Praying and Contemplating in Late Antiquity: Religious and Philosophical Interactions ed. by E. Pachoumi, M. Edwards (review)

At first glance, the purpose of the book is broadly formulated and the range of topics and traditions to be discussed is broad as well. The book deals, as the title indicates, with prayer and contemplation in Late Antiquity. The back cover informs us that the book focusses on the interactions and tensions between philosophy and religion and briefly mentions the different aspects and traditions that will be discussed in addressing this issue. The book is well organized and, besides the collection of articles, provides an introduction by the editors and indices of ancient authors, references, and subjects.

The introduction teaches us that the articles collected in this volume were presented at the conference Praying and Contemplating: Religious and Philosophical Interactions in Late Antiquity and deal with texts that were written between the third and seventh century ad. The introduction further provides the usual overview of the content and argument of the individual contributions and ends with a unifying programmatic statement: the editors take a position against the view of some scholars (Geffcken, Dodds, and Gilbert Murray) who have estimated the role of certain religious elements within philosophy as undesirable and 'irrational'. The papers that are collected in this book instead aim to show the rationalism of (various forms of) religion and the close encounters between different traditions (especially Platonism, mystery cults, and Christianity), rather than their proclaimed oppositions. With this statement, and the volume as a whole, the editors clearly aim to correct (or at least problematize) a view that is held by some prominent scholars in the field of ancient studies.

The first four articles focus on the Neoplatonic tradition. John Dillon, Chapter 1, 'Prayer and contemplation in the Neoplatonic and Sufi traditions' (pp. 7-22), describes the different stages of prayer and contemplation in the work of Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus, and uses some notions of the Sufi tradition to shed light on what the highest stage, the ἕνωσις, might consist of. His comparison with and use of the Sufi tradition is interesting and useful in addressing the question of what is involved in obtaining the ἕνωσις within the Neoplatonic tradition. Eleni Pachoumi, Chapter 2, 'Magico-religious and philosophical interactions in Proclus' theurgic unions' (pp. 23-37), discusses the interactions between the Neoplatonic (especially Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus) and magico-religious tradition in their exemplification of theurgic unions. Therein she focuses on the notions of mixture and sympathy and on theurgical attributes that appear in the writings of both traditions, showing the overlap between them. Explicitly problematizing Dodds' claim that Iamblichus introduced the irrational into philosophy, John Finamore, in his Chapter 3, 'Reason and irrationality: Iamblichus on divination through dreams' (pp. 39-58), traces the rationality of the irrationality in dream-divination. He argues that the embrace of an irrational component within philosophy stands in a long tradition – stretching from Homer, through Plato, to Iamblichus – in which dream-divination is widely accepted. As Finamore shows, Iamblichus actually builds on and addresses issues from within the metaphysical framework of this tradition in a rational and consistent manner. Mark Wildish, Chapter 4, 'Iamblichus on the language of prayer' (pp. 59-70), subjects Iamblichus' account of prayer to a linguistic analysis and contrasts it with Ammonias' neo-Aristotelian account. In the latter, a hierarchical distinction between the invoker and the invoked is maintained, based on the doxastic use of language which is distinguished from the intellective content that is called upon in prayer. In Iamblichus' account, the higher forms of prayer (for example, via symbols) annul this distinction, as the utterance of the prayer is infused with the intellective content that is performed in the act of prayer, establishing a bond between invoker and invoked.

The two subsequent articles deal with prayer in the work of Boethius and the emperor Julian respectively. Wayne Hankey, Chapter 5, 'Ratio, preces, intuitus: prayer's mediation in Boethius...