Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Blood wrote:I'm interested in Stoic uses of phaulos ('of no account') if anybody's got some.

Matthews, Bradley J. (2009) Mature in Christ: the contribution of Ephesians and Colossians to
constructing Christian maturity in modernity, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham
E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1345/

2.2.2.2 Σοφός: The Stoic Sage

According to the Stoics, individuals can be classed as either a fool (φαῦλος) or a sage (σοφός). This provokes strong criticism from Plutarch, who finds fault with the idea that a person would transition instantaneously from being bad (κακός) to perfect (τέλειος).43 Whilst his criticism primarily pertains to how one becomes a σοφός, Plutarch’s terminology reveals that he understands Stoic sages to be self-perceived perfect individuals. Whether the Stoics refer to the sage in the same manner is ultimately uncertain, but the σοφός remains the ideal to which every Stoic aspires.

43. Mor. 75-76.

Blood wrote:Does the word actually appear in Philo?

Certainly, apart from the Roman lawyers, the only identifiable Greek or Latin author I know in whom we find a reflection of the argument that slavery can be 'contrary to nature' is Philo, the Hellenised Jew who wrote at Alexandria during the first half-century of the Christian era. In one work he speaks with evident admiration of the Jewish sect of the Essenes, who (he says) do not have a single slave; they denounce slaveowners, he adds, for being unjust in destroying equality (isotes) and impious in transgressing the precept of Nature, the thesmos physeos (Quod omn. prob. liber 79; cf. hoi tes physeos nomoi, ibid. 37). In another work he similarly describes the 'Therapeutai' -- who must surely have been either imaginary or a sect of the Essenes -- as believing that the ownership of slaves was altogether contrary to nature, para physin (De vita contempl. 70); and again we have the interesting assumption that equality is the ideal: Philo speaks of the injustice and greed of 'those who introduce inequality, the origin of evil' (ten archekakon anisoteta). It is perfectly clear, however, that Philo himself did not by any means reject slavery altogether. His own basic position was that which I have described as the standard one in Hellenistic and later thinkers: that the good man, even if he happens to be enslaved, is 'really' free, while the bad man, the man who is worthless or senseless -- in Philo's Greek, the phaulos or aphron -- is always 'really' a slave. Philo wrote two whole treatises on this theme, of which we possess only the second, usually referred to by its traditional Latin title, Quod omnis probus liber sit; the other, intended to prove 'that a phaulos is a slave' (see Quod omn. prob. liber 1), has fortunately not survived. The treatise we do possess is actually the earliest full-length statement of the theory to survive complete, for the still earlier Stoic and other writings on the subject now exist, if at all, only in fragments. It is perfectly possible to demonstrate from Philo himself that what I have described as the standard view of slavery from Hellenistic times onwards can be assimilated to the old theory of 'natural slavery', provided slavery, for the worthless man, is treated as a benefit. In one of his fanciful attempts to establish borrowings by Greek authors -- in this case, Zeno the founder of Stoicism -- from the Jewish Scriptures, Philo recalls Genesis XXVII.40, where Isaac tells Esau that he is to 'serve' his brother Jacob. In the Septuagint, used by Philo, the verb in this passage is a form of douleuein, the commonest Greek term for serving as a slave. Isaac believed, Philo continues, that what seems to be the greatest of evils, namely slavery (douleia), is the highest possible good for a fool (an aphron), since his being deprived of liberty prevents him from doing wrong unscathed, and his character is improved by the control he experiences (Quod omn. prob. liber 57). Plato and Aristotle (see Section 11 of this chapter) would have warmly approved: to them, such a man was a slave 'by nature'. http://books.google.com/books?id=MSPttW ... CCAQ6AEwAA

In The Allegorical Laws (Legum Allegoria) 1.92-94, similarly, Philo classifies mankind into three types in relation to its need for rules (praecepta): generic man (spoudaios); neutral man (mesos); and bad man (phaolos):

Now it is to this being [Adam], and not to the being created after His image and after the original idea, that God gives the command. For the latter, even without urging, possesses virtue instinctively; but the former, independently of instruction, could have no part in wisdom. There is a difference between these three — injunction, prohibition, command accompanied by exhortation. For prohibition deals with wrongdoings and is addressed to the bad man, injunction concerns duties rightly done, and exhortation is man [pros ton mison], the man who is neither bad nor good [ton mete phaulon mete spoudaion]: for he is neither sinning, to lead anyone to forbid him, nor is he so doing right as right reason enjoins, but has need of exhortation [counselling and guidance], which teaches him to refrain from evil things, [alla chreian exei parainesews tes apexein men twn paulwn didaskouses] and incites him to aim at things noble. There is no need then, to give injunctions or prohibitions or exhortations [counselling] to the perfect man formed after the (Divine) image, for none of these does the perfect man require. The bad man has need of injunction and prohibition [tw de phaulw prostaxews kai apagoreusews], and the child of exhortation and teaching. Just so the perfect master of music or letters requires none of the directions that apply to those arts, whereas the man who stumbles over the subject of his study does require what we may call laws or rules with their injunctions and prohibitions, while one who is now beginning to learn requires teaching.

Alan Mendelson describes Philo's classification of mankind as static: “The phaulos does not seek to rise; the prokopton might aspire upwards aspire upwards, but is often pulled down; and angels are angels. Philo, in On the Giants (De Gigantibus) 60-63, makes a similar tripartite distinction between men in different terminology: [citation] The terms used by Philo in this passage * “man of God [oi theou],” “man of heaven [oi ouranou],” and “man of earth [oi ges]” — are interchangeable for spoudaios, mesos, and phaulos, but, as Mendelson points out, by presenting a possibility of mobility from second category to first, "Philo gives as an example of such movement the case of Abraham who begins his life as Abram, an ordinary man in the progressive class. [http://books.google.com/books?id=64p8Dm ... 22&f=false

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