Zeke Mazur
Postdoctoral Fellow, Université Laval
ajmazur@uchicago.edu
Porphyry, the Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, Zostrianos
(NHC VIII,1), and the Question of Relative Chronology.
I have been working on Zostrianos, Porphyry, and the Anonymous
Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. I have come to agree with Tuomas
Rasimus that the Anonymous Commentary (=ACPP) is a crypto–Gnostic,
possibly Sethian, document. A close analysis of the technical
terminology suggests that the ACPP shares more with indubitably
pre-Plotinian Gnostic and / or Christian sources than with other works
unquestionably by Porphyry, and any lexical overlap between undisputedly
Porphyrian works and the ACPP that does not imply a Gnostic source can
be found in prior philosophical literature, e.g. in Alexander of
Aphrodisias (distinct echoes of whom, incidentally, can be found in
other non–Sethian Nag Hammadi tractates). I have also been re–examining
Abramowski’s and Majercik’s arguments, especially the latter’s claim of
a broad Porphyrian influence on Sethian literature— I think its a
priori unlikely— and from extensive use of the TLG, I have come
instead to the opposite conclusion, namely, that the Sethian literature
had a tremendous influence on Porphyry, who was, despite his evident
opposition, immersed in their world–view and topoi. At those points
where there appears to be a close textual overlap between Sethian
treatises and Porphyry that cannot be traced to a prior Middle–Platonic
source such as Alexander— e.g., in the curious and extensive parallel
between Sententiae 40 and Zostrianos pp. 45–46— both the terminology
and the conceptual structure appear to be more natural in the Gnostic
context, with which one can find many parallels. The implication is that
Porphyry is trying to rephrase Sethian ideas in more orthodox Platonic
language.
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