Philosophy and the Abrahamic Religions: Scriptural Hermeneutics and Epistemology

Edited by

Torrance Kirby, Rahim Acar and Bilal Ba

Philosophy and the Abrahamic Religions: Scriptural Hermeneutics and Epistemology,

Edited by Torrance Kirby, Rahim Acar and Bilal Ba

This book first published 2013

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright 2013 by Torrance Kirby, Rahim Acar and Bilal Ba and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

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ISBN (10): 1-4438-4043-2, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4043-9

CHAPTER FOUR

EXEGESIS AND IDENTITY AMONG PLATONIST HELLENES AND CHRISTIANS

ELIZABETH DEPALMA DIGESER In Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: the Development of Christian Discourse, the 1991 publication of her Sather lectures of 1986, Averil Cameron applied Michel Foucaults concept of a totalizing discourse to describe both the rise of Christian power in Late Antiquity and the evolution of Christian identity.1 Cameron was better at describing the totalizing aspects of Christianitythe definition of which I will give shortlythan she was in spelling out the process by which this discourse came to dominate Roman society. Nevertheless, Camerons book was revolutionary, both for its application of political theory to late antique studies and for its original assessment of the forces driving the Christianization of the late Roman world. What Cameron did not see, howeverand what I will argue hereis that the trend she had identified for Christian discourse and Christian identity was to some extent a response to a new third-century approach to Platonist exegesis pioneered by the shadowy Alexandrian philosopher, Ammonius Saccas. His notion of a philosophy without conflict2 revolutionized the pursuit of philosophy within the third-century Roman Empire by positing that the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle agreed in their essential points and that their writings ought to be edited and interpreted so as to harmonize their apparent conflicts. A liminal figure, Ammonius taught a diverse circle of students, including the famous Christian theologian, Origen of Alexandria, as well

*This paper draws substantially on the introduction to my book A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists and the Great Persecution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, in press). 1 Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 2 ap. Hierocl. Prov. ap. Phot. Bibl. cod. 251, 461a24-39.

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as Plotinus, the foremost Platonist philosopher of the age. In both lineages survived the concept of a philosophy without conflict, but in a way that became increasingly implicated with issues of opposing identities, Christian and Hellene, by the centurys end.

This essay will address the significance, but also the shortcomings, of Camerons argument for understanding the religious transformation of the Mediterranean world in Late Antiquity. It will then sketch the broader genealogy of the approach to texts and exegesis that contributed to form the totalizing Christian discourse that she rightly identified. Finally, I will step outside the realm of hermeneutics to suggest the process by which this late antique style of reading contributed to the reification of opposing identities and the rise of the Christian state.

Foucaults interest in power led him to see Christianity as providing a new kind of discourse, both totalizing and individualist.3 By the term totalizing discourse, scholars working in this tradition describe a comprehensive interpretation of reality that subsume[s] or exclude[s] other interpretations.4 Cameron added the insight that Christianitys focus on texts demand[s] a hermeneutical process of such intensity that it tends to become an end in itself.5 Moreover, she believed that such exegetical activity, especially its figural emphasis,6 separate[d] Christian texts and Christian practice from the pagan context in which they developed.7 This distinction, in Camerons view was because the Christian God is modeled on language.8

Camerons work was a watershed in the study of late antique Christianity. In works such as his biography of Augustine and The World of Late Antiquity,9 Peter Brown had already excised the study of Roman Christianization from a paradigm linking it with the fall of Rome and situated it firmly within a historical period that he saw as one of transition 3 Averil Cameron, Redrawing the Map: Early Christian Territory after Foucault, JRS 76 (1986): 266. 4 Theodore S. De Bruyn, Ambivalence within a Totalizing Discourse: Augustines Sermons on the Sack of Rome, JECS 1.4 (1993): 405-421 at 406. 5 Cameron, Redrawing the Map: Early Christian Territory after Foucault, 268-269. 6 De Bruyn, citing Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 2-3, 57-8, 217-20. 7 Cameron, Redrawing the Map: Early Christian Territory after Foucault, 268-269. 8 Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 6 citing G. G. Harpham, The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 17. 9 P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London: Faber, 2000) a new edn. with an epilogue; P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150-750 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971).

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to new forms and structures of life rather than one of decline. Cameron, however, gave scholars a paradigm and vocabulary by which to understand Christianitys rise that went beyond the previous scholarly emphasis on material culture, economic structures and ideology. The overwhelming number of authors who have cited her work in the past two decades underscores the power of her idea.10

All the same, there are problems with Camerons thesis that employing a wider angle lens to the activity of third- and fourth-century theologians quickly brings into view. For not only Christians used the figural exegesis of texts as a tool in crafting a systematic and universalizing view of reality. And, although Cameron acknowledged that Jewish hermeneutics was a neglected chapter in her story, neither she nor Foucault situated these Christian (or Jewish) exegetical trends within the broader world of Mediterranean scholarship, particularly the third- and fourth-century intellectual circles of Alexandria, Rome and Antioch. When we do, we see that what Cameron saw as a specifically Christian form of discourse and exegesis developed in conversation with Platonist scholars engaged in precisely the same pursuit. This discovery means that Christianity was not the only totalizing discourse in town, but that competition between perspectives played an important role both in the reification of distinct Christian and Hellene identities and the push to influence the Roman throne. This competition involved the shadowy philosopher Ammonius Saccas, his two students, the Hellene, Plotinus, and the Christian, Origen, together with their followers: Porphyry and his student, Iamblichus, on the one side, and a number of later Origenists, including Methodius and Eusebius of Caesarea on the other. In order to make this argument, let me

10 See, for example, H. A. Drake, Intolerance, Religious Violence and Political Legitimacy in Late Antiquity, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79 (2011): 193-235; U. Simonsohn, The Biblical Narrative in the Annales of Said ibn Batriq and the Question of Medieval Byzantine-Orthodox Identity, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 22 (2011): 37-55; J. Garroway, The Law-Observant Lord: John Chrysostoms Engagement with the Jewishness of Christ, Journal of Early Christian Studies 18 (2010): 591-615; P. Brown, Through the Eye of the Needle: The Foundation of Latin Christianity in Recent Historiography, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 46 (2010): 3-18; M. Peppard, The Eagle and the Dove: Roman Imperial Sonship and the Baptism of Jesus (Mark 1:9-11), New Testament Studies 56 (2010): 431-451; A. Sterk, Representing Mission from Below: Historians as Interpreters and Agents of Christianization, Church History 79 (2010): 271-304; idem, Mission from Below: Captive Women and Conversion on the East Roman Frontiers, Church History 79 (2010): 1-39; A.E. Sheckler and M.J.W. Leith, The Crucifixion Conundrum and the Santa Sabina Doors, Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010): 67-88.

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turn now to the Alexandrian context in which arose that strand of Christian exegesis which most strove toward a comprehensive interpretation of reality, especially through figural reading.

Early third-century Alexandria was home to Ammonius Saccas, a man whose silhouette we can faintly conjure. By collating the accounts of his successors, especially the Platonists, Porphyry and Hierocles,11 and the Christian bishop, Eusebius,12 it is possible to see that Ammonius devised an approach to philosophy that became definitive of the Plotinian community in Rome, the Origenist communities in Alexandria and Caesarea, and the Iamblichan community in Syria. Through philosophy, Ammonius sought to define a comprehensive system, the tenets of which would thus achieve the return of his soul to its divine source.13 His method for doing so was to derive a philosophy without conflicts, mining a wide variety of sources with a toolkit of exegetical techniques. The richest sources for Ammonius were the texts of Plato. All the same, he also believed that Platos teachings had been corrupted by his later followers. This assumption allowed Ammonius to embrace other sources, particularly Aristotle, whose treatises he used to broaden his understanding of what Plato might have taught beyond what he had actually written down. Ammonius, who came from a Christian family, also evaluated Jewish and Christian sources in building his philosophy without conflicts: two tracts attributed to him evince an interest in Jesus life and message, both as presented in the gospels and as compared against Moses teachings. Ammonius subjected the gospel accounts to a rigorous point-by-point comparative analysis, perhaps to identify what might be reliable information based on consensus across the texts, a technique that he must have also applied to the works of Plato and Aristotle. From the perspective of Porphyry of Tyre, this type of systematic, careful analysis as a preliminary to textual exegesis became a point of fracture between his teacher, Plotinus, whom he saw as Ammonius one true heir (besides himself), and Ammonius Origenist and Iamblichan descendents. Finally, for Ammonius, a person dedicated to true philosophy must uphold the laws of the community to which he belonged, a value that Porphyry highlighted in describing him as the ideal philosopher of his age. Porphyry could use this tenet, not only to challenge Origens openly encouraging Christians to seek martyrdom, but also to question Iamblichans who, at 11 Porphyrys account of Ammonius survives in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.19 and his own Life of Plotinus 3. Hierocles account survives in Photius Biblioteca cod. 214, 173a18-40. 12 Ecclesiastical History 6.19. 13 For the fullest exposition of the evidence, see Digeser, A Threat, chapter 1.

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least in his view, violated standard exegetical rules in their desire to establish rituals, not contemplation, as the guaranteed path to union with the divine.

As Ammonius was establishing his reputation in Alexandria as a heterodox Christian developing a systematic philosophy with Plato at its centre, he took on as a student the young Origen.14 He was a Biblical scholar, a compelling teacher, a rigorous ascetic and a theologian deeply indebted to Plato. Origen adopted many of these traits from his mentor and his students appropriated them in turn. This line of succession would pose a challenge to Ammonius Hellene heirs since both groups strove to set out a philosophy without conflicts.15 For example, by comparing a variety of Scriptural traditions (both Greek and Hebrew) in his Hexapla, Origen hoped to produce the definitive edition of Hebrew Scripture. For his part, by setting gospel accounts side by side, Ammonius may have sought to identify what Jesus actually did, drawing confidence from episodes that the various traditions had in common. Origen required an authentic text, he believed, because his figural exegesis often drew meaning out of very small textual details. Despite these commonalities, however, two areas of disagreement divided Origen and Ammonius. First, Ammonius saw Plato as the source of true knowledge; thus Ammonius was a Hellene, although he may have self-identified as a Christian.16 For Origen, however, Jesus teachings were foundational: only with an awareness of Jesus doctrines

14 See Digeser, A Threat to Public Piety, 31-33. The sources on Origen are vast. My analysis draws particularly on Porphyrys accounts of him preserved in Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 6.19 and Porphyrys own Life of Plotinus, 3, together with Eusebius rather misleading testimony throughout book 6. There has been heated disagreement over whether Origen studied with Ammonius (see most recently, Mark J. Edwards, Ammonius, Teacher of Origen, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44 [1993]: 169-181, but this actually is a point on which both Porphyry and Eusebius agree. For the details of the debate, see E. D. Digeser, Origen on the Limes: Rhetoric and the Polarization of Identity in the Late Third Century, in The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity: Religion and Politics in Rome, Byzantium and the Early Islamic World, R.M. Frakes, idem and Justin Stephens, edd. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 197-217. Of special importance to the analysis here are Origens commentaries on John, Genesis, Lamentations and the Psalms, his Contra Celsum, and his De principiis. For a fuller analysis of the evidence, please see Digeser A Threat to Public Piety, chapter 2. 15 I use the word Hellene instead of pagan since it is how these Platonists referred to themselves. See ps.-Julian, Ep. 187.406e with T. D. Barnes, A Correspondent of Iamblichus, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 19 (1978): 99-106. 16 See A Threat to Public Piety, chapter 1.

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could people properly interpret ancient philosophy and gain salvation. By putting Jesus teachings at the centre of his theology, Origen also pursued a civic politics of confrontationone that Ammonius would not have condoned.17 For example, Origen encouraged his students to become martyrs and so bear witness to the conflict between Roman law and Christian law during the so-called Severan persecution.

A second student of Ammonius, the great Platonist philosopher, Plotinus, brought his Alexandrian teacher philosophy as a way of life to Rome where its development where it developed political overtones in the shadow of the imperial court.18 The style of hermeneutics, teaching, ascesis and Platonism manifest in his circle, I suggest, show the influence of the eleven years that Plotinus spent with Ammonius. Such influence is evident in style of textual criticism that Plotinus students used to assess the authenticity of the writings of Zostriansus, for example, a so-called Gnostic text, in order to determine its reliability as a source of ancient wisdom.19 Moreover, like Origens figural reading of Hebrew Scripture, Plotinus similar approach to Greek mythology allowed him to describe the relationship between the One, Nous and Soul. Finally, where Ammonius had attempted to harmonize Aristotle with Plato, Plotinus managed to incorporate Aristotle into his essentially Platonist philosophy.20

All the same, there are important differences between Origen and Plotinus.21 For example, Plotinus has a notion of a transcendent One that is alien to Origens conception of God the Father. Plotinus residency in Rome also gave him proximity to the imperial court and Senate, so much so that senators and public officials became acolytes and he even gained the admiration of the emperor Gallienus (260-68).22 Dominic OMeara has argued convincingly that Neoplatonists, despite the apparent mysticism in their quest for union with the One, nevertheless were keenly interested 17 See A Threat to Public Piety, Introduction, chapters 1 and 2. 18 See A Threat to Public Piety, chapters 2 and 3. The chief source for Plotinus philosophy is Porphyrys edition of his treatises which survives under the title of The Enneads. I have drawn especially on 3.8, 5.8, 5.5 and 2.9, Plotinus treatises against the Gnostics. On Plotinus life, an invaluable source is Porphyrys biography, the Life of Plotinus. For an in-depth analysis of the evidence for the arguments here, please also see Digeser, Religion, Law and the Roman Polity: The Era of the Great Persecution, in Law and Religion in Classical and Christian Rome, C. Ando and J. Rpke, eds. (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2006), 68-84. 19 Porphyry, De vita Plotini, 16. Hereafter abbrev. Plot. 20 Lloyd P. Gerson, Aristotle and Other Platonists (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 205f. 21 See A Threat to Public Piety, Introduction, and chapters 2 and 3. 22 Plot. 7, 12

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in guiding the application of Roman power, in a way not unlike the role of the philosopher in Platos Laws.23 I would suggest further that Plotinus and Porphyry had clear political goals: Plotinus appealed to the emperor Gallienus for permission to establish a city of philosophers in the Campania, and Porphyrywho had, like Plotinus, achieved union with the Onethought that he thus had the standing and insight to guide the emperors in shaping laws in the image of divine legislation.

After Plotinus died, however, Porphyry and the rest of his mentors circle faced competition from Iamblichus of Chalcis.24 Although he had studied with Porphyry for a short time, Iamblichus established a school in Antioch which opposed Porphyrys teachings in some important respects. Porphyrians and Iamblichans began to split into two camps, as Porphyrys On Abstinence indicates. In this text, Porphyry argued that, because it was polluting, eating animal flesh (even in feasting after a sacrifice) was deleterious to the soul of someone seeking the philosophical life. Porphyry dedicated the treatise to Castricius, and there are indications in the work that he had left Porphyry to join with Iamblichus and his circle. Disagreement between Porphyry and Iamblichus came to a head in Porphyrys Letter to Anebo, which interrogates its reader about how divine beings are arranged hierarchically, how different kinds of divination work, and how to identify the kind of divine being which might cause a particular type of epiphany. Iamblichus responded to this short letter in a ten-volume work, On the Mysteries. Here, Iamblichus demonstrates how deeply Plotinus had influenced him, but he develops his predecessors philosophy in entirely novel ways. In particular, Iamblichus departs from Plotinus in maintaining that for their souls to re-ascend to their source, everyone must participate in theurgic rituals, rites, that is, involving matter and even blood sacrifice. In Iamblichus system, according to Gregory Shaws Theurgy and the Soul, Hermetic, Chaldaean, Pythagorean and Plotinian wisdom all combined to form a path along which all souls could

23 Dominic J. O'Meara, Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 24 See A Threat to Public Piety, Introduction and chapter 4. For the discussion here, Iamblichus most important treatise is On the Mysteries and Porphyrys Letter to Anebo. Important information on Iamblichus life comes from Eunapius, Lives of the Sophists. For a detailed evaluation of the evidence for the argument here, please also see Digeser, The Power of Religious Rituals: A Philosophical Quarrel on the Eve of the Great Persecution, in The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, N. Lenski and A. Cain, edd (Ashgate, 2010), 81-92.

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return to their source.25 In Porphyrys view, however, Iamblichus philosophy deviated from the norms that defined the true descendents of Ammonius and Plotinus. By challenging his exegesis of his source texts, Porphyry disputed Iamblichus claim, based his reading of Hermetic and Chaldaean wisdom, that material rituals were necessary for the ascent of most philosophers souls. Porphyry then attacked everyone working in the Ammonian tradition who arrayed both philosophers and ordinary people along a common path to the divine. He decried those on the Hellene side under Iamblichus and on the Christian side under Origen, who, he believed, derived a philosophy without conflicts from inappropriately using their schools exegetical toolkit. In Porphyrys view these new totalizing paths were really dead ends: Porphyrys On the Return of the Soul and Philosophy from Oracles set out his own exegesis of Chaldaean theurgic oracles. From these texts, Porphyry concluded that theurgic rituals might be purificatory, but could not return the soul to its source. Porphyrys Life of Plotinus, written around the same time of these treatises (ca. 300), sets out its authors own vision of the orthodox philosophical life. At the same time that this biography maintained the authority of Plotinus philosophy, it allowed Porphyry to stake his own claim to being Plotinus only true successor. Taken together, Porphyrys treatises written at the cusp of the fourth century claimed that only those who could adopt the philosophical life might experience the return of their souls to their divine source. Because most people had neither the time nor the talent for philosophy, however, Porphyry seems to have envisioned a system of salvation along three paths across which different types of souls might reach their divine source during several lifetimes. Although Porphyry proposed three paths to the divine and not one, his theology is just as indebted to the Ammonian exegetical techniques as those of his competitors. It is also equally totalizing: ordinary people, educated people and philosophers each have their proper route to God, paths that deny the reality of Iamblichan Hellenism or Origenist Christianity. And, as Jeremy Schott has seen most vividly, Porphyrys theology pulled in a systematized (even colonized) religious traditions from across the Roman Empire.

Porphyrys attacks reverberated not only within the Iamblichan community, but also among Origens heirs, including Methodius of Olympus.26 Methodius was Porphyrys contemporary and a teacher in the

25 Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park: Penn. State, 1995). 26 See A Threat, Introduction and chapter 5. For the discussion here, Methodius most important treatises are his Symposium, De cibis and Aglaophon. For a more

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Origenist tradition. Methodius career is obscure, but his writings show that his exegetical and pedagogic practices place him unambiguously among Origens heirs. In his Symposium, Methodius understands Christianity as the one path which allows the human soul to ascend to God. Methodius writings show clearly that he was responding to a series of attached that Porphyry had levied against his exegetical strategies. Indeed Porphyrys arguments had caught Methodius in a contradiction. The basis of Methodius theology was a figural reading of Jewish law. Porphyry argued, however, that figural exegesis was appropriate only if Jewish law was true and just. If that were the case, however, Christians should to follow traditional Jewish rituals instead of claiming to follow a new Christian law.

Thus we can see, contra Cameron, that all members of the Ammonian communityHellenes and Christiansapplied similar exegetical tools to their texts and that their theology or philosophy depended on these methods.27 Each branch maintained that their true philosophy, derived from a close reading of a canon of ancient tests, established the way of life that would allow their souls to return to their source. Each maintained that their readings allowed them to reach back and recover the teachings of august ancient teachersnamely, Pythagoras, Plato and Moses. All used certain methods to determine the authenticity of potentially sacred texts, practices aimed at assessing a texts authenticity.28 They might also use techniques that would produce the best edition of a text from extant available copies. Once they had ascertained a texts authenticity and reliability, all promoted exegetical strategies, such as figural reading,29 in order to discern the true philosophy within these texts. Figural reading was necessary because these treatises often conveyed the true philosophy or doctrine as ainigmata, puzzles or apori in the texts. This assumption reveals that all of these philosophers and theologians believed that the detailed discussion of the evidence supporting the arguments here, see Digeser, Methodius and Porphyry, Studia Patristica 26 (2010): 21-26. 27 See A Threat, Introduction. 28 E.g. Porphyrys analysis concluding that the books of Zoroaster were apocryphal (Porph. Plot. 16); his determining that the Book of Daniel was really a history of the era of Antiochus IV, but still worth reading as a narrative of those events (Hier. Dan. prf); and Porphyrys assessment that the gospel accounts were not reliable accounts of Jesus life and teaching since their authors were ignorant and made so many errors (e.g., ap. Hier. Ep. 57.9). 29 I avoid the term allegorical exegesis, because this term connotes a narrative element often lacking in these interpretations. See Blosson Stefaniw, Mind, Text and Commentary: Noetic Exegesis in Origen of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind and Evagrius Ponticus (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010).

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knowledge they sought had an occult character which rendered it potentially unsuitable for or at least unavailable to ordinary people. Such reading strategies not only presupposed a certain amount of training in order to recognize potential apori and ainigmata, but also required a thorough liberal arts education and a good library so that the ainigmata could be properly decoded.30

Given these shared traditions, then, among the Ammonian community, what was the process by which one of their totalizing discourses came to dominate the other? Porphyrys arguments had splintered the Ammonian community into three parts, Porphyrians, Iamblichans, and Origenists. Despite their rift over how best to lead the philosophical life, Porphyrian and Iamblichan Hellenes agreed that the souls of ordinary people needed traditional rituals. This fundamental concord,31 together with the arguments against Christian doctrine and practice that Porphyry had developed in writing against these opposing universal religious systems, helped fuel the impetus for the Great Persecution. Porphyrys publications of the 290s, written to respond both to Iamblichans and Origenists, reverberated far beyond the walls of these scholarly communities. Fragments usually attributed to a work entitled Against the Christians show how Porphyrys exegesis of Jewish and Christian Biblical texts allowed him to undermine their utility as prophetic or historical literature respectively. Since Porphyry found no evidence either in Jewish Scripture or the emerging New Testament canon to corroborate the Christians claim for the divinity of Jesus, he concluded that he was a fully human being whose worshippers were polluting themselves with blood sacrifices through the Eucharist. Porphyrys On Abstinence had argued that polluted people could disrupt divination and civic rituals. His publications, taken together, therefore allowed Hellene readers, especially priests and officials close to Ammonian circles, to conclude that Christians were a danger to the Roman community. Such people were active in Antioch when the failed auspices of 299 motivated the court to purge Christians from the eastern army, and to scourge Christian courtiers who refused to sacrifice. This episode marked the start of the emperor Galeriuss campaign to turn Diocletian toward a policy of persecution, an effort that culminated in presentations by Sossianus Hierocles and Porphyry at the imperial court. As a philosopher who had achieved divine union, Porphyry would have seen his visit to Nicomedia as an opportunity to advise the emperors on 30 Taking Porphyrys Cave of the Nymphs as an example: the section on bees (7) required a knowledge of natural philosophy; the evaluation of the cave necessitated geographical information (9-10). 31 See A Threat, Introduction.

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proper religious practices for all groups within the empire, from ordinary people through those capable of living philosophically. When he appropriated the time-honoured role of Platos philosopher advising the emperor in Nicomedia just before persecution began, Porphyry not only allowed the conflict that began within his school to assume its most public face, but he also attempted to shape laws embracing his own theology to the detriment of his Origenist and Iamblichan competitors.32

In the end, an intramural debate between two philosophical circles over the value of sacrificial rituals for philosophically capable people produced the texts and generated the arguments that led indirectly to the Great Persecution.33 We thus can see clearly the violent political consequences that these competing identities and discourses brought to bear. How, then, did this situation contribute to the rise of the Christian state? The persecutors, as we know well, overplayed their hand. In 311 the emperor Galerius conceded as much when he reinstated religious liberty and required prayer, not sacrifice, from all his subjects on the empires behalf. This act recognized how thoroughly Christians had interwoven themselves within the fabric of the Roman state, not least within Roman philosophical schools and from there into positions as administrators, officials and decurions. This integration meant that the Hellenes mustered as much distaste as zeal toward their efforts to turn back the clock. Galerius 311 edict also left the door open for an even bolder move the following year when his junior partner, Constantine, claimed the aid of the Christian god, first in putting down the usurper, Maxentius, and then12 years laterin claiming sole rule for himself. Constantine was not unfamiliar with Porphyrian Hellenism, as his Oration to the Saints clearly shows. I think, in fact, that he tried to unite all sides of the debate that had raged before the persecution within his own person: banning blood sacrifice to appease the Porphyrians, appointing Iamblichus student Sopater as court philosopher, and viewing bishops much as Eusebius of Caesarea and later Christian Platonists construed them: as true philosophers and thus a conduitlike himselffor divine law. This last step, however, was pivotal. For unlike the loose network of Hellene scholars, Christian bishops coupled a universalizing faith with a powerful organization. The rest, as they say, is historya history this city knows well!

32 See A Threat, chapters 2 and 4. 33 See A Threat, Introduction.