Bridging Greek Philosophy, Christianity, and Islam: An Edition of the Late Antique Testimonies of Heraclitus

ongoing

The chief objective of the project is to produce the first complete collection of the Late Antique testimonies concerning the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus. This source collection will include an English translation of the texts in the various relevant languages (mainly Greek and Arabic, but also Latin, Coptic, and Syriac) and a running commentary of the testimonies, highlighting both the philological and the philosophical importance of the Late Antique afterlife of Heraclitus. The project will thus also provide the very first in-depth study of the reception of the thought and the tenets of Heraclitus in this fundamental period. The name of Heraclitus was still resonating in third century Rome, fifth century Alexandria, and ninth century Baghdad, but no one has put together the existing evidence to tell that story yet. The main philosophical and exegetical objective of the project thus consists not only in the analysis of the various ways in which different authors have expounded the views and the sayings of Heraclitus, but also in the assessment of the remarkable patterns of continuity and change that characterise the Heraclitean interpretations in the broad chronological span of Late Antiquity. The figure of Heraclitus lies, indeed, at the intersection of historical periods and exegetical traditions that tend to be considered separately. My project aims to challenge this approach by showing that the literary and philosophical production pertaining to research fields such as Greek Philosophy, Christianity, and Islam has to be jointly taken into account if we want to understand both the interpretative history and the theoretical relevance of the tenets of Heraclitus. For this reason, the project includes not only the Greek reception of Heraclitus but also domains neglected by scholarly research such as the Gnostic writings of the Nag Hammadi library and the texts produced in the framework of the translation movement from Greek into Syriac and Arabic.