The paper deals with the source of Porphyry’s concept of a γνῶσις ἀπόλυτος, which is ascribed to the One in the commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. It will be argued, that Porphyry employs a specific, formal understanding of absoluteness, which can be traced back to Plotinus’ Enneads. Furthermore, as a careful reader of his master’s writings, Porphyry may have been inspired by Plotinus’ teachings not only concerning the formal understanding of absoluteness but also in content. This thesis is spelt out in (...) the second part of the paper, which deals with Plotinus’ scarce and cautious reflections about the possibility to conceive of the highest principle as intellection (νόησις). (shrink)

Given the Corpus Hermeticum’s history of formation, it has prompted the attempt to separate layers or groups of writings within the collection of treatises. This process of division, which was for the most part undertaken on criteria of content (dualism, pantheism, etc.), has been viewed rather negatively by the more recent research, on grounds of method. Given the discovery of numerous doctrinal contents that remain constant across different treatises, increased efforts are being made to reconstruct the Corpus’s moments of unity. (...) The present paper aims, in this spirit, to provide a more precise identification of the overarching forms of theological thought in the Hermetic writings. The reflections that follow aim to make it plausible that the defining form of theological thought in the Corpus Hermeticum can be classified as panentheism. In addition, the distinctive form of this influential theological paradigm in the Hermetic writings will be considered. (shrink)

The present paper deals with a syntactic ambiguity in Numenius’ Fr. 30, 9 and proposes a new reading. According to most scholars, in this fragment Numenius tries to identify Egyptian gods and human souls descending into generation. Instead, I argue that, since theology and psychology are different topics in Fr. 3, Numenius is rather talking about the interrelation of gods and souls in the process of metempsychosis.