In this section, we begin the treatment of Jewish and Christian thinkers who were among the first to encounter ancient Greek philosophy in a systematic way. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity (and later, Islam) as religions, on the one hand, and their theological formulations, on the other, is an ongoing theme through this book. The Hellenized Jew Philo of Alexandria is perhaps the first to see in Greek philosophy the vocabulary and the conceptual framework for articulating Biblical revelation. The principal challenge Philo faced was how to express in the language of Greek philosophy the personal nature of the first principle of all and the relation that existed between that principle and the Jewish people. The history of ancient Greek philosophy is often characterized as having separated itself from the personalized Homeric gods in favour of more rational and so more impersonal causes. But it was not so much the personal as it was the non-rational aspects of the personal that Greek philosophical theology wished to abandon. Philo’s efforts to provide a systematic allegorizing of Scripture was to be enormously influential in both Jewish and Christian attempts to commensurate the philosophical and the theological.

In Justin, Clement and Origen we have three of the earliest major thinkers to argue that Christianity was a philosophy, indeed, that it was the culmination of Greek philosophical thinking. It is already evident from the Pauline Epistles that Christianity and Greek philosophy were apt either for conflict or harmonization. This option for the latter will be reprised and also repeatedly rejected up through the Reformation and beyond. Tertullian’s (c. 160–c. 220) famous query, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem or the Academy with the Church?’ is an emblematic reaction to the more eirenic or perhaps strategic efforts of the above three. It was their approach, however, that mainly prevailed. In them, we see much of the common currency of Greek philosophical language employed in a way intended to preserve the distinctiveness of the Christian message.

SYRIANUS’ LIFE AND WORKS

Information about the life of Syrianus, son of Philoxenus, is scarce, and is limited to what can be deduced from what we know about the life of Proclus, Syrianus’ disciple, who became much more famous than his master. Nevertheless, one date is certain: Syrianus became head of the Platonic school at Athens in 432 ce, after the death of his master, Plutarch. As to Syrianus’ own death, the date which is often given, of 437 ce, is only conjectural, if probable, but it is certain that he died before 439 ce, when Proclus wrote his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus; the past tense verbs in this text indicate that Proclus’ master had already passed away.

Among Syrianus’ numerous works, only his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics has survived, and that in an incomplete form comprising only books 3, 4, 13 and 14. A commentary on two treatises by Hermogenes of Tarsus, an orator of the second to third century ce, On Types of Style and On Argumentative Stances, has also been transmitted under Syrianus’ name. However the most recent editor of these commentaries, H. Rabe, has expressed doubts concerning their authenticity.

But we know that Syrianus gave lectures, not only on works by Aristotle other than the Metaphysics, but also on Platonic dialogues. As regards the latter, we have a commentary on Plato’s Phaedrus, written by Syrianus’ disciple Hermias: he wrote this commentary on the basis of notes taken during his master’s lectures.

THE TRANSMISSION OF THE GREEK LEGACY TO THE ARAB WORLD: AN OUTLINE

It is widely acknowledged that the origins of Arabic-Islamic philosophy are to be found in the transmission of a great amount of texts both from classical Greece – some Plato and virtually the whole of the Aristotelian corpus – and post-classical Greek thought, from Hellenism to late antiquity. In this chapter, we shall see that post-classical thought has been of momentous importance in the Arab interpretation of Plato’s and Aristotle’s doctrines. Predictably, the transmission of their works was made possible through the spread of classical Greek philosophy in the Mediterranean area during the Hellenistic and imperial ages, and then again through the scholastic tradition of late antiquity. However, post-classical thought was decisive for the rise of Islamic philosophy even from a more substantial point of view: the main problems dealt with by Muslim philosophers can be understood only against the background of the rethinking of Plato and Aristotle which took place in the imperial age, chiefly thanks to Alexander of Aphrodisias and Plotinus. Furthermore, the systematic structure into which Aristotle’s doctrines were moulded in the curricular teaching in the schools of late antiquity paved the way for their transmission to Latin and Arabic thought.