{"_index":"sire","_id":"735","_score":null,"_source":{"id":735,"authors_free":[{"id":1098,"entry_id":735,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":220,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Kraemer, Joel L.","free_first_name":"Joel, L.","free_last_name":"Kraemer","norm_person":{"id":220,"first_name":"Joel L.","last_name":"Kraemer","full_name":"Kraemer, Joel L.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/113182023","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"A Lost Passage from Philoponus' Contra Aristotelem in Arabic Translation","main_title":{"title":"A Lost Passage from Philoponus' Contra Aristotelem in Arabic Translation"},"abstract":"A comparison of the Arabic text with the excerpt of Simplicius shows that he, being concerned only with the gist of the argument, did not quote Philoponus' passage in its entirety. He reproduced only the second part of it, in which Philoponus referred to the Greeks and the barbarians, that is, those whose consensus was invoked by Aristotle and who were, for Aristotle, exhaustive of mankind. Simplicius omitted the first part of the passage, in which Philoponus spoke of those who believe in creation, among whom he certainly included Christians (\"the people of our time\"), a category of mankind unknown to Aristotle. There was no need for him to quote the last part of the passage, in which Philoponus gave his own interpretation of the common belief that the divine is associated with heaven. That the excerpt by Simplicius is not a direct quote, and the Arabic text an expansion of the original passage, is confirmed by the fact that some of the detail in the Arabic rendition, which is missing in Simplicius' excerpt, nevertheless appears in his discussion of Philoponus' argument.\r\n\r\nThe passage before us, a response to a rhetorical argument, is not on a par with the technical aspects of Philoponus' critique of Aristotle, but it is no less appealing or significant for that reason. The last part of it conveys, in a lyrical way, the religious sentiment of the author in a tone that prefigures the devotional pages of the De opificio mundi. There, he returns to the question of the designation of heaven as the seat of the divine. \"What wonder,\" he writes, \"if [people] set apart the noblest and purest of bodily existents, heaven, for God, and, while praying, extend their hands to it.\" He adds that through the physical act of raising the hands and eyes to heaven, the mind is raised to God. Heaven is a symbol of the majesty of the Creator.\r\n\r\nPhiloponus obliterates the pagan-Aristotelian distinction between the divine, eternal heavens and the transitory sublunar world. But it is not quite precise to say that he abrogates the superiority of heaven. Heaven and earth are placed in the same order, but heaven ranks higher than earth. That heaven ranks higher than earth and is more closely associated with the divine is part of his Christian heritage. The light metaphor and the idea that all things receive the divine illumination and do so according to their capacity are reflections from Neo-Platonism, but they appear to have been integrated into his Christian vision. The idea that all things are filled with God is not inconsistent with the biblical view that the whole earth is filled with His presence. [conclusion p. 326-327]","btype":3,"date":"1965","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/3NxYnrQXBWBXLOL","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":220,"full_name":"Kraemer, Joel L.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":735,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Journal of the American Oriental Society","volume":"85","issue":"3","pages":"318-327"}},"sort":["A Lost Passage from Philoponus' Contra Aristotelem in Arabic Translation"]}