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Basil and Amelius

2021, Studia Patristica 115, p. 305-311

Basil’s Homily on the word: ‘In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1)’ alludes to the admiration of the pagans for the prologue of the Gospel of John and to how pagans are supposed to have made use of this text in their own writings. Behind these words, one can easily recognize an allusion to the Neoplatonist Amelius, Plotinus’ senior disciple. Basil’s Neoplatonism has been the subject of much debate, especially as far as his direct knowledge of Plotinus is concerned. In this article, I will show that Basil has certainly not read Amelius, but, exactly like the other Christian writers who referred to Amelius’ testimony, is dependent here on Eusebius’ Evangelical Preparation and the way the Palestinian bishop had more or less coined Amelius’ testimony on the value of John’s Prologue.

This pdf is a digital offprint of your contribution in M. Vinzent (ed.), Studia Patristica. Vol. CXV, ISBN 978-90429-4762-7 https://www.peetersleuven.be/detail.php?search_key=9789042947627&series_number _str=115&lang=en The copyright on this publication belongs to Peeters Publishers. As author you are licensed to make printed copies of the pdf or to send the unaltered pdf file to up to 50 relations. You may not publish this pdf on the World Wide Web – including websites such as academia.edu and open-access repositories – until three years after publication. Please ensure that anyone receiving an offprint from you observes these rules as well. If you wish to publish your article immediately on openaccess sites, please contact the publisher with regard to the payment of the article processing fee. For queries about offprints, copyright and republication of your article, please contact the publisher via peeters@peeters-leuven.be STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXV Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019 Edited by MARKUS VINZENT Volume 12: The Cappadocian Writers PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT 2021 Table of Contents Emily Chesley The Mercy of Macrina the Younger: A Portrait of a Way of Life.... 1 Nathan howard Epistolary Agōn in the Cappadocian Fathers ...................................... 11 Gabrielle Thomas ‘Robes of Glory’ – Revisiting Theosis in the Theology of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus.......................................................................... 19 Georgiana huian The Human Being in the Poetry of Gregory of Nazianzus ................ 29 Alessandro de Blasi Gregory Nazianzen’s Canon in Verse: The Poem I 1, 12, On the Genuine Books of the Holy Scripture ................................................. 41 Kyriakoula TzorTzopoulou The Conceptualization of Envy in Gregory of Nyssa ........................ 57 Jared R. BryanT Cosmological Trinitarian Polemics in Gregory of Nazianzus’ Theological Orations ................................................................................... 69 Brendan A. harris The Spirit as Creator in Gregory Nazianzen’s Or. 41.14 ................... 77 Taylor C. ross ‘Reformulating’ Gregory of Nyssa’s Reception of Origen ................ 89 Olympe de BaCker Struggling for the Divine Crown: Agonistic Imagery and Perfection in Gregory of Nyssa’s In inscriptiones Psalmorum ........................... 99 Ty monroe Toward Unity: On the Christology of Gregory of Nyssa .................. 107 Andrej KuTarňa Light and Likeness in Gregory of Nyssa ............................................ 125 VI Table of Contents Liang zhang Follow the Guide According to the De vita Moysis of Gregory of Nyssa ................................................................................................... 133 Ann Conway-Jones Negotiating between Exodus and Paul: Moses’ Transformation in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses 2.217-8 ......................................... 145 Joost van rossum The ‘Heavenly Bread’ in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses: A Eucharistic or Non-Eucharistic Interpretation? ............................................ 155 Gabriel Jaramillo El proceder teológico de Gregorio de Nisa en De Vita Moysis e In Canticum Canticorum ......................................................................... 161 Michael moTia ‘Language is the Author of All these Emotions’: Greek Novels and Christian Affect in Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs .................................................................................................... 177 Marion PragT Organizing Exegetical Knowledge in Syriac Christianity: Extracts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs in the London Collection (BL Add. 12168) ........................................................ 187 James F. WellingTon Love Intensified: Exploring Gregory of Nyssa’s Noetic-Erotic Revolution .................................................................................................... 199 Anthony vella Gregory of Nyssa’s Understanding of Humility and Poverty in his First Homily on the Beatitudes .................................................................... 211 Francisco BasTiTTa harrieT Compassion to Become Equal: The Shaping of a Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa’s De Beatitudinibus V ......................................................... 219 Alexander L. aBeCina Power in Weakness: Pneumatology in Gregory of Nyssa’s De virginitate, Chapters 7-13 ........................................................................... 231 Valentina marCheTTo ‘One Heart and One Soul’ (Acts 4:32). Past and Present Unity in Basil of Caesarea .......................................................................................... 243 Table of Contents VII Thomas D. TaTTerfield Sympatheia and the Body of Christ in Basil of Caesarea .................. 255 Sergey TrosTyanskiy Units, Limits and the Order of Nature: Basil the Great’s Theory of Time and Creation ............................................................................... 261 Colten Cheuk-Yin Yam Basil on the Souls................................................................................ 283 María Alejandra valdés garCía La thesis en las homilías De invidia y Adversus eos qui irascuntur de Basilio de Cesarea .......................................................................... 295 Arnaud PerroT Basil and Amelius ............................................................................... 305 Lillian I. larsen Evagrius in the Classroom .................................................................. 313 Rubén pereTó rivas Attention (προσοχή) in Evagrius of Pontus....................................... 333 Stuart E. Parsons The Coherence of Evagrius’ Scholia on Proverbs ............................. 341 Kelly E. harrison Recipes for Passion: Understanding the Role of Representations, Thoughts and Demons in the Event of Passion in Evagrius Ponticus.. 353 Daniel G. opperwall Chained to Grievance, Rotten to the Roots: Evagrius and John Cassian on Sadness ........................................................................................... 367 Basil and Amelius Arnaud perroT, Université François-Rabelais, Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours, France aBsTraCT Basil’s Homily on the word: ‘In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1)’ alludes to the admiration of the pagans for the prologue of the Gospel of John and to how pagans are supposed to have made use of this text in their own writings. Behind these words, one can easily recognize an allusion to the Neoplatonist Amelius, Plotinus’ senior disciple. Basil’s Neoplatonism has been the subject of much debate, especially as far as his direct knowledge of Plotinus is concerned. In this article, I will show that Basil has certainly not read Amelius, but, exactly like the other Christian writers who referred to Amelius’ testimony, is dependent here on Eusebius’ Evangelical Preparation and the way the Palestinian bishop had more or less coined Amelius’ testimony on the value of John’s Prologue. Basil’s Homily On the word: ‘In the Beginning was the Word (John 1:1)’, of uncertain date,1 deals, in a few lines, with the alleged pagan admiration for 1 The critics, following Jean Bernardi, La prédication des Pères Cappadociens: le prédicateur et son auditoire, Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences humaines de Montpellier 30 (Paris, 1968), 86-7, usually date the homily from the early years of Basil’s episcopacy. The reason can be summed up as follows: preaching the doctrine, Basil does not give a special place to the Spirit, which would constitute a clue for a dating before the Pneumatomachian crisis or before the liturgical incident of St Eupsychios, thus before September 372. However, this argument cannot be regarded as indisputable, inasmuch as the commented lemma does not require an elaborate discourse on the third Person of the Trinity. Therefore, Basil could have preached this homily at almost any time, even at a time when his pneumatological doctrine was no less developed than in other texts, such as the homily On Faith, often interpreted as a ‘final synthesis’ of Basil’s Trinitarian doctrine. A study of the exegesis does not prove to be of great help for the dating. Indeed, if it is true that Basil uses John 1:1 in Contra Eunomium, published ca. 364/365, the presence of an antisabellian theme in our homily does not necessarily mean that our homily shows an enrichment of the polemical potentialities of John’s exegesis. Such an ‘evolutionist’ point of view is supported by volker h. Drecoll, Die Entwicklung der Trinitätslehre des Basilius von Cäsarea: Sein Weg vom Homöusianer zum Neonizäner, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 66 (Göttingen, 1996), 165. But, here again, one can object that antimodalist arguments were strictly useless against Eunomius and, therefore, it is possible to imagine that the Contra Eunomium, in order to fit with its only target, has reduced the range of attacks allowed by this verse. On the other hand, the antiarian use of John 1:1 cannot be used as a proof that the homily was performed towards the time of composition of Basil’s Contra Eunomium – for such a position, see Jean Gribomont, ‘In Tomum 31 Introductio’, Patrologia Graeca cursus completus XXXI (repr. Turnhout, Studia Patristica CXV, 305-311. © Peeters Publishers, 2021. 306 a. perroT the Prologue of the Gospel of John and how pagans are supposed to have made use of this text in their own writings. These words, I know that many who are outside the doctrine of truth and pride themselves on the wisdom of the world have admired (θαυμάσαντας) them and have dared to mix (ἐγκαταμίξαι) them with their own compositions. For the devil is a thief (κλέπτης) and divulges our mysteries to his interpreters. (PG 31, 472C) Basil makes this statement at the beginning of the homily. The Cappadocian thus seeks to arouse the attention of the audience for difficult and controversial matters, the Theology of the Son (τὰ περὶ τῆς θεολογίας τοῦ Υἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ, 473A), by creating a competition between Christians and pagans, an attitude familiar to him in a homiletical context.2 Neither Celsus nor Porphyry can, of course, be identified as these admirers of John’s words since, as far as we know, their approach consisted in contesting, in one way or another, the status of Logos attributed to Jesus.3 Behind these words, one can however recognize an allusion to the famous case of the Neoplatonist Amelius, Plotinus’ senior disciple. It is well known that Basil’s Neoplatonism has caused much debate, especially as far as Plotinus is concerned. Some critics, such as Paul Henry in the 1930s, have tried to demonstrate that, at every step of his career, Basil shows direct knowledge of Plotinus’ work.4 But it is far from clear that Basil has always directly used Plotinus’ writings, when a Plotinian influence can be suggested.5 What is clearer, however, is that Basil had certainly never read Amelius, but is here dependent, just like the other Christian authors who have used Amelius’ commentary on John, on Eusebius’ Evangelical Preparation and the way Eusebius has framed the so-called ‘testimony’ of the Platonist. 1965), 5 – since the antiarian controversy is a constant of the Corpus basilianum. To sum up, this both antiarian and antisabellian homily does not contain any guiding elements that would allow us to situate it precisely in a chronology of Basil’s works. For a commentary on this homily, see Arnaud Perrot, ‘Basile de Césarée’, in Matthieu Cassin (ed.), Histoire de la littérature grecque chrétienne, IV (Paris, 2019), 309-16. 2 Emmanuel Amand de Mendieta, ‘The Official Attitude of Basil of Caesarea as a Christian Bishop towards Greek Philosophy and Science’, in Derek Baker (ed.), The Orthodox Churches and the West, Studies in Church History 13 (Oxford, 1976), 25-49. 3 Note Celsus’ polemics against Christ as Logos: Jesus should have illuminated everything, like the sun; moreover, he is not a pure and holy Logos, but a man ignominiously led to punishment. See Robert Bader, Der Alethes Logos des Kelsos, Tübinger Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft 33 (Stuttgart, Berlin, 1940), fragment 2, 30 and fragment 2, 31. Porphyry in the treatise Against the Christians states, drawing upon stoic concepts, that if Jesus is Logos uttered, he cannot be substantial, and if he is Logos internal to God, he has not descended from the divinity. See Adolf von Harnack, Porphyrius, Gegen die Christen: 15 Bücher: Zeugnisse, Fragmente und Referate, Abhandlungen der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 1 (Berlin, 1916), fragment 86. 4 Paul Henry, Études plotiniennes, I. Les états du texte de Plotin (Paris, 1938), 159-96. 5 See John M. Rist, ‘Basil’s Neoplatonism: Its Background and Nature’, in Paul J. Fedwick (ed.), Basil of Caesarea, Christian, Humanist, Ascetic. A Sixteen-Hundredth Anniversary Symposium (Toronto, 1981), I 270-325. Basil and Amelius 307 The fragment of Amelius cited by Eusebius is as follows: And it was this Word, the eternal being to whom all that exists owes its origin, as Heraclitus himself would have said (see fr. B1 Diels-Kranz), of which, yes by Zeus! (νὴ Δία), the Barbarian says that, placed in the rank and dignity of principle, he is turned to God and that he is God himself, that through him absolutely everything has entered into existence, […] and that he falls (πίπτειν) into the bodies and that, having clothed (ἐνδυσάμενον) himself in flesh, takes on the appearance of man (φαντάζεσθαι ἄνθρωπον),6 thus showing the greatness of his nature; and that, evidently, once destroyed, is again deified and God, as he was before descending into the body, the flesh, the man.7 Amelius’ text is neither a quotation from John 1:1-4, nor a commentary, but a paraphrase which consists in a re-reading of the contents of the first verses of John in Platonic terms. According to the interpretation of Hermann Dörrie8 and Luc Brisson,9 which is accepted by John Dillon,10 the ‘Barbarian’ is meant to describe the procession of the Soul (Logos), instrument of the Intellect (God), down to the level of the individual human souls who participate in it and who are associated, in the material realm, with bodies, and then return to their higher state, after the destruction of the bodies. The process of fall and rise, or procession and conversion, appears as a cycle, or a succession of ‘moments’, in which the unique, historical character of the event of the Incarnation has clearly disappeared. In this context, the reading of the Prologue does not specifically deal with Jesus alone. Even if one can note some unusual stylistic traits in the paraphrase – such as the interjection νὴ Δία – which is a vigorous, but ambiguous, manifestation of the Platonist, it is unclear whether Amelius’ reading was favorable or unfavorable to Christians (and what sort of Christians?), and we have no clue about the precise context in which Amelius had to quote it, directly or indirectly. At least, it can easily be accepted that it is absolutely not an orthodox reading of the Prologue of John, whether it is inspired by the reading of Christians Amelius was fighting against, as some critics have postulated,11 or distorted by the philosopher’s own system. 6 It is not my purpose, in the present article, to discuss Amelius’ so-called ‘Docetism’. This heresiological category has very little meaning in a Greek context, but it is worth notice that Eusebius does not fear to use, as a proof-text, a text that could be regarded as docetic by Christians. 7 Eusebius, Evangelical Preparation XI 19, 1. 8 Hermann Dörrie, ‘Une exégèse néoplatonicienne du Prologue de l’Évangile de S. Jean (Amélius chez Eusèbe, Prep. ev. 11, 19.1-4)’, in Jacques Fontaine and Charles Kannengiesser (eds), Epektasis. Mélanges patristiques offerts au cardinal Jean Daniélou (Paris, 1972), 75-8. 9 Luc Brisson, ‘Amélius. Sa vie, son œuvre, sa doctrine, son style’, in Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung II 36.2 (Berlin, 1987), 793-860. 10 John Dillon, ‘St. John in Amelius’ Seminar’, in Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Stephen R.L. Clark (eds), Late Antique Epistemology: Other Ways to Truth (New York, 2009), 30-43. 11 L. Brisson has postulated that it was an excerpt from Amelius’ anti-Zostrian (NH VIII, 1) writings. 308 a. perroT At any rate, Eusebius, deliberately ignoring this aspect of the problem, has cut the quotation from its context and has diverted it to serve his own ends by means of the commentary within which he has framed it. Amelius ‘thought it proper, according to Eusebius, to mention John the Evangelist’ (ἠξίωσε τοῦ εὐαγγελιστοῦ Ἰωάννου μνήμην ποιήσασθαι).12 Amelius quotes him ‘highly’ (ἄντικρυς) and ‘with an uncovered head’ (γυμνῇ τῇ κεφαλῇ) (Eusebius alludes, with a good deal of literary irony, to the attitude of Socrates in Phaedrus, 243b).13 He ‘gives a testimony in favor of his words’ (ἐπιμαρτυρεῖ […] ταῖς φωναῖς αὐτοῦ)14. Eusebius is, indeed, responsible for the favourable impressions associated with this Platonic use of John 1:1-4. He has isolated and, in doing so, almost coined the testimonium of Amelius. This is, indeed, the literary origin of the feeling of admiration shared by ‘many’ pagans to whom Basil alludes in front of his listeners, with a little bit of rhetorical exaggeration. One pagan was probably not enough to create a real spirit of zeal for the Johannine prologue.15 That Basil deals with the famous excerpt from Amelius seems to me confirmed by a short literary appreciation, conveyed through the word ἐγκαταμίξαι, which may be a way to express metaphorically the process of paraphrase as a phenomenon of fraudulent incorporation. In Eusebius’ work, the quotation from John’s Prologue is a proof that Plato and his followers were preceded on the path of truth by the Hebrew sages and that the Greeks agree with the Hebrews on the essential points of their philosophy. Amelius, if he is indebted here to Numenius’ doctrine and symphonic exegesis, more surely thought the exact opposite: the ‘Barbarian’, in his own language, agreed with the results of Greek philosophy. Basil rewrites and hardens Eusebius’ perspective. Basil now evokes the apologetic motive of the diabolic larceny, without quoting, as usual, his intermediary literary source. Indeed, he has the same attitude, for example, when portraying Josephus’ cannibal mother in a Homily pronounced in a time of famine and drought, quoted from Origen or Eusebius, but with a less antijuidaic and a more pathetic, social, point of view. Basil’s remark on John 1:1 thus evidences an interesting phenomenon of successive deformations as well as a case of amplification drawing upon the memory of a distorted excerpt. 12 Evangelical Preparation XI 18, 26. Ibid. 19, 2. 14 Ibid. 18, 26. 15 The Platonist to whom Augustine refers to in The City of God (X 29, 2), reporting that he had said that the first lines of the Prologue of John should be written in golden letters on the pediment of all the churches, is in all likelihood not Amelius: everything (and in particular the Platonicus’ interest for churches in a Milanese context) suggests that the Platonicus in question is a Christian Platonist, who may be identified as Marius Victorinus. See Pierre Hadot, Marius Victorinus, Recherches sur sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris, 1971), 237 and Goulven Madec, ‘Si Plato viveret… (Augustin, De Vera Religione, 3.3)’, in Néoplatonisme : mélanges offerts à Jean Trouillard, Les Cahiers de Fontenay 19-22 (Fontenay-aux-Roses, 1981), 233. 13 Basil and Amelius 309 The same phenomenon is observed at various levels among the other alleged Christian witnesses of Amelius. Eusebius is, as already demonstrated by many critics, the source of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Cyril of Alexandria’s comment on Amelius, each of them using Eusebius’ decontextualized excerpt according to his own views. Just like Basil, Theodoret underlines Amelius’ admiration for John. ‘A man who has been nourished by the eloquence of Plato and other philosophers admires so much the theology of the Barbarian’, Οὕτως ἄρα τὴν τοῦ βαρβάρου θεολογίαν τεθαύμακεν ὁ τῇ Πλάτωνος καὶ τῶν ἄλλων φιλοσόφων ἐντραφεὶς εὐεπείᾳ (Therapy II 89). After giving the same quotation as Eusebius, Theodoret rewrites it as if Amelius had made an orthodox exposition on the doctrine of Logos, appropriating the paraphrase through his own paraphrase. ‘And he confessed with us (ξυν-) that the Logos was in the beginning, that He was God, that He was with God, that He created everything, that He is the cause and the chorege of life for all beings, that for the salvation of the world he has hidden in a flesh the greatness of his divinity, and yet unveiled even in the small and thick cloud the nobility of his Father’, Καὶ ξυνωμολόγησε τὸν λόγον καὶ ἐν ἀρχῇ εἶναι καὶ θεὸν εἶναι καὶ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν εἶναι καὶ τὰ πάντα πεποιηκέναι καὶ ζωῆς τοῖς ἅπασιν αἴτιον ὑπάρχειν καὶ χορηγὸν καὶ τῆς τῶν ὅλων ἕνεκα σωτηρίας σαρκὶ μὲν ξυγκρύψαι τὸ μεγαλοπρεπὲς τῆς θεότητος, ἀποκαλύψαι δὲ ὅμως κἀν τῇ σμικρᾷ καὶ παχείᾳ νεφέλῃ τὴν πατρῴαν εὐγένειαν (ibid.). Theodoret has truly ‘re-johannized’ and ‘christianized’ Amelius. Against Julian, Cyril of Alexandria, showing that some Greek philosophers have known and accepted the mystery of the Incarnation, talks about Amelius as a philosopher who ‘knows a Logos which became man and agrees with it’, οἶδεν ἐνανθρωπήσαντα λόγον καὶ τοῦτο ὁμολογεῖ (Against Julian VIII 44), ignoring, deliberately or not, that the Platonic procession is not a ‘historical’ and unique event. Eusebius, Theodoret and Cyril, because of the agreement which they claim to find between the Scriptures and Platonism, think to prove the rationality of the Christian faith. By contrast, Basil seems to be the poorest. He has used Eusebius’ excerpt neither as a proof-text, nor as a text; neither has he put forward Amelius’ name as an argument from authority – Amelius here has absolutely no authority –, reducing it instead to a pastoral tool, able to excite the ζῆλος of the audience. If pagans inspired by the devil have paid attention to John’s words, how much more must Christians, inspired by the Spirit, listen to and study the words ‘In the Beginning was the Word’. At this point, it is however worth picking up on a little philological irony. Before examining with extreme care the theological content of the first two verses of John’s Prologue, Basil, following a method he often favors when dealing with theological doctrine, practices a form of Platonic excusatio on the unattainable character (ἀνέφικτον) of God, a variant of the ἀξίως λέγειν of eulogy rhetoric, so to speak. At the very moment when pagans are accused of 310 a. perroT being thieves, Platonic rhetoric, mixing accents that ultimately go back to the Symposium and the Republic, is itself retrieved by the Christian speaker. Καὶ τίς οὕτως ἀναισθησίαν νοσῶν, ὥστε τοιοῦτον κάλλος ἐννοίας καὶ βάθος δογμάτων οὕτως ἀνέφικτον μὴ οὐχὶ καταπλαγῆναι, καὶ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτῶν τῆς ἀληθοῦς καταλήψεως; Ἀλλὰ γὰρ οὐχὶ τὸ θαυμάσαι τὰ καλὰ δύσκολον, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐν ἀκριβεῖ κατανοήσει γενέσθαι τῶν θαυμασθέντων, τοῦτο χαλεπὸν καὶ δυσέφικτον. Ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸν ἥλιον τοῦτον τὸν αἰσθητὸν οὐδεὶς μέν ἐστιν ὃς οὐχ ὑπερεπαινεῖ, τὸ μέγεθος αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ κάλλος, καὶ τῶν ἀκτίνων τὴν συμμετρίαν, καὶ τὸ ἀποστίλβον αὐτοῦ φῶς κατασπαζόμενος· ἐὰν μέντοι βιαιότερον φιλονεικήσῃ τῷ κύκλῳ ἀντεξάγειν ἑαυτοῦ τὰς τῶν ὀμμάτων βολάς, οὐ μόνον οὐ κατόψεται τὰ περισπούδαστα, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ἀκρίβειαν τῆς ὄψεως προσδιαφθείρας οἰχήσεται. Τοιοῦτόν τί μοι δοκῶ τὴν διάνοιαν πάσχειν, τὴν φιλονεικοῦσαν ἀκριβῆ ποιεῖσθαι τῶν προκειμένων ῥημάτων τὴν ἐξέτασιν. And who suffers from insensibility to the point of not being struck by such beauty of thought and so unattainable a depth of doctrine, and of not desiring their true understanding? But admiring beautiful things is not difficult; having a precise understanding of what we have admired, however, is difficult and hard to achieve. For if there is no one who does not praise this sensitive sun, charmed by its greatness and beauty, the equality of its rays and the luminous brilliancy of its light, if, however, a man wishes to fix with more effort his looks on the disk, not only will this man not see the much desired object, but in addition his visual acuity will be severely impaired! That is almost what my thought suffers, in my opinion, when I wish to offer the precise exegesis of the words in question. (PG 31, 472C-473A) In this rhetorical context, the effort to unfold the content of the proposed ῥήματα is assimilated to the pain caused by the contemplation of the sun (472C-473A). While ordinarily Basil qualifies the properties of the scriptural λέξις in terms of utility, lack of literary elaboration and brevity, through the initial Platonic eulogy of John, whose words are ‘too great (μείζονα) for the ear’, just like the Good according to Socrates in the famous analogy of the Sun in the Republic, and ‘too sublime (ὑψηλότερα) for any spirit’ (472B), Basil intersects, in a very condensed way, with Origen’s Commentary on John who considers that the theological depth of John’s beginning is exceptional, even in comparison with the other Gospels. However, precisely when rejecting the Platonic appropriation of John, Basil appropriates Platonic language and rhetoric. There is a correct, even silent, form of cultural appropriation, as well as an illegitimate one, as it seems! This reversal of situation has nonetheless given rise to an interesting posterity: the first anonymous scholia preceding the Dionysian corpus, the so-called scholia De philosophis paganis whose author may be none other than John Philoponus,16 16 See Beate R. Suchla, Corpus Dionysiacum: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. IV/I, Ioannis Scythopolitani prologus et scholia in Dionysii Areopagitae librum ‘De divinis nominibus’, cum additamentis interpretum aliorum, Patristische Texte und Studien 62 (Berlin, Boston, 2011), 43. Basil and Amelius 311 explicitly makes use of this passage as an argument from authority to overthrow the real relationship between the writings of Proclus the philosopher and those of the ‘Blessed Dionysius’. It must be known that some of the pagan philosophers, and Proclus in particular, frequently make use of the doctrines of the blessed Dionysius, and even literally of some of his own expressions. This suggests that the most ancient philosophers of Athens, having appropriated Dionysius’ treatises, as the author relates in this book, kept them hidden to appear themselves as the fathers of Dionysius’ divine discourses. And it is by a providential disposition of God that the present work appeared to accuse them of vain glory and laziness. And that it is a habit of the pagans to appropriate our doctrines, the divine Basil teaches it in his homily on ‘In the beginning was the Word’, where he says in express terms: These words, I know that many who are outside the doctrine of truth and pride themselves on the wisdom of the world have admired them and have dared to insert them in their own writings. For the devil is a thief and divulges our mysteries to his interpreters.17 Here, Proclus is, to the Christian scholiast’s eye, a thief, because, as saint Basil said, philosophers are frequently thieves. So what have we learnt from this story? First: preaching is one thing, philology is another. Second: the thief is not always the one we initially suspected. 17 For a French translation see Henri-Dominique Saffrey, ‘Le lien le plus objectif entre le Pseudo-Denys et Proclus’, in Roma, magistra mundi. Itineraria culturae medievalis: Mélanges offerts au Père L.E. Boyle à l’occasion de son 75e anniversaire, Textes et études du Moyen Âge 10 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1998), 791-810, reprinted in H.-D. Saffrey, Le néoplatonisme après Plotin, Histoire des doctrines de l’Antiquité classique 24 (Paris, 2000), 239-52.