This chapter first investigates the meaning of ‘revelation’ in ancient Christianity and ancient non-Jewish and non-Christian religions, especially in ‘pagan’ Platonism of the early imperial period. ‘Revelation’ was characterised by the stress on authoritative sources of revealed knowledge (e.g., the Bible, the Chaldaean Oracles). The objective is to argue that ‘pagan’ Platonists faithful to Plato (and commenting just on Plato) cannot be simplistically opposed to Jewish or Christian Platonists faithful to the Bible (and commenting exclusively on the Bible). The chapter examines how philosophical allegoresis was applied by Stoics and Platonists – ‘pagan’, Jewish, and Christian Platonists – to their authoritative texts and revelations. This study provides an accurate examination of the conceptual and methodological intersections between the works of ‘pagan’ and Christian Platonists, and points to cases that break the binary between ‘pagan’ commentaries on ‘pagan’ authoritative texts and Christian commentaries on Scripture. It will also suggest that Amelius commented on the Prologue of John in light of his previous knowledge of Origen’s Commentary.

Numenius (second century AD), the only witty Platonist after Plato himself, memorably described Plato as ‘Moses talking Attic’. He did not mean thereby to rate Eastern wisdom more highly than Platonic philosophy, as is sometimes suggested, but to recognise in the words ‘I AM THAT I AM’, spoken to Moses by the God of the Hebrews, an anticipation, unique in Eastern lore, of the conception Numenius championed of the Platonic first principle One or Good as Being itself. This paper proposes that his further exploration of that idea shows him to have construed the Timaeus account of such being as an eternal present, or in Boethius’s words ‘the complete possession all at once of an infinite life’, not as timelessness (the Timaeus interpretation advocated by Richard Sorabji). It is argued that this was both a correct interpretation of Plato’s text, and one shared in much subsequent ancient and medieval philosophy, including Plotinus, Augustine, and Aquinas. From our own human perspective, a present tense without past or future connections might be considered ‘a kind of logical torso’, a defective remnant of ordinary time. For Plato that human conception of present time is itself a mere image of eternity.

This chapter examines how Calcidius sees his role as commentator in relation to his own translation, and his posiiton vis-à-vis the Platonist tradition.

This chapter examines the different levels of divine agency Calcidius posits, in a fluid structure of three gods; it assesses the potential influence of Numenius and Stoicism on this aspect of the commentary.

This chapter examines Calcidius' explicit treatment of Numenius, and the role of the views attributed to the latter in the commentary as a whole; it argues that Numenius is an important influence, but that Calcidius asserts his independence also from his views.

This chapter looks at the Chaldean Oracles, a set of hexameter texts from the Antonine period which develop an ambitious system of Platonising theurgy. Scholars have long appreciated the importance of this corpus for the development of Neoplatonic philosophy, and late paganism more generally, but have had less to say about its place in the history of Chaldean thought – the topic of this chapter. It first traces the history of what ancient observers called the ‘philosophy’ of the Chaldeans in relation to developments in Greek philosophical thought. It then shows how the Oracles attempt to reform the Chaldean brand in response to the rise of Platonism. Finally, it places the Oracles in the cultural and intellectual context of Syria during the Antonine period. Chaldeanism emerges from this argument as a non-Greek tradition that interacted closely with the major Greek philosophical schools of its time.