Late Neoplatonic discourses on suicide and the question of Christian philosophy professors at Alexandria

Abstract:

The later Neoplatonic commentaries attributed to David and Elias are considered by many scholars to be the work of Christians who dominated the Alexandrian school in the latter half of the sixth century. Christian Wildberg has challenged this prevailing view: he argues that the commentaries are more likely the work of pagan philosophers. Scholars who support Christian authorship have appealed to the strict prohibition against suicide expressed in the parts of the commentaries that discuss Socrates’ characterization in the Phaedo of philosophy as the practice of death. But the proscription of suicide that the commentators read into the Phaedo is consistent with the teachings of pagan Neoplatonists and thus provides no basis for a rejection of Wildberg’s thesis. I discuss the literary and historical exempla that the commentators use and propose that these are drawn in part from Gregory of Nazianzus’ Invective against Julian. The connection between the discourses and Gregory’s text suggests that the commentators may have been deliberately responding to his accusations of pagan hypocrisy.