On the Apostacy of the Academy from Plato

Nume'nius

(Νουμήνιος), of Apameia in Syria, a Pythagoreo-Platonic philosopher, who was highly esteemed by Plotinus and his school, as well as by Origen. (Porphyr. Vit. Plot. 2, 17; Suid. s. vv. Ὠριγένης, Νουμήνιος. He and Cronius, a man of a kindred mind and a contemporary, who is often spoken of along with him (Porphyr. De Antr. Nynmph. p. 121 ed. Holsten.), probably belong to the age of the Antonines. He is mentioned not only by Porphyrius, but also by Clemens of Alexandria and Origen.

Works

Statements and fragments of his apparently very numerous works have been preserved by Origen, Theodoret, and especially by Eusebius, and from them we may with tolerable accuracy learn the peculiar tendency of this new Platonico-Pythagorean philosophy, and its approximation to the doctrines of Plato. Numenius is almost invariably designated as a Pythagorean, but his object was to trace the doctrines of Plato up to Pythagoras, and at the same time to show that they were not at variance with the dogmas and mysteries of the Brahmins, Jews, Magi and Egyptians. (See the Fragm. of the 1st book Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ, ap. Euseb. Praep. Evang. 9.7.) Numenius called Plato " the Atticising Moses," probably on the supposition of some historical connexion between them. (Clem. Alex. Strom. 1.342; Euseb. Praep. Evang. 11.10. p. 527; Suid. s. v.)

In several of his works, therefore, he had based his remarks on passages from the books of Moses, and he had explained one passage about the life of our Saviour, though without mentioning him in a figurative sense. (Orig. ad v. Cels. iv. p. 198, &c. Spenc.; comp. i. p. 13; Porphyr. De Antr. Nymph. p. 111, &c.) He had also endeavoured to inquire into the hidden meaning of the Egyptian, perhaps also of Greek mythology. (See his explanation of Serapis apud Orig. Ibid. v. p. 258; Fr. ἐκ τοῦ περὶ τῶν παρὰ Πγάτωνι ἀπορρήτων, ap. Euseb. Pruaep. Ev. 13.5. )

His intention was to restore the philosophy of Plato, the genuine Pythagorean and mediator between Socrates and Pythagoras (neither of whom he prefers to the other) in its original purity, cleared from the Aristotelian and Zenonian or Stoic doctrines, and purified from the unsatisfactory and perverse explanations, which he said were found even in Speusippus and Xenocrates, and which, through the influence of Arcesilas and Carneades, i. e. in the second and third Academy, had led to a bottomless scepticism. (See especially Euseb. Praep. Ev. 14.5.)

On the Apostacy of the Academy from Plato (Περὶ τῆς τῶν Ἀκαδημαϊκῶν πρὸς Πλάτωνα διαστάσεως)

His work on the apostacy of the Academy from Plato (Περὶ τῆς τῶν Ἀκαδημαϊκῶν πρὸς Πλάτωνα διαστάσεως), to judge from its rather numerous fragments (ap. Euseb. Praep. Ev. 14.5-9), contained a minute and wearisome account of the outward circumstances of those men, and was full of fabulous tales about their lives, without entering into the nature of their scepticism.

On the GoodΠερὶ τἀγαθοῦ)

His books Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ seem to have been of a better kind; in them he had minutely explained, mainly in opposition to the Stoics, that existence could neither be found in the elements because they were in a perpetual state of change and transition, nor in matter because it is vague, inconstant, lifeless, and in itself not an object of our knowledge; and that, on the contrary, existence, in order to resist the annihilation and decay of matter, must itself rather be incorporeal and removed from all mutability (Frag. apud Euseb. Praep. Ev. 15.17), in eternal presence, without being subject to the variation of time, simple and imperturbable in its nature by its own will as well as by influence from without. (Ib. 11.10.) True existence, according to him, is identical with the first god existing in and by himself, that is, with good (τὸ ἀγαθόν), and is defined as spirit (νοῦς, ib.. 11.18, 9.22). But as the first (absolute) god existing in himself and being undisturbed in his motion, could not be creative (δημιουργικός), he thought that we must assume a second god, who keeps matter together, directs his energy to it and to intelligible essences, and imparts his spirit to all creatures; his mind is directed to the first god, in whom he beholds the ideas according to which he arranges the world harmoniously, being seized with a desire to create the world. The first god communicates his ideas to the second, without losing them himself, just as we communicate knowledge to one another, without depriving ourselves of it. (Ibid. 11.18.) In regard to the relation existing between the third and second god, and to the manner in which they also are to be conceived as one (probably in opposition to the vague duration of matter), no information can be derived from the fragments which have come down to us.

[Ch. A. B.]