Porphyry (c.232/4-c.305) or Porphyrios was born in Tyre [now Lebanon] or Batanaea [now Syria], and studied in Athens, before joining the Neoplatonic group of Plotinus in Rome. In 263-268 or thereabouts, Porphyry studied philosophy in Rome under Plotinus, who rescued him from a suicidal depression .
In 301 Porphyry completed The Enneads, a systematized and edited collection of the works of Plotinus, including a short but very informative biography. The name Enneads means "Nines", so-called because they were sorted into chapters of nine sections each. (This arrangement of course was purely Porphyry's idea). The Enneads became a book of great significance and influence, not only in the Hellenistic-Roman world, but later in the Islamic and Renaissance Christian worlds as well.
Although not an original thinker in the league of his teacher Plotinus, or his student Iamblichus, Porphyry nevertheless was possessed of great learning, an interest in and great talent for historical and philological criticism, and an ernest desire to uproot false teachings in order to ennoble people and turn them to the Good. He declared the salvation of the soul as the ultimate purpose of philosophy.
The 16-book work by the Neoplatonist Porphyry Against the Christians is lost. Constantine ordered that all copies should be destroyed; a century later Theodosius tacitly acknowledged that this had not occurred by issuing a similar edict in 448. Although Christians were generally interested in Neoplatonism, and many of Porphyry's major philosophical works still survive, it is hard to see who would have copied a work calculated to offend everyone reading or writing books between 550 and 1450, even without such a edict. Books that insult their readers and copyists have few chances of survival.
In 1867, a 15th century manuscript containing an unknown work with the title the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes was discovered in Epirus and taken to Athens by C. Blondel. The work had been written in 5 books; the Athens MS contained only the portion from the middle of book 2 to the middle of book 4. Blondel made an edition of the text from the MS, which was very corrupt, but died before he was able to publish. The book was published by his friend Foucart in 1876, but without an introduction, and this edition is itself now very rare. This remains the only edition of this work. In 1877 Duchesne examined the manuscript again, and provided a description. The MS is now lost.
This work consists of a series of anti-Christian objections or sneers directed at the Scriptures, much after the manner of Porphyry, or the apostles, quoted verbatim, followed by a refutation by a Christian. While the authorship of these passages is unknown, and has been attributed to various writers (Crafer prefers Hierocles, the persecuting governor of Bithynia), since Harnack there has been a general consensus that the fragments are derived from Porphyry, albeit in a form condensed by a later writer. For the purposes of this page, the text will be treated as 'Porphyry'.
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