The rationale for this unit starts with the recognition that “religion” and “philosophy” were not mutually exclusive categories in Late Antiquity. In certain polemical and apologetic contexts, Christian, Jewish, and “pagan” authors make claims about the coherence or opposition of philosophy and religion. Outside these rhetorically charged places, the line between religion and philosophy is murky, if existent. Though scholars have thoroughly demonstrated that the category of “religion” is etic to the late ancient world, this recognition has yet to be complicated because “philosophy” is an emic category. Our unit will continue exploring these categories and their usefulness for understanding the interconnectivity and interdependence of the intellectual and social worlds of Roman imperial and late ancient intellectuals. The examples of the intersection of philosophy and religion not only in late antiquity but already in the early imperial times are extensive. 

It is striking that philosophical schools of the early empire (especially Platonists and Pythagoreans) showed a particular interest in religious traditions. Therefore, scholars stress the so-called religious turn of philosophy in the early empire. Earlier philosophers also referred to archaic religious traditions, yet an intensive philosophical interpretation of cults and their material aspects emerges in this period. Mixed forms of philosophical religion and religious philosophy are developed. Religious texts and practices are used as sources of authority, while participation in rituals is linked to intellectual life, a tendency that ultimately leads to Neoplatonic theurgy. Philo of Alexandria, Plutarch of Chaironeia, and the Hermetic Corpus are among the most representative examples of this blend in this era. In late antiquity, the overlap between philosophy and religion can be seen regularly in the contestation over religious texts in which disputants used philosophical concepts as frameworks to debate cosmology, to theorize about demons and the problem of evil, and to explain the relationship between the Christian Father and Son, among other issues. In De Principiis, Origen seized Platonist notions of the nature of the divine and applied them to the description of the Christian God. For Augustine, Plato plays a significant role in the narrative of his conversion in The Confessions, and he further engages in an extended conversation with Platonism, critiquing it in their own terms in his City of God. 

Cult activity likewise became fodder for more philosophical speculation and practices in late antiquity. For example rituals of divination that were ubiquitous from the epic poems of Homer through the Christian saints’ shrines and beyond. Deification rituals are one of the few cult activities that garners significant philosophical commentary in the late ancient times. Divination offers a site to contemplate fate, the relationship between humans and gods, and the physical and metaphysical world, to name a few topics. For the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, it became a method towards the attainment of likeness to the divine, a concept that occurs in Plato himself but becomes the very goal of philosophy in Middle-Platonism since Eudorus and Philo of Alexandria in early imperial times. 

Thus it is not a coincidence that many elements of the ancient schools of philosophy, particularly in early empire and late antiquity, parallel modern descriptions of religion. As Pierre Hadot demonstrated, philosophy was a way of life and could dictate diet, dress, sexuality, and ritual practice. Ancient biographies of philosophers often focused on foundational figures and presented them as charismatic individuals who model the ideal philosophical lifestyle, not unlike the function Jesus's and saints’ lives played in early Christianity. 

Taken together, these examples demonstrate the arbitrariness of labeling e.g. Christianity as “religion”, while naming e.g. Neoplatonism as “philosophy”. When we break free of the constraints placed upon us by our modern categories of thought, we discover a richer, more interconnected picture of the late ancient world. The SBL devotes sections to individuals (e.g., Philo of Alexandria) and movements (e.g., Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism) for which philosophy was significant. These sections do at times take on questions of philosophy, but philosophy is only one area covered by these sections.  At the same time, each of these topics could incorporate additional authors and texts, which would in turn encourage theorization of the topic beyond the specific rubric of Philo or Gnosticism. Currently, “philosophy” is not an available tag for proposal submissions, suggesting that the scope of philosophy’s importance for the various Christian, Jewish, and polytheistic traditions of late antiquity has been overlooked, misunderstood, or neglected. Our unit fills this unfortunate gap in SBL’s programme by creating a dedicated forum to examine the interplay and interconnections between ancient religion and philosophy.

Steering Committee Members

Despotis, Athanasios / University of Bonn, Co-Chair (New Testament and ancient Greek philosophy)

Katsos, Isidoros / University of Athens, Co-Chair (Philosophical Theology and Epistemology, Systematics)

Attanasio, Clelia / University of Bonn

Hirsch-Luipold, Rainer /  University of Bern (New Testament and Greco-Roman World)

Pleše, Zlatko / University of North Carolina (Science of Religion, ancient Greek philosophy)