‘The Holiest Man Ever Born’: Sages, <span class='italic'>Theioi Andres</span>, and the Shaping of Late Greek Prophecy

doi:10.1017/9781009328777.006

Chapter 5 - ‘The Holiest Man Ever Born’: Sages, Theioi Andres, and the Shaping of Late Greek Prophecy

from Part II - Status, Role, and Functions of Human Intermediaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2023

Claire Hall

Edited by

Elsa Giovanna Simonetti and

Claire Hall

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Elsa Giovanna Simonetti: Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Claire Hall: Affiliation:
University of Durham

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Summary

This chapter examines the idea of the prophetically able holy man, or theios anêr, and argues that the attribution of sagehood to prophets in the Hellenistic Jewish tradition paved the way to the creation of the idealised prophet-sage of the Greek theios anêr tradition. This process radically altered the way in which Greeks – including pagans, Jews, and Christians – conceptualised the role of the prophet. The merging of the rational-dialectical epistemic claims of the sage with the revelatory epistemology of the prophet in authors like Philo established a potentially universal scope to the prophet-sage’s knowledge; while both the prophet and sage had defined epistemologies and limits in traditional Greek and Jewish thought, the new-prophet sage understood nothing less than the ‘structure of the cosmos and the activity of the elements’.

Keywords

prophet sage epistemology theios anêr divination Epictetus Philo Apollonius of Tyana

Type: Chapter
Information: Divination and Revelation in Later Antiquity , pp. 99 - 119

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009328777.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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