High Priests of the Highest God: Third-Century Platonists as Ritual Experts

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Heidi Marx-Wolf

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 18, Number 4, Winter 2010,pp. 481-513 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/earl.2010.0016

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Journal of Early Christian Studies 18:4, 481513 2010 The Johns Hopkins University Press

I am grateful to participants in a session on late Platonism at the 2007 meeting of the North American Patristics Society. I also wish to thank Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, Harold Drake, Nancy McGloughlin, and Thomas Sizgorich for reading earlier drafts of this paper. Finally, the comments I received from two anonymous reviewers for JECS were very helpful as I worked on my final revisions.

1. Plato himself gives us two models for how the philosopher should contribute to the political order. In the Republic, he argues that the ideal ruler is the philosopher-king. In the Laws, however, he presents the philosopher in an advisory role. Both models were invoked in subsequent periods, but later Platonists preferred the model of the philosopher as advisor for the general polity.

High Priests of the Highest God: Third-Century Platonists as Ritual Experts

HEIDI MARX-WOLF

This paper explores the way in which third-century philosophers, especially Platonists, portrayed themselves as high priests or priests of the god who rules all. It argues that figures such as Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus incorporated this hieratic status into their identity at the expense of the reputations of more ordinary, local priests. Furthermore, they grounded their authority on theological and ritual matters in their knowledge of the nature of various kinds of spiritual beings inhabiting the cosmos, beings which they tended to order in systematic and hierarchical ways. Finally, this paper presents evidence that these intellectuals endeavored to use their authority in these matters to position themselves socially as potential advisors to provincial and imperial leaders.

Beginning with Plato, or perhaps even Pythagoras, philosophers reflected on their relations to and role in the contemporary social and political order. They frequently argued that their pursuit of wisdom and the insight it yielded served as the basis for their ability to advise rulers and weigh in on matters pertaining to the ideal governance of cities and states.1 In the

482 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

2. Both Dominic OMeara, Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiq-uity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), part 2, chapter 9, and Jeremy Schott, Founding Platonopolis: The Platonic Politeia in Eusebius, Porphyry, and Iamblichus, JECS 11 (2003): 50131, have convincingly demonstrated a clearly articulated political philosophy in the works of a number of late Platonists.

3. Porph. Abst. 2.49 (ed. Jean Bouffartigue, Michel Patillon, and Alain Seconds, De labstinence, 3 vols., Collection des universits de France [Paris: Belles Lettres, 1977], 2:114; trans. Gillian Clark, On Abstinence from Killing Animals [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000], 75). Origen identifies these figures as high priests. As the important volume edited by Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frede has demonstrated (Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]), it was quite common for intellectuals in this period to believe in some kind of supreme divinity and first principle, a god above all other deities and spirits.

4. David Frankfurter has discussed this phenomenon with reference to the construc-tion of evil conspiracies. He maps out the way in which self-defined spiritual experts impose elaborate systems of classification on more local, ad hoc understandings of spirits. These experts then show the evil system behind inchoate misfortune, offering their audience the tangible hope of purifying it (Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Ritual Abuse in History [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006], 32). Although this paper will not limit itself to the construction of discourses regarding evil daemons, it will highlight the way in which some third-century philos-ophers sought to extend their influencephilosophical, spiritual, and ritualon the basis of their daemonological knowledge. I use the term daemon and daemonol-ogy in order to stay as close to the Greek meaning of the word as possible and to avoid the pejorative meaning of the word demon. I use the words demon and demonology only when the author being cited or referred to uses these terms.

third century, figures such as Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus refash-ioned the identity of the philosopher to include another facet, namely ritual expertise and the access it gave to divinity. This access could be put to use on behalf of both individual souls as well as states.2 All three philosophers used hieratic terms to construct this new identity. Further-more, they did not merely identify themselves with ordinary priests, but rather as priests of the god who rules all.3 They did so, as this paper will demonstrate, at the expense of the reputation of ordinary more local priests of Mediterranean cult. In order to discredit or demote these priests, all three philosophers constructed complex daemonologies that ordered the realm of spirits in terms of a totalizing, universal hierarchy.4 Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus then associated ordinary priests with the wor-ship of lesser spirits within this hierarchy and reserved the title of high priest for themselves.

Why was access to divinity important in the third century? As a number of scholars have noted, emperors increasingly chose to identify themselves with specific divinities and emphasized the importance of divine favor

MARX-WOLF / RITUAL EXPERTS 483

5. Garth Fowden distinguishes political, military, and economic universalism from cultural universalism, which according to him stands especially for religious univer-salism, religion being understood to be a constituent part of the wider category culture. He adds that, in his study, cultural universalism will be applied to late antiquitys distinctive and dynamic fusion of those two strands of universalism into the type of universalism that aimed at politico-cultural world empire, but however successful, issued eventually in commonwealth (Empire to Commonwealth: Conse-quences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993], 67).

6. James B. Rives writes, There can be little doubt that the trend towards mono-theism played an important role in the change from local cults to universalizing religions. But to appreciate the significance of Deciuss decree on sacrifice, we need to consider not the content of religious belief, but rather the structures of religious organization, i.e., what actions people performed in what circumstances, who had the authority to regulate these actions, and how this authority was organized and expressed (The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire, Journal of Roman Studies 89 [1999]: 15354).

7. Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate, 24.

in the legitimation of their often-tenuous claims to political authority. Additionally, as both James B. Rives and Garth Fowden have noted, the third century was a time of increasing emphasis on cultural universalism and religious centralization, a trend that would find new expression in the fourth-century struggles over Christian orthodoxy. But already in the third century, religious practice or ritual formed the basis for a number of movements in the direction of religious centralization.5 Rives cites as an example of this movement Deciuss imperial mandate for empire-wide sacrifice.6 It should be no surprise, then, that philosophers in the course of positioning themselves socially and arguing for their place in civil soci-ety would do so in terms that emphasized their claim to knowledge and expertise regarding sacrifice and other ritual actions that established con-nections between the individual and the realm of spirits.

Daemons and daemonology played an as yet unexamined role in the construction of this authority. In his recent book, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, David Frank-furter demonstrates how daemonological writing flourished as a literary- theological pursuit in the changing religious landscape of the late Roman Mediterranean across a wide variety of religious communities. Although Frankfurters focus is on Christian and Jewish daemonologies, non-Christian Platonists such as Porphyry and Iamblichus produced some of the most elaborate discourses on the realm of spirits in this period. These daemonologies were often superimposed upon more local experiences of spirits.7 According to Frankfurter, as well as many anthropologists who


8. Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate, 32.9. Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate, 2627. 10. E. R. Dodds, Theurgy and Its Relationship to Neoplatonism, Journal of

Roman Studies 37 (1947): 5569. This article is reprinted with minor changes as Appendix II: Theurgy, in Eric R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1951), 283311.

11. Here Dodds follows the nineteenth-century writer Wilhelm Kroll who asserted that Plotinus raised himself by a strong intellectual and moral effort above the fog-ridden atmosphere that surrounded him (The Greeks and the Irrational, 286). Zeke Mazur, Unio Magica: Part I: On the Magical Origins of Plotinus Mysticism, Dionysus 21 (2003): 2352, confronts Doddss portrayal of Plotinus as the last bas-tion of Platonic rationality before this retrogression by exploring precedents for Plotinuss conception of mystical union in Sethian Gnostic, Hermetic, and so-called magical texts such as the Greek Magical Papyri.

12. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 288.13. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 288.14. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 288.

work on similar topics cross-culturally, spirits at the local, everyday level are experienced as diverse, unclassified, individual, capricious, and ambigu-ous. Writers and ritual experts working in a daemonological mode seek to impose an order on this amorphous realm. These self-defined spiritual experts then show the evil system behind inchoate misfortune, offering their audience the tangible hope of purifying it.8 Frankfurter writes,

Demonologies seek to controlthrough order, through writing, through the ritual power of declarationa chaotic world of misfortune, temptation, religious conflict, and spiritual ambiguity. . . . Demonology collects from and attends to these various domains of apparent demonic action, yet its intent lies in grasping totality, simplifying, and abstracting immediate experience for the sake of cosmic structures.9

The daemonological focus of these third-century philosophers has been a source of ongoing scholarly consternation. In his article Theurgy and its Relationship to Neoplatonism, Eric R. Dodds accused Platonists from Porphyry to Proclus of succumbing to the irrationality and superstition of their age.10 The theurgical focus of these figures, according to Dodds, was proof of retrogression to the spineless syncretism from which Ploti-nus had supposedly tried to escape.11 He also contended that late antique intellectuals, in response to the sense that Christianity was sucking the lifeblood out of Hellenism, turned to vulgar magic.12 According to Dodds, this move is commonly the last resort of the personally desper-ate, of those whom man and God have alike failed.13 As a result theurgy became the refuge of a despairing intelligentsia which already felt la fas-cination de labme.14


15. Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (Uni-versity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995).

16. It is difficult to give a definition of the word theurgy () because its meaning was a matter of debate for some of the philosophers under consideration in this paper, as was its importance to the philosophical life and union with God. As Hans Lewy (Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy: Mysticism, Magic and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire, ed. Michel Tardieu, rev. ed. [Paris: tudes Augustiniennes, 1978], xiii) notes, the terms theurgy and theurge/theurgist () were neologisms from the Chaldean Oracles, a corpus of writings, extant only in fragments, associated with two men, Julian the Chaldean and his son, Julian the Theurgist, who lived dur-ing the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines. The oracles were a publication of the revelations of the gods to these two holy men. Later Platonists, starting with Porphyry, took up this corpus, just as they did certain Hermetic works, and made use of it for their own purposes, treating the oracles as sacred texts. Hence, the definition of theurgy varied considerably in the third and fourth centuries. For instance, accord-ing to Lewy (Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy, 462), the Chaldeans did not promise deification (), which is what Platonists such as Porphyry and Iamblichus took them to do, but rather immortality (). In general, the term came to stand for a set of rituals that would purify either the body or the soul or both and put the individual in touch with various levels of divinity. For the most comprehen-sive study on the fragmentary oracles themselves, see Ruth Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1989). For an excellent overview of theurgy in the writings of late Platonists such as Iamblichus, Porphyry, the emperor Julian, and Proclus, see Carine Van Liefferinge, La thurgie: Des oracles chaldaques Proclus, Kernos Supplement 9 (Lige: Centre International dtude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 1999). A more complete discussion of the debate between Porphyry and Iamblichus on the question of the salvific effects of theurgy can be found later in this paper. Gregory Shaws Theurgy and the Soul (esp. chapter 4, Theurgy as Demiurgy) has best explicated Iamblichuss understanding of the term. Polymnia Athanassiadi (Dreams, Theurgy and Freelance Divination: The Testimony of Iambli-chus, Journal of Roman Studies 83 [1993]: 116) defines Iamblichan theurgy in the following way: But of course theurgy is not just a technique (though by a tenuous definition it can be this as well), but rather a dynamic state of mind, varying from individual to individual and additionally undergoing constant change according to the theurgists state of mind. Attempting a provisional definition based on Iamblichuss understanding of the term, I would describe theurgy as the often involuntary mani-festation of an inner state of sanctity deriving from a combination of goodness and knowledge in which the former element prevails. I would argue that Athanassiadi defines theurgy in terms of its effects and not as a set of practices, whether philosophi-cal, ethical, or ritual, which achieve these effects. She also does not tell us where in the Iamblichean corpus she finds evidence for her definition.

Some scholars have come to the defense of these intellectuals against Dodds and others by focusing on their philosophical contributions, the complexity and systematic nature of their ideas.15 For instance, in her article Dreams, Theurgy and Freelance Divination: The Testimony of Iamblichus, Polymnia Athanassiadi argues that theurgy, at least on the interpretation of Iamblichus, was about personal virtue and wisdom.16


17. Athanassiadi, Dreams, Theurgy, and Freelance Divination, 123.18. Athanassiadi, Dreams, Theurgy, and Freelance Divination, 128: As much

by their teaching as by their example, men like Maximus of Ephesus and his pupil Julian foisted on Iamblichus the image of the magician. This impression was height-ened and further spread by the representatives of the Athenian School, until the dia-dochus Proclusor was it Syrianusadministered to the saint of Apamea the coup de grce. See also Polymnia Athanassiadi, The Oecumenism of Iamblichus: Latent Knowledge and Its Awakening, Journal of Roman Studies 85 (1995): 247.

19. Emma C. Clarke, Iamblichus De Mysteriis: A Manifesto of the Miraculous (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001), 12.

This interpretation leads her to conclude that Iamblichus would have been horrified by the claim in modern scholarship, i.e. in Doddss writing, that theurgy and magic are disciplines resting on the same presuppositions and using some of the same methods.17 In order to divorce theurgy from magic, while still acknowledging the importance of prayer and sacrifice to the Iamblichan program, i.e. to the life of one who seeks union with god, Athanassiadi recasts theurgy in terms that downplay the importance of ritual. She also blames modern distortions concerning Iamblichus on the excesses and enthusiasms of post-Iamblichan Platonists who misunder-stood their master.18 In other words, the trend in studies that have sought to redress the skewed vision of late antique Platonism found in the writings of earlier historians such as Wilhelm Kroll (in the nineteenth century) and Dodds (in the twentieth century) has been to distinguish these philoso-phers from their contexts and the supposed superstitions and propensities for magical practices exhibited in the population at large. But the work of Athanassiadi can and should be taken further, because, although it may spare the reputation of specific philosophers, it relocates the irrationalism Dodds attributed to them in equally problematic directionseither upon their followers or upon everyday people in late antique society.

Emma Clarke raises similar misgivings about certain attempts to rescue Iamblichus from the charge of irrationalism. She writes:

Iamblichus did not see his treatise as predominantly philosophical, indeed his main point was to reject this method of approach and take a wholly new tack. While I do not deny that there is philosophy in the De mysteriis, and that some considerable reward lies in digging it out, I would query the tendency to keep our reading of the treatise within these confines; to assess the De mysteriis in philosophical terms, to squeeze this square peg into a round, intellectual hole, seems to me an extraordinary oversight. Iamblichus viewed philosophy as a worthwhile but fundamentally limited method of understanding.19


20. Athanassiadi, Dreams, Theurgy, and Freelance Divination, 127.21. Athanassiadi, Dreams, Theurgy, and Freelance Divination, 12022. Although

it is not the purpose of this article to engage in the longstanding discussion of magic in antiquity, I generally follow the definition offered by Charles Robert Phillips who takes a phenomenological approach to the question. He writes: Magic would better be considered a particular kind of social knowledge for dealing with the world out thereknowledge which one group might call magic and another call religion. Magic and religion and science are intersected in the Roman Empire: the individual would draw boundaries as a function of his social location and social knowledge that went with that location (The Sociology of Religious Knowledge in the Roman Empire to A.D. 284, ANRW 2.16.3 [1986]: 2732). Phillips agrees in part with David Aunes influential definition of magic, namely as that form of religious deviance whereby individual or social goals are sought by means alternate to those normally sanctioned by the dominant religious institution (Magic in Early Christianity, ANRW 2.23.2 [1980]: 1515). But Phillips finds that Aunes functionalist approach does not entirely avoid the traditional implications of the category magic (Sociology of Religious Knowledge, 2729). One does find an encouraging trend in scholarship exemplified by such historians as Jonathan Z. Smith, John Gager, and a handful of others who view practices and artifacts previously labeled magical and thereby classed as sub-versive or marginal as far more normative and thereby within, rather than juxtaposed to, the realm of religion.

22. In this paper, I will make occasional reference to this corpus of textual and mate-rial artifacts usually called the magical papyri. I use the term magical in quotes because this designation, in my opinion, is misleading and inaccurate. This grouping of artifacts would be better referred by the designation ritual papyri, because the term magical implies that they represent illicit practices and were produced and used by individuals who were somehow socially or religiously marginal.

23. Jacco Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites: The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100300 c.e.), Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, V. 153 (Leiden: Brill, 2005).

Athanassiadi rightly argues that Iamblichus sought to distinguish his own theurgical enterprise from the practices of others identified by her as magicians.20 But she assumes that he did so because what he was doing was, in reality, very different. She does not, however, ask after the identity of these magicians, who they might be to Iamblichus and other intel-lectuals. She also uses the so-called Greek magical papyri (Papyri Grae-cae Magicae) to represent the kinds of practices she argues Iamblichus eschewed.21 But it is necessary to inquire after the source of these arti-facts, who created and used them, and whether they actually represented magical practices.22

This paper will draw on recent scholarship that argues that the source of some of these artifacts were Egyptian priests.23 Furthermore, Iamblichus and his contemporary Platonists may have even perceived some priests as rivals for certain kinds of social goods, such as authority and prestige. As


24. Athanassiadi, Dreams, Theurgy, and Freelance Divination, 117.25. For a thorough discussion of the scholarly debate concerning the reliability of

Rufinuss Latin translations of Origens homilies, see Ronald E. Heines introduction to Origen. Homilies on Genesis and Exodus (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1982). Rufinus does say of the Homilies on Leviticus that while he (Origen) spoke in a hortatory manner, my translation has been done in the mode of an explanation (Heine, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, 37 n. 188). However, I follow Heine in his conclusion that, on the whole, the substance of Rufinuss transla-tions can be regarded as representing Origens thought (Heine, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, 38). G. W. Butterworth takes a similar approach but adds a cautionary note: Not seldom Rufinus altogether misses the point of the Greek. On the whole, however, we can gather from him fairly well the main drift of the arguments. But in

Athanassiadi herself notes, On the Mysteries contains an apology for tra-ditional cult while playing down the importance of sacred places as com-pared with the authority of holy men, the theurgists who are repeatedly contrasted with mere craftsmen of spirituality.24 Iamblichus was doing this in a period when other holy men, for instance, members of traditional Egyptian priesthoods, were moving outside temple precincts and offering their ritual services to a broader clientele, in part in response to extenuat-ing economic circumstances.

Athanassiadi and others have done a great deal to rehabilitate the philo-sophical reputation of Iamblichus by responding directly and convincingly to the negative characterizations of third-century intellectuals propounded by earlier historians. But this corrective, namely, the attempt to situate these third-century Platonistsand Iamblichus, in particularmore squarely within a philosophical lineage and to demonstrate the rationality and con-sistency of their views has laid the groundwork for subsequent scholars to inquire about the ways in which these figures were in dialogue with their society more generally. My argument is that it is necessary to rethink the age itself in the ways in which scholars such as Garth Fowden and Polym-nia Athanassiadi herself have done for the philosophers. If one forgoes the language of irrationality and superstition in defining the third century, then the issue is no longer whether people such as Origen, Porphyry, or Iambli-chus were rational and free of superstitions. Rather, it becomes an issue of the degree to which they took account of the local construction of spirits in their rational discourses and the reasons that may have motivated them to do so. Their respective references to the philosopher as priest serves as one helpful means of approaching these questions.

We begin our investigation with Origens interpretations of the figure of the high priest in the Hebrew Scriptures and his conjunction of this priestly status and daemonological expertise. In his Homilies on Leviticus,25


the case of a keen thinker like Origen, the construction of every sentence, the balance of phrases and often the very order of the words are important; and it would be folly to deny that, for all the good intentions of Rufinus, we lose much when we turn to his version from the Greek (Origen on First Principles: Being Koetschaus Text of the De Principiis [Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973], lii).

26. Origen is well known for his extensive use of figural interpretation and for his attempts to distinguish and employ various levels of interpretation more generally (see On First Principles, Book 4, for a basic outline of Origens method of biblical interpretation). Porphyry objected strongly to Origens choice to allegorize the Hebrew Scriptures, stating that Origen took the method of allegorical interpretation from the works of Chaeremon the Stoic and Cornutus, who had applied it to the myster-ies of the Greeks (Eus. H. e. 6.19; ed. Theodor Mommsen, Eusebius Werke ii. Die Kirchengeschichte, GCS 9.1 [Leipzig, 1903]). For a helpful discussion of Porphyrys objections to the interpretive endeavors of Origen and his less able followers, see Michael B. Simmons, Porphyry of Tyres Biblical Criticism: A Historical and Theo-logical Appraisal, in Reading in Christian Communities: Essays on Interpretation in the Early Church, ed. Charles A. Bobertz and David Brakke (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 90105. See also Pier Franco Beatrice, Por-phyrys Judgment on Origen, in Origeniana Quinta: Historica, Text and Method, Biblica, Philosophica, Theologica, Origenism, and Later Developments. Papers of the 5th International Origen Congress, Boston College, 1518 August 1989, ed. Robert J. Daly (Leuven: University Press, 1992), 35167.

Origen reflected at length on the figure of the high priest and employed a number of different levels of interpretation in his reflections.26 Sometimes he discussed the Israelite priests and the prescriptions that pertained to them in very literal terms, marking the difference between the conditions that obtained in earlier epochs and in the post-resurrection age. He also carefully interpreted the priestly role and the Levitican laws in figural terms. In this context, priests came to stand for a wide range of different things. At times Origens interpretative focus is on Christian priests. In other instances, the Israelite priests stand for any true Christian. In other homilies, Christ is the high priest, the ideal intercessor on behalf of the sinful community because he spilled, not the blood of animals, but his own blood. Origen moved between these levels and at times it is unclear which sense of the mysterious or level of interpretation he was engaging. But it is difficult to miss certain connections he drew in this corpus of sermons between the high priests he interpreted in figural terms and the real priests of the Christian church, an order to which he himself belonged.

Origens status as a presbyter was not, however, uncontesteda fact which may have contributed to his eagerness to associate himself with the high priests of the ancient Hebrews. Origens troubles seem to have begun even before he was ordained a priest. In spite of the fact that bishop Dem-etrius of Alexandria had put Origen in charge of teaching catechumens, he


27. The issue may have been that Origen was preaching without Demetriuss per-mission at the behest of the Palestinian bishops whom Demetrius considered his sub-ordinates. I thank Elizabeth DePalma Digeser for sharing this interpretation of the situation with me.

28. Butterworth, Origen on First Principles, xxiiixxvii. The precise chronology of these events is difficult to establish based on any one source. Our main source is Euse-biuss Ecclesiastical History, but as Pier Franco Beatrice has pointed out (Porphyrys Judgment on Origen, 353), Eusebius is not always forthcoming about certain details of Origens life, travels, and associations with other platonist philosophers.

29. Beatrice, Porphyrys Judgment on Origen, 359. Ammonius Saccas was also the teacher of Plotinus. Beatrice argues that his lineage was shared by his two most illustrious pupils, Origen and Plotinus, both of whom at some point late in the life of the former contested the others claims to represent the true heritage of their teacher (36062).

30. Beatrice, Porphyrys Judgment on Origen, 359.

objected to Origens teaching in church, something which Origen did when he visited bishops Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctistus of Caesarea in Palestine around 215 c.e.. Demetrius, hearing word of Origens preach-ing in Caesarea at the enthusiastic behest of the two bishops, ordered the philosopher back to Alexandria. The tensions between the two continued over the next decade. Jeromes letter to Paula (Ep. 33) suggests that the enmity was fueled by jealousy on the part of Demetrius because of Ori-gens popularity as a teacher.27 The situation reached a crisis point when Origen made a second trip through Palestine en route to Athens. On this journey the same bishops who had earlier asked him to preach ordained him by laying their hands on him. When Origen returned to Alexandria, he found his presence wholly unwelcome and decided to move perma-nently to Caesarea around 231 c.e. Demetrius called a synod of Egyptian bishops in order to bar Origen from ever teaching in Alexandria again, and shortly thereafter he also had Origen excommunicated. This decision was affirmed by the bishop of Rome.28

Origen lived and worked as a priest and teacher in Caesarea until 251 c.e. when he was imprisoned and tortured during the Decian per-secution. But even during this period, as Pier Franco Beatrice argues, he was involved in actively trying to rehabilitate his status and reputation as a priest beyond Palestine. According to Beatrice, Origen went back to Alexandria after the death of Ammonius Saccas (242 c.e.), his philosophy teacher of ten years and the founder of an important school of Platonism.29 He may have been trying to reestablish himself as a teacher in Alexan-dria under the patriarchate of his former student and friend Heraclas. But the new bishop also had Origen expelled (243244 c.e.).30 On Beatrices account, Origen proceeded to travel to Rome via Athens, perhaps to appeal


31. Beatrice, Porphyrys Judgment on Origen, 360. Philip the Arab was known to have been sympathetic to Christians. Eusebius, H. e. 6.34, notes that he was even willing to confess his sins to the bishop of Rome one Passover in order gain admit-tance to the church.

32. Or. Hom. in Lev. 2.1 (ed. Marcel Borret, Homlies sur le Lvitiques, SC 286 [Paris: ditions du Cerf, 1981], 100, 102; trans. Gary Wayne Barkely, Origen: Homilies on Leviticus: 116 [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990], 44).

33. Or. Hom. in Lev. 2.1 (SC 286:92). 34. Or. Hom. in Lev. 6.3 (SC 286:278). 35. In other words, Origen can read rituals in figural ways when he needs to.

directly to Emperor Philip the Arab and his wife Severa (244249 c.e.).31 Whether or not Beatrice is correct in his chronology and his evaluation of Origens actions and intentions, it is the case that Origens status as a presbyter was in question in a number places outside Palestine, including in his homeland of Egypt, for at least the last two decades of his life. His theology was also subject to vigorous scrutiny and opposition from certain quarters even during his lifetime. Hence, these concerns about his ordina-tion and priestly standing should be placed alongside his statements about the priesthood in his Homilies on Leviticus if one is to understand how these sermons may have functioned to legitimate the Christian priesthood in general and Origens own position as a presbyter in particular.

In Homily 2, Origen identified the high priest as the one who was anointed; he who kindles fires on divine altars; who sacrifices to God gifts and salutary offerings; he who intervenes between God and men as a pro-pitiator.32 One might be inclined to think that here Origen was speaking of Christ, but in fact he was not. For even such a priest, he writes, cannot be entirely free from sin. What sets the priest apart from other sinners, however, is that he knows and understands his own sin.33 Hence, in this case knowledge and wisdom define the priest for Origen. In Hom-ily 6, while reviewing the process by which a high priest is chosen, he once again affirms that wisdom distinguishes the priest from the rest of the congregation: For in ordaining a priest, the presence of the people is also required that all may know and be certain that from all the people one is chosen for the priesthood who is more excellent, who is more wise, who is more holy, who is more eminent in every virtue. . . .34 But in addi-tion to understanding his own sin, what kind of knowledge sets the priest apart from the rest of the church? What sort of mysteries does he fathom while others remain content with literality? If one stays with the Homi-lies on Leviticus, then priestly knowledge focuses on the hidden meaning of rituals and in particular, the ritual of sacrifice.35 But in the preface to


36. Or. Cels. 3.37 (ed. M. Markovich, Origenes Contra Celsum libri VIII [Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001] 18081; trans. Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum [Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965], 153). Origen makes a similar distinction between those who understand the hidden meaning of sacred texts and sacred acts and the ordinary believer: There are some who because of their great simplicity do not know how to explain their actions with arguments which may not be lightly regarded but what are profound and, as a Greek might say, esoteric and mysterious. They believe a profound doctrine about God and about those beings who through the only-begotten divine Logos have been so honored by God that they participate in the divine nature, and for this reason are also granted the name. There is also a profound doctrine about the divine angels and the opponents of the truth who have been deceived, and who because of this call themselves gods, or angels of God, or good daemons, or heroes who come into being through the transformation of a good human soul. Such Christians will also argue that, just as in philosophy many may think that they are in the right, either because they have fallaciously deceived them-selves by plausible arguments, or because they have unthinkingly believed in notions suggested and discovered by others, so also there are some among the bodiless souls and angels and daemons who have been led by plausibilities to call themselves gods. But it was because of these doctrines which men have not been able to discover exactly and perfectly that it was not considered safe for a man to entrust himself to any being as a god, except only to Jesus Christ who rules over all like an arbiter (Or. Cels. 3.37 [Markovich 18081; trans. Chadwick 15354]).

37. Or. Princ. 1.pref.3 (ed. Henri Crouzel and Manlio Simonetti, Trait des prin-cipes, SC 252 [Paris: ditions du Cerf, 1978], 78, 80; trans. Butterworth 2).

38. Or. Princ. 1.pref.3 (SC 252:78, 80; trans. Butterworth 2).

On First Principles, the mysteries that the philosopher-priest apprehends go far beyond the meaning of ritual to include doctrines about the origin, nature, and fate of all rational souls, all spiritual beings, both good and evil. Indeed, embedded in Origens cosmology is a complex daemonology that encompasses humans, angels, and evil spirits, an account that includes both cosmogonical and eschatological elements. Understanding of these doctrines, which in Contra Celsum he called esoteric and mysterious ( ), was not granted to everyone in the apostolic teaching.36 Origen claimed that the reason Christ and the apostles left so much unexplained was without doubt to supply the more diligent of those who came after them, such as should prove to be lovers of wisdom, with an exercise on which to display the fruit of their ability.37 In the beginning of his Commentary on John, Origen associates this order of wise exegetes and philosophers with the high priests of the order of Aaron and distin-guishes them from the run-of-the-mill believer as he also does in Contra Celsum and On First Principles.38 He writes:

Most of us who approach the teachings of Christ, since we have much time for the activities of life and offer a few acts to God, would perhaps be those from the tribes who have a little fellowship with the priests and support the service of God in a few things. But those who devote themselves to


39. Or. Jo. 1.1011 (ed. Ccile Blanc, Commentaire sur Saint Jean, SC 120 [Paris: ditions du Cerf, 1966], 62; trans. Ronald E. Heine, Origen: Commentary on the Gospel According to John, Books 110, FOTC 80 [Washington, DC: Catholic Uni-versity of America Press, 1989], 3334).

40. Porph. Abst. 2.49 (Bouffartigue et al. 2:114).41. Or. Hom. in Lev. 1.5 (SC 286:84; trans. Barkley 37).42. It is interesting that Porphyry (Abst. 2.34 [Bouffartigue et al. 2:101]) makes

a similar point when discussing the kinds of sacrifices most appropriate for the phi-losopher to offer to the god: To the god who rules over all, as a wise man said, we shall offer nothing perceived by the senses either by burning or in words. For there is nothing material which is not at once impure to the immaterial. So not even logos expressed in speech is appropriate for him, nor yet internal logos when it has been contaminated by the passion of the soul. But we shall worship him in pure silence with pure thoughts about him.

the divine Word and truly exist by the service of God alone will properly be said to be Levites and priests in accordance with the excellence of their activities in this work. And, perhaps, those who excel all others and who hold, as it were, the first places of their generation will be high priests in the order of Aaron. . . .39

So the priest, the one who exceeds all others in wisdom, understands both the proper practice of ritual and its hidden meanings. He also knows all about the various spiritual beings that inhabit the cosmos, as well as the specific roles they play in the salvation of the human soul. As we will see, it was also this ritual, daemonological, and soteriological knowledge that set the philosopher apart from others as the priest of the god who rules all40 for both Porphyry and Iamblichus.

It is important to note that by this time actual sacrifice had ceased in the Christian, Jewish, and Jewish-Christian ritual orders. This was not the case, however, for traditional polytheistic religion. But allegorizing Greek and Roman sacrifices was not an avenue Origen could take anyway. Although Jewish sacrifice had ceased, Origen still felt a strong imperative to recast the entire priestly order and the sacrifices it used to perform in Christian terms. In Homily 6, for instance, he carefully interpreted each piece of the priestly vestments in minute detail. And in Homily 1, he explains the mean-ing of each sacrificial animal, associating them one by one with the various orders within the Christian congregation and the kinds of transgressions they were prone to. For example, when discussing the sacrifice of a calf, Origen explains that this animal is the flesh which must be sacrificed and the priest is in you the mind which is also its understanding in you who are rightly called a priest and sons of a priest.41 Here the Platonic faculty of mind, traditionally associated with the philosopher and the wise ruler, is transposed into a religious mode and becomes the priest.42


43. One must keep in mind that by baptism, Origen meant a long-term process of initiation into a congregation. This process would involve instruction of catechu-mens of the sort that Origen offered in Alexandria. In many churches, preparation for baptism would have also involved exorcism. For a discussion of various exorcistic practices related to early Christian baptism, see H. A. Kelly, The Devil at Baptism: Ritual, Theology, and Drama (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); Dayna Kalleres, Exorcising the Devil to Silence Christs Enemies: Ritualized Speech Practices in Late Antique Christianity (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2002).

44. Or. Cels. 3.37 (Markovich 180; trans. Chadwick 153).45. Or. Cels. 7.64 (Markovich 580; trans. Chadwick 448).46. Edwin Hamilton Gifford translated some of these fragments in his edition of

Eusebiuss Preparation for the Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1981), the only place where many of them are extant. It is generally recognized that a new translation is needed. In some instances, I include my own translations and indicate so in footnotes. Beatrice has suggested that a better title for Philosophy from Oracles would be Philosophy according to the oracles (of the Gods). See Beatrice, On the Meaning of Profane in the Pagan-Christian Conflict of Late Antiquity: The Fathers,

In different places, Origen gave accounts of both Hebrew and Greek ritual. In the case of the former, he interpreted the Levitican prescriptions regarding blood sacrifice in figural terms in such a way as to preclude the necessity of actually performing such sacrifices. The only ritual he claimed was necessary and efficacious after Christs resurrection was baptism.43 When it came to interpreting Greek sacrifice, his main contention, like that of so many other Christian thinkers before him, was that all blood sacrifices were made to evil daemons posing as gods and good spirits. In Contra Celsum, where one finds Origens most extensive discussion of these matters, knowledge about sacrifice and knowledge about various orders of spirits are treated together. In this work, Origen stated that all the gods of the heathen are gluttonous daemons, who wander around sacrifices and blood and the portion taken from the sacrifices, and deceive those who have not fled for refuge to the supreme God.44 These spirits occupy images and places either because they have been invoked by cer-tain magical spells or because in some other way they have been able to get possession of places for themselves, where they greedily partake of the portions of the sacrifices and seek for illicit pleasure and for lawless men.45 Implicit in Origens association of evil daemons with blood sac-rifices is the understanding that the personnel who perform them, namely priests, were in service to spiritual beings other than the highest god or gods. Rather, they offered worship to evil spirits.

Porphyry agreed with Origen on this association of evil daemons with blood sacrifices. He did so in two places that we know of, in fragments from On Philosophy from Oracles46 and in his On Abstinence from Killing Ani-


Firmicus Maternus and Porphyry before the Orphic Prorhesis (OF 245.1 Kern), Illinois Classical Studies 30 (2005): 13765, esp. n. 128.

47. Here Porphyry relies on Theophrastus, Aristotles successor at the Peripatetic school (Porph. Abst. 2.57 [Bouffartigue et al. 2:7477]). He writes: But when the first fruits offered by people in sacrifice went further into unlawfulness, the use of the most terrible sacrifices was introduced, full of savagery, so that the curses once pronounced against us seemed now to have reached their fulfillment: people were slaughtered, and stained the altars with blood, from the time when, having experienced famine and war they had blood on their hands. So the divine power (as Theophrastus says), in retaliation for both of these, imposed upon us, it seems, a fitting penalty. Accord-ingly, some people have become atheists; others, strictly speaking, are mind-forsaken rather than godforsaken, because they think the gods are base, no better than us in nature (Porph. Abst. 2.7 [Bouffartigue et al. 2:77; trans. Clark 57]).

48. Porph. Abst. 2.25 (Bouffartigue et al. 2:91; trans. Clark 65): We try to conceal the truth about sacrifices by the enjoyment that arises from them: we hide it from ourselves, but we cannot hide it from the god.

49. Porph. Abst. 2.42 (Bouffartigue et al. 2:109; trans. Clark 73). For an illu-minating discussion of the materiality of daemons and physical/medical meanings and associations of the term pneuma in antiquity see Greg Smith, How Thin is a Demon?, Journal of Early Christian Studies 16 (2008): 479512. For discussion of the medical and scientific associations of blood that ground Porphyrys views on sacrifice see Chapter Three, How to Feed a Daemon: The Demonic Conspiracy of Blood Sacrifice and the Moral Valencing of the Realm of Spirits in Heidi Marx-Wolf, Platonists and High Priests: Daemonology, Ritual and Social Order in the Third Century (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009).

50. Porph. Abst. 2.42 (Bouffartigue et al. 2:109; trans. Clark 73).51. Or. Cels. 7.31 (Markovich 546; trans. Chadwick 474): Now concerning food

and drink, we think that a man cannot feast with daemons except by eating what are

mals. In this latter work, Porphyrys reasoning formed part of a sustained argument for vegetarianism among philosophers. Yet in the course of mak-ing his argument, Porphyry elaborated a complex conspiracy surrounding blood sacrifices, a conspiracy in which the original order of sacrifices of plant matter, whether gathered or grown, was perverted through homi-cide and ritualized in animal sacrifice.47 This perversion was accompanied by a desire on the part of humans to eat meat, an activity that was also made licit once blood sacrifices became socially accepted.48 For Porphyry, this perversion of a primordial sacrificial relationship between gods and humans was both instigated and perpetuated by evil daemons, who, as in Origens writings, rejoiced in the drink offerings and smoking meats on which their pneumatic part grows fat.49 According to Porphyry, the pneuma of the daemon gone bad, lives on vapors and exhalations in a complex fashion and from complex sources, and it draws strength from the smoke that rises from blood and flesh.50 Origen limited this congress with evil daemons to the context of ritual sacrifices.51 But Porphyry, in making


popularly called sacred offerings, and by drinking the wine of the libations made to the daemons. Celsus, at least in Origens representation of him, appears to hold views on daemons that are similar in certain respects to those of both Porphyry and Iambli-chus: But Celsus thinks that a man is feasting with daemons even when he partakes of good and drinks some wine, and when he tastes fruits, and moreover, if he only drinks some water; even here, he says, the man who drinks is associating with dae-mons. He adds that even the man who breathes in common air gets from this certain daemons, since the daemons who have been given charge of the air grant to it living beings for breathing (Or. Cels. 8.31 [Markovich 546; trans. Chadwick 474]).

52. Eus. P. e. 4.23 (ed. Andrew Smith and David Wasserstein, Porphyrii Philosophi Fragmenta, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana [Stut-gardiae: Teubner, 1993] 326F; trans. Gifford 192).

53. In another fragment from On Philosophy from Oracles (Smith and Wasserstein 326F; my trans.), Porphyry outlines the reason one ought to avoid the ingestion of meat in even more explicit terms: And furthermore, every body is full of them. For they especially take delight in those beings well-fed on grasses ( ). For when we are eating, they approach and sit near the body, and the purifications are because of this, not because of the gods, so that those ones (the evil daemons) might depart. But they especially delight in blood and impurities and they take enjoy-ment of these by entering into those who use them.

his argument for vegetarianism, extended it to all consumption of meat. Implicit in the arguments of both writers is the conclusion that priests who perform these kinds of sacrifices are in reality feeding evil spirits.

In fragments from On Philosophy from Oracles, Porphyry qualified this implication somewhat by interpreting what he thought were Phoeni-cian and Egyptian practices in such a way as to preserve the reputation of priests from these ancient cultures for wisdom in religious matters. He claimed that these priests violently cracked leather thongs or whips () in the temples and dashed to earth () animals before worshipping the gods.52 According to Porphyry, they did this to drive out the daemons from the temple by giving them the pneuma (the breath or spirit) and blood of animals. Once these evil spirits departed, then the true parousia or manifestation of the god could occur. On this account, then, killing animals in temples had nothing to do with the actual worship of the gods. Rather it was merely a preliminary step, a prophylactic measure against daemonic interference in proper ritual. This view is still consistent with the one Porphyry held in On Abstinence, because these evil spirits are attracted and sated by the same things in both works, and one is warned in both cases to avoid eating meat.53 Furthermore, his views accord, for the most part, with Origens on the matter of blood sacrifices.

Modern readers may find themselves surprised by the close agreement between Origen and Porphyry on these matters, and by Porphyrys demoni-zation of animal sacrifice. But this is only surprising if one assumes that


54. Although some scholars have held the view that the Origen who studied with Ammonius was distinct from the Christian Origen, there is a growing consensus that the Platonist Origen and the Christian Origen are one and the same. For a discus-sion of the scholarship positing two distinct Origens see Beatrice, Porphyrys Judg-ment on Origen, 352; Thomas Bhm, Origenes, Theologe Und (Neu-) Platoniker? Oder: Wem soll man misstrauen, Eusebius oder Porphyrius? Adamantius 8 (2002): 723. I also wish to thank Elizabeth DePalma Digeser for sharing her recent work on the subject.

55. Eus. H. e. 6.19. See also Athanasius Syruss preface to Porphyrys Isagoge: Porphyry was from Tyre and was a disciple of Origen (Smith and Wasserstein, 24 n. 29aT). Eunapius, Vit. soph. 457, also implied that Porphyry had associated with Origen.

56. Beatrice, Porphyrys Judgment on Origen, 35455.57. Porph. Vit. Plot. 3. This is one of the most controversial claims of the one

Origen theory, since evidence for the text appears only in Hellene sources and no work of that title survives. Porphyry also says that Origen wrote nothing except On the Spirits (Concerning Daemons) and That the King is the Only Maker (ed. Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, Plotini opera, 3 vols. [Oxford: E Typographeo Clarendoniano, 19641982], 1:34: , . ). Elizabeth DePalma Digeser takes this to mean that these two works were the only ones that Platonists of the Ammonian school counted as philosophical works. I thank her for sharing her forthcoming manuscript, in particular Chapter Three (Origen as a Stu-dent of Ammonius), with me.

58. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy, 505.

religious identity was the primary determinant of third-century intellec-tuals views. It is less surprising when one begins to consider the actual connections between these two Platonists. First, both stood directly in the lineage of Ammonius Saccas, the mysterious Alexandrian Platonist and teacher to both Plotinus and Origen.54 Porphyry was Plotinuss student and wrote a biography of his teacher that highlights his connections to Ammonius. In a passage preserved in Eusebiuss Ecclesiastical History, Porphyry indicates that he knew Origen in his youth.55 As Beatrice points out, Porphyry was close enough to Origen at some point in his life to become familiar with the contents of the Alexandrians library and to be able to identify his main philosophical influences.56

It may even be the case that Porphyry derived his ideas about evil dae-mons directly from Origen. Both Porphyry and Longinus tell us that Origen wrote a work called Concerning the Demons.57 Furthermore, a number of modern authors have argued for Porphyrys dependence on Origen for his views on evil daemons. Lewy, who subscribed to the view that Ori-gen, the author of the work on daemons, was not the same person as the Christian Origen,58 devoted his Excursus Eleven in Chaldean Oracles and


59. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy, 497. 60. Beatrice, Porphyrys Judgment on Origen, 362. One way in which scholars

might determine actual connections between Origens Concerning the Demons would be to look at extant fragments of the work in Procluss Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato. This is the approach Lewy takes in his excursus. But given the recent schol-arship arguing for a single Origen, these fragments need to be reconsidered.

61. Porph. Abst. 2.49 (Bouffartigue et al. 114; trans. Clark 75): So the philoso-pher, priest of the god who rules all, reasonably abstains from all animal food. Porphyry repeats the idea that the philosopher is the only true priest in his Letter to Marcella 16.

62. Iamblichus was already in his thirties when he joined Porphyrys school in Rome and he had already spent considerable time training as a philosopher. For a more extensive discussion regarding the relationship between these two Platonists, see John M. Dillon, Iamblichus of Chalcis (c. 240325 AD), Aufstieg und Nieder-gang der rmischen Welt 2.36.2 (1987), 862909. See also H. D. Saffrey, Abamon, Pseudonyme de Jamblique, in Philomathes. Studies and Essays in the Humanities in Memory of Philip Merlan, ed. R. Hamerton-Kelly and R. B. Palmer (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971), 22739.

63. For a detailed discussion of the identification of Iamblichus with Abamon and the reasons why the philosopher assumed this pseudonym, see Saffrey, Abamon, Pseudonyme de Jamblique.

Theurgy to establishing that Porphyrys long description of demonology in On Abstinence, a discourse which he attributes to some Platonists ( ) was, in reality, based on Origens work Concern-ing the Demons.59 This opinion is not limited to supporters of the two Origen hypothesis. Beatrice, who identifies the two Origens as one and the same person, agrees with Lewy about the likelihood that Porphyrys daemonology was based on this treatise.60

Origen and Porphyry also agreed in their insistence that the high priest was the one who serves the highest god,61 and that one becomes a priest of this kind by living a philosophical sort of life, by being the one who, on the characterization of Origen, is most eminent in knowledge and wisdom by having made a study of things mysterious and esoteric. As a matter of fact, Porphyrys claim to ritual knowledge on the question of blood sacrifices put him at odds not with any Christian intellectual, but rather with his one time student and fellow Platonist, Iamblichus.62 Hence, by focusing on the daemonic, one finds not only unexpected agreement between Christian and non-Christian philosophers, but also internecine disagreement within the latter group, namely between Porphyry and Iamblichus.

Iamblichus wrote his On the Mysteries in response to a work by Por-phyry called Letter to Anebo.63 This work was supposedly directed to Iamblichus, who found in it a number of objectionable positions that he


64. Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004), xxix. In another article, I discuss these disagreements between Porphyry and Iamblichus in light of their differences regarding the possibility of the existence of a universal path to salvation and free-dom from pollution. See A Strange Consensus: Daemonological Discourse in Origen, Porphyry and Iamblichus, in The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity: Religion and Politics in Byzantium, Europe, and the Early Islamic World, ed. Elizabeth Depalma Digeser, Robert M. Frakes, and Justin Stephens (forthcoming).

65. Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 4 n. 16.66. Aug. Civ. 10.9 (ed. Bernard Dombart and Alphonse Kalb, De civitate dei, libri

IX, CCSL 47 [Turnhout: Typographi Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1955], 28182; trans. Henry Scowcroft Bettenson, Augustine: Concerning the City of God against the Pagans [London: Penguin Books, 2003], 383).

67. Aug. Civ. 10.9 (Dombart and Kalb 282; trans. Bettenson 384). The difference between the spiritual and intellectual souls likely refers to the Platonic idea of the tri-partite soul as expounded in both Platos Republic and Timaeus. Thus, what Porphyry likely meant is that theurgic rites help that part of the human soul associated with

thought required extensive corrective comment.64 On the Mysteries was a defense of the importance of theurgy, even over and above theology. The term theurgy (), meaning god work, originated with second-century Platonists who used it to refer to the deifying power of Chaldean rituals.65 In his Letter to Anebo, Porphyry asked whether certain rites such as standing on characters could invoke the presence of the gods by constraining them to follow the will of the ritualist. Iamblichus disagreed with this characterization of the way ritual works, maintaining that the gods cannot be constrained, but rather are always predisposed to help those who make use of the connections already built into the fabric of the cosmos between gods and souls, connections that are activated by certain god-given rituals, such as prayers and sacrifices. Iamblichus included tradi-tional religious rituals among these, arguing that they were established and given to human souls by the gods and that these cult practices exemplified divine principles that provided for the deification of the human soul.

Porphyry did not dismiss the utility of theurgy entirely, but it appears that he wanted to place limits on its effectiveness for returning the soul to its primordial condition or reunifying it with its source. According to Augustine, Porphyry, perhaps in clarifying his position in response to Iam-blichus criticisms, held the view that the spiritual element of the soul could be put into a proper condition, capable of welcoming spirits and angels, and of seeing gods by means of theurgy.66 But, according to Augustine, Porphyry limited the effectiveness of these rites and argued that they did not affect any purification of the intellectual soul which would fit it to see its God and to apprehend the true realities.67


passions and emotions, affections that arise as a result of embodiment. But theurgy does not help the soul cleansed of passions to reunite with God. This is the point where ritual ceases and contemplation is the mode of return. By contrast, Iamblichus argued for the importance of theurgic rites to the final stages of the souls ascent and reunion with its source.

68. Iamb. Myst. 1.16 (ed. duoard des Places, Jamblique: Les mystres dgypt. Collection Bud [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1966], 6768).

69. Iamb. Myst. 5.10 (des Places 165; trans. Clarke et al. 243).70. Iamb. Myst. 5.9 (des Places 164).71. Gregory Shaw describes this interaction between human and divine action in the

following way: Thus, in theurgy the human activity becomes the vehicle for a divine activity measured by the receptive capacity (epitedeiotes) of a soul that experiences a secret sumpatheia with divine powers. Gregory Shaw, Neoplatonic Theurgy and Dionysius the Areopagite, Journal of Early Christian Studies 7 (1999): 589.

Iamblichuss criticisms of Porphyrys questions and positions on the issue of theurgic practices, such as sacrifice, are very pointed. But at stake for Iamblichus was not only the salvation of the philosophers soul, but also the salvation of all souls. For implicit in Porphyrys view that priests who sacrificed animals were worshipping evil spirits was the corollary that anyone who partook of these sacrifices was also participating in this worship. Furthermore, Iamblichus was also concerned about the place of the philosopher as ritual expert in a changing religious and ideological landscape. Iamblichuss daemonology in On the Mysteries is one place where all of these points of disagreement between the two philosophers are highlighted.

Throughout significant portions of On the Mysteries, Iamblichus chides Porphyry for his almost global failure to understand the nature of dae-mons, both good and evil, as well as other kinds of spiritual beings. First, his former teacher attributed a kind of corporeality to these entities that they, on philosophical grounds, could not have.68 Porphyry confused ques-tions about their essence with questions concerning accidental qualities, of which daemons have none because of their incorporeality. But the worst blunder of all was Porphyrys claim that some daemons were ensnared by the vapors of animal sacrifices, and that these sacrifices nourished spirits of this sort who are somehow dependent on them.69 Iamblichus objected to the entirety of Porphyrys opinion on this issue. First, accord-ing to Iamblichus, all sacrifices were divinely ordained.70 All ordained practices worked in such a way as to affirm and strengthen the bonds of philia and sympatheia established by gods, heroes, daemons, and other good spirits with human souls. And when humans performed these rites, they set in motion or activated these relationships already built into the fabric and order of the cosmos.71 Accordingly, each cosmic level had its


72. Iamb. Myst. 5.9 (des Places 164; trans. Clarke 241): Since these relationships are numerous, and some have an immediate source of influence, as in the case of dae-monic ones, while others are superior to these, having divine causes, and, higher than these again, there is the one pre-eminent cause, all these levels of cause are activated by the performance of perfect sacrifice; each level of cause is related to the sacrifice in accordance with the rank to which it has been allotted.

73. Iamb. Myst. 5.14 (des Places 16869; trans. Clarke et al. 249).74. Iamb. Myst. 5.14 (des Places 16869; trans. Clarke et al. 249, 251).75. Iamb. Myst. 5.16 (des Places 171; trans. Clarke et al. 253). This seems to

accord with things Porphyry says in On the Return of the Soul. 76. Iamb. Myst. 5.11. (des Places 166; trans. Clarke et al. 245).77. Iamb. Myst. 2.11 (des Places 96; trans. Clarke et al. 115): Indeed what, then,

would hinder those who are theoretical philosophers ( ) from enjoying a theurgic union with the gods? But the situation is not so: it is the accom-plishment of acts not to be divulged and beyond all conception, and the power of unut-terable symbols, understood solely by the gods, which establishes theurgic union.

appropriate set of rituals.72 In the case of blood sacrifices, these rites did not propitiate evil daemons, rather they were the perfect sacrifice for those material gods ( ) who embrace matter within themselves and impose order on it.73 He writes, And so, in sacrifices, dead bodies deprived of life, the slaughter of animals and the consumption of their bodies, and every sort of change and destruction, and in general processes of dissolution are suitable to those gods who preside over matter.74 These animal sacrifices helped and healed the worshipper who was constrained by the body and must suffer accordingly. They also aided in the release of the soul from its attachment to the body. Indeed, Iamblichus argued that human beings were frequently involved with gods and good daemons that watch over the body, purifying from impurities, freeing it from disease, cutting away what is heavy or sluggish.75

Iamblichus used fire to explain how sacrifices symbolize the way in which these spirits help human souls to become free. He writes, The offering of sacrifice by means of fire is actually such as to consume and annihilate matter, assimilate it to itself rather than assimilating itself to matter, and elevating it towards the divine and heavenly and immaterial fire.76 This explanation of sacrifices transformative power ran counter to Porphyrys mere propitiation of evil spirits. One sacrificed and burned animals, their flesh and blood, in order to become free from flesh and body. Instead of being a polluting practice, it was a purifying one.

Iamblichus also insisted that the order of sacrifices could not be confused or circumvented. Even the person who dedicated his or her life to philo-sophical pursuits and theological speculation must, if he or she wished to be healed of the suffering associated with embodiment and generation, per-form the proper sacrifices in the correct order and manner.77 This position


78. Iamb. Myst. 5.15 (des Places 170; trans. Clarke et al. 253): So if one does not grant some such mode of worship to cities and peoples not freed from the fated pro-cesses of generation and from a society dependent on the body, one will continue to fail of both types of good, both the immaterial and the material; for they are not capable of receiving the former, and for the latter they are not making the right offering. Gregory Shaw, Neoplatonic Theurgy and Dionysius the Areopagite, 578, explains that the reason Iamblichus denied the possibility that human souls could philosophize their way back to union with the one was that the soul, when it descended, did so completely. Iamblichus disagreed with Plotinus and Porphyry on this point, both of whom believed that some part of the soul remained connected with its source.

79. Saffrey, Abamon, Pseudonyme De Jamblique, 23438, has offered an intrigu-ing interpretation of this name. He argues that Iamblichus combined the Syriac/Hebrew word for father (Aba) with the Egyptian deity Amon (also Ammon or Amoun), a deity identified by Plutarch with Zeus, the highest god in the Greek pan-theon. Thus the name would mean father of god (in Greek it would be or ), a phrase which Porphyry used in his Sententiae to identify the one who has attained the highest level of virtue, namely the level of paradigmatic virtues.

80. Iamb. Myst. 5.20 (des Places 175). 81. Iamb. Myst. 5.20 (des Place 175; trans. Clarke et al. 261).

ran counter to the one Iamblichus represented as Porphyrys, namely that one can think ones way out of the bonds of nature. According to Iam-blichus, Porphyry was of the opinion that the philosopher did not need theurgy but could reach God by virtue of the intellect. Not only was it the case for Iamblichus that philosophers could not think their way to union with the One, but everyday people and communities or states were left with no soteriological recourse according to Porphyrys view of things.78

On the one hand, then, Iamblichus appears to have been defending a key ritual of traditional cult against one of its detractors. Yet Iamblichus was neither defending animal sacrifices nor lending support for the reli-gious and ritual status quo of his day; rather, he was constructing a certain image of cult by way of an apologia for sacrifice. And he wrote himself into this construction as an expert on, not just theological matters, but ritual ones as well. The first indication he gives is his choice to write under the guise of an Egyptian priest, Abamon.79 He elaborates this identity in more detail as he proceeds.

In Book Five, Iamblichus asserts that sacrifices have a proper order that reflected the cosmic order.80 The law of cult ( ), he writes, assigns like to like, and extends their principle from highest to the lowest levels.81 This implies that in order for one to follow the laws of cult, one must have an extensive knowledge of the god to whom one sacrifices and all the appropriate connectionsfrom highest to lowestthat obtain within the physical cosmos to each particular deity. And if one wished to make contact with what Iamblichus called the gods of


82. Iamb. Myst. 5.20 (des Places 175; trans. Clarke et al. 261, 263).83. Iamb. Myst. 5.21 (des Places 176; trans. Clarke et al. 263).84. Iamb. Myst. 5.21 (des Places 176; trans. Clarke et al. 263). 85. Iamb. Myst. 5.22 (des Places 177; trans. Clarke et al. 265). The hieratic supe-

riority of the theurgist continued to be affirmed in later Platonists, such as Proclus. Polymnia Athanassiadi puts it well: It is within this cosmic logic of unity and union through love that Proclus proclaims his optimistic message that the theurgists ascend-ing practice brings salvation to humanity at large: at that moment imitating his own god by whom he is possessed, the divine love breaks away and leads upwards the well-born, perfects the imperfect and provides success to those in need of salvation (In Alc. 53, 912). In other words, in his sweeping ascent towards the realm of sing-ing light the theurgist bolsters the struggle of everyone who strives consciously or unconsciously towards union (The Chaldean Oracles: Theology and Theurgy, in Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, ed. Athanassiadi and Frede, 14984, quoted at 17677).

theurgy ( ), this required considerable knowledge and preparation. In order to emphasize just how rare such an individual is, i.e. one who knows the laws of cult, Iamblichus notes that

one should not therefore take a feature that manifests itself in the case of a particular individual, as the result of great effort and long preparation, as the consummation of the hieratic art, and present it as something common to all men, but not even as something immediately available to those beginning theurgy, and not yet those who have reached a middling degree of proficiency in it; for even these latter endow their performance of cult with some degree of corporeal influence.82

But who is the individual sufficiently trained in the hieratic art to be able to perform the proper ceremony, a ceremony not simple, but multi-form () and panharmonic () and composed of everything contained in the world ( )? He answers that it is the theurgist: . . . only the theur-gists know these things exactly through having made trial of them in prac-tice, then only these can know what is the proper method of performing the hieratic art.83 Only these theurgists realize that any elements omit-ted, even minor ones, can subvert the whole performance of cult.84 And only such a one is able to ascend to the One, which is supreme master of the whole multiplicity (of divisions) and in concert with that, at the same time, pay court to all the other essences and principles.85

The reader of these passages is led to ask after the identity of these ritual experts, these high priests of the hieratic arts. Certainly Iamblichus would have us count his pseudonymous Abamon among this elite group, and thereby himself. But was he making a similar claim for all Egyptian priests? In fact, he was not. Unlike Origen and Porphyry, however, who


86. Iamb. Myst. 5.14 (des Places 168). 87. Iamb. Myst. 3.28 (des Places 138; trans. Clarke et al. 189).88. Iamb. Myst. 3.28 (des Places 139; trans. Clarke et al. 189). 89. This is especially the case among Platonist theurgists who come after Iambli-

chus. According to Todd Krulak, the telestic arts represented the theurgists partici-pation in the demiurgic activity of ensouling matter. Krulak argued this point with reference to Proclus in his paper, Its a Small World: Statue Animation and Platonic Cosmogony in Proclus Commentary on the Timaeus, delivered in San Diego at the meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature (November 2007). In his abstract, Kru-lak argues that it is important to understand that statue animation was a ritual that did not occur in isolation, but rather served as a communal act in which the Pla-tonic cosmogony is remembered and reproduced. He continues: Proclus repeated comparisons between the role of the telestes, the ritual expert, and that of the Pla-tonic Demiurge on the one hand, and between the cult image and the Universe on the other, suggest that the practice has implications that extend beyond simply the cultivation of oracular pronouncements. Indeed . . . the cosmogonic rehearsal found in statue animation can be viewed as a communal reminder both of the authority of Platos account and of the soteriological power of theurgy.

both claimed that the priest offering blood sacrifices to the gods was, in reality, worshipping evil daemons, Iamblichus granted these practitioners a role in proper cult. As already noted, these priests made offerings to material spirits ( ),86 i.e. good daemons or material archons. But such priests did not offer worship to the higher gods. In other words, they fell short of the expertise of the true theurgist. Hence, like Origen, Iambli-chus was positioning himself in such a way as to supplant other religious experts and to claim the highest priesthood for himself.

Elsewhere in On the Mysteries, Iamblichus addressed the status of certain religious personnel in a more explicitly negative fashion while at the same time refuting another claim of Porphyrys. In his Letter to Anebo, Porphyry had asserted that there are generators of effective images ( )87 and that they make these images with the aid of the stars in their revolutions.88 An effective image of this sort would have been one that incited the god to take up some sort of residence in it. This ritual of statue animation is frequently referred to in the magical papyri. But Platonic theurgists also practiced this art, seeing it as a kind of demiurgical work, an ensouling of matter.89 And Porphyry himself made explicit reference to the practice of making cult statues when he discussed the philosopher as priest in On Abstinence from Killing Animals:

The real philosopher has knowledge of many things: he notes signs, he understands the facts of nature, he is intelligent and orderly and moderate, protecting himself in all respects. And just as a priest of one of the particular gods is expert in setting up cult-statues of this god, and in his rites and initiations and purifications and the like, so the priest of the god


90. Porph. Abst. 2.49 (Bouffartigue et al. 114; trans. Clark 75): , , .

91. Iamb. Myst. 3.28 (des Places 140; trans. Clarke et al. 191).92. David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 2930, 21314.93. Dieleman, Priest, Tongues, and Rites, 1.

who rules all is expert in the making of his cult statue and in purifications and the other rites by which he is linked to the god.90

In this quote we see how close Porphyry and Iamblichus really were in their understanding of philosophers as priests and theurgists. This is likely part of the reason why Iamblichus marked their differences so dramatically.

Iamblichus objected to the idea that an ordinary image-maker might be able to invoke divinities. He responds:

Then, in accordance with the truth, we must demonstrate that the image-maker does not use the astral revolutions or the powers inherent in them, or the powers found naturally around them, nor is he at all able to control them; rather he operates with those emanating last from nature in the visible [realm] about the extreme part of the universe, and does so purely by technical skill, and not by theurgic skill.91

Presumably, then, by theurgic skill, one can participate in the demiurgic activity of ensouling matter. But this is the purview of specialists, not everyday craftsmen. But who were the image-makers at the center of this disagreement between Porphyry and Iamblichus? The one kind of artifact extant from this period that describes the actual ritual of mak-ing a cult statue and animating it are the corpus of magical papyri. Who would have created these artifacts and used them? More often than not, they would have been some kind of local religious expert, a priest of a local temple or shrine. If David Frankfurter is correct in his assess-ment of the third-century religious landscape in Egypt, ordinary temple priests would have engaged in activities such as the creation of amulets and small, portable cult images with increasing frequency as they tried to supplement their dwindling state incomes and bolster their authority and prestige.92 According to Jacco Dieleman, the Greek and bilingual (Greek/Demotic) magical papyri bear important resemblances to the Corpus Hermeticum in terms of when these texts first started to be produced and their international content and influence.93 Scholars used to think that


94. Dieleman, Priest, Tongues, and Rites, 2. 95. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy, 228.96. Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites, 9. 97. See Dieleman, Priest, Tongues, and Rites, 286: Egyptian priests, bereft of their

income by economic measures taken by the Roman government, mimic the Hellenistic image of their profession to secure financial gain from the Hellenistic elite, which is interested in personal religious experience and close contact with the divine through the agency of an oriental guru.

98. Eun. Vit. soph. 458 (ed. and trans. Wilmer Cave France Wright, Philostra-tus and Eunapius: The Lives of the Sophists, LCL 134 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989], 36263):

both corpuses were produced in a Greek cultural context. But more recent research suggests that they reflect Egyptian religious thought and a priestly milieu.94 In his book on the Chaldean Oracles, Hans Lewy correctly notes that what we know of theurgical ritesthe lustrations, conjunctions, supplications and invocations, the telestic arts, and other practices aimed at eliciting epiphanies and autophanesare all found in the papyri.95 The authors, temple archivists, preservers, and copyists of these ritual or hier-atic descriptions were, according to Dieleman, well-educated Egyptian priests who were creating religious products that catered to a Hellenistic and Roman clientele: Egyptian priests who had lost their state subsi-dies with the introduction of Roman rule, had to look for new sources of income and found those in a Greco-Roman clientele willing to pay for divine illumination.96

So Iamblichus was, in essence, discrediting everyday Egyptian priests as creators and purveyors of religious products that merely engaged the lowest of all natural forces using mere techne\. This is peculiar because at the same time he was posing as one of them. In other words, while he wrote as an illustrious and authoritative Egyptian priest, Abamon, and garnered cultural capital based on this image, he undermined everyday priests. Because the religious landscape of Egypt (and much of the Medi-terranean) was in flux and priests were purveying their services, expertise, and products to broader clientele with new applications, Iamblichus was able to take on this malleable identity and use it for his own ends.97

One possible objection to my efforts to put Iamblichus into closer prox-imity, and even rivalry, with the priest-ritualists who created, preserved, and used artifacts like the papyri handbooks, amulets, curses, spells, and so forth is that he himself came from a very important family of the highest standing in Syrian society. For instance, Eunapius tells us that Iamblichus was of illustrious ancestry and he belonged to an opulent and prosper-ous family.98 In other words, one might wonder why Iamblichus would


, .

99. John M. Dillon, Iamblichi Chalcidensis in Platonis dialogus commentariorum fragmenta (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 5: the descendents of Sampsigeramos continued to rule Emesa until the reign of Domitian, and even thereafter were dominant in the area.

even bother with these craftsmen of spirituality at all, being from the social class he was. But another aspect of his ancestry complicates the pic-ture further. One of Iamblichuss ancestors, Sampsigeramos, was a founder of the line of priest-kings of Emesa, a group active in governing the area well into the imperial period.99 This means that Iamblichuss own identity as a member of the Syrian elite had a religious dimension that he seems to have taken rather seriously given the topics to which he devoted some of his most important thinking. He is not the only Syrian to have taken this aspect of his ancestry and identity seriously. We need only look at the way in which the emperor Elagabalus both came to power and conducted him-self during his reign to find a compelling example of just how far a member of the Syrian provincial elite from a priestly family could go in the third century. Although most of his Roman contemporaries saw his behavior as bizarre and offensive, there are other possible perspectives that make sense of some of Elagabaluss actions and choices. For instance, he may have been enacting his role as pontifex maximus in a Syrian idiom. And he may have seen this role as the most important facet of what it meant to be emperor and to rule. The reign of Elagabalus makes the point that in a time of increased social mobility, such as the third century, someone like Iamblichus may have had even more at stake as a provincial elite than in earlier periods and hence situated his own social standing within this more fluid late Roman arena. Further support is lent to this interpre-tation when we consider that members of traditional priesthoods with philosophical predilections in both Syria and Egypt were actively engaged in the production of theological texts, such as the Chaldean Oracles and Hermetic writings.

In fact, a certain irony emerges when one asks what Iamblichuss sources might have been for his understanding of Egyptian myth, ritual, and hieratic practice. It is unlikely that he would have known the Egyp-tian language. Native Egyptians who wished to better their situation in life learned Greek under both the Ptolemies and the Romans. But it was rare that Greek speakers perceived any advantage in learning Egyptian. Although it is unlikely that Iamblichus learned Egyptian, he probably spent time in Egypt. Both B. Dalgaard Larsen and Polymnia Athanassiadi


100. Polymnia Athanassiadi, The Oecumenism of Iamblichus, 246. B. Dalsgaard Larsen, La place de Jamblique dans la philosophie antique tardive, in De Jamblique Proclus, ed. H. Drrie, Entretiens sur lantiquit classique (Geneva: Foundation Hardt, 1975), 24.

101. For the most complete and detailed work on Iamblichuss biography as a whole, see John Dillon, Iamblichus of Chalcis (c. 240325 AD).

102. For a discussion of the events surrounding the destruction of the Bruchion quarter see Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins, 1997), 28 and 366 n. 18. See also Steward Irvin Oost, The Alexandrian Seditions under Philip and Gallienus, Classical Phi-lology 56 (1961): 120.

103. Athanassiadi, The Oecumenism of Iamblichus, 246, also argues for Her-metic influence on Iamblichuss writings: To the present reviewers mind, [Iambli-chus] drew much more from Egypt in general and the Hermetic milieu in particular than has ever been suspected. . . . Indeed, one of Iamblichus primary achievements is to have shown how this contemporary Hermetic literatureso diverse in style and content (DMVIII.4.265, I.260 and VI.5)had absorbed much that was of Greek and Hellenistic origin without sacrificing its essentially Egyptian character (DM8.5; cf. 7.5.258).

104. Beatrice, Porphyrys Judgment on Origen.

argue compellingly that Iamblichus spent considerable time in Alexandria as a young man.100 It may have been in Alexandria that he studied with Anatolius, the future bishop of Laodicaea. Scholars generally accept that Iamblichus was born around 240 c.e.101 and that Anatolius left Alexandria after the destruction of the Brucheon quarter around 270 c.e., the area of the city where most of the teachers and philosophers were known to have resided.102 Thus, because Iamblichus studied with Anatolius before going to Porphyrys school in Rome in his early thirties, Alexandria seems the most likely place for his studies with the former.103 So although Iamblichus was a descendent of an important family of priest-kings in Emesa he chose to assume the identity of an Egyptian priest. Iamblichus may have also drawn on this Egyptian identity because of the importance of Alexandria to the Platonic lineage of Ammonius Saccas, a lineage that, as Beatrice notes, was not uncontested.104

Based on the foregoing considerations, one can understand why Iambli-chus may have chose to fashion his priestly identity in Egyptian terms. The question remains as to the textual sources of Iamblichuss knowledge of Egyptian religion. Garth Fowden suggests that Iamblichus relied on Her-metic writings in this regard. We find evidence of this Hermetic focus in Book 8 of On the Mysteries, where Iamblichus provided his reader with an account of Egyptian theology. Here he interpreted Egyptian cosmology in terms of Platonic emanation, from an original triadic unity mediated to the heavenly gods through Hermes and leader of the heavenly Kneph, working down to the demiurgic Nous and beyond to Amun, Ptah, and


105. Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 138.

106. See Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 13839: In other words, there existed what may best be called theological Hermetica, which described the gods in the Stoic man-ner in terms of the powers inherent in physical creation and discussed the names variously assigned them by the Egyptians and the Greeks. There are obvious paral-lels with the passages just quoted from the De mysteriis; and we may assume that it was at least in part from these theological Hermetica that Iamblichus compiled his account of Egyptian doctrine concerning the gods.

107. Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 138.108. Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 167. Chaeremon was a first-century Egyptian

priest (hierogrammateus) and Stoic philosopher who became Neros tutor before his accession. Athanassiadi, The Chaldaean Oracles, 15455, notes a similar associa-tion of local priests educated in philosophy in second-century Apamea. She cites an inscription that mentions a priest of Bel who was also head of the Epicurean school in the city. She tentatively identifies the sanctuary of Bel and its priesthood as the milieu in which the Chaldean Oracles were produced and disseminated. Philosophical interest in the oracles could have been transmitted through the platonist philosopher Numenius whose school was also at Apamea.

Osiris. Fowden notes that scholars have found this account puzzling: There is some traditional Egyptian material (though not such as was unavailable in the Greek literature on the subject), jumbled together with relatively late Greek philosophical speculation and little clue to how it all fits together.105 Fowden claims that we can only really understand what is going on in Book 8 if we look back to Plutarch to

High Priests of the Highest God: Third-Century Platonists as Ritual Experts

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