St John in Amelius' seminar
pp. 30-43
in: Panayiota Vassilopoulou, Stephen L. Clark (eds), Late antique epistemology, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
This chapter, I regret to say, is a somewhat fanciful production. The topic on which I propose to allow my fancy to play is the report by Eusebius1 that the Neoplatonic philosopher Amelius, senior pupil of Plotinus, who retired in later life to Apamea in Syria, provided, in some context, an exegesis of the Prologue (at least) of the Gospel of John. This remarkable testimony has often been noted, but never, I think, dwelt on with quite the attention that it deserves.2 I must confess to having long been intrigued by the mystery of exactly how and why Amelius approached this troublesome text — product of an alien and, indeed, dangerously hostile tradition, but yet in some ways oddly familiar to a Platonist or Stoic philosopher in its terminology.
