Review of Rosemary A. Arthur, Pseudo-Dionysius as Polemicist: The Development and Purpose of the Angelic Hierarchy in Sixth-Century Syria.The Journal of Theological StudiesSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/6N4XR3V4/tei
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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.AndrewLouthReview of Rosemary A. Arthur, Pseudo-Dionysius as Polemicist: The Development and Purpose of the Angelic Hierarchy in Sixth-Century Syria.http://syriaca.org/cbss/6N4XR3V4https://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/6N4XR3V4https://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/6N4XR3V4The Journal of Theological Studies602009709-710There is a great deal of interest in this book, but I am not sure that it will do more than cause renewed reflection on some of the lines of thought advanced by the author.Rosemary Arthur has worked for many years on Dionysios, and this book bears many of the characteristics we have come to expect from her work, especially a boldness in taking up and pursuing ideas that other scholars treat with greater caution. Her conviction of the lateness of the Corpus Areopagiticum (i.e. no earlier than 530) remains, and of the author’s probable dependence on Damascius, the last of the Platonic διάδοχοι at Athens, who may well have ended up teaching in Syria, though the real influence now is the ‘Evagrianism’ condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council. There is much of interest in her exploration of the Syriac background to Dionysios’ thought, but much that she puts forward seems to me barely proven. Too many of the parallels are isolated, and if Arthur herself can discard evidence (of citation of the Areopagite before the 530s, for instance) on grounds of interpolation, that is a tactic open to others. She is fairly sure that the Areopagite was a Monophysite (at least she does not use the popular barbarism, ‘miaphysite’), but use of the terminology of ‘unchanged’ and ‘unconfused’ does not really distinguish Monophysites from Chalcedonians. She also thinks she has broken the seal of his anonymity, and puts forward Sergius of Reshaina as the author of the works. (If, as Arthur also argues, the author of the corpus was a bishop, then that is something we need to add to Sergius’ CV.) I doubt if this will carry any more conviction than the suggestions others have made (which already include this one). Throughout there is an uneasy balance between general exposition and detailed points. One of these details is the assertion that ὑμνϵν does not mean ‘to praise’, but ‘to relate’, the evidence being Liddell and Scott. But Liddell and Scott’s lexicon is an authority on classical Greek, not the Greek of Christian late antiquity, and she has overlooked the fact that one of the scholia to the corpus (possibly by Maximos) comments on the Areopagite’s use of ὑμνϵν, contrasting it with simple predication (PG 4, col. 328A: on DN 5.8). That seems to me better evidence that ὑμνϵν indeed meant ‘to praise’.
Louth, Andrew. “Review of Rosemary A. Arthur, Pseudo-Dionysius as Polemicist: The Development and Purpose of the Angelic Hierarchy in Sixth-Century Syria.” The Journal of Theological Studies 60, no. 2 (2009): 709–10. https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flp044.
Andrew Louth, Review of Rosemary A. Arthur, Pseudo-Dionysius as Polemicist: The Development and Purpose of the Angelic Hierarchy in Sixth-Century Syria.,The Journal of Theological Studies 60, no. 2 (2009): 709–10, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flp044.