicism (Oxford–New York 2009) 1–19 at 6–7, 19 and J.B. Gourinat, “The Stoics on Matter and Prime Matter: ‘Corporealism’ and the Imprint of Plato’s Timaeus”, ibid., 46– 71. 4 K. Algra, “Stoic Philosophical Theology and Graeco-Roman Religion”, in Salles, God and Cosmos in Stoicism, 224–252. See also Salles, “Introduction”, ibid., 6–7. 5 See M. Frede, “Monotheism and Pagan Philosophy”, in Athanassiadi & Frede, Pagan Monotheism, 41–68, (53); Salles, “Introduction”, in Salles, God and Cosmos, 6; Gourinat, “The Stoics on Matter”, 59–62; also M.J. White, “Stoic Natural Philosophy (Physics and Cosmol- ogy)”, in B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (Cambridge 2003) 124–152, and in the same volume, K. Algra, “Stoic Theology”, 153–178.