Numenius of Apamea Simulacrum

The Life

Numenius was born in Apamea, in Syria, and was active in the second half of the second century CE. Almost nothing is known about his biography beyond that. He wrote philosophical dialogues, of which only fragments survive, preserved mostly in the polemical excerpts of the Christian scholar Eusebius of Caesarea, who found in Numenius convenient arguments against pagan philosophy's claims to independence from older Eastern sources.

The Thought

Numenius's fragments present a Platonism more willing than most to acknowledge non-Greek sources. He famously asked — in a formulation Eusebius was glad to preserve — "What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic Greek?" The remark was not a claim that Plato had read the Hebrew Bible but a claim about the convergence of ancient wisdom traditions: Plato, the Pythagoreans, the Egyptians, the Brahmans, and the Hebrews were, in Numenius's view, articulating the same fundamental truths in different languages.

His metaphysical system distinguished three gods — a first god who is pure intellect and rest, a second god who is the demiurge and orders the world, and a third god who is the world itself or its soul. This threefold division was an important bridge between Middle Platonism and the later Neoplatonic hierarchy of the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. He also drew freely on Pythagorean numerological thought and on matter-spirit dualism, producing a metaphysics that was cosmopolitan in its sources and influential in its effects.

The Legacy

Numenius was a formative influence on Plotinus, the next generation's great Platonist; Porphyry reports that Plotinus was accused of plagiarising Numenius, and the charge was evidently taken seriously enough to require answering. Through that influence, Numenius shaped Neoplatonism at its formation. He was also, through his Moses-remark and his comparative approach, an important figure for Christian Platonists who wanted to argue for the continuity of biblical revelation with philosophical reason. Origen and Eusebius both drew on him, the first positively and the second more ambivalently.