136 | CHAPTER 5
orientation, shared by learned exponents and systematizers of all these First
Millennium traditions of thought, in what I here call the exegetical phase.
This is a quite different perspective from the one which sees Justinian’s
ban on philosophical teaching at Athens in 529 as the “end of Antiquity.” As
I already remarked in chapter 1, the prestige of Plato and Athens has imposed
premature closure on a period now coming to be seen as one of continued
intellectual activity and dissemination. Partly this reevaluation is based on
recognition that the Aristotelian commentators were not so stuck to their
texts that they were unable to think new thoughts. Partly it is a more general
acknowledgment of late Platonism’s ability to engage modern minds caught
somewhere between reason and religion. In other words, a substantial region
of later Greek thought is well on the way to getting over its inferiority com-
plex vis- à- vis the “classical,” in comparison with which both the commentar-
ies stigmatized as “derivative” and the Platonists downgraded to “Neo- ” have
been deemed distinctly parasitic.^43 This development reinforces my argu-
ment for a First Millennium built on the power and legacy of ideas.
Christian polemic
Aristotelianism not only enjoyed its own almost millennial exegetical age
between Alexander of Aphrodisias and Ibn Sīnā c. 1000; it also contributed
vitally to Christian exegesis.
Aristotle would hardly have been rendered into Armenian and Syriac, or
probably Arabic, had not Christians early on—centuries before Philopo-
nus—felt a need for his logic in refining and propagating their faith, and
developing a common terminolog y in which to argue. Philosophical oppo-
nents of Christianity like the second- century Platonist Celsus emphasized
the rigor and sophistication of their way of thought compared to the simplic-
ity—in content and style—of the Gospels. Answering Celsus, the learned
third- century Alexandrian Christian Origen, already encountered in chapter
3, quoted Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus, and the Epistle of Titus to show that the
scriptures likewise encourage study of dialectic (the art of arguing ) because
“proofs are friendly,” as Plato put it, while preaching the Gospel involves “re-
futing the adversaries” too.^44 In his school at Caesarea, Origen took his pupils
through dialectic and logic, physics including geometry and astronomy, and
ethics, before getting to Christian theolog y and the study of scripture.^45
It was notably in the schools of Alexandria that, in ensuing generations,
Christian intellectuals sharpened their wits and deployed their eristic skills
43 Cf. Baltussen, Poetics today 28 (2007) [5:14], esp. 248, 262, 273–75.
44 Origen, Against Celsus [3:39] 6.7.
45 Gregory Thaumaturgus, Address to Origen [ed. and tr. (French) H. Crouzel (Paris 1969)] 7–15;
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical history [3:35] 6.18.3–4.