Our sources for On the Philosophy to be derived from Oracles
The reason so much from Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles is extant is twofold: firstly, pagan Neoplatonists seem to have held onto it as an important text, and secondly, Christian authors who were familiar with Neoplatonism - and thus with this book - found it useful to show how not only an eminent pagan philosopher, but even the pagan gods themselves proved the truth of Christianity. The arguments range from the extremely superficial, as in Firmicus Maternus, "On the error of pagan worship" (de errore profanarum religionum):
... the substance of demons, who are generated through the procreation of the devil, are nourished from the blood (of animal sacrifice). Porphyry - the defender of sacrifices, the foe of god, the enemy of truth, the teacher of criminal arts - has shown this to us with manifest proofs. (306F Smith, my transl.)
With the reference to "criminal arts" (sceleratarum artium), Firmicus Maternus in the 4th century identifies the subject of On the Philosophy with magic, like John Philoponus also would in the 6th century (see part #2). "On the Error" was published during the rule of Constantius II, a time when legislation against magic and forms of private divination that had existed for centuries was expanded to include more and more elements of pagan ritual. But back to the text, and to the single line Maternus quotes from Porphyry:
"Serapis, summoned (vocatus) and joined (conlatus) within the body of a human responded in this way..."
Now may the people of perdition (perditi homines) tell me: who is mightier, the one who summons and commands and imprisons, or the one who is called and obeys and, when he has come into the body of the receiving human, is imprisoned by the power of the one who commands? We thank you, Porphyry, for your books; you have shown us the substance of your gods. (306F cont'd)
From this most superficial argument, as I said, the reception ranges through sporadic mentions in Augustine's On the City of God and an engagement specifically with Porphyry's presentation of astrology by John Philoponus in his On the Creation of the World, to - most importantly - the very many and often lengthy excerpts cited by Eusebius in his Preparation of the Gospel.
Finally, there is an anti-pagan polemical work of a special kind, an inverted twin of On the Philosophy, which even seems to borrow the word Theosophia from Porphyry as its title. I will begin with the fragments of Porphyry to be found in this collection of - real and forged -oracles which are supposed to support Christianity.
From the anonymous Theosophia (late 5th century CE)
Pier Franco Beatrice, editor of the Theosophia, describes the relationship between the two books in the following terms: "In his work Pophyry had collected various oracles of Greek gods such as Apollo, Hecate and Sarapis, in order to offer a philosophical reinterpretation of them in light of the doctrines that had developed in the Neoplatonic school, thanks to the teachings of his master Plotinus. This programme is clearly stated in the prologue to the Philosophy from Oracles quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea." Meanwhile, "in the Theosophy their oracles are quoted with the [...] intention of upholding the truth of the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation." Accordingly, "it cannot but be a relationship of challenge or rivalry." (p. xxvii)
We will see over the course of this post whether "reinterpretation" is an entirely fair word, and in future posts, whether Neoplatonism actually figures in the extant fragments, but for the moment, let us look at the quotations our anonymous authors attributes to Porphyry, and how they serve his Christian argument.
One of them is very brief, and reads - seen with a Christian lense - as follows:
Turn your mind to God the king, and do not consort with the lesser spirits (pneumasi mikroteroisin) upon the earth; this I have said to you. (Theosophia 1.27 = 325aF Smith, my translation)
The interpretation that the Theosophia wants us to adopt is obvious: don't worship angels or demons, but only God. And indeed the very term "spirit" for superhuman beings - rather than for the stuff they or their souls are made of - is unusual and seems to be explainable from Hebrew usage. But not everything influenced by Judaism is influenced by all of Judaism at once. Even if the oracle is intended as a hard prohibition (it could also be meant in an aspirational sense: it would be better if you paid more attention to the King), most of the pagan gods, from the perspective of a polytheist like Porphyry, are anything but "smaller spirits": worship of the major gods would be taken for granted or thought to go hand in hand with a focus on the demiurge, rather than being opposed to it.
The other - there are only two oracles attributed to Porphyry by name, although more could potentially be from On the Philosophy - is far more extensive, and much more interesting; it is a hymn revealed by Apollo (Theosophia 24-26 = 325F). Rather than making a time-consuming original effort at this difficult text, here is a translation I am largely adapting from the German found in Günther Zuntz' Griechische Philosophische Hymnen, written by his editors Cancik and Käppel.
The first section (ll. 1-7) is this:
Immortals' Ineffable (arrhête) Father, Eternal One, mysta*,
You, o master (despota), who are born on the etherial ridges of the circling cosmoses,
Where the might of your power (alkês) is made fast for you,
Who watches everything and hears with beautiful ears.
Hear your children, whom you begot in the right seasons!
For above the cosmos and the starry heaven (ouranon)
Lies your golden, great, eternal power (alkê).
*Literally, "initiate", but attested as a divine epithet elsewhere, perhaps best understad as "of the mysteries".
I am perhaps misled by my current preoccupation with the language of divine powers, but alkê here seems to be a poetic synonym of dynamis (as in Porphyry's On Images; and like potestas in Servius). This would explain the indefinite relationship-or-identity between the god and his own power (see next verse). One thing that is clear, at any rate, is that "cosmoses" must stand for the single cosmos with its many celesetial spheres, not multiple universes.
Lines 8-11:
You are elevated above it (= the power), stirring yourself in the light,
Nourishing the intellect (noun) through eternal channels (okhetoisi) that it remain in balance,
Which (=the intellect) gives birth to this universe (pan) by crafting incorruptible matter;
Its (=matter's) coming-into-being (genesis) is decreed because you bound it with shapes.
The purpose of the distinction between the god and his power and himself and the intellect seems primarily to be his absolute exaltation, albeit Zuntz notes that the language of channels has Chaldaean parallels and is thus unlikely to be an ad hoc invention. (Nevertheless hardly derived from the Chaldaean Oracles; Zuntz speaks of "Platonic models (Vorbilder, lit. 'fore-images') and Chaldaean after-images", p. 81.) At any rate the conjunction of terms here is imposing rather than philosophically precise.
The next section is glossed by the author of the Theosophia - hardly by Porphyry himself, although Smith prints it as a direct quote - in the following way: "This oracle shows three orders of angels: of those who are always with God; those which, removed from him, are sent on deliveries of messages (angelias) and certain services, and of those which always carry his throne." Zuntz takes this interpretation on board: "the entire conception is not Greek or 'Hellenistic' or 'Chaldaean'; this angelic court is Jewish; one is immediately reminded of Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4."
But if one looks at the oracle itself, it is much less obvious that we are dealing with a court of angels. Lines 12-19:
From there (= the Father) flow offspring, firstly of holy Kings (hagiôn anaktôn)
(Who are) around you, o most regal and sole All-ruler (pantokrator) of mortals
And blessed immortals, Father! The others, although born
Far from you, still each spend their time bearing messages
For/To/By the ancient-born intellect (noôi) and your power (karteï).
In addition to these you also made a third kind of Kings (anaktôn)
Which are daily at the singing of hymns for you,
Readily doing what is desired, and singing esôde [unintelligible].
The avoidance of the word "gods" seems to have made Zuntz think that the oracle concerns daemons or angels, and Christian author of the Theosophia will have identified the holy kings with the Christian angels. But the word for king used here, anax, is almost entirely reserved for gods, and strikes me as manifestly inappropriate for the subservient angels of Christianity, even if - which is entirely plausible - the word "gods" is purposely avoided due to Jewish influence. The kings who spend their time in praise may indeed be best explained from that quarter. There is no difficulty in this, as the so-called "magical koine", the shared language of miniaturized rituals in the Roman period, had incorporated much recognizably Jewish material. Against Zuntz's feeling that there is something discordant about this (p. 84f), this confluence is nothing out of the ordinary.
But as for the gods "around" the Father: they are not at all likely to be attendants in the angelic sense, but rather celestial gods, perhaps the stars and the planets - in that case, the three "orders" would be of 1. gods, 2. angels (equivalent to daemons in Platonism), and 3. choirs praising the Father (after the Jewish model). Overall, then, the eccentricity of the oracle and its proximity to Jewish or Christian ideas are a matter of details and elaboration, not of substance. We are still within the range of the cosmological koine of the Greco-Roman world.
And the final three lines show that the Platonizing hierarchy, with an intellect above the world and a Father above the intellect, is not so definitely hierarchical or Platonizing as it appeared. Instead, it is rather seen as convertible into a Stoic sense of cosmic deity. Theosophia 1.26 (still the same fragment in Smith):
You are the father and the resplendent form of the mother,
And the delicate blossom of the children, existing as form in the forms,
Soul and spirit (pneuma) and harmony and number.
This is a synthesis of many different ideas - firstly, that the god is the entire world, father, mother, and offspring (Stoic "pantheism"); secondly, that he inheres in the world as form (in a Platonic sense?); thirdly, that he is the world soul, according to the various definitions of soul - spirit = a mix of air and fire (Stoic), harmony (Pythagorean), or number (Old Academy).
Although these ideas seem to be in tension, they all serve to elevate and praise the god, and in this they cohere wonderfully. Moreover, as I mentioned in part #1 already, the difference between Platonic and Stoic views was not so keenly felt by non-philosophers. It is only our own concern with the "purity" of worldviews that leads us to see the common ground between them as incoherent eclecticism.
In summary, although a Christian reading is obvious enough, this oracle is neither Christian nor Stoic nor Platonic orthodoxy; nor is it, with Zuntz, "a hymn to the highest god as the philosophers saw him, but as person, as 'father'". The epithet of father, rather, is taken over directly from Zeus (and/or the Jewish god), not the result of an addition of personal feeling to an abstract philosophical notion. We cannot guess how exactly Porphyry proceeded in his interpretation, but the indefiniteness and ambiguity is close enough to the situation with Zeus in On Images, I think, that we can call the oracle neither neatly concordant with Porphyry's own philosophy - whether Middle Platonic or Neoplatonic - nor so different that it required a complete "reinterpretation". Rather, this is a strikingly effective and impressive hymn of praise, which, when taken as a text with a philosophical meaning, was always going to require some interpretative originality, some coherence-making, rather than only the recognition of pre-existing coherence - which does not inhere in the text. (Of course, this is the situation with most human language.)
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