by
Damien F. Mackey
“Clement of Alexandria even believed that Sirach had
influenced
the
Greek philosopher Heraclitus (Strom. 2.5; Bright 1999:1064)”.
Introduction
Some of the greatest presumed founders of religions and philosophies we
have found to have been composite, non-historical persons based upon real
(often biblical) characters.
Thus, for instance, the seminal Thales,
was based (in part, at least) upon the
Egyptianised Joseph, son of Jacob, of the Book of Genesis:
Re-Orienting to
Zion the History of Ancient Philosophy
(3) Re-Orienting to Zion the History
of Ancient Philosophy
And, likewise, Pythagoras.
In the case of the Buddha,
we found that he was primarily based upon Moses:
Buddha partly based on Moses
(3) Buddha partly based on Moses
Heraclitus - who, or whatever he may have
been - was said to have come under the influence of the biblical (in Catholic
bibles) Sirach.
Chris de Wet tells of it in his article, “John Chrysostom’s use of the Book of Sirach in his
homilies on the New Testament”:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ABbef
The golden
age of Greek patristic literature, that is, the fourth and fifth centuries, [is]
no exception as far as the popularity of Sirach. Besides John Chrysostom,
nearly all of the most prominent authors of this period cite from Sirach,
including, inter alia, Clement of Alexandria … Ambrose … and Augustine ….
Clement of
Alexandria even believed that Sirach had influenced the Greek philosopher
Heraclitus (Strom. 2.5; Bright 1999:1064).
Sirach was
also popular with authors such as Tertullian, Origen and Cyprian.
Jerome,
however, rejected the canonical status of Sirach.
The first
full commentary on Sirach was only completed in the ninth century by Rabanus
Maurus (Bright 1999:1064).
Even the great Socrates, who
has similarities to the Hebrew prophets, was likely a composite, non-historical
character. Thus I have written:
‘Socrates’ as a Prophet
I put 'Socrates' in inverted commas here because I
suspect that he, as is the case with the Prophet 'Mohammed', had no real
historical existence, but is basically a biblical composite. Introduction For
the substance of this article to be fully appreciated, one needs to be aware
of ...
The era in which 'Socrates' is thought to have emerged pertains to
c. 600-300 BC, known as “The Axial Age”. It is thought to have been a time of
some very original characters and religio-philosophical founding fathers: Socrates, Confucius, Buddha and ...
Was 'Socrates' a prophet? The question may not be as
silly as it might at first appear. The Evolution of 'Socrates' Though the prototypal Socrates, and indeed Mohammed, are (according to
my view) composites, based chiefly upon persons ...
‘Socrates’
a Christian before Christ?
(3)
'Socrates' a Christian before Christ?
And, assigned to AD time, the highly influential Prophet Mohammed turns out to be quite an historical
anomaly:
Biography of the
Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History
(5) Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously
Mangles History
Scholars have long pointed out the
historical problems associated with the life of the Prophet Mohammed and the
history of Islam, with some going even so far as to cast doubt upon Mohammed’s
actual existence. Biblico-historical events,... more
Nineveh, which was destroyed by the Medes
in c. 612 BC, and not re-discovered until the C19th AD – “Before that, Nineveh,
unlike the clearly visible remains of other well-known sites such as Palmyra,
Persepolis, and Thebes, was invisible,... more
The ‘life’ of Mohammed will be shown to
consist of, to a large extent, a string of biblical episodes (relating to, for
instance, Moses; David; Job/Tobias; Jeremiah; Jesus Christ), but altered and/or
greatly embellished, and re-cast into... more
Might not the same sort of situation apply, again, for Zoroaster?
Indeed, according to certain traditions, Zoroaster was the biblical
Baruch, scribe of the prophet Jeremiah: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/baruch-baruk-baruk-in-ar
Baruch is of interest to Iranian studies chiefly
because he was identified with Zoroaster by the Syriac authors Išoʿdād of Marv (3rd/9th
cent.) and Solomon of Baṣra (7th/13th cent.), an
identification perpetuated by some of the Arab historians (see the material
collected by Richard Gottheil, “References to Zoroaster in Syriac and Arabic
literature,” in Classical Studies in Honour
of Henry Drisler,New York, 1894, pp. 24-32, as well as Joseph Bidez
and Franz Cumont, Les Mages hellénisés.
Zoroastre, Ostanès et Hystaspe d’après la tradition grecque,Paris,
1938, repr. Paris, 1973, I, pp. 49ff., and the texts referred to and published
in the second volume).
Thales;
Pythagoras; buddha; heraclitus;
Socrates;
Zoroaster; prophet Mohammed.
These famous sages and philosophical luminaries, and
founding fathers of some of the greatest world religions even of our present
day may not be all that they seem.
And the same could be said, e.g., for Solon the so-called
Athenian statesman:
Greeks re-invented
King Solomon as an Athenian Statesman, Solon
(5) Greeks
re-invented King Solomon as an Athenian Statesman, Solon
Academic bias towards Greeks
“Philosophy is essentially a western phenomenon because of
The individualistic
nature of the great philosophers”.
Alistair Sinclair
The
following excerpts taken from Alistair Sinclair’s book What is Philosophy? An Introduction
(Dunedin Academic Press Ltd., 2008) are perfect examples of the type of
indoctrination according to which we westerners have been ‘educated’, that
wrongfully gives all the credit to the Greeks – an entirely Western-biased view
of the origins of philosophy:
P. 15 Philosophy as a western phenomenon
The great
philosophers were all western philosophers because philosophy developed as a
distinct subject in ancient Greek culture. The word ‘philosophy’ was
popularized by Pythagoras but it was Plato who delineated the role of the
philosopher and distinguished it from the role of the sophist.
….
Philosophy
is essentially a western phenomenon because of the individualistic nature of
the great philosophers. Each of them is one of a kind. Eastern thinkers in
contrast tended to be more embedded in the prevailing religion and culture in
which they had lived. They were more like cult figures than individualists
obstinately ploughing their own fields.
Moreover,
classical Greek philosophy in particular applied reason to the material world
in a way that is not found in the speculative systems of India, the mysticism
of Taoism, or the gentlemanly precepts of Confucianism. The ancient Greeks
believed that reason was an essential feature of human beings and not just the
prerogative of philosophers. It was fashionable among the Greeks to be lovers
of truth who were possessed with a passion for knowledge of all kinds. …. Such
singlemindedness in the pursuit of philosophy has been a particular
characteristic of western culture. It was not found anywhere else in the world
until recent times. ….
Mackey’s
comment: But see e.g. my
article:
Jesus
Christ the Centre of Metaphysics
(5) Jesus
Christ the Centre of Metaphysics
Alistair
Sinclair continues:
P. 22 Pythagoras (c. 570-500 BCE)
The name
of Pythagoras outshines that of any other early Greek philosophers, and rightly
so since the whole science of mathematics originates in his work and that of
his successors. He was reputedly born on Samos and his interest in mathematics
may have been stimulated by early visits to Babylonia and Egypt ….
Certainly
he brought to the study of mathematics something of an oriental adoration.
P. 33
‘The
European philosophical traditions consist of a series of footnotes to Plato’ … so
said [Professor] A.N. Whitehead.
Zoroaster, Sirach,
Heraclitus
“Heraclitus did not merely employ an
oracular mode of expression: he was an oracle. What he said was a revelation
and he was its prophet. Heraclitus was far from the early rationalist or
primitive scientist he
has been made out to be. He was what we
today would call a mystic”.
Nicolas
Elias Leon Ruiz
“The
Zoroastrian origins of Greek philosophy”, as argued in an article entitled:
Judaism
The Beginnings of
Greek Philosophy
http://www.askwhy.co.uk/judaism/GreekIndex.php
would
mean more specifically, according to traditions about Zoroaster as previously
mentioned, the ‘Jewish (Baruchian) origins of Greek Philosophy’.
Although
Hebrew-Jewish influences upon Greek philosophy and its origins extended back
far beyond Baruch, the suggestion that the Greeks were by no means the founders
of philosophy is right in accordance with my theory (based in part upon part
clues left by the Church Fathers) that the earliest philosophers whom one meets
in any standard History of Ancient Philosophy - the so-called ‘Ionian Greeks’,
beginning with Thales - were in fact Hebrews/Israelites (later Jews).
Upon Thales, one of the so-called
‘seven sages of antiquity’, is bestowed the honorific title, “First
Philosopher”. He, supposedly an Ionian Greek, that is, from western Asia, was
actually (at least in part) , as I have argued elsewhere, the great biblical
Patriarch Joseph, distorted by Greek legends.
The name ‘Thales’ is likely a
corruption of the name of the celebrated Egyptian sage, Ptah-(hotep), who, presumably,
like Joseph, lived to be 110. Thales is also the genius, Imhotep, builder of
the famous Step Pyramid of Saqqara: what we have considered to be a material
icon of his father Jacob’s dream of a staircase unto heaven (Genesis 28:12).
Mark
Glouberman has ironically, in “Jacob’s Ladder. Personality and Autonomy in the
Hebrew Scriptures”, exalted the supposed rational triumph of the ‘Greek’
Thales, “Western rationality’s
trademark mastery over the natural world”, over the “earlier [religious] mode of thought”
of the Hebrews. “… Thales
forecast the bumper crop by observing climatic regularities, not by
interpreting dreams of lean kine and fat, nor by deciphering the writing on the
wall …”.
Glouberman
calls this a “Hellenic Götterdämmerung”
(Mentalities/
Mentalités,13, 1-2, 1998, p. 9).
So my view of who influenced
whom with regard to early philosophy is
quite the opposite of what our western education has told us.
Now,
this brings me to another important Patristic contribution relevant to the
biblical Sirach: the view of Saint Clement of Alexandria, that Sirach had
influenced Heraclitus.
Chris
de Wet tells of it in his article, “John
Chrysostom’s use of the Book of Sirach in his homilies on the New Testament”:
http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/4624/DeWet-SHEXXXVI_2_-October2010.pdf?sequence=1
The golden
age of Greek patristic literature, that is, the fourth and fifth centuries, are
no exception as far as the popularity of Sirach. Besides John Chrysostom,
nearly all of the most prominent authors of this period cite from Sirach,
including, inter alia, Clement of Alexandria … Ambrose … and Augustine….
Clement of Alexandria even believed that Sirach had influenced the Greek
philosopher Heraclitus (Strom. 2.5; Bright 1999:1064). ….
Chronologically,
this is an extraordinary statement by Saint Clement, considering that Sirach
would conventionally be located centuries after Heraclitus. It ranks in
conventional chronological awkwardness with the view of St. Ambrose that Plato
knew Jeremiah in Egypt.
This
view has led to an interesting question by Daniel Lattier (January 9, 2017),
recalling what the Fathers had believed:
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/did-plato-get-his-ideas-bible
Did Plato Get His
Ideas from the Bible?
The other day I was reading
St. Augustine’s (354-430) De Doctrina Christiana—a treatise that played an
enormous role in shaping Western education—and came across an interesting
passage in Book 2. In it, Augustine responds to the charge that Jesus Christ
derived his teachings from Plato.
Drawing on his mentor St. Ambrose (340-397), he denies the charge, and responds that Plato
actually borrowed from Jewish thinkers!
“The illustrious bishop
[Ambrose], when by his investigations into profane history he had discovered
that Plato made a journey into
Egypt at the time when Jeremiah the prophet was there, show[ed] that it is
much more likely that Plato was through Jeremiah's means initiated into our
literature, so as to be able to teach and write those views of his which are so
justly praised?”
Augustine also makes the same
claim of Pythagoras, namely, that his thought on God depended upon Jewish
thinkers, and by proxy, divine revelation.
In his classic The City of God, Augustine later rejected the Jeremiah connection, since the prophet was dead
long before Plato visited Egypt. And he also notes that Plato couldn’t have
read the Hebrew Scriptures directly, because they hadn’t yet been translated
into Greek. But he nevertheless still believes that affinities between these
Scriptures and Plato’s writings means that the latter probably studied them
through a translator.
I looked further, and
discovered that the thesis that Plato borrowed from the Jews was not uncommon
in the ancient world. In a post for First Things, Peter Leithart draws upon
Theophilus Gale’s 17th-century work Court of the Gentiles in relaying
the tradition of this thesis:
[Gale] knows he is in a long
tradition of Jewish and Christian thought. Aristobulus, a Jew, claims that
Plato followed the institutes of the Jews carefully, and this is repeated by
Clement and Eusebius. All make the same claim about Pythagoras. Tertullian
claims in his Apology that all poets and sophists draw
from prophets.
Gale denies that the notion
that Plato borrowed from Jews is a Christian prejudice. Pagan philosophers say
the same. Hermippus of Smyrna, who [wrote a] life of Pythagoras, says that
he ‘transferred many things out of the Jewish Institutions into his own
philosophy’ and calls him ‘imitator of Jewish Dogmas.’ Gale takes from Grotius
the notion that Pythagoras lived among Jews. Numenius is reputed to have said,
‘What is Plato but Moses Atticizing?
Heraclitus
- who, or whatever he may have been - seems to be one of the most substantial
of the early philosophers.
Might
he even have been based upon Sirach, a full-on sage?
Whatever
may be the case, for: “We have no idea of who and what he was” (see below), it
seems that there is a common mystical element to be considered, contrary to
Glouberman’s mistaken view of “Western
rationality’s trademark mastery over the natural world”, over the “earlier [religious] mode of thought”
of the Hebrews. For studies more astute than Glouberman’s and those of his same
opinion, the majority, would indicate that some of these ancient philosophers -
so limited by those cramped commentators of history to merely natural
philosophy and the elements (earth fire water, etc.) - were actually
men of great wisdom and enlightenment, religious and mystical.
For
a deeper understanding of this, I suggest one read for instance:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache
Heraclitus and the Work of Awakening
A
Dissertation Presented
by
Nicolas Elias Leon Ruiz
In his
Abstract, Ruiz well explains why commentators have invariably found Heraclitus
to be an ‘obscure’ thinker:
….
Heraclitus is universally regarded as one of the fathers of western philosophy.
However,
the characterization of the nature of his contribution varies widely. To some
he is an early example of rational, empirical, scientific inquiry into the
physical world. To others he was primarily a brilliantly innovative
metaphysician. Still others prefer to see him as the distant ancestor of the
great German dialecticians of the 19thcentury. In the 20th century,
certain existential phenomenologists all but claimed him as one of their own.
Behind all
of this stands a fundamental set of assumptions that is never questioned.
Whatever else may be the case, we know that Heraclitus was, essentially, a
rational human being like ourselves. He was a philosopher, concerned with
explanation and exposition. He was a thinker, and his fragments encapsulate his
thought.
It is
because of this that Heraclitus has been completely misunderstood. We have no
idea of who and what he was. We do not understand what he was saying. Perhaps
the greatest irony is that Heraclitus himself, at the very outset of what he
wrote, explicitly predicted that this would happen.
Everyone
who writes about Heraclitus will make at least passing reference to his
legendary obscurity. Some will talk about the oracular character of his
writing. A few go so far as to say that his thought bears the traces of
revelation, his expression, of prophecy. This is as far as it goes. The problem
is that this rather metaphorical way of talking about Heraclitus misses the
point entirely. His writing was not just “obscure,” it was esoteric.
Heraclitus
did not merely employ an oracular mode of expression: he was an oracle. What he
said was a revelation and he was its prophet. Heraclitus was far from the early
rationalist or primitive scientist he has been made out to be. He was what we
today would call a mystic.
….
This
estimation by Ruiz would also help to explain why it has been observed
(emphasis added): “In dealing with pre-Socratic thought, A N Marlow tells us we
find ourselves in an atmosphere more akin to that of the Orient than to that
of the West”.
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