This volume, a translation of book 1 of Philo of Alexandria's De vita Mosis, with introduction and commentary, aims to introduce new readers, both students and scholars, to Philo of Alexandria through what is widely considered to be one of his most accessible works and one that Philo himself may have intended for readers unfamiliar with Judaism. The introduction provides historical, intellectual, and religious context for Philo, discusses major issues of scholarly interest, considers the relation of De vita (...) Mosis to the Septuagint, and explores the immediate Nachleben of Philo's works. The author's translation is paired with Cohn's edition of the Greek text, thereby providing not only a rendering of the Greek but also the Greek itself for those who wish to read Philo's own words. The English rendering of the Greek aims at clarity and accuracy while retaining as many of Philo's unique stylistic features as possible. Finally, the notes are designed to elucidate the text, especially for new readers, on a variety of levels: extrapolating on points more fully discussed elsewhere in the Philonic corpus, observing specific divergences from the Septuagint, and suggesting aspects of contemporary historical influence on Philo's retelling of the biblical narrative. The volume serves as a succinct entry into the basics of Philo while also preparing the reader for some of Philo's more challenging works. (shrink)

Hierocles of Alexandria was a Neoplatonic philosopher of the fifth century AD. Hermann S. Schibli surveys his life, writings, and pagan and Christian surroundings, and succinctly examines the major points of his philosophy, both contemplative and practical. He includes the first modern English translations, with helpful notes, of Hierocles' Commentary on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans and of the remnants of his treatise On Providence.

This book is at once an analytical study of one of the most important mathematical texts of antiquity, the Mathematical Collection of the fourth-century AD mathematician Pappus of Alexandria, and also an examination of the work's wider cultural setting. An important first chapter looks at the mathematicians of the period and how mathematics was perceived by people at large. The central chapters of the book analyse sections of the Collection, identifying features typical of Pappus's mathematical practice. The final chapter (...) draws together the various threads and presents a fuller description of Pappus's mathematical 'agenda'. This is one of few books to deal extensively with the mathematics of Late Antiquity. It sees Pappus's text as part of a wider context and relates it to other contemporary cultural practices and opens avenues to research into the public understanding of mathematics and mathematical disciplines in antiquity. (shrink)

Many recent AI systems take inspiration from biological episodic memory. Here, we ask how these ‘episodic-inspired’ AI systems might inform our understanding of biological episodic memory. We discuss work showing that these systems implement some key features of episodic memory whilst differing in important respects, and appear to enjoy behavioural advantages in the domains of strategic decision-making, fast learning, navigation, exploration and acting over temporal distance. We propose that these systems could be used to evaluate competing theories of episodic memory’s (...) operations and function. However, further work is needed to validate them as models of episodic memory and isolate the contributions of their memory systems to their behaviour. More immediately, we propose that these systems have a role to play in directing episodic memory research by highlighting novel or neglected hypotheses as pursuit-worthy. In this vein, we propose that the evidence reviewed here highlights two pursuit-worthy hypotheses about episodic memory’s function: that it plays a role in planning that is independent of future-oriented simulation, and that it is adaptive in virtue of its contributions to fast learning in novel, sparse-reward environments. (shrink)

Dreams are used figuratively throughout Greek literature to refer to something fleeting and/or unreal. In Plato, this metaphorical language is specifically used to describe an epistemological distinction: the one who has false knowledge or opinion is said to be dreaming while the one who has true knowledge is said to be awake. These figures are also central to Philo of Alexandria's philosophical language in De somniis 1-2 and De Iosepho. Although scholars have documented these epistemological metaphors in Plato and (...) related treatments of the concept of sleep in Heraclitus, it has not been discussed in any detail in relation to Philo's treatment of Joseph in these two treatises. In De somniis 1-2, Philo primarily emphasizes his role as a dreamer and thus one incapable of true knowledge. In De Iosepho, Joseph is a dream interpreter who is not only awake but also capable of interpreting the figurative dream of life to which most people are subject. Although some scholars have considered these treatises contradictory in terms of their treatments of Joseph, an analysis of Philo's figurative use of sleep and dreaming reveals that they are a part of a coherent exegetical framework. (shrink)

Clement of Alexandria lived and taught in the most lively intellectual centre of his day. This book offers a comprehensive account of how he joined the ideas of the New Testament to those of Plato and other classical thinkers. Clement taught that God was active from the beginning to the end of human history and that a Christian life should move on from simple faith to knowledge and love. He argued that a sequence of three elliptical relations governed the (...) universe: Father and Son, God and humanity, humans and their neighbours. Faith as a fixed conviction which is also a growing mustard seed was joined to Plato's unwavering search for the best reason. The open heaven of prophecy became intelligible through Plato's ascending dialectic. This book will be invaluable in making this outstanding thinker of the early Church accessible to the students of today. (shrink)

The Greek mathematician Diophantos of Alexandria lived during the third century CE. Apart from his age, very little else is known about his life. Even the exact form of his name is uncertain, and only a few incomplete manuscripts of his greatest work, Arithmetica, have survived. In this impressive scholarly investigation, first published in 1885, Thomas Little Heath meticulously presents what can be gleaned from Greek, Latin and Arabic sources, and guides the reader through the algebraist's idiosyncratic style of (...) mathematics, discussing his notation and originality. This was the first thorough survey of Diophantos' work to appear in English. Also reissued in this series are Heath's two-volume History of Greek Mathematics, his treatment of Greek astronomy through the work of Aristarchus of Samos, and his edition in modern notation of the Treatise on Conic Sections by Apollonius of Perga. (shrink)

Origen of Alexandria was an early Christian theologian who stands out as an anomaly amongst Church Fathers. He is considered to have entertained heretical views, yet is still held in high esteem by the Church today. The church Fathers were theologians whose writings and debates helped forge an approach for articulating the doctrines of Christianity. Why should Origen stand among these esteemed figures? Why should a heretic hold such acclaimed standing in the heart of the Church?

In Philo of Alexandria and Greek Myth: Narratives, Allegories, and Arguments, a fresh and more complete image of Philo of Alexandria as a careful reader, interpreter, and critic of Greek literature is offered. Greek mythology plays a significant role in Philo of Alexandria's exegetical oeuvre. Philo explicitly adopts or subtly evokes narratives, episodes and figures from Greek mythology as symbols whose didactic function we need to unravel, exactly as the hidden teaching of Moses' narration has to be (...) revealed by interpreters of Bible. By analyzing specific mythologems and narrative cycles, the contributions to this volume pave the way to a better understanding of Philo's different attitudes towards literary and philosophical mythology. (shrink)

Episodic memory has a distinctive phenomenology: it involves “mentally reliving” a past event. It has been suggested that characterising episodic memory in terms of this phenomenology makes it impossible to test for in animals, because “purely phenomenological features” cannot be detected in animal behaviour. Against this, I argue that episodic memory's phenomenological features are impure, having both subjective and objective aspects, and so can be behaviourally detected. Insisting on a phenomenological characterisation of episodic memory consequently does nothing to damage the (...) prospects for detecting it in nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Hierocles of Alexandria was a Neoplatonic philosopher of the fifth century AD. Hermann S. Schibli surveys his life, writings, and pagan and Christian surroundings, and succintly examines the major points of his philosophy, both contemplative and practical. He includes the first modern English translations, with helpful notes, of Hierocles' Commentary on the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans and of the remnants of his treatise On Providence.

This volume is a further continuation of the annotated bibliographies on the writings and thought of the Jewish exegete and philosopher Philo of Alexandria, following those on the years 1937-1986 published in 1988, 1987-1996 published in 2000 and 1997-2012 published in 2012. Prepared in collaboration with the International Philo Bibliography Project, it contains a complete listing of all scholarly writings on Philo for the period 2007 to 2016. Part One lists texts, translations, commentaries etc. (75 items). Part Two contains (...) critical studies (1143 items). In Part Three additional items up to 2006 are presented (27 items). In all cases a summary of the contents of the contribution is given. Six indices, including a detailed Index of subjects, complete the work. (shrink)

Episodic memory is the form of memory involved in remembering personally experienced past events. Here, I address two questions about episodic memory’s function: what does episodic memory do for us, and why do we have it? Recent work addressing these questions has emphasized episodic memory’s role in imaginative simulation, criticizing the mnemonic view on which episodic memory is “for” remembering. In this paper, I offer a defense of the mnemonic view by highlighting an underexplored mnemonic function of episodic memory – (...) namely, its role in the encoding, storage and retrieval of the type of information more standardly associated with semantic memory. I argue that in healthy individuals, episodic memory plays a central role in the encoding, storage and retrieval of prototypically semantic information, analogous to the role played by mind palaces in the method of loci, and may have been selected on for this reason. This suggests new directions for studying episodic memory, particularly in nonhuman animals. (shrink)

The Jewish exegete and philosopher Philo of Alexandria has long been famous for his complex and spiritually rich allegorical treatises on the Greek Bible. The present volume presents first translation and commentary in English on his treatise De plantatione (On planting), following on the volume devoted to On cultivation published previously by the same two authors. Philo gives a virtuoso performance as allegorist, interpreting Noah's planting of a vineyard in Genesis 9.20 first in theological and cosmological terms, then moving (...) to the spiritual quest of both of advanced souls and those beginning their journey. The translation renders Philo's baroque Greek into readable modern English. The commentary pays particular attention to the treatise's structure, its biblical basis and its exegetical and philosophical contents. (shrink)

Samuel Sandmel's book: Philo of Alexandria: An Introduction, is a basic introductory, supplementing his own teacher' Goodenough: 'An Introduction to Philo Judaeus, ' and foundation to more recent works on Philo.

In this paper I will reconsider the doxographical text about Aristotle in Clement of Alexandria's Protrepticus 5.66.4: οδν δ ομαι χαλεπν νταθα γενμενος κα τν κ το Περιπτου μνησθναι· κα γε τς αρσεως πατρ, τν λων ο νοσας τν πατρα, τν καλομενον ‘πατον’ ψυχν εναι το πντος οεται· τουτστι το κσμου τν ψυχν θεν πολαμβνων ατς ατ περιπερεται. γρ τοι μχρι τς σελνης ατς διορζων τν πρνοιαν, πειτα τν κσμον θεν γομενος περιτρπεται, τν μοιρον θεο θεν δογματζων.

Eclecticism is a concept widely used in the history of ancient philosophy to describe the intellectual stance of diverse thinkers such as Plutarch, Cicero and Seneca. In this book the historical and interpretative problems associated with eclecticism are for the first time approached from the point of view of the only self-described eclectic philosopher from Antiquity, Potamo of Alexandria. The evidence is examined in detail with reference to the philosophical and wider intellectual background of the period. Potamo's views are (...) placed in the context of key debates at the forefront of late Hellenistic philosophical activity to which he contributed, such as the criterion of truth, the first principles in physics, the moral end and the interpretation of Aristotle's esoteric works. The emergence of eclecticism is thus treated in connection with the major shift in philosophical interests and methods that marked the passage from Hellenistic to Imperial philosophy. (shrink)

For South Africans, heart transplantation centers are prized assets—symbols of the country's self‐sufficiency, a source of national pride, and perhaps necessary to retain any capacity to provide advanced coronary care. They are also expensive to maintain in a country in which many citizens are afflicted with a low standard of living and inadequate medical attention.

This is the first collected volume dedicated to Olympiodorus of Alexandria, the last pagan Platonic philosopher at the end of antiquity.

Aesthetic education with a writing focus has occurred in the United States through two vehicles: textbooks in classroom-based instruction or self-help books in extracurricular instruction. Self-help books on writing, or texts that address a readership interested in learning about composing independent of a teacher or university, played a significant role in guiding countless individuals during the twentieth century and continues to do so today.1 The evolution of these self-help books paralleled the development of college and university writing courses that arose (...) early in the twentieth century: indeed, a powerful informal aesthetic education has been occurring through self-help books. In this article, I perform a .. (shrink)

The Epistle to the Hebrews contains one of the most unique Greek lexicology and syntax of all the New Testament writings. Behind syntax, however, there lies a very profound theological vision on topics such as Christ, Temple, holiness, perseverance and salvation. Studying Hebrews against the background of Graeco-Roman culture, the source that most contemporary scholars mention as being closest to the world of Hebrews in this context is Philo of Alexandria. Not only on philological grounds, but also in matters (...) of methods of interpreting the Old Testament cult and in theology, Hebrews and Philo share a very common background. Analyzing the Epistle to the Hebrews comparatively, we are bound to ask whether or not comparsions such as these are warranted. In the following study we will state the state of the problem and then will examine the two sources that seem to have served as a source of inspiration for the author of Hebrews: the Old Testament and Philo of Alexandria. We will focus exclusively on the issues of the method of allegory and the spiritualization/reinterpretation of Old Testament cultic entities, since both Philo and Hebrews are characterized by these concerns. In essence, we will want to know who or what served as the most plausible source of inspiration for the author of Hebrews in the particular area of the reinterpretation of the Old Testament cult. (shrink)

Mindreaders can ascribe representational states to others. Some can ascribe representational states – states with semantic properties like accuracy-aptness. I argue that within this group of mindreaders, there is substantial room for variation – since mindreaders might differ with respect to the representational format they take representational states to have. Given that formats differ in their formal features and expressive power, the format one takes mental states to have will significantly affect the range of mental state attributions one can make, (...) and the ease or difficulty with which one can make them. I illustrate this by considering what it would be to take mental states to be map-like in format, showing that this would result in a distinctively limited form of mindreading. I close by articulating the significance of this for the emerging picture of great ape mindreading. (shrink)

In the treatise On the Change of Names (part of his magnum opus, the Allegorical Commentary), Philo of Alexandria brings his figurative exegesis of the Abraham cycle to its fruition. Taking a cue from Platonist interpreters of Homer's Odyssey, Philo reads Moses's story of Abraham as an account of the soul's progress and perfection. Responding to contemporary critics, who mocked Genesis 17 as uninspired, Philo finds instead a hidden philosophical reflection on the ineffability of the transcendent God, the transformation (...) of souls which recognize their mortal nothingness, the possibility of human faith enabled by peerless faithfulness of God, and the fruit of moral perfection: joy divine, prefigured in the birth of Isaac. (shrink)

The first author in which the traditions of Judaic thought and Greek philosophy flow together in a significant way is Philo of Alexandria.This study presents a ...

Voluntary stream segregation was investigated in cochlear implant users and normal-hearing listeners using a segregation-promoting objective approach which evaluated the role of spectral and amplitude-modulation rate separations on stream segregation and its build-up. Sequences of 9 or 3 pairs of A and B narrowband noise bursts were presented which differed in either center frequency of the noise band, the AM-rate, or both. In some sequences, the last B burst was delayed by 35 ms from their otherwise-steady temporal position. In the (...) other sequences, the last B bursts were temporally advanced from 0 to 10 ms. A single interval yes/no procedure was utilized to measure participants’ sensitivity in identifying delayed vs. no-delay sequences. A higher d′ value showed the higher ability to segregate the A and B subsequences. For NH listeners, performance improved with each spectral separation. However, for CI users, performance was only significantly better for the condition with the largest spectral separation. Additionally, performance was significantly poorer for the largest AM-rate separation than for the condition with no AM-rate separation for both groups. The significant effect of sequence duration in both groups indicated that listeners made more improvement with lengthening the duration of stimulus sequences, supporting the build-up effect. The results of this study suggest that CI users are less able than NH listeners to segregate NBN bursts into different auditory streams when they are moderately separated in the spectral domain. Contrary to our hypothesis, our results indicate that AM-rate separation may interfere with the segregation of streams of NBN. Additionally, our results add evidence to the literature that CI users build up stream segregation at a rate comparable to NH listeners, when the inter-stream spectral separations are adequately large. (shrink)

In this book, John A. McGuckin reviews and assesses the monumental influence that Origen of Alexandria has exercised over the shape and content of the Christian tradition over seventeen hundred years.

An inquiry drawing on the presence of Hellenistic philosophy in Philo provides a better knowledge of the diffusion of Hellenistic philosophy since the late ...

What were the historical and cultural processes by which Cyril of Alexandria was elevated to canonical status while his opponent, Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, was made into a heretic? In contrast to previous scholarship, Susan Wessel concludes that Cyril's success in being elevated to orthodox status was not simply a political accomplishment based on political alliances he had fashioned as opportunity arose. Nor was it a dogmatic victory, based on the clarity and orthodoxy of Cyril's doctrinal claims. Instead, it (...) was his strategy in identifying himself with the orthodoxy of the former bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, in his victory over Arianism, in borrowing Athanasius' interpretive methods, and in skilfully using the tropes and figures of the second sophistic that made Cyril a saint in the Greek and Coptic Orthodox Churches. (shrink)

A very slight reading of Clement of Alexandria is enough to prove how deeply he is indebted to Plato both in respect of language and of thought. Quotations from Plato are to be found throughout Clement's works, and in many cases acknowledgment is made of their origin. In addition there are frequent allusions, which for the most part the student of Plato can easily recognize. Clement invariably shows a profound respect for the Greek philosopher, whom he looks upon as (...) a seeker after truth and as an authority, we may almost say, second only to the Scriptures. A careful comparison of the Protrepticus with the Phaedrus, results of which are given below, will furnish a striking illustration of the close dependence of Clement upon Plato. The Protrepticus is a short work, occupying in space not more than one–twelfth of Clement's extant writings, while the Phaedrus is even smaller in proportion to the whole of Plato. It is remarkable that so much inter-connexion should be found in so small a field, especially when we remember that the references to the Phaedrus represent by no means the whole of Clement's drawing upon Plato in the Protrepticus. There are allusions also to the Theaetetus, Republic, Charmides, Laws and Epistles, and possibly to the Politicus, Cratylus, Philebus, Symposium and Apology. (shrink)

In dicephalus conjoined twinning, it appears that two heads share a body; in cephalopagus, it appears that two bodies share a head. How many human animals are present in these cases? One answer is that there are two in both cases—conjoined twins are precisely that, conjoined twins. Another is that the number of humans corresponds to the number of bodies—so there is one in dicephalus and two in cephalopagus. I show that both of these answers are incorrect. Prominent accounts of (...) biological individuation, which treat the organism as an integrated whole, reveal that in these and other cases of conjoined twinning the ‘twins’ share a single human animal. This has a number of consequences for the debate about what we are. First, if animalism is true, individuals of our kind can be—and are—profoundly psychologically divided. Second, cephalopagus twinning does not divide animalism from its rivals, as has been claimed. Finally, animalists can reply to a vicious species of the ‘too many thinkers’ problem to which they are allegedly uniquely vulnerable. (shrink)

This volume is a continuation of "Philo of Alexandria: an Annotated Bibliography 1937-1986, published by Roberto Radice and David Runia in 1988 (second edition ...

The problem of Philo's ambivalence about the physical world -- The context for Philo's ambivalence toward the physical world -- Philo's negative terminology for the physical world : [ousia, hylē, genesis, genētos] -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [kosmos] -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [physis] part 1 -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [physis] part 2 -- Higher and lower approaches to God -- The ambiguity of the physical world : (...) a multiperspectival approach -- Conclusions. (shrink)

In the 5th century, Cyril of Alexandria wrote a large apologetic work, as a response to Julian the Apostate’s anti-Christian work Against the Galileans. Aside from the obvious divide of one being a Christian and one a pagan, Cyril's religious views were very different from Julian's. Julian's arguments against the Christian doctrine do not greatly differ from those used in the second century by Celsus and by Porphyry in the third, and he regarded the relations between Neoplatonic criticism of (...) Christian Word. As a pagan, Julian had adopted the Platonic and Neoplatonic conception of the one God. Cyril doesn’t stack up against the Platonic one. Cyril’s goal in responding to Julian is, therefore, to help the skeptical reader to find the real faith. Cyril invokes precisely the evidence of Platonist philosophers in favor of the Trinitarian doctrine. Cyril shows, unlike Julian, that the Greek philosophers accept the three principal hypostases and using the term triad, they agree with Christian teaching. So, ancient philosophers as Porphyry supported that the substance of the divinity has proceeded towards three hypostases. Cyril doesn’t only confront Julian’s view against Christian, but he also confirms something that Justin the Martyr supported centuries ago about the “spermatic logos.” In this paper, we will examine this two works, “Against the Galileans” of Julian and “Against Julian” of Cyril, not only from their theological opinions but as arguments using the “common images” (εἰκότα), the possible logical arguments, in supporting the positions of Julian and Cyril in a legal struggle. (shrink)

Episodic memory is memory for past events. It’s characteristically associated with an experience of ‘mentally replaying’ one’s experiences in the mind’s eye. This biological phenomenon has inspired the development of several ‘experience replay’ algorithms in AI. In this chapter, I ask whether experience replay algorithms might shed light on a puzzle about episodic memory’s function: what does episodic memory contribute to the cognitive systems in which it is found? I argue that experience replay algorithms can serve as idealized models of (...) episodic memory for the purposes of addressing this question. Taking the DQN algorithm as a case study, I suggest that these algorithms provide some support for mnemonic accounts, on which episodic memory’s function lies in the storage, encoding and retrieval of information. By extending and adapting experience replay algorithms, we might gain further insight into episodic memory’s operations and contributions to cognition. (shrink)

The concept of πρoπαειαι or "pre-emotions" is known not only to the Roman Stoics and Christian exegetes but also to Philo of Alexandria. Philo also supplies the term πρoπαεια at QGen 1.79. As Philo cannot have derived what he knows from Seneca, nor from Cicero, who also mentions the point, he must have found it in older Stoic writings. The πρoπαεια concept, rich in implications for the voluntariness and phenomenology of the passions proper, is thus confirmed for the Hellenistic (...) period. It is not to be expected that Philo's handling of this or any concept will necessarily conform to the usage of his Stoic sources. His evidence is nonetheless of great value where it coincides with that of other witnesses. In QGen 4.73 the emphasis falls upon involuntariness and the mechanisms of impression and assent as in Epictetus fr. 9. The πρoπαεια saves the virtuous person's insusceptibility to emotion exactly as it does for the Stoic spokesman in Gellius NA 19.1; this point is of some interest in view of the Christological use of this concept in Origen and Didymus. QGen 1.55 and 3.56 indicate that the occurrence of the πρoπαειαι is dependent upon uncertainty, and further, that for Philo, as for Seneca in Ira 2.3.4, a thought not acted upon can count as a πρoπαεια. In QGen 4.15-17 and 1.79, Philo indicates that hope and perhaps laughter may be related to joy as πρoπαεια to παoς; these assertions are not paralleled in extant Stoic texts. Further, in QGen 2.57, he names "biting and contraction" as the ευπαεια corresponding to grief, supplying a helpful parallel for Cic. Tusc. 3.83 and Plut. Virt. Mor. 449a. The topic may well have been discussed by Posidonius, as suggested by Cooper and others, but Posidonius' attested innovations are rather different in character from the points which have caught the attention of Philo. Taking together the indirect evidence of Philo, Seneca, and Cicero, we may reasonably infer that the πρoπαεια concept belonged already to an earlier period of Stoicism. (shrink)

Episodic memory—memory for personally experienced past events—seems to afford a distinctive kind of cognitive contact with the past. This makes it natural to think that episodic memory is centrally involved in our understanding of what it is for something to be in the past, or to be located in time—that it is either necessary or sufficient for such understanding. If this were the case, it would suggest certain straightforward evidential connections between temporal cognition and episodic memory in nonhuman animals. In (...) this paper, I argue that matters are more complicated than this. Episodic memory is memory for events and not for the times they occupy. As such, it is dissociable from temporal understanding. This is not to say that episodic memory and temporal cognition are unrelated, but that the relationship between them cannot be straightforwardly captured by claims about necessity and sufficiency. This should inform our theoretical predictions about the manifestations of episodic memory in nonhuman behaviour. (shrink)