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Proclus on the Chaldaean Oracles (1)

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01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery





01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery



Keywords
Adad
Chaldeans
oneness of god
primordial causes
Period
5th century CE
Roman Empire
Channel
Helleno-Roman philosophers and scholars


Text
Explanation of the name Adad as ‘One’.

Proclus, Commentary to Plato’s Parmenides:
There are many, saying a variety of other things, but they all try to direct the thought of the soul towards the One. The gods, knowing what concerns them, tend upwards towards the One by means of the One in themselves. And this precisely is their theological teaching: through the voice of the true theologians [= the Chaldean Oracles] they have handed down to us this hint regarding the first principle. They call it by a name of their own, ‘Ad’, which is their word for ‘one’; so it is translated by people who know their language. And they duplicate them in order to name the demiurgic intellect of the world, which they call ‘Adad, worthy of all praise.’ They do not say that it comes immediately next to the One, but only that it is comparable to the One by way of proportion: for as that intellect is to the intelligible, so the One is to the whole invisible world, and for that reason the latter is simply called ‘Ad,’ but the other which duplicates it is called ‘Adad’.


Source (list of abbreviations)
Proclus, Commentary to Plato’s Parmenides

Bibliography

Dalley and Reyes 1998, 121Dalley, S. and A. T. Reyes. “Mesopotamian Contact and Influence in the Greek World.” In: S. Dalley (ed.). The Legacy of Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998, 85-124.
Klibansky and Labowsky 1953, 274Klibansky, R. and C. Labowsky. Plato Latinus. Vol. 3: Parmenides usque ad finem primae hypothesis nec non Procli Commentarium in Parmenidem, pars ultima adhuc inedita interprete Guillelmo de Moerbeka. London: Warburg Institute 1953.
Talon 2001, 274Talon, Philippe. “Enūma Eliš and the Transmission of Babylonian Cosmology to the West.” In: R. M. Whiting 2001 (ed.). Mythology and Mythologies. Methodological Approaches to Intercultural Influences. Melammu Symposia 2. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001, 265-277. [PDF]

Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Cf. Adad as the greatest god (1)
Cf. Apamea and the Chaldean Oracles (1)

Amar Annus


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000198.php


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