Nemesius: On the Nature of Man (Translated Texts for Historians, 49)

by Philip Van Der Eijk (Translator), R.W. Sharples (Translator)

Nemesius' treatise On the Nature of Man is an important text for historians of ancient thought, not only as a much-quarried source of evidence for earlier works now lost, but also as an indication of intellectual life in the late fourth century AD. The author was a Christian bishop; the subject is the nature of human beings and their place in the scheme of created things. The medical works of Galen and the philosophical writings of Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonist Porphyry are all major influences on Nemesius; so too the controversial Christian Origen. On the Nature of Man provides the first kown compendium of theological anthropology with a Christian orientation and considerably influenced later Byzantine and medieval Latin philosophical theology.

Genres: Philosophy, Ancient History

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 390

Reviews

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nemesius is a 4th Century Christian bishop who in this work is listing what the science of his day thought about a human being, both in terms of the body and the soul. He summarizes a great deal of ancient Hellenistic knowledge including what the great ancient philosophers wrote about being human. It becomes obvious that the ancient Christians accepted as true much of what the Hellenistic philosophers concluded about being human and used that to interpret the Bible. While some of what they wrote might be considered ancient science, it is all intermixed with philosophy. The ancients did not have the modern idea that science skeptically tests ideas to determine truth. Instead they tended to give great weight to whatever the ancient teachers said and so passed along ideas as tradition, not constantly testing the ideas. They were not superstitious but science conformed more to a logical tradition of philosophical arguments rather than to performing tests to see if the ideas conformed to reality. Much ancient Christian anthropology comes from Hellenistic thinkers and is read into the Scriptures. Judaism was not very philosophical and tended to hold to more concrete ideas which allowed the Christians to read the Hellenistic science (philosophy) into the biblical texts without much problem. In the book, the earlier chapters which focused more on the science (how the body functions) was more interesting to me than the later chapters which dealt mostly with philosophical ideas of the soul or free will or intelligence. Nemesius seems to be very immersed in the ideas of the great philosophers and is aware when they contradict each other. His work also tells me that the ancient Christian teachers were well versed in the science of their day and had no problem with using it to interpret the Scriptures. They wanted to know the truth and were well aware that the Bible does not contain everything that can be known about this world.