1.
Ancient philosophy
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This page lists some links to ancient philosophy. Genuinely philosophical thought, depending upon original individual insights, arose in many cultures roughly contemporaneously, karl Jaspers termed the intense period of philosophical development beginning around the 7th century and concluding around the 3rd century BCE an Axial Age in human thought. Chinese philosophy is the dominant philosophical thought in China and other countries within the East Asian cultural sphere share a common language, including Japan, Korea. The Hundred Schools of Thought were philosophers and schools that flourished from the 6th century to 221 BCE, the thoughts and ideas discussed and refined during this period have profoundly influenced lifestyles and social consciousness up to the present day in East Asian countries. The intellectual society of this era was characterized by itinerant scholars, who were employed by various state rulers as advisers on the methods of government, war. This period ended with the rise of the Qin Dynasty and the subsequent purge of dissent, a main idea of Confucianism is the cultivation of virtue and the development of moral perfection. Confucianism holds that one should give up ones life, if necessary, either passively or actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren, the Legalists exalted the state above all, seeking its prosperity and martial prowess over the welfare of the common people. Harmony with the Universe, or the source thereof, is the result of many Taoist rules and practices. Mohism, which advocated the idea of love, Mozi believed that everyone is equal before heaven. Mozi advocated frugality, condemning the Confucian emphasis on ritual and music, naturalism, the School of Naturalists or the Yin-yang school, which synthesized the concepts of yin-yang and the Five Elements, Zou Yan is considered the founder of this school. Agrarianism, or the School of Agrarianism, which advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism, the Logicians or the School of Names, which focused on definition and logic. It is said to have parallels with that of the Ancient Greek sophists or dialecticians, the most notable Logician was Gongsun Longzi. Scholars from this school were good orators, debaters and tacticians, the Miscellaneous School, which integrated teachings from different schools, for instance, Lü Buwei found scholars from different schools to write a book called Lüshi Chunqiu cooperatively. This school tried to integrate the merits of various schools and avoid their perceived flaws, the School of Minor-talks, which was not a unique school of thought, but a philosophy constructed of all the thoughts which were discussed by and originated from normal people on the street. Another group is the School of the Military that studied strategy, however, this school was not one of the Ten Schools defined by Hanshu. The founder of the Qin Dynasty, who implemented Legalism as the official philosophy, Legalism remained influential until the emperors of the Han Dynasty adopted Daoism and later Confucianism as official doctrine. These latter two became the forces of Chinese thought until the introduction of Buddhism. In contrast, there was an Old Text school that advocated the use of Confucian works written in ancient language that were so much more reliable
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Western philosophy
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Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. The word philosophy itself originated from the Hellenic, philosophia, literally, the scope of philosophy in the ancient understanding, and the writings of the ancient philosophers, were all intellectual endeavors. Western Philosophy is generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western Asia Minor with Thales of Miletus and his most noted students were respectively Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus. Pythagoras, from the island of Samos off the coast of Ionia, pythagoreans hold that all is number, giving formal accounts in contrast to the previous material of the Ionians. They also believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation, Socrates The key figure in Greek philosophy is Socrates. Socrates studied under several Sophists but transformed Greek philosophy into a unified, Socrates used a critical approach called the elenchus or Socratic method to examine peoples views. He aimed to study human things, the life, justice, beauty. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, some of his many disciples wrote down his conversations and he was tried for corrupting the youth and impiety by the Greek democracy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles. His execution consisting in drinking the poison hemlock and he died in 399 B. C, Plato Socrates most important student was Plato. Plato founded the Academy of Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, some central ideas of Platos dialogues are the immortality of the soul, the benefits of being just, that evil is ignorance, and the Theory of Forms. Forms are universal properties that constitute reality and contrast with the changeable material things he called becoming. Aristotle Platos most outstanding student was Aristotle, Aristotle was perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher and scientist. He wrote books on physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, politics, Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. Aristotelian philosophy exercised considerable influence on almost all western philosophers, including Greek, Roman, Christian, Jewish, the Neoplatonic and Christian philosophers of Late Antiquity. Early medieval philosophy was influenced by the likes of Stoicism, neo-Platonism, but, above all, the prominent figure of this period was St. Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers up until the 13th century. The foundations of many northern European universities were built in the Middle Ages by waves of Irish, Scottish & English monks from the Celtic Church begun by Columba, see Celtic Christianity. Erigena is said to have been stabbed to death by his students with their pens and his theology would today be called pantheistic, in keeping with Celtic resolutions of pagan and Christian philosophy
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Neoplatonism
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Neoplatonists were heavily influenced by Plato, but also by the Platonic tradition that thrived during the six centuries which separated the first of the Neoplatonists from Plato. In defining the term Neoplatonism, it is difficult to reduce the school of thought to a set of ideas that all Neoplatonic philosophers shared in common. The work of Neoplatonic philosophy involved describing the derivation of the whole of reality from a single principle, instead, the most concise definition of Neoplatonism casts it as a historical term. Thinkers of this period include Syrianus, Olympiodorus the Younger. Neoplatonism has been influential throughout history. In the Middle Ages, Neoplatonic ideas were integrated into the philosophical and theological works of many of the most important medieval Islamic, Christian, yeats and T. S. Eliot, among many more. The term Neoplatonism has a function as a historical category. On the one hand, it differentiates the philosophical doctrines of Plotinus, on the other, the term makes an assumption about the novelty of Plotinus interpretation of Plato. The term Neoplatonism implies that Plotinus interpretation of Plato was so distinct from those of his predecessors that it should be thought to introduce a new period in the history of Platonism. Some contemporary scholars, however, have taken issue with this assumption and have doubted that Neoplatonism constitutes a useful label and they claim that merely marginal differences separate Plotinus teachings from those of his immediate predecessors. Whether Neoplatonism is a meaningful or useful historical category is itself a central question concerning the history of the interpretation of Plato, for much of the history of Platonism, it was commonly accepted that the doctrines of the Neoplatonists were essentially the same as those of Plato. The Renaissance Platonist Marsilio Ficino, for instance, thought that the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato was an authentic, contemporary scholars often identify the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher as an early thinker who took Platos philosophy to be separate from that of his Neoplatonic interpreters. However, others have argued that the differentiation of Plato from Neoplatonism was the result of a historical development that preceded Schleiermachers scholarly work on Plato. The most important forerunners of Neoplatonism are the Middle Platonists, such as Plutarch, Neoplatonism is generally a metaphysical and epistemological philosophy. Neoplatonism is a form of idealistic monism combined with elements of polytheism, although the founder of Neoplatonism is supposed to have been Ammonius Saccas, the Enneads of his pupil Plotinus are the primary and classical document of Neoplatonism. One of the features of Plotinus system, which was also taken up by subsequent Neoplatonists, is the doctrine of the One beyond being. For Plotinus, the first principle of reality is a simple, ineffable, unknowable subsistence which is both the creative source and the teleological end of all existing things. Although, properly speaking, there is no name appropriate for the first principle, the One is so simple that it cannot even be said to exist or to be a being
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Porphyry (philosopher)
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Porphyry of Tyre was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre, in the Roman Empire. He edited and published the Enneads, the collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. His commentary on Euclids Elements was used as a source by Pappus of Alexandria and he also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics. His Isagoge, or Introduction, is an introduction to logic and philosophy, under Longinus he studied grammar and rhetoric. In 262 he went to Rome, attracted by the reputation of Plotinus, at one point he became suicidal. On the advice of Plotinus he went to live in Sicily for five years to recover his mental health, on returning to Rome, he lectured on philosophy and completed an edition of the writings of Plotinus together with a biography of his teacher. Iamblichus is mentioned in ancient Neoplatonic writings as his pupil, the two men differed publicly on the issue of theurgy. In his later years, he married Marcella, a widow with seven children, little more is known of his life, and the date of his death is uncertain. Porphyry is best known for his contributions to philosophy, in medieval textbooks, the all-important Arbor porphyriana illustrates his logical classification of substance. To this day, taxonomy benefits from concepts in Porphyrys Tree, the Introduction was translated into Arabic by Abd-Allāh Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ from a Syriac version. With the Arabicized name Isāghūjī it long remained the standard introductory text in the Muslim world and influenced the study of theology, philosophy, grammar. Besides the adaptations and epitomes of this work, many independent works on logic by Muslim philosophers have been entitled Isāghūjī, Porphyrys discussion of accident sparked a long-running debate on the application of accident and essence. There is debate as to whether it was written in his youth or closer in time to the persecutions of Christians under Diocletian, whether or not Porphyry was the pagan philosopher opponent in Lactantius Divine Institutes, written at the time of the persecutions, has long been discussed. The fragments of the Philosophy from Oracles are only quoted by Christians, especially Eusebius, Theodoret, Augustine, the fragments contain oracles identifying proper sacrificial procedure, the nature of astrological fate, and other topics relevant for Greek and Roman religion in the third century. Whether this work contradicts his treatise defending vegetarianism, which warned the philosopher to avoid animal sacrifice, is disputed among scholars. During his retirement in Sicily, Porphyry wrote Against the Christians which consisted of fifteen books, Porphyry acknowledged Jesus Christ only as an outstanding philosopher. Some thirty Christian apologists, such as Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, Augustine, Jerome, in fact, everything known about Porphyry’s arguments is found in these refutations, largely because Theodosius II ordered every copy burned in A. D.435 and again in 448. Porphyry became one of the most able pagan adversaries of Christianity of his day and his aim was not to disprove the substance of Christianity’s teachings but rather the records within which the teachings are communicated
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Pythagoras
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Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and the putative founder of the movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written centuries after he lived. He was born on the island of Samos, and travelled, visiting Egypt and Greece, around 530 BC, he moved to Croton, in Magna Graecia, and there established some kind of school or guild. In 520 BC, he returned to Samos, Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy and religion in the late 6th century BC. He is often revered as a mathematician and scientist and is best known for the Pythagorean theorem which bears his name. Many of the accomplishments credited to Pythagoras may actually have been accomplishments of his colleagues, some accounts mention that the philosophy associated with Pythagoras was related to mathematics and that numbers were important. It was said that he was the first man to himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom, and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato. Burkert states that Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus are the most important accounts, Aristotle had written a separate work On the Pythagoreans, which is no longer extant. However, the Protrepticus possibly contains parts of On the Pythagoreans and his disciples Dicaearchus, Aristoxenus, and Heraclides Ponticus had written on the same subject. These writers, late as they are, were among the best sources from whom Porphyry and Iamblichus drew, while adding some legendary accounts. Herodotus, Isocrates, and other writers agree that Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus and born on the Greek island of Samos. His father is said to have been a gem-engraver or a wealthy merchant, a late source gives his mothers name as Pythais. As to the date of his birth, Aristoxenus stated that Pythagoras left Samos in the reign of Polycrates, at the age of 40, around 530 BC he arrived in the Greek colony of Croton in what was then Magna Graecia. There he founded his own school the members of which he engaged to a disciplined. He furthermore aquired some political influence, on Greeks and non-Greeks of the region, following a conflict with the neighbouring colony of Sybaris, internal discord drove most of the Pythagoreans out of Croton. Pythagoras left the city before the outbreak of civil unrest and moved to Metapontum, after his death, his house was transformed into a sanctuary of Demeter, out of veneration for the philosopher, by the local population. In ancient sources there was disagreement and inconsistency about the late life of Pythagoras. His tomb was shown at Metapontum in the time of Cicero, according to Walter Burkert, Most obvious is the contradiction between Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus, regarding the catastrophe that overwhelmed the Pythagorean society
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Neopythagoreanism
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Neopythagoreanism was a school of Hellenistic philosophy which revived Pythagorean doctrines. Neopythagoreanism was influenced by Middle Platonism and in turn influenced Neoplatonism and it originated in the 1st century BCE and flourished during the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. The 1911 Britannica describes Neopythagoreanism as a link in the chain between the old and the new within Hellenistic philosophy, as such, it contributed to the doctrine of monotheism as it emerged during Late Antiquity. Central to Neopythagorean thought was the concept of a soul and its inherent desire for a unio mystica with the divine, the word Neopythagoreanism is a modern term, coined as a parallel of Neoplatonism. Other important Neopythagoreans include the mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa, who wrote about the properties of numbers. In the 2nd century, Numenius of Apamea sought to fuse elements of Platonism into Neopythagoreanism. Neopythagoreanism was an attempt to re-introduce a mystical religious element into Hellenistic philosophy in place of what had come to be regarded as an arid formalism, the founders of the school sought to invest their doctrines with the halo of tradition by ascribing them to Pythagoras and Plato. They emphasized the distinction between the soul and the body. God must be worshipped spiritually by prayer and the will to be good, the soul must be freed from its material surrounding, the muddy vesture of decay, by an ascetic habit of life. Bodily pleasures and all sensuous impulses must be abandoned as detrimental to the purity of the soul. God is the principle of good, Matter the groundwork of Evil, in this system can be distinguished not only the asceticism of Pythagoras and the later mysticism of Plato, but also the influence of the Orphic mysteries and of Oriental philosophy. The Ideas of Plato are no longer self-subsistent entities but are the elements which constitute the content of spiritual activity, the non-material universe is regarded as the sphere of mind or spirit. A basilica where Neopythagoreans held their meetings in the 1st century was found near Porta Maggiore on Via Praenestina in Rome, pythagoreanism School of the Sextii Allegorical interpretations of Plato Charles H. Neopythagoreanism
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Aristotle
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Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, at seventeen or eighteen years of age, he joined Platos Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven. Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, teaching Alexander the Great gave Aristotle many opportunities and an abundance of supplies. He established a library in the Lyceum which aided in the production of many of his hundreds of books and he believed all peoples concepts and all of their knowledge was ultimately based on perception. Aristotles views on natural sciences represent the groundwork underlying many of his works, Aristotles views on physical science profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. Their influence extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, some of Aristotles zoological observations, such as on the hectocotyl arm of the octopus, were not confirmed or refuted until the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as The First Teacher and his ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotles philosophy continue to be the object of academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues – Cicero described his style as a river of gold – it is thought that only around a third of his original output has survived. Aristotle, whose means the best purpose, was born in 384 BC in Stagira, Chalcidice. His father Nicomachus was the physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Aristotle was orphaned at a young age, although there is little information on Aristotles childhood, he probably spent some time within the Macedonian palace, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Platos Academy and he remained there for nearly twenty years before leaving Athens in 348/47 BC. Aristotle then accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor, there, he traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Pythias, either Hermiass adoptive daughter or niece and she bore him a daughter, whom they also named Pythias. Soon after Hermias death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander in 343 BC, Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time he gave not only to Alexander
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Plato
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Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Platos entire work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead once noted, the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. In addition to being a figure for Western science, philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, amongst other scholars, called Christianity, Platonism for the people, Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy, which originate with him. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied, few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range, perhaps only Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank. Due to a lack of surviving accounts, little is known about Platos early life, the philosopher came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active families in Athens. Ancient sources describe him as a bright though modest boy who excelled in his studies, the exact time and place of Platos birth are unknown, but it is certain that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BCE. According to a tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus. Platos mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker, besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children, these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus. The brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon are mentioned in the Republic as sons of Ariston, and presumably brothers of Plato, but in a scenario in the Memorabilia, Xenophon confused the issue by presenting a Glaucon much younger than Plato. Then, at twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, went to Euclides in Megara, as Debra Nails argues, The text itself gives no reason to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and implies the very opposite. Thus, Nails dates Platos birth to 424/423, another legend related that, when Plato was an infant, bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping, an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse about philosophy. Ariston appears to have died in Platos childhood, although the dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mothers brother, who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato and these and other references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct Platos family tree
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Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
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Syrians
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Syrians, also known as the Syrian people are the inhabitants of Syria, who share a common Levantine Semitic ancestry. The Syrian republic has a population of nearly 17 million as of 2014, the dominant racial group is the Syrian descendants of the old indigenous peoples who mixed with Arabs and identify themselves as such in addition to ethnic Aramean. The Syrian diaspora consists of 15 million people of Syrian ancestry, who immigrated to North America, European Union member states, South America, Australia, and Africa. The name Syrians was employed by the Greeks and Romans to denote the inhabitants of Syria, however, the ethnic designation Syrian is derived from the word Assyrian and appeared in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Some argue that the discovery of the inscription in 2000 seems to support the theory that the term Syria derives from Assyria. The Greeks used the terms Syrian and Assyrian interchangeably to indicate the indigenous Arameans, Assyrians and other inhabitants of the Near East, starting from the 2nd century BC onwards, ancient writers referred to the Seleucid ruler as the King of Syria or King of the Syrians. However, the interchangeability between Assyrians and Syrians persisted during the Hellenistic period, in one instance, the Ptolemies of Egypt reserved the term Syrian Village as the name of a settlement in Fayoum. The term Syrians is under debate whether it referred to Jews or to Arameans, as the Ptolemies referred to all peoples originating from Modern Syria, the term Syrian was imposed upon Arameans of modern Levant by the Romans. Pompey created the province of Syria, which included modern-day Lebanon and Syria west of the Euphrates, in his book The Great Roman-Jewish War, Josephus, a Hebrew native to the Levant, mentioned the Syrians as the non-Hebrew, non-Greek indigenous inhabitants of Syria. The Arabs called Syria and the Levant Al-Sham, besides religious identities, the Syrian people is split between three identities, namely the Arab, Syriac, and Syrian identities. Many Muslims and some Arabic-speaking Christians describe themselves as Arabs, while many Aramaic-speaking Christians, also some people from Syria, mainly Syrian nationalists, describe themselves as only Syrians. The inhabitants of Syria descend from the ancient Semitic peoples of antiquity, mainly the Arameans and Phoenicians, as well as from the pre- and post-conquest Arabs of the 7th century. The majority of the Syrian people who refer to themselves as Arabs are the result of the linguistic Arabization of Syria following the Muslim conquest of the Levant. Arabisation and Islamization of Syria began in the 7th century, while it took centuries for Islam, the Arab identity. Syrians welcomed the Arabs as liberators which made Arabisation and conversion faster, caliph Uthman specifically ordered his governor, Muawiyah I, to settle the new tribes away from the original population. However, the ascendancy of Arabic as the language of the state prompted the cultural. The new Muslim converts mixed with the Arabs and shifted to an Arab racial identity, Syriac is still the liturgical language for most of the different Syriac churches in Syria. More recently, the Syriac Orthodox Church, which has been historically called Syrian, in Maloula the Christian majority is split in between the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, in addition to a Muslim minority
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Philosopher
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A philosopher is someone who practices philosophy, which involves rational inquiry into areas that are outside of either theology or science. The term philosopher comes from the Ancient Greek φιλόσοφος meaning lover of wisdom, the coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras. Typically, these brands of philosophy are Hellenistic ones and those who most arduously commit themselves to this lifestyle may be considered philosophers. The separation of philosophy and science from theology began in Greece during the 6th century BC, thales, an astronomer and mathematician, was considered by Aristotle to be the first philosopher of the Greek tradition. While Pythagoras coined the word, the first known elaboration on the topic was conducted by Plato, in his Symposium, he concludes that Love is that which lacks the object it seeks. Therefore, the philosopher is one who seeks wisdom, if he attains wisdom, therefore, the philosopher in antiquity was one who lives in the constant pursuit of wisdom, and living in accordance to that wisdom. Disagreements arose as to what living philosophically entailed and these disagreements gave rise to different Hellenistic schools of philosophy. In consequence, the ancient philosopher thought in a tradition, as the ancient world became schism by philosophical debate, the competition lay in living in manner that would transform his whole way of living in the world. Philosophy is a discipline which can easily carry away the individual in analyzing the universe. The second is the change through the Medieval era. With the rise of Christianity, the way of life was adopted by its theology. Thus, philosophy was divided between a way of life and the conceptual, logical, physical and metaphysical materials to justify that way of life, philosophy was then the servant to theology. The third is the sociological need with the development of the university, the modern university requires professionals to teach. Maintaining itself requires teaching future professionals to replace the current faculty, therefore, the discipline degrades into a technical language reserved for specialists, completely eschewing its original conception as a way of life. In the fourth century, the word began to designate a man or woman who led a monastic life. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, describes how his sister Macrina persuaded their mother to forsake the distractions of life for a life of philosophy. Later during the Middle Ages, persons who engaged with alchemy was called a philosopher - thus, many philosophers still emerged from the Classical tradition, as saw their philosophy as a way of life. Among the most notable are René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, with the rise of the university, the modern conception of philosophy became more prominent
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Arabs
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Arabs are an ethnic group inhabiting the Arab world. They primarily live in the Arab states in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabs are first mentioned in the mid-ninth century BCE as a tribal people dwelling in the central Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, tradition holds that Arabs descend from Ishmael, the son of Abraham. The Arabian Desert is the birthplace of Arab, there are other Arab groups as well that spread in the land and existed for millennia. Before the expansion of the Caliphate, Arab referred to any of the largely nomadic Semitic people from the northern to the central Arabian Peninsula and Syrian Desert. Presently, Arab refers to a number of people whose native regions form the Arab world due to spread of Arabs throughout the region during the early Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. The Arabs forged the Rashidun, Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphates, whose borders reached southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north, and this was one of the largest land empires in history. The Great Arab Revolt has had as big an impact on the modern Middle East as the World War I, the war signaled the end of the Ottoman Empire. They are modern states and became significant as distinct political entities after the fall and defeat, following adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945. The Charter of the Arab League endorsed the principle of an Arab homeland whilst respecting the sovereignty of its member states. Beyond the boundaries of the League of Arab States, Arabs can also be found in the global diaspora, the ties that bind Arabs are ethnic, linguistic, cultural, historical, identical, nationalist, geographical and political. The Arabs have their own customs, language, architecture, art, literature, music, dance, media, cuisine, dress, society, sports, the total number of Arabs are an estimated 450 million. This makes them the second largest ethnic group after the Han Chinese. Arabs are a group in terms of religious affiliations and practices. In the pre-Islamic era, most Arabs followed polytheistic religions, some tribes had adopted Christianity or Judaism, and a few individuals, the hanifs, apparently observed monotheism. Today, Arabs are mainly adherents of Islam, with sizable Christian minorities, Arab Muslims primarily belong to the Sunni, Shiite, Ibadi, Alawite, Druze and Ismaili denominations. Arab Christians generally follow one of the Eastern Christian Churches, such as the Maronite, Coptic Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, or Chaldean churches. Listed among the booty captured by the army of king Shalmaneser III of Assyria in the Battle of Qarqar are 1000 camels of Gi-in-di-buu the ar-ba-a-a or Gindibu belonging to the Arab
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Syria
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Syrias capital and largest city is Damascus. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans, Shiites, Salafis, Sunni Arabs make up the largest religious group in Syria. Its capital Damascus and largest city Aleppo are among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, in the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. The post-independence period was tumultuous, and a number of military coups. In 1958, Syria entered a union with Egypt called the United Arab Republic. Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963 to 2011, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens, Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was preceded by his father Hafez al-Assad, who was in office from 1970 to 2000. Mainstream modern academic opinion strongly favours the argument that the Greek word is related to the cognate Ἀσσυρία, Assyria, in the past, others believed that it was derived from Siryon, the name that the Sidonians gave to Mount Hermon. However, the discovery of the inscription in 2000 seems to support the theory that the term Syria derives from Assyria. The area designated by the word has changed over time, since approximately 10,000 BC, Syria was one of centers of Neolithic culture where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period is represented by houses of Mureybet culture. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gyps, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations. Cities of Hamoukar and Emar played an important role during the late Neolithic, archaeologists have demonstrated that civilization in Syria was one of the most ancient on earth, perhaps preceded by only those of Mesopotamia. The earliest recorded indigenous civilisation in the region was the Kingdom of Ebla near present-day Idlib, gifts from Pharaohs, found during excavations, confirm Eblas contact with Egypt. One of the earliest written texts from Syria is an agreement between Vizier Ibrium of Ebla and an ambiguous kingdom called Abarsal c.2300 BC. The Northwest Semitic language of the Amorites is the earliest attested of the Canaanite languages, Mari reemerged during this period, and saw renewed prosperity until conquered by Hammurabi of Babylon. Ugarit also arose during this time, circa 1800 BC, close to modern Latakia, Ugaritic was a Semitic language loosely related to the Canaanite languages, and developed the Ugaritic alphabet. The Ugarites kingdom survived until its destruction at the hands of the marauding Indo-European Sea Peoples in the 12th century BC, Yamhad was described in the tablets of Mari as the mightiest state in the near east and as having more vassals than Hammurabi of Babylon. Yamhad imposed its authority over Alalakh, Qatna, the Hurrians states, the army of Yamhad campaigned as far away as Dēr on the border of Elam
14.
Suda
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The Suda or Souda is a large 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is a lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost. The Suda is somewhere between a grammatical dictionary and an encyclopedia in the modern sense and it explains the source, derivation, and meaning of words according to the philology of its period, using such earlier authorities as Harpocration and Helladios. The articles on history are especially valuable. These entries supply details and quotations from authors whose works are otherwise lost and they use older scholia to the classics, and for later writers, Polybius, Josephus, the Chronicon Paschale, George Syncellus, George Hamartolus, and so on. This lexicon represents a convenient work of reference for people who played a part in political, ecclesiastical, the chief source for this is the encyclopedia of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, and for Roman history the excerpts of John of Antioch. Krumbacher counts two main sources of the work, Constantine VII for ancient history, and Hamartolus for the Byzantine age, the system is not difficult to learn and remember, but some editors—for example, Immanuel Bekker – rearranged the Suda alphabetically. Little is known of the compilation of work, except that it must have been written before it was quoted from extensively by Eustathius who lived from about 1115 AD to about 1195 or 1196. It would thus appear that the Suda was compiled sometime after 975, passages referring to Michael Psellus are considered later interpolations. It includes numerous quotations from ancient writers, the scholiasts on Aristophanes, Homer, other principal sources include a lexicon by Eudemus, perhaps derived from the work On Rhetorical Language by Eudemus of Argos. The work deals with biblical as well as subjects, from which it is inferred that the writer was a Christian. A prefatory note gives a list of dictionaries from which the portion was compiled. Although the work is uncritical and probably much interpolated, and the value of its articles is very unequal and its quotations from ancient authors make it a useful check on their manuscript traditions. A modern translation, the Suda On Line, was completed on 21 July 2014, the Suda has a near-contemporaneous Islamic parallel, the Kitab al-Fehrest of Ibn al-Nadim. Compare also the Latin Speculum Maius, authored in the 13th century by Vincent of Beauvais and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Sūïdas. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Herbermann, Charles. Ancient Greek Scholarship, a guide to finding, reading, and understanding scholia, commentaries, lexica, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press,2006. Tachypaedia Byzantina, The Suda On Line as Collaborative Encyclopedia, Digital Humanities Quarterly 3.1, an on-line edition of the Ada Adler edition with ongoing translations and commentary by registered editors
15.
Eunapius
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Eunapius was a Greek sophist and historian of the 4th century AD. His principal surviving work is the Lives of Philosophers and Sophists and he was born at Sardis, AD346. In his native city he studied under his relative, the sophist Chrysanthius, and while still a youth went to Athens and he possessed considerable knowledge of medicine. Eunapius was the author of two works, one entitled Lives of Philosophers and Sophists, and Universal History consisting of a continuation of the history of Dexippus. The former work is extant, of the latter only excerpts remain. It embraced the history of events from AD 270–404, the style of both works is marked by a spirit of bitter hostility to Christianity. Photius had before him a new edition of the history in which the passages most offensive to Christians were omitted, in his later years he seems to have lived at Athens, teaching rhetoric. Initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, he was admitted into the college of the Eumolpidae, there is evidence that he was still living in the reign of the younger Theodosius. Edition of the Lives by JF Boissonade, with notes by D Wyttenbach History fragments in C. W. Müller, Fragmenta Hist. Graecorum, iv. V. Cousin, Fragments philosophiques, translation and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. article name needed. Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, dübner, Parisiis, editore Ambrosio Firmin Didot,1849, pp. 453-505
16.
Royal family of Emesa
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The Emesani dynasty or the Sempsigerami of Emesa, sometimes known as the Sampsiceramids were a ruling Roman client dynasty of priest-kings in Emesa, Syria Province. Emesa was famous for the worship of the ancient pagan cult El-Gebal. The city was renowned for El-Gebal’s place of worship the Temple of the Sun, El-Gebal was worshipped in the form of a conical black stone. El-Gebal was the Aramaic name for the Syrian Sun God and means God of the Mountain, a resident of Emesa could be called an Emesan, Emesani or Emesene. Sampsiceramus I was the founding Priest-King of the Emesani dynasty who lived in the 1st century BC and was an Aramean chieftain or Phylarch. The ancestors of Sampsiceramus I were Bedouins who had travelled the Syrian terrain, before deciding to settle in the Orontes Valley, Sampsiceramus I, his family and his ancestors in Syria had lived under the Greek rule of the Seleucid Empire. Sampsiceramus I was a son of Aziz, paternal grandson of Iamblichus, in Emesa, Aramaic and Greek were commonly spoken languages and later Latin was probably commonly spoken in the city. Through the rule and influence of the Seleucid dynasty and Greek settlement in the Seleucid Empire, Emesa was assimilated into the Greek language, hence, Sampsiceramus I and his ancestors became Hellenized through the Greek rule of Syria and the surrounding territories. The father of Sampsiceramus I, Aziz also known as Azizus the Arab, Aziz is associated with the rule of the Seleucid Kings Philip I Philadelphus and his brother Demetrius III Eucaerus. Aziz may had assisted Philip I some years before about 87 BC, Aziz assisted in putting the last Seleucid King Philip II Philoromaeus, the son of Philip I on the throne, by arranging to meet him and putting the Diadem on his head. However Philip II realised that Aziz befriended him to him to gain a portion of a divided Syrian Kingdom, realised the plot. Sampsiceramus I like his father, continued to an ally to the last Seleucid Greek Monarchs of Syria, like his father, Sampsiceramus I was also known as the Phylarch of the Arabs. By this time, the Seleucid Empire had become very weak, around 64 BC, the Roman General and Triumvir, Pompey had reorganised Syria and the surrounding countries into Roman provinces. Pompey had installed client kings in the region, who would become allies to Rome, among those client kings was Sampsiceramus I. The Roman politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, nicknamed Pompey ‘Sampsiceramus’ to make fun of Pompey’s pretensions as an eastern potentate, at the request of Pompey, Sampsiceramus I captured and killed in 64 BC, the second last Seleucid King Antiochus XIII Asiaticus. After the death of Antiochus XIII, Sampsiceramus I was confirmed in power, Client rulers such as Sampsiceramus I could police routes and preserve the integrity of Rome without cost to Roman manpower or to the Roman treasury, they were probably paid for the privilege. Emesa was added to the domains of Sampsiceramus I, but the first Emesani capital was Arethusa, the kingdom of Sampsiceramus I was the first of Rome’s client kingdoms on the desert’s fringes. The kingdom’s boundaries extended from the Beqaa Valley in the West to the border of Palmyra in the East, from Yabrud in the South to Arethusa in the North and Heliopolis
17.
Plotinus
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Plotinus was a major Greek-speaking philosopher of the ancient world. In his philosophy there are three principles, the One, the Intellect, and the Soul and his teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition. Historians of the 19th century invented the term Neoplatonism and applied it to him, much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyrys preface to his edition of Plotinus Enneads. His metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Pagan, Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic metaphysicians and mystics. Porphyry reported that Plotinus was 66 years old when he died in 270, eunapius reported that Plotinus was born in the Deltaic Lycopolis in Egypt, which has led to speculations that he may have been a native Egyptian of Roman, Greek, or Hellenized Egyptian descent. Plotinus had an inherent distrust of materiality, holding to the view that phenomena were an image or mimicry of something higher. This distrust extended to the body, including his own, it is reported by Porphyry that at one point he refused to have his portrait painted, likewise Plotinus never discussed his ancestry, childhood, or his place or date of birth. From all accounts his personal and social life exhibited the highest moral and spiritual standards, Plotinus took up the study of philosophy at the age of twenty-seven, around the year 232, and travelled to Alexandria to study. There he was dissatisfied with every teacher he encountered until an acquaintance suggested he listen to the ideas of Ammonius Saccas, upon hearing Ammonius lecture, he declared to his friend, this was the man I was looking for, and began to study intently under his new instructor. Besides Ammonius, Plotinus was also influenced by the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Numenius, after spending the next eleven years in Alexandria, he then decided, at the age of around 38, to investigate the philosophical teachings of the Persian philosophers and the Indian philosophers. In the pursuit of this endeavor he left Alexandria and joined the army of Gordian III as it marched on Persia. However, the campaign was a failure, and on Gordians eventual death Plotinus found himself abandoned in a hostile land, and only with difficulty found his way back to safety in Antioch. At the age of forty, during the reign of Philip the Arab, he came to Rome, there he attracted a number of students. He had students amongst the Roman Senate beside Castricius, such as Marcellus Orontius, Sabinillus, finally, Plotinus was a correspondent of the philosopher Cassius Longinus. While in Rome Plotinus also gained the respect of the Emperor Gallienus, an Imperial subsidy was never granted, for reasons unknown to Porphyry, who reports the incident. Porphyry subsequently went to live in Sicily, where word reached him that his teacher had died. The philosopher spent his days in seclusion on an estate in Campania which his friend Zethos had bequeathed him. According to the account of Eustochius, who attended him at the end, Plotinus final words were, Eustochius records that a snake crept under the bed where Plotinus lay, and slipped away through a hole in the wall, at the same moment the philosopher died
18.
Apamea, Syria
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Apamea, on the right bank of the Orontes River, was an ancient Greek and Roman city. It was the capital of Apamene under the Macedonians, became the capital and Metropolitan Archbishopric of late Roman province Syria Secunda, the site is about 55 km to the northwest of Hama, Syria, overlooking the Ghab valley. After the conquest of the region by Alexander the Great and the subsequent wars between his generals, Apamea fell under the command of the former Macedonian general Seleucus from about 312 BC. From about 300 BC Apamea was fortified and established as a city by Seleucus who named it after his Bactrian wife, the site was enclosed in a loop of the Orontes which, with the lake and marshes, gave it a peninsular form whence its other name of Cherronêsos. It was located at a crossroads for Eastern commerce and became one of the four cities of the Syrian tetrapolis. Seleucus also made it a base with 500 elephants. After 142 BC, the pretender Diodotus Tryphon made Apamea the base of his operations, in 64 BC Pompey marched south from his winter quarters probably at or near Antioch and razed the fortress of Apamea when the city was annexed to the Roman Republic. In the revolt of Syria under Q, caecilius Bassus, it held out against Julius Caesar for three years till the arrival of Cassius in 46 BC. On the outbreak of the Jewish War, the inhabitants of Apamea spared the Jews who lived in their midst, much of Apamea was destroyed in the 115 AD earthquake, but was subsequently rebuilt. Destroyed by Chosroes I in the 6th century, it was rebuilt and known in Arabic as Famia or Fâmieh. In the Crusades it was still a flourishing and important place and was occupied by Tancred, both the Jerusalem Targumim considered the city of Shepham to be identical with Apamea. Since Apamea virtually belonged to Rabbinic Palestine, the first-fruits brought by Ariston from that town were accepted for sacrifice in Jerusalem, as a result of the recent civil war in Syria, the ancient city has been damaged and looted by treasure hunters. The Great Colonnade was situated along the avenue of Apamea and ran for nearly 2 kilometres. It was rebuilt after the original, dating from the Seleucid Empire, was devastated along with the rest of Apamea in the 115 AD earthquake, reconstruction started immediately and over the course of the second century the city was completely rebuilt, starting with the Great Colonnade. The colonnade was aligned along the axis, making up the citys cardo maximus. Starting at the north gate, the colonnade ran in an uninterrupted straight line to the south gate. The northern third of the stretch is marked by a monumental votive column that stood opposite the baths. On either side of the street a 6.15 metres wide colonnade ran its full length, the columns were 9 metres high and 0.9 metres in diameter
19.
Antioch
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Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient Greco-Roman city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. Its ruins lie near the city of Antakya, Turkey. Antioch was founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, the citys geographical, military, and economic location benefited its occupants, particularly such features as the spice trade, the Silk Road, and the Persian Royal Road. It eventually rivaled Alexandria as the city of the Near East. It was also the center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period. Most of the development of Antioch was done during the Roman Empire. Antioch was called the cradle of Christianity as a result of its longevity, the Christian New Testament asserts that the name Christian first emerged in Antioch. It was one of the four cities of the Syrian tetrapolis, a single route proceeds south in the Orontes valley. The settlement of Meroe pre-dated Antioch, a shrine of the Semitic goddess Anat, called by Herodotus the Persian Artemis, was located here. This site was included in the suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of Mount Silpius named Io and this name was always adduced as evidence by Antiochenes anxious to affiliate themselves to the Attic Ionians—an eagerness which is illustrated by the Athenian types used on the citys coins. Io may have been an early colony of trading Greeks. John Malalas also mentions a village, Bottia, in the plain by the river. Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great is said to have camped on the site of Antioch and this account is found only in the writings of Libanius, a 4th-century orator from Antioch, and may be legend intended to enhance Antiochs status. But the story is not unlikely in itself, after Alexanders death in 323 BC, his generals divided up the territory he had conquered. Seleucus I Nicator won the territory of Syria, and he proceeded to found four sister cities in northwestern Syria, one of which was Antioch and he is reputed to have built sixteen Antiochs. Seleucus founded Antioch on a site chosen through ritual means, an eagle, the bird of Zeus, had been given a piece of sacrificial meat and the city was founded on the site to which the eagle carried the offering. Seleucus did this on the 22nd day of the month of Artemisios in the year of his reign
20.
Johann Albert Fabricius
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Johann Albert Fabricius was a German classical scholar and bibliographer. Fabricius was born at Leipzig, son of Werner Fabricius, director of music in the church of St. Paul at Leipzig, who was the author of several works, the most important being Deliciae Harmonicae. The son received his education from his father, who on his deathbed recommended him to the care of the theologian Valentin Alberti. He studied under J. G. Herrichen, and afterwards at Quedlinburg under Samuel Schmid, on returning to Leipzig in 1686, he published anonymously two years later his first work, Scriptorum recentiorum decas, an attack on ten writers of the day. His Decas Decadum, sive plagiariorum et pseudonymorum centuria is the one of his works to which he signs the name Faber. In 1693 he published a doctoral dissertation De Platonismo Philonis Judaei which contributed to Philo of Alexandrias losing his position as an honorary Church Father and he therefore remained at Hamburg in the capacity of librarian to Johann Friedrich Mayer. In 1696 he accompanied his patron to Sweden, and on his return to Hamburg, not long afterwards, he became a candidate for the chair of logic, Fabricius is credited with 128 books. He was a bibliographer and collector of manuscripts, and many of his volumes are compilations, editions. Its divisions are marked off by Homer, Plato, Jesus, Constantine, renaissance Attitudes towards New Testament Apocryphal Writings, Jacques Lefèvre dÉtaples and His Epigones. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and New Testament, Prolegomena to the Study of Christian Origins, petersen, E. M. Pade, ed. Learned Communication, Johann Albert Fabricius and the Literary Communities. Renaissance Readings of the Corpus Aristotelicum, petersen, E. Intellectum liberare Johann Albert Fabricius, En humanist i Europa. The Modern Invention of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. article name needed. Bibliotheca Latina Mediae et Infimae Aetatis and other books, Fabricius, Codex pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti on GoogleBooks J. A. Fabricius, Codicis pseudepigraphi Veteris Testamenti, Volumen alterum accedit Josephi veteris Christiani auctoria Hypomnesticon on GoogleBooks J. A, Fabricius, Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti on GoogleBooks Links to online copies of different editions of Fabricius Bibliotheca Graeca at Links Galore
21.
Constantine the Great
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Constantine the Great, also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was a Roman Emperor from 306 to 337 AD. Constantine was the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, a Roman Army officer and his father became Caesar, the deputy emperor in the west, in 293 AD. Constantine was sent east, where he rose through the ranks to become a military tribune under the emperors Diocletian, in 305, Constantius was raised to the rank of Augustus, senior western emperor, and Constantine was recalled west to campaign under his father in Britannia. As emperor, Constantine enacted many administrative, financial, social, the government was restructured and civil and military authority separated. A new gold coin, the solidus, was introduced to combat inflation and it would become the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the Nicene Creed was adopted by Christians, in military matters, the Roman army was reorganised to consist of mobile field units and garrison soldiers capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. The age of Constantine marked an epoch in the history of the Roman Empire. He built a new residence at Byzantium and renamed the city Constantinople after himself. It would later become the capital of the Empire for over one thousand years and his more immediate political legacy was that, in leaving the empire to his sons, he replaced Diocletians tetrarchy with the principle of dynastic succession. His reputation flourished during the lifetime of his children and centuries after his reign, the medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype, a point of reference, and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity. Beginning with the Renaissance, there were more critical appraisals of his due to the rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources. Critics portrayed him as a tyrant, trends in modern and recent scholarship attempted to balance the extremes of previous scholarship. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on his orders at the site of Jesus tomb in Jerusalem. The Papal claim to power in the High Middle Ages was based on the supposed Donation of Constantine. He is venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics, though Constantine has historically often been referred to as the First Christian Emperor, scholars debate his actual beliefs or even his actual comprehension of the Christian faith itself. Constantine was a ruler of major importance, and he has always been a controversial figure, the fluctuations in Constantines reputation reflect the nature of the ancient sources for his reign. These are abundant and detailed, but have strongly influenced by the official propaganda of the period. There are no surviving histories or biographies dealing with Constantines life, the nearest replacement is Eusebius of Caesareas Vita Constantini, a work that is a mixture of eulogy and hagiography
22.
Stobaeus
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Joannes Stobaeus, from Stobi in Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was divided into two volumes containing two books each. The two volumes became separated in the tradition, and the first volume became known as the Extracts. Modern editions now refer to both volumes as the Anthology, the Anthology contains extracts from hundreds of writers, especially poets, historians, orators, philosophers and physicians. The subjects covered range from philosophy, dialectics, and ethics, to politics, economics. The work preserves fragments of many authors and works who otherwise might be unknown today, of his life nothing is known. He derived his surname apparently from being a native of Stobi in Macedonia Salutaris, the age in which he lived cannot be fixed with accuracy. He quotes no writer later than the early 5th century, from his silence in regard to Christian authors, it has been inferred that he was not a Christian. His name, though, would indicate a Christian, or at least the son of Christian parents. His anthology is a valuable collection of extracts from earlier Greek writers. The extracts were intended by Stobaeus for his son Septimius, and were preceded by a letter explaining the purpose of the work. As each of the four books is sometimes called Anthologion, it is probable that this name belonged to the entire work. The full title, according to Photius, was Four Books of Extracts, Sayings, at some time subsequent to Photius the two volumes were separated, and the two volumes became known to Latin Europe as the Eclogae and the Florilegium respectively. Modern editions have dropped these two titles and have reverted to calling the work the Anthology. Each chapter of the four books is headed by a title describing its matter, Stobaeus quoted more than five hundred writers, generally beginning with the poets, and then proceeding to the historians, orators, philosophers, and physicians. The works of the part of these have perished. It is to him that we owe many of our most important fragments of the dramatists and he has quoted over 500 passages from Euripides,150 from Sophocles, and over 200 from Menander. The first two books consist for the most part of conveying the views of earlier poets and prose writers on points of physics, dialectics
23.
Polytheism
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Polytheism is the worship of or belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religions and rituals. Polytheism is a type of theism, within theism, it contrasts with monotheism, the belief in a singular God, in most cases transcendent. Polytheists do not always worship all the gods equally, but they can be henotheists, other polytheists can be kathenotheists, worshiping different deities at different times. Polytheism was the form of religion during the Bronze Age and Iron Age up to the Axial Age and the development of Abrahamic religions. Important polytheistic religions practiced today include Chinese traditional religion, Hinduism, Japanese Shinto, the term comes from the Greek πολύ poly and θεός theos and was first invented by the Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria to argue with the Greeks. When Christianity spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, non-Christians were just called Gentiles or pagans or by the pejorative term idolaters. The modern usage of the term is first revived in French through Jean Bodin in 1580, a central, main division in polytheism is between soft polytheism and hard polytheism. Hard polytheism is the belief that gods are distinct, separate, real divine beings, hard polytheists reject the idea that all gods are one god. Hard polytheists do not necessarily consider the gods of all cultures as being equally real, Polytheism cannot be cleanly separated from the animist beliefs prevalent in most folk religions. The gods of polytheism are in cases the highest order of a continuum of supernatural beings or spirits. In some cases these spirits are divided into celestial or chthonic classes, since divinity is intellectual, and all intellect returns into itself, this myth expresses in allegory the essence of divinity. Myths may be regarded physically when they express the activities of gods in the world, the psychological way is to regard the activities of the soul itself and or the souls acts of thought. The material is to regard material objects to actually be gods, for example, to call the earth Gaia, ocean Okeanos, Some well-known historical polytheistic pantheons include the Sumerian gods and the Egyptian gods, and the classical-attested pantheon which includes the ancient Greek religion and Roman religion. Post-classical polytheistic religions include Norse Æsir and Vanir, the Yoruba Orisha, the Aztec gods, an example of a religious notion from this shared past is the concept of *dyēus, which is attested in several distinct religious systems. In many civilizations, pantheons tended to grow over time, deities first worshipped as the patrons of cities or places came to be collected together as empires extended over larger territories. Conquests could lead to the subordination of the elder cultures pantheon to a one, as in the Greek Titanomachia. Most ancient belief systems held that gods influenced human lives, epicurus believed that these gods were material, human-like, and that they inhabited the empty spaces between worlds. Though it is suggested that Hestia stepped down when Dionysus was invited to Mount Olympus, robert Graves The Greek Myths cites two sources that obviously do not suggest Hestia surrendered her seat, though he suggests she did
24.
Miracle
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A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being, magic, a miracle worker, other such miracles might be, survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or beating the odds. Some coincidences may be seen as miracles, a true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many rational and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible or impossible to confirm by their nature. The former position is expressed for instance by Thomas Jefferson and the latter by David Hume, theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, is free to work without, above, or against it as well. The possibility and probability of miracles are then equal to the possibility and probability of the existence of God, a miracle is a phenomenon not explained by known laws of nature. Criteria for classifying an event as a miracle vary, often a religious text, such as the Bible or Quran, states that a miracle occurred, and believers may accept this as a fact. British mathematician J. E. Littlewood suggested that individuals should statistically expect one-in-a-million events to happen to them at the rate of one per month. By Littlewoods definition, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace, the Aristotelian view of God does not include direct intervention in the order of the natural world. Jewish neo-Aristotelian philosophers, who are influential today, include Maimonides, Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon. Directly or indirectly, their views are still prevalent in much of the religious Jewish community, in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Spinoza claims that miracles are merely lawlike events whose causes we are ignorant of. We should not treat them as having no cause or of having a cause immediately available, rather the miracle is for combating the ignorance it entails, like a political project. According to the philosopher David Hume, a miracle is a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent. According to the Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher every event, even the most natural and usual, james Keller states that The claim that God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive implies that God is unfair. If God intervenes to save life in a car crash. Thus an all-powerful, all-knowing and just God, as predicated in Christianity, the Haedong Kosung-jon of Korea records that King Beopheung of Silla had desired to promulgate Buddhism as the state religion. However, officials in his court opposed him, in the fourteenth year of his reign, Beopheungs Grand Secretary, Ichadon, devised a strategy to overcome court opposition. Ichadon schemed with the king, convincing him to make a proclamation granting Buddhism official state sanction using the royal seal, Ichadon told the king to deny having made such a proclamation when the opposing officials received it and demanded an explanation. Instead, Ichadon would confess and accept the punishment of execution, Ichadon prophesied to the king that at his execution a wonderful miracle would convince the opposing court faction of Buddhisms power
25.
Julian (emperor)
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Julian, also known as Julian the Apostate, was Roman Emperor from 361 to 363, as well as a notable philosopher and author in Greek. A member of the Constantinian dynasty, Julian became Caesar over the provinces by order of Constantius II in 355 and in this role campaigned successfully against the Alamanni. Most notable was his victory over the Alamanni in 357 at the Battle of Argentoratum. In 360 in Lutetia he was proclaimed Augustus by his soldiers, before the two could face each other in battle, however, Constantius died, after naming Julian as his rightful successor. In 363, Julian embarked on an campaign against the Sassanid Empire. Though initially successful, Julian was mortally wounded in battle and died shortly thereafter, Julian was a man of unusually complex character, he was the military commander, the theosophist, the social reformer, and the man of letters. He was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, and it was his desire to bring the Empire back to its ancient Roman values in order to, as he saw it, save it from dissolution. He purged the state bureaucracy and attempted to revive traditional Roman religious practices at the expense of Christianity. His anti-Christian sentiment and promotion of Neoplatonic paganism caused him to be remembered as Julian the Apostate by the church and he was the last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty, the empires first Christian dynasty. Both of his parents were Christians and his paternal grandparents were Western Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus and his second wife, Flavia Maximiana Theodora. His maternal grandfather was Julius Julianus, praetorian prefect of the East under emperor Licinius from 315 to 324, the name of Julians maternal grandmother is unknown. Constantius II, Constans I, and Constantine II were proclaimed joint emperors, Julian and Gallus were excluded from public life, were strictly guarded in their youth, and given a Christian education. They were likely saved by their youth and at the urging of the Empress Eusebia, if Julians later writings are to be believed, Constantius would later be tormented with guilt at the massacre of 337. After Eusebius died in 342, both Julian and Gallus were exiled to the estate of Macellum in Cappadocia. Here Julian met the Christian bishop George of Cappadocia, who lent him books from the classical tradition, at the age of 18, the exile was lifted and he dwelt briefly in Constantinople and Nicomedia. He became a lector, an office in the Christian church. Julian studied Neoplatonism in Asia Minor in 351, at first under Aedesius, the philosopher and he was summoned to Constantius court in Mediolanum in 354 and kept there for a year, in the summer and fall of 355, he was permitted to study in Athens. While there, Julian became acquainted with two men who became both bishops and saints, Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great
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Lydia
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Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian, at its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. Lydia was a satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, with Sardis as its capital, tabalus, appointed by Cyrus the Great, was the first satrap. Lydia was later the name of a Roman province, coins are said to have been invented in Lydia around the 7th century BC. The endonym Śfard survives in bilingual and trilingual stone-carved notices of the Achaemenid Empire and these in the Greek tradition are associated with Sardis, the capital city of King Gyges, constructed during the 7th century BC. The region of the Lydian kingdom was during the 15th-14th centuries part of the Arzawa kingdom, the Lydian language is not part of the Luwian subgroup. An Etruscan/Lydian association has long been a subject of conjecture, however, recent decipherment of Lydian and its classification as an Anatolian language mean that Etruscan and Lydian were not even part of the same language family. The boundaries of historical Lydia varied across the centuries and it was bounded first by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and coastal Ionia. Later, the power of Alyattes II and Croesus expanded Lydia. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions, the Lydian language was an Indo-European language in the Anatolian language family, related to Luwian and Hittite. It used many prefixes and grammatical particles, Lydian finally became extinct during the 1st century BC. Lydia developed after the decline of the Hittite Empire in the 12th century BC, in Hittite times, the name for the region had been Arzawa. According to Greek source, the name of the Lydian kingdom was Maionia, or Maeonia. Homer describes their capital not as Sardis but as Hyde, Hyde may have been the name of the district in which Sardis was located. Later, Herodotus adds that the Meiones were renamed Lydians after their king Lydus, son of Atys and this etiological eponym served to account for the Greek ethnic name Lydoi. During Biblical times, the Lydian warriors were famous archers, some Maeones still existed during historical times in the upland interior along the River Hermus, where a town named Maeonia existed, according to Pliny the Elder and Hierocles. In Greek myth, Lydia had also adopted the symbol, that also appears in the Mycenaean civilization. Omphale, daughter of the river Iardanos, was a ruler of Lydia, all three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming Heracles as their ancestor
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Nous
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The three commonly used philosophical terms are from Greek, νοῦς or νόος, and Latin intellectus and intelligentia respectively. This activity is understood in a way, at least in some contexts. In philosophy, common English translations include understanding and mind, or sometimes thought or reason and it is also often described as something equivalent to perception except that it works within the mind. It has been suggested that the meaning is something like awareness. In colloquial British English, nous also denotes good sense, which is close to one everyday meaning it had in Ancient Greece, in Aristotles influential works, the term was carefully distinguished from sense perception, imagination, and reason, although these terms are closely inter-related. The term was already singled out by earlier philosophers such as Parmenides. In the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the understanding or awareness which allows human beings to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, deriving from this it was also sometimes argued, especially in classical and medieval philosophy, that the individual nous must require help of a spiritual and divine type. By this type of account, it came to be argued that the human understanding somehow stems from this cosmic nous, which is not just a recipient of order. In early Greek uses, Homer used nous to signify mental activities of both mortals and immortals, for example what they really have on their mind as opposed to what they say aloud. It was one of words related to thought, thinking. In pre-Socratic philosophy, it became distinguished as a source of knowledge and reasoning and opposed to mere sense perception. For example, Heraclitus complained that much learning does not teach nous, among some Greek authors a faculty of intelligence, a higher mind, came to be considered to be a property of the cosmos as a whole. The work of Parmenides set the scene for Greek philosophy to come and he claimed that reality as the senses perceive it is not a world of truth at all, because sense perception is so unreliable, and what is perceived is so uncertain and changeable. Amongst the pre-Socratic philosophers before Anaxagoras, other philosophers had proposed a similar ordering human-like principle causing life and the rotation of the heavens. For example, Empedocles, like Hesiod much earlier, described cosmic order and living things as caused by a version of love. Anaxagoras wrote, All other things partake in a portion of everything, while nous is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself. For it is the thinnest of all things and the purest, and it has all knowledge about everything and the greatest strength, and nous has power over all things, both greater and smaller, that have soul
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Demiurge
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In the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy, the demiurge is an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe. The term was adopted by the Gnostics, depending on the system, they may be considered to be either uncreated and eternal, or considered to be the product of some other entity. The philosophical usage and the proper noun derive from Platos Timaeus, written c.360 BC and this is accordingly the definition of the demiurge in the Platonic and Middle Platonic philosophical traditions. In the various branches of the Neoplatonic school, the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, Plato, as the speaker Timaeus, refers to the Demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue Timaeus, c.360 BC. The main character refers to the Demiurge as the entity who fashioned and shaped the material world, Timaeus describes the Demiurge as unreservedly benevolent, and hence desirous of a world as good as possible. The world remains imperfect, however, because the Demiurge created the world out of a chaotic, Platos work Timaeus is a philosophical reconciliation of Hesiods cosmology in his Theogony, syncretically reconciling Hesiod to Homer. In Numeniuss Neo-Pythagorean and Middle Platonist cosmogony, the Demiurge is second God as the nous or thought of intelligibles and sensibles, Plotinus and the later Platonists worked to clarify the Demiurge. To Plotinus, the second emanation represents a second cause. In order to reconcile Aristotelian with Platonian philosophy, Plotinus metaphorically identified the demiurge within the pantheon of the Greek Gods as Zeus, the first and highest aspect of God is described by Plato as the One, the source, or the Monad. This is the God above the Demiurge, and manifests through the work of the Demiurge, the Monad emanated the demiurge or Nous from its indeterminate vitality due to the monad being so abundant that it overflowed back onto itself, causing self-reflection. This self-reflection of the indeterminate vitality was referred to by Plotinus as the Demiurge or creator, the second principle is organization in its reflection of the nonsentient force or dynamis, also called the one or the Monad. Plotinus form of Platonic idealism is to treat the Demiurge, nous as the contemplative faculty within man which orders the force into conscious reality. In this he claimed to reveal Platos true meaning, a doctrine he learned from Platonic tradition that did not appear outside the academy or in Platos text. This tradition of creator God as nous, can be validated in the works of philosophers such as Numenius. Before Numenius of Apamea and Plotinus Enneads, no Platonic works ontologically clarified the Demiurge from the allegory in Platos Timaeus. The idea of Demiurge was, however, addressed before Plotinus in the works of Christian writer Justin Martyr who built his understanding of the Demiurge on the works of Numenius. The figure of the Demiurge emerges in the theoretic of Iamblichus, here, at the summit of this system, the Source and Demiurge coexist via the process of henosis. The One is further separated into spheres of intelligence, the first and superior sphere is objects of thought, then within this intellectual triad Iamblichus assigns the third rank to the Demiurge, identifying it with the perfect or Divine nous with the intellectual triad being promoted to a hebdomad
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Augustine of Hippo
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Augustine of Hippo was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius, located in Numidia, Augustine is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City of God and Confessions, according to his contemporary, Jerome, Augustine established anew the ancient Faith. In his early years, he was influenced by Manichaeism. After his baptism and conversion to Christianity in 386, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. Believing that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin, when the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview, the segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople closely identified with Augustines On the Trinity. Augustine is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Christian Church, and he is also the patron of the Augustinians. His memorial is celebrated on 28 August, the day of his death, Augustine is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes, and a number of cities and dioceses. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists and Lutherans, consider him to be one of the fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teachings on salvation. Lutherans, and Martin Luther in particular, have held Augustine in preeminence, Luther himself was a member of the Order of the Augustinian Eremites. In the East, some of his teachings are disputed and have in the 20th century in particular come under attack by such theologians as John Romanides, but other theologians and figures of the Eastern Orthodox Church have shown significant appropriation of his writings, chiefly Georges Florovsky. The most controversial doctrine surrounding his name is the filioque, which has been rejected by the Orthodox Church, other disputed teachings include his views on original sin, the doctrine of grace, and predestination. Nevertheless, though considered to be mistaken on some points, he is considered a saint. In the Orthodox Church his feast day is celebrated on 28 August and he was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. Augustine was the bishop of Hippo Regius, located in Numidia and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City of God and Confessions, Augustine was born in the year 354 AD in the municipium of Thagaste in Roman Africa. His mother, Monica or Monnica, was a devout Christian, in his writings, Augustine leaves some information as to the consciousness of his African heritage
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Trinity
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The Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is three consubstantial persons or hypostases—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—as one God in three Divine Persons. The three persons are distinct, yet are one substance, essence or nature, in this context, a nature is what one is, whereas a person is who one is. Reflection, proclamation, and dialogue led to the formulation of the doctrine that was felt to correspond to the data in the Bible. The simplest outline of the doctrine was formulated in the 4th century, further elaboration continued in the succeeding centuries. Scripture contains neither the word Trinity, nor an expressly formulated doctrine of the Trinity, rather, according to the Christian theology, it bears witness to the activity of a God who can only be understood in Trinitarian terms. The doctrine did not take its shape until late in the fourth century. During the intervening period, various solutions, some more. Trinitarianism contrasts with nontrinitarian positions which include Binitarianism, Unitarianism, Oneness Pentecostalism or Modalism, the word trinity is derived from Latin trinitas, meaning the number three, a triad. This abstract noun is formed from the adjective trinus, as the word unitas is the noun formed from unus. The corresponding word in Greek is tριάς, meaning a set of three or the number three, the first recorded use of this Greek word in Christian theology was by Theophilus of Antioch in about 170. He wrote, In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man. The Ante-Nicene Fathers asserted Christs deity and spoke of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Trinitarians view these as elements of the codified doctrine. Ignatius of Antioch provides early support for the Trinity around 110, exhorting obedience to Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit. Justin Martyr also writes, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, the first of the early church fathers to be recorded using the word Trinity was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as God, His Word and His Wisdom in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation, the first defence of the doctrine of the Trinity was in the early 3rd century by the early church father Tertullian. He explicitly defined the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, St. Justin and Clement of Alexandra used the Trinity in their doxologies and St. Basil likewise, in the evening lighting of lamps. The highly allegorical exegesis of the Valentinian school inclined it to interpret the relevant scriptural passages as affirming a Divinity that, the Valentinian Gospel of Phillip, which dates to approximately the time of Tertullian, upholds the Trinitarian formula
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Mathematics
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Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. There is a range of views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope, Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof, when mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry, rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclids Elements. Galileo Galilei said, The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and it is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth, carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as the Queen of the Sciences. Benjamin Peirce called mathematics the science that draws necessary conclusions, David Hilbert said of mathematics, We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules, rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise. Albert Einstein stated that as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, finance and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics, Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, the history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns, in Babylonian mathematics elementary arithmetic first appears in the archaeological record. Numeracy pre-dated writing and numeral systems have many and diverse. Between 600 and 300 BC the Ancient Greeks began a study of mathematics in its own right with Greek mathematics. Mathematics has since been extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today, the overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs. The word máthēma is derived from μανθάνω, while the modern Greek equivalent is μαθαίνω, in Greece, the word for mathematics came to have the narrower and more technical meaning mathematical study even in Classical times
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Destiny
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Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a future, whether in general or of an individual. Although often used interchangeably, the fate and destiny have distinct connotations. Traditional usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines, Fate defines events as ordered or inevitable and unavoidable. This is a based on the belief that there is a fixed natural order to the universe, and in some conceptions. Classical and European mythology feature personified fate spinners, known as the Moirai in Greek mythology, the Parcae in Roman mythology, and they determine the events of the world through the mystic spinning of threads that represent individual human fates. Fate is often conceived as being divinely inspired, fatalism refers to the belief that events fixed by fate are unchangeable by any type of human agency. In other words, humans can not alter their own fates or the fates of others, the Roman image of Fortuna, with the wheel she blindly turned, was retained by Christian writers, revived strongly in the Renaissance and survives in some forms today. Philosophy on the concepts of destiny and fate has existed since the Hellenistic period with such as the Stoics. The Stoics believed that human decisions and actions ultimately went according to a plan devised by a god. They claimed that humans theoretically have free will, their souls. The Epicureans challenged the Stoic beliefs by denying the existence of this divine fate and they believed that men’s actions were voluntary so long as they were rational. In daily language, destiny and fate are synonymous, but with regard to 19th century philosophy, but this concept may have even other senses, although he, in various places, saw the will to power as a strong element for adaptation or survival in a better way. Nietzsche eventually transformed the idea of matter as centers of force into matter as centers of will to power as mankind’s destiny to face with amor fati. The expression Amor fati is used repeatedly by Nietzsche as acceptation-choice of the fate, influential philosophers like Robert Kane, Thomas Nagel, Roderick Chisholm, and A. J. Ayer have written about this notion, the idea of a god controlled destiny plays an important role in numerous religions. Followers of Ancient Greek religion regarded not only the Moirai but also the gods, particularly Zeus, as responsible for deciding and carrying out destiny, respectively. Those who followed Gnosticism believed in fate as something strict and unchangeable, resulting in only for the “chosen ones. ”Followers of Christianity consider God to be the only force with control over one’s fate
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Evil
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In religion, ethics, philosophy and psychology good and evil is a very common dichotomy. In cultures with Manichaean and Abrahamic religious influence, evil is usually perceived as the dualistic antagonistic opposite of good, Evil, in a general context, is the absence or opposite of that which is described as being good. Often, evil is used to denote profound immorality, in certain religious contexts, evil has been described as a supernatural force. Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its motives, however, elements that are commonly associated with evil involve unbalanced behavior involving expediency, selfishness, ignorance, or neglect. How to achieve good is also discussed in the social sciences, every language has a word expressing good in the sense of having the right or desirable quality and bad in the sense undesirable. A sense of judgment and a distinction right and wrong, good. This idea developed into a religion which spawned many sects, some of which embraced an extreme dualistic belief that the world should be shunned. Morality in this absolute sense solidifies in the dialogues of Plato, the idea is further developed in Late Antiquity by Neoplatonists, Gnostics, and Church Fathers. Medieval theology was shaped by St. Augustine of Hippo. According to the definition of St. Augustine of Hippo sin is a word, deed. Other later Germanic forms include Middle English evel, ifel, ufel, Old Frisian evel, Old Saxon ubil, Old High German ubil, differing views also exist as to why evil might arise. Many religious and philosophical traditions claim that evil behavior is an aberration that results from the human condition. Sometimes, evil is attributed to the existence of free will, Some argue that evil itself is ultimately based in an ignorance of truth. A variety of Enlightenment thinkers have alleged the opposite, by suggesting that evil is learned as a consequence of social structures. In physics and statistical thermodynamics, the property of goodness or order is referred to as a state of low entropy. Confucianisms primary concern is with correct social relationships and the behavior appropriate to the learned or superior man, thus evil would correspond to wrong behavior. By good, I understand that which we know is useful to us. By evil, on the contrary I understand that which we certainly know hinders us from possessing anything that is good
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Infinity
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Infinity is an abstract concept describing something without any bound or larger than any number. In mathematics, infinity is treated as a number but it is not the same sort of number as natural or real numbers. Georg Cantor formalized many ideas related to infinity and infinite sets during the late 19th, in the theory he developed, there are infinite sets of different sizes. For example, the set of integers is countably infinite, while the set of real numbers is uncountable. Ancient cultures had various ideas about the nature of infinity, the ancient Indians and Greeks did not define infinity in precise formalism as does modern mathematics, and instead approached infinity as a philosophical concept. The earliest recorded idea of infinity comes from Anaximander, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus and he used the word apeiron which means infinite or limitless. However, the earliest attestable accounts of mathematical infinity come from Zeno of Elea, aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known for his paradoxes, described by Bertrand Russell as immeasurably subtle, however, recent readings of the Archimedes Palimpsest have found that Archimedes had an understanding about actual infinite quantities. The Jain mathematical text Surya Prajnapti classifies all numbers into three sets, enumerable, innumerable, and infinite, on both physical and ontological grounds, a distinction was made between asaṃkhyāta and ananta, between rigidly bounded and loosely bounded infinities. European mathematicians started using numbers in a systematic fashion in the 17th century. John Wallis first used the notation ∞ for such a number, euler used the notation i for an infinite number, and exploited it by applying the binomial formula to the i th power, and infinite products of i factors. In 1699 Isaac Newton wrote about equations with an number of terms in his work De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas. The infinity symbol ∞ is a symbol representing the concept of infinity. The symbol is encoded in Unicode at U+221E ∞ infinity and in LaTeX as \infty and it was introduced in 1655 by John Wallis, and, since its introduction, has also been used outside mathematics in modern mysticism and literary symbology. Leibniz, one of the co-inventors of infinitesimal calculus, speculated widely about infinite numbers, in real analysis, the symbol ∞, called infinity, is used to denote an unbounded limit. X → ∞ means that x grows without bound, and x → − ∞ means the value of x is decreasing without bound. ∑ i =0 ∞ f = ∞ means that the sum of the series diverges in the specific sense that the partial sums grow without bound. Infinity can be used not only to define a limit but as a value in the real number system
35.
Bibliotheca Teubneriana
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The Bibliotheca Teubneriana, or Teubner editions of Greek and Latin texts, comprise the most thorough modern collection ever published of ancient Greco-Roman literature. Today, the only comparable publishing ventures, producing authoritative scholarly reference editions of ancient authors, are the Oxford Classical Texts. In 1811, Benedictus Gotthelf Teubner refounded in his own name an operation he had directed since 1806. The volumes of the Bibliotheca Teubneriana began to appear in 1849, although today Teubner editions are relatively expensive, they were originally introduced to fill the need, then unmet, for low-priced but high-quality editions. Prior to the introduction of the Teubner series, accurate editions of antique authors could only be purchased by libraries, students and other individuals of modest means had to rely on editions which were affordable but also filled with errors. To satisfy the need for accurate and affordable editions Teubner introduced the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, in the 19th century, Teubner offered both affordable editiones maiores for scholars, and low-priced editiones minores for students. Eventually, editiones minores were dropped from the series and Teubner began to offer only scholarly reference editions of ancient authors, during the period between the end of World War II and German reunification, the publishing house of B. G. Teubner split into two firms, Teubner KG, later BSB B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, in Leipzig in East Germany, both offered volumes in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana. After the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany, Teubner was also reunited and subsequently consolidated its headquarters at Wiesbaden. Teubner Verlag announced their intention to concentrate on scientific and technical publishing, all their Classical Studies titles, including the Biblotheca Teubneriana, were sold to K. G. Saur, a publisher based in Munich. Although new volumes began to appear with the imprint in aedibus K. G. Saur, in 2006, the publishing firm of Walter de Gruyter acquired K. G. Saur and their entire publishing range, including the Bibliotheca Teubneriana. Since January 2007, the Bibliotheca Teubneriana is being published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. As of 1 May 2007, the new North American distributor of titles from the Bibliotheca Teubneriana is Walter de Gruyter, while the typography of the Greek Teubners has been subject to innovations over the years, an overview of the whole series shows a great deal of consistency. The old-fashioned, cursive font used in most of the volumes is instantly recognized by classicists. This type was in use at least from the 1870s to the 1970s. Teubner used a type, designed to match the original cursive type. In the example shown, the type is still used in the critical apparatus. In other editions, this font is used throughout
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Thomas Taylor (neoplatonist)
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Thomas Taylor was an English translator and Neoplatonist, the first to translate into English the complete works of Aristotle and of Plato, as well as the Orphic fragments. Thomas Taylor was born in the City of London on 15 May 1758 and he was educated at St. Pauls School, and devoted himself to the study of the classics and of mathematics. His aim was the translation of all the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers. So enamoured was he of the ancients, that he and his wife talked to one only in classical Greek. He was also a voice against corruption in the Christianity of his day. Taylor was ridiculed and acquired many enemies, but in other quarters he was well received, among his friends was the eccentric traveller and philosopher John Walking Stewart, whose gatherings Taylor was in the habit of attending. Taylor married his childhood sweetheart Mary Morton in 1777, and they had four sons, George Burrow Taylor, John Buller Taylor, William Grainger Taylor and their daughter, Mary Meredith Taylor, was named after his generous patron William Meredith and married a haberdasher, Samuel Beverly Jones. He married again, and his second wife Susannah died in 1823, from his second marriage he had one son, Thomas Proclus Taylor. The texts that he used had been edited since the 16th century and his translations were influential on William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. In American editions they were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Taylor also published several original works on philosophy and mathematics. These works have been republished by the Prometheus Trust, 1788-89 The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclids Elements, and his Life by Marinus. With a preliminary Dissertation on the Platonic Doctrine of Ideas, to which are added A History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology by the later Platonists,2 vols. With a preliminary Dissertation on the Platonic Doctrine of Ideas, to which are added A History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology by the later Platonists,2 vols. 1793 Sallust on the Gods and the World, and the Pythagoric Sentences of Demophilus,1794 Pausaniass Description of Greece Five Books of Plotinus, viz. On Felicity, on the Nature and Origin of Evil, on Providence, on Nature, Contemplation, and the One, an Answer to Dr. Gilliess Supplement to his New Analysis of Aristotles Works The Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius,2 vols. His Fifty-Five Dialogues and Twelve Epistles,5 vols, with an Appendix containing some Hymns never before printed. 1807 The Treatises of Aristotle on the Heavens 1809 The Elements of the true Arithmetic of Infinites. In which all the Propositions on the Arithmetic of Infinites invented by Dr. Wallis relative to the summation of fluxions are demonstrated to be false, the Six Books of Proclus, the Platonic Successor, on the Theology of Plato,2 vols
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International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: William Ritchie Sorley (1911). "Iamblichus, the chief representative of Syrian Neoplatonism". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 