Towards a Textual History and Reconstruction of Alexander of Aphrodisias's Treatise On the Principles of the Universe
Among Alexander of Aphrodisias's works, a key role is played by his treatise On the Principles of the Universe. It contains Alexander's exegesis of Aristotle's theory of the unmoved mover, as in Metaphysics Lambda and in Physics VIII. Its original Greek text is lost, but a sixth-centu...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2014]
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| In: |
Journal of Semitic studies
Year: 2014, Volume: 59, Issue: 1, Pages: 91-116 |
| RelBib Classification: | TB Antiquity VA Philosophy |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | Among Alexander of Aphrodisias's works, a key role is played by his treatise On the Principles of the Universe. It contains Alexander's exegesis of Aristotle's theory of the unmoved mover, as in Metaphysics Lambda and in Physics VIII. Its original Greek text is lost, but a sixth-century Syriac version and two tenth-century Arabic ones are still extant. All these versions have already been published, and two of them have been rendered into modern languages (English, French, Italian) in the last ninety years, but a really deep textual comparison between them, aiming at the reconstruction of the lost Greek text, has not yet been made. Usually, a key role is given to the second, later Arabic version, mostly since it is more complete than the other ones. Here, a philological re-examination of the history of the textual transmission of Alexander's work is given, and some new conclusions about it are suggested, according to which the role of the first Arabic version, and that of the Syriac one in particular, are found to be more important than hitherto suspected. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-8556 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Semitic studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jss/fgt036 |