God's Acting, Man's Acting: Tradition and Philosophy in Philo of Alexandria (Studies in Philo of Alexandria): 4 - Hardcover

Calabi, Francesca

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004162704 ISBN 13: 9789004162709

Publisher: Brill, 2007

Synopsis

The topic tackled in this book is Philo's account of the complex, double-sided nature of God's acting - the two-sided coin of God as transcendent yet immanent, unknowable yet revealed, immobile yet creating - and also the two sides of acting in humans - who, in an attempt to imitate God, both contemplate and produce. In both contexts, divine and human, Philo considers that it would not be proper to give precedence to either side - the result would be barren. God's acting and man's acting are at the same time both speculative and practical, and it is precisely out of this co-presence that the order of the world unfolds. Philo considers this two-sided condition as a source of complexity and fertility. Francesca Calabi argues that, far from being an irresolvable contradiction, Philo's two-fold vision is the key to understanding his works. It constitutes a richness that rejects reduction to apparently incompatible forms and aspects.

About this title

Review

'this is a fine product of current Italian scholarship on Philo and Hellenistic Judaism, and very good to have in (faultlessy idiomatic) Anglophone format.'

John Dillon, The studia Philonica Annual, 2008

Synopsis

In the Biblical model, God first creates the world, then intervenes often in it; in the Platonic model, God is a distant and unchanging abstraction. Calabi (philosophy in late antiquity, U. of Pavia) argues that Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo (20BC-50AD) drew from both, and celebrated the contradiction between them as fertile and complex, and

Edition details

• Publisher: Brill
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 9004162704
• ISBN 13: 9789004162709
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 265