Exegesis Volume 07 Issue #037 In This Issue: From: L:Smerillo Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #36
Exegesis Digest Wed, 06 Mar 2002

Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 09:13:52 +0100
From: L:Smerillo
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #36

Indeed, the cosmological wonder at the night sky was a potent sight for all peoples, the less they understood, the more potent it was. The starry carpet often occupies more than half the the time of a day. Such considerations as the author quoted raises are of course all rather, as you say at the end, naive.

The idea of wonder is classically expressed in the fragments of Artitotle's On the Heavens, some of which are preserved in Cicero's Hortensius. Arisitotle of course was not arguing for a soul, but for the existence of a theos or thinking being who created the cosmos. The idea was picked up by mediaeval scholasticism, but there disproven.

Circadian cycles have been noted in animals, and I suppose some form of this basic material coordination can be expected in humans as well. Matter tends to behave in its larger agglutinates in a remarkably consistent manner.

Origen by the way was not a gnostic, and the passage quoted only refers to the general ideas of natural astrology or astronomy which were the common coin of natural philosophy, what we call science, of the Hellensitic and Late Antique world.

I do not see that the extensive quotes of this author further any discussion, nor apparently do you.

feliciter,

Lorenzo Smerillo

End of exegesis Digest V7 #37

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