Porphyry, Sacrifice, and the Orderly Cosmos: On the Philosophy to be Derived from Oracles Fr. 314 and 315
Porphyry’s statement from On the Cave of the Nymphs, in which he divides gods and their places of sacrifice into three groups, is familiar to scholars interested in how the Greeks may have categorized the divine world and its workings. But we have overlooked other important statements on these topic...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Centre
[2010]
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| In: |
Kernos
Year: 2010, Volume: 23, Pages: 115-132 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Porphyry’s statement from On the Cave of the Nymphs, in which he divides gods and their places of sacrifice into three groups, is familiar to scholars interested in how the Greeks may have categorized the divine world and its workings. But we have overlooked other important statements on these topics that Porphyry made in On the Philosophy from Oracles. Here I focus on fr. 314 and 315, where Porphyry quotes extensive portions of oracles in which Apollo divides the gods and their proper sacrifices into groups; Porphyry himself then streamlines and justifies those divisions. Although Apollo presents us with many more categories than we are accustomed to look for, his approach suggests that the drive to categorize was more common in ancient thought than recent scholarship has allowed. I also show that Porphyry works to collapse Apollo’s categories into only three. I end with comments about how these observations may help us better understand our practices as scholars of religion. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Kernos
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.4000/kernos.1571 |