Overview

Daemons in Hellenic and Christian Antiquity is a groundbreaking analysis of the interplay between Greek and Christian ideas in Late Antiquity, with a focus on how daemons were conceived of by intellectuals in both traditions. Its protagonists are Origen, the great third-century philosopher and theologian, and Porphyry, a philosopher of the next generation whose ideas were strikingly influenced by Origen. By critical comparative study of Origen’s Contra Celsum and Porphyry’s De Abstinentia, author Panayiotis Tzamalikos establishes beyond doubt that Porphyry’s conception of daemons took its cue overwhelmingly from his predecessor’s theories on the subject. Porphyry adopted Origen’s ideas (and, at crucial points, his vocabulary) on daemons, at times very closely, thereby setting his daemonology apart from that of other Greek schools, while also he employed terminology interweaving Greek and Christian language. Throughout this inquiry, the author also builds further evidence that there was only one Origen, and that the modern invention of ‘two Origens’ (one ‘Platonist’, the other ‘Christian’) is untenable. This book is set to revolutionise understanding of the relationship between Greek philosophy and Christianity in Late Antiquity.

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9781636674056

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Reviews

This is without doubt an excellent and groundbreaking study. Author Panayiotis Tzamalikos convincingly portrays the entwined intellectual worlds of Origen and Porphyry, two major intellectual figures of late antiquity, and simultaneously demonstrates the extraordinarily advanced level of philosophical debate in this often-neglected period. This book brings the fields of late antique philosophy and patristics to life. Martin Ilert, Adjunct Professor for Eastern Christian Studies at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

Author Information

Panayiotis Tzamalikos, MSc, MPhil, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His books include The Concept of Time in Origen (1991 –his Phd at the University of Glasgow, 1987); Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time (2007); Origen: Philosophy of History and Eschatology (2007); A Newly Discovered Greek Father – Cassian the Sabaite eclipsed by John Cassian of Marseilles (2012); The Real Cassian Revisited – Monastic Life, Greek Paideia, and Origenism in the Sixth Century (2012); An Ancient Commentary on the Book of Revelation – A critical edition of the Scholia in Apocalypsin (2013); Anaxagoras, Origen, and Neoplatonism – The Legacy of Anaxagoras to Classical and Late Antiquity (2 vols. 2016); Origen: New Fragments from the Commentary on Matthew (2020); Origen and Hellenism – The Interplay Between Greek and Christian Ideas in Late Antiquity (2022); Guilty of Genius – Origen and the Theory of Transmigration (2022); The Wisdom of Solomon and the Byzantine Reception of Origen (2023).

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