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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