Giuseppe, I presume the crucifixion in Plato you're referring to is that of the just man in Plato's
Republic, bk
II
[Glaucon:
361e->] “We must tell it, then; and even if my language is somewhat rude and brutal, you must not suppose, Socrates, that it is I who speak thus, but those who commend injustice above justice. What they will say is this:
that such being his disposition the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, [362a->] the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified,1 and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire. And the saying of Aeschylus was, it seems, far more correctly applicable to the unjust man. For it is literally true, they will say, that the unjust man, as pursuing what clings closely to reality, to truth, and not regulating his life by opinion, desires not to seem but to be unjust ... ”
1 or strictly “impaled.” cf. Cicero
De Rep. iii. 27. Writers on Plato and Christianity have often compared the fate of Plato's just man with the crucifixion.
.. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... ion%3D362a
“In the Republic the great philosopher asks what is likely to be the position of a completely just man in this world. He comes to the conclusion that a man's righteousness is only complete and guaranteed when he takes on the appearance of unrighteousness, for only then is it clear that he does not follow the opinion of men but pursues justice only for its own sake.
“So according to Plato the truly just man must be misunderstood and persecuted in this world; indeed, Plato goes so far as to write:
"They will say that our just man will be scourged, racked, fettered, will have his eyes burnt out, and at last, after all manner of suffering, will be crucified..." Republic, Book II, 361e-362a. ”
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, Herder and Herder: New York, 1970, p. 222.
Previously, in chapter 59 of
First Apology, Martyr says
.
“you may learn that it was from our teachers--we mean the account given through the prophets--that Plato borrowed...the very words spoken through Moses, who, as above shown, was the first prophet, and of greater antiquity than the Greek writers...through whom the Spirit of prophecy, signifying how and from what materials God at first formed the world, spake... So that both Plato and they who agree with him, and we ourselves, have learned, and you also can be convinced, that by the word of God the whole world was made out of the substance spoken of before by Moses. And that which the poets call Erebus, we know was spoken of formerly by Moses.”
.
Moreover, he again appeals to Moses by invoking Numbers 21:8-9.
2
Numbers 21:8-9,
Brenton Septuagint Translation, -
.
8 And Moses prayed to the Lord for the people; and the Lord said to Moses, Make thee a serpent, and put it on a signal-staff;2 and it shall come to pass that whenever a serpent shall bite a man, every one so bitten that looks upon it shall live.
9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a signal-staff 2 : and it came to pass that whenever a serpent bit a man, and he looked on the brazen serpent, he lived.
.
First Apology 60
.
“And the physiological discussion concerning the Son of God in the Timoeus of Plato, where he says, "He placed him crosswise in the universe",3 he borrowed in like manner from Moses; for in the writings of Moses it is related how at that time, when the Israelites went out of Egypt and were in the wilderness, they fell in with poisonous beasts, both vipers and asps, and every kind of serpent, which slew the people; and that Moses, by the inspiration and influence of God, took brass, and made it into the figure of a cross, and set it in the holy tabernacle, and said to the people, "If ye look to this figure, and believe, ye shall be saved thereby".2
“And when this was done, it is recorded that the serpents died, and it is handed down that the people thus escaped death.
“Which things Plato reading, and not accurately understanding, and not apprehending that it was the figure of the cross, but taking it to be a placing crosswise,3 he said that the power next to the first God was placed crosswise in the universe.3
“And as to his speaking of a third,4 he did this because he read, as we said above, that which was spoken by Moses, "that the Spirit of God moved over the waters." For he gives the second place to the Logos which is with God, who he said was placed crosswise in the universe;3 and the third place4 to the Spirit who was said to be borne upon the water, saying, "And the third around the third".4
“And hear how the Spirit of prophecy signified through Moses that there should be a conflagration.”
.
2 It is clear that Justin has 'reconfigured' the "serpent of brass upon a signal-
staff" as
'the figure of a cross'.
3 In
chapter 60 Justin refers to 'crosswise' four times
("placed in the universe" three), and,
in the first line, he ties that to Son of God in Plato's
Timaeus
- Commentary: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1572/1572-h/1572-h.htm - search 'cross'
And so the thought of God made a God in the image of a perfect body, having intercourse with himself and needing no other, but in every part harmonious and self-contained and truly blessed. The soul was first made by him—the elder to rule the younger; not in the order in which our wayward fancy has led us to describe them, but the soul first and afterwards the body. God took of the unchangeable and indivisible and also of the divisible and corporeal, and out of the two he made a third nature, essence, which was in a mean between them, and partook of the same and the other, the intractable nature of the other being compressed into the same ... The entire compound was divided by him lengthways into two parts, which he united at the centre like the letter X, and bent into an inner and outer circle or sphere, cutting one another again at a point over against the point at which they cross ...
... He was always tending to argue from what was near to what was remote, from what was known to what was unknown, from man to the universe, and back again from the universe to man. While he was arranging the world, he was arranging the forms of thought in his own mind; and the light from within and the light from without often crossed and helped to confuse one another ...
The universe revolves around a centre once in twenty-four hours, but the orbits of the fixed stars take a different direction from those of the planets. The outer and the inner sphere cross one another and meet again at a point opposite to that of their first contact ...
- http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html
... This new beginning of our discussion of the universe requires a fuller division than the former; for then we made two classes, now a third must be revealed. The two sufficed for the former discussion: one, which we assumed, was a pattern intelligible and always the same; and the second was only the imitation of the pattern, generated and visible. There is also 4a third kind which we did not distinguish at the time, conceiving that the two would be enough. But now the argument seems to require that we should set forth in words another kind, which is difficult of explanation and dimly seen ...
... The nature of the light and the heavy will be best understood when examined in connexion with our notions of above and below ; for it is quite a mistake to suppose that the universe is parted into two regions, separate from and opposite to each other, the one a lower to which all things tend which have any bulk, and an upper to which things only ascend against their will. For as the universe is in the form of a sphere, all the extremities, being equidistant from the centre, are equally extremities, and the centre, which is equidistant from them, is equally to be regarded as the opposite of them all. Such being the nature of the world, when a person says that any of these points is above or below, may he not be justly charged with using an improper expression ? For the centre of the world cannot be rightly called either above or below, but is the centre and nothing else ; and the circumference is not the centre, and has in no one part of itself a different relation to the centre from what it has in any of the opposite parts. Indeed, when it is in every direction similar, how can one rightly give to it names which imply opposition ? For if there were any solid body in equipoise at the centre of the universe, there would be nothing to draw it to this extreme rather than to that, for they are all perfectly similar
4 might be too much of a stretch ... but anything is possible with such philosophising ...
