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Augustine, Manichaeism, and the Allegorical Interpretation of Creation: Foundations of an Androcentric Anthropology.

By David Morphew

Abstract:

Many have described Augustine as deeply misogynistic and as the most influential writer

to propagate misogynistic thinking in the Western world (Daly 1968, Boullough 1973, Ruether

1983 & Pagels 1988). Some have suggested that Augustine’s Manichaean background is to

blame for his androcentric / misognystic views, even after his rejection of Manichaeism and

conversion to Catholic Christianity (Boullough 1973, van Oort 1987, Pagels 1988, Bloch 1991 &

Apuleius' use of philosophical allegory

By Joshua Renfro

How are we to read the Metamorphoses alongside the remainder of Apuleius’ rich and

variegated corpus? This is a longstanding question in classical scholarship, and little progress

has been made, as evidenced by the lack of consensus. Unsatisfied with narratological and

sophistic readings (Winkler 1985, Harrison 2000) a few scholars have recently been trying to

revive a Platonic approach to Apuleius (e.g. O’Brien 2002 and Kirichenko 2008) by building

off suggestive leads found in older scholarship (Thibau 1965, Schlam 1970, DeFillippo

The Philosophical Allegoresis of Plato and Scripture in Numenius, Origen and Amelius

By Ilaria Ramelli

Abstract:

Philosophical allegoresis (that is, the allegorical exegesis of authoritative texts and traditions) was first used systematically by the Stoics, from the Old Stoa onwards, starting from Zeno, Cleanthes, and especially Chrysippus (who not only practiced, but also theorised allegoresis), down to imperial Stoics such as Annaeus Cornutus and Chaeremon of Alexandria, who exerted a great deal of influence on the Christian Platonists Clement and Origen of Alexandria.

Gymnasia for the Soul: Proclus and the First Lines of the Parmenides

By Alex Tarbet

Proclus was a man obsessed with interpreting the first lines of Platonic dialogues. The first book of his commentary on the Parmenides, for example, is a masterpiece of allegorizing mania. There he offers mountains of explanations for every smallest detail of the first sentence of Plato’s work. He expounds each feature as a representation of cosmic and divine significance, often with no justification or explanation of his process. Scholars have noticed a problem with this: how can any interpretation possibly be better than any other, or even just wrong?