John Philoponus and His Opponents: A Discussion on the Nature of the Heavens and Heavenly Bodies in Book iiiof the Treatise <i>On the Creation of the World</i>
The paper deals with the teaching of the sixth-century Christian Neoplatonist John Philoponus on the form and movement of heavens, as well as on the nature of the heavenly bodies, to which issues book iii of his treatise On the Creation of the World is devoted. The emphasis is on identifying the opponents of Philoponus, the tradition against which he polemizes, and the set of authors who may have belonged to this tradition. The only author whom Philoponus mentions explicitly, and to whom he devotes most of the book to dispute with, is Theodore of Mopsuestia. The Alexandrian philosopher, however, does not mean that the subject of his criticism is only the writings of Theodore himself: he also repeatedly refers to his nameless followers. At this juncture, there is a need to “draw a portrait” of these opponents. To achieve this goal, two procedures are performed in the paper. First, on the basis of the relevant texts of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the author attempts to reconstruct the latter's teaching on the nature of heaven from the point of view, above all, of how adequately this doctrine was reproduced by John Philoponus. Secondly, on the basis of the material of the 10th chapter of book iii of the treatise, an attempt is made to identify those interpretations of the Holy Scripture that John Philoponus attributes to his nameless opponents. As a result, it becomes feasible to find a number of parallels of the anonymous comments he disapproves of with the interpretations of Theodoret of Cyrus, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Severian of Gabala, Pseudo-Justin, and Olympiodorus of Alexandria.