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In the modern imagination, ancient Alexandria stands as a paradigmatic locus for the exchange of ideas and cultural traditions and as a metaphor for a distinctive cast of mind-"neither Greek nor Egyptian, but a hybrid: a joint" (Durrell); profoundly "theoretical, scholarly, and systematic" (Nietzsche); and equally versed in "philosophy, rhetoric, and the sacred scriptures" (Cavafy, Tomb of Evrion). Underlying this monolithic concept of 'Alexandrian man' is a variegated reality of historical 'personae' with diverging interests and often competing cultural programs: native Egyptian priests protecting their diminishing influence through a discourse of racial and cultural priority; Greek 'Orientalizers' reaffirming their cultural supremacy by means of the dark 'barbarian' alter-ego; marginalized Greek-speaking Jews caught in the vicious circle of simultaneously affirming and disavowing their otherness; local aristocrats struggling to protect the city's autonomy from Roman imperial hegemony; scholars of various sorts, acting as the guardians of Greek literature, science, and philosophy, and engaged in antiquarian research and the 'para-textual' practices of scrutinizing and clarifying 'canonical' texts of the past; and finally, the emerging group of Christian theologians adapting Alexandrian cultural models and their master-narratives to their own theological and apologetic agendas.
In this context, the Department of Religious Studies at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in collaboration with the Department
of Theology at the University of Göttingen, will host a two-day conference
on February 23-24, 2008, with contributions by an international group
of scholars. The principal goal of this conference is to explore various
forms of interaction between philosophy, textual exegesis, and religious
discourses in late Hellenistic and Roman Alexandria (1st ct. BCE-3rd
ct. CE), as they are reflected in the literary work, private records,
and public activity of the following Alexandrian 'personae': (i)
the Egyptian priest; (ii) the gymnasiarch; (iii)
the magician; (iv) the astrologer; (v)
the alchemist; (vi) the apocalyptic prophet; (vii)
the philologist; (viii) the rhetorician; (ix)
the antiquarian; (x) the physician; (xi)
the Hermetist; (xii) the 'Gnostic'; (xiii)
the Christian teacher; (xiv) the doxographer; (xv)
the philosopher.
Individual presentations will address the following set of issues:
- Greco-Egyptian Consciousness. What impact did the centuries of Greek and then Roman rule exert on the mindset of native Egyptian elites? Was the cultural interaction between Egyptians and Greeks, relatively well attested in various regions of Egypt, also typical for a profoundly Hellenocentric Alexandrian milieu? And who were the likely agents of such integrative processes? Finally, is it possible to isolate in Alexandrian literary products the intra-textual markers of a new Greco-Egyptian consciousness?
- Alexandrian Philology and Biblical Hermeneutics. To what extent did the editorial work and exegetical protocols of Alexandrian philologists inform methods of Biblical exegesis, both among Jewish intellectuals and Christian teachers in Alexandria? Did contemporary rhetoric, with its elaborate techniques of interpreting legal documents, play any substantial role in Jewish and Christian approaches to their sacred traditions? And how was such a close, context-bound and cross-referential reading of Biblical texts made compatible with allegorical 'translation', a trademark of Alexandrian scriptural exegesis, which destabilizes the outer boundary of the text as well as its literary meaning? Finally, can we discern similar interpretative patterns and protocols in Alexandrian commentaries on scientific, medical, and philosophical texts, in the Hermetic appropriation of Demotic priestly texts, or in the 'Gnostic' engagements with Plato, with the Mosaic account of creation, and with Jewish wisdom literature?
- New Trends in Late Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy. What role did the rise of Alexandria as the new center of higher education play in the revival of classical Platonism, in the reinvention of Pythagorean philosophy, in the internal changes undergone by Stoicism, and in the articulation of new, more 'contaminated' and porous, philosophical genealogies? And to what extent did the emergence of a distinctively Alexandrian cast of mind-described in the opening paragraph as "neither Greek nor Egyptian, but a hybrid, a joint"-help to inform the 'Orientalist' current within the Imperial Platonism of the 1st-2nd centuries CE , characteristic for its intertwinement of philosophy and non-Greek religious traditions as coordinate cases of the same perennial wisdom?
Download the Program
There is no registration fee to attend the conference. Simply send
an email to Professor Zlatko Plese at plese@email.unc.edu
informing him that you plan to attend. We look forward to seeing you.
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