The ancient Greeks, being superstitious people, like other people, worshiped the forces of nature. They always strived to live in harmony with nature. The most popular tree, associated by the Greeks with the supreme god Zeus, was the oak. One of the most ancient and authoritative sanctuaries of ancient Greece was the oracle of Dodona, on whose grounds grew a sacred oak tree, the fame and authority of which dates back to Homeric times. Despite the assertions of some scholars, the sacred oak tree was not the "home" of Zeus–the ruler of all the gods resided high on Olympus. At a certain stage in the functioning of the Dodona oracle–a role also once played by the sacred spring and copper cauldrons–the sacred oak tree acted as a relay for Zeus's will, which was heard through the rustling of leaves, the creaking of branches, and so on. Thus, a connection was established: the questioner–the sacred oak tree–the god Zeus. The sacred oak survived until the reign of Theodosius, when it was destroyed by order of the emperor.
The paper examines the problem of discrepancies between the Septuagint and the primary Hebrew text of the Old Testament, supplements and contractions, which have emerged in the Greek translation, in the history of Christian Biblical exegesis. The quantitative distinctions and semantic mismatches of separate readings in the overall corpus of versions of the Biblical text inevitably raised questions among Christians when they compared the two Scriptures that had acquired the sacred status: the Holy Scripture of Jews and the Septuagint – the Holy Scripture of Christians, the original and its translation having become the original in terms of ultimate authorship. The presence of another original should have been clarified to the community of Christians, in order not to diminish the divine inspiration of the Septuagint. This issue has become particularly apparent as tied to Origen’s project for the rectification of the Septuagint, based on the synoptic edition in parallel columns of the Hebrew original of the Old Testament together with its Greek transliteration and several Greek translations. Addressing varied readings of different translations with reference to the Hebrew original has been a distinctive feature of Origen’s Biblical commentaries and sermons, and thence firmly entered the practice of Old Testament interpretation. Within the paper, the mentioned issue is studied based on the example of the texts of Origenes and John Philoponus, which allow making it ostensible through an analysis of the transformations that the textual criticism and exegesis methods to handling the classical texts proper to the Late Antiquity grammar and rhetoric have undergone in the works of these Christian theologians. As a basic text commented on, the paper has the 4th chapter of Book IV of Philoponus’ treatise “On the Creation of the World”, where he, leaning on the criticism of Origen’s textological commentary on the supplement to the text of Gen. 1:9–10 in the Septuagint, answers the question of the validity of this insertion.
An analysis of astronomical data from the Zij-i Sultani reveals that the Samarkand Observatory represented the pinnacle of pre-telescopic astronomy. This study shows that Ulugh Beg built the 40-meter meridian instrument primarily to determine the moments of equinoxes and calculate the length of the tropical year. Given the instrument's limitations, its one-arcminute margin of error was an outstanding achievement for its time. The excessive significant figures in some results stem from subsequent calculations rather than direct observational accuracy. Furthermore, the astronomers derived their highly precise sidereal year from tropical year measurements and the then-accepted precession rate of 1° per 70 years. Ultimately, the work of Ulugh Beg and his team demonstrates a rigorous application of geometry and precursors data, with its deviations from modern values remaining well within the rational error bounds of 15th-century science
This article examines the problem of the eternity of the cosmos and celestial bodies in Plotinus’ treatise II 1 “On the Heavens”. The question of the world’s eternity was widely debated among Platonists and Peripatetics before Plotinus. In the Timaeus (41 a7 – 8), Plato maintained that although the cosmos came into being, by virtue of the divine will it would not be destroyed. This position drew criticism from Aristotle (On the Heavens, 280 a25 – 30), who held the opinion that nothing that has come into being could be eternal. Later, Peripatetics, notably Alexander of Aphrodisias, challenged Plato’s doctrine of the divine will as a guarantee of the world’s eternity (Quaestiones, I 18). Within the Platonic tradition–with the exception of Plutarch and Atticus–the prevailing view was that the world had no beginning in time. This approach resolved the contradiction between coming-to-be and eternity of the world: if the world did not come into being, nothing prevents it from existing forever. A more complex issue for Platonists was the eternity of celestial bodies. The focus of this article is an analysis of Plotinus’ arguments in the treatise II1, where he raises three main questions: 1. If the cosmos is homogeneous, why do some bodies (celestial) possess individual eternity, while others (sublunary) are eternal only by form? 2. If matter as the substrate of all bodies imparts to them its nature of changeability, why do some bodies nevertheless remain changeless? 3. How can the divine will ensure the eternal existence of a part of the corporeal cosmos? The article demonstrates that Plotinus develops an original doctrine concerning the eternity of celestial bodies, based on their special nature and the role of the World Soul in cosmos’ composition.
The publication presents a commented Russian translation of the first five chapters of the third book of Marsilio Ficino’s (1433–1499) treatise De vita, or De triplici vita, pertaining to the later works of the Florentine, which was composed in the 1480s and first published in 1489. This is one of the most important testimonies of the Renaissance natural philosophy, or rather natural magic (magia naturalis) – a world-view developed out of Neoplatonic and Hermetic traditions whose major texts had been translated into Latin and commented upon by Ficino himself. As his kindred spirit Pico della Mirandola puts it, magic is “the practical part of natural science” (Concl. 2.9.3) or even “the absolute consummation of natural philosophy” (Dign. 148). Perceived as such, magic was leading to science in the contemporary understanding of the term. In contrast to the first two books of the treatise, De vita sana and De vita longa, which may be characterized as a medico-magical research, the third book, arisen from a commentary on Plotinus, delves into the medico-astrological field, and besides “Platonics” Ficino makes extensive usage of the works of “Arabian astrologers”, accessible to him in Latin translations, to begin with the Abbreviated Introduction to Astrology by Abū Maʿšar (787–886), a Persian by birth, the treatise De radiis by al‑Kindī (c. 801–873), as well as the book Picatrix, falsely attributed to the Andalusian scholar al-Maǧrīṭī (c. 950– 1007). The practice of “obtaining life from the heavens” is based on the correspondence between micro- and macrocosmos and on sympathetic magic. The operational medium of the magical attraction of heavenly “favors” is the world spirit (the same as ether, the same as quintessence) interacting with the individual spirit of a human subject and embracing the spirits of stars and demons. Health and well-being are ensured by a carefully elaborated way of life that takes into consideration the influences of stars and is oriented towards the usage of things and entities which are in accord with these stars, from minerals and plants to animals and human beings of a particular mould.
