The Critique of the Chaldean Oracles in the Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s ‘Parmenides’

With Stephen Marinca (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München).
The so-called Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s ‘Parmenides’ often shows a strong polemical spirit. This applies especially to the fourth fragment of the Commentary (fol. IX–X) where the possibility of knowing the First Principle is debated, questioning at least two schools of thought: on the one hand, the Stoics and on the other hand, an “unnamed group of interpreters” of the Chaldean Oracles. My presentation examines the passage that recalls the Chaldean Oracles from two perspectives. After reviewing some hypotheses about the identity of these “unnamed interpreters” and the originality of their thesis, I will turn to the response of the commentator, who criticizes both the form of their transmission (by means of a revelation) and the doctrine itself. The second point of view is related to a formal and objective matter: the “unnamed interpreters” of the Oracles claim that the Father “unifies in his simplicity” his own Power and Intellect. This phrase is also found in the ‘common source’ used by the Latin theologian Marius Victorinus and the Coptic-Gnostic apocalypse Zostrianos (NHC VIII,1), although here it indicates how the One is configured according to the triad Existence-Life-Blessedness. The final part of my presentation examines some hypotheses concerning the presence of this formula in both the Anonymous Commentary and the ‘common source’, by making some references to the anti-Gnostic debate promoted by the school of Plotinus.

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