Mind, Text, and Commentary: Early Christianity in The Context of Antiquity

EARLY CHRISTIANITY
IN THE CONTEXT
OF ANTIQUITY
Edited by David Brakke, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, Jörg Ulrich
Blossom Stefaniw
Mind, Text,
and Commentary
Noetic Exegesis in
Origen of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind,
and Evagrius Ponticus
6
PETER LANG
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Scholarship on early Christian exegesis is full of puzzlement at the commentator’s ap-
parent lack of concern for the literal or historical meaning of the text, usually explained
as the result of an illegitimate allegorical method. This study comes to grips with the
particularities of this type of interpretation by using tools from ethnography and literary
criticism. By analysing the commentator’s interpretive assumptions and the framework
of signiﬁcances within which the commentaries were produced and read, the author
is able to solve a chronic problem in the study of early Christian exegesis. Further, she
articulates the social context of the performance of noetic exegesis and its signiﬁcance
for monastic teachers, philosophers, and their audiences.
Blossom Stefaniw grew up in both the United States and Papua New Guinea, com-
pleting her undergraduate studies in 1999. After taking a Masters of Theology at the
University of Wales, she completed her PhD in Religious Studies at the University of
Erfurt (Germany). She is currently pursuing postdoctoral research.
www.peterlang.de
Mind, Text, and Commentary
Early Christianity
in the Context
of Antiquity
Edited by David Brakke,
Anders-Christian Jacobsen,
Jörg Ulrich
Advisory board:
Hanns Christof Brennecke
Ferdinand R. Prostmeier
Einar Thomassen
Nils Arne Pedersen
Volume 6
Peter Lang
Frankfurt am Main · Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Wien
Blossom Stefaniw
Mind, Text,
and Commentary
Noetic Exegesis in
Origen of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind,
and Evagrius Ponticus
Peter Lang
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is
available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Zugl.: Erfurt, Univ., Diss., 2008
Cover design:
Olaf Glöckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg
547
ISSN 1862-197X
ISBN 978-3-653-00187-7
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Studying Exegesis, Interpreting Interpretation 9
Introduction 9
Sample Exegetes and Source Texts 16
Origen of Alexandria (185–254) 20
Didymus the Blind (c. 313–c. 398) 23
Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–c. 400) 27
Terminology 28
Christians and Pagans 42
Precedent and Progress in the Interpretation of Interpretation 43
Chapter 2
What: What Manner of Thing Was The Text Beleived To Be? 59
Introduction 59
The Larger Cultural Context 63
The Nature of the Text and Exegetical Controversy 73
Traditional Texts as Media of Revelation in the Sample Commentators 86
The Authors of Traditional Texts as Visionaries and Prophets 96
Constructing Revelation:
Interpretive Maintenance of the Authority of the Text 116
Perceiving the Moral and Spiritual Referent 132
Conclusions 145
6 Mind, Text, and Commentary
Chapter 3
Why: Under What Conditions Was Noetic Exegesis Considered
Necessary? 149
Introduction 149
The Intelligible and the Sensible:

Metaphysical Categories and Multiple Referents 154
Ordinary Language and Perfect Knowledge:

The Paradox of Written Revelation 198
Conclusions 218
Chapter 4
How: The Performance, Embodiment,
and Acquisition of Noetic Skill 221
Introduction 221
Contemporary Psychology and the Cognitive Equipment

Used in Noetic Exegesis 228
Embodying Noetic Skill: the Interpreter

as Philosopher, Holy Man, or Spiritual Guide 253
Exegesis and Education: Acquiring Noetic Skill 266
Philosophical Formation in the Larger Cultural Context 270
Origen’s Curriculum 276
Didymus the Blind’s Curriculum 284
Evagrius and Monastic Formation 289
Conclusions 296
Blossom Stefaniw 7
Chapter 5
Where: The Social and Institutional Context
of Noetic Exegesis 299
Introduction 299
The Logistics of Higher Education in the Larger Culture 305
Pedagogical Logistics in Origen 313
Pedagogical Logistics in Didymus 319
Pedagogical Logistics in Evagrius 325
Noetic Exegesis in Practice 330
The Praxis of Noetic Exegesis in Origen’s School 334
The Praxis of Noetic Exegesis in the School of Didymus 340
Evagrius’ Praxis of Noetic Exegesis in Instruction 345
Confession and Interpretation 356
Conclusions 363
Chapter 6
Noetic Exegesis 365
Introduction 365
A Thick Description of Noetic Exegesis 366
The Interpretive Assumptions Governing Noetic Exegesis 374
Noetic Exegesis, Neoplatonist Influence, and Cultural Context 377
Noetic Exegesis, Patristics, and Ancient History 384
Bibliography 387
Acknowledgements 415
1
STUDYING EXEGESIS,
INTERPRETING INTERPRETATION
Introduction
The act of interpretation is an essential and quotidian function of the

human mind. Trafficking in signs and symbols, words and texts, is both
ordinary and spectacular, a manifestation of gorgeous complexity and
subtle ingenuity in the fundamental task of making sense. We interpret
arbitrary sounds without even being aware of doing so and understand
language. Some of us, more than others, are able to accurately interpret
the subtlest social cues and respond with discretion and prudence to the
unstated concerns of another person. We interpret behaviours, clothes,
and tones of voice to orient ourselves to other people, and we have our
own answers to larger philosophical questions about the nature of the
world or the human condition based on the interpretations we have
constructed from our experience and inheritance. One concentrated and
prized form of the typical human behaviour of interpretation is the
interpretation of texts. Exactly how this can or does take place has
fascinated literary critics and philosophers intensely over the last fifty
years as the linguistic turn ran its course. Another historical context in
which interpretation held a specially prized position was in a
philosophical educational milieu in late antiquity. The motivation for
that was not an ancient linguistic turn, but rather the interaction of the
ideas and assumptions and social contexts analysed in the following
chapters. This book is about using some of the ideas which have arisen
out of the fascination with interpretation in recent decades to better
understand how one type of interpretive project worked in late
antiquity, what the aims and motivations were that drove it, and to
identify its relationship with its social context and with religion.
Since commentaries in the third and fourth centuries were not
exclusively produced in a context of scholarly privacy, there is a social
context attached to them which requires attention. While we have some
exegetical works which do represent scholarly treatments produced on
commission from wealthy sponsors, we also have exegetical works, from
Didymus the Blind, for example, which were produced orally and reflect
the impromptu setting of an informal lecture. Others, like those of
Evagrius Ponticus, were written for use within a specific context of
spiritual formation, and still others, such as those of Origen of Alexandria,
reflect a constant concern for the moral and spiritual progress of the reader
or hearer. In order to articulate a historical perspective on early Christian
exegesis, it is necessary to examine the social context in which particular
interpretations were generated and the function that biblical commentaries
had within a given community.
Also, given the role of the community which reads a text in
establishing the meaning of that text, the possibility presents itself that
the interpretations reached by the commentators, especially in cases
where these diverge sharply from the surface reading of the text, can be
Blossom Stefaniw 11
explained systematically by examining the concerns prevalent in the

relevant social context and by identifying the interpretive assumptions
from which particular exegetes proceeded. In taking an approach to
commentaries which includes attention to the social context in which
they were produced and used, I am also necessarily raising questions as
to the cultural significance of the commentary itself and the act of
producing it or studying it. A commentary produced on an impromptu
basis in public must be acceptable and coherent to the audience. An
interpretation which is part of a text used for spiritual meditation must
display characteristics perceived by the readers as effective in spiritual
development. Exegesis which is concerned with the moral, mental, and
spiritual progress of the reader or hearer must similarly be understood
by the reader or hearer as morally, mentally and spiritually valid and
valuable. Because of these relations between the commentary and its
audience, when examining the interpretive assumptions of the
commentators themselves, we are also probing the larger religious and
cultural assumptions of the communities in which and for whom they
interpreted. The identification of the interpretive assumptions which
drive a certain type of exegesis is a matter of discovering why particular
exegetes interpret as they do, why certain ranges and directions of
interpretation are consistently considered valid and acceptable even,
and especially, when these seem to readers outside of that particular
interpretive tradition to clash with the ‘literal’ meaning of the text. On
the basis of a sample group of exegetes, this study seeks to define and
systematise the framework of ideas which drives a specific type of
exegesis, here termed noetic, and to demonstrate that it is this

framework of ideas or collection of interpretive assumptions which
determines the meaning constructed in the commentaries.
While this study of the production and application of early
Christian commentaries approaches exegesis in terms of the interactions
between the interpretive community and the meaning that community is
in the process of constructing through commentary on a given text, the
traditional approach to early Christian commentaries treats them
primarily as a product of theological debate and a means of explicating
doctrine. The following chapters treat commentaries as a cultural
mechanism driven by identifiable interpretive assumptions. That is, the
characteristics of noetic exegesis are explicable on cultural, functional,
and social, rather than confessional, doctrinal, and individual grounds.
Early Christian commentaries, just as much as non-Christian interpretive
works, must be studied as texts which belong to a culture which is foreign
to and separate from our own, and the interpretations presented in the
commentaries can reasonably and appropriately be assumed to be driven
by the beliefs and concerns of the interpretive community embedded in
that culture. That is, while a modernist Western view of the interpretive
task aimed at establishing one correct and definitive identification of what
the text means, we cannot assume that Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus are
working toward that same goal, but instead must elicit from the
commentaries what goal they are working towards and why.
Noetic exegesis can preliminarily be defined as exegesis which is
concerned with perceiving the noetic content of an authoritative text by
Blossom Stefaniw 13
means of noetic comprehension of the higher significance of the text and

with a view to rehabilitating and cultivating the interpeter’s νοῦς. 1 Thus
the topic of this investigation could be stated as the identification and

analysis of the interpretive assumptions of noetic exegesis conceived of
not as a technique but as a manifestation of the concerns and
preoccupations of a particular interpretive community. In keeping with
the goal of addressing patristic exegesis as part of a culture foreign to
any of our own, the anthropological methodology and terminology of
Clifford Geertz is used, while the early literary critical work of Stanley
Fish is applied to investigate the actual locus of meaning among
interpreters and their pedagogical communities. (The locus of meaning
in this context is the location of the structures according to which a text
takes on significance). This study is also intended to present and to
demonstrate the cultural-historical usefulness of an alternative approach
to early Christian exegetical texts which is informed by religious-
historical, literary-critical and cultural methods in order to allow for
findings which cannot be accessed on the traditional theological or
philological models of studying patristic exegesis.
The commentaries and scholia of Origen of Alexandria, Didymus
the Blind, and Evagrius Ponticus are approached in the pursuit of
answers to basic questions such as one would pose to an informant in an
ethnographic study. The first question posed in Chapter Two, which
1 A full discussion of this terminology is provided below. The νοῦς is a mental

organ believed to be capable of perfect intuitive comprehension of intelligible
reality whose function is compromised by the embodied state.
leads to the most basic assumption, without which there would be no

reason for noetic exegesis to exist, is: What exactly is the text? This
brings us to beliefs about the status of the biblical text as a vessel of
divine revelation formulated in analogy to assumptions about the
revelatory value of Homeric myth or the Platonic dialogues which in
turn bring with them particular ideas about the status of the author or
writer of Scripture and the nature of its contents. Chapter Three pursues
witting and unwitting testimony in the commentaries as to the broadest
level of beliefs about the metaphysical state of affairs or basic
worldview which serves to structure and also to necessitate noetic
exegesis for these particular writers, namely the assumption of the
categories of intelligible versus perceptible and their application to the
text’s ordinary referent and its higher referent. The question posed is:
Why can one not simply read and understand the surface meaning of the
text? Chapter Four pursues issues of the means by which noetic
exegesis could be performed, asking: How does one gain insight into the
deeper meaning of the text? What tools are available and in what
manner can this task be performed? Chapter Five asks: Where was
noetic exegesis performed? This chapter examines the social context in
which commentaries were produced and studied and investigates
Origen’s teaching activity in Caesarea, Didymus the Blind’s teaching in
Alexandria, and Evagrius’ involvement in monastic formation in the
ascetic settlements of Nitria and Kellia. The final chapter then
systematises the findings to provide a full definition of the interpretive
assumptions driving noetic exegesis, thus supplying a non-confessional
Blossom Stefaniw 15
explanation for biblical exegesis in these three late antique

commentators being the way it was, also connecting this practice to the
overall question of how this picture of noetic exegesis relates to the issue
of the relationship between non-literal biblical exegesis and Platonist or
Neoplatonist influence. The explanation offered does not propose to
identify the causal structures behind noetic exegesis nor does it make
any claim that particular cultural and historical processes necessarily
resulted in the development of the practice of noetic exegesis, which
was, even in its own time, one type of interpretation among many.
Rather, the level of explanation offered is concentrated on relating the
specific concerns and assumptions of the cultural context in which
noetic exegesis was performed to the manner in which it was performed
and the particular hermeneutical characteristics of noetic exegesis.
While the object of commentary in all of these cases is the Bible, that
state of affairs cannot be assumed as the obvious and only possible route
which intellectual Christians could have taken: it is precisely the
application of noetic exegesis to the text of the Bible that served to
construct it as a text with the status that making such an assumption
would pre-suppose.
Sample Exegetes and Source Texts
A study of commentaries is a study of the collaboration of readers with

the text in a process which amounts to re-writing the text, instilling it
with particular significances and explaining the value and validity of
those significances. The early Christian commentators included in this
study are intended to provide a sample on the basis of which a set of
interpretive assumptions can be identified and systematised. This study
raises no claim to show that noetic exegesis was peculiar to these
particular late antique intellectuals nor that the sample investigated here
represents the complete set of those commentators who engaged in this
type of exegesis. Further research may proceed on this basis to search
for the exact limits to the historical practice of noetic exegesis, or to
determine whether and which other thinkers also engaged in noetic
exegesis. The next place to look would be in the works of Clement and
Philo or among the Cappadocians.2 Noetic exegesis should also be
expected in roughly contemporary pagan exegesis of Homer, Plato, and
Aristotle, especially that undertaken in the context of higher
philosophical curricula. This study does not attempt to define the
assumptions characteristic of patristic exegesis understood as a genre,
nor does it seek to supply an overall theoretical explanation of
allegorical or figural interpretation in general which could also be
2 Philo of Alexandria, also known as Philo Judaeus (c. 20 BCE–c. 50 CE) was a
Hellenised Jewish intellectual who wrote exegetical works on the Pentateuch.
Clement of Alexandria, or Titus Flavius Clemens, (c. 150–c. 215) was a Christian
teacher and intellectual in Alexandria. The Cappadocian Fathers include Basil the
Great (329–379), Gregory Nazianzus (329–389) and Gregory of Nyssa (340–390).
Blossom Stefaniw 17
applied to medieval allegory or other figural methods of interpreting the

Bible or any other text. Instead, this is a historical case study, necessarily
linked to the particularities of person and place and time.
The exegetes whose work is the primary basis for this study are
Origen of Alexandria (185–254), Didymus the Blind (313–398), and
Evagrius Ponticus (346–399). These three early Christian exegetes have
sufficient common characteristics to form a coherently related sample,
but are diverse enough that their similarities cannot be explained as
mere borrowings from each other. All three were involved in education
and spiritual formation, and all three produced exegetical works
characterised by non-literal interpretation. Interaction between the three
is extant but limited: Didymus and Evagrius were familiar with
Origen’s thought and their use of it, among other things, resulted in the
three being condemned together at the Fifth Ecumenical Council. 3
Evagrius is reported to have attended lectures by the aged Didymus
who was in reasonable visiting distance for about fifteen years from the
time Evagrius came to the desert.4 On the other hand, these exegetes are
not usually treated as a group and did not function socially as members
of the same group. The historiographical sources only mention them
together when referring to their condemnation. As a result, where
common interpretive assumptions can be found, these must be
3 This is the only context in ancient sources in which these three thinkers are
explicitly named together as a group, as in Evagrius Scholasticus, h. e. 4.38.
4 Pall., h. mon. 4.20,80. See also the introduction to L. Dysinger, Psalmody and
Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus, Oxford 2005, on contact between
Evagrius and Didymus.
understood as part of an interpretive tradition rather than either

coincidentally similar individual peculiarities or the arbitrary
conventions of a minority interpretive community. Because of their
tenuous historical contact with each other,5 the interpretive community
whose assumptions we are here pursuing is not equivalent to a group of
people all involved in interpretation at the same institution or with each
other. Rather, it is a community in the same sense that we speak of a
‘scientific community’, as people committed to the same general
intellectual project, and as users of a common discourse, regardless of
geographical and chronological distance.
The minimum criterion for inclusion in this study was having
generated figural interpretations occurring in exegetical commentaries.
The pedagogical context of the use or generation of these interpretations
was not a pre-condition to the choice of these particular texts and
writers, but rather a common trait which became clear on examination of
the historical and social setting of the texts and which proved valuable in
understanding the social context of noetic exegesis. The common
religious identity of these three exegetes is more a result of the
concentration of adequate source material than of a conviction that late
antique Christians interpreted in a manner determined by their
Christianity. As will be shown in the following chapters, neither the
practice of noetic exegesis nor the individual interpretive assumptions
5 Origen died long before Didymus was born, although both Didymus and
Evagrius were familiar with his thought. While Didymus and Evagrius probably
met, they lived and worked in separate locations, and Evagrius completed both
his formal and his monastic education elsewhere.
Blossom Stefaniw 19
driving it were exclusively or particularly Christian. The sources do not

indicate that this type of exegesis fully dominated the exegesis of
Christian intellectuals in the period of time between Origen and
Evagrius, since the commentaries of Origen and Didymus refer to
opponents to allegory, and Didymus explicitly identifies these opponents
as certain Christian (and pagan) sects.6 At the same time, the relevant
interpretive assumptions, precisely because they were not religiously
determined, can also be found among pagan intellectuals such as
Porphyry, Hermeias, and Olympiodorus. As we will see, the ideas and
assumptions which drive noetic exegesis are all familiar components of
late antique philosophical and pedagogical culture, common to both
pagans and Christians. 7 The sample commentators are loosely
concentrated around Alexandria for the sake of cogency, and as a result
of the fact that Alexandria was among the largest and best centres for
higher education, including monastic formation, in our period.
6 Didym., ps. 38.12 (M. Gronewald [ed.], Didymos der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar IV

zu Ps 35–39, PTA 6, Bonn 1969, 249-251). This passage is discussed in depth in
Chapter Three below.
7 Each of the following chapters contains brief sections on the larger cultural
context in order to indicate the degree to which the interpretive assumptions we
see in action in the practice of noetic exegesis were current in non-Christian and
non-religious segments of the culture as well, and in recognition of the role of
context, both social and cultural, in making up the locus of meaning.
Origen of Alexandria (185–254)
I begin this study chronologically with Origen, in spite of the tradition of

treating him either along with his predecessors Philo of Alexandria and
Clement of Alexandria, or as an individual exception. Origen is
generally treated as a watershed in the history of Christian exegesis and
as a major influence on the other two exegetes included. He is
particularly interesting for my purposes because of his role in religious
and philosophical education in Alexandria and also in his school in
Caesarea. While Origen is usually treated as typical of the ‘Alexandrian
school’ of exegesis, and indeed received his own education in that city,
he only worked and taught in Alexandria for about half of his adult life,
developing involvement with other cities from around the age of thirty.
Origen was permanently settled in Caesarea for roughly twenty years,
arriving in the city as an established scholar.
Since Origen’s surviving writings are prohibitively voluminous,
and since his exegesis has already received a great deal more scholarly
attention than that of Didymus or Evagrius, I have chosen in this study
to concentrate primarily on a few sample works with particular
relevance to noetic exegesis, namely the Peri Archon, the Commentary on
John, the Commentary on Matthew, and the Commentary on the Song of
Songs. The former two works are from his Alexandrian period while
the latter two were written toward the end of his time in Caesarea. The
Contra Celsum and Origen’s Letter to Gregory, as well as Gregory of
Thaumaturgus’ Panegyric on Origen, provide valuable explication of
Blossom Stefaniw 21
Origen’s understanding of what constitutes legitimate exegesis, why one

should engage in it, and the social context in which it was performed.
Ancient accounts of Origen’s life do exist but cannot be taken at
face value due to their often tendentious character. However, a
reasonably well-established account can be reconstructed from the
evidence available.8 Origen was native to Alexandria and his father is
said to have been killed in the Severan Persecution. Origen worked as a
grammatikos or teacher of rhetoric as a young man in Alexandria, later
gaining the sponsorship of a wealthy lady, which enabled him to pursue
higher studies and to take on private students himself. Origen left
Alexandria in 215, at the age of 30, in connection with a violent incident
in the city instigated by the visiting emperor Caracalla and apparently
directed at young aristocrats and their leaders, which included groups
of students surrounding private philosophical teachers such as Origen.
He later decamped to Caesarea, where he eventually settled
permanently, having fallen out with the Alexandrian bishop. In
Caesarea Origen was active both as an ordained priest in the church and
as a teacher of advanced philosophy in a private school whose student
body included wealthy young men such as the person we now know as
Gregory Thaumaturgus, who left us valuable evidence on Origen’s
teaching. Origen’s approach to theological questions caused
8 In this account I largely follow the biography provided by M. Hornschuh in Das

Leben des Origenes und die Entstehung der alexandrinischen Schule, in ZKG 71 (1960),
1–25; 193–214. More recent but slightly divergent accounts can be found in
Ch. Kannengiesser / W.L. Petersen (eds.), Origen of Alexandria. His World and his
Legacy, Notre Dame 1988, and H. Crouzel, Origen. The Life and Thought of the First
Great Theologian, San Franciso 1989.
controversy even within his lifetime, and a series of teachings attributed to

him was later condemned as heretical. Throughout his lifetime, Origen was
an extremely productive and able scholar and produced not only biblical
commentaries, but also numerous homilies and text-critical studies.
Modern scholars have invested a great deal of energy in the
study of Origen’s life and works, and he remains the focus of numerous
studies. This is not least due to his many-sidedness, which has resulted
not only in a constant scholarly fascination but also in a certain degree of
debate and controversy. In the present study, however, there is no need to
question whether Origen was a real man of the Church, a fully or partially
converted Christian, a closet Platonist, or actually against Plato.9 In fact,
the ambiguity in his mentality is perfectly consistent with an approach to
his exegesis as determined by the aims and concerns of the philosophical
and pedagogical project he was engaged in, rather than by confessional
allegiance. The approach of this study thus also solves some of the
problems which arise from seeing Origen's style of exegesis as an
unsuccessful attempt on the part of a Christian commentator to apply
ideas arising from Platonist influence to a Jewish text.10
9 A review of the various characterisations of Origen can be found in the

introduction to M.J. Edwards, Origen Against Plato, Aldershot 2002.
10 This view of Origen is exemplified by R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event. A Study
of the Sources and Significance of Origen’s Interpretation of Scripture, Richmond 1959.
Blossom Stefaniw 23
Didymus the Blind (c. 313–c. 398)
Didymus the Blind is known not only as an exegete or scholar but as a

religious educator, so that he represents a particularly good source for
observing noetic exegesis in its socio-cultural context. Didymus’
teachings, like those of Origen, were also condemned as unorthodox, so
that a great many of his works have been lost. Those works which were
discovered in 1941 and are now referred to as the Tura Papyri had been
deliberately but half-heartedly defaced and hidden. Since the papyri onto
which these particular commentaries, along with works of Origen, had
been copied can be dated to the sixth or seventh century, it is possible that
the texts were mutilated by an ascetic community wishing to dispose of
incriminating evidence following the condemnation of Origen and
Didymus at the Fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 553. Thus
their survival bears a certain irony, as the fact that the codices show
evidence of long and careful study before they were cut apart and buried
may point to the historical vindication of their original readers.11
All of Didymus’ surviving commentaries are included in this
study. His exegetical works are very ample, but are included in full
nonetheless to compensate the discrepancy in the level of attention
granted to Didymus in comparison to Origen or Evagrius. We are
fortunate to have editions of the Tura Papyri which represent notes
taken by a professional scribe during Didymus’ lectures on the Psalms
11 See R. Layton, Didymus the Blind and his Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria. Virtue
and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship, Chicago 2004, 2–3, for a full account of the
discovery and condition of the Tura Papyri.
and Ecclesiastes.12 An additional commentary on Job is in a more fully

edited finished written draft and does not as directly reflect impromptu
commentary in lessons. Didymus’ Commentary on Zechariah was
purportedly written on commission by Jerome, but assuming that
Didymus was blind enough to have to dictate his interpretations, it is
possible that his students, or some manner of audience, was present
even as he composed this more formal commentary out loud. The
Commentary on Genesis has also survived, while further commentaries on
Exodus, the Song of Songs, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Matthew,
Luke, John, Acts, Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Hebrews,
several epistles, and Revelation have all been lost. A very great loss for
the purposes of this study is a commentary by Didymus on Origen’s
Peri Archon, which would have provided Didymus’ position on Origen’s
statements about how to interpret Scripture. Didymus also composed
doctrinal treatises, such as On the Trinity, which are not included in this
study. While the characterisation of Didymus as having inherited the
leadership of the so-called Alexandrian Catechetical School in a direct
line from Origen is extremely dubious, the important point for this
study is that he did teach some manner of collection of students by
means of exegesis.
The evidence available on Didymus’ life is coloured by
hagiographical motives, but we can accept with a reasonable degree of
certainty that Didymus was born around 313 and died around 398.
12 The works of Didymus which are included among the Tura Papyri have been
published in the series Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen (PTA) as listed in the
bibliography.
Blossom Stefaniw 25
Thus nearly one hundred years had passed since Origen had been
resident in Alexandria, and Didymus was already around seventy years
of age when Evagrius came to Egypt. We do not know anything about
his parentage or social status, although a certain degree of privilege
would have been necessary for him to acquire the education and the
familiarity with the curricula of the philosophical and rhetorical schools
which is reflected in his commentaries. Presumably his scholarly
activity also depended on a certain degree of assistance due to his
blindness but we do not know if this was provided by slaves, relatives,
students, or friends. Didymus is described as having, through his
learnedness and his fame as a biblical commentator, attracted the
interest of other fourth-century scholars such as Jerome, Rufinus, and
Palladius, and Evagrius is also said to have visited him, as noted above.
What is less clear is exactly what the social context of Didymus’
scholarly and pedagogical activity was. Palladius describes people as
visiting him in his cell, with the result that some scholars have
concluded that Didymus was a monk.13 On the other hand, Didymus
seems to have remained in or near the urban center of Alexandria, and
does not appear to have been part of one of the established monastic
communities in the region as was Evagrius. He can at least be said, on
the basis of the content of his commentaries, to have been active as an
ascetic teacher.
13 Ancient accounts of Didymus’ life and works can be found in Pall., h. Laus. 4.9;
Soz., h. e. 3.15; Socr., h. e. 4.25; Rufinus, h. e. 2.7; Hier., chronicon 8.812; vir. ill. 109;
Thdt., h. e. 4.26. Cf. PG 39.216–268.
While Didymus is not nearly as controversial a figure for modern

scholars as Origen has been, he has also failed to attract a comparable
degree of scholarly attention, as is apparent from the bibliography of
secondary works which concentrate on him. In fact, besides a recent
translation of his Commentary on Zechariah, full-length studies (apart
from dissertations) in English are limited to Richard Layton’s 2004
monograph. This may be explained by the relative inaccessibility of the
Tura Papyri which are not available in English, as well as by the fact that
Didymus’ voluminous remaining work is often perceived as an
unremarkable rehearsal of Origen’s methods and ideas. Also, since the
commentaries on Ecclesiastes and the Psalms are stenographic notes
from impromptu exegetical lectures, they are not particularly
stylistically refined and reflect the oral nature of the lessons in a certain
circuitousness and repetition. For our purposes, however, Didymus is
highly interesting precisely because of his use of exegesis in teaching
and the inclusion among his works of texts which directly record the
pedagogical process.
Blossom Stefaniw 27
Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–c. 400)
The inclusion of Evagrius Ponticus expands the geographic range of this

study outside the urban centres of Alexandria and Caesarea. I am
primarily concerned with Evagrius in his role as a spiritual and ascetic
teacher, so that both Evagrius’ exegetical works (the Scholia on Psalms,
Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes) and his trilogy on spiritual formation (the
Praktikos, Gnostikos, Kephalaia Gnostica) and other spiritual writings such
as Chapters on Prayer are all relevant and will be drawn upon here.
Evagrius was born in Cappadocia in the same region as the
famous brothers Basil and Gregory, in a town called Ibora in
Helenopontus, the son of a rural bishop. He became the protégé of Basil
and was ordained lector at some point in the 370s, as a man in his late
twenties or early thirties. At the death of his patron Basil, in 379,
Evagrius moved to Constantinople and was taken over by Gregory
Nazianzan who ordained him deacon. There, Evagrius participated in
the Council of Constantinople in 381, continuing to serve the new
bishop after Gregory resigned. He gained a considerable reputation as a
skilled theologian, also assisting Gregory’s successor in Constantinople.
Evagrius experienced an emotional crisis, however, apparently having
become involved with the wife of a Roman prefect. In 382 he fled to
Jerusalem and was taken in by Rufinus and Melania in their ascetic
community there. Here Evagrius was converted, on the advice of
Melania after another crisis, to the monastic life, and then sent to Egypt
to learn asceticism. Evagrius stayed at Nitria probably from 383 to 385
and then moved permanently to Kellia where he died at the age of 55.14
He became a respected monastic teacher and wrote his works of
spiritual development and his biblical scholia while a monk in the desert.
Evagrius’ works have also suffered as a result of his
condemnation as an Origenist. Recent scholarship has taken an
increasing interest in Evagrius, whose life and works are valuable
sources on the role of mysticism and philosophy in desert asceticism
and on the social networks existing among educated Christians in the
fourth century. For the present study, Evagrius, like Didymus,
demonstrates the link between noetic exegesis, the ascetic life, and the
process of spiritual formation.
Terminology
Specifying the exact definition of the term noetic exegesis, which I have
introduced to denote the broad interpretive project observable in the
commentaries, is a large part of the purpose of this study. In general, I
have chosen the term ‘noetic exegesis’ because this type of interpretation
is particularly concerned with applying and developing the νοῦς. The
term ‘noetic exegesis’ was also used by Eric Osborne in his 1998 article
14 This account is based on Sinkewicz’s summary of the evidence on the life of

Evagrius available from Pall., h. Laus. 38; 17; 18. See R.E. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of
Pontus. The Greek Ascetic Corpus, Oxford 2003, xvii–xxi.
Blossom Stefaniw 29
on Philo and Clement.15 Osborne does not offer an explicit definition of

noetic exegesis in that essay, but associates it with the process of diaresis
and characterises noetic exegesis as a tradition of biblical interpretation
to which both Clement and Philo belonged and which aims at finding
the hidden νοῦς in Scripture by using the human νοῦς. 16 My own usage
does not contradict this characterisation, except that I consider the

exclusive attachment of this exegetical process to Scripture and its
characterisation as a type of biblical exegesis inaccurate. The choice of
this term also arises out of a need for a more precise term than the
traditional but misleading term ‘allegorical interpretation’. Calling this
particular type of exegesis noetic is an attempt to reflect the relevant
exegetes’ beliefs that the higher interpretation of the text required the
application of the νοῦς to the text in order to perceive the intelligible
truths contained within it. It should be noted that the term ‘noetic
exegesis’ is not by any means merely an updated alternative to
‘allegorical interpretation’, signifying more or less the same thing in a
less brutally inaccurate manner. This type of exegesis includes but is not
at all limited to allegorisation. Noetic exegesis includes the entire project
of perceiving and articulating the higher noetic content of the text,
15 E. Osborne, Philo and Clement. Quiet Conversion and Noetic Exegesis, in StPhilo
10 (1998), 108–124. The term is also used technically in philosophy and political
philosophy. In its original sense in Aristotle it indicates participatory
interpretation of the divine ground. That usage is very roughly compatible with
the concerns of the commentators examined here, but did not inform my original
decision to use this term.
16 The term νοῦς can indicate both mind and meaning, and the commentators in this
study fully exploit this ambiguity.
which, seen in terms of procedure, starts with the traditional obligatory

identification of the speaker, addressing the grammatical or
etymological issues of a given verse, explanation of the literal referent,
all the way to the decision on the part of the exegete to look for a higher
meaning in a particular verse or passage, followed by the actual
articulation of that higher referent, whether this be by means of allegory,
symbolism, synechdoche, typology, metonymy or free association. This
broadness is a result of the fact that even where the ordinary historical
referent is being explained, the ultimate end in view is working forward
or upward until an intelligible content can be perceived and articulated.
Seen as a social act, noetic exegesis includes the entire project of
becoming able to perceive intelligible things in a text, the act of doing so,
and the use of this capacity.
This term has been preferred to both ‘allegorical exegesis’ and
‘Origenist Exegesis’. Although Evagrius and Didymus are commonly
identified as Origenists, this identification is not only posthumous—
they themselves did not perceive their work as part of an Origenist
tradition or a question of promoting a given set of ideas called Origenist
—but also tendentious and uninformative. The term ‘allegorical
exegesis’ is even more misleading, because what a modern English
speaker would understand as allegorical interpretation, namely an
extended narrative metaphor in which the characters and events
represent often abstract entities and their interactions 17 (standard
examples being Pilgrim’s Progress, Dante, medieval courtly love allegory)
17 A. Fletcher, Allegory. The Theory of a Symbolic Mode, Ithaca 1964.

Blossom Stefaniw 31
is very different from what persons with some degree of literary

education between the 2nd and 6th centuries included in the category
‘allegorical’. In late antique terms, allegory included a wide range of
figurative and non-literal interpretations including analogy, symbolism,
typology, metonymy, synechdoche and metaphor. One finds a sparsity
of allegory in the strict sense, with an abstract entity corresponding to
each concrete element or action in the text, which is in complete
disproportion to the reputation of these patristic commentators as
allegorists. This reputation is thus more plausibly attributed to a
polemical habit on the part of other exegetes, whether Antiochenes in
the fifth century or Protestant modernists in the twentieth, for whom
this characterisation was more a term of abuse than a careful description
of the content of particular commentaries.
Even when a commentator from our sample explicitly introduces
his interpretation by stating that he is about to set down the allegorical
meaning of a particular passage, what follows would more correctly
have to be described as figural interpretation or symbolic interpretation.
The purported allegorical interpretations offered (in the late antique
sense of the word) also usually are not integrated into the larger
narrative structure of the passage being interpreted, so that a proper
allegory (in the modern English sense of the word) does not result, but
rather a jumble of interpretations of key words or key actions in the
passage which may or may not be related to each other in the
interpretation at all. In the same way, when these commentators
announce that they are about to deliver a literal interpretation, what
follows is hardly what a modern literary scholar would call a literal

interpretation (especially given the fact that most literary scholars have
lost faith in the existence of literal readings at all). Instead, it is simply
an interpretation which refers to the ordinary world. This is the case, for
example, when Didymus explicitly claims to be recounting a literal
interpretation of Psalm 21:17, which includes the phrase ‘many dogs
surrounded me’. The ‘literal’ interpretation offered is that this verse
refers to people who rebel against their leaders, as has been observed in
history, and are ‘churlish people in their character’. 18
Further, in speaking of noetic exegesis in these particular
commentaries, it is important to establish the boundaries within which
the interpretive project is taking place by articulating what the exegetes
are neither doing nor attempting to do. What is particularly surprising
in these commentaries in the face of modern historical-critical methods
of exegesis is that neither Origen nor Didymus nor Evagrius put their
interpretations forward as the one true meaning of the text. In fact, in
very many cases, they each provide several possible interpretations to
the same verse, explicitly stating that the interpretations given are
18 Didym., ps. 21.17 (L. Doutreleau / A. Gesché / M. Gronewald [eds.], Didymos der

Blinde. Psalmenkommentar I zu Ps. 20–21, PTA 7, Bonn 1969, 157-159): ‘For dogs
have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me: they pierced
my hands and my feet.’—Some have given the following literal interpretation:
There have been many shepherds of irrational beings, and never before has
anyone heard of a herd of cattle attacking a cowherd or a herd of goats attacking
a goatherd or a flock of sheep attacking a shepherd. Only humans have attacked
their rulers, and history shows that many wise and good rulers were killed by
their subjects. So if they had remained sheep, they wouldn’t have killed. But
when they became dogs and churlish people in their character, way of life, and
constitution, they were called ‘a crowd of evildoers’. Because only evildoers rise
up against one who does good and attack the shepherd. (author’s translation)
Blossom Stefaniw 33
inconclusive and that anyone with more discernment is welcome to offer

yet another interpretation. There is no claim to exegetical authority or
correctness in that sense. Also, despite the pervasive use of non-literal
exegesis, none of these commentators rejects literal interpretation
categorically: a literal or ordinary referent of a given verse or passage is
routinely included in its explanation. Lastly, there is a striking tendency
of the commentators to get off the subject and either interpret some other
verse from a completely different book of the Bible which they have
reached by a chain of association based on a key word in the verse they
are ostensibly interpreting, or else to interject a discussion of numerology
or a topic from logic or rhetoric which modern readers would generally
not see as relevant to the task of biblical exegesis. All of these
characteristics taken together suggest that noetic exegesis is definitely
not primarily concerned with establishing the real, true, authoritative
meaning of the biblical text through allegory as opposed to literal
reading, and that the exposition of the text itself is not the end which is
being pursued, but rather functions as a means to some other end which
we are here engaged in identifying.
Another term used to characterise the alternative approach to the
study of exegesis presented here is thick description. In describing this
approach to noetic exegesis as one of thick description, I am borrowing a
term from Clifford Geertz (who himself borrowed the term from Gilbert
Ryle) and his hermeneutical approach to culture which seeks to study
culture or aspects of culture in a manner that refrains from simple
cataloguing, from describing a collection of individual cases, or from
reducing a practice to an abstract formula. Instead, thick description

concentrates on two things: what a given practice means to the members
of the culture in question, and how the significance of that practice is
constructed. A large part of the underlying motivation for this study is
the conviction that a great many of the difficulties with what is usually
called Christian allegorical interpretation experienced by so many
twentieth-century scholars can be explained as a result of their own lack
of attention to the larger implications of the fact that even if the scholars
concerned identified with patristic commentators in terms of a common
religious confession, these interpreters were part of a culture completely
foreign to anything familiar to our own experience. That means that the
standard of evaluation or investigation was too often whether the
interpretations supplied by Origen, for example, seemed legitimate and
valuable and meaningful for Christian exegesis or theology as the
scholar concerned understood it, and not whether, why, and how
Origen’s interpretations were legitimate and valuable and meaningful
for him and his readers. It is this second standard of investigation which
the term thick description characterises, as if the inclusion of the
question of the significance of a given practice adds an extra dimension
to our understanding of it which a more distanced or phenomenological
approach cannot provide.
My goal in approaching a study of noetic exegesis in terms of
thick description is to discern, as Geertz describes this type of
investigative task, the ‘interlinking complex conceptual structures’
which surround noetic exegesis, and to explain how this type of exegesis
Blossom Stefaniw 35
functioned as a symbolic action with specific coherence and significance.

Thick description is a matter of ‘setting down the meaning particular
social actions have for the actors whose actions they are’.19 It is precisely
that concern for the significance or meaning of observable social actions
which differentiates a thick description from a thin description. A thin
description catalogues what can be empirically and objectively observed
by an outsider. A thick description is interested in the subjective
perspective of the insider, in finding out what a given act or behaviour
means within a particular cultural context. The example used in Geertz’
essay on this topic is that of an anthroplogist observing two boys
winking. On a thin description approach, the anthropologist would
note how often each boy winked, in what situations he winked, whether
he consistently used the same eye or not, etc. None of this information
would be incorrect, as such, but the approach is still unsatisfactory
because it supplies no means of discovering, for example, whether one
boy was winking because he suffered from a tick and the other boy was
winking deliberately to make fun of the first. In contrast, a thick
description would be primarily concerned with the question of why
each boy is winking, and what purpose or significance the behaviour
has for each of them: Does he have something stuck in his eye? Is he
practicing a secret signal? Is he flirting with somebody? Does he
believe that frequent winking helps you win at football?
Applying this analogy to the present subject, the same
methodological disparity obtains in the study of exegesis as Geertz
19 C. Geertz, On the Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, New York 1994, 27.

observed in the disciplines of anthropology and ethnography. The usual

approaches are theological or philological and concern themselves most
often with exegetical technique as evidenced in the commentaries, with
possible sources or reasons for this technique (usually found, in the case
of our sample commentators, in Philo, Clement, Stoic logic, the tradition
of the rhetorical schools, Judaism, rejection of the body and the material
world, lack of respect for the historicity of the Bible, etc.), or with
observing how the technique is applied to the religious context. As in
the case of thin description ethnography, a great deal of the research that
has been done on this model has produced accurate and careful
accounts of exegesis. However, as in the example above, the potential
results of any study conducted on this approach are limited to what can
be empirically observed (on the philological approach) or what can be
extrapolated from the exegete’s Christianity (on a theological
approach). A phenomenological approach to exegesis cannot engage
with questions of the significance of a particular type of exegesis for the
exegete on a subjective basis, and the process of extrapolating from the
exegete’s Christianity depends on large and dangerous assumptions
about the sameness of Christianity today and in late antiquity.
Continuing with the same analogy, taking a thick description approach
to the study of exegesis in the educational practice of Origen, Didymus,
and Evagrius is a matter of establishing its nature as a social action (in
contrast to the view of it as a strictly theological or scholarly-philological
action) and then setting out its meaning for those involved, that is, for
the teachers and students of biblical commentary. Thus the questions
Blossom Stefaniw 37
this study is concerned with are, among others, the following: What did
involvement in the study of biblical texts through noetic exegesis signify
to others regarding an individual’s spiritual condition? What did the
commentators and their students feel they could achieve by performing
or studying noetic exegesis? Why does noetic exegesis continuously
appear in connection with asceticism and philosophical study? What
was the significance of performing noetic exegesis on the biblical text
rather than on other texts? These are all questions which are
unavoidable if we are to know what we are looking at when we look at
certain commentaries, but which cannot be answered satisfactorily by
finding out a given commentator’s sources nor by tracing his technique
or the recurrence of particular terms.
Serious doubts have been raised as to the applicability of the
Geertzian culture-as-text concept to the study of early Christian texts.
On the one hand, an anthropological approach has proven very
attractive to textual scholars, and the idea of thick description has been
widely appropriated by historians. On the other hand, Geertz’ theory
and the legitimacy of its application to pre-modern history has been
criticized. A historian is not able to interact with textual or material
evidence in the same way as would be possible for an anthropologist
working with a living informant, and the point that it is dangerous to be
seduced by the adulterous glitter of other discipline’s methodologies is
well-taken. Also, Geertz’ text-culture metaphor has been faulted for
eliding unavoidable differences between ‘both the status of practices
and the particular work performed by high literary and philosophical
writings’. 20 That is, treating culture as text could lead to uninstructive

confusion about the particularities of both culture and text.
In my own reading of Geertz, I have not treated him as a theorist
nor have I applied his entire framework of ideas to this project. Geertz is
a vigorous and athletic thinker who does not invest primarily in system
and detail, but works intuitively and in broad strokes. He is not a
philosopher. This is evident not least of all in the fact that he does not
offer any definition for some of his key terms, giving several examples
instead, and offers multiple alternative definitions of the term thick
description. Borrowing his term thick description to describe my general
approach here is not intended to indicate that I ascribe to a particular
theory of culture-as-text nor that I am interested in defending or
attacking its application to early Christian texts in general. Rather, I have
borrowed from Geertz the concept of thick description because it
denotes a way of studying human practices which takes into
consideration the meaning a given practice has for those involved in it.
My own application of Geertzian thought in this project is intended
therapeutically, as an antidote to the tendency to isolate early Christian
exegetical texts from their social and cultural context, connecting them
instead to the biblical text being interpreted. I am not claiming that early
Christian exegetical culture is a text, but sooner that in the case of
exegetical works, the text is indeed a text and should be treated as such,
with full regard for the social context in which it was produced and used
20 E.A. Clark, History, Theory, Text. Historians and the Linguistic Turn,
Cambridge 2004, 7–8.
Blossom Stefaniw 39
and on the basis of which its meaning was constructed. The

commentaries of Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius are texts which were
invested with meaning (the significance of their generation and
application) derived from the particularities of the aims and concerns of
the communities in which they were written. Skepticism about the
feasibility of discovering how a member of a culture fifteen-hundred
years ago read his own culture is fully justified. I do however consider it
both possible and worthwhile to discover how, why, where and to what
ends certain members of a certain late ancient educational culture read
particular books as they did and what the cultural significance of the act
of reading and interpreting was for those engaged in it. It is precisely
that question with which I here engage.
The answers to the set of questions which structure the following
chapters can also be characterised as what Stanley Fish has called
interpretive assumptions, based on his theory that the meaning of a text
exists in the community that reads the text rather than in the text itself,
and that an appropriate and acceptable reading is determined by its
having been generated on the basis of a set of ideas and assumptions
common to the community reading the text. The component parts of
the set of ideas which motivate and constrain a given community’s
readings are termed interpretive assumptions. Fish has, in his focus on
the process of interpretation, established the weighty role of the context
in which an utterance is made or read in determining its meaning, and
has done so in discussion with an opposing school of thought which
defended the position that meaning comes from the text itself in some
objective and determined manner.21
Fish engaged opponents of his view who objected that
identifying the locus of meaning as outside of the text itself and
determined by a given community’s interpretive assumptions, which of
course can change, is equivalent to claiming that the text means
anything that any one arbitrarily ascribes to it. This objection expressed
a feeling of offense on the part of objectivist literary critics, who saw the
substantiality of the literary canon under threat and felt that their
respect for the text as an independent object, and indeed the authority of
the text itself, was being attacked. A similar aversion to what is
understood as arbitrariness in the interpretation of texts has been behind
various criticisms of allegorical interpretation which portray it as an
irresponsible hermeneutic which allows any commentator to impose his
or her personal ideas on any passage of Scripture, a process which is
perceived as illegitimate and offensive to the integrity of the text. Fish
responded to the alarm of his colleagues by explaining that although the
text does not consist of an objective container of determinate meaning,
the meaning found in the text is still constrained by the interpretive
norms extant and applicable in the social context in which it is read.22
Thus even though interpretation is not a question of more or less correct
reading of a text whose meaning is determined by the language which it
21 S. Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities,

Cambridge 1980, 310.
22 Fish, 1980, 325–321

Blossom Stefaniw 41
contains, and even if one concedes that the meaning of the text is not
located within the text, one is not yet faced with total hermeneutical
anarchy and arbitrariness. There are rules governing the construction
and articulation of meaning when a text is read by a given community,
although the relevant rules are cultural and social rather than strictly
grammatical or literary ones.
In terms of this study, the concept that the locus of meaning is to
be found in the community which reads the text is being applied to early
Christian commentaries both in examining the social and cultural
context in which they were read and how that context constructed the
significances found in the biblical text being commented upon, and also in
identifying the interpretive assumptions considered applicable to and thus
constraining noetic exegesis. Granted that the locus of meaning exists in
the community reading the text, what exactly were the interpretive
assumptions from which our sample commentators proceeded? How did
these assumptions motivate and constrain their interpretations?
The link between this idea from Fish and the above concept from
Geertz also requires articulation. Both concepts are relevant to the
concerns and goals of this study, despite their diverse provenance,
because they are both concerned with the question of meaning and
significance. A thick description requires attention to the meaning of any
given practice (in this case the practice of exegeting and explaining the
exegesis of Scripture) to the community involved in it. Looking for the
particular interpretive assumptions which are manifestations of the
concerns and preoccupations of the interpreting communities is the same
as specifying where and how the practice of noetic exegesis relates to

and is born up by the larger culture which gives it its meaning, since
interpretive assumptions are located in the (cultural) community reading
the text and at the same time are the basis on which the meaning of the
text is constructed. To some degree this integration of the two terms
elides the search for how the commentators invested given texts with
meaning, and the attempt to identify the meaning of that process itself
within the cultural context. Under the circumstances, and given the
intricate manner in which cultures, interpretive communities, and
interpretation relate to each other, this is only appropriate.
Christians and Pagans
I have chosen to carry on using the objectionable term ‘pagan’ for

traditional religions of the period under examination here, or any non-
Christian and non-Jewish religions and their adherents. The alternative
‘Hellenic’ I consider unsatisfactory because it suggests that non-
Christians had a part in inheriting Hellenistic culture and ideas and
carrying them forward while Christians did not. The other common
alternative term, ‘polytheist’ is also unsatisfactory as many of the
‘polytheists’ studied here (Neoplatonist intellectuals) were at least as
monotheistic as their Christian counterparts, if not more so.23 This study
avoids the use of the terms ‘Christian’ or ‘pagan’ as a way to
23 P. Athanasiadi / M. Frede (eds.), Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Oxford 1999.

Blossom Stefaniw 43
characterise or define any type of exegesis and in order to deconstruct

any temptation to compare or contrast ‘pagan exegesis’ and ‘Christian
exegesis’. Given the abundance of excellent scholarship that has been
produced on this topic in the last twenty-five years, I consider the view
of paganism and Christianity as strictly distinct hostile monolithic
entities satisfactorily corrected and proceed from that basis. 24 Thus I do
not see any particular significance—for our understanding of their
interpretive assumptions—in the fact that the three commentators I have
taken as my sample for investigation are all Christian.
Precedent and Progress in the Interpretation of Interpretation
This study carries forward the work of several scholars who have
pursued and developed a cultural and literary critical approach to early
Christian exegesis. This direction in scholarship on patristic authors
represents a significant contrast to earlier studies on allegorical
interpretation which all too often were characterised by an evaluative
approach, criticising exegetes such as Origen for what was perceived as
a lack of attention to ‘the historicity of the biblical narrative’ and treating
Origen’s exegesis as the regrettable result of illegitimate philosophical
24 See for some early examples G.W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity,
Cambridge 1990, and G. Fowden, Between Pagans and Christians, in JRS 78 (1988),
173–182, and A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire. The Development
of Christian Discourse, Sather Classical Lectures 55, Berkeley 1991.
influences.25 While recognising that all scholars of exegesis, including

myself, are just as coloured by their own cultural setting and personal
commitments as the exegetes they study, I aim in this study to refrain
from any form of evaluation of the legitimacy or legitimate Christianity
of the interpretations under examination here, readily accepting that an
interest in this sort of approach is itself a part of the culture in which I
was educated. The pursuit of an alternative approach to exegesis is not
a claim to objectivity in contrast to earlier or more religiously invested
scholars on this topic, but rather an approach which has been made
possible through the particular cultural and scholarly axiology of the
last two generations, and which it is hoped will contribute to a clear and
practical comprehension of the interpretive assumptions on the basis of
which a significant portion of patristic literature was produced.
The linguistic, textual, and cultural turns of the past several
decades have all given momentum to scholarly interest in the cultural
particularities of the late antique authors being studied and an interest
in their subjective agenda or motivations. This type of historical or
cultural scholarship asks a different sort of question than was asked fifty
or sixty years ago. Instead of asking ‘Where has Origen borrowed this
idea?’ or ‘Should Origen borrow ideas from outside the Bible?’ or ‘What
doctrine is Evagrius explicating?’ or ‘Is Didymus orthodox?’, scholars in
the broad direction about to be presented ask questions like ‘What
strategies do early Christian exegetes use to solve the problems they
25 This attitude is typified by R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event. A Study of the
Sources and Significance of Origen’s Interpretation of Scripture, Richmond 1959.
Blossom Stefaniw 45
perceive in the text?’ or ‘What goal is Origen pursuing in his exegesis?’

or ‘What philosophical ideas motivate Neoplatonist exegetes to interpret
as they do?’. These two groups of questions represent different
methodological categories. The former is more closely akin to a thin
description approach, quantifying influences and attempting to judge
the relationship between the contents of a commentary and orthodox
Christian doctrine on a phenomenological or essentialist level. The
second group is more closely akin to a thick description approach,
inasmuch as it takes into account the subjective perspective of the
commentator being studied.
It should be stated clearly, however, that the first scholar whose
work is presented here has robust reservations about the usefulness of
applying Clifford Geertz’ ideas to the study of pre-modern texts, as
discussed in the outline of terminology above. Also, none of the others
associate themselves explicitly with that particular approach at all. Thus
my characterisation is a rough indication based on my own terminology,
and could just as well be expressed as the effect of the shift from
modernism to post-modernism or structuralism to post-structuralism.
Two studies by Elizabeth Clark are of particular relevance to this
study. One is a theoretical work on the application of theory to pre-
modern texts, including early Christian literature, and one is itself a
study of a particular type of exegesis which identifies the strategies used
in interpretation of the Bible by ascetic exegetes.26 In History, Theory, Text:
26 E.A. Clark, 2004, and E.A. Clark, Reading Renunciation. Asceticism and Scripture in
Early Christianity, Princeton 1998.
Historians and the Linguistic Turn, Clark traces the development of the
linguistic turn and its influence on historians of pre-modern cultures.
The primary contribution of the linguistic turn to the present study is the
recognition of the importance of the role of the reader and of the fluid
boundary that exists between the text and the context in which it is read
and used. 27 The following chapters also avoid investigation of patristic
texts from a standpoint of theological monism and instead argue for
pursuing issues of the collaboration of readers with the text. Scriptural
commentaries are a clear case of readers, in interaction with the text,
themselves becoming writers, but the use of the text in specific social
contexts, such as the mental and spiritual formation of a group of students,
is also an example of how the reading of the text is at the same time its re-
writing, as it is invested with meaning determined by the context in which
it is read. Integrating the results of the linguistic turn into the study of
early Christian exegesis provides a coherent way to investigate the cultural
institutions surrounding the reading of biblical texts in a particular milieu
which is similarly pursued in the present study.
This book also pursues the same overall agenda which Elizabeth
Clark states in her introduction to Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and
Scripture in Early Christianity. The goal of this study is likewise to make a
contribution to the history of early Christian reading with special
attention to the ‘social location of writings and the institutional
27 Clark, 2004, 133. See also ‘From Work to Text’, in R. Barthes, The Semiotic
Challenge, New York 1988, 160; 163, on the collaboration of readers with the text.
Blossom Stefaniw 47
structures that variously support or challenge them.’28 I am similarly

concerned both with the process by which a given work acquires
meaning, which in the present case means the process of noetic
commentary on the Bible, and with the elision of the division between
writer and reader. In the present case those dynamics of meaning-
construction can be observed at the point where the commentator
interprets the text, investing it with noetic meaning, and also at the point
where the interpretation is presented to a group of hearers in an
educational context, whose involvement in a curriculum of spiritual
progress further constructs the significance of the text interpreted. Thus
I also follow Clark in her treatment of text and interpretation, adopting
the literary theorist’s recognition of the ‘creativity of readers and
commentators in producing new meaning for earlier writings.’29
Another scholar with two monographs demonstrating a keen
interest in the strategies and agenda used by late antique readers is
David Dawson. In his monograph Allegorical Readers and Cultural
Revision in Ancient Alexandria (1992), Dawson has investigated this topic
as a means by which representatives of a certain culture or sub-culture
defined their relationship to the larger culture, to tradition, and to each
other. He also focusses on the issue of the creativity of the reader and
interpretation as re-writing of a text, a topic we have seen taken up by
Clark above. Dawson’s primary concern in this study is the use of
interpretation in sectarian competition and the negotiation of
28 Clark, 1998, 4.
29 Clark, 1998, 5.
relationships with tradition or with the dominant culture. Dawson’s

work reflects an awareness of the creative role of the reader and
interpreter and the need to examine the goals pursued by the interpreter
which is shared by the present study.
In a more recent monograph called Christian Figural Reading and
the Fashioning of Identity, Dawson has also concentrated on Origen’s
exegesis.30 Dawson characterises Origen’s approach as a case of
discovering in the Scriptures the structures of spiritual reality, rather
than simply discarding the ‘shell’ of the plain words of Scripture and
replacing it with the ‘kernel’ or inner spiritual sense:
When read allegorically, the biblical text reveals a

surprising and total isomorphism with the very structure
of spiritual reality. To read this text properly is not [...] to
replace one thing (shell) with another (kernel), but to be
brought into direct relation with the way reality, in its
fullest sense, is. When Scripture is read allegorically, the
Scripture reader’s soul ‘makes room’ for the reception of
the powerful knowledge of spiritual realities needed for
the transformative fashioning of his or her soul. This powerful
result of reading comes to those with the power to read the text
properly. The process is, of course, finally circular: A divine
rhetorician produces words that are powerful, and those able
to read them properly are ‘empowered’ to do so because they
30 J.D. Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity, Berkeley 2002.
Blossom Stefaniw 49
have been inspired by the same spirit that animates the very
words they seek to understand.31
Dawson’s description of ‘reading the text properly’ articulates the larger

framework of ideas and assumptions within which Origen engages the
text, such that his approach, as well as his findings, are part of what the
following chapters carry forward. In his study of Origen, Dawson also
touches on the element of revelation studied in Chapter Two below and
also on the exegetical consequences of reading across the metaphysical
categories of the sensible and the intelligible which are addressed in
Chapter Three, not to mention the spiritual status of the reader as
discussed in Chapter Four of this study.32 Dawson's work provides a
sensitive account of what Origen thinks exegesis is for, which is very
congenial to the priorities of the present study.
Frances Young’s 1997 monograph entitled Biblical Exegesis and the
Formation of Christian Culture finds cogent cultural motives for the
particular characteristics of early Christian exegesis, citing the
investment of the Bible with authority and the plausibility structures
within which it was received. She locates the real differences between
ancient and modern exegesis in that arena rather than in the arena of
31 Dawson, 2002, 6.
32 Dawson, 2002, 59: ‘Origen’s conception of Scripture’s contents and structure is

based, not on the shell-kernel ontology described by Boyarin, but rather on a
larger conception of reality consisting of two deeply interpenetrating realms: a
non-sensible realm of spiritual realities (ta noeta) and a sensible realm of material
realities (ta aistheta). Included in the sensible realm are the scriptural text itself as
well as all historical events and natural phenomena to which the text refers.’
exegetical method. I could not more heartily agree with the view that
the arena of cultural assumptions, such as conceiving ‘of the material
universe as interpenetrated by another reality which is transcendent and
spiritual’, 33 is the place to find adequate explanations for any particular
type of late ancient exegesis. Above all, leaving aside issues of method
means the question of the rightness or wrongness of other exegetical
procedures is not raised, and the status of patristic exegesis as part of a pre-
modern, non-Western culture is respected. Young is also sensitive to the
apparent contradictions of concealment and revelation in non-literal
exegesis in writers like Origen, so that her work has raised many of the
same questions motivating my own.34 Young also offers an assessment of
the significance for commentators like Origen of interaction with Scripture
which likewise demonstrates a sensitivity to cultural differences:
[The reading of Scripture] was a deadly serious business.

Its purpose was to understand one’s place in the great
scheme of things, and to learn how to live and act. No
one questioned the ancient assumption that literature
belonged to pedagogy, that it was the source of
‘teaching’ (dogma or doctrina); so the text was didactic. It
was therefore incumbent upon the exegete to have
33 F.M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture,

Cambridge 1997, 139.
34 Young, 1997, 184.

Blossom Stefaniw 51
insight (theoria) into the theology and the moral meaning

even of passages where nothing of the kind was obvious. 35
Young’s work has broken ground in approaching patristic exegesis in

terms of the assumptions about the purpose of reading Scripture, its role
in pedagogy, the task of the exegete in applying special insight, which are
also among those which I am here examining as part of noetic exegesis.
In her 1986 monograph Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological
Method in Origen’s Exegesis, Karen Torjesen pursues the question of the
relationship between Origen’s theological and pastoral concerns and the
procedure he employs to interpret the biblical texts, with primary focus
on detailed analysis of his homilies. Torjesen concentrates on issues of
the exegete’s goals and ideas and how these structure his interpretation
in a manner that is similar to my own approach.36 Torjesen articulates
the assumption or belief about the nature of the text and what it refers to
from which Origen proceeds, and also the role of this view of the text in
its exegesis and the application of the exegesis to the spiritual life of the
hearer. All of these questions are likewise pursued in the following,
with the distinction that the primary textual basis is not Origen’s
homilies but rather his commentaries, along with those of Didymus and
Evagrius, and the hearers with which we are here concerned are
students and readers outside of a liturgical setting.
35 Young, 1997, 297.
36 K.J. Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis,

PTS 28, Berlin 1986, 34.
James A. Coulter, in The Literary Microcosm: Theories of

Interpretation of the Later Neoplatonists37 also displays an interest in
identifying philosophical ideas behind allegorical interpretations in his
treatment of Neoplatonist readers. However, while Coulter
characterises the ideas which structure exegesis in this case as
‘philosophical prejudices’, I would prefer to refer to them in a non-
evaluative manner as interpretive assumptions:
[...] there were two leading philosophical prejudices

which tended to predispose to allegorical thinking. The
one was the belief in an unseen order of being which, in its
greater degree of reality, was viewed as the cause or model
of ‘our’ world, the world of the senses, a view pre-
eminently exemplified, of course, by Platonism. The other
predisposing factor was the belief that behind the working
of the universe there lay some kind of conscious purpose.38
Coulter identifies another philosophical idea which makes allegorical

interpretation coherent to the exegetes concerned:
37 J.A. Coulter, The Literary Microcosm. Theories of Interpretation of the Later

Neoplatonists, Leiden 1977. More recent studies of exegesis in Neoplatonism have
been made by Robert Lamberton and are listed in the bibliography in full. Since
Lamberton’s work receives persistent attention throughout the following
chapters, an earlier example of investigation into the culture-exegesis interface in
non-Christian commentators is presented here.
38 Coulter, 1977, 20.

Blossom Stefaniw 53
In Neoplatonic speculation, correspondence, an essential

feature of the symbol, is elaborated to a quite
extraordinary degree. And with it came a coherent
philosophical answer to one fundamental question of
critical theory, i. e. how one literary feature, although
only one thing, can yet suggest many other things
apparently different from itself. And unity, or one-ness,
figures in another way, too. For it is not just that one
phenomenal detail is linked to numerous levels of
intelligible reality; it is also true that unity, the source for
the Neoplatonists of all being and meaning, is necessarily
present in all derivative reality. The result is that, in a
characteristically Neoplatonic double movement, literary
details are linked ‘upward’ to higher levels of meaning,
and at the same time coherence of detail is established by
a firm anchoring in transcendent unity.39
39 Coulter, 1977, 59.

Coulter considers a key factor of Neoplatonist exegesis to have been
the commentators’ belief in ‘literary organicism, i. e. the belief that a work of
literature is an organic microcosm, created by an intelligent artisan in the
light of some pre-existing aim or intention’ as set out in Phaedrus 264c and in
the Anonymous Prolegomena to Philosophy. 40 This drive for establishing a
coherent unity, also evidenced in patristic commentary, is exactly the sort of
belief which I am analysing in this study as a part of the network of
interpretive assumptions driving noetic exegesis.
There has clearly been a strong desire in the scholarly community
for a more satisfactory state of clarity concerning the cultural
significance of the exegetical project as it appears in late antique
commentaries. Many of the above studies have demonstrated the
usefulness of treating early Christian exegetical works in terms of the
ideas and assumptions from which the commentators proceed and the
goals they aim to achieve in their exegesis. This is apparent in analyses
of a particular interpretive agenda (as in Elizabeth Clark’s work on
ascetic readers) and also in David Dawson’s study of the role of
allegorical readings in inter-communal maneuvering, both showing the
connection between the overt or covert aims of the exegetical
community and the manner in which their representatives interpret. An
awareness of the importance of the social or religious context in which
exegesis is performed is also persistent in this general line of
scholarship. The present study integrates questions of both the
interpreters’ agenda (in investigating persistent trends in the direction of
40 Coulter, 1977, 105.

Blossom Stefaniw 55
interpretation and the reasons for them) as well as the didactic or social
application of noetic exegesis (in the analysis of the pedagogical context
in which it was performed and its role in an overall project of mental, moral,
and spiritual formation). This study also adds to both of these concerns
through the identification and analysis of the interpretive assumptions
which link both agenda and application, thereby not only adding onto the
direction of scholarship described above, but also systematising the
methodological priorities which it manifests, namely attention to social
context and to the subjective preoccupations of the commentators.
Finally, it is necessary to articulate how this approach is distinct
from and more satisfactory than a theological approach to early
Christian, or patristic, exegesis. On a general level, taking a historical
approach means that an explanation for the manner in which particular
exegetes work is to be sought in their interpretive assumptions and the
social context in which they interpret, and not in their religious
confession. This is not to deny that Origen, Didymus, or Evagrius were
Christians or that they were true Christians. It is only to maintain a
chronologically appropriate level of skepticism about the degree to
which it is possible to know, without further ado, what their being
Christian meant for their exegesis or what it meant at all at that time. A
departure from a theological approach is also motivated by the
conviction that religion is part of culture and culture is stronger than
doctrine. It seems historically more plausible that particular exegetes
interpreted as they did because they considered it obviously necessary
and useful to do so than that their interpretations were determined by a set

of doctrinal propositions which had not necessarily yet become normative.
The most fundamental reason to prefer a historical approach to a
theological one is that a theological approach presupposes aspects of the
exegetes’ set of assumptions and in so doing obscures their exegetical
significance. For example, on a theological approach, the assumption
that the text of the Bible is a vessel of divine revelation is not interesting:
it is an assumption which is presupposed as arising out of the
Christianity of the exegetes, since all Christians are taught to consider
the Bible revelatory. On a cultural and historical approach, however, a
confessional framework for the particular ideas and assumptions
manifested in the commentaries cannot be presupposed. This then
requires an investigation of the assumption on the part of these exegetes
that the text is revelatory which, as the following chapter should show,
is in fact highly interesting. The same discrepancy between a theological
approach and a historical one is evidenced in other points of this study
as well. On a theological approach, that the text is exegeted with a view
to the moral and spiritual formation of the audience of the commentary
is obvious and uninteresting: viewed retrospectively through two
thousand years of Christian tradition including pages and pages of
homilies and commentaries which do the same, it is absolutely
unsurprising. On a historical approach, however, the application of the
interpretation to the moral and spiritual formation of the hearers or
readers cannot be assumed, and once again attempting to account for
this application reveals much about the interpretive assumptions of the
Blossom Stefaniw 57
exegete which would remain invisible on a theological approach, such

as the fact that in the actual practice of noetic exegesis biblical
commentary can be found being practiced in non-religious contexts
such as schools, and along with non-religious academic subjects like
grammar and geometry. The view of noetic exegesis that becomes
visible in the following pages is admittedly more complex than the
picture of exegesis gained by looking at commentaries through a
theological lense, but the social practice of noetic exegesis whose
contours I articulate here is also more plausible and more human.
2
WHAT:
WHAT MANNER OF THING WAS THE TEXT BELIEVED TO BE?
Introduction
It is actually possible for opinions to vary, and to vary extremely, on the

topic of what a text really is. This can involve questions about the
nature of text as such: Is it a precise, objective record of a specific piece
of language whose meaning is determined? Or is it an inherently
ambiguous, amorphous example of human thought processes, whose
meaning is inherently undetermined and which means whatever it is
read as meaning? Defining what a text is can also involve questions
about the status of individual texts: Does this text deserve to be part of
the literary canon? Is it a valid specimen of the author’s work? Should it
be used in education? This preoccupation with issues of the relative
objectivity or subjectivity of text as such, and how particular texts are
granted cultural authority, has been typical of the shift from modernism
to post-modernism. Late antique scholars also had particular concerns
and preoccupations in addressing the question of the nature and status
of various texts. In the sample before us here, we are not confronted
with as much discussion of the definition of the nature of text-as-such as
scholars in the past century have been occupied with, nor with our own
day’s awareness of construction, narrative and discourse. Instead, we
see these thinkers functioning within a culture which gave certain texts a
privileged status and attributed special characteristics and capabilities to
them, so that the most pressing question was whether a given text
should be categorised as corrupting, deceitful, merely frivolous,
worthwhile, useful in forming young minds or, at the highest end of the
scale, capable of conveying intelligible truths. Specifically, this chapter
addresses the assumption manifested in the commentaries of Origen,
Didymus, and Evagrius that the text of the Bible is a vessel of divine
revelation whose content could appropriately be applied to moral and
spiritual development.
One may question the usefulness of investigating this point,
given our own habit of understanding the writings of the church fathers
as determined by their Christianity, which leaves us decidedly
unsurprised when we perceive ourselves as observing Christian readers
finding Christian revelation in Christian texts. However, the issue is not
quite as simple as it appears on a model which assumes that exegesis is
determined by religious confession. If exegesis is determined by
interpretive assumptions which could be and were held by members of
various religious confessions, then particular Christian doctrines such as
the divine authorship of Scripture do not explain why a certain text was
treated in a certain way. Rather, the doctrines themselves may have
resulted from the application of the relevant interpretive assumptions
within a given religious community: a text read as revelatory, whose
revelatory status has been practiced socially, becomes a doctrinally
legitimised deposit of revelation.
Blossom Stefaniw 61
Late antique intellectuals, whether teachers, exegetes,

philosophers or theologians, worked with constant reference to the past,
especially to the writings of Homer, Plato and Aristotle, to what we
would now characterise as ancient or classical literature and philosophy.
Despite the tenacity with which Neoplatonists, for example, would have
claimed that they were simply studying Plato and cultivating a proper
understanding of his works, late antique intellectuals were of course
reading Plato or Aristotle across a space of several centuries. Late antique
commentators were not necessarily Greek or even originally Greek-
speaking, but from cultures all across the Mediterranean region. This
means that while traditional texts (as I will call thoses texts granted a
special authoritative status in late antiquity, including the works of
Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle and, I will argue, the Bible) were held in
high esteem because of their antiquity, they were held in a much
different sort of esteem than they had been in their original contexts.
Aristotle, in reading Plato, was engaged in a different sort of project than
were Origen, Plotinus, Porphyry, or Evagrius.
This chapter is intended to demonstrate that the sample exegetes
in this study treated the Bible in much the same way that other late
antique intellectuals treated the works of Homer and Plato (among
other authors), and that one way in which their inclusion of the Bible in
the category of privileged traditional texts was achieved was by making
it the object of noetic exegesis. Beyond this articulation of cultural
context and function, a first cluster of interpretive assumptions located
around the question of what the text is, and the commentators’ answer
that the text was a vessel of divine revelation, can be addressed in this
chapter. What I am here proposing is that the assumption of Origen,
Evagrius, and Didymus that the text they were interpreting, despite any
and all appearances to the contrary on the surface of the text, was
designed to convey divine revelation of higher spiritual realities, is
neither specifically nor exclusively Christian. Nor are the non-literal
readings arising out of this assumption evidence of a desperate attempt
to reconcile ‘philosophical’ and ‘Jewish’ frames of thought. Rather, the
assumption that certain texts have a special revelatory status and that
those texts require an appropriately extraordinary type of interpretation
is typical of the milieu with which we are here concerned, with its
involvement in spiritual guidance and philosophical formation. This
assumption was so usual among educated persons interpreting texts
within the cultural context of noetic pedagogy as to have appeared
completely obvious and unavoidable to these commentators- studying a
text which was not revelatory, or non-noetic readings of a revelatory
text, could at best be applied to the lower levels of education, to practice
in dialectic, for example.
What is of primary relevance to this chapter’s task of
understanding the role of this assumption in noetic exegesis is
demonstrating that the Bible was, by virtue of being read allegorically
(in the late antique sense of the word), maneuvered into a position of
parallel status to Homer, Plato, and other ancient writers. We then
turn to addressing the additional interpretive assumptions which
depend from this idea and constitute a first cluster of the interpretive
Blossom Stefaniw 63
assumptions which drive noetic exegesis. Among the ideas

associated with granting certain traditional texts a special revelatory
status is the view on the part of these commentators, and their
counterparts outside the sample group, that the authors or writers of
the texts were visionaries or prophets, or themselves divine. This
view of the nature and status of the text also resulted in the need to
interpret the text in such a manner that it rendered a meaning which
was appropriate or worthy of the divine or visionary author and in
fact supplied the revelation it was believed to contain. In the case of
the commentaries we are concerned with here, this is evidenced in
explicit statements on the need to find an interpretation worthy of the
author of the text in the internal process-discourse of the commentary.
It is also, and very frequently, implicit in the conspicuous tendency to
interpret the text with reference to the spiritual or moral life, since
engagement with intelligible things was believed to be of spiritual,
moral and mental benefit to the individual, and an appropriate
application of divine revelation.
The Larger Cultural Context
In the case of non-Christian exegetes of non-Christian texts, it has long

been known and accepted that certain late antique commentators
operated on the basis of a cultural assumption that the texts with which
they were concerned had a special oracular or revelatory status. Where
Stoics postulated a special form of primitive knowledge expressed in the

form of myths, that which myths were considered to be expressing was
seen by Platonists more and more articulately as revelation.41 The
works of Homer especially were texts central to Greek, and later
Hellenistic, identity, so that as that identity was coloured by various
periods in history, the text which upheld it had to be constantly
reinterpreted in ways that served to maintain its value in each respective
historical period. Since late antique intellectuals, especially those
committed to Platonism, were highly concerned with achieving
knowledge of higher realities, it is no surprise that they perceived texts
by Homer as potentially revealing that sort of knowledge. 42 This is the
case when Cornutus, for example, engages with myth as ‘interpretable
evidence of pristine cosmological beliefs’. 43
A traditional text, if it was to be worthy of the respect granted to
it, could and must provide some information about what to do with
one’s soul. It must reveal higher truths about the fate of the soul and the
structure of reality.44 Robert Lamberton describes how this new way of
41 R.D. Lamberton, The Neoplatonists and the Spiritualization of Homer, in: R.D.
Lamberton / J.J. Keaney (eds.), Homer’s Ancient Readers. The Hermeneutics of Greek
Epic’s Earliest Exegetes, Princeton 1992, 115–133 (122).
42 A.A. Long, Stoic Readings of Homer, in: Lamberton / Keaney, 1992, 41–66 (44).
43 Long, ibid., 56 referring to Cornutus 76.2–5. Cornutus was a Stoic philosopher at

the centre of a school which met in his home in the time of Nero.
44 R.D. Lamberton, Homer the Theologian. Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the
Growth of the Epic Tradition, Berkeley 1986, 1. See also R.A. Kaster, Guardians of
Language. The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity, Berkeley 1988, 16, who also
discusses Phocas, v. Verg. praef.24: carmen sacrum; Macr. 1.24,13: sacrum poema as
examples of this attitude toward traditional texts in late antiquity.
Blossom Stefaniw 65
reading old texts was effected by producing a change in the expectations

with which the reader approached the text, rather than by manipulating
the text itself. 45 He characterises Neoplatonist allegorists as having
refashioned Homer by means of their allegorical interpretations, so that
later readers expected a ‘certain scope of meaning’ when studying
Homer. That is, Neoplatonists interpreted Homer as if legends about
wars and heroes actually conveyed or revealed higher metaphyscial
truths, and—Lamberton thinks as a result of this type of interpretation—
readers came to assume and expect a revelatory, metaphysical, intelligible,
or oracular meaning in Homeric stories. I would not see Neoplatonist
interpretation of Homer as the cause of this particular assumption,
however, but as its result. If that type of assumption had not already
existed, an interpretation which depended on it would have been
marginalised as eccentric and arbitrary. At the same time, the more an
interpretive community puts their assumptions into practice in producing
interpretations with a ‘certain scope of meaning’, the more further
interpretations along the same lines will be expected and readily accepted.
In the context of advanced philosophical training in late
antiquity, non-literal readings of a traditional text went hand in hand
with the belief that the text conveyed something higher and more
spiritually or philosophically valuable beyond the apparent meaning of
the text. 46 In fact, the term allegory as it was used even from the time of
45 Lamberton, 1986, xi.
46 J.D. Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria,

Berkeley 1992, 236. Dawson refers to what I am calling traditional texts as
‘culturally significant texts’.
Philo and Heraclitus came to be associated specifically with ‘figurative

interpretation of an authoritative text’47, so that ‘to judge a piece of
writing worthy of allegorical reading was to lend it dignity and
importance’.48 It was assumed that respected traditional texts could not
possibly really be about lists of ships, or at whose home which guests
had appeared for supper and philosophical discussion. Nor, as we will
see in the case of Christian commentators, was the Bible believed
actually to refer to which tribes the Israelites were supposed to destroy
and who was the son of whom. On the basis of this assumption, when
Plato appeared to be relating banal details about who was absent from a
discussion last week, late antique exegetes were confident that this
appearance was deceptive, and that they must dig deeper to find the
true meaning of the text. An example of this attitude can be found in
Proclus’ interpretation of Parmenides 126b.49 The passage reads:
These men, I said, are my fellow-citizens, and most

interested in philosophy. They have heard that this
47 R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event. A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen’s
Interpretation of Scripture, Richmond 1959, 39.
48 Even if the text considered allegorical is not of one’s own religious tradition,
considering it so implies its value as a medium of spiritual truth: “Numenius
does, however, provide Origen with a valuable example of a pagan who (in
contrast to the ‘Epicurean’ Celsus) read and studied the Hebrew and Christian
scriptures and held them in respect ‘as writings that are allegorical and are not
stupid’ (hos peri tropologoumenon kai ou moron syggrammaton, Contra Cels. 4.51)[...]
It is clear to Origen that, in Numenius’ circle as in his own, to judge a piece of
writing worthy of allegorical reading is to lend it dignity and importance—and
he accepts this compliment to the scriptures.” Lamberton, 1986, 80–81.
49 Proclus (412–485) was a fifth century Neoplatonist philosopher educated in

Alexandria and Athens and who later taught in Athens.
Blossom Stefaniw 67
Antiphon has often met with a certain Pythodorus, who

was a friend of Zeno, and that through often having heard
Pythodorus, he remembers the discussion which Socrates,
Zeno and Parmenides once held. 50
Proclus explains that this text is really about progressively diluted levels
of reality and is not just a charming detail in the narrative by means of
which characters in the dialogue are conveniently introduced. He
reaches this conclusion by looking for the spiritual significance of the
fact that there are qualifiers like ‘this’ and ‘a certain’ before the names of
Antiphon and Pythodorus, while Socrates, Zeno, and Parmenides’ names
are left unqualified. This suggests to Proclus that the latter represent a
more absolute, unified level of reality, while the former are closer to the
realm of multiplicity. That, for him, is an acceptable interpretation, but
concluding that this passage is simply about who told what to whom
would contradict beliefs about the type of meaning that traditionally
respected texts contain, and about the nature of such texts. Similarly, for
Proclus, Homeric myth is not about a completely gratuitous war over
somebody’s wife, but reveals higher metaphysical realities:
The myths want to indicate, I believe, through Helen, the

whole of that beauty that has to do with the sphere in
which things come to be and pass away and that is the
50 Procl., in Prm. 630.21–36. Translation from J.A. Coulter, The Literary Microcosm.
Theories of interpretation of the later Neoplatonists, Leiden 1976, 121.
product of the demiurge. It is over this beauty that eternal

war rages among souls, until the more intellectual are
victorious over the less rational forms of life and return
hence to the place from which they came.51
This interpretation should be read with Plato’s discussion in the

Symposium of the interaction of human minds with physical beauty as
opposed to beauty in itself in mind. On Proclus’ reading, Helen
represents beauty in the realm of becoming (versus the realm of being or
of unchangeable archetypes, in which case the reference would be to the
idea of beauty or the beautiful itself). She is the occasion for eternal war
between more or less rational forms of life, that is, souls with varying
degrees of rational powers. Those souls who are ‘victorious’ overcome
the tendency to concern themselves with physical rather than real
beauty and are able to return ‘to the place from which they came’, which
on a Platonic scheme is full union with the One. Thus a text (the Iliad
and Odyssey) is oriented onto a framework of Platonic thought so that it
is made to reveal and manifest important intelligible truths about how
to interact with the physical world and what the ultimate goal of
intellectual life is.52
51 R.D. Lamberton, The Neoplatonists and the Spiritualization of Homer, in:

Lamberton / Keaney, 1992, 115–133, 199–200 (Lamberton’s translation of Procl.,
in r. 1.175,15–21).
52 Lamberton, 1986, 37: ‘The use of the myths of Plato to explicate the myths of
Homer and the idea that the two bodies of story telling had like structures of
meaning were perhaps the most important developments in the history of the
reading of Homer in Platonic circles.’
Blossom Stefaniw 69
The assumption that an authoritative text serves a revelatory

purpose also appears in the one remaining complete text from
Hermeias, namely his Commentary on the Phaidros.53 This text includes a
statement suggesting Hermeias’ belief in traditional texts as revelatory:
‘For often the myths about the gods use historical events and stories for the
purpose of the teaching about the universals.’54 For Hermeias, then, the
historical and narrative content of traditional myths is only a means to the
end of revealing higher truths about the universals. The purpose of the
texts concerned is not to convey facts or record stories or express the
opinions of the author, but to reveal ‘the teaching about the universals’.
Thus we see a view of traditional texts as vessels of divine revelation
persisting in the larger culture at least through the fifth century.
An extended example of this assumption in action can be found
in Porphyry’s exegesis of a passage from Book 13.102–112 of the
Odyssey, known as the Cave of the Nymphs, in which Homer describes a
cave on Ithaca. Porphyry begins by asking ‘What does Homer
obscurely signify (αἰνίττεται) by the cave in Ithaca [...]?’, thus
immediately revealing his assumption that this is not a straightforward

description of a topographical object, but contains some deeper or
53 Hermeias of Alexandria (dates uncertain), also a fifth-century Neoplatonist,

originated in Alexandria, was a fellow-student of Proclus while at Athens, and
then returned to Alexandria, teaching at the Neoplatonist philosophical school
there which was later led by his son, Ammonius, and by Olympiodorus.
54 Herm., in Phdr. 28.26 ff. (H. Bernard [ed.], Hermeias of Alexandria. Kommentar zu

Platons ‘Phaidros’, Philosophische Untersuchungen 1, Tübingen 1997, 33).
higher significance. 55 He then goes on to argue for this assumption by

pointing out that contemporaries familiar with the geography of the
island have not mentioned there being a cave there in fact, and also
excludes the option that Homer is just inventing the cave frivolously.56
Similarly, Porphyry excludes an interpretation based on a literal reading
of the cave as the actual location of a means of ascent and descent for gods
and men, since all these beings cannot be expected to convene on Ithaca in
order to use the entrance and exit to the cave as a way to get in or out of
the world. Porphyry states that he is following Cronius in concluding
‘that it is evident not only to the wise but also to the vulgar, that the poet,
under the veil of allegory, conceals some mysterious signification (ἔκδηλον
εἶναι ἀλληγορεῖν τι καὶ αἰνίττεσθαι διὰ τούτων τὸν ποιητήν).’ Thus the Homeric
text is defined as revealing higher truths and as requiring special

interpretation if those truths are to be perceived. The need for special
interpretation, while drawn from the precedent of Cronius, is
characterised as ‘clear not only to the scholar but to the layman as well’,
an attitude which we will observe in Origen shortly and which reflects the
conviction that this state of affairs is obvious.57
Just as we have seen in the brief examples noted above, and as
we are about to see in examining the sample commentators, Porphyry
55 Porphyry (233–305) was a student of the founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus, with

whom he studied in Alexandria and whose teachings he recorded in the Enneads.
He is semi-contemporary with Origen and may have met him.
56 M.J. Edwards, Porphyry’s Cave of the Nymphs and the Gnostic Controversy, in: Hermes
124 (1996), 88–100 (58).
57 Porph., antr. 56.3 (Lamberton, 1986, 22).

Blossom Stefaniw 71
becomes fascinated with minor details and constructs paradoxes which

form a justification for non-literal interpretation. For example, he finds
it contradictory for Homer to describe the cave as both pleasant and
dark, since he feels darkness is normally horrible and frightening, so
that this phrase requires him to search for a special interpretation which
can reconcile this paradox and thus salvage the coherence of the text.
The special interpretation which he reaches is as follows: ‘On this
account the cave may thus be properly called delightful when one first
approaches it, because of its partaking in the forms; but it is misty to one
who looks at what is beneath it and enters into that with his mind.’58
Thus the text is made to refer to intelligible things and to the overall
philosophical project of cultivating the mind and perceiving the
intelligibles or forms. Porphyry also finds it significant that the entrance
to the cave intended for the gods faces south, when everyone knows
temples arrange their statues facing east since that is the direction which
gods should face. Porphyry is convinced that:
[...] since this narration is full of such obscurities (τοιούτων
ἀσαφεῖων πλήρους ὄντος τοῦ διηγήµατος) it can neither be a
fiction casually devised for the purpose of procuring

delight, nor an exposition of a topical history; but
58 Porph., antr. 59.21–25 (Edwards, 1996, 93): ὄθεν οἰκείως ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἂν ῥηθείη ἄντρον
ἐπήρατον µὲν τῷ εὐθὺς ἐντυγχάνοντι διὰ τὴν τῶν εἰδῶν µέθεξιν, ἠεροειδὲς δὲ σκοποῦντι τὴν
ὑποβάθραν αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὴν εἰσιόντι τῷ νῷ.
something allegorical (ἀλληγορεῖν δέ τι) must be indicated
in it by the poet [...]. 59
The degree to which interpreters are willing to pursue details in this way
and to struggle with points in the text which seem paradoxical to them
indicates a very deep and deeply valued conviction that these texts
contain a higher significance and are able to reveal that significance if
interpreted appropriately.
Further, Mark Edwards has analysed the manner in which
Porphyry’s interpretation of this passage itself reflects his ideas about
the mental processes necessary for proper reading of revelatory texts:
The cave, as the seat of mundane antitupia, is a subject of

cognition, transcended in the very act by which it is
understood. The symbol of the desired illumination is
the olive above the cave, which is for Porphyry the
immediate goal of Odysseus’ approach (De Antro 80.8–9):
‘Therefore the seat beneath the olive is proper to him as
the suppliant of the god’. This god is Athena, patroness
of wisdom, whose aid is as necessary to the reader as to
the hero. On its first appearance, it is a symbol to the
reader that an allegory is needed to elucidate the text (De
Antro 57.17–21): ‘The discussion of these obscurities is
sufficient; the passage is not a fabrication (plasma) to
59 Porph., antr. 4.
Blossom Stefaniw 73
charm the soul, nor does it contain the description of a

locality, but the poet is using it as the instrument of some
allegory, mystically putting near it the olive plant.60
Just as the cave is deceptively attractive to those only able to appreciate

physical beauty but seems murky to those willing and able to struggle to
perceive the forms symbolised in the cosmos, so also the text invites an
analogous process of perception, requiring the reader to perceive the
elements referred to in the text as symbolic of higher intelligible things.
This analogy between the noetically valuable way to perceive the
physical world and the noetic interpretation of an authoritative text also
appears consistently in our sample commentators.
The Nature of the Text and Exegetical Controversy
Because of the reverence for the text which allegorisation (in the late
antique sense) implied, the legitimacy of searching for spiritual truths in
a given text through allegory is often an issue in intercommunal polemic.
Objections to allegorising either the Bible or Homeric myth, for example,
were grounded on the assumption that only a text which contained divine
wisdom could appropriately be allegorised, coupled with the author’s
conviction that the other party’s text did not in fact contain divine wisdom
but was merely a collection of stories. The denial of cultural ‘permission’
60 Edwards, 1996, 98.

to interpret a certain text figuratively in turn allowed the other party’s

text to be polemicized not only as consisting of mere stories, but as full
of stories which, far from being symbolic of higher truths, were vulgar,
immoral, or barbaric. Several examples of this type of controversy can
be found in responses on the part of Origen and Didymus to claims by
pagan critics that it is ridiculous and offensive for Christians to
allegorise the Bible as if it were Homer.
These conflicting evaluations of the status of the Bible are a
constant point of controversy in Origen’s Contra Celsum. In Book IV,
Origen finds fault with Celsus’ representation of the story of the tower
of Babel:
For some unknown reason he thinks that ‘the overthrow

of the tower had a similar purpose to that of the flood
which,’ according to the doctrine of the Jews and
Christians, ‘purified the earth.’ Supposing that ‘the story
about the tower’ in Genesis ‘contains no hidden truth
but’, as Celsus thinks, ‘is obvious’, even so its overthrow
does not seem to have happened for the purification of
the earth—unless perhaps he imagines that the so-called
confusion of tongues was a purification of the earth. A
competent student would explain this at a more
opportune moment when it is his task to show both the
literal sense of the passage and its mystical interpretation.61
61 Or., Cels. 4.21 (H. Chadwick [ed.], Origen. Contra Celsum, Cambridge 1986, 197–8).
Blossom Stefaniw 75
Here Origen is taking a polemical stance, suggesting that Celsus is not

only wrong in claiming that the passage in question ‘contains no hidden
truth but is obvious’ (i. e., has no deeper non-literal significance), but
that he is also just wrong in the literal interpretation which he offers.
Origen makes a final jab at his opponent by claiming that even a
competent student would treat the text more satisfactorily. A
satisfactory interpretation is then defined as showing both the correct
literal sense and also, proceeding from the conviction, obvious and
undeniable to Origen, that it has a deeper significance, providing ‘its
mystical interpretation’.
Origen also reacts to Celsus’ portrayal of the creation story,
describing Celsus’ literal reading of the creation of Adam as proof of his
‘wicked character’. Origen and Celsus agree that a literal reading of the
passage in question is ridiculous. Origen sees Celsus’ limitation of his
interpretation to this level as a case of deliberate cussedness, attempting
to make fun of the story being related (‘so that anyone would think that
the words ‘given breath’ were meant in a similar sense to that of skins
being inflated, and would laugh at this idea that ‘he breathed into his
face the breath of life’), and claims instead that it ‘is meant allegorically
and needs an explanation which shows that God imparted a share of
His incorruptible spirit to man’. 62 Here Origen has explicitly defined
what sort of meaning should be found in the text and what an
acceptable ‘explanation’ of the passage should show. Further on in the
62 Or., Cels. 4.37 (Chadwick, 1986, 213).

same passage, Origen elucidates his objections to Celsus’ reading of the

book of Genesis and points up the inconsistency of Celsus’ objections
when comparing the content of the creation story, for example, to Hesiod:
In fact, he wanted to pretend that such stories are not

allegories, although in what follows he says that ‘the
more reasonable Jews and Christians are ashamed of
these things and try somehow to allegorize them’. Are,
then, the stories related by your ‘inspired’ Hesiod in the
form of a myth about the woman to be interpreted
allegorically when they say that she was given to men by
Zeus as an evil, as the price of the fire, whereas you think
that there is no deeper and hidden meaning at all in the
story that the woman was taken and made by God from
the rib of the man who fell asleep after a trance?
But it is not treating the matter fairly to refuse to
laugh at the former as being a legend, and to admire the
philosophical truths contained in it, and yet to sneer at
the biblical stories and think that they are worthless,
your judgment being based upon the literal meaning
alone. If one may criticize simply on the ground of the
literal sense what is expressed by veiled hints, consider
whether it is not rather the stories of Hesiod which
deserve to be laughed at, though he was, as you say, an
inspired man. [Origen then quotes Hes., op. 53–82, and
Blossom Stefaniw 77
op. 90–98]. In reply to the man who gives a profound

allegorical interpretation of these verses, whether his
allegory is successful or not, we will say this: Are the
Greeks alone allowed to find philosophical truths in a
hidden form, and the Egyptians too, and all the
barbarians whose pride is in mysteries and in the truth
which they contain? 63
Origen responds to Celsus’ claims that while intelligent Christians try to

escape the vulgarity and absurdity of the contents of the Bible by
allegorising the stories within it, this is not legitimate because he does
not accept that the text belongs in the same category as Homeric myth
or any other text which has a high traditional status and ‘deserves’ to be
allegorised. Origen’s counter-attack involves taking issue with the
legitimacy of allegorising Greek authors, making the similar claim that
their texts are not worthy of allegorisation and consist merely of vulgar
and frivolous stories. Origen’s apology for allowing for non-literal
interpretations of Bible stories which would, in his setting, otherwise
appear ridiculous, is based on a plea for consistency: If Celsus accepts
the legitimacy of allegorising Hesiod or Egyptian myths, he must also
accept this in the case of what Origen calls Jewish myths. This strategy
obviously opens Origen to the charge of himself operating on a double
standard, which he apparently was aware of since he follows by
drawing parallels between the story of Eve and the serpent in the Bible
63 Or., Cels. 4.26–28 (Chadwick, 1986, 213–214).

with the stories about Eros related in the Symposium, portraying both as
legitimately allegorical.
If readers of this were to imitate the malice of Celsus

(which no Christian would do) they would ridicule the
myth and would make a mock of so great a man as Plato.
But if they could find Plato’s meaning by examining
philosophically what he expresses in the form of a myth,
they would admire the way in which he was able to hide
the great doctrines as he saw them in the form of a myth
on account of the multitude, and yet to say what was
necessary for those who know how to discover from the
myths the true significance intended by their author. 64
It is especially of note here that Origen suggests not only that no good
Christian would make fun of Plato, but also that Christians respect both
the legitimacy of the Bible and that of ‘so great a man as Plato’, so that
the special interpretation of the Bible for him is an addition to the canon
of texts already accepted as revelatory in that sense, rather than a
replacement or substitution. As in the previous passage, Origen is
agitating for a treatment of Biblical myth as analogous to other myths
which are accepted as containing philosophical truths which must be
extracted through special interpretation. On the other hand, Origen’s
64 Or., Cels. 4.39 (Chadwick, 1986, 215).

Blossom Stefaniw 79
conclusion to this section suggests a more complex attitude toward

Greek literature than unequivocal acceptance:
I have ventured upon an extended discussion from a

desire to show that Celsus is incorrect when he says that
‘the more reasonable Jews and Christians try somehow to
allegorize them, but they are incapable of being explained
in this way, and are manifestly very stupid fables’. But the
truth is much rather that it is the legends of the Greeks
which are not only ‘very stupid’, but also very impious.
For our scriptures have been written to suit exactly the
multitude of the simple-minded, a consideration to which
no attention was paid by those who made up the fictitious
stories of the Greeks.65
While Origen is ready to respect the myths included in the dialogues of

Plato, he objects to ‘the legends of the Greeks’ because their authors did
not take into consideration their effects on ‘the multitude of the simple-
minded’, or those people who are not able to understand them as
enigmatic accounts of deeper spiritual or philosophical truths, but will
inevitably take them at face value. This reason for taking issue with
Greek myth is indicative of Origen’s beliefs about the pedagogical
purposes of Scripture and authoritative texts in general. The fact that he
faults the authors of Greek myth for not taking into consideration this
65 Or., Cels. 4.50 (Chadwick, 1986, 225).

task suggests that he expects any traditional text or any text with a
special revelatory status to facillitate the spiritual formation of those
exposed to its contents. Here we see the link between the belief in the
revelatory status of the text and its usefulness in spiritual formation
which will be discussed further in Chapter Four.
Porphyry also objects to Christian figural readings, as recorded in
Eusebius’ Church History:
Hear his own words: ‘But some’ says he, ‘ambitious

rather to find some solution to the absurdities of the
Jewish writings, instead of abandoning them, have turned
their minds to expositions, inconsistent with themselves,
and inapplicable to the writings; and which, instead of
furnishing a defense of these foreigners, only give us
encomiums and remarks in their praise. For boasting of what
Moses says plainly in his writings, as if they were dark and
intricate propositions (αἰνίγµατα), and attaching to them divine
influence, as if they were oracles replete with hidden mysteries;

and in their vanity pretending to great discrimination of mind,
they thus produce their expositions. 66
As far as Porphyry is concerned, the proper response to ‘Jewish

writings’ (he is referring to the Old Testament), would be to abandon
66 Eus., h.e., 6.19,4 (C.F. Cruse [ed.], Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History, Peabody 1998, 208).
Blossom Stefaniw 81
them or to provide ‘a defense of these foreigners’. Porphyry considers it

ridiculous for Christian exegetes to attempt to ‘find some solution to the
absurdities of the Jewish writings’ by treating them as enigmatic texts of
‘divinie influence’ and interpreting them ‘as if they were oracles replete
with hidden mysteries’. That is, he observes Christian exegetes treating
the Bible as a medium of divine revelation which, as such, requires
special interpretation. Porphyry does not reject the idea that the divine
reveals itself in certain texts, nor that special types of interpretation can
and should be used, but simply denies that the Bible qualifies as an
enigmatic revelatory text, describing it as ‘what Moses says plainly’. If it
is spoken ‘plainly’, it does not admit of special interpretation, if it does
not admit of special interpretation, it does not contain oracles or
mysteries or constitute divine revelation. It should also be noted that
Porphyry associates special interpretation, even if he objects to its
application to the Mosaic writings, with ‘great discrimination of mind’,
indicating a link to the role of the intellectual cultivation of noetic skill in
the interpretation of revelatory texts which will be examined in
Chapters Four and Five.
Porphyry then goes on to criticize a specific exegete who he sees
as having erred in exactly the way he has just described, namely Origen.
‘Then, again’, he said, ‘Let us take an example of this

absurdity, from the very man whom I happened to meet
when I was very young, and who was very celebrated,
and is still celebrated by the writings that he has left; I
mean Origen, whose glory is very great with the teachers

of these doctrines [...] But Origen, as a Greek, being
educated in Greek literature, declined to this barbarian
impudence [...] intermingling Greek literature with these
foreign fictions. For he was always in company with
Plato, and had the works also of Numenius and Cronius,
of Apollophanes and Longinus, of Moderatus and
Nicomachus, and others whose writings are valued, in
his hands. He also read the works of Chaeremon, the
Stoic, and those of Cornutus. From these he derived the
allegorical mode of interpretation usual in the mysteries
of the Greeks, and applied it to the Jewish Scriptures.’67
Porphyry continues his polemic, referring to Christian figural

interpretation as ‘this absurdity’. He characterises Origen’s
exemplification of the type of exegesis he has just described as
‘barbarian impudence’ and is offended by what he sees as Origen’s
‘intermingling Greek literature with these foreign fictions.’ At the end of
the passage, what he means by that is again made explicit, namely the
application of special interpretation, which Porphyry describes as ‘usual
in the mysteries of the Greeks’, to the Jewish Scriptures. Porphyry takes
offense at the application of this type of interpretation outside of the
canon of texts to which he considers it appropriate.
67 Eus., h.e. 6.19,5–8 (Cruse, 1998, 209).

Blossom Stefaniw 83
Didymus also engages in this debate and responds to Porphyry’s

objections to Christian allegory, which he would have known from
written texts of Porphyry which are now lost except for such quotations
as we have just seen. In his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Didymus
addresses Porphyry’s complaint about what he considers the
inappropriate allegorisation of the Bible. His objection and the
discussion of legitimacy again are concentrated on the fact that
Porphyry recognises no higher wisdom or divine inspiration in the
Scriptures, and therefore considers them unqualified as objects of
allegorical interpretation. Didymus, however, offers their divine
inspiration as the very reason that they must be interpreted in a higher
spiritual sense:
There is nothing which is inspired by the Holy Spirit,

which does not have a spiritual significance. Where there
are teachings of the Holy Spirit, they must, if they are to
take effect, be interpreted spiritually. 68
For Didymus, it is a sort of natural law that anything inspired by the Holy
Spirit also has a spiritual significance and therefore not only allows for but
also requires an interpretation capable of exposing that significance.
Didymus also treats an example of Porphyry’s polemic against
Christian exegetes in which he caricatures allegorical interpretation as a
68 Didym., eccl. 9.10 c–d (M. Gronewald [ed.], Didymus der Blinde. Kommentar zum
Ekklesiastes 5, PTA 24, Bonn 1979, 37). Also discussed in W. Bienert, Allegoria und
Anagoge bei Didymos dem Blinden von Alexandria, Berlin 1972, 142.
desperate attempt to make anything and everything refer to Christ.69

Porphyry apparently put forward a farcical interpretation of Homeric
myth, pretending to have perceived the higher meaning of the
characters of Hector and Achilles as the devil and Christ respectively:
Porphyry, for example, who accuses us of doing violence

to the text and inventing spiritual interpretations and
allegories, himself interpreted the passage from Homer
where Achilles and Hector are mentioned allegorically as
referring to Christ and the Devil. And what we said
about the Devil, he said about Hector, and what we said
about Christ, he said about Achilles. And he used the
following words: ‘Before the victory of Achilles Hector
arose boasting about them all and was thought stronger
than them all. He did this, however, to cause confusion.’
Here ends the spiritual interpretation. 70
Didymus, somewhat disingenuously, in turn refuses to read Porphyry’s

comment in its polemical context, and presents it as if Porphyry had
meant it seriously and is thus himself guilty of absurd interpretations.
At the same time, Didymus takes issue with Porphyry’s use of special
69 G. Binder, Eine Polemik des Porphyrios gegen die allegorische Auslegung des Alten
Testaments durch die Christen, in: ZPE 3 (1968), 81–95 (93) refers to the polemical
comment of Porphyry (a facetious Christian allegory of Homer) which Didymus
treats as a means of demonstrating the absurdity of allegorsation so that anything
and everything refers to Christ.
70 Didym., eccl. 9.10 c–d (Gronewald, 1979, 39). Cf. Eus., h.e. 6.19,4 f.
Blossom Stefaniw 85
interpretation of Homer, which he himself thinks is only appropriate for

the Bible. The possibility of arbitrary and incoherent interpretations is
admitted by all parties, as is the potential legitimacy of non-literal
interpretations or interpretations based on the assumption of the
revelatory status of the text. The disagreements that arise, beyond a
variety of polemical tactics including vigorous application of double
standards, are limited to which texts fall into this privileged category.
What is primarily of note here is that the reason offered in these
controversies as to why the use of allegorical interpretation by the
respective opponent is illegitimate is not the illegitimacy of allegory as a
hermeneutical method in and of itself. Instead, the disputants all found
their objections on the fact that they do not accept that the text in
question is not in the required category and therefore does not contain
the sort of higher spiritual wisdom to which they consider allegorisation
a means of access. Even in disputing with each other, all parties reveal
their consensus on the point that certain texts do have a special
revelatory status and, if a given text does have that status, when
interpreted accordingly, is capable of providing knowledge of
intelligible things. No insult to Greek literature would have been
perceived by Porphyry if he had found the idea that certain texts served
a revelatory purpose when interpreted appropriately merely crazy or
eccentric. Further, objections to the allegorisation of a given text do not
correspond to the disputants’ religious commitments: Numenius agrees
with Origen that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures are legitimately
interpeted ‘as writings that are allegorical and are not stupid’, while
Didymus, as we will see in Chapter Three, points to ‘whole sects both

pagan and Christian’ who object to allegorical readings as such. 71
Traditional Texts as Media of Revelation in the Sample Commentators
The assumption that traditional texts are media of divine revelation and
that they therefore require a special type of interpretation appears
persistently in our sample commentaries. In Origen’s Peri Archon, we
see evidence that Origen considers it obvious that the Hebrew
Scriptures cannot possibly really be about what they seem to be about:
Indeed, the entire narrative, which seems to be written

about weddings or the births of sons or different battles
or whatever other stories one wishes, what else must it be
believed to be than the forms and types of hidden and
sacred matters? 72
This statement is made in the context of a section of the text, Book IV of

Peri Archon, generally recognised as Origen’s statement of exegetical
method, and is part of his explanation of why it is not acceptable to
simply take the text at face value. It is also significant that Origen makes
71 See note 6 above for another example of the non-correspondence of religious

confession and approval or disapproval of non-literal readings.
72 Or., princ. 4.2,2 (G.W. Butterworth [ed.], Origen. On First Principles, Gloucester
1985, 271).
Blossom Stefaniw 87
this point in the form of a rhetorical question (what else must it be

believed to be?), as if it is incredible to him that any right-thinking
person could disagree. This is reminiscent of Porphyry’s statement from
the passage above ‘that it is evident not only to the wise but also to the
vulgar, that the poet, under the veil of allegory, conceals some
mysterious signification.’ In his Commentary on John, Origen expresses
his conviction that the text of the Bible contains a higher spiritual
significance in a similarly rhetorical manner:
For what would the narrative of the sensible Gospel

amount to if it were not developed to a spiritual one? It
would be of little account or none; any one can read it and
assure himself of the facts it tells—no more. But our whole
energy is now to be directed to the effort to penetrate to the
deep things of the meaning of the Gospel and to search out
the truth that is in it when divested of types.73
For Origen it is obvious that reading a text to ‘assure oneself of the facts
it tells’ is an inadequate use of Scripture. The concern of noetic exegetes
when they read was to ‘penetrate to the deep things’, so that, as we will
see in Chapter Four, interpretive assumptions about the nature of the
text have implications for further assumptions about what the act of
reading should involve. This conviction at the same time maneuvers the
Gospel narrative into the same category as other privileged traditional
73 Or., Jo. 1.10.

texts, but also reflects the cultural and chronological distance of the late
antique reader, who has difficulty seeing the value or coherence in the
surface narrative.
In Origen’s Commentary on Matthew, the Gospel text is described
as referring to ‘unspeakable and mysterious things’ and as a ‘revelation
of things fundamentally beyond mere letters’. In the same passage
Origen claims that he himself is ‘far from able to penetrate to the depths
of what is here revealed’. 74 For Origen, while actually perceiving the
divine content of the text requires special dedication and ability, the
revelatory capacity of the Scriptures is something even uneducated
Christians are aware of:
That there are certain mystical revelations made known

through the divine scriptures is believed by all, even by
the simplest of those who are adherents of the word. 75
Accordingly, the need to depart from the literal meaning and pursue the
higher significance of the text through special forms of exegesis seems a
question of plain common sense to Origen, especially when the literal
meaning appears to him to be incoherent as in the following:
74 Or., comm. in Mt. 14.12 (H.J. Vogt [ed.], Der Kommentar zum Evangelium nach
Mattäus 2, BGrL 18/30/38, Stuttgart 1983/1990/1993, 48).
75 Or., princ. 4.2,1 (Butterworth, 1985, 272). The same pseudo-argument for the
obviousness of the need for non-literal reading was noted above in the discussion
of Porphyry.
Blossom Stefaniw 89
No less do we find a similar problem with what is said in

Ezekiel about Egypt, for example, that it is to be made
desolate for ‘forty years’ so that ‘no foot of man’ will be
found in it, that it will be so taken by assault that through
the entire land human blood will rise up to the knees. I
do not know how anyone with any sense could apply all
this to that earthly Egypt which borders on Ethiopia. 76
It is in part Origen’s concern for the truth-value of statements in

Scripture which compels him to consider the surface reading insufficient
and to interpret particular passages allegorically or noetically. The
above passage is highly reminiscent of Porphyry’s similar musings
about how Homer’s description of the cave should be taken and his
proferring of the non-factuality of the surface reading as grounds for
concluding that the passage revealed deeper mysteries. Apparently,
Origen is not willing to read the passage above as a literary trope such
as hyperbole or an example of the genre of apocalyptic prophecy, any
more than Porphyry can accept the idea that Homer just made up the
existence of the cave on Ithaca for the sake of entertainment. The
apparently ridiculous must be interpreted more deeply as the text is
required not only to be true (and for Origen ‘true’ means something
different than ‘factual’) but also to convey some manner of valued
divine or spiritual truth. Given these assumptions, the logic of Origen’s
76 Or., princ. 4.3,9 (Butterworth, 1985, 302). Origen is referring to Ezek 29:11–12;
30:7, 10–12; 32:5–6, 12–13, 15.
treatment of the above passage is perfectly coherent and systematic:

Origen considers it implausible that the whole of Ethiopia could in fact
contain no human life at all for an entire forty years, or that its surface
area could be covered with such quantities of blood as to rise to knee-
height. Since the Bible cannot really refer to untrue or absurd things, a
passage like the above must refer to something else. Since the Bible
contains divine revelation, the ‘something else’ to which a passage like
the above is seen as referring is some manner of higher spiritual truth,
whose specific content it is the task of the exegete to perceive and
expound. Here, as in the non-Christian examples above and in the
excerpts from Didymus and Evagrius below, the belief that the text has a
higher revelatory meaning and that it requires special interpretation
correspond and co-occur closely and consistently.
Didymus the Blind’s conviction of the revelatory content of
Scripture is so strong that he is able to find mysteries in the subtitles of
Psalms. This is much in line with Porphyry’s special attention to which
direction the openings of the cave face and Origen’s concentration on
details in the narrative which a modern reader would tend to brush aside.
On Psalm 44:1 ‘In view of the goal’. So, ‘for those who
have been transformed. For the insight (σύνεσιν) of the
sons of Kora.’ And since even the title and the whole
Psalm have mysteries hidden within them, thus the one
who performs this song needs insight. For (the Psalm) is
Blossom Stefaniw 91
‘for insight’. And I also already said about the thirty-first

Psalm that it is spoken in riddles.’77
Here Didymus puts forward the view of the Psalms as the hiding-place
of mysteries not as a debatable point to be argued for, but as a reason to
conclude something else (‘the one who performs this song needs
insight’). While modern scholars would wish to relate this Psalm and its
title to its original historical context, Didymus, not just in his comment
on this verse, but also in his work as a teacher, is interested in ‘the goal’
taken as the goal of the spiritual life, so that those who are in view of it
are those who have already been transformed and who have insight.
In Didymus’ Commentary on Zechariah, we hear echoes of the
same rhetorical certainty that the revelatory nature of the text is obvious
and indisputable to any right-thinking person which we found in
Origen. Having provided an interpretation of the attire described in the
text as ‘by divine anagogy’ referring to the virtues, Didymus defends his
interpretation thus: ‘I mean, surely the mind is not so blind as to think
that the Holy Spirit is teaching about corporeal vesture, and not about
77 Didym., Ps. 44.1 (Gronewald, 1979, 201).

garments covering the inner person.’78 For Didymus, the suggestion

that the Holy Spirit would record instructions about actual physical
clothing is preposterous and can only be answered with incredulity:
‘surely the mind is not so blind as to think [...]’. This statement is also
reflective of further interpretive assumptions, including the authorship
of the Holy Spirit (to be addressed shortly) and the intelligible referent,
which will be addressed in Chapter Three.
Also, using both his knowledge of numerology and his
assumption that even minor details have some sort of higher spiritual
significance, Didymus is able to find revelatory value in information about
the precise number of men recorded as not having worshipped Baal:
Yet each of these expressions is in accord with reality,

provided that the numbers are not taken completely in a
material way: the seven thousand men who had not bent
the knee to Baal are those who conform in a mystical
78 The passage in full reads as follows: ‘Now, clothing and garments by divine
anagogy are the different kinds of virtue and the actions performed in accord
with them, as well as the doctrines of piety and the mysteries of truth. With both
of these is draped [...] the queen, bride of Christ, the Church, as the singer says in
the forty-fifth Psalm, “the queen attends at your right clad in a garment of gold of
a rich variety”, and further on, “clad in golden tassels of a rich variety” [Ps
45:9,14]. I mean, surely the mind is not so blind as to think that the Holy Spirit is
teaching about corporeal vesture, and not about garments covering and adorning
the inner person [...].’ Didym., Zach. 14.13–14 (R.C. Hill [ed.], Didymus the Blind.
Commentary on Zechariah. FaCh 111, 344–5).
A similar expression of this assumption also provides a link to the issue of
the intelligible referent to be discussed in the following chapter: ‘Surely, after
all, our mind is not so confined to earth as to believe that spiritual people under
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit have referred to material wine presses and
vats, and not instead to lofty spiritual interpretations.’ Didym., Zach. 14.9–11
(Hill, 2006, 340).
Blossom Stefaniw 93
manner to the Sabbath reserved to the people of God, and

the number is closely related to the number 1000 and the
number 7, of which it is composed. In many texts, in fact,
you can see the number 1000 mentioned in a manner
befitting God, as in the following statement about God:
‘He was mindful of his covenant forever, of a word he
commanded for a thousand generations from Abraham’;
there is no suggestion that there will be a thousand
generations to the end of the world, as has previously
been pointed out at greater length in other places. It is on
the basis of this mystical numbering that the seven
thousand is composed, and in terms of it those people are
numbered who sincerely revere God and genuflect before
the one who alone is the cause of everything.79
The conformity of the text to ‘reality’ is achieved by not taking the

referent to be a material thing or understanding it in a material sense.
The text thus is not taken to refer to a historical group of non-conformist
Israelites, but rather to those people ‘who sincerely revere God’. The
grounds for establishing this intelligible referent is not just the
association with the numerologically interpreted number seven-
thousand, but also Didymus’ assumption that the text is intended to
convey higher realities, and not historical statistics.
79 Didym., Zach. 8.23 (Hill, 2006, 200–201).

Evagrius expresses his belief in the intelligible contents of

Scripture in his interpretation of Proverbs 23:1 ‘When you sit to eat with
a ruler, consider diligently what is before you.’:
Because not everyone is capable of comprehending the

mystical sense of Scripture (τὴν διάνοιαν τῆς γραφῆς). It is
necessary to comprehend divine (θείαν) Scripture intelligibly
(νοητός νοεῖσθαι) and spiritually (πνευµατικός). For sensible
knowledge (γνῶσις) according to the historical sense (κατὰ
τὴν ἱστορίαν αἰσθητὴ) is not true.80
The Scripture does not concern itself, for Evagrius, with the demeanor
with which it is appropriate to eat in the presence of rulers. Instead,
Evagrius constructs a metaphor according to which sitting down to eat
corresponds with sitting down to read the Bible. One should ‘consider
diligently’ (his copy of the verse also has νοητὸς νοεῖ) what one is
engaging with. Evagrius then explains why this special mentality is

needed, namely because without that type of comprehension, one
would be left only with the sensible narrative, which he holds to be
untrue. Even in this short passage it is evident how closely linked the
assumption of the divine content and special status of Scripture is to the
80 Evagr. Pont., schol. pr. 250–251 (P. Géhin [ed.], Evagrius Ponticus. Scholies aux
Proverbes, SC 340, Paris 1987, 346–347).
Blossom Stefaniw 95
need for a special mental approach to it, an approach whose contents

and trappings will be discussed in detail in the following chapters.
In the same way, when Evagrius reads Proverbs 24:13 (‘My son,
eat honey, for it is good. Yes, the honey from the comb is sweet to your
taste.’) it is clear to him that the text does not actually encourage the
consumption of bee products.
He who benefits from divine Scripture eats honey. But he

who casts off the words (τοῦς λόγους) from these things
(τῶν πραγµάτων), which also the holy prophets and the
apostles cast off, he eats the comb. Eating honey is for

anyone who wants to, but eating the comb is only for
those who are pure.81
Benefitting from Scripture on the level available to anyone is equivalent

to eating honey, but Scripture for Evagrius also has a deeper level which
requires one to ‘cast off’ the words. On the basis of the metaphor being
used, casting off the words (ἐκβάλλον τὸυς λόγους) suggests discarding a
less valuable type of nourishment for a more substantial one within it.
That type of engagement with Scripture is typical of ‘the holy prophets
and apostles’ and is described in this interpretation as eating the
honeycomb rather than just the honey. Anyone can eat the honey
81 Evagr. Pont., schol. pr. 270 (Géhin, 1987, 364–5). Géhin has ‘ses doctrines des
réalités elles-mêmes’ for τῶν πραγµάτων τοὺς λόγους, since the ‘these things’ I have
translated would normally imply ‘these intelligible/noetic things’.
(benefit from Scripture), but only those who are pure can eat the
honeycomb (progress from the words to the substance within them).
Here we see not only Evagrius’ assumption that Scripture has a deeper
revelatory meaning at work, but once again its association with spiritual
purity and an accomodation of different types of readers similar to what
is familiar from Origen as in his discussion in Peri Archon IV.2.6 of
different levels of meaning in Scripture to provide for the different
capacities of various readers.
So in all of the sample commentators, the assumption that
Scripture is one of the texts which functions as a medium of divine
revelation is observable, as well as the further implication that this state
of affairs requires a special type of interpretive effort.
The Authors of Traditional Texts as Visionaries and Prophets
What does the assumption that a particular text has a special revelatory
status imply about the author or writer of that text? Logically, the
author or writer of such a text must necessarily have some ability to
perceive and to communicate revelatory content. The role assigned to a
person who is characterised as able to access revelatory or divine forms
of knowledge in any particular culture will vary depending on whether
that culture believes something like divine knowledge really exists,
whether it is desirable or possible for individuals to perceive it, and the
social implications for the person who does perceive it (Can they still
Blossom Stefaniw 97
participate normally in society? Do they require an extraordinary form

of life or separation from the ordinary community? Are they dangerous
and abnormal? Are they wise and spiritual? Can their visions be
communicated to others in a constructive and profitable manner?). The
variety of ways in which this type of activity is valued or perceived in
various cultures results in a variety of social roles. An individual
believed to be involved in perceiving and communicating divine
knowledge may be described as a witch, a mystic, a mentally ill person,
or a prophet. The importance of a culture’s assumptions about what is
possible and normal in this regard can be exemplified even within the
range of modern Western cultures. In present-day Germany, a claim to
have had a vision of divine truth will at least alienate one’s fellows, and
quite probably result in an appointment with a psychiatrist or questions
about the use of hallucinogenic drugs. In a present-day Pentecostal
community in the United States, however, such a claim would be fully
acceptable and would be interpreted as a manifestation of the work of
the Holy Spirit. It is not only an acceptable claim, but one that has
significant and highly valued implications for the role of the visionary
individual in the religious community which outweigh competing
secular interpretations of the same claim.
The writers in our sample and indeed a large segment of the
culture around them not only believed that something like divine
intelligible realities exist, but also that it is possible and highly desirable
for a human mind to perceive and communicate such knowledge. In
fact, there were conventions in place which provided the means of
attaining divine knowledge. Where Western society might toy with

ideas about finding the means to higher forms of knowledge by using
chemicals to open the doors of perception, going to India, or learning
yoga, in late antiquity, the perception of intelligible realities—the best
possible type of knowledge a human being could experience—was
located at the pinnacle of the philosophical and spiritual life, following
on a massive investment in physical, mental, and moral discipline.
One assumption driving noetic exegesis was the view that a
writer’s ability to provide revelation by depositing intelligibile realities
into a text was equivalent to the writer functioning in the role of a
visionary or prophet, having achieved or been granted access to
intelligible realities. Similarly, when an author is postulated beyond the
actual writer or also acts as a writer, the author is usually described as
divine, which clearly qualifies one for the perception and
communication of revelation. The authors and writers of those texts
which were granted revelatory status by their interpretive communities,
whether Moses, Plato, Homer or the Holy Spirit, were believed to have
had access to ultimate reality in the course of composition and to have
deposited revelation of the same in the text. This act of deposit is
usually understood as having been performed with considerable
pedagogical deliberation, providing a structure by means of which
readers could trace the clues to find the spiritual content of the text.82
That is, the author or writer deposits indications in the language of the
82 J. Dillon, The Golden Chain. Studies in the Development of Platonism and Christianity,
Aldershot 1990, 73 (‘Self-Definition in Later Platonism’).
Blossom Stefaniw 99
text of what has been perceived or experienced directly and

independently of language in order to communicate intelligible
knowledge to those not privy to direct visions or inspirations.
Especially in the case of a properly divine author, this encoding and
depositing of revelation of intelligible knowledge is described as part of
the larger providential plan or as divine pedagogy.
This belief can be observed prior to the period under
consideration here when Clement argues that Homer was dependent on
the Hebrew prophets, on the one hand, but also grants him the status of
having had access to hidden truths which were revealed in his poetry in
an obscure manner as he himself, without the benefit of Christian
doctrine, was not able to truly understand them.83 Clement maintains
the accepted status of Homer as a visionary, but claims to better
understand the truths communicated by Homer than he himself did.
Homer, while writing, only partially comprehended the truth which
Christian interpreters, while reading, are able to see clearly because of
their historical (revelatory) advantage over the writer. 84 Thus Clement
goes to great lengths to grant a fuller level of vision and revelatory
83 Lamberton, 1986, 78 (referring to Clem., str. 5.4,24,1).
84 Lamberton, 1986, 80: “[...] Homer was both an allegorical poet whose prestige
might add to that of the Christian tradition and a participant in the revelation
lying behind Christianity. But the limitations of Homer are crucially important.
Homer perceived only dimly the truth of the revelation to the Jews. His poetic
fictions are a ‘screen’ (παραπέτασµα): the term, so characteristic of Proclus, is used
in Clement to refer to poetry of Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, Linus, and Musaeus.
But that ‘screen’ is misleading, false, and for all its beauty and ingenuity, Homer
the allegorical poet, a visionary by heathen standards, is in fundamental points of
doctrine profoundly wrong.”
capacity to the writers of Christian texts, but still manifests his

assumption that Homeric writings have a special revelatory status. The
maneuvering of Homer to a subsidiary position in relation to the
Hebrew prophets would not be necessary if Clement was able to
conceive of a text of special status as not being revelatory at all or if he
was able to completely abandon the idea of the author of such texts as
able to engage in special visionary forms of knowledge.85
With regard to the visionary status of writers of the Bible
specifically, Athenagoras expressed the way in which they were inspired
(i. e., privy to revelatory or divine knowledge) by describing the
movement of the Spirit on the prophets as analogous to ‘a flute player
who blows on the flute’ with the flute representing the prophets and the
flute player the Holy Spirit. 86 Athenagoras’ view of inspiration as
expressed here resembles that of Plato as expressed in Ion 534 c and
Apology 22 c. 87 The same model of inspiration appears in Philo’s
characterisation of the biblical prophets, and his exegesis as a whole
demonstrates substantial continuity with earlier Homeric commentary
as well as close similarities with our commentators.88 Variety and
85 Lamberton, 1986, 78. From Clement’s period forward, a shift in Christian

attitudes to Homer can be observed, such that the Bible seems to completely
replace Homeric texts in the position of revelatory privilege for Christians by the
fifth century. At the same time, however, Neoplatonist interpreters are
intensifying their noetic readings of Homer, Plato, and the Chaldaean Oracles.
86 E. Nardoni, Origen’s Concept of Biblical Inspiration, in: Second Century 4 (1984), 9–

23 (9). Cf. Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, (PG 6, 907).
87 Pl. Ion 534 c (Loeb Classical Library, 164, 420–25); Pl. ap. 22 c (Loeb Classical
Library 261, 416–417).
88 Lamberton, 1986, 48 ff.

Blossom Stefaniw 101
discussion exist as to whether this precise image is accurate or

acceptable, with some authors objecting to the suspension of the
medium’s reason which this model implies. However, the idea that
revelatory texts have a writer or author who is privy to intelligible
knowledge remains consistent.
The characterisation of the author or writer of a traditional text as
a visionary or prophet is also clearly recognisable in Neoplatonist views
of Homer as a prophet, or, in late antique terms, a theologian. Here it is
vital to note a key instance of ambivalence in discourse about the process
of writing and that of reading or interpreting:
The distinction between ‘theologizing’ by writing poetry

in which information about the gods was presented in a
more-or-less veiled form and ‘theologizing’ by interpreting
the poetry of the ancients in such a way as to bring out
these meanings is, in fact, one that seems often to have
been blurred in antiquity. From our perspective there is a
world of difference between deliberate poetic allegory
and the interpretation as allegory of existing poetry. By
the fourth century, however, the verb theologeo and its
complex of related words could refer to either activity.’89
Among Neoplatonist exegetes we see a close relationship between the

mental processes of writing and interpreting when the object of these
89 Lamberton, 1986, 24.

activities is categorised as encoded intelligible truth. In the interpretive

project thus conceived, the central action is not engagement of the
reader’s linguistic competence and the language presented in the text,
but rather a complex interaction between the mind of the reader, that of
the author or writer, and the intelligible realities which the reader is
striving to become able to comprehend.
The characterisation of writers of traditional texts as morally and
mentally extraordinary is also stated in the final passage of Porphyry’s
interpretation of The Cave of the Nymphs:

When one takes into consideration the ancient wisdom
and the vast intelligence of Homer, along with his
perfection in every virtue, one cannot reject the idea that
he has hinted at images of more divine things (εἰκόνας τῶν
θειοτέρων ᾐνίσσετο) in molding his little story. It is impossible
that he should have successfully created the entire basis of

this story without shaping that creation after some sort
of truth.90
For Porphyry, the reason it is impossible that Homer’s story is not

shaped according to the truth is that Homer himself possessed ‘ancient
wisdom’ and ‘vast intelligence’ and ‘perfection in every virtue’. Also, it
is implied that Homer had access to ‘truth’, according to which he
90 Porph., antr. 36 (cf. Lamberton, 1986, 40).

shaped his story. Thus the mental and moral status of the authors or
writers is what allows them to not only perceive higher intelligible
truths but also to encode them in written stories.
If we turn now from the larger cultural context to our sample
commentators, we can observe Origen, in the course of arguing that wise
men who lived before Christ shared in the same knowledge as the Apostles
who had seen Christ directly, setting out a catalogue of figures from the Old
Testament who he claims were privy to complete understanding of the
‘higher interpretations’ of the stories which they recorded:
We must believe what is good and true about the

prophets, that they were sages (σοφοί), that they did
understand what proceeded from their mouths, and that

they bore prudence on their lips. It is clear that Moses
understood in his mind the truth of the law, and the
higher interpretations of the stories (ἑωρα τῷ νῷ τὴν ἀλήθειαν
τοῦ νόµου καὶ τὰς κατὰ ἀναγωγὴν ἀλληγορίας) recorded in his
books. Joshua, too, understood the meaning (ἀληθῆ) of the
allotment of the land after the destruction of the nine and

twenty kings, and could see better than we can the
realities of which his achievements were the shadows. It is
clear, too, that Isaiah saw the mystery (µυστήριον) of Him
who sat upon the throne, and of the two seraphim, and of
the veiling of their faces and their feet, and of their wings,
and of the altar and of the tongs. Ezekiel, too, understood

the true significance of the cherubim and their doings, and
of the firmament that was above them, and of Him that
sat on the throne, than all which what could be loftier or
more splendid [...] those who were made perfect in
earlier generations knew not less than the Apostles did of
what Christ revealed to them, since the same teacher was
with them as He who revealed (ἀποκαλυφθέντων) to the
Apostles the unspeakable mysteries of godliness (τῆς
θεοσεβείας µυστήρια).91
This implies that the human authors of Scripture not only deposited
divine knowledge beneath the surface of the text, but were aware that
they were doing so and also of what that knowledge consisted of. The
mind of each of the persons Origen lists had access to ‘the truth’, ‘the
higher interpretations’, the ‘meaning’, ‘the mystery’, the ‘true
significance’, etc. It is of note that the meanings deposited in the text are
the sort of thing a sage knows. As we will investigate in more detail in
Chapter Four, in noetic exegesis we find the reader or interpreter of
Scripture taking on a role directly parallel to that of its writer or author,
such that both are concerned with a vision of ultimate reality which is
mediated by the text.
91 Or., Jo. 6.2.

In Origen the basis for belief in the inspiration of Scripture is partly

described as the fact that the Holy Spirit moved the writers of Scripture.92
However, Origen objects to a model of inspiration as a state of prophetic
ecstasy, since he considers that typical of the work of an evil spirit, describing
the experience of the writer inspired by a good spirit thus:
A man admits the energy and control of a good spirit

when he is moved and incited to what is good and
inspired to strive towards things heavenly and divine; just
as the holy angels and God himself worked in the
prophets, inciting and exhorting them by holy suggestions
to strive towards better things, though certainly in such a
way that it rested with the man’s own will and judgment
whether or not he was willing to follow God’s call to the
heavenly and divine [...] Such for example were the
prophets and the apostles, who attended upon the divine
oracles without any mental disturbance. 93
This is a description of the frame of mind participated in by the writer of

Scripture in his capacity as visionary or prophet, which should be kept in
92 Or., princ. 4.2,2 (G.W. Butterworth [ed.], Origen. On First Principles.: Being
Koetschau’s Text of the ‘De Principiis’, Gloucester 1985, 272). E. Nardoni, Origen’s
Concept of Biblical Inspiration, in: Second Century 4 (1984), 9–23 (11), also collects
the following repetitions of this point in Origen: Or., hom. in 1 Reg. 2 (PG
12.1017). See also Or., schol. in Lc. 1 (PG 17.312); Or., princ. pref.8 (Butterworth,
1985, 5).
93 Or., princ. 3.3,4 (Butterworth, 1985, 227).

mind when we turn to the mental capacities required of the noetic

exegete, which are closely analogous to this description. Origen’s
description of the writer’s mental state while inspired is closely analogous
to that required of the reader able to perceive the text’s intelligible
contents. Both writer and reader are expected to be oriented to the good,
to strive toward things heavenly and divine, and to have their intellectual
capacities in good working order, avoiding all ‘mental disturbance’.
While Origen equivocates on the precise role of the Holy Spirit as
having inspired the prophets or directly composed Scripture, he
consistently sees the author of Scripture as working deliberately and
with a view to revealing higher spiritual truths.94 This is evident for
example in the Homily on Numbers 27.6, in which the way that the stages
of the journey of the Israelites through the desert are recorded in
duplicate is seen as evidence of a divine instructive intention:
We see what great care the Lord took in describing those

stages so that their description would be introduced in a
second place. For those names are recounted, granted
with some differences, at the point when the children of
Israel are said to have left each different place and to have
camped at it [...] The stages are repeated twice in order to
show two journeys for the soul.95
94 E.A. Dively Lauro, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture Within Origen’s Exegesis,
Leiden 2005, 39. Or., princ. pref.1,8; SC 252:84.
95 Dively Lauro, 2005, 186.

For Origen, the fact that the stopping-places of Israel during their
wanderings in the desert are recorded twice is not evidence of a certain
manuscript tradition, and certainly not a mere coincidence. It is
included in the text purposefully, and its purpose is to indicate spiritual
truths, in this case to reflect the ‘two journeys for the soul’.
Origen also frequently speaks of the methods by which the Holy
Spirit inserts divine truth into the text in such a way as to alert the
reader to the fact that there is a spiritual content beyond the plain
narrative. These methods include such signals as paradox, a few cases of
which we have already had occasion to examine. The Holy Spirit crafts
the text deliberately to contain but also to conceal the divine revelation,
which Origen terms ‘the spiritual meaning’ or ‘the secret meaning’:
Moreover, we should also know that since the chief aim of

the Holy Spirit was to keep the logical order of the
spiritual meaning (ἐν τοῖς πνευµατικοῖς) either in what is
bound to happen or in what has already taken place, if

anywhere He found that what happened according to the
narrative (κατὰ τὴν ἱστορίαν) could be fitted to the spiritual
meaning (τοῖς µυστικοῖς), He composed something woven
out of both kinds in a single verbal account, always hiding

the secret meaning (τὸν νοῦν) from the many more deeply. 96
96 Or., princ. 4.2,9 (Butterworth, 1985, 285 ff.).

In the following passage, Origen continues and varies his theme of

explaining that the Bible contains a secret deeper meaning by putting
forward the view that the Holy Spirit enlightened the ‘prophets and
apostles’ who composed the Scriptures and explicitly states what he
considers the purpose of the hidden meaning within the Scripture to be:
[...] we must point out that the aim of the Spirit who, by
the providence of God through the Word who was ‘in
the beginning with God’, enlightened the servants of the
truth, that is, the prophets and apostles, was pre-
eminently concerned with the unspeakable mysteries
(τὸν ἀπόρρητον µυστήριον) connected with the affairs of men
—and by men I mean at the present souls that make use

of bodies—his purpose being that the man who is
capable of being taught might by ‘searching
out’ (ἠρυνήσας) and devoting himself to the ‘deep things’
in the spiritual meaning of the words (τοῖς βάθεσι τοῦ νοῦ
τῶν λέξεων) become partaker of all the doctrines of the
Spirit’s counsel. 97
The primary concern of the Holy Spirit in determining how the

Scripture is written is ‘the unspeakable mysteries’. This implies that
when the text appears to communicate ordinary, obvious, or frivolous
97 Or., princ. 4.2,7 (Butterworth, 1985, 282, has ‘deep things revealed in the spiritual
meaning of the words’).
things, that appearance is not correct and the commentator should

search for the higher referent, exactly as we saw in the above account of
the larger culture and as we will see in numerous further examples in
this study. In Origen, as we saw in the discussion of Porphyry above,
incidental details are taken as the result of the author’s revelatory
intentions. This is the case when Origen is writing his commentary on
the Song of Songs and explaining a reference to ‘repose at noon’. He
relates the time of day to the state of the mind, with noon representing
the highest level of ability to perceive divine things. In the course of
substantiating this conclusion with the story of Abraham’s vision at the
oak of Mamre, which contains the phrase ‘he was sitting at the door of
his tent at noonday’, Origen explains why such details are important:
As we believe that these things were written by the Holy

Spirit, I take it that it was not for nothing that the Divine
Spirit saw fit to commit to the pages of Scripture even the
time and hour of the vision.98
The divine authorship of the text is not only explicitly stated, but also
related to the special significance even of details about times of day in
the narrative.
For Origen, the purpose of the Holy Spirit is concentrated on the
capable reader and the process in which he engages in order to perceive
98 Or., comm. in cant. 2.4 (R.P. Lawson [ed.], Origen. The Song of Songs. Commentary
and Homilies, ACW 26, New York 1957, 125).
and identify what Origen calls the ‘deep things’. Thus the author of
Scripture does not only act as a visionary or prophet, implanting the
divine truth which he perceives into the text, but he does so with a
specific purpose in mind, namely the spiritual cultivation of the reader.
Although Origen sometimes describes the author of Scripture as himself
divine (the Holy Spirit) rather than as some one experiencing a vision of
divine things (Moses), what is consistent is that each has access to
intelligible realities and each composes the text with a view to revealing
these in an enigmatic manner.
Several examples of this view of the author or writer of Scripture
can also be drawn from Didymus the Blind’s Commentary on Zechariah.
First we may examine a passage in which (re-enacted) vision, writing,
and commentary follow close upon each other so that their relationship
to each other can be seen. Didymus describes the experience of
Zechariah while writing and explains why he chose particular words to
convey his vision:
Having seen with the enlightenment of the eyes of his

heart the vision that came into his ken, he replied to him,
‘I see a lamp stand all of gold’. In saying the lamp stand
was all of gold, he indicates that the lamp stand
completely covered in lights is in the mind (νοερά),
immaterial (ἀσώµατος). We do not find everywhere in
Scripture that spiritual things (τὰ νοητά) are suggested by
gold; so perhaps the lamp stand in the mind (ἡ νοητὴ

λυχνία) is the spiritual house and temple of God, as is
said in the book of Revelation by John, where the one

showing the revelation to the neophyte says, ‘The seven
lamp stands that you saw with the eye of your mind are
the seven churches’. 99
The writer of the book of Zechariah sees a vision ‘with the

enlightenment of the eyes of his heart’. He then expresses this vision in
words (I see a lamp stand all of gold), and Didymus then addresses the
particular words chosen to see what sort of higher truths are indicated,
that is, what the original vision of reality being encoded in the words
may have been.
In another passage from the same commentary, Didymus also
characterises the relationship between the psalmist and God as one
which maintains the Psalmist in the role of a visionary:
In keeping with God’s communication by revelations to

people who discern interiorly, the psalmist says in the
Psalms, ‘Then you spoke in a vision to your sons [Ps 89:19
LXX],’ since God the Word does not speak by ears and
voice to those in possession of the spirit of adoption. As
the true light, you see, he enlightens the mind (τὴν διάνοιαν)
of those he wishes to receive his divine communications,
99 Didym., Zach. 4.1–3 (R.C. Hill [transl.], Didymus the Blind. Commentary on
Zechariah, FaCh 111, Washington 2006, 85).
speaking by visions rather than by hearing; for example,

when God spoke this way also in Isaiah in the verse, ‘A
vision which Isaiah saw’, it was not visible things (ὁρατά)
that followed but words. I mean, what is visible about

the verse, ‘Listen, heaven, and give ear earth, for the
Lord has spoken [...]’100
It is taken as a given that God engages in ‘communication by revelations

to people who discern interiorly’. Didymus further describes this type
of communication as enlightenment of the minds of the persons
concerned and opposes this to the use of language (God the Word does
not speak by ears and voice [...] speaking by visions rather than by
hearing). Didymus then constructs a paradox to describe the visions as
a special type of speaking. Enlightening minds is the way God speaks
instead of ‘by ears and voice’, ‘speaking by visions rather than by
hearing’. In the example given, however, this equivocation between
speaking in visions and speaking in words which would otherwise
break down the categories just constructed can only be resolved if the
words quoted, words from the text explicitly communicating a vision,
are in fact taken as reflective of the type of revelatory communication
with which the passage begins. Thus language which encodes
intelligible visions is located by Didymus outside the category of
ordinary human language. This move not only solves Didymus’
100 Didym., Zach. 4.8–9 (Hill, 2006, 94).

paradox in this passage, but is also key to the functionality of noetic

exegesis as we will see in the following chapter.
Later, Didymus discusses the same question of how the promise
of ‘length of days’ really applies to his hearers, a topic which we will see
again below. After establishing that a surface reading of the text as a
promise that all righteous people will have a long and peaceful life is
implausible, Didymus offers an alternative reading:
Now, the fact that length of days means extended

illumination Moses the revealer (ὁ ἱεροφάντης) of the divine
laws tells the godly person: ‘This is life and length of days
for you, to love the Lord your God with your whole soul
and your whole heart.’ [Deut 30:20,6]. In other words,
since intense love of God is illuminating, it is also
productive of length and quality of days, so that the
person practising it lives a long and fruitful life.
Compared with these days the initial enlightenment
involves brief days, but whoever does not scorn it will
very easily experience further illumination after the initial
stages; at that point they will rejoice ‘with the
indescribable and glorious joy’ which is ‘the fruit of the
holy spirit’. [1Pet 1:8; Gal 5:22]. 101
101 Didym., Zach. 4.10 (Hill, 2006, 96).

Didymus defines the referent of the phrase ‘length of days’ as ‘extended

illumination’ and substantiates his position on the basis of a verse from
Deuteronomy, which he understands as having been spoken by Moses
‘the revealer’. Here the text is assumed to have a revelatory content
mediated by a writer or author in the role of a visionary, and in this
particular case what is revealed is the type of vision which not only the
writer or author but any godly person should strive for. Later, Didymus
defines the purpose of the Mosaic writings in contemplation:
Moses spoke these words so that we might truly know

creation and its creator; and all the other words recorded
in Genesis were spoken, not for us to put them into
action but for us to contemplate (θεωρῶµεν) them, and
this instruction is confirmed in all of Scripture, inspired

as it is by God. The saviour himself in the Gospels, for
example, sometimes gives directions that are to be put
into practice, and sometimes transmits what we should
know and contemplate (θεωρεῖν).102
Moses’ intent as a writer of Scripture was to facilitate the attainment of

true knowledge of ‘creation and its creator’. The reason Didymus
considers it appropriate for ‘all of Scripture’ to be contemplated rather
than put into action is that it is inspired by God (the divine author).
102 Didym., Zach. 8.16–17 (Hill, 2006, 189). This point is made in the context of
Didymus’ explanation of the active and the contemplative life.
Thus once again the revelatory nature of Scripture is linked to the

special divine or visionary status of the author or writer, which in turn
determines the appropriate manner of engagement with Scripture.
In Evagrius, the authorship of Scripture is allocated to the divine
directly, and is conflated with the meaning of Scripture which is to be
extracted by means of noetic exegesis. That is, Scripture, like creation,
both originates with and embodies Christ, who is also frequently
referred to as the divine wisdom and as a perfect νοῦς. Thus Christ’s role
as creator and author is directly related to the possibility of discovering

divine wisdom through contemplation. Christ is treated as a sort of
contemplative or epistemological facilitator, first hiding divine wisdom
in creation and in the Scriptures, at a level which is accessible to the
fallen νοῦς, and then helping the monk, or any individual for that matter,
to get his νοῦς to see the divine wisdom in creation or in the Scriptures.
The created world and the Scriptures are thus treated as having arisen
specifically for pedagogical purposes, to facilitate the journey of return
to perfect union by means of exploiting the link between sensible and
intelligible things in order to train the human mind to perceive
intelligible things. This mechanism is possible because, for Evagrius,
Scripture originates in an act of providence through Christ and depends
on Christ’s position as a perfect νοῦς able to reflect the divine wisdom
into creation and also to reveal the divine wisdom to other creatures
because he is united to both creation and to God. 103 Thus the divine
103 Evagr. Pont., keph. gnost. 3.24 (L. Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings
of Evagrius Ponticus, Oxford 2005).
authorship of Scripture not only arises out of but also guarantees its
revelatory status.
Constructing Revelation: Interpretive Maintenance of the Authority of the Text
The use of special interpretation to adapt the text, especially passages

referring to divine beings, to what was considered appropriate for
divinity, or to derive a non-literal reading from ideas about the most
plausible intentions of the author, or to interpret figurally where the text
appears to advocate immoral behaviour, are all familiar from studies of
Stoic and Neoplatonist interpretation of Homer and other traditional
myths. Heraclitus, for example, composed a book (called Homeric
Problems: Homeric allegories concerning the gods) specifically and explicitly
concerned with demonstrating that Homeric myth is not blasphemous
and with doing so by means of proving that Homer is an allegorist, so
that those passages which on the surface seem to portray the gods
behaving in ways Homer’s later readers considered inappropriate for
the divine can be interpreted in some manner which is appropriate.
Heraclitus’ agenda also indicates his assumptions that the gods are more
moral and dignified than Homer portrays them, and that a traditional
text should be morally valuable to its readers. 104
104 A.A. Long, Stoic Readings of Homer, in R. Lamberton / J.J. Keaney (eds.),
Homer’s Ancient Readers. The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes,
Princeton 1992, 41–66 (45–46).
Commentators engaged in noetic exegesis were quite conscious of

and frank about their conviction that it was necessary to provide certain
passages of the texts with which they were concerned with special
interpretation in order to make them compatible with what they believed
to be appropriate to the nature of the text as divine revelation. The defense
of non-literal readings from the need to construct appropriateness is used
frequently. The goal may be appropriateness to the revelatory nature of
the text, or to the status of the divine or visionary author which follows
from that, or to the application of the text in the cultivation of the
individual mind which in turn follows from both of the above.
Without a belief in the existence of a hidden significance
combined with the respect invested in these texts, readers could have
simply rejected the text as offensive, anomalous or illogical. These
assumptions motivate the reader to treat the literal meaning of these
passages as mere illusions veiling a higher spiritual reality in cases
where the reader does not see anything valuable or coherent in the
literal reading of the text. This is reflected in Pophyry’s interpretation of
The Cave of the Nymphs, where he justifies a figural reading on the basis
of the geographical inaccuracy of the account as it stands and his
perception that the passage contains numerous obscure and paradoxical
elements. 105 The same mechanism can frequently be observed at work
in Origen when he considers the surface meaning nonsensical and
105 Lamberton, On the Cave of the Nymphs (introduction), Barrytown 1993, 11. See J. Pépin,
Porphyre. exégète d’Homère, In Porphyre, EnAC 12, Vandœuvres-Genève 1966, 231–266
(252–256), for a full discussion of ancient passages which take surface-level incoherence
or obscurity as a signal that a non-literal reading is needed.
salvages it through special interpretation used to discover an acceptable

spiritual meaning. For example, Luke 10:4 exhorts us to ‘salute no one
by the way’. This, to Origen, cannot possibly mean what it seems to
mean, as it would be shocking bad manners. When Origen is
confronted with the command to ‘turn the other cheek’ in Matthew 5:39,
he considers, in his laborious respect for literal coherence, how this
would function in practice, and comes to the conclusion that it is absurd:
if one is struck by a right-handed man, the blow will fall on the left
cheek. If one turns the right cheek towards the aggressor, this will only
exasperate him by forcing him to switch hands. 106 Thus Origen
considers it obvious that this command does not really mean what it
appears to mean.
The locus of meaning or the standard of interpretation, the
motivation for the choice to read a given passage noetically, is found in
the interpreter’s view of what is appropriate, more precisely, in what is
considered realistic, sane, and proper in relations between God and man
generally. Origen is willing to reject the plain meaning of an ordinance
from Scripture because it seems inappropriate to him, as he does in his
treatment of sacrificial law in the Homily on Leviticus. The text is
required to make sense and be instructive relative to Origen’s concept of
the divine author of Scripture, and since it does not make sense to
Origen on the surface, a ‘secret meaning’ is pursued:
106 Or., princ. 4.3,1–4 (Butterworth, 1985, 281).

But if there was no secret meaning intended, what could

be the sense of a bought ram being offered as a victim,
and bought at a certain price? [...] So the good sense of
the lawmaker ordains that a man’s sins cannot be
forgiven unless he have a fixed amount of money? 107
Origen clearly does not consider it appropriate for a deity to only

forgive individuals who can afford to sacrifice rams. Since he
presupposes a ‘lawgiver’ who is just and coherent, the text as it stands is
not acceptable, and he reacts to the implications of a literal reading with
rhetorical incredulity. This is a good example of how interpretive
assumptions which exist ‘outside’ the text determine the meaning of the
text, as Origen’s view of the God reflected in the Old Testament as a
good and just being was by no means universal. A Gnostic or atheist
interpreter would have had no grounds at all for providing a ‘secret
meaning’ for such laws, as in their case no such cognitive dissonance
would have arisen as it did for Origen. It is Origen’s assumption that
the God of the Old Testament is just and good and perfect which causes
a problem for him in the surface meaning of this law. A good and just
God would not limit the forgiveness of sins to persons wealthy enough
to pay for a ram, which is what Origen sees the verse as implying on a
surface reading.
107 Or., hom. in lev. 3.8 (quoted and translated in R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event.
A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen’s Interpretation of Scripture,
Richmond 1959, 307).
As we saw in Porphyry’s interpretation of the Cave of the Nymphs

above, anything perceived as anomalous in events recorded in the
surface narrative is also considered clear evidence of a need for noetic
exegesis by Origen, as when he attempts to explain why Jesus could
possibly have needed both an ass and a foal for a very short journey:
Our literal interpreters, however, if there is nothing

worthy of the appearance of the Son of God in the ass
and the foal, may perhaps point to the length of the road
for an explanation. But, in the first place, fifteen stades
are not a great distance and afford no reasonable
explanation of the matter, and, in the second place, they
would have to tell us how two beasts of burden were
needed for so short a journey; ‘He sat,’ it is said, ‘on
them’. And then the words: ‘If any man say aught unto
you, say ye that the Lord hath need of them, and
straightway he will send them.’ It does not appear to be
worthy of the greatness of the Son’s divinity to say that
such a nature as His confessed that it had need of an ass
to be loosed from its bonds and of a foal to come with it;
for everything the Son of God has need of should be
great and worthy of His goodness.108
108 Or., Jo. 10.17.

Origen in this passage systematically addresses possible literal

explanations for the request for both an ass and a foal and rejects them.
For Origen the assumption that the actions described in the text must be
‘worthy of the greatneass of the Son’, along with the logistical
implausibility he finds in the literal text, indicates that a non-literal
interpretation is needed: an actual request to borrow an ass and a foal is
implausible to Origen because it ‘does not appear to be worthy of the
greatness of the Son’s divinity’ and since ‘everything the Son of God has
need of should be great and worthy of His goodness’. This standard,
along with assumptions about what exactly is worthy, requires Origen
to move beyond a literal reading. It should also be noted that this
passage represents a puzzle for Origen which it does not for modern
readers, so that the distinctness of the role of the text in Origen’s cultural
context as opposed to our own becomes apparent. In a modern Western
context, the story from John which Origen is interpreting has authority
for reasons other than any ability to reflect intelligible truths which
Origen requires from it, and in the contexts in which the prelude to the
Easter story is usually read, the cultural preoccupations and concerns
surrounding it are other than the pursuit of contact with intelligible
truth. While a modern pastor or teacher might question whether the
text represents a precise historical account, he or she would never
normally see a paradox or an anomaly in the use of an ass as well as a
foal for a relatively short journey as Origen does. Thus Origen’s
struggle with this sort of detail reflects the way in which the text is still
being digested by the culture and is still in the process of taking on a
more familiar role, as well as the particular concerns with which he

approaches it.
Origen cannot accept any minor superfluity or inaccuracy in the
text as nothing more or less than that. Instead, he insists that such
apparent mistakes or incoherent passages are signals to the astute reader
that special interpretation must be applied to that passage in order to
make sense of it and find its true meaning. A good example of this is
found in Origen’s interpretation of Matthew 21:17, which reads ‘leaving
them he went outside the city’. Origen cannot simply pass by this
phrase, but instead sees its superfluity (how else could Jesus have gone
outside the city except by leaving them?) as indicative of the need for a
special interpretation, characterising what sort of interpretation he
considers necessary thus: ‘it is necessary to extract from what is said
objects worthy of the wisdom of God by which the Gospels have been
written’. 109 Here it is interesting to note that Origen is perfectly prepared
to explain his motive for non-literal interpretation as the need to adapt
the literal content of the text to his ideas about what constitutes an
interpretation ‘worthy of the wisdom of God’. In fact, Origen expresses
incomprehension towards anyone who thinks they can substantiate
belief in a morally worthy, just, and metaphysically coherent God when
reading the Scriptures literally:
109 Or., comm. in Mt. 16.27 (H.J. Vogt [ed.], Origen. Der Kommentar zum Evangelium
nach Mattäus, vol. 2, BGrL 18/30/38, Stuttgart 1983/1990/1993, 208).
But they believe as they do because they are ignorant

how to interpret any passage except literally (nihil audire
ultra litteram norunt). If this is not so, let them show how
it is just, in a literal sense (secundum litteram), for the sins
of the parents to be visited on the heads of the children,
and on the children’s children after them, to the third
and fourth generation. We, however, do not understand
such sayings in a literal sense (non secundum litteram
intelligentur), but as Ezekiel taught when he uttered his
well-known ‘proverb’, we inquire what is the inner
meaning of the proverb (requirimus quid introrsus significet
ipsa parabola). 110
Origen sees the habit of interpreting Scripture literally as the reason for
what he sees as his opponents’ false beliefs, and lists several passages
which he considers morally problematic if taken literally. The Bible is
not only divine revelation for Origen, but it is the revelation of a good
and just God, so it must render meaning that is appropriate to that sort
of divine nature. Again, Origen’s difficulty with the passages he refers
to results from his particular concept of justice and his assumption that
God is just, and is a difficulty that would not arise in a reader willing to
accept moral arbitrariness in the divinity.
The perception of a text as literally senseless or paradoxical is
determined by the reader’s cultural and religious paradigm, as when

the ascetic Didymus is taken aback by the description of wives and

children as a blessing in the book of Job.111 Just as Origen perceives a
contradiction between a just God and a God who takes revenge on the
sons and grandsons of sinners so that he must find an ‘inner meaning’,
so also Didymus must find a deeper meaning to passages which
contradict what he believes the Bible to be teaching. This is most
strikingly apparent in Didymus’ interpretation of the book of Job, whom
Didymus portrays as a contemplative hero, despite all the upset and
cursing and general loss of composure reflected in the surface narrative.
Didymus reconstructs the story of Job so that Job is an example of
contemplative perfection and virtue, since Didymus is simply unable to
believe that an authoritative and revelatory text would include a story of
pointless existential misery. 112 Assumptions about what a traditional
text should contain and the type of ethical and spiritual life it should
portray can thus motivate an interpretation of the text in direct
contradiction to its literal contents.
Didymus’ ideal of a righteous man does not include emotional
outbursts directed at the divinity, so that even when Job directly utters a
111 On the exegetical strategies arising out of this perceived paradox for both
Didymus and other early Christian readers, see E. Clark, Reading Renunciation.
Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity, Princeton 1998.
112 R. Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria. Virtue and
Narrative in Biblical Scholarship, Chicago 2004, 57: “Didymus renders Job’s
experience as that of a saint maintaining undisturbed contemplation of the
divine truths throughout an arduous ordeal, an achievement he views as the
perfect expression of the most ancient of virtues: courage. (JobT 91.29–92.7;
254.34–255.13; 262.26–263.28) By means of this depiction, Didymus integrates Job
into the economy of salvation and proffers for subsequent ascetics a species of
heroic virtue that corresponds to the state of the perfect Christian, the ‘gnostic’.”
curse, Didymus explains that, since cursing the day of one’s birth is
obviously not appropriate for a wise man, one must necessarily interpret
the text noetically, ‘so that it renders a reasonable sense which is fitting to
the saint.’113 What we today read as Job’s expression of despair is for
Didymus a sign of the greatness of Job’s soul and an expression of the
intensity of his contemplation of the virtues.114 When Job wishes he had
never been born, Didymus sees this as Job asking for clarity about the
judgments of God for the enlightenment of his hearers, although he, as a
saint, already knows them.115 After struggling with this passage for some
time, Didymus presents the following interpretation:
So he says: the cause, which resulted in entry into life,

may be cursed and cease to exist. Then he uses the term
‘night’, since birth often takes place in the night. ‘May
that night be dark’, so that the meaning is: ‘No longer on
the path, but in the dark may they be prevented from
finding the way for evil to arise’, just as one might say of
those who came to harm because of a disorderly way of
life: ‘May the concerns of those, who live in a disorderly
manner, come to no good end’. ‘And may the Lord not
find them from above’. It was seemly for the saint to
113 Didym., Job 3.3–5 (A. Henrichs [ed.], Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zu Hiob I.
Kap. 1–4. PTA 1. Bonn 1968, 171–173).
114 Didym., Job 9.27 (A. Henrichs [ed., and trans.], Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar
zu Hiob III. Kap. 7–12. PTA 2. Bonn 1968, 93).
115 Didym. Job 3.10–11 (Henrichs, Didymos I, 1968, 203–205).

pray that beings who possess reason strive for virtue and
do not return to a bad state—for that state would no
longer be the same—as those believe who ascribe to the
idea of reincarnation.
‘Nor may light come upon it’. May striving
towards the bad be prevented, in that those who do so
remain without light, so that according to the word from
Scripture ‘the light of the godless will be put out’. ‘Death
is surrounded by dark and shadows’, so that those, who
are oriented to darkness and evil, will be thwarted and
the shadows will so hinder them in their striving
towards evil that they come to the realisation that their
endeavor brings only death [...]. ‘May darkness come
upon it, cursed be that day and that night, may darkness
carry them away’. These words must not be considered
curses, but pleas that evil find an end. For according to
what is set out above, it is desirable that the cause of the fall
and its path remain unknown, so that ‘man comes to no
good end in evil’. For striving after virtue makes the path to
evil unclear, and virtue, when it gains strength, causes
complete forgetting of the effects of evil. That is what the
expression means ‘may darkness carry it away’. 116
116 Didym., Job 3.7–9 (Henrichs, Didymos I, 1968, 183–187).

In thus finding and explicating an interpretation which is ‘seemly’ for a

saint, Didymus has salvaged the status he has attributed to Job and
resolved the dissonance between what he expects the text to reveal and
what the surface narrative seems to refer to. In the case of Job’s cursing
of the day he was born, we see an example of how vigorous interpretive
assumptions can be, in changing ‘I curse the day I was born’ into ‘I wish
people would strive after virtue and that evil would come to an end’.
So it is Didymus’ own ideas about how a traditional text must
teach us virtue, and about what virtue is, which motivates him to
produce an interpretation which directly contradicts what a modern
reader takes to be the literal meaning of passages in Job which conflict
with these assumptions. Didymus is quite frank about his priorities and
conscious of his motives:
If those who love the bare narrative (οἱ φιλίστορες) cling to
the literal meaning, they will undo the courage of the saint
—which the devil was unable to loosen—by supposing
him to have such great ὀλιγωρίαν. Neither would the devil
be brought to shame by encountering his courage, nor

would the Lord say to him, ‘Do you think I would have
treated you for any other reason than that your
righteousness might appear?’ [Job 40:8]. Since the literal
meaning does not yield a sense rational and suitable to
the holy man, it is necessary to interpret according to the

rules of allegory.117
Didymus states explicitly that the need to ‘interpret according to the

rules of allegory’ arises from the fact that the text does not otherwise
‘yield a sense rational and suitable to the holy man’. He also sees a literal
reading of this text as so invidious as to do what even the Devil failed to
do, to ‘undo the courage of the saint’, by interpreting Job’s character as
anything less than a pillar of contemplative virtue. Job’s angry protests
and enraged and frustrated speeches simply do not fit with Didymus’
view of the overall purpose and meaning of the text: a traditional text, as
divine revelation, must give us good examples of worthy and just men,
particularly—for Didymus—of restrained and self-controlled ascetics.
Therefore whatever Job says or does is read by Didymus as reflecting his
status as a saint and thus demonstrating his concern with the
contemplation of virtue and a lack of emotional response to the
misfortunes besetting him:
After he, this holy man (ὁ ἄγιος), gave a complete report in
this manner, that in it he gives instruction (διδασκαλία) about
the counsels of God and about divine secrets (µυστηρίων
θείων), as we have explained to the best of our ability, it is
117 An in-depth discussion of Didymus’ reading of Job is available in R.A. Layton,

Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria. Virtue and Narrative in
Biblical Scholarship. Chicago 2004, 71. This quote is Layton’s translation of JobT
55:33–56:15.
clear that he is not moved in his passions by what has

happened to him, but that in the midst of suffering has
maintained the desire for divine contemplation (θείας θεωρίας)
and heavenly longing (ἔρωτα οὐράνιον). 118
Didymus’ Job is not a despairing Semitic gentleman unburdening his

heart to his friends, but a contemplative saint whose discourse is
‘instruction about the counsels of God and about the divine secrets’. His
moral fortitude allows him thus to teach those who have gathered
around him because ‘he is not moved in his passions by what has
happened to him’ but instead ‘has maintained the desire for divine
contemplation and heavenly longing’. In this way, Job becomes a heroic
example to the ascetic circle to whom Didymus delivered his
commentaries, a holy man who maintained an iron focus on
contemplation in the face of physical pain and the loss of his family, just
as contemporary ascetics strove to do.
In Evagrius, the construction of meaning which is worthy of the
revelatory status of the text is closely related to the assumption that the
text contains a higher intelligible referent which will be discussed in the
following chapter, and is less concerned with resolving perceived
paradoxes or obscurities on the surface of the text. This may be a result
of the slight difference in genre in the exegetical works of Evagrius as
opposed to those of Didymus and Origen: Evagrius does not write fully
118 Didym., Job 3.26 (Henrichs, Didymos I, 1968, 259).

elaborated commentaries, so that his interpretations are delivered in

brief glosses on each verse of the text without further explanation.
Where Didymus spends five pages on one phrase, Evagrius delivers
compact interpretations, usually in one to four sentences. Also,
Evagrius’ specialisation in the teaching of contemplation removes his
attention from the sort of grammatical and logical puzzles which Origen
and Didymus frequently interpret with a view to resolving them in
some way which renders an appropriate meaning to the passage
concerned. Still, an adjustment of the meaning of the text to what
Evagrius perceives as worthy of God is evident even in the first few
verses of his Scholia on Proverbs. The passage he interprets first is, to a
modern reader, simply the title of the book: ‘The proverbs of Solomon,
son of David, who was king of Israel.’ Evagrius’ interpretation begins
with a definition of the term ‘proverb’: ‘A proverb is a sentence which
designates intelligible realities by means of sensible realities (δι᾽ αἰσθητων
πραγµάτων σηµαίνων πράγµατα νοητά).’ 119 On this definition, the book is
positioned squarely in the revelatory category we have just explicated,

and as a result reflects intelligible realities worthy of its divine or
inspired author, rather than being a practical handbook of advice for an
ancient Near Eastern prince. When it comes to Proverbs 20:23 ‘Double
weights are an abomination to the Lord, and a false scale is not good
before him’, it is far from Evagrius’ mind to read this as referring to
actual physical weights and measures, information which to him is not a
119 Evagr. Pont., schol. in pr. 1.1 (P. Géhin [ed.], Scholies aux Proverbes. Introduction,
texte critique, traduction, notes, appendices et index, SC 340, Paris 1987, 92).
valuable revelation worthy or appropriate to the revelatory status of the

text. Instead, he glosses this verse as follows: ‘He calls ‘a false scale’ the
intellect (νοῦς) which, although it is able to rightly perceive reality (τὰ
πράγµατα), is pulled down by the weight of its free will.’ Thus the text
refers to the primordial state of noetic union of all minds, to Evagrius a

more appropriate referent than fair business practices.
The repeated use of special interpretation in an, often explicit,
attempt to adjust the traditional text to make it morally and religiously
appropriate according to the standards and assumptions of the
interpreter must remind us that when the Bible, Homer, and Plato were
read, they were often treated as foreign, separate texts which had to be
made sense of. While today we receive interpretations of the Bible
which are the product of the centuries-long process of adjustment and
sense-making and therefore fail to realise the degree to which, for
exactly those exegetes whose work has digested the Bible into Christian
tradition, these texts were indeed strange or ‘other’.
Perceiving the Moral and Spiritual Referent
A very large portion of interpretations produced by noetic exegesis

consist in finding and expounding what the commentators considered
spiritual and moral truths. The need to find a significance in the text
which the readers and hearers considered of particular value is a logical
result of the belief that the text being expounded was a medium of
divine revelation and the assumption that the sort of thing the divine
reveals is useful in the moral and spiritual improvement of the
individual. Once again, this same idea can be observed in the larger
cultural context as well as in our sample interpreters.
Hermeias finds a higher spiritual meaning in what we would
consider incidental details, for example in the account of the setting of
the dialogue of the Phaidros.120 His interpretations are driven by his
belief that the entire dialogue has as its true σκοπός the task of revealing
the nature of Beauty. Thus, when Socrates says that he is going for a
walk outside the walls of the city, Hermeias takes this to indicate that
Socrates is dedicated to a higher and better form of life, separate from
the masses, and that Socrates is a role model for the way of life
concerned with knowledge of spiritual beauty. Another example can be
taken from Olympiodorus, who treats the passage in the Phaedo which
describes how Socrates rejects the instructions of the executioner not to
talk after drinking the hemlock. Olympiodorus does not think that the
120 Herm., in Phdr. 1.1–20 (H. Bernard [ed.], Hermeias of Alexandria. Kommentar zu

text is written to record the historical event of the individual called

Socrates receiving and disregarding certain instructions on a given day.
Instead, this is what he considers the text to mean:
Here Socrates represents the intellective and purificatory

way of life, Crito the secondary life that depends on it, the
man who prepares the poison the destructive cause
which has the immediate control of matter and is also in
charge of privation. This is why the man who makes the
poison does not address Socrates directly, to intimate that
there is not immediate contact between the lowest and
the highest orders of existence.121
Here the text has been expected to reveal deeper truths about the
metaphysical structure of reality, and, in response to this expectation
and the application of special interpretation, has done so. Olympiodorus
is thus able to find in it guidance for the philosophical student seeking
to emulate the very ‘intellective and purificatory way of life’ which
Socrates is understood to represent. Olympiodorus is also quick to re-
interpret Socratic irony as something less frivolous or flippant than it
might appear on the surface, finding a more serious moral meaning in
Gorgias 489 d 7–8, which is even, in the text of the dialogue, directly
followed by the comment on the part of Callicles ‘You’re being ironic,
121 Olymp., comm. in Phd. 2.8 (L.G. Westerink, Olympiodorus, The Greek
Commentaries on Plato’s ‘Phaedo’ 1, Amsterdam 1976, 64).
Socrates.’ When Socrates says, at the end of his tongue-in-cheek address

to his interlocuter:
Tell me once more from the beginning, what do you

mean by the better, seeing that it’s not the stronger? And,
my wonderful man, go easier on me in your teaching, so
that I won’t quit your school.
Olympiodorus still finds a moral lesson in the phrase, and concludes:

‘He may be speaking ironically, but at least he is making an honest point.
For he is teaching him not to be rough but mild.’122
Among the sample commentators, the assumption that the text,
due to its revelatory status, should provide moral and spiritual instruction
is also abundantly manifested. When Origen reads Matthew’s account of
the miracle of the coin found in the fish’s mouth, he sees in it not a
clever miracle performed for the convenience of Jesus and his disciple,
but an allegory for the reform of an avaricious soul:
You could apply this story to an avaricious person who

has nothing else in his mouth but talk about money,
when you see that he is healed by Peter who took the coin
not only out of his mouth and out of his conversations
but also out of his whole frame of mind which is the
122 Olymp., comm. in Grg. 28.5 (R. Jackson / K. Lycos / H. Tarrand [eds., and

transls.], Olympiodorus. Commentary on Plato’s ‘Gorgias’, PhAnt 78,
Leiden 1998, 201).
symbol of all his appetite for money. You will surely say
that such a person found himself in the sea and in the
salty business of life and in the waves of thoughts and
worries revolving around money and had the coin in his
mouth, as long as he was unbelieving and avaricious, but
he rose up out of the sea when he was caught by the hook
of reason and experienced this great favor (through some
Peter who taught him the truth) so that he no longer has
the coin in his mouth, but instead words which bear the
image of God.123
This is a rare case of true allegory, in which the fish stands for an
avaricious person, the coin for money, the position of the coin in the
mouth for a fixation on money in the conversation and mentality and
appetites of the avaricious person, the sea for the tumultuous life
resulting from dependence on business concerns and lack of belief, the
fishing hook for reason, and the removal of the coin by Peter as the
replacement of ‘words which bear the image of God’ for avarice. What
is of note, however, is the fact that Origen looks for a moral referent even
in a miracle story, and does not show much interest in the miracle as
such. He is more concerned with the victory of reason and virtue over
irrational sins like avarice. Origen does not explicitly express
reservations about the surface referent, but the fact that he provides a
special interpretation indicates his assumptions: the divine is not
123 Or., comm. in Mt. 13.12 (Vogt, Origen 2, 1990, 256).

concerned with saving himself trouble when it is time to pay taxes, but
with the moral reform of individuals.
Origen even finds moral lessons in minor details of the Gospel
narrative, just as details which he considered to result in a paradox were
seen as a signal that special interpretation was needed:
Note this, too, that Mary being the greater comes to

Elisabeth, who is the less, and the Son of God comes to
the Baptist; which should encourage us to render help
without delay to those who are in a lower position, and to
cultivate for ourselves a moderate station. 124
Had he been operating according to other interpretive assumptions,

Origen could easily have explained this detail as a bit of realism or a
mere coincidence in what was preserved in the textual tradition about
which of the women concerned happened to be travelling.
Examples of moral interpretations from Didymus are very
numerous, so that here I will focus on commentary which interprets
concrete objects referred to in the text as instructive of the moral or
spiritual life. Didymus’ belief that the text conveys revelation of spiritual
things makes him confident that the text does not really refer to crowns,
days, the end of a journey, or houses. Instead, he reads the text in such a
way that it reveals divine truth about the nature and value of the life of
virtue. When Didymus the Blind reads Psalm 20:4, ‘You welcomed him
124 Or., Jo. 6.30.

with rich blessings and placed a crown of pure gold on his head’, he
draws the conclusion that the precious stones must either represent ‘the
virtues or those who have achieved the virtues’, if his identification of
the passage as referring to the incarnate Christ holds.
If this is said of the human form of the Lord, then this is

the crown, which is to be set upon his head, made of
precious stones, that is either of the virtues or of those who
possess them. In the strands of this crown there are those
stones which, along with gold and silver, are built onto the
foundation which is Christ. It is clear that neither gold nor
silver nor the stones may be taken literally.125
The commentator’s belief that it is obvious that a non-literal reading is

necessary and its expression without argument appears here once
again. For Didymus, it is not plausible to hold that divine revelation
would concern itself with actual gold, silver, or stones. Further on in the
same passage he surveys virtuous characters in biblical history so that
the text becomes a pretext for discoursing to his students on the value of
attaining various virtues.
Just as the prince of Tyros, as he lived a good life, was

moved onto the Holy Mountain of God with the
125 Didym., ps. 20.4 (L. Doutreleau / A. Gesché / M. Gronewald [eds.], Didymos der
Blinde. Psalmenkommentar I zu Ps 20–21. PTA 7, Bonn 1969, 43–44).
Cherubim, as he was a picture of perfection and a crown

of beauty, was not decorated with ordinary stones—with
such stones one is crowned [Ezek 28:12–14]. Joseph for
example struggled for chastity. Chastity is a precious
stone. These crowned him and Susanna and the
martyrs. And since the virtues are connected to each
other in a series and he who has one thus has all of them,
the woven crown does not consist of one stone only. 126
Didymus allows that the passage might refer not to Christ incarnate, but
to any king, and thus offers alternative interpretations. On that basis
saints in general are praised as being kings who deserve crowns.
Didymus then specifies that the stones contained in the crowns are the
virtues in which each saint excelled, such as chastity for Joseph and
Susanna. The weaving of the crown serves Didymus to explain that the
virtues are all interconnected, so that achieving one of them is equivalent
to achieving all of them. Thus Didymus is not actually commenting on
the passage before him, but on the moral and spiritual life which he is
encouraging his hearers to pursue by praising those who have excelled
in that way of life.
Again when Psalm 20:5 speaks of ‘length of days for all eternity’
Didymus discovers a reference to the virtues in the midst of a digression
on various reasons for wanting a long life and how the term ‘day’
should be understood:
126 Didym., ps. 20.4 (Doutreleau /Gesché /Gronewald, 1969, 44–45).

A praiseworthy day is also each individual practical

virtue which is achieved. Since, just like the knowledge
which here is only partial is followed by a perfect and all-
embracing knowledge, so also in the area of practical
virtue those who are later proved just in the practical
virtues, will be virtuous in a different manner, because
they possess righteousness both now and in future.
Question: what comes after all the days
mentioned here?—Each individual dogma which
enlightens the soul and is shined upon by the sun of
justice, we have called a day. After these progressive
illuminations there is a certain perfect state of light. That
day will never be interrupted by night, there is no longer
a multiplicity of days.
One can also take it thus: since the virtues are
connected to each other, since all are full of light, a single
length of days arises out of their following upon each
other without interruption.127
The interpretation reached carries on the instruction about virtue which

Didymus pursued in his commentary on the previous verse from this
Psalm. A student follows up with a question looking for explanation of
the analogy Didymus has constructed: if days are the virtues and if
127 Didym., ps. 20.5 (Doutreleau /Gesché /Gronewald, 1969, 51–55).

having them leads one to ‘possess righteousness both now and in the
future’, how is this future to be characterised? What comes after the
days/virtues? Didymus answers by eliding his analogy of days to
virtues with the mention of ‘perfect and all embracing knowledge’
which he had just made. He first provides the alternative analogy of
days to each individual dogma which enlightens the soul and proceeds
to use it as a basis on which to describe the state of perfect knowledge.
The multiplicity or series of days is thus equivalent to intermittent
partial enlightenment, followed by ‘a certain perfect state of light’
equivalent to complete and constant enlightenment. Didymus then
returns to his original analogy for days, namely virtues, and adds the
alternative interpretation that the transition from a series of individual
days to one single uninterrupted day is equivalent to the transition from
separate individual virtues to ‘their following upon each other without
interruption’. Here again Didymus is less concerned about finding a single
definitive interpretation for the passage under examination as he is with
explaining the goals and content of the moral and spiritual life on the basis
of elements from the text which he uses as illustrations and analogies.
Several examples of interpretation towards the moral and
spiritual can also be taken from Evagrius’ Commentary on the Psalms.
Evagrius interprets the attack made by ‘sinners’ upon the ‘upright of
heart’ in terms of the spiritual struggle of the soul:
‘For behold the sinners have bent their bow, they have
prepared their arrows for the quiver, to shoot in the
moonless night the upright of heart’. Bow is the impure

intellect (ἀκάθαρτος νοῦς). Arrow is the impassioned
thought (ἐµπαθὴς λογισµός). Quiver is the worst habit,
filled with impure thoughts. Moonless night is the soul’s

ignorance (ἄγνοια ψυχῆς). 128
Here Evagrius gives a deeper meaning to each of three terms in the

passage he is interpreting. Bow, arrow, and quiver, however, are treated
as an analogy with the impure intellect, impassioned thoughts, and ‘the
worst habit’, all of which relate to each other similarly to an archer’s
equipment (the worst habit is filled with impure thoughts as the quiver
is filled with arrows). Evagrius includes an interpretation for ‘moonless
night’ as well, but in all of this has hardly generated an allegorical
interpretation of the passage in question, having provided no gloss on
‘sinners’, their actions, or ‘the upright of heart’. What he has done is to
use the text as a pretext for instruction about mental and moral dangers
relevant to his audience and to his concerns as a spiritual teacher. This is
what the text reveals, and not the experience or expressions of the
Psalmist as a historical event. The interpretation of Psalm 3:7 also
concentrates on the moral and spiritual struggles of the monk:
‘Arise, O Lord, deliver me, my God; for you have struck

all who were in vain my enemies; you have broken the
128 Evagr. Pont., schol. in ps. 11.3,1–3 (Dysinger, 2005).

teeth of sinners’. The teeth of sinners are irrational

tempting thoughts occuring to us contrary to nature;
making use of these many teeth the enemies draw near to
us in order to eat our flesh [Ps 26:2] that is, those things
that sprout forth from the flesh: ‘For the works of the flesh
are manifest’, [Gal 5:19] as the divine apostle says.129
In a similar style as we observed above, Evagrius selects one element

from the passage being examined and uses it as the basis of moral and
spiritual instruction. Questions of deliverance and divine retribution are
left to one side, while Evagrius identifies ‘the teeth of sinners’ as
‘tempting thoughts’ and constructs, on that basis, an analogy between
teeth, biting, and flesh, on the one hand, and irrational thoughts,
enemies (presumably demons, given the evagrian preoccupation with
demons attacking monks with temptation), and ‘those things that sprout
forth from the flesh’, on the other. Thus what is actually being
interpreted is not the passage from the Psalms. Rather, the analogy
constructed in the composition of the commentary serves to interpret
and explain the spiritual life. One way in which it is instructive is the
need to resolve the surface inconsistency of the analogy presented. Why
is the biting the work of an enemy if what he is attacking is ‘the works of
the flesh’? This only makes sense if Evagrius sees the works of the flesh
not as something the enemy is biting off and which should be bitten off
(removed from the life of the monk), but rather as a sort of growth upon
129 Ibid.
the body of the monk which invites attacks from the enemy: those
things which sprout from the flesh provide something for demons to
bite into and thus make the monk prone to attack. The lesson is then
clear: the monk must discipline the flesh to protect himself from
‘irrational tempting thoughts’.
Again, in his Scholia on Ecclesiastes, Evagrius reads the text as
conveying divine truth about the life of virtue:
4.5 ‘The senseless man crosses his arms and devours his
own flesh.’
26. If the arms are the symbol of ascetic work, everyone
who does not work righteousness folds his arms—and
that, he says, is why such a person devours his own flesh,
filling himself with the sins that spring from the flesh.130
Based on what we know about Evagrius’ beliefs about the relationship

between ascetic discipline and the flesh from the verse just examined,
we can see the same lesson being presented in another way in
connection with a different verse: failing to use one’s ‘arms’
constructively (to engage in ascetic work) is the same as devouring one’s
own flesh (filling oneself with the ‘sins that spring from the flesh’. Such
an interpretation indicates that the text is believed not to primarily be
about the personal struggles of a historical figure or about conflicts
130 Evagr. Pont., schol. in eccl. 4.5. The above quote is Augustine Casiday’s
translation from A.M. Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus, New York 2006, 137.
experienced by King David. Scripture is interpreted to reveal universal

moral truths and to elucidate the spiritual life, understood in this context
as the path of ascetic discipline.
This particular interpretive assumption is supported by so many
others that it is no surprise when one finds interpretations of this type
occurring with great frequency. As Chapter Three shows, noetic
exegetes also expected the higher meaning of the text to refer to
something in the intelligible realm, a requirement which is fulfilled by
spiritual and moral teachings. Further, as Chapter Four demonstrates,
the best tool for performing noetic exegesis was the νοῦς, a part of the
person which required a high level of moral and spiritual development

in order to function properly, further motivating the type of
interpretation we are about to examine. Similarly, the commentator
himself, or the expert noetic exegete, was cast in the role of the
philosopher, holy man, or spiritual guide, so that his commentary was
also part of exercising and demonstrating his authority and achievement
in the moral and spiritual life. The social contextualisation of noetic
exegesis within higher philosophical education and spiritual formation
as investigated in Chapter Five also puts momentum behind
interpretations aimed at the moral and spiritual inasmuch as the
curriculum, of which commentary was a part, was concerned with the
overall ordering of the moral and spiritual life of the student. Thus the
prevalence of interpretations which depart from the literal sense to
discover some moral or spiritual teaching in a given passage is easily
explained by the particular interpretive assumptions motivating and

constraining noetic exegesis as well as its social context.
Conclusions
In summary, the evidence of the commentaries indicates that non-literal

interpretation of the Bible in these commentators does not arise
arbitrarily, but is motivated by specific interpretive assumptions which
determine the type of interpretations which can be reached by noetic
exegesis. The first cluster of interpretive assumptions we have now
identified centres around the belief that the Bible, like other traditional
texts, contains divine revelation which could provide moral and
spiritual guidance, even where the surface meaning appears frivolous,
banal or irrelevant. That cultural license for noetic exegesis is dependent
upon the status of the text as a medium of divine wisdom is shown by
controversies between pagan and Christian authors about the legitimacy
of applying this type of exegesis to their respective texts. The ability of
the text to convey higher spiritual truths beyond the simpler, more
everyday surface is a result of the access to the divine enjoyed by its
authors and writers, whether themselves divine (as in Origen’s Holy
Spirit or Evagrius’ Christ) or enjoying a view of ultimate reality while
composing the text as with the biblical authors, Homer or Plato. The
beliefs of the commentators examined here about how divine wisdom
got into the text are the logical basis not only for the type of
interpretations found to produce a meaning appropriate to divine

revelation, but also for beliefs about the task of the reader, or how the
reader is supposed to get the divine wisdom out of the text, which we
will turn to again in Chapter Four.
There is widespread recognition among contemporary scholars of
the usefulness of allegorical interpretation as a means of making one
system of thought fit onto another system of thought. That is,
allegorisation is perceived as an effective, if illegitimate, tool for
allowing the system of thought in a given commentator’s mind to be
imposed upon the system of thought represented by the text he or she is
reading. In the case of interpretation of Homeric myth in late antiquity,
for example, allegorisation is understood as a means of resolving the
cognitive dissonance experienced by commentators who believed that
the divine was good and just when faced with texts whose narratives
seemed immoral, ridiculous, or insubstantial, but which were also
solidly anchored in a position of traditional authority and respect. In the
case of patristic interpretation of the Bible, allegorisation is understood
as a means of imposing non-Christian ‘philosophy’ upon the text of
Scripture. In the above discusson, I have been concerned to revise this
view in its application to patristic exegesis on the basis of the evidence
that the discrepancy between what we see as the original meaning of the
text in its historical setting and the meaning it was given by Origen,
Evagrius, or Didymus did not arise out of these exegetes’ agenda of
forcing their ‘Neoplatonist’ worldview onto the Jewish Scriptures, but
rather because of the discrepancy between what modern scholars
consider the ‘nature’ or genre of the text in its original setting or the
purpose for which the text may originally have been written, and its
perceived nature and the purposes the commentators believed it to be
intended to serve. The text of Scripture means something different to
these exegetes because of what they believe that text to be, namely, a
vessel of divine revelation about higher spiritual truths which, if
properly engaged with by the reader or commentator, could aid in the
cultivation of the mind and soul. Since it is clear that a great many
cultures or sub-cultures regard the text of the Bible as some manner of
divine revelation which should lead to the moral and spiritual
development of the reader, the rest of this study is to a great extent
concerned with moving on from specifying what revelation means
within the cultural context of noetic exegesis, as we have just done, to
setting out what was understood, within this context, as moral or
spiritual development, and where and how the reading and study of
texts believed to have a revelatory status was performed.
3
WHY:
UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS WAS NOETIC EXEGESIS
CONSIDERED NECESSARY?
Introduction
To some degree each of the chapters of this study concerns itself with the
question ‘Why was noetic exegesis practiced?’. This is not least because
investigating the motivations and aims of our sample exegetes is
naturally the focus of a study of their interpretive assumptions and of a
thick description approach. In the present chapter we are not yet
concerned with answering this question in terms of the social
application of noetic exegesis or the larger cultural aims it was believed
to be able to facilitate, but first with moving on directly from Chapter
Two’s most general assumptions about the nature of the text to similarly
broad quasi-philosophical beliefs which, for the exegetes concerned,
provided a framework within which noetic exegesis, given the
interpretive assumptions on the nature of the text just collected and
those on the means and social location of noetic exegesis we are to
examine in Chapter Four and Chapter Five, was necessary. In speaking
of necessity, I am referring to a perceived need for noetic exegesis above
and beyond the mere grammatical comprehension of the textual
narrative in order to achieve the aims to which the reading of the text in
a specific pedagogical context was oriented, and not of any historically

compelling circumstances which caused noetic exegesis to arise or
caused it to be preferred to any (purportedly) literal manner of reading.
Thus while noetic exegesis was believed to be a necessary way of
reading in certain social contexts where certain assumptions were made
and certain goals were being pursued, it was by no means considered
the only legitimate way of reading biblical texts, or authoritative texts of
any kind, in late antiquity, nor was it practiced universally or
exclusively, nor was it universally approved of. It was simply perceived
as necessary and useful to certain social groups with certain
assumptions and aims.
There are two elements among the assumptions driving noetic
exegesis which explain the perceived necessity of endeavouring to
comprehend a higher meaning in the text. These are, firstly, the
metaphysical state of affairs which was assumed to be the case and,
secondly, doubts about the possibility of communicating true
knowledge in ordinary human language or by means of concepts and
propositional thought. The first assumption to be examined in this
chapter involves the view that the world consists of the visible and
material but essentially unreal, temporal, illusory, phenomena (τὸν
αἰσθητόν), on the one hand, and an invisible, immaterial, higher, eternal
and truly real reality (τὸν νοητόν), on the other. In noetic exegesis, this
idea is applied in the form of an arrangement of the text and its meaning
across these categories. Thus the ordinary everyday historical referent
of the biblical narrative is mapped onto the category sensible and
corresponds to the realm of becoming. Its higher, non-literal referent is

mapped onto the category intelligible and is considered in or at least
nearer the realm of true being (such that it is capable of rendering
spiritual and divine truths, i. e., revelation, as discussed in Chapter
Two). Along with this comes the belief in the providential provision of a
coherent and dependable relationship between the two categories, such
that one can proceed from knowledge of the visible to knowledge of the
invisible realm by means of this constantly referenced and persistently
implemented connection between the visible and invisible.
The second branch of this cluster of interpretive assumptions is
highly complex and ambivalent, but serves to link reservations about the
adequacy of ordinary language and mental concepts for expressing
perfect knowledge or higher truths to the need for noetic exegesis.
Accordingly, noetic exegesis is understood as a way of reading that could
circumvent the limitations of the embodied mind and enscripted
revelation. The reader who is confronted with the language of
traditional texts and at the same time believes the language he is reading
to reveal perfect knowledge or higher spiritual truths must have some
means of moving beyond the ordinary comprehension of words if he is
to access the higher content of the text. Along with this comes the
assumption that it is indeed possible and desirable to think without
using language, propositions, or concepts and that this type of thought is
superior to thought which is expressed in ordinary language or divided
out into individual propositions.
These two concepts have not received particular attention in

previous research related to Alexandrian exegesis or Christian
allegorical exegesis. In the case of the first idea, what I am here
describing as the presumed metaphysical state of affairs, this may be
because it is usually evaluated as a regrettable philosophical,
Neoplatonist, or non-Christian remnant present in the thought of early
Christian exegetes, often portrayed as compromising the exegetical
work of the commentator in question. 131 The appearance of this idea in
Christian exegetical works is also sometimes used as a basis on which to
characterise commentators as synthesising two systems of thought, the
philosophical and the Christian, as if they were sitting on neutral
ground between the two and puzzling them together. This model of
commentator-as-synthesizer is sometimes treated as a concession, or
even a conscious missionising manuever on the part of the
commentator, 132 needed in order to make the Bible comprehensible and
acceptable to non-Christians, and sometimes as a failure on the part of
the commentator, who is portrayed as having allowed himself to be
‘influenced’ by the larger culture. Here the synthesising project is more
an attempt to resolve the cognitive dissonance arising out of the
juxtaposition of his philosophical leanings and the presumed Christian
content of the text he is interpreting. Let it suffice to say here that this
131 This view can be observed in R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event. A Study of the
Sources and Significance of Origen’s Interpretation of Scripture, Richmond 1959.
132 A characterisation of the relationship between philosophical tradition and

Christianity as one of providential or at least non-corrupting synthesis can be
seen in the work of Henry Chadwick, as in H. Chadwick, Early Christian
Thought and the Classical Tradition, Oxford 1966.
model is highly problematic and is not being applied in the present

study. The details of the problems involved in an influence model of
religious interaction and a comparison with the present approach are
provided in the concluding chapter. On a thick description approach to
exegesis, what matters is not where commentators got particular ideas,
and certainly not whether they should or should not have been
applying those ideas to exegesis of the Bible, but rather which ideas
were in fact functioning as interpretive assumptions and how exactly
they functioned.
In the case of the second cluster of ideas, namely those centred
around reservations about whether ordinary types of language and
thought are able to facilitate true knowledge, some interest has been
shown in the way Origen, for example, treats the language of Scripture
as inherently ambiguous, and textual scholars have become interested in
the overall question of early Christian readings of the Bible and specific
interpreter’s beliefs about language.133 Early Christian thinkers
involved in noetic exegesis have a very high tolerance for ambiguity in
language and for the inconclusiveness and subjectivity of interpretation
which has proved more attractive to post-modern scholars than it was to
their modernist counterparts. Despite this readiness to accept the
cultural peculiarities of noetic interpreters evidenced by more recent
scholarship on this second point regarding their attitudes toward
language, its relevance as a motivation for non-literal readings has not
133 See for example P.C. Miller, Poetic Words, Abysmal Words. Reflections on Origen’s
Hermeneutics, in Ch. Kannengiesser / W.L. Petersen (eds.), Origen of Alexandria.
His World and Legacy, Notre Dame 1988, 165–178.
yet been fully articulated. Thus this chapter is not engaged in tracing
the presence of these ideas in the commentaries under examination here,
but rather with establishing their particular role as key interpretive
assumptions in noetic exegesis.
The Intelligible and the Sensible: Metaphysical Categories and Multiple Referents
The sensible universe, that which can be seen and touched and
perceived through the bodily senses, was commonly understood by
Origen’s contemporaries, as well as by fourth-century intellectuals, to
represent a less real and derivative level of reality. It was seen as an
illusory screen covering over the intelligible world, that which is eternal,
unchanging, perceived with the mind rather than the body. The fact that
a large portion of intellectuals in the period we are examining generally
assumed a metaphysical state of affairs constructed from the
phenomenal vs. the noumenal or the sensible vs. the intelligible is
neither novel nor disputed, and indeed this construction of reality goes
back at least as far as Plato. What has not yet been satisfactorily
explained is how and why this presumed metaphysical state of affairs
played a role in noetic exegesis. In the larger cultural context, as well as
among our sample commentators, we can observe this view closely
interacting with beliefs about the nature of the text as a divine revelation
conveyed to the reader through the work of a visionary writer or divine
author just examined in Chapter Two. Where there is also a belief in a
higher intelligible reality, it is logical to identify the revelatory content of

the text, or its deeper meaning, with the intelligible realm, while
mapping the ordinary literal or historical referent onto the category of
sensible things. As a result, there is a perceived link between the
revelatory capacity of the text and that of the physical world, which we
will also observe in our sample exegetes. Both the text and the world
observable by the senses are taken as inherently ambiguous and as both
concealing and revealing higher intelligible and eternal truths, despite
their own physical and transitory nature. This is the reason Sallustius
can say ‘The cosmos as well may be described as a myth, for bodies and
things are manifest in it, but souls and minds lie hidden.’134
Just as the universe is divided into the categories sensible and
intelligible, so also for Origen the Gospel itself consists of a sensible
Gospel and, above and beyond it, the intelligible Gospel. For Origen,
the sensible Gospel is perceived on the level of simply understanding
the language in which it is written and comprehending the ordinary
meaning of the words. The intelligible or spiritual Gospel is the result of
a special type of reading characterised by dedicating one’s ‘whole
energy’ to the task of penetrating ‘the deep things of the meaning of the
Gospel’. 135 In other words, the ordinary meaning corresponds to the
sensible realm, while the noetic interpretation corresponds to intelligible
134 R.D. Lamberton, Homer the Theologian. Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the
Growth of the Epic Tradition, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 9,
Berkeley 1986, 201. (Sallustius, De diis 3, p. 4, lines 9–11 ed. Nock). Sallustius
was a fourth-century intellectual who participated with the Emperor Julian in
an effort to reform and re-establish paganism.
135 Or., Jo. 1.10 (This passage is discussed in more detail in Chapter Two).
reality. (As we will see, the noetic interpretation is not required to

always and everywhere refer only to an intelligible entity, but may also
refer to things which are related to the overall project of cultivating the
intelligilbe capacities of the individual, such as exemplary persons, the
virtues, or the nature of the human mind). That is, when commentators
like Origen and Didymus use the term κατὰ τὴν ἱστορίαν or ἐπὶ ἱστορίῃ they
do not mean ‘literal’ in the same sense that a modern English dictionary
defines the term ‘literal’, but rather something more like ‘referring to the
ordinary world or to observable historical events’ or ‘interpreted in the
obvious sense’. 136 The reason that the surface sense of the text does not
render an intelligible meaning is not that the letters and physical words
are seen as material objects which only have a higher significance when
they are seen as symbols, but because the words, already processed as
symbols through actual reading, refer to ordinary worldly, historical
events and not to heavenly, spiritual, moral or intellectual things. Again,
this does not imply any difficulty with the words themselves, as exactly
the same passages can be and are interpreted both according to their
plain narrative sense and in terms of one or more higher meanings,
without the higher meaning being presented as exclusive or definitive.
Whether the words refer to historical events or the everyday world and
thus fail to render noetic knowledge, or else refer to intelligible realities
136 See E.A. Dively Lauro, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture Within Origen’s Exegesis,
Boston 2005, 52–55, who argues that Origen’s use of this term cannot refer to
the literal sense as such since Origen also claims that some passages have no
literal sense, which Dively Lauro holds to be impossible. Noam Chomsky
would disagree.
and thereby indeed supply the mind with noetic truth, is not a function
of the words themselves but of the manner in which they are read.
Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs supplies several
statements on the relationship between the perceived metaphysical
state of affairs and the way in which Scriptural texts can and should be
interpreted, not least because the Song of Songs is the one book of the
Bible which Origen takes to be completely figurative. 137 In the
following, Origen expresses his view of how human beings can
overcome the epistemological limitations of physicality and how they
should pursue intelligible knowledge:
So with all else that God made– it is good for the use of
man, but it bears also the imprint of celestial things,
whereby the soul may be taught, and elevated to the
contemplation of the invisible and eternal. Nor is it
possible for man, while he lives in the flesh, to know
anything that transcends his sensible experience, except
by seizing and deciphering this imprint. For God has so
ordered His creation, has so linked the lower to the
higher by subtle signatures and affinities, that the world
137 The idea that certain books or passages within a larger work were more
figurative than others is also familiar from Neoplatonic exegesis of Homer, as
evidenced in Porphyry’s Cave of the Nymphs (Porph., antr.).
we see is, as it were, a great staircase, by which the mind

of man must climb upwards to spiritual intelligence.138
This passage reflects Origen’s belief in a providentially provided

‘imprint of celestial things’ already discussed in Chapter Two, and goes
on to express Origen’s belief that this intelligible deposit is able to teach
the human soul. Origen also specifies the goal of the educational
process thus arising, namely the ‘contemplation of the invisible and
eternal’. The person engaged in this process can only succeed in
knowing anything beyond the sensible if he is able to ‘seize and
decipher’ the intelligible content of physical things which has been
provided by the Creator. Origen also explicitly attaches the need to
puzzle one’s way toward intelligible knowledge on the basis of their
imprint in the visible world to the embodied state of the human being,
and characterises it as the only way that it is possible to transcend
sensible experience.
Beyond setting down the necessity of ‘seizing and deciphering’
encoded intelligible truths, Origen offers the relationship between the
visible and the invisible as grounds on the basis of which one can expect
to actually be able to achieve this goal. The following passage is a
rhetorical digression before Origen sets out to expound the significance
of a passage he considers challenging:
138 Or., comm. in cant. 3.12 (R.P. Lawson [ed.], The Song of Songs. Commentary and
Homilies, ACW 26, New York 1957, 220). The original Greek for this work is lost.
Paul the apostle teaches us that the invisible things of

God are understood by means of things that are visible,
and that the things that are not seen are beheld through
their relationship and likeness to things seen. He thus
shows that this visible world teaches us about that which
is invisible, and that this earthly scene contains certain
patterns of things heavenly. Thus it is possible for us to
mount up from things below to things above, and to
perceive and understand from the things we see on earth
the things that belong to heaven. On the pattern of these
the Creator gave to His creatures on earth a certain
likeness to these, so that thus their great diversity might
be more easily deduced and understood.139
One can ‘mount up from things below to things above’, not only from
the physical creation to a perception of it as divine revelation, but also
from the apparent, ordinary referent of a passage of Scripture to its
noetic significance in the realm of eternal truth, because ‘this visible
world teaches us about that which is invisible’ and ‘the invisible things
of God are understood by means of things that are visible’. Again, like
the deposit of intelligible truth in texts or in creation, the establishment
of a relationship between visible and invisible things, a relationship
which it is possible for the human mind to deduce and understand, is a
result of creative providence. Without this relationship, even if there
139 Or., comm. in cant. 3.12 (Lawson, 1957, 218).

was an intelligible deposit in ordinary language, historical events, or

physical objects, the human mind would have no dependable and non-
arbitrary means of proceeding from the visible to the invisible. This
relationship is clearly vital to the process of perceiving the noetic
significance of a passage of Scripture, but its precise nature is never
made explicit or systematically described; the existence and usefulness
of a connection between the visible and invisible realms remains an
assumption, albeit a systematically crucial one. 140
This idea of the relationship between the visible and the invisible
is then, further on in the same passage from the Commentary on the Song
of Songs, explicitly related to the interpretation of Scripture:
But this relationship does not obtain only with creatures;

the Divine Scripture itself is written with wisdom of a
rather similar sort. Because of certain mystical and
140 The same idea can be observed in the thought of Plotinus, as explained in
Lamberton, 1986, 95: ‘[...] this universe is for Plotinus merely the insubstantial
expression of higher true realities. This is not to reduce it to the level of the
utterly contemptible; in his tract against the Gnostics (Enn. 2.9) and elsewhere,
Plotinus is explicit that the material cosmos, though teetering on the edge of
nonexistence, is not to be viewed as inherently evil or the product of an evil
creator. It is redeemed by the fact that it expresses higher realities. Implied in
this attitude is the belief that the material universe itself constitutes a system of
meaning, a language of symbols that, properly read, will yield a truth that
transcends its physical substrate [...] Any statement about this world may, on a
higher plane, mask a statement about some true existent, not because of the
nature of the statement, but because of the inherently symbolic structure of the
universe to which it refers.’ Also ibid., 87–88: ‘[...] it is axiomatic for Plotinus
that the order we observe in the material universe is the expression of a non-
spatial, unchanging reality. An image used tentatively to express this
relationship is that of the natural world as the mirror, itself devoid of form, of
the ordering principles emanating from the higher realities of soul (psyche) and
mind (nous), beyond which lies the One (to hen) (Enn. 1.1.8).’
hidden things the people is visibly led forth from the

terrestrial Egypt and journeys through the desert, where
there was a biting serpent, and a scorpion, and thirst, and
where all the other happenings took place that are
recorded. All these events, as we have said, have the
aspects and likenesses of certain hidden things. And you
will find this correspondence not only in the Old
Testament Scriptures, but also in the actions of Our Lord
and Saviour that are related in the Gospels.141
Just as the visible creation corresponds to and is able to reveal the

invisible hidden and heavenly things if they are understood ‘through
divine wisdom’, the narrative events of Scripture ‘have the aspects and
likenesses of certain hidden things’. For Origen, the historical events
referred to in the ordinary reading of biblical narratives, here the Exodus
from Egypt and the wandering in the desert, actually did take place, so
that the historical referent of the narrative of these events is no less
accurate than the spiritual referent. However, the historical events
themselves are indicative of ‘certain hidden things’, caused to happen
not randomly or arbitrarily but ‘because of certain mystical and hidden
things’, presumably the noetic or spiritual truth that these events,
recorded in Scripture, are able to communicate. Here we see the
reasoning which enables the equivocation between revelation in both

the Scriptures and in the physical creation as valid objects of noetic

contemplation in Evagrius Ponticus.
Commentators operating according to the interpretive
assumptions which drive noetic exegesis are thus ambivalent on the
question of whether the events narrated in a text need have been actual
or not. While Origen here proposes that the events referred to are
historical, he elsewhere, as we have seen, considers the obvious
impossibility of events as narrated to be an indicator of the need for
noetic interpretation of that passage. This ambivalence results from
seeing a relationship both between the real, historical, physical world—
including human behaviour—and intelligible things, and also between
the words of the text and intelligible things. Either relationship will
serve to reveal intelligible truths. Both need not obtain. This is a good
example of a key difference between noetic exegesis and allegory: there
is no need to claim, even occasionally, that the events described in a text
read as an allegory actually took place, but in noetic exegesis this need
does arise because the noetic reading of the text is attached to a larger
system of ideas about the pedagogical relationship between the text and
the intelligible truths that can be perceived through it and also between
the physical world and intelligible truth.
Another part of the cultural reasoning behind the arrangement
of the ordinary meaning and the noetic significance across the
categories of sensible and intelligible has to do with a concern for the
truth value of the text. For Origen, mature perception reveals the fact
that ‘there is greater truth in the things that are not seen than there is in
those that are seen’. People who have achieved this realisation will also
realise that figurative interpretation is ‘that which they should follow
and embrace’, precisely because it, in finding invisible, spiritual things
in the text, constitutes a ‘way of understanding truth that leads to
God’.142 The same concern about the truthfulness of the text is evident
in Origen’s Commentary on John.
Christ, again, the light of the world, is the true light (φῶς
ἀληθινόν) as distinguished from the light of sense (πρὸς
ἀντιδιαστολὴν αἰσθητοῦ); nothing that is sensible is true. Yet
though the sensible is other than the true, it does not

follow that the sensible is false, for the sensible may have
an analogy with the intellectual (δύναται γὰρ ἀναλογίαν ἔχειν
τὸ αἰσθητὸν πρὸς τὸ νοητόν), and not everything that is not
true can correctly be called false. 143
Origen asserts that ‘nothing that is sensible is true’. This implies that the
interpreter seeking the higher truth in the Gospel, if he is concerned
with expounding ‘truth’, must leave the ‘sensible’ (ordinary, everyday,
historical) meaning behind and press on toward the noetic significance.
At the same time, Origen does not hold that that which is sensible is
false (which would clearly cause him difficulties in denying the value of
143 Or., Jo. 1.24.

the narrative level of understanding the Bible, which he elsewhere

characterises as sufficient for the basic faith of simple believers).144
Therefore the literal text is a less true indicator of the truth, but is not
necessarily a falsehood which must be rejected in favor of the noetic
significance of the text. Origen terms this relationship of the sensible to
higher realities an ‘analogy with the intellectual’. For Origen the locus
of truth is in the intelligible realm, so one can see that if traditional texts,
as we have seen, are believed to give access to divine truth, then noetic
interpretation must serve as a mechanism for moving from the obvious
sense of the text (when this is perceived as failing to render noetically
valuable truth) to the intelligible significance contained within it.
Within this system, finding an intelligible interpretation for
problematic passages is absolutely necessary if the texts are to continue
to be perceived as true and valuable within the culture, not only because
intelligible knowledge has a higher status than sensible knowledge, but
also because noetic interpretation is able to overcome inconsistencies or
factual errors in the narrative and thus to preserve the authority of the
text. This aspect of the assumption of an intelligible referent is closely
related to the tendency to construct more acceptable meanings for
passages deemed unworthy or inappropriate which was examined in
Chapter Two: contradiction or factual inconsistency could be seen as
another category of unworthiness. In a discussion of the problem of
coordinating the synoptic Gospels with each other and with the Gospel
144 Or., princ. 4.2,4 (G.W. Butterworth [ed.], On First Principles. Being Koetschau’s
Text of the ‘De Principiis’, Gloucester 1985, 273–275).
of John, Origen explains that without pursuing ‘the truth of these

matters [...] in that which is seen by the mind’, (i. e., finding the
intelligible significance of the text) the Gospels are reduced to the status
of inaccurate reporting and fanciful narratives full of logical
inconsistencies and chronological impossibilities. Origen even states
explicitly that the tension between the apparent inaccuracy of the text if
taken at face value, plus ‘our trust in the Gospels as being true and
written by a divine spirit’ is what requires the student of Scripture to
either ‘conclude that all our information about our Lord is
untrustworthy’ or ‘consider that their truth is not to be sought for in the
outward and material letter’. The implication is that the truth, a thing
we know Origen to locate in the intelligible realm, can be found in the
inward and incorporeal ‘letter’.145
Origen’s concern for upholding the truthfulness of the Gospel
narrative motivates him to propose an explanation of how and why
the Gospel writers produced narratives which so often appear banal
or unfactual:
(the Gospel writers) made full use for their purpose of

things done by Jesus in the exercise of His wonderful and
extraordinary power; they use in the same way His
sayings, and in some places they tack on to their writing,
with language apparently implying things of sense,
things made manifest to them in a purely intellectual
145 Or., Jo. 10.2.

way. I do not condemn them if they even sometimes

dealt freely with things which to the eye of history
happened differently, and changed them so as to serve
the mystical aims they had in view; [...] They proposed to
speak the truth where it was possible both materially and
spiritually, and where this was not possible it was their
intention to prefer the spiritual to the material. The
spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in
the material falsehood. 146
Here Origen characterises the Gospel writers’ goal not as the accurate
reporting of historical events, but as conveying intellectual, mystical,
and spiritual truth. In the service of this overall goal, it was permissible
for them to take liberties with ‘things which to the eye of history
happened differently’ when this was done for the purpose of speaking
the truth, where truth is assumed to correspond to what is valuable in
the pursuit of spiritual and mental development, namely intelligible
things. Whenever possible, they spoke ‘the truth [...] both materially
and spiritually’, but where the material element of the narrative is not
historically accurate, Origen holds that there is in fact spiritual truth
there, because the Gospel is taken as having been written deliberately to
convey things ‘made manifest to them (the writers) in a purely
intellectual way’. Thus it is precisely then when a passage seems to be
‘implying things of sense’ but cannot be historically or logically correct,
146 Or., Jo. 10.4.

that Origen sees the writers as having deposited something in the text of
their intellectual apprehension of truth. That is how ‘the spiritual truth
was often preserved, as one might say, in the material falsehood.’
The arrangement of the obvious meaning of the text and its
higher noetic significance across the categories of sensible and
intelligible is also frequently evidenced in the commentaries of Didymus
the Blind. Apprehending the meaning of the text is a matter of relating
it to higher things or in a way that leads the mind upward (κατ᾽
ἀναγωγήν). This is accomplished by moving beyond the initially apparent
(αἰσθητά) and pursuing the higher ideas (νοητά) within it. 147 The
interpreter must thus be able to differentiate between lower and higher

types of meaning and have the spiritual maturity to perceive the higher
meaning as will be explained further in Chapters Four and Five. Noetic
interpretation is subsumed to the overall spiritual goal of leading the
reader to spiritual perfection. That Didymus equates the ordinary
meaning of the text with the sensible and its noetic interpretation with
the intelligible is evident from the following passage, in which he
introduces a noetic interpretation with the phrase ‘now from the
sensible to the intelligible’:
‘Turn not thy countenance from me!’. Now from the

sensibly perceptible to the intelligible: the eye or the eyes
147 The specific mechanics of this process and a comparison with interpretations
Didymus characterises by means of the term ἀλληγορία can be found in
W. Bienert, Allegoria und Anagoge bei Didymos dem Blinden von Alexandria,
Berlin 1972.
of the inner man are never satiated nor do they tire of the
countenance of God; for because it constantly shines, it
enlightens and increases desire. So ‘let the light of your
countenance shine upon us, O Lord’ [Ps 4:7]. It remains.
The light of the sun, or generally any light source which
is perceptible to the senses, does not remain. If one
retreats from the light or closes his eyes, it does not shine
on him. The intelligible light however obviously remains
with those it enlightens, it cannot be lost. 148
Didymus constructs an interpretation of the phrase from the Psalms

which depends on the assumption of the existence of an inner eye,
unlike the physical eye, which looks upon the face of God, and in turn
differentiates the light of God’s countenance from the light of the sun or
any other source of light perceptible to the senses. The intelligible light
(of God’s countenance) remains with the one who is enlightened by it,
while sensibly perceptible light does not ‘remain’. Thus Didymus’
noetic interpretation not only demonstrates a belief in the reference of
the text to intelligible realities but also interprets in the direction of the
pinnacle of the spiritual life as he understands it. For him, the
intelligible content of the passage in question is not concerned with
ordinary eyes beholding ordinary faces which may or may not cease
looking or be turned away, but inner eyes which never cease looking
148 Didym., ps. 26.9 (M. Gronewald [ed.], Didymos der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar II
zu Ps 22–26:10, PTA 4, Bonn 1968, 237).
and a countenance whose light constantly remains with the one it shines
upon. Thus the phrase ‘turn not thy face away from me’ is not, for
Didymus, a plea by a distressed individual to the personified divinity,
but a hint at what Didymus believes to be the real possibility of the
noetic contemplation of God. Thus for this phrase, the intelligible
referent is distinguished from the sensible one (historical case of
individual existential distress) and defined as referring to an exemplary
desire for perfect contemplation. A comparison with Origen’s
description of the role of material things in teaching the soul and
allowing the mind to ‘climb upwards to spiritual intelligence’ is
instructive: in the above passage from Didymus, we see the same idea in
exegetical action. 149
As with Origen and Evagrius, Didymus sees Scripture as
functioning analogously to the physical created world to reveal God when
the mind perceives divine things which have been providentially
deposited in the text. Didymus also proceeds from the same assumption
of the relatedness between the sensible and intelligible levels of perception:
That which is invisible (ἀόρατα) of God is perceived when
we confront the visible creations of God and thus see the

invisible God from the creation of this sensibly
perceptible (αἰσθητοῦ) world.150
149 See the discussion of Or., comm. in cant. 3 above.
150 Didym., ps. 24.15 (Gronewald, 1968, 123).

Didymus does not explain the mechanics of how ‘we confront the
visible creations of God’ in order to ‘apprehend the invisible God’ any
more specifically than Origen does, nor does he argue for the point he is
making. He states it in a matter-of-fact manner, much as a teacher of
economics would set out the principle of supply and demand. For
Didymus, this is just the way the world is: invisible, divine, intelligible
things can be perceived on the basis of the visible and sensible.
In another passage which we will now discuss in some detail,
Didymus provides an interpretation which itself gives testimony to his
understanding of the relationship between the words of the text and
their spiritual significance which makes interpretation both possible and
necessary. The passage he is discussing is from Psalm 22, including the
verses 14–18, which read as follows:
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of

joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away
within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and
my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in
the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of
evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands
and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and
gloat over me. They divide my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing.
Didymus takes this passage to be spoken by Christ, and alludes to

various elements from it in his interpretation. The whole passage from
the commentary is built around an analogy between the body of Christ
and the Scripture:
I say as follows: [...] that the divinely inspired Scripture

itself is the body of the Saviour, the bones of this body
however are the strong perceptions (εὔτονα νοήµατα), the
thoughts about the perceptions, which are higher than

others (τὰ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὑπερτέρων νοηµάτων θεωρήµατα).
The clothes however are the words; for the noetic sense
(κατὰ τὴν νόησιν) is clothed by the words. 151
Didymus develops his analogy by specifying which parts of the body of

Christ correspond to which parts of Scripture: the bones are the εὔτονα
νοήµατα, translated here as ‘strong perceptions’, analogous to bones
because they lie deep inside the body and because they are strong like
bones. Knowing what we already know about noetic interpretations,
and given the term used and the analogy to Scripture, it seems Didymus
is referring to exactly that deeper significance of Scripture which the
noetic exegete is concerned to discover. As his discussion of this passage
151 The editor’s German gloss for εὔτονα νοήµατα is ‘passende Interpretationen’ or, in
English, ‘fitting interpretations’. I disagree with this not only because it
disregards the analogy on which Didymus is basing his commentary, but also
because that is a very unusual translation for the terms involved.
continues, Didymus links the references in the passage he is interpreting

to being able to count one’s bones, and the garments being divided up
by lot, to bones as the deeper meaning of Scripture:
So when they counted his bones, they did not share them
among themselves. They merely perceived them µόνον
εἶδον, as they are not; for if they had perceived them
(θεασάµενοι), as they are, they would have been
strengthened by them and would have incorporated

them, so that they could have said ‘All of my bones will
testify: Lord, who is like you? [Ps 34:10]’. For that is not
said by the bones perceptible to the senses. 152
Didymus is referring, as he makes explicit in the next quotation below,

to people he considers heretical or false interpreters of the Scripture.
The reason their interpretations are faulty is that they have ‘merely
perceived’ the bones of Scripture, rather than perceiving them ‘as they
are’ (in an intelligible sense). Didymus further reveals his understanding
of the process of noetic exegesis by saying that if ‘they’ had interpreted
properly, the ‘bones of Scripture would have strengthened them and been
incorporated into them. That is, the noetic substance of Scripture would
152 Didym., comm. in cant. 21.18 (L. Doutreleau / A. Gesché / M. Gronewald

[eds.], Didymos der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar I zu Ps. 20–21, PTA 7. Bonn 1969,
161–162).
have been integrated into the interpreter and increased his or her own
noetic content, so to speak.
So all heretics and false teachers divide the clothes of the

words among themselves. They tug at the words in
whichever direction they want and claim them for
themselves, as for example ‘The Lord created me at the
beginning of his ways’ [Prov 8:22]. The word is only the
robe of the thought (τοῦ θεωρήµατος). The Arians tug it
arbitrarily here and there and consider it their property.

The men of the church, on the other hand, see it in the
way that the wisdom, who said it, wears it, and others in
still other ways. And in any case you can find the same
words being handled in constantly changing ways
among all the false believers. They have therefore
divided them among themselves, they have taken the
words off the meaning and taken these, naked of
meaning, for their own purposes. 153
Didymus also connects those who tear the Psalmist’s clothes and divide
them among themselves with those who misuse Scripture. Having
already mapped ‘clothes’ onto ‘the words of Scripture’, Didymus
continues the metaphor and describes ‘heretics’ as arbitrarily tugging at
the ‘clothes’ of Scripture in that they interpret in constantly changing
153 Didym., ps. 21.18 (Doutreleau / Gesché / Gronewald, 1969, 162–163).

ways and divest it of its true meaning. The examples he gives make it
evident that he is referring to Arian exegetes. For Didymus, the true
meaning of Scripture is maintained when ‘the men of the church [...] see it
in the way that the wisdom, who said it, wears it’. That is, the words of
Scripture must be seen in relation to the wisdom (Christ? God?) who
‘wears’ them if they are to be seen correctly. Otherwise the words become
‘naked of meaning’, so that Didymus again insists on the value not only of
the intelligible content of Scripture but also on the link between the
sensible level (the words) and their meaning. Here the correspondence of
the higher meaning of Scripture to intelligible things is not only persistent,
but also associated with proper interpretation and with the capacity of the
process of interpretation to benefit the interpreter.
Didymus frequently concentrates on a specific term in a verse
from the text he is explaining and introduces the noetic interpretation by
claiming that the verse obviously does not refer to the visible term or the
term as it is perceived by the senses, but to its invisible/intelligible/
spiritual counterpart. This is a clear indication of an assumption on his
part that the higher meaning of the text, which it is the task of the
commentator to perceive and explain, is located in the intelligible realm.
For example, the reference in Proverbs to ‘the houses of the lawless’
does not refer, for Didymus, to certain people’s domestic
accommodation, but to their ‘spiritual habits’:
And the word from Proverbs: The houses of the lawless

will require purification, but the houses of the righteous
are acceptable. This is not about visible (περὶ αἰσθητῶν)
houses, but about spiritual (ἐν διανοίᾳ) habits, since the
evil require purification but the virtuous are acceptable,

while the term ‘acceptable’ does not mean what is
desirable to some one, but that which is laudable in
itself. For the good is desirable, even if no one desires it,
and it is acceptable, even if no one accepts it. 154
This interpretation is also consistent with the analysis in Chapter Two,

according to which interpretations tend to be made in the direction of the
moral or spiritual. Also, the final sentence of this passage reflects a
standard point of popular Platonic or Stoic philosophy, that the good is
good in and of itself, regardless of varying opinions about it. So locating
the interpretation of the verse or even some aspect of a verse of Scripture
in the non-perceptible realm requires an interpretation which refers to
spiritual or moral truths, the discerning and explaining of which
constitutes the means of the overall moral, mental, and spiritual
cultivation of the readers or hearers of the commentary, so that the
addition of a philosophical principle on the nature of the good is
unsurprising. It reflects the manner in which the practice of noetic
exegesis is intricately involved with the attitudes and beliefs of the larger
culture, and reflective of the interpretive assumptions driving it, and the
pedagogical context in which it was generated. Thus what otherwise
154 Didym., Job 5.24 (A. Henrichs, Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zu Hiob II. Kap.
5.1–6.29, PTA 2, Bonn 1968, 101).
appears to be a case of arbitrary association of ideas (houses and spiritual

habits) by an undisciplined exegete becomes coherent and systematic
when approached in terms which allow for an explanation of
interpretation in the direction of moral and spiritual formation.
Elsewhere Didymus considers references to mountains in Scripture
to actually refer to saints who themselves are examples of the spiritual goal
which the readers or hearers of the commentary are to learn to attain,
namely the elevation of their attention to the invisible and eternal:
‘Your righteousness is like the mountains of God’. The

mountains of God are interpreted in the Scriptures in
various ways. When it says: ‘You let your light shine
from the eternal mountains’ [Ps 75:5], he calls the saints,
who no longer direct their gaze to the visible, which is
temporal, but rather to the invisible, which is eternal,
[2Cor 4:8], ‘eternal mountains’. ‘Approach the eternal
mountains’ [Mic 2:9]. These physically perceptible
mountains are not eternal. But when heaven and earth
have passed away, protrusions and parts of the earth,
like mountains, disappear too, pass away with her and
thus are not eternal. All those, on the other hand, who
have turned their gaze to the eternal, the invisible, the
higher, the highest, all of those are mountains, because
they have loftiness of life, because they have the height of
pious convictions. Thus ‘approach the eternal mountain’,
approach them inwardly, gain the same high convictions

as they have!155
Because it is not the case that physically perceptible mountains are

eternal, (and the text is required to be true, despite the fact that it refers
to ‘eternal mountains’), the passage must refer to something else. Thus
the ‘eternal mountains’ are the saints, eternal because they ‘have turned
their gaze to the eternal, the invisible, the higher, the highest’ and
mountains ‘because they have loftiness of life’ and ‘the height of pious
convictions’. The command to ‘approach the eternal mountains’ is thus
an appeal to inwardly aspire to the same ‘high convictions’ as the
saints. If we recall the discussion of the need to find morally valuable
significance in Scripture from Chapter Two, we can again see that that
component of noetic exegesis also determines the direction of Didymus’
interpretation toward an appeal to moral excellence and the construction
of a spiritual example to be followed. In any case, the location of the
ordinary meaning in the sensible, physically perceptible realm and its
noetic significance in the realm of the eternal and intelligible is again
evident: the word ‘mountains’ does not refer to geological structures but
to spiritual perfection.
The following passage provides another example of the belief
that Scripture has an ordinary meaning and can also be read to reveal its
intelligible contents:
155 Didym., ps. 35.7 (Gronewald (VI) 23).

‘And light is sweet and good for the eyes.’ One can take
‘light’ and ‘eyes’ in two ways, and also ‘sweetness’.
Accordingly, when it refers to the visible realm, which is
revealed by perceptible ‘light’, it says sweet instead of
‘pleasant’. But when you think of the inner ‘eyes’ and the
‘true light’, ‘sweet’ should be understood in the same
way as it is meant in the following sentences: ‘Taste and
see that the Lord is good’; ‘how sweet are your words,
sweeter than honey from the comb’: ‘eat honey, my son,
for the comb is good and sweetens the throat’. And
(here) the ‘honey’ being eaten is the ‘good’ of the spiritual
(πνευµατικῶν) content of Scripture, the ‘comb’, though,
which contains it, is the letter of Scripture [...] 156
For Didymus, the ordinary meaning of ‘sweet’ in this passage– ‘when it

refers to the visible realm’– is synonymous with ‘pleasant’. The
intelligible meaning, which Didymus fits in with reading the phrase in
terms of the inner ‘eyes’ and the ‘true light’, is not stated directly but is
to be drawn from a series of verses which refer to things that Didymus
takes as intelligible: ‘the Lord’, ‘your words’, etc. Due to the impromptu
nature of his interpretations (the teaching context of his exegesis is
discussed in Chapter Five), Didymus jumps to the next point,
interpreting an example which he had included for the sake of
156 Didym., eccl. 11.7 a (G. Binder / L. Liesenborghs [eds.], Didymos der Blinde.
Kommentar zum Ekklesiastes VI. Kap. 11–12, PTA 9, Bonn 1969, 71).
interpreting his original text, which refers again to the differentiation of

‘the spiritual content of Scripture’ and ‘the letter of Scripture’. In the
course of doing so, Didymus explicitly states his view that the letter of
Scripture is a sort of container or carrier for spiritual content, just as the
comb contains honey. A comparison with Evagrius’ interpretation of the
same verse from Proverbs, which was discussed in Chapter Two, is
instructive: Evagrius inverts the referents compared to Didymus, so that
for Evagrius the surface level of Scripture corresponds to honey and the
deeper meaning to the comb. Although Evagrius was semi-
contemporary with Didymus and refers to him elsewhere in his writings
respectfully, his exegesis is not determined by the authority of his older
colleague, whom he does not imitate directly, but is rather determined by
the desire to convey a common concern, namely the need to differentiate
between the sensible and intelligible aspects of Scripture.
Didymus, like Origen, is also convinced that the truthfulness of
the text is dependent on interpreting it noetically, which for him is
synonymous with identifying its intelligible contents. In his
Commentary on Job, Didymus addresses a statement which is obviously
implausible if read as a simple proposition: ‘I grew old and have never
seen a righteous man who was abandoned or whose descendents
sought for bread. He is merciful and lends the whole day’. If taken as
referring to the ordinary everyday world, this statement is not truthful,
because everyone has seen righteous people who were unfortunate.
Didymus explains, however, that it is truthful and binding if
understood in a spiritual sense:
(the verse from the Psalms): ‘I was young. Now I have

grown old and have never seen a righteous man who
was abandoned, nor that his descendents searched for
bread. He is merciful all the day and lends’ is true and
binding if it is taken in the spiritual sense (ἀληθὲς καὶ
ἀναγκαῖον κατὰ διάνοιαν λαµβανόµενον). For the righteous
man has no shortage of nourishment, because his soul is

full of the ‘life-giving spirit’. And also his descendents,
who according to the word from Paul ‘imitate me as I
Christ’, have for their food the will of God, in that they
walk in his laws and decrees. 157
The righteous man does not go hungry, on the intelligible interpretation

provided by Didymus, because ‘his soul is full of the life-giving spirit’,
and his descendents are not children but those who ‘have for their food
the will of God, in that they walk in his laws and decrees’. By lending
the statement an intelligible referent, Didymus constructs a meaning for
it which he can accept as ‘true and binding’ and which also functions to
construct an example of moral uprightness and what it does or does not
entail for his students.
In noetic exegesis, the legitimacy of non-literal interpretation is
directly linked to the belief in both the existence and the value of an
intelligible referent. Didymus characterises people who reject allegorical
157 Didym., Job 5.20 (Henrichs, 1968, 77).

interpretation (in the broad late antique sense of allegorical) as ‘fantasies

and illusions’ as calling the ‘teaching about the intelligibles lies’, thus
treating allegorical interpretation and investigation into the intelligible
realm as synonymous. Here we may note that even those who
Didymus portrays as sectarians both among Christians and among
pagans and who reject allegorical interpretations do so for reasons
which are coherent within the system of ideas we are here uncovering:
they do not claim that figural interpretation is an inappropriate or
illegitimate exegetical technique, but rather that the interpretations are
not in fact intelligible (implying that if they did refer to intelligible
realities the allegorical interpretations would be acceptable) and they see
the text as limited to the corporeal and sensible realm:
Because there are people, and whole sects have been

formed among the pagans and the Christians, who say
that allegories are fantasies and delusions. And they refer
to the teachings about intelligible things as lies, because
they consider everything physical and perceptible to the
senses. These are the psychic (ψυχικοί) people, who do not
accept that which comes from the spirit (τὰ τοῦ πνεύµατος),
because they consider themselves independent and believe they

can comprehend (θεωρεῖν) everything on their own strength.’158
zu Ps 35–39, PTA 6, Bonn 1969, 249–251).
Didymus characterises these ‘whole sects’ as if they were an ancient

type of materialist or positivist, convinced that everything is ‘physical
and perceptible to the senses’ and that human abilities are sufficient to
comprehend everything. Didymus’ grounds for rejecting this mentality
are themselves clearly reflective of the framework of assumptions
within which he is working: the people he describes fail to admit the
existence of the intelligible world, and consequently cannot possibly
accept a manner of reading which presupposes an intelligible deposit in
the text. This is the same type of basis for controversy which we
observed in Chapter Two. The people who hold this position are
explicitly described as consisting of groups among both pagans and
Christians, so that even among contemporaries, the practice or
acceptance of figural interpretation was not perceived as arising out of
or directly determined by one’s religious identity. One does not
necessarily need to be a pagan or a Christian in order to accept the
legitimacy of noetic exegeis, but one does need to believe that there is
such a thing as an intelligible realm and that the text under examination
can and does refer to it.
In his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Didymus cites another case of
rejection of allegorical interpretations (his term) based on the belief that
they fail to reflect intelligible realities but are mere images arising out of
the realm of sense perception:
Some, including Apollinarius, consider the allegories

mere images, which primarily have been drawn from the
realm of that which is perceptible to the senses. 159
Following this passage, Didymus goes on to characterise a rejection of

allegorical interpretation as equivalent to rejecting the intelligible world
as such, including the value of the soul in comparison to the body and of
divine wisdom as opposed to worldly concerns. This is the same
conflict as in the above case. Thus Didymus’ controversies with others
over the legitimacy of non-literal interpretation of the Bible do indeed
arise out of unreconcilable differences, but the differences concerned
relate to agreement or disagreement regarding the same overall
assumptions. Just as in Chapter Two we saw Didymus reject
Porphyry’s claim that Christian allegorism is illegitimate because his
assumption that the Bible is a vessel of divine knowledge, and therefore
an appropriate object for noetic exegesis, conflicts with Porphyry’s
conviction that it is nothing of the kind, Didymus here faces objections
to allegory based on Apollinarius’ assumption that the allegories are not
legitimate because they do not refer to the intelligible world and the
assumption on the part of ‘whole sects’ that allegory is not legitimate at
all because there is no such thing as an intelligible world. In the present
case just as in the former, both sides of the conflict are playing by the
159 Didym., eccl. 5.11 (J. Kramer [ed.], Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zum
Ekklesiastes III. Kap. 5–6, PTA 13, Bonn 1970, 21). The Apollinarius mentioned
here could conceivably be Apollinarius of Laodicea (310–390), a contemporary
of Didymus who was involved in Christological controversies.
same rules and on the assumption that allegory should refer to the
intelligible world and is legitimate if and only if it does so in relation to a
text whose content is intelligible.
In the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, this contrast between
sensible and intelligible and the arrangement of the ordinary referent of
a word of Scripture and its higher interpretation around the categories
of sensible and intelligible is also evident. In his Kephalaia Gnostika,
Evagrius repeatedly and explicitly calls his noetic interpretation of some
term from a passage of Scripture ‘intelligible’. Several series of exegesis
can be identified. Due to the fact that noetic interpretation in the
Kephalaia Gnostika is both voluminous and ambiguous, I will restrict the
discussion here to explicitly stated ‘intelligible’ (νοητή, πνευµατική)
interpretations which appear in a series, often related to an identifiable

biblical text, leaving to one side sayings which do not state explicitly that
they are offering the intelligible significance of something (although one
could make a plausible case that this is implied) and those which appear
in isolation rather than in a series or thematic cluster.
A first series relates to the sun, moon and stars, while Evagrius
does not specify whether he is referring to their appearance in nature or
in Scripture. (This equivocation is perfectly coherent for him because,
like Origen and Didymus, he sees nature and Scripture as analogous
forms of revelation):
The intelligible (νοητός) ‘sun’ is the reasoning nature that
contains within it the first and blessed light.160
The intelligible (νοητή) ‘moon’ is the reasoning nature that is
illuminated by ‘the sun of justice.’ [Mal 3:20]161
The intelligible (νοητοί) ‘stars’ are reasoning natures to
which it has been confided to illuminate those who are in

the darkness.162
All of the astronomical bodies referred to here are taken as signifying the
reasoning nature(s) (ἡ λογική). The various types of reasoning natures
are differentiated from each other on analogy with the relationships

between the sun, moon, and stars. For Evagrius, a ‘reasoning nature’
can be a human, demon, or angel. In the context the term appears to
mean humans in various stages of spiritual development. The highest
state is that of a person whose mind ‘contains within it the first and
blessed light’, i. e. the light of pure contemplation of the One or the Holy
Trinity. Another, slightly lower condition of the ‘reasoning nature’ is
being illuminated by ‘the sun of justice’. Since we know what Evagrius
takes ‘sun’ to signify, we can work out that he is referring to the
160 Evagr. Pont., keph. gnost. 3.44 (L. Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings
of Evagrius Ponticus, Oxford 2005).
161 Evagr. Pont., keph. gnost. 3.52 (Dysinger, 2005).

condition not of containing ‘the first and blessed light’ but of being
illuminated by such a reasoning nature. This implies a condition
approximate to that of pure contemplation, but one that is more distant
and passive, possibly that of a student of a fully noetically developed
teacher. The third condition Evagrius describes in his exegesis is that of
‘stars’ or those ‘reasoning natures to which it has been confided to
illuminate those who are in the darkness’. This implies people whose
task is not that of pure contemplation but of conveying ‘light’ to those
who are as yet unenlightened. That could refer to those who are
engaged in teaching or preaching to those who as yet have no
knowledge of whatever Evagrius takes to be the source of the ‘light’
around which his interpretation is constructed. Here Evagrius is
explicitly locating the significance in the words (or elements of creation)
in the intelligible realm. The referent is not any physical body, but rather
the condition of the mind in relation to other minds and in relation to
‘the first and blessed light’.
A longer series of noetic interpretations which can be clearly
attached to a text from the Bible treats the ceremonial apparatus laid out
in Exodus 28 and 29:
The intelligible unleavened loaves [Ex 29:2] are the state

of the reasoning soul which is constituted by pure virtues
and true doctrines.163
163 Evagr. Pont., keph. gnost. 4.28 (Dysinger, 2005). A form of πνευµατικός is used
in all of the remaining excerpts from Evagrius for ‘intelligible’ unless
otherwise noted.
The intelligible blade is the knowledge of the Blessed

Trinity. [Ex 28:36]164
The intelligible pectoral is the hidden knowledge of the

mysteries of God. [Ex 28:4] 165
The intelligible coat is the spiritual teaching that gathers

wanderers. [Ex 28:4] 166
The intelligible trousers are the mortification of the

concupiscible part, which have been made for the
knowledge of God. [Ex 28:42]167
The intelligible ephod is the soul’s justice, through which

man is accustomed to win fame in works and in
irreproachable teachings. [Ex 28:4]168
All of the intelligible referents are intelligible qualities whose pursuit is

part of the tasks and goals of the monastic life: ‘the state of the reasoning
soul which is constituted by pure virtues and true doctrines’, ‘faith’,

‘knowledge of the Blessed Trinity’, ‘hidden knowledge of the mysteries

of God’, ‘spiritual teaching’, ‘mortification of the concupisciple part’,
and ‘the soul’s justice’. The text is thus taken to refer to the intelligibles
inasmuch as it refers to the human soul and mind, and here, specifically,
to mental states and practical disciplines which serve the development
of the mind in order to achieve contemplation of intelligible realities,
which for Evagrius, as we will see in Chapter Five below, is the goal of
the monastic life. In no case is the text taken as referring to its ordinary
historical referent, traditional Jewish ceremonial apparatus. This is much
like the interpretation of ‘mountains’ as the souls of people who have
achieved perfection in Didymus.
Evagrius also offers a noetic interpretation of Paul’s account in
the book of Ephesians of the spiritual armour with which the Christian
is to be clothed:
The intelligible sword is the spiritual saying (λόγος
πνευµατικός) that separates the body from the soul, or the
vice and the ignorance.169
The intelligible shield is practical knowledge that guards

unharmed the passible part of the soul.170

The intelligible helmet is spiritual knowledge that guards

unharmed the intelligent part of the soul. 171
Although the original passage from Ephesians 6 is itself an allegory and

although the interpretation of the various aspects of the spiritual armour
described is provided in the original text, Evagrius still finds it necessary
to supply a noetic interpretation. As above, the referents—the spiritual
saying, practical knowledge, and spiritual knowledge—are all tools for
developing the capacity for contemplation of the intelligibles, so that
while the referents are no more concerned with a directly and purely
intelligible vision than they were as seen in Origen and Didymus, noetic
exegesis is still oriented to the goal of knowledge of the intelligibles.
A final passage from the Kephalaia Gnostika offers a noetic
interpretation of a Psalm of assent:
The intelligible city is the spiritual contemplation which

contains the spiritual natures. 172
The intelligible gates are the virtues of the reasoning soul

and πρακτική which have been constituted by the power
of God.173

The intelligible wall is ἀπάθεια of the soul, which the
demons do not approach. 174
The intelligible temple is the pure νοῦς, which keeps [safe]
within it the full manifold wisdom of God [Eph 3:10];

the temple of God is he who is a seer of the blessed
Unity, and the altar of God is the contemplation of the
Blessed Trinity.175
Once again, the referents are spiritual states which all constitute stages
and tools of the monastic life, whose goal is ‘the contemplation of the
Blessed Trinity’, a form of pure noetic knowledge. In this case, some of
the noetic referents are not as penultimately intelligible as usual, but
properly intelligible, such as ‘the pure νοῦς’, but the relation to the
intelligible realm is, as above, via the monastic discipline which

Evagrius believes to be necessary in order to contemplate the
intelligibles. Like Didymus and Origen, Evagrius does not expect
passages which admit of noetic exegesis to always and only refer
directly to the intelligibles, but rather to relate to the assumed goal of
achieving knowledge of the intelligibles in some manner. The lack of
the same type of explicit scholarly discussion about the relationship
between the intelligible and the sensible in the text which was

observable in Origen and Didymus can be explained as the result of the

particular genre of the Kephalaia Gnostica, which is non-discursive and
can only be taken as exegetical in the broadest possible sense.
While Evagrius’ strictly exegetical works are still far less
discursive and not nearly as inclusive of general discussions and
digressions as the commentaries of Origen or Didymus, they still
provide us with examples of noetic exegesis presupposing the
orientation of the higher referent of a given verse to the intelligible
realm. In the Scholia on Ecclesiastes, Evagrius sees the phrase ‘vanity of
vanities’ not as an expression of existential disillusionment, but rather as
an expression of the vanity of ‘the contemplation of the created things’
in comparison with ‘the knowledge of God himself’:
1.2 ‘Vanity of vanities’, says the Preacher, ‘vanity of

vanities, all is vanity’.
2 To those who are entering the church of the mind and
are wondering at the contemplation of the created things,
the Word says, ‘You must not think that these things are
the final goal that has been stored up for you by the
promises—for they are all vanity of vanities in
comparison with the knowledge of God himself. For just
as medicines are vain after one’s health has been
completely restored, so, too, the meanings of the ages
and the worlds are vain after one has knowledge of the
Holy Trinity.176
The text refers, on Evagrius’ interpretation, to the final goal of the

contemplative life of the monk, the knowledge of God or of the Holy
Trinity, a knowledge clearly belonging to the realm of the intelligibles.
Although a reading of this verse as disillusionment with worldly life, or
according to its historical referent, would be perfectly consistent with
the monastic context or even with a generally Christian context,
Evagrius still chooses to look for a higher intelligible referent. This
indicates that the driving priority for Evagrius is not constructing
compatibility with Christian ideals, since, if that was his agenda, he
could easily have attached this verse to the ‘this world’ and ‘kingdom of
heaven’ dichotomy, or equated vanity with sin and explicated the
universal human need for salvation. Instead, Evagrius reads this phrase
in a way which breaks completely with any everyday referent. His
agenda is clearly to interpret in such a manner that the verse tells the
reader something about what intelligible knowledge is like and how to
attain it, and that agenda clearly overrides any concern with generating
meanings which conform with Christian doctrines or ethics in general.
176 Evagr. Pont., schol. eccl. 1.2 (A.M. Casiday, Evagrius Ponticus, London 2006, 131,
CPG 2458 e).
Similarly, when Evagrius interprets Ecclesiastes 3:10–13, he sees it

as contrasting engagement with perceptible, temporal things with their
use as objects of spiritual contemplation: 177
I have seen, he says, perceptible things busy the

intelligence of man, which God has given to men before
their purification to be busy with them. Their beauty, he
says, is temporal and not eternal. For after purification,
the pure person no longer regards perceptible things as
merely busying his mind, but as having been placed in
him for spiritual contemplation. For it is one thing for
sensible things to make an impression on the mind as it
perceives them sensibly through its sense, and another
for the mind to arrange the meanings that are in sensible
things by contemplating them. But this knowledge only
follows for the pure, whilst thinking about perceptible
things follows for the impure as well as for the pure [...] 178
Just as the ordinary reading of the text is not rejected as wrong or bad,
the perceptible world is not bad as such but has been providentially
177 The text Evagrius is commenting on reads: ‘I have seen the business which God
has given the sons of man to be busy with. Everything that he has made is
beautiful in its time; he has also given the age to their hearts, in such a way that
man cannot discover the work that God has worked from the beginning even
unto the end. I have recognised that there is no good for them except to rejoice
and do good in one’s life. As for everyone who eats and drinks and sees good
from all his toil–this is a gift from God.’
178 Evagr. Pont., schol. eccl. 3.10–13 (Casiday, 2006, 134).

supplied to man ‘to busy the intelligence’. The application of the

intelligence to perceptible things is a phase in the cultivation and
purification of the mind before it is pure and able to engage in higher
forms of contemplation. Evagrius differentiates between the state of the
person and his relationship with perceptible things before and after
purification. The special capacity gained by purification is ‘to arrange
the meanings that are in sensible things by contemplating them’ and to
move on from the less mature state in which ‘sensible things make an
impression on the mind as it perceives them sensibly through its sense’.
That is, a mind which has been purified is able to access the intelligible
content in sensible things rather than being reduced to dependence on
the sensible itself. Evagrius explains this type of contemplation in more
detail elsewhere, as will be investigated in the next chapter. What is
significant here is that Evagrius, like Didymus and Origen, is working
from the assumption of a metaphysical state of affairs involving the
sensible vs. the intelligible, and that he also links attention to the
intelligibles, and the ability to gain knowledge of the intelligibles, with
spiritual maturity. Further, this interpretation not only assumes the
distinction of the sensible and intelligible realms, but also applies this
assumption to the text, so that the ‘business which God has given the
sons of man to be busy with’ is read not as ordinary everyday business,
but as the task of rehabilitating the mind for knowledge of God, and
the gift from God is not to eat and drink and see good from one’s toil,
but rather the ability to attain knowledge which goes beyond the
perception of the sensible.
In the Scholia on Job Evagrius also demonstrates this assumption:
8.21: ‘He shall fill the true mouth with laughter.’

Instead of this, ‘He shall fill the intellect with knowledge’.179
Evagrius introduces his noetic interpretation with ‘instead of this’, as if

superimposing or substituting the intelligible referent for the ordinary.
He cannot read this verse as indicating that God makes people laugh.
Rather, the gift is knowledge for the intellect. Also, in interpreting the
following verse, Evagrius does not read the passage to mean that the
strength of wisdom is twice as strong as the strength of the speaker’s
enemies, but rather to indicate the same twofold nature of wisdom he
has postulated elsewhere:
11.6: ‘Then he will announce to you the strength of

wisdom, since it is double those which are against you.’
14: He has called ‘double’ that of his wisdom which is
conceivable and that which is not; or, not only in his
perceptible works but also in his intelligible ones is his
wisdom contemplated.’180
179 Evagr. Pont., schol. Job 11.6 (fragm.) (Casiday, 2006, 126, CPG 2458 b).
180 Ibid.
The double strength of wisdom consists of the conceivable and

perceptible on the one hand, and that which is not conceivable and
which is intelligible on the other.
Also in the Commentary on the Psalms, Evagrius does not see the
mention of a sword as indicating physical force as a punishment for
refusal to convert, but rather as an ‘intelligible [...] spiritual word’ which
separates the soul from the body and vice from ignorance:
7.13: If you will not be converted he will brandish his sword.

6: The intelligible sword is the spiritual word (λόγος πνευµατικός)
separating soul from body, or from vice or ignorance.181
Just as we have seen in noetic exegesis in the Kephalaia Gnostika, Evagrius

here also introduces his noetic interpretation by replacing a term in the
verse with an intelligible alternative:
Ps 16:9–10 They have shut up their fat:

4. The intelligible fat is the coarseness which, on account
of vices, descends upon the ἡγεµονικόν. 182
The referent is the noncorporeal state which can effect a part of the soul.
The word fat cannot be taken purely metaphorically to mean wealth or
181 Evagr. Pont., ps. 5.13 (Dysinger, 2005).
182 Evagr. Pont., ps. 16.9–10 (Dysinger, 2005).

meat or flesh, because for Evagrius the text is not about material things
like wealth or meat. It is about the spiritual and moral life and is a tool
for perceiving intelligible things, so that is what ‘the intelligible fat’
refers to.
In sum, the manner in which a particular metaphysical state of
affairs is attached to the exegetical project brings to the surface another
cluster of interpretive assumptions about what a text is believed to refer
to or to be able to refer to and what the point of reading is: reading is not
a way to collect information or trace the linguistic structures which had
previously been generated and deposited in writing by an author. Nor is
the text a means by which an author may communicate a series of facts
to the reader. Rather, because (among other things) the revelatory status
of the text entails that it has an intelligible referent and therefore requires
the reader to exercise discernment and skillful noetic perception to access
the intelligible significance behind the ordinary, historical, or everyday
referent, reading or interpreting becomes a spiritual discipline or
philosophical exercise whose mastery is proved by the ability of the
reader to penetrate the surface meaning of the text and perceive the
higher reality beyond it. The belief in an intelligible referent is not, to our
sample commentators, equivalent to a belief that all passages from all
texts admit of or require a noetic interpretation. At the same time, it is
closely linked to their belief that certain texts, those to whom the status
of revered tradition and the function of revelatory media was granted or
assumed, contained the potential to provide access to intelligible truth if
noetic exegesis was applied appropriately to particular passages.
Without this metaphysical state of affairs being presumed and the text
and its referents being oriented around it, noetic exegesis would be
something completely different, and the revelatory potential of the text
established in the previous chapter could, for example, have resulted in
oracular readings about worldly affairs and would have played a
completely different role as a social act, serving as a means of political
subversion, perhaps, rather than serving to cultivate the reader mentally
and spiritually. Assumptions about whether the surface meaning of the
text and its deeper meaning are identical or separate, and about where
one should look for the deeper meaning if it is separate, and how it
relates to the surface meaning, are all vital in defining what
interpretation consists of and what it can be used for.
Ordinary Language and Perfect Knowledge: The Paradox of Written Revelation
Noetic exegetes’ assumptions about the metaphysical state of affairs

which obtained in the world not only resulted in the orientation of the
text and its referents to the categories of sensible and intelligible, but also
brought with it epistemological issues. If the surface meaning of the text
corresponded to the sensible realm and its higher referent to the
intelligible one, the text itself became a junction of the sensible and
intelligible inasmuch as it, a physical thing composed of human
language, was expected to function as a vessel of divine revelation. At
the same time, the reader, like any human being, also constituted an
intersection of the sensible and the intelligible inasmuch as a human is

composed of a sensible physical body and also a mind. While the
complexities of the relevant view of the mind and their application to
noetic exegesis will be discussed in detail in Chapter Four, it is here
sufficient to note that the mind was not conceived of as a physical organ
located in the head, but as a sort of abstract spark which had an
intelligible origin and was capable of intelligible knowledge. This
assembly of ambivalent elements (sensible and intelligible referents for
the same passage, intelligible revelation encased in sensible human
language, an intelligible mind in a sensible human body) and their
interactions with each other, are indeed complex. However, it is
precisely because of the metaphysical ambivalence seen in being human
and in reading a revelatory text, that the interaction between reader and
text, when structured as in noetic exegesis, supplied a solution to the
problem of striving for intelligible knowledge while in an embodied
state and through a text composed of human language, by fully
exploiting the ambiguity and ambivalence inherent in this construct.
Just as the text could be read either on the sensible surface or in terms of
its noetic referent, and the world could be perceived either as a jumble of
physical objects or as the symbolic revelation of a divine creator, so also
the mind could be asked to think in different ways, adapting itself either
to sensible or to intelligible objects.
Since we have established that noetic exegesis includes the
assumption on the part of our commentators that traditional texts
contained and concealed divine revelation, and have just shown how the
higher significance of the text is assumed to be located in the intelligible

realm, it is clear that the ability of ordinary language to communicate or
transmit intelligible truths is highly relevant to the noetic commentator,
since his task is to extract intelligible truth from a text written in
apparently quite ordinary language. One can see how these interpreters
feel it necessary to read the text in a manner which does not depend on
ordinary language and its referents in the sensible world. The plain
meaning of the text cannot be depended on to render revelation, since
the revelation is intelligible and since ordinary language is inadequate to
the task of accurately reflecting intelligible truths.
A view of language as something belonging to the realm of
becoming (i.e. the sensible realm), something changeable, temporary, a
matter of mere convention, and therefore unreliable as a source of truth
or true knowledge had existed for some time prior to the period under
examination here and appears in philosophical and exegetical works as
early as Plato. The mistrust of language as a satisfactory source of
knowledge is apparent in Platonic reservations about ordinary
language.183 This view is already present in Philo as well, who locates
language in the sensible realm, where everything which can be perceived
with the senses is only able to render unclear, unreliable, provisional
knowledge. If certain and reliable knowledge is to be attained, this can
only be done by contemplating the intelligibles with the mind, not by
183 Cf. Pl., smp. 205 b–c on the ambiguity of terms and Plato’s Epistle Pl., ep. 7.341 c
on teachings which cannot be communicated from teacher to student in words.
perceiving things, including spoken or written words, in the sensible

realm with the physical senses.184
Neoplatonist views of language as a mediator between the human
and the divine and as a thing which ‘has no existence outside the sublunary
world characterised by change and by time’ are also active in the larger
cultural context of our commentators. 185 Plotinus postulates a chain of
relationships of archetype and image connecting spoken language,
‘language’ existing in the soul, and language as it exists in the mind:
For as the language (λόγος) spoken by the voice is an
imitation (µίµηµα) of that in the soul, in the same way
that one in the soul is an imitation of the one in the other

(hypostasis, mind); likewise, just as the language
pronounced by the lips is fragmented (into words and
sentences) in contrast to that in the soul, so is the one in
the soul (which is the interpreter of that previous
language) fragmented by comparison with the one that
precedes it.186
Thus when language is expected to express noetic or intelligible things, it

can only do so in an inadequate and fragmentary manner. If language is
184 Philo, post. 167; op. 69 ff.; praem. 36 ff.
185 Lamberton, 1986, 88, 171.
186 Lamberton, 1986, 87–88 quoting Plot., enn. 1.2,3,27–30.

to adequately reflect the stuff of intellect, it would have to allow direct

apprehension despite being an image, by being a perfect image, an
image which can be relied on because it is clearly and dependably linked
to the higher referent it is used to indicate.187 This is where the need for
an extraordinary type of reading (noetic exegesis) links into the concept
of the providential link between the sensible and intelligible realms in
the assumption of an extraordinary type of language, namely that used
in various passages of revelatory texts.
In Proclus, the functions and capacities of human language are
attached to the various mental organs then believed to compose the
human being, namely the psyche and the νοῦς. Normally language is
proper to the psyche, whose mental capacities are more limited and
more reliant on discursive processes. When the νοῦς involves itself with
language, although it does not necessarily need to, it is able to do so in a

manner that allows for the reliable identification of the intelligible things
represented by the words.188 Proclus also does not consider it possible
for divine beings to directly express themselves in language, so that
where revelation of higher realities takes place in the form of text or
language, some degree of fragmentation and reduction to levels
187 M.R. Alfino, Plotinus and the Possibility of Non-Propositional Thought, in

Ancient Philosophy 8 (1989), 273–284 (282–283), referring to Plot., enn. 5.8,5.
188 Lamberton, 1986, 166, referring to Procl., in Cra. 17.8–14.

perceptible to humans must be assumed.189 Thus a perception of a text

or any piece of discourse as of divine origin or as having a revelatory
function automatically implies that the language involved is not
normal. Wherever language is asked to refer to what Proclus considers
reality (the intelligible realm, perfect being, etc.), it inevitably falls short
of accurately representing its referent.190 Noetic exegesis solves this
problem by overriding the fragmentary discursive nature of ordinary
language and reading it as extraordinary language which does indeed
refer to the intelligible, albeit in an oblique manner which requires
special skill to perceive. As the following examples show, this view of
ordinary language is inextricably connected to the valuation of non-
propositional forms of thought and of the special functions of the νοῦς
which will be explicated in more detail in Chapter Four.

This established philosophical attitude is also reflected in our
corpus of commentaries and exegetical works. A passage from Origen’s
Peri Archon presents the fact that language is diverse and subject to
human convention as evidence that it is not a reliable source of truth:
189 Lamberton, 1986, 169: ‘Direct expression on the part of a god in human
language is finally an impossibility, though perhaps as early as Xenocrates
demonology had developed to the point where ‘divine’ utterance could be
understood to mean the use by a lowly providential daimon of human speech in
order to express in fragmented form for our discursive perceptions truths
emanating from a higher plane. Likewise, as we shall see, the highest form of
poetry comes close to communicating experience on this level.’
190 Lamberton, 1986, 170–171.

Therefore, everyone who is concerned with truth should

be little concerned with names and words [1Tim 1:4],
because different nations have different customs about
words. And he should pay more attention to what is
meant than to how it is expressed in words, especially in
the case of such great and difficult matters. 191
Concern with truth is not, to Origen, compatible with excessive concern

for ‘names and words’. A person who is concerned with truth should
attend to ‘what is meant’ instead. In cases involving ‘great and difficult
matters’, Origen considers it particularly appropriate not to concentrate
one’s attention on ordinary words. This reflects Origen’s feeling that there
is a discrepancy between the capacities of ordinary words and ‘the great
and difficult matters’ which are expressed in them, and on a deeper level
of assumption, the idea that variety and diversity are less communicative
of truth than are unity and consistency. For Origen, ‘what is meant’ is
something perfectly single, which is only being expressed in language at
all as a concession to the limitations of human ability.
Origen sees the inadequacy of language for explaining the noetic
content of the Scriptures not only as determining the manner in which the
‘divine writings’ should be interpreted, but also as necessitating the use of
‘simple apprehension’, a particular type of non-propositional thought
which is part of the contemporary psychology which we will examine in
the following chapter on how noetic exegesis was performed. Origen

contrasts ‘the meanness of the language’ of the Gospel with ‘the divine
power of the Holy Spirit’, and ‘certain things’ with what it would be
possible to ‘adequately explain by any human language’:
Our aim has been to show that there are certain things, the
meaning of which it is impossible adequately to explain by
any human language, but which are made clear rather
through simple apprehension than through any power of
words. This rule must control our interpretation even of the
divine writings, in order that what is said therein may be
estimated in accordance not with the meanness of the
language but with the divine power of the Holy Spirit who
inspired their composition.192
Origen even explicitly states that ‘this rule must control our
interpretation even of the divine writings’, the rule he refers to being
assent to the proposition that certain things cannot be adequately
explained in human language but instead require ‘simple apprehension’.
This for Origen is what controls proper interpretation of Scripture, given
that Scripture consists of divine writings inspired by the Holy Spirit. Once
again, the approach to the written revelation by means of ‘simple
apprehension’ or attention to ‘what is meant’ is the way that Origen
192 Or., princ. 4.3,15 (Butterworth, 1985, 312). The Greek text of this passage is lost,
so that a gloss on ‘simple apprehension’ cannot be provided. This term
suggests the type of direct non-propositional comprehension of intelligible
things which is the highest type of noetic skill and which is discussed in depth
in the following chapter.
proposes to resolve the clash he perceives between the divine origins of

the text, their inspired status, and everything that entails for him, and the
‘meanness of the language’ in which they are expressed.
In a fragment from his Commentary on the Psalms, Origen also
expresses a belief in the possibility and necessity of relating to the
content of Scripture in a manner ‘which soars above the signs of
doubtful letters’:
Even if you do not know how you can give thanks to

God in a worthy manner, you should still exult with the
clear voice of a singing heart which soars above the signs
of doubtful letters and express the mysterious and
inexpressible (ἀπορίαν) despite the confusion of
interpretations. If you soar above the sounds of the

words, if you keep within you the proclamation made
with the mouth, if you can sing praise to God with just
the spirit, your spirit, which does not know how to
express its movements in words, because the word in
you cannot carry the inexpressible and divine meaning
of the Spirit- then you are singing praise to God.193
193 Or., ps. fragm. 80.1 (J.B. Pitra, ASSSP 3, 135). Quoted in Ch.J. King, Origen on the
Song of Songs as the Spirit of Scripture. The Bridegroom’s Perfect Marriage Song,
Oxford 2005, 146; also cited in H.U. von Balthasar, Origen. Spirit and Fire,
Washington 1984, 107.
Ordinary human language is not only inadequate as a vessel for divine

revelation, but also for the expression of ‘thanks to God’. Origen
opposes ‘the signs of doubtful letters’ to ‘the clear voice of a singing
heart’ which can ‘express the mysterious and inexpressible’, a purely
spiritual form of ‘praise to God’. The purely spiritual, mysterious, and
inexpressible is independent of expression in ordinary language. What
is intriguing in this passage is that Origen seems to be conflating the act
of reading (through his references to ‘the signs of doubtful letters’ and
‘the confusions of interpretations’ and the need to ‘soar above the sounds
of the words’) and the act of ‘singing praise to God’, suggesting that the
need to apply the human soul and mind to the task of reading was more
than a mere logical result of the whole framework of assumptions
driving noetic exegesis, but also had concrete effects in the practice of
reading, by making it into a meditative and spiritual act.
Like Didymus and Evagrius, Origen treats the presentation of
divine truths ‘after the manner of human speech’ as a concession to
human limitations:
The Divine Scripture expresses these things after the

manner of human speech, for the sake of those who cannot
understand them unless they are thus couched in terms to
which they are accustomed. The words in which we hear
them, therefore, will be well known and familiar; but our
perception of them, if we give them the perception they

deserve, will be of things divine and incorporeal.194
Despite this concession in the delivery of ‘these things’ in words which

are ‘well known and familiar’, Origen considers an appropriate way of
approaching the text as a reader to require a perception which is ‘of
things divine and incorporeal’– in other words, intelligible or noetic.
The concession is not an adaptation, but rather a sort of bait inviting the
reader to give the words the special sort of ‘perception they deserve’.
A final text from Origen gives a noetic interpretation which itself
refers to the noetic contents of Scripture contained in ordinary language:
But what need is there to multiply proof texts, when

those who will can easily see for themselves from many
Scripture passages, that gold is applied to the intellect
and mind, whereas silver is referred only to language and
the power of speech? 195
Origen considers it something that anyone who really wants to can see
for himself that mere ‘language and the power of speech’ is referred to
as silver in Scripture, being something less valuable, while what is most
valuable and referred to as gold is ‘the intellect and mind’. This same
194 Or., comm. in cant. 3.9 (R.P. Lawson [ed.], Origen. The Song of Songs. Commentary
and Homilies, ACW 26, New York 1957, 201).

interpretation of silver and gold is also very frequent in Didymus and

well expresses the commentators’ opinion on the relationship between
reading on the level of ordinary language to reading on a noetic level.
Both are valuable, but clearly achieving a reading which accesses the
inner mind of Scripture and which both applies and cultivates the
reader’s mind is far more valuable.
In Gregory of Thaumaturgus’ speech of thanks to Origen, he
expresses a similar view of human language as inadequate for the expression
of higher truths to what we have seen in Origen’s exegetical works:
But now we shall fill up the measure of folly, or rather we

already filled it up when we dared to enter with
unwashed feet (as the saying goes) into ears which the
divine word itself does not visit shod in the stout leather
of riddling and obscure phrases, as in the ears of most
men, but entering barefoot (as it were), clear and manifest,
it settles there. But we, bringing our human words like dirt
or mud, have dared to dump them on ears which have
been trained to listen to divine and pure sounds.196
Gregory finds fault with himself for having ‘dared to dump’ human
words ‘on ears which have been trained to listen to divine and pure
sounds’. He characterises Origen as some one who, because of his
196 Gr. Thaum., pan. 2.18 (M. Slusser [ed.], St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. Life and Works,
FaCh 98, Washington 1998, 94).
spiritual maturity, has been privileged to be visited by the divine word

‘entering barefoot [...] clear and manifest’, while other people receive the
‘divine word [...] shod in the stout leather of riddling and obscure
phrases’.This is especially interesting for our topic, because it implies
simultaneously that divine truth can be communicated without human
words, and that the use of ‘riddling and obscure phrases’, such as the
enigmas contained in Scripture, which Origen sees as requiring a great
concentration and effort in order to perceive their noetic interpretation,
are a result of the difficulty of communicating divine things through
language: not ordinary language is necessary, but some manner of
‘riddling and obscure phrases’. That is, a reading of the revelation of ‘the
divine word itself’ as ordinary language will not manifest anything
intelligible, but only a reading which treats the language as ‘riddling
and obscure phrases’ will provoke the search for intelligible referents.
Didymus’ thought on the adequacy of language for reflecting
intelligible truths is directly and explicitly linked to his categorisation of
the possible referents of given terms used in Scripture as either sensible
or intelligible and his beliefs about the type of language used for each
type of referent.
‘Taste and see, that the Lord is good.’ How often have we
said that the sensible and corporeal things are like this:
Each thing is only that which it is. For example a
pomegranate is nothing other than a pomegranate, and
so also with bread. But for the food which nourishes the
inner man, one uses various images. Thus it is called

light, or is also called well, or also bread and meat, true
nourishment. So he says: ‘taste’ with the invisible gums
of the inner man, ‘and see, how good the Lord is!’ Just
taste and comprehend, that he is nourishing, see the well
of righteousness, the well of goodness!197
Referents within the sensible realm have one name each: each thing is
simply what it is, and the terms used to refer to them are simple and
unambiguous. But referents within the invisible, eternal, and intelligible
realm may be referred to by several different terms in the text. Thus, if a
text is believed to refer to the intelligible realm, it automatically does not
mean what it appears to mean, because words used for intelligible
referents are always ambiguous. The terms of Scripture are being
stretched and required to do more than they ordinarily can when they
are expected to refer to things in the intelligible realm such as the true
nourishment of the soul. The same differentiation of ordinary
unambiguous language referring to the sensible realm and ambiguous or
ambivalent (homonymous) terms being used of the intelligible is
expressed elsewhere in an instance of magnificently circular reasoning:
‘In the middle of my belly’. In the realm of intelligible

things (ἐπὶ τῶν νοητῶν), different words refer to one and
197 Didym., ps. 33.9 (M. Gronewald, Didymos der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar III zu Ps
29–34, PTA 8, Bonn 1969, 245).
the same thing. I call the sheep intelligible which follows

the true Shepherd. This sheep is also called light. When
I was once asked by a philosopher if I could prove from
the Scriptures that the soul is incorporeal, I said the
following: Each word which signifies a body, signifies
only that one about which it is spoken. For example, the
ordinary (αἰσθητή) vine is nothing other than a vine and
the corporeal stone nothing other than a stone. But when

various things which have different meanings are spoken
about one and the same being, then it is clear that that is
an intelligible being. Thus we also say of God that he is
incorporeal, because he is called light, fire, spirit, and
well. These cannot be one thing in a corporeal sense, but
only in a figurative sense (κατ᾽ ἐπινοίας). There are only
such figures (ἐπίνοιαι) for intelligible things. So when the
human or the soul is called light, but also sheep and plant
—for the soul is also called plant and sheep—it cannot be
all of these things in a physical manner, and thus we are
dealing with an intelligible being. So when you hear the
words heart, thought, belly, or well, do not understand
that literally. The container of the soul, in which it takes
in spiritual nourishment, is called belly. And since it also
has the capacity to beget, I take this belly sometimes as

ingesting nourishment, sometimes as begetting.198
Didymus can only argue that the soul is incorporeal because it is

referred to by different terms in the text because he assumes a) that the
soul is in fact incorporeal/intelligible and b) that the biblical text offers
information referring to it. His reply to the philosopher is basically ‘the
soul is incorporeal because it is referred to by various terms in the
Scripture and in Scripture the use of various terms for the same thing
indicates an incorporeal referent’. Comparing this to the similar passage
preceding it, we may also note that the ambiguity in the relationship
between intelligible things and words is established in a necessarily
circular manner: an intelligible thing is referred to by multiple terms, so
if multiple terms refer to the same thing in Scripture, we know that that
thing is intelligible. Didymus does not specify, however, how one
knows what any term or group of terms refers to, or what particular
thing is being referred to when the terms heart, thought, or belly all refer
to the same thing. While this may be irritating to the analytical mind, it
is informative to a historical one, since the fact that Didymus can muster
these pseudo-arguments without objections from his audience suggests
that his audience is operating according to the same assumptions and
thus does not recognise, or is not bothered by, the circularity involved.
In several passages Didymus indicates a belief, similar to what we
just observed in Origen, that the mixing of intelligible truths with
198 Didym., ps. 21.25 (Doutreleau / Gesché / Gronewald, 1969, 139–141).

ordinary language is a providential instance of didactic reduction,

carried out in order to make intelligible things comprehensible bit by bit
to the human mind:
And because humans could not understand (the wisdom of

God), it was mixed with human words, so that they became
able to comprehend the ‘mixture’, since they cannot
understand the (teachings) of wisdom in unveiled form.199
Human words provide a ‘veil’ covering over pure divine wisdom which
Didymus considers to have been necessary ‘because humans could not
understand the wisdom of God’. Again, this concession is a means of
making divine wisdom comprehensible to embodied human beings,
and the need for this ‘veiled form’ arises out of the presumed
metaphysical gap between embodied human beings and the intelligible
truth represented by divine wisdom, as well as the inadequacy of
ordinary human language to communicate it. This passage is also
suggestive in its image of Scripture not as a record of the work of God in
history or of instruction in the path to salvation, but as a mixture of
divine wisdom and ‘human words’. This implies that the text is a sort
of metaphysical hybrid and that noetic exegesis is a means of exploiting
that hybrid status in order to gain access to intelligible knowledge by
means of the words mixed in with it.
199 Didym., Job 5.26 (Henrichs, (II) 1968, 121).

In his Commentary on the Psalms, Didymus similarly interprets

wine being mixed with water as a metaphor for the same sort of didactic
reduction expressed above. He does so in a tangent drawn from Psalm
22:5 (‘You have prepared a table for me before my enemies’) which leads
him to discuss a verse from Proverbs 9:2 in which a table is prepared by
personified wisdom:
Further she also ‘mixed their wine’. She added water, so

that we, who are not able to ingest it unmixed, could
receive mixed wine. There are certain unspoken thoughts
which [...], These are supposed to be wine. If some one is
able to convey these in a spoken teaching, he has mixed
them, by adding in the water of the perceptable (αἰσθητόν).
(These are) the παραδείγµατα of Scripture, the teachings
which are presented in parables.200
Conveying ‘certain unspoken thoughts’ in ‘spoken teaching’ is like

mixng wine with water. Didymus specifies that the ‘certain unspoken
thoughts’ are presented as parables (another term for figurative or non-
literal language in general) by adding in ‘the water of perceptibility’. If
the relevant interpretive assumptions regarding the correspondence
between the text and its referent and the sensible and intelligible realms
outlined above have been understood correctly, then ‘the water of
zu Ps 22–26:10, PTA 4, Bonn 1968, 27.
perceptibility’ is the same as something in the sensible realm which is

the same as human language, while ‘certain unspoken thoughts’ is the
same as something in the intelligible realm which is the same as the
noetic significance of the text.
In Evagrius, noetic exegesis is performed by means of applying a
type of contemplation he terms θεωρία φυσική to the text of Scripture. A
primary goal in this phase of spiritual development (θεωρία φυσική is
preliminary to pure, imageless contemplation or θεολογική) is to properly
manage language, concepts, and any manner of mental images and use
them as a means of detecting divine realities rather than being distracted
or seduced by them. Language, like mental concepts, is one of the
‘images’ Evagrius expects the monk to employ as a contemplative tool
rather than focussing on it itself. Thus the language of Scripture,
understood literally, does not move the monk forward in his
contemplative journey. It only serves this purpose when treated as an
image of higher realities.
Evagrius explains this progression in an extended analogy
between contemplation and the acquisition of literacy (ep. mel. 11–14).
The ‘small letters’ of creation reveal the wisdom of the Creator, but
contemplation of rational beings (first order images closely related to
God) is like reading in capital letters, whence one recognises Christ and
the Holy Spirit. This is a very revealing analogy for θεωρία φυσική—
reading involves looking at physical things which have absolutely no

meaning in and of themselves, but are invested with meaning because
of the intention of the writer and a common system of comprehension

between writer and reader. Looking at the letters themselves goes
nowhere, but comprehending them within the symbolic system of
which they are a part reveals meaning in the words formed and, on a
higher level, comprehension of the entire ‘text’ of creation or Scripture.
Θεωρία φυσική is like learning to read because it is a matter of recognising
things as images and pursuing their significance rather than remaining

in a state of illiterate stupor.
Evagrius, like Proclus and Plotinus, also solves the problem of
the necessary fragmentation which occurs when intelligibles are
attached to images by postulating the existence of perfect images, which
are not fragmented or separated from their origin except as a providential
means of allowing human beings to comprehend intelligible realities,
which they, while in the embodied state, must normally do by means of
images. Evagrius puts forward Christ, the logos, and the νοῦς all as perfect
images, so that all are basically ontologically identical with each other.
This, in the context of noetic exegesis, means that the logos of God which
is deposited in the text is the same as the νοῦς by means of which and for
the sake of which the reader is attempting to comprehend the higher

intelligible meaning of the text. Here again being and knowledge coalesce
and thereby provide even an embodied human mind with a way of
comprehending the intelligibles whose specific dynamics will be
examined in the following chapter.
Conclusions
The above discussion has identified a second cluster of interpretive

assumptions, centred around two broad quasi-philosophical beliefs on
the basis of which noetic exegesis, given the goals it was assumed to
serve and the revelatory or oracular status the text was assumed to have,
was perceived as necessary. The belief in the structuring of the world
around the categories of phenomenal and noumenal or sensible and
intelligible, along with the orientation of the text and its higher
significance around these categories, is one of the grounds for noetic
exegesis. The logic, within the system, is perfectly coherent. If the
ordinary meaning of the text is in the realm of the sensible and its higher
noetic significance is in the realm of the intelligible, and if perceiving the
noetic significance allows access to the divine revelation assumed to be
deposited in the text (and is thus of great value to spiritual and mental
development), then it is necessary to read the text in such a way as to be
able to perceive the intelligible aspect of it. Noetic exegesis is the
manner of reading which allows for perception of the intelligibles
through particular passages of the text, thus noetic exegesis is necessary.
Noetic exegesis is necessary since without it one would not be able to
access the intelligible content of traditional texts.
The second belief addressed here, that of the inadequacy of
ordinary language and propositional thought for communicating
knowledge of the intelligibles, similarly constitutes a driving force in
noetic exegesis. The logic, again internally quite coherent, goes
something like this: Ordinary language is an inadequate means of

communicating knowledge of the intelligibles. The texts with which the
commentators are concerned are composed of language. The texts, due
to their revelatory nature, communicate intelligible truth at least
intermittently, which cannot, due to the ontological discrepancy between
language and the intelligible, be accessed by means of plain grammatical
comprehension of the language in which they are encased. Thus, the
texts must include language which admits of extraordinary
interpretation. Extraordinary interpretation of the text is achieved by
allowing that where a term or passage refers to the intelligible, it is
ambiguous, as explained in the very instructive case of circular reasoning
in Didymus above. Noetic exegesis, using noetic skill to discern and
perceive the intelligible referent of passages deemed to constitute
extraordinary language, is just such a way of apprehending the
intelligible meaning of the text. Thus, where the interpretive
assumptions set out in this chapter and in the previous chapter hold,
noetic exegesis is necessary. This leaves us with the question of how the
perceived need for noetic exegesis could be satisfied, and how one was
expected to go about extracting the intelligible content from the text.
4
HOW:
THE PERFORMANCE, EMOBODIMENT, AND ACQUISITION
OF NOETIC SKILL
Introduction
In this chapter we turn to the question of how, given the assumptions

just identified regarding the nature of the text and the metaphysical state
of affairs within which it existed, the reader or interpreter was believed
to be able to comprehend the noetic significance of the text.
Unfortunately, the commentators in our sample did not set down a clear,
explicit, and demonstrably consistently applied procedure for how a
noetic interpretation of any given text could be attained, nor are they
themselves particularly structured or consistent in the steps they go
through in order to reach their interpretations. Sometimes, as several
example texts from the previous chapters have shown, a sort of
hortatory comment precedes the interpretation, along the lines of ‘let us
strive to understand the spiritual meaning’, and sometimes there is a
clear announcement that the interpretation about to be delivered is the
spiritual, intelligible, or noetic one.201 Most often, an interpretation is not

characterised or categorised at all, but just delivered, so that Didymus’
students, for example, frequently have to ask what the spiritual
interpretation is, or if that was it that they just heard.202 Similarly, there
is scholarly debate to this day about whether Origen actually applied his
theory of the three senses of Scripture, whether he had any such theory
at all, or whether he actually only works with two senses at least in
201 An example of ‘tagging’ the noetic interpretation explicitly can be found in

Didym., eccl. 2.7 (G. Binder / L. Liesenborghs, Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar
zum Ekklesiastes I.1. Kap. 1.1–2.14, PTA 25, Bonn 1979, 179–181): ‘[...]We can
interpret the words spiritually, since their literal meaning is clear [...]’. Another
typical tag can be observed in the same author, Didym., eccl. 3.14 b (G. Binder,
Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zum Ekklesiastes I.2. PTA 26, Bonn 1983, 111):
‘[...] According to the spiritual and higher sense (πρὸς ἀναγωγὴν [...] διανοίαν) one
can also say the following [...]’.
202 Several such questions appear in the transcripts of Didymus’ lessons on

Ecclesiastes and Psalms. For example, in Didym., eccl. 5.10 a (J. Kramer,
Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zum Ekklesiastes III. Kap. 5–6, PTA 13,
Bonn 1970, 13) the transcript reads: ‘Question: is the allegorical sense mixed
with the literal sense here? Answer: Yes, it is, since many make an effort to
gain a certain amount of education and rejoice in just this ‘supposed
knowledge’. They are satiated by the quantity of this joy [...]’. Further on in
the same passage, there is another question, possibly by the same individual
struggling to understand the difference between spiritual and literal readings:
‘Question: the higher interpretation (τὴν ἀναγωγήν) for ‘what use is courage?’
Answer: Again, I do not say that what is thought courage subjectively is the
true courage of a man, but instead I call courage which is directed toward
unimportant things courage in a non-absolute sense. However, one also
sometimes speaks, imprecisely, of the prudence of a specific man and means
absolute prudence, such as the prudence of Joseph.’ (Didym., eccl. 5.10 bc;
Kramer, 1970, 17). Here it is important to note that Didymus’ answer is
supremely unhelpful in establishing a clear rule for differentiating between
higher and lower levels of interpretation. However, it suggests that, as we
observed in the previous chapter, intelligible things, such as the virtues in
their absolute forms, are appropriate referents for the higher sense of a given
passage, since Didymus answers the request for a higher interpretation by
explaining the difference between incidental and perfect virtue.
practice. 203 Evagrius’ exegetical procedure is uncontroversial, largely

because his writings include almost no discussion of his method of
reaching a given interpretation, as there is in his older contemporary or
in Origen. This being the case, and given the particular goals of this
study, it seems appropriate to avoid any attempt to answer the ‘how’
question with a discussion of technique or procedure. Grappling with
the question of ‘how’ in terms of procedure or technique would require
a shift in perspective away from the beliefs and assumptions of the
interpreters and toward an objectivist, phenomenological examination
of the commentaries. Instead, this chapter is concerned to describe the
way that the commentators themselves believe it possible and proper to
work at perceiving and explaining the intelligible content of the text.
Several studies have been made on the techniques employed by
individual exegetes. Special attention has been given to hermeneutical
procedure in Origen, possibly provoked by his discussion of the
interpretation of the Bible according to various levels of meaning in Peri
Archon Book IV.204 The exegetical technique and terminology of Didymus
the Blind has also been studied, though with lesser frequency.205 Most
203 For a summary of this debate, see the introduction in E.A. Dively Lauro, The
Soul and Spirit of Scripture Within Origen’s Exegesis, The Bible in Ancient
Christianity 3, Leiden 2005.
204 On Philo: I. Christiansen. Die Technik der allegorischen Auslegungswissenschaft bei

Philon von Alexandrien. BGBH 7, Tübingen 1969. On Origen: K.J. Torjesen,
Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis, PTS 28,
Berlin 1986.
205 W. Bienert, Allegoria und Anagoge bei Didymos dem Blinden von Alexandria,
Berlin 1972, and J. Tigcheler, Didyme l’Aveugle et l’Exégèse allegorique. Étude
semantique de quelques termes exégétiques importantes de son commentaire sur
Zacharie, GCP 6, Nijmegen 1977).
recently, Evagrius’ exegetical works have received a rare investigation in

their own right in their role as contemplative tools, but his non-discursive
style resists any attempt to analyse anything like a set technique in his
exegetical writings.206
The scholarly fascination with the puzzle of hermeneutical
procedure or exegetical technique has exposed a large segment of the
sources which constitute our sample to intense scrutiny and has
produced careful and detailed investigations of particular methods,
with discussion of the reasons they were chosen, their origins, and to
what purpose they were applied. However, the analysis of individual
or comparative exegetical techniques, while interesting in and of itself, is
not able to supply answers to questions about the interpreters’
assumptions about the interpretive task overall or why Origen and
Didymus and Evagrius or anyone else considered noetic exegesis a valid
and valuable way of reading at all. The reason for this is not that the
relevant techniques are necessarily always inconsistent or unrecognisable,
but rather that the steps through which an exegete proceeds before
reaching or stating his interpretation are not the primary manifestation of
his interpretive assumptions. These assumptions are reflected in implicit,
unwitting, and passing comments within the commentaries, and in
assertions put forward as obvious.
The question of the means and manner of noetic exegesis will be
addressed in three phases, none of which concern themselves with
technique as such. Each phase concentrates on the question ‘How did
206 L. Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus, Oxford 2005.
noetic exegetes and their readers and hearers believe that it was possible
to comprehend and articulate the noetic significance of the text?’ rather
than ‘What technique, method, or procedure was employed by a specific
exegete in order to reach a given interpretation?’. Given the interpretive
assumptions on the revelatory nature of the text and its intelligible
content already collected, it is possible to stipulate at this point that we
are looking for some means of comprehension which is believed to be
suitable to intelligible truths and which is seen as appropriate for
engagement with a text of divine origin. When we look at interpretive
assumptions which are primarily socially, rather than theoretically
expressed, such as those relating to the person of the exegete, we are also
faced with questions of the interpreter’s identity and role in relation to
the text, its explication, and those receiving the interpretation, and also
with questions of the qualifications which an interpreter was expected to
have to guarantee the legitimacy and validity of his interpretation.
The commentaries frequently reflect the interpreters’
assumptions about the mental equipment available to the reader and
what part of this equipment could appropriately be used in noetic
exegesis. What is observable is a particular psychology, not uncommon
among contemporaries, which postulates a part of the mind, the νοῦς,
which is capable of perceiving higher truths beyond the restrictions of

ordinary language or discursive thought. This mental equipment,
because of its capacity for a special form of perception, was the
optimum tool in comprehending noetic truths contained in the text. As
will be seen, however, its relationship with and application to the act of
noetic exegesis is complex. This is not least because it appears to be the

equipment needed to perform noetic exegesis, while practicing noetic
exegesis is thought to have a purifying, exercising, and cultivating effect
on the νοῦς itself, and to be part of the overall intellectual project of
returning the νοῦς to a state of fitness for perfect knowledge. Also, the
functionality of the νοῦς is dependent on the orderly functioning of the
lower sections of the person, namely the body and the psyche, so that
discipline with regard to the impulses and appetites of the body and
emotions must be achieved before the νοῦς can be expected to work
properly. This in turn explains why noetic exegesis so often appears in
conjunction with ascetic and semi-ascetic social contexts, and with an
educational curriculum dedicated to the overall moral and mental
formation of the student.
It is also necessary to examine ‘how’ noetic exegesis was
performed not only in the sense of ‘by what means’ but also in the sense
of ‘in what manner’. The commentaries suggest that the interpreter was
understood to be working or reading in the manner of a philosopher or
spiritual guide, because the interpretation of a text believed to contain
divine wisdom required him to conform his mind to divine things, and
also to manifest a high level of moral, spiritual, and/or ascetic skill. Just
as the belief that the text was a medium of divine revelation brought
with it a view of the author or writer as a visionary or prophet, so also
the belief that the intelligible content of the text can and should be
accessed by the application of the νοῦς to it brings with it a view of the
reader or interpreter as a philosopher or a person engaged in a

spiritually excellent and exceptional activity. Thus to some extent the
characterisation of the highly-developed noetic interpreter or teacher as

an athlete of extraordinary mental skill and his role as spiritual guide is
a systemic consequence for the practical performance of noetic exegesis
of the belief in the νοῦς as the appropriate tool for noetic exegesis. This
explains why we see Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius engaged both in

exegesis and in the spiritual guidance and intellectual development of
their students. The co-occurrence of the production of exegetical works
and activity as a spiritual guide or philosophical teacher is not
coincidental, but rather the latter is a by-product of the assumptions
driving the former. Similarly, if the νοῦς was the appropriate tool for
noetic exegesis, and if this exegesis was performed in the manner of a

philosopher or spiritual guide, how could an individual develop the
necessary noetic skill and ability to read contemplatively or
philosophically? How could his interpretation be recognised as valid and
legitimate? The final section of this chapter answers these questions by
presenting the larger curriculum of mental and moral formation of
which noetic exegesis was a part, and whose object was the cultivation
of noetic skill. In short, this chapter constitutes a fuller explanation of
why this particular way of reading and interpreting can and should be
called noetic.
Contemporary Psychology and the Cognitive Equipment Used in Noetic Exegesis
Just as the cultural context of an interpretive community determines

what the nature and status of the text is held to be, the same principle
applies to the question of the proper means of interpreting the text and
the sort of equipment that is considered appropriate to that task. If the
text is a record of a fixed structure of meaning unambiguously recorded
by the author, all one needs to interpret it appropriately is a well-
developed knowledge of the relevant language, common sense, and
adequate information about the author. If the text is an ambiguous
construct whose meaning is undetermined and open, then all one needs
to interpret it is sensitivity to one’s own responses while reading the text
and the ability to express them. For interpreters engaged in noetic
exegesis, assumptions about the nature and status of the text, as well as
about the inadequacy of ordinary language and propositional thought
for conveying its contents, indicated that a special type of mental
equipment would be needed. That is, if the text is a vessel of divine
revelation encased in language with which it is ontologically
incompatible, then the type of mental equipment applied must be able
to cope with the ontologically ambivalent and to perceive the sort of
thing that the divine reveals.
While there was academic debate about the precise components
of the soul and mind and their relationship to each other, in all the
commentators examined here, as well as in the thought of other late
antique intellectuals, we can observe a psychology which postulates a
mental organ known as the νοῦς (usually unsatisfactorily translated as
‘mind’ or ‘intellect’). The νοῦς was widely described as a part of the mind
left over from original union with the One which, if rehabilitated from
the effects of its involvement with the material world, the body, and the
disordered psyche, could again achieve knowledge of the intelligibles.
The νοῦς was believed to be able to think without images, concepts, or
language and was thus the appropriate tool for comprehending the
intelligibles, the One, the Trinity, God or anything considered beyond
conceptualisation and expression in ordinary language. This special

differentiation of the νοῦς began with Plato, who distinguished between
the mental processes of νόησις and διάνοια.207 The important distinction
for our purposes is that διάνοια uses sensible things as images, where as
νόησις is a mental process which is able to proceed without images and
directly engage with the forms.208 Clearly, both processes are involved
in noetic exegesis, with νόησις being an ideal goal, and διάνοια the greater
share of what would actually be done while searching for intelligible

knowledge by means of a written text in the embodied state. Philo
largely followed the Platonic model, assigning the νοῦς to knowledge of
incorporeal things while the senses supplied knowledge of the physical
207 Pl., r. 6.511 b 1–2. On the νοῦς specifically, see also Pl., Phd. 97–99 for the cosmic
role of νοῦς in Phaedo, Republic 6–7 for in-depth discussion of νοῦς, and Timaeus
for discussion of the role of νοῦς in the creation of the world, which we will meet
again in discussion of Evagrius.
208 I. Mueller, Mathematical Method and Philosophical Truth, in R. Kraut (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge 1999, 170–199.
world which should be processed inductively.209 Plotinus was also

preoccupied with the function and capacity of the νοῦς, which he held to
be infallible, unlike lower parts of the mind or soul which were

dependent on discursive processes. 210 The belief in the existence and
specific uses of this particular mental equipment was among the
assumptions current in the cultural context in which the interpretive
community performing noetic exegesis functioned.
Turning to our sample commentators, we can observe a very
similar idea about what the νοῦς is, where it originates, and its ultimate
end as was found in the larger intellectual culture of the time:
We must see, therefore, whether perchance, as we said

was made clear by its very name, the psyche or soul was
so called from its having cooled from the fervour of the
righteous and from its participation in the divine fire, and
yet has not lost the power of restoring itself to that condition
of fervour in which it was at the beginning. Some such fact
the prophet appears to point to when he says, ‘Turn unto thy
rest, O my soul’. All these considerations seem to show that
when the mind (mens) departed from its original condition
and dignity it became or was termed a soul, and if ever it is
209 Philo, op. 17.53, and Philo, som. 6.30.
210 Plot., enn. 5.1,11; 5.5,1. See also M. Alfino, Plotinus and the Possibility of Non-
Propositional Thought, in Ancient Philosophy 8 (1989), 273–284, for discussion of
the connection between Plotinus’ quest for perfect noetic knowledge and his
reservations about the capacity of language to serve this quest.
restored and corrected it returns to the condition of being a

mind (mens).211
This passage explains equivocation on the issue of the precise functions

and capacities of the psyche as compared with the νοῦς. The psyche in
Origen, as in Evagrius, is treated as a sort of prolapse of the νοῦς which
occurred when the νοῦς fell away from ‘the fervour of the righteous and
its participation in the divine fire’, so that the highest part of what
appears as psyche in the embodied individual was originally νοῦς. What
is key in this passage is that Origen explicitly defines the proper end of
the mind as he sees it, namely to be ‘restored and corrected’ and
returned to perfect ‘participation in the divine fire’. The full
implications of this view for the practice of noetic exegesis are manifold,
since noetic exegesis is performed as part of the larger project of
rehabilitating the νοῦς and ultimately making it capable of returning to
its original state. The view of the νοῦς as the proper organ for perceiving
intelligible realities is also clearly reflected in the following:
In further confirmation and explanation of what we have

said about the mind or soul (mente vel anima), as being
superior to all bodily nature, the following remarks may
be added. Each of the bodily senses is appropriately
211 Or., princ. 2.8,3 (G.W. Butterworth [ed.], Origen. On First Principles. Being
Koetschau’s Text of the ‘De Principiis’, Gloucester 1985, 125).
connected with a material substance towards which the

particular sense is directed. For instance, sight is
connected with colour, shape and size (etc. [...]) But it is
clear to all that the sense of mind is far superior to the
senses above mentioned. Does it not then appear absurd
that these inferior senses should have substances
connected with them, as objects towards which their
activities are directed, whereas this faculty, the sense of
mind, which is superior to them, should have no
substance whatever connected with it, and that this
faculty of an intellectual nature should be a mere accident
arising out of bodies? Those who assert this are
undoubtedly speaking in disparaging terms of that
substance which is the better part of their own nature;
nay more, they do wrong even to God himself in
supposing that he can be understood through a bodily
nature, since according to them that which can be
understood or perceived through a body is itself a body;
and they are unwilling to have it understood that there is
a certain affinity between the mind and God, of whom
the mind is an intellectual image (mens intellectualis
imago), and that by reason of this fact the mind, especially
if it is purified and separated from bodily matter, is able
to have some perception of the divine nature (de deitatis
sentire natura, maxime si expurgatior ac segregatior sit a

materia corporali).212
This text brings to light several aspects of Origen’s beliefs about the νοῦς.
He is convinced that it is ‘superior to all bodily nature’ and characterises

it repeatedly as ‘superior to (bodily senses)’ and as ‘that substance
which is the better part of their own nature’, or also characterises the
senses as inferior. This means Origen does not believe the νοῦς to be
simply an additional part of the human among others, but a part which
is superior to the others and the best that a human being has. We can
also note from this text that Origen sees the νοῦς as something non-
bodily: it is a ‘faculty of an intellectual nature’, it is an intellectual image

of God. Further, Origen sees the proper object of perception of the νοῦς,
on analogy with his theme of the proper object of perception of sight,

hearing, etc., as God or the divine nature. This is why he argues against
those who consider God a body since he can be ‘understood or
perceived through a bodily nature’: the νοῦς is not bodily and what it
perceives is not bodily. Instead, Origen argues that ‘there is a certain

affinity between the mind and God’ and that ‘by reason of this fact the
mind, especially if it is purified and separated from bodily matter, is able
to have some perception of the divine nature’. The significance of the
212 Or., princ. 1.1,7 (Butterworth, 1985, 12–13). The need to separate the mind from
corporeal things to allow it to perceive divine things is consistent with the
pursuit of advanced mental formation only after at least rudimentary control of
the body, if not ascetic discipline, had been achieved.
belief that there is a need to purify the mind and separate it from bodily
matter will be taken up further below when I address the process of
spiritual formation within which noetic exegesis played a role. Here it
will suffice to make one further note, namely that Origen rhetorically
characterises his position as clear to any right-thinking person: he
introduces the counter-position with ‘does it not then appear absurd’
and then lays down his own position without working through each
point systematically, as one would expect if he had seen himself as
defending a position which he expected his readers to see as unusual or
novel. For Origen, it is obvious and plain that the object of the
intellectual sense cannot be corporeal and there is no need to
demonstrate that point.
In another passage from the Peri Archon, the νοῦς is treated as
needing to develop its ability to function fully and to do so in spite of its

location in the physical body:
[...] it is possible that a rational mind also, by advancing

from a knowledge of small to a knowledge of greater
things and from things visible to things invisible, may
attain to an increasingly perfect understanding. For it
has been placed in a body, and of necessity advances
from things of sense, which are bodily, to things beyond
sense perception, which are incorporeal and intellectual.
But in case it should appear mistaken to say as we have
done that intellectual things are beyond sense perception
we will quote as an illustration the saying of Solomon:

‘You will find also a divine sense’. By this he shows that
intellectual things are to be investigated not by bodily
sense but by some other which he calls divine.213
The rational mind can attain to a more perfect understanding, but can
do so by ‘advancing from [...] a knowledge of visible to things invisible’.
This process of advancement and progress starting from the physical
and moving on to the incorporeal and intellectual is seen by Origen as a
necessity resulting from the location of the νοῦς in the body. The passage
ends with an example of noetic exegesis which gives a reason for noetic
exegesis: Solomon’s saying is understood as meaning that a non-bodily,
‘divine’ sense (Origen implies this is the νοῦς) is needed to investigate
intellectual things. From our previous discussion on the metaphysical

state of affairs making noetic exegesis necessary, we know that noetic
exegesis is a case of proceeding from the ordinary ‘bodily’ sense of the
text to the intellectual things beyond it just as Origen expects one to
proceed from the physical world to knowledge of God. Thus this
passage provides a link both to how the νοῦς negotiates the metaphysical
gap examined in the previous chapter, and also why its application to
the text is considered necessary.
Also in the Peri Archon, Origen engages in debate with those who
believe in the resurrection of the body, instead interpreting references to

the saints eating and drinking as a matter of their souls being nourished
by the ‘food of truth and wisdom’:
Those, however, who accept a view of the scriptures

which accords with the meaning of the apostles, do
indeed hope that the saints will eat; but they will eat the
‘bread of life’, which is to nourish the soul and enlighten
the mind with the food of truth and wisdom and to
cause it to drink from the cup of divine wisdom [...] The
mind (mens), when nourished by this food of wisdom to
a whole and perfect state, as man was made in the
beginning, will be restored to the ‘image and likeness’ of
God; so that, even though a man may have departed out
of this life insufficiently instructed, but with a record of
acceptable works, he can be instructed in that Jerusalem,
the city of the saints [...] There too he will come to a truer
and clearer knowledge of the saying already uttered
here, that ‘man does not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds from the mouth of God’. 214
Origen’s testimony on his view of the νοῦς and its needs and functions
here is marginal and incidental, and therefore particularly revealing of

his assumptions. The mind requires ‘this food of wisdom’ as its
nourishment in order to ‘be restored to the image and likeness of God’.
214 Or., princ. 2.11,3 (Butterworth, 1985, 148–149).

This nourishment is provided by ‘every word that proceeds from the

mouth of God’—presumably Scripture. Bodily senses or the psyche or
emotions are not the part of the human which responds to or requires
nourishment by wisdom or the word of God. It is the νοῦς which is able
to profit from ‘truth’, ‘wisdom’, ‘divine wisdom’, and instruction in

‘things divine’. We know from the discussion in Chapter Two above that
it is precisely these things that commentators in the tradition of noetic
exegesis believe to be conveyed by Scripture. This passage also reflects
Origen’s adherence to the view that the restoration of the νοῦς
(‘nourished by this food of wisdom to a whole and perfect state’) is

equivalent to the reattainment of the condition of the νοῦς before the fall
into the material creation (‘restored to the image and likeness of God’).
Thus the rehabilitation of the νοῦς through nourishment by the word of
God, i. e., among other things, the practice of perceiving the intelligible
content of Scripture through noetic exegesis, is equivalent to the
fulfilment of the larger spiritual project of the return to its original state
of perfect union.
In his Commentary on John, Origen interprets the architectural
structure of the temple as suggesting the manner in which the mind can
‘rise from sensible things to the so-called divine perceptions’, (referring
to the metaphysical gap discussed in Chapter Three), and goes on to
specify that these divine things are seen only by the mind:
And there is some sort of an ascent about the temple of

God, not with angles, but with bends of straight lines. For
it is written, ‘And there was a winding staircase to the
middle, and from the middle to the third floor’; for the
staircase in the house of God had to be spiral, thus
imitating in its ascent the circle, which is the most perfect
figure. But that this house might be secure five ties are
built in it as fair as possible, a cubit high, that on looking
up one might see it to be suggested how we rise from
sensible (ἀπὸ τῶν αἰσθητῶν) things to the so-called divine
perceptions (ἐπὶ τὰς καλουµένας θείας αἰσθήσεις), and so be
brought to perceive those things which are seen only by

the mind (πρὸς κατανόησιν τῶν νοητῶν) [...] Now everything
about the house was made golden, for a sign that the
mind which is quite made perfect estimates accurately the
things perceived by the intellect (εἰς σύµβολον τοῦ
τελειουµένου παντὸς νοῦ πρὸς τὴν τῶν νοητῶν ακριβῆ ἀπόταξιν).215
As we have already observed in numerous instances, the direction of

noetic interpretations is determined by the assumptions which drive it
and which are current in the social and cultural context within which it
functions. Thus, passages of Scripture which refer to construction
requirements are assumed not to really be about the size or number of
215 Or., Jo. 10.24.

stairs and supporting beams, but rather to have a spiritual significance,

so that the shape of the staircase implies the spiritual perfection to be
pursued and the height of the beams is seen as referring to the journey
of the mind to ‘the so-called divine perceptions’ and ‘those things which
are seen only by the mind’. Origen draws an analogy between the mind
and gold and again reveals his belief that the mind requires to be ‘made
perfect’ and that it can then perceive the intelligibles. Once again, this is
an example of noetic exegesis which itself reveals the interpretive
assumptions driving it: the text is interpreted as if it referred to spiritual
truths, on the assumption that there is a sensible and an intelligible
realm and that one can (and should) progress from one to the other and
that it is the mind which is the proper means of perceiving divine or
intelligible things. By induction, on this basis and given what we know
from Chapter Two about the assumption that Scripture contains
intelligible truths, we can add further evidence for the belief that the νοῦς
is the proper means not only for perceiving intelligible things in general,
but also for perceiving them where they are deposited in a text.
A final passage from the Commentary on John also manifests the
view that the νοῦς is the necessary and appropriate organ for
comprehending the intelligible significance of the text:

Now to see into the real truth of these matters is the part
of that true intelligence (νοῦ ἀληθοῦς) which is given to
those who can say, ‘But we have the mind (νοῦν) of

Christ’ that we may see those things which are freely

given to us of God; and doubtless it is beyond our
powers. For neither is the ruling principle in our soul
ἡγεµονικόν free from agitation nor are our eyes such as
those of the fair bride of Christ should be, of which the

bridegroom says, ‘Thy eyes are doves’, signifying,
perhaps, in a riddle, the observant power which dwells
in the spiritual (τὴν τῶν πνευµατικῶν κατανοητικὴν δύναµιν),
because the Holy Spirit came over it like a dove to our

Lord and to the lord in every one. 216
The task of the ‘true intelligence’ which is equivalent to having ‘the

mind of Christ’ is to ‘see into the real truth of these matters’ and to ‘see
those things which are freely given to us of God’. This task is difficult to
fulfil when the soul is subject to agitation and lacking ‘the observant
power which dwells in the spiritual’. That means that the proper
function of the νοῦς is something which allows special insight into truth,
an achievement to which not all are privy, and which is dependent upon
freedom from agitation, or a state of order and tranquillity in the soul.
All of these aspects of the view of the νοῦς current among our
commentators link into further elements of noetic exegesis, as will be

shown in the final section of this chapter on the training believed to be
needed before fully engaging in this practice.
216 Or., Jo. 10.18.

Didymus the Blind also works with a concept of the νοῦς as
immaterial and as functioning successfully inasmuch as it approximates

its original state:
For sometimes the human melts and the material falls

away from thought and from the heart, so that the mind
(τὸν νοῦν) no longer has any attachments, but is completely
immaterial, as it was in the beginning. 217
It is worthwhile to note here that this is a state which Didymus describes

as happening ‘sometimes’, a sort of entrancement or rapture which may
be experienced in this life, but is rare, due to the material attachment of
the mind to the body. This association of the functionality of the νοῦς
with distance or detachment from material realities has systematic

consequences for the practice of noetic exegesis, supporting its
connection with ascetic and philosophical lifestyles inasmuch as these
contributed to the ordering and control of the body in favour of pure
thought. Didymus also reveals the same agenda of returning to a
perfect original state of union which we saw in Origen (‘as it was in the
beginning’), and in our examples from the larger culture above.
In Didymus’ terminology, the term ‘heart’ is often borrowed from
Scripture to signify νοῦς and is used synonymously with it, as in the
following two passages:
217 Didym., ps. 21.15 (L. Doutreleau / A. Gesché / M. Gronewald [eds.], Didymos

der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar I zu Ps 20–21, PTA 7, Bonn 1969, 143.
The wise man has a mind (νοῦν) which thinks in the right
manner, he has insight (σύνεσιν) into intelligible things.
The heart of the fool however is left, it occupies itself

only with the material.218
For Didymus, a properly functioning νοῦς is a characteristic of the wise
man which goes along with insight into intelligible things. This is
opposed to the foolish man whose νοῦς/heart is engaged with material
things. This statement is part of Didymus’ exegesis of Psalm 43 and

reflects the same opposition of intelligible and material already
discussed in Chapter Three and, as in the example from Origen, allows
the conclusion that if the νοῦς is the proper means of gaining insight into
intelligible things and if the text contains intelligible truths, then the νοῦς
is the proper means of perceiving the intelligible content of the text.

One can also add to this line of reasoning the question of the
differentiation between a properly or an improperly functioning νοῦς,
the full implications of which we will pursue in the discussion of the

noetic curriculum below.
In the second passage directly describing the νοῦς using the
Biblical term ‘heart’, Didymus defines the mind (the pure heart) as the
‘eye’ which is able to see invisible things and which also sees God.
218 Didym., ps. 43.3–4 (M. Gronewald [ed.], Didymos der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar
V zu Ps 40–44.4, PTA 12, Bonn 1970, 113.
We have a twofold capacity for knowledge. Knowledge

of the truth exists when it takes up into itself the idea of
each known thing. There are visible and invisible things
created by God. And their creator is seen (θεωρεῖται) from
their greatness and beauty. The eye however which sees

invisible things is our mind (νοῦς), the pure heart, which
also sees God.219
This passage is reminiscent of that from Origen, quoted above, in its

reference to knowing the creator on the basis of the visible creation. The
term used for ‘seeing’ the creator is frequently also used for a sort of
contemplative comprehension whose relevance to noetic exegesis we
will address in more detail in our discussion of Evagrius. In this
passage, the term is describing how the mind which sees God functions,
while describing this sort of seeing as the same process of analogy as we
identified as parallel to noetic exegesis in Chapter Three. Its
etymological root has to do with seeing, in the sense of perceiving or
observing or finding out about something. In philosophical and
patristic contexts the term is heavily weighted with the connotation of
grasping a concept, what Dorothy Emmet has called ‘internal and
intellectual seeing’.220 It is characteristic of a condition of the mind in
which perception is heightened and clarified in a manner which,
zu Ps 22–26:10, PTA 4, Bonn 1968, 121.
220 D. Emmet, Theoria and the Way of Life, in: JThS 17 (1966), 38–52.
especially in patristic usage, involves the participation of the seer in the

thing seen.221 The term θεωρία was also used in connection with a way of
life requiring moral and mental discipline which allowed the individual
to make unencumbered use of the intellect. 222 This aspect also is highly
relevant to all of our commentators, and the use of the term in a moral-
philosophical context goes back as far as Plato and Aristotle. Origen,
Didymus, and Evagrius maintain the visual, mental, moral,
philosophical, and even scientific connotations of the term. Θεωρία may
best be paraphrased in English as ‘an intellectual activity consisting of

an internal and enhanced perception made possible by a life of moral
and mental discipline’. This paraphrase should serve to remove us
some distance from the modern English connotations of the word
‘contemplation’ as a spiritual and quasi-mystical activity which bypasses
the intellect. 223 Rather, it is an advanced function of the intellect, doing
what the νοῦς is supposed to do.
The next passage from Didymus links his belief in the νοῦς to the
structuring of the text around the categories of the material and

intelligible as discussed in Chapter Three above, on the one hand, and
221 Emmet, 1966, 44.
222 Emmet, 1966, 41.
223 J.E. Bamberger, Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, Cistercian Studies Series 4,
(1970), lxxviii notes discussion of the proper translation of θεωρία in I. Hausherr,
Les versions syriaque et arménienne d’Evagre le Pontique, in: OrChr 22 (1931), 69–
118 (75), and the suggestion that one should translate θεωρία as ‘mystery’ or
‘secret’. I disagree with this view as I think Evagrius considers θεωρία to be an
activity of the νοῦς and that θεωρία is less mystical and more cognitive and
philosophical than a word like ‘mystery’ suggests.
with the social context of noetic exegesis within higher education, as

discussed in Chapter Five, on the other hand.
Accordingly [...] talk about nature, so that he is in

exchange with him who possesses the spirit which sees
God, teaches others to progress from the perceptible to
the spiritual things (διὰ τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἐπὶ τὰ νοητά).224
Despite the highly inconvenient gap in the text, we can observe

Didymus expressing the need for an interlocutor who ‘possesses the
spirit which sees God’ and who ‘teaches others to progress from the
perceptible to the spiritual things’. It is not implausible that he is here
referring to the teacher or interpreter acting as a spiritual guide and
able to do so because he is in possession of a functioning and
enlightened νοῦς. Once again, it is the ascent from perceptible to
spiritual things, which we know from other passages to be the task of

the νοῦς, which is set down as what the spiritual man teaches others.
For Evagrius also the νοῦς is the part of the person first created by
God and capable of knowing God. 225 On his account, the νοῦς has a
separate and distinct origin from the other parts of the person, but must
224 Didym., eccl. 1.1 ( G. Binder / L. Liesenborghs, 1979, 25).
225 Evagr. Pont., ep. ad Melan. 47.

function in this world using the body and the psyche.226 It is the νοῦς
which is a matter of ultimate concern, while the body and the psyche are
only important inasmuch as they may help or hinder the νοῦς in
performing the function for which it was made. It is the νοῦς which has
the capacity for the final vision of God because it is a survival from the
original vision of God before the creation of the world and human
beings as we know them: ‘The naked νοῦς is that which, by means of the
contemplation which concerns it, is united to knowledge of the

Trinity’. 227 This is much in line with the view already observed in
226 The changes in the capacities of the νοῦς entailed by embodiment are explained
in D.E. Linge, Leading the Life of Angels. Ascetic Practice and Reflection in the
Writings of Evagrius of Pontus, JAAR 68 (2000), 537–568 (545): ‘In its present
situation of embodiment νοῦς has come to have a discursive function (to
logistikon or dianoia) in relation to the world of plurality and change. But its
higher, original nature as direct rational apprehension (theoria) lies hidden and
inoperative because of the influence of the passable soul. True to his Platonic
heritage, Evagrius designates the affective functions of the soul as the desiring,
or appetitve part—to epithymatikon—and the irascible part—to thymatikon.
Epithymia and thymos depend upon and respond to the world of sense
experience and change. From the perspective of individual fallen nous,
therefore, the task of life in the material-visible world is progressively to free
itself from the influences of soul and body.’
See also J.E. Bamberger, 1970, lxxvii: ‘Not only do bodies arise from
this creation, but souls also result from it. They too are part of the fall. Indeed,
the same intelligence (nous) which was once a pure intelligence, without
becoming another person, or more exactly another being, becomes a soul
(psyche). Now one of the outstanding characteristics of a soul, or psyche, is
affectivity. The psyche is the seat of the passions. It is involved in varying
measures with the body of the fallen intelligence (nous). In the angels it is the
intelligence that predominates; in man and in the demons, the psyche with its
complex of passions. In man it is the passions associated with sensuality
(epithumia) that predominate; in the demons, those arising from irascibility
(thumos) [...].’
227 Evagr. Pont., keph. gnost. 3.6 (L. Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of
Evagrius Ponticus, Oxford 2005).
Origen and Didymus, as is Evagrius’ belief that the νοῦς has a natural
appetite for intelligible things. 228 The better a νοῦς functions, the closer it
comes to the highest form of contemplation which Evagrius calls θεωρία
θεολογική: ‘A pure νοῦς has need of the λόγοι of bodies, a purer (νοῦς needs)
the λόγοι of incorporeals, and a (νοῦς) purer than the latter (needs) the
Blessed Trinity’.229 A νοῦς which is not yet ‘naked’ and which has not
received special graces but is not fatally encumbered by a disordered

psyche is capable of a lower form of contemplation, namely θεωρία
φυσική. This is the type of contemplation which Evagrius believes to be
appropriately applied not only to creation but also to the Scriptures, so

that examining his view of the role of the νοῦς in θεωρία φυσική here also
shows what he believes to be its role in noetic exegesis. That is, it is

exactly the process of deducing intelligible knowledge on the basis of
sensible things which we have already seen in both Origen and
Didymus in Chapter Three which Evagrius considers the appropriate
task for the νοῦς which is in the process of purification but not yet
capable of pure thought. This understanding of the role of the νοῦς in
noetic exegesis highlights the nature of noetic exegesis as part of the

process of developing noetic skill and of disencumbering the νοῦς as far
as possible while in the embodied state, rather than as an expression of

perfect noetic function.
228 Evagr. Pont., ep. fidei 38.

For Evagrius, the object which the νοῦς is able to know reflects the
state the νοῦς is in: ‘The νοῦς which is imperfect is that which again has
need of the contemplation which is known by corporeal nature’.230

Similarly, the need for sensory input is proper to contemplation in the
embodied state, but the νοῦς is able, and in fact destined, to exist
separately from the body, so that it can know things beyond what sense
experience can supply: ‘The organs of sense and the νοῦς partake of
sensible (things); but the νοῦς alone has the intellection of the intelligible,
and it thus becomes a viewer of objects and λόγοι’. 231 The νοῦς is able to
cooperate with the bodily senses, and θεωρία φυσική, because it occurs in
the embodied state, is a matter of learning to use the senses as a means

for knowing the λόγοι and thus learning to prefer intelligible to sensible
perception: ‘The sense, naturally by itself, senses sensory things, but the
mind (νοῦς) always stands and waits (to ascertain) which spiritual
contemplation gives it vision’. 232 When the body and psyche are
subdued, the νοῦς gains distance from the material world and can
confront creation from a different and higher perspective: ‘The νοῦς that
is divested of the passions and sees the λόγοι of beings does not
henceforth truly receive the εἴδωλα that (arrive) through the sense; but it
is as if another world is created by its knowledge, attracting to it its

thought and rejecting far from it the sensitive world’. 233 The embodied
νοῦς which has the body and psyche in order thereby gains distance from
‘the sensitive world’ so that what it perceives most keenly is the

intelligible aspect of things while the sensible objects appear as
shadows: ‘Just as when the sun rises things which are elevated a little
from the ground cast a shadow, so also to the νοῦς which begins to
approach the λόγοι of beings, objects appear obscurely’.234 On this basis
we may conclude that Evagrius believes the mental equipment used for
noetic exegesis is the νοῦς in a semi-functional state, still involved with
the senses but able to make use of sensory perception and material
objects to perceive intelligible reality, while he holds the perfection of the
νοῦς to be the ultimate goal of the spiritual life. These passages also show
a highly articulated link between physical and emotional order and

discipline and the development of the νοῦς which is not stated as
explicitly in Origen or Didymus.

In the Epistula Fidei, Evagrius explains that the capacity of the νοῦς
for contemplation is natural and instinctive as soon as the νοῦς is
rehabilitated, rather than requiring instruction as do lower parts of the mind

such as the rational mind which would be used for dialectical reasoning:
For just as sense perception is competent in sensory

things, so the intellect (νοῦς) in intelligible things. At the

same time one must say that God, when he created in the
beginning, made physical criteria unlearnable. No one
has ever taught the face to perceive colour and form nor
hearing to recognise noises or voices, nor smell pleasant
or unpleasant scents, nor taste juices and liquids nor
touch soft or hard, warm or cold. In the same way no one
needs to teach the intellect to turn itself toward
intelligible things. Just as the organs of sense, when they
are sick, just require healing and then easily take up their
proper function, so also the intellect which is bound to
the flesh and filled with the images which arise out of it
requires faith and an upright life, which places it ‘as
hinds feet on high places’.235
Evagrius here uses the same analogy between physical senses and their
appropriate objects and the νοῦς as an organ of sense which also has an
object appropriate to it, namely intelligible things, which was observed

in Origen. The task of the νοῦς which is ‘bound to the flesh and filled
with the images which arise out of it’ is to go through a process of

healing so that it can take up its ‘proper function’. Ascetic discipline
(expressed by Evagrius here as following the commandments) is
characterised as a healing process appropriate to the soul:
235 Evagr. Pont., ep. 63.38 (G. Bunge [ed.], Evagrios Pontikos. Briefe aus der Wüste,
Trier 1986, 302).
Who knows the activity of the commandments? Who

understands the powers of the soul, and how the former
heal the latter and urge them on to the contemplation of
things which exist (πρὸς τὴν ἀληθινὴν θεωρίαν)? 236
Similarly, the state of the νοῦς in a person who has been engaging in
θεωρία φυσική is often described as one of health or proper function
according to nature: ‘When the reasoning nature will receive the

contemplation which concerns it, then also the power of the νοῦς will be
healthy’. 237 The special knowledge of the wisdom of God gained

through θεωρία φυσική is here again seen as proper to the νοῦς and able to
‘heal’ it, analogously to the virtues proper to other parts of the person:
‘Knowledge heals the νοῦς, love θυµός, and chastity ἐπιθυµία. And the
cause of the first is the second, and that of the second the third’. 238 Just
as the psyche which is functioning according to nature becomes free of
disturbance, the νοῦς which is practising θεωρία φυσική attains a state of
stability similar to ἀπάθεια: ‘Just as a mirror remains unstained by
images that are observed there, so the impassible soul (remains

unstained) by things that are on earth’.239 This is because of the distance
gained from sensory input and inner impulses—the νοῦς is free to relate

to intelligible things which are suitable for it. That is, the νοῦς is able to
bypass the sensible, ordinary, everyday, or historical referent of the text

and perceive its intelligible, spiritual, moral, or revelatory referent. This
brings us to questions of the practical implications of these beliefs for
noetic exegesis which will be discussed in the following two sections, so
that we can specify what the ‘healing’ required by the νοῦς for its
rehabilitation consisted of and how this was implemented.

In short, these three commentators see the νοῦς as the appropriate
means of performing noetic exegesis because noetic exegesis is concerned

with perceiving the eternal intelligible truth deposited in the text and the
νοῦς is the cognitive organ which is able to achieve insight into that type of
thing. They are in broad agreement as to the immaterial nature of the νοῦς
and its origin prior to and separate from the creation of the body. Of
further relevance for noetic exegesis is these commentators’
understanding of the proper function of the νοῦς as dependent on a state of
discipline and order in the body and soul and also the lower parts of the
mind. This directs our attention to the appearance of noetic exegesis in
the social context believed to provide just such inner order, namely
asceticism and higher philosophical education, as investigated in Chapter
Five. In completing our treatment of the ‘how’ of noetic exegesis,
however, it remains to set out how noetic skill was embodied or
characterised, and also how that skill could be acquired.
Embodying Noetic Skill: the Interpreter as Philosopher, Holy Man, or Spiritual Guide
How is noetic skill embodied? What sort of person is the interpreter?

The act of interpretation in and of itself does not have a set essence
which unambiguously determines the social role of the interpreter.
Depending on the cultural context, the interpreter of authoritative texts
could operate in the role of a scholar, bard, technical expert, esoteric
eccentric, or beleaguered defender of traditional values. The social
significance of the person of the interpreter is dependent on the
significance of the texts, and their interpretation, within a particular
cultural context. If asked what sort of person can perform a task whose
object is intelligible truth and whose means is the νοῦς, persons involved
in the broad social context in which noetic exegesis was practised point
to the philosopher, holy man, or spiritual guide. As we have already
seen, there are several components among the interpretive assumptions
driving noetic exegesis which should make the identification of the
reader or interpreter with a philosopher or holy man (i. e. with a person
of exceptional mental and spiritual capacity) unsurprising at this point.
The belief in the object of noetic interpretation as something located in
the realm of the intelligibles, in the need for noetic insight in order to
perceive the intelligible content of the text, and in the need to develop
and appropriately apply the νοῦς, all point in this direction for the
commentators with whom we are concerned.

There are two basic ideas which result in the association of the
interpreter with the philosopher, spiritual guide, or holy man. The first
is a logical result of the need for noetic skill in order to perceive the
higher meaning of the text, and the overall moral and mental
development which was understood to be prerequisite to attaining that
skill. Anyone who is fully competent in noetic exegesis has, in order to
become so, also attained control of the body and emotions and so has
earned authority over the moral and spiritual life in general, and in late
antiquity, the figure of the philosopher, holy man, or spiritual guide was
the social bank of that kind of authority. The second idea is less a matter
of internal logic that can be deduced—or induced—by an observer, and
more an additional component of the collection of assumptions on
which noetic exegetes were operating. This idea is expressed
systematically in Plotinus, but assumed in the commentaries. It is the
conviction that the unity of the knower and the object of knowledge is a
condition absolutely necessary for true knowledge, such as noetic
comprehension of the intelligibles. 240 Plotinus expresses this idea by
claiming that true knowledge is self-knowledge, when a thing knows
itself apart from any sort of division or separateness. 241 The reason that
this state of profound unity between knower and known is necessary
has much to do with the priority given to non-discursive forms of
thought examined in Chapter Three: this type of thought can only
successfully be achieved when knowledge coalesces with being, hence
the persistence of the idea in the discussion of the νοῦς above that the νοῦς
240 S. Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism. Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus,

Proclus, and Damascius, Cambridge 2000, 33.
241 Plot., enn. 5.3,13,13–17 (M.R. Alfino, Plotinus and the Possibility of Non-
Propositional Thought, in Ancient Philosophy 8 (1989), 273–284 [279]).
only really functions perfectly when it has overcome the embodied state
and has returned to unity with the One. The νοῦς needs to not just
concern itself with intelligible things, although this is an important

preliminary step, but aims eventually to actually become purely
intelligible itself. So if noetic exegesis has as its object intelligible
realities, and if knowledge of intelligible realities is more perfect the
more the knower is unified with the known, the mental quality
necessary for independently and reliably performing noetic exegesis is a
state of unity, or at least harmony, with the intelligible object of
knowledge. That is, an interpreter can interpret better the more his mind
is attuned to the higher spiritual realities he is trying to uncover from the
text before him, so that he must be free of anything that disturbs the
functioning or the purity of the νοῦς. That means that the interpreter
must be morally and psychologically purified, so that his νοῦς can
function as well as possible while still in the embodied state, and so that
he has a capacity for unity with intelligible things and, ultimately, with
the One or the Trinity or God.242 This idea of a need for unity or
harmony works in both directions, in the orientation toward the
ultimate goal of the νοῦς (union with the One) and in the exegetically
specific desire to interpret in the same frame of mind in which the

author or writer deposited intelligible content into the text.
242 The need for unity gains further momentum from the fact that the term νοῦς is
also used to indicate meaning, as well as from the association of Christ with a
perfect manifestation of νοῦς deposited in Scripture.
Origen expresses this belief in the need for conformity or unity

between the mind of the interpreter and ultimate truth in terms of the
necessity of the interpreter’s mind being governed by the same spirit
that inspired the author. This is stated by Origen in the midst of his
struggle to understand a certain text of Matthew. While he finds he must
capitulate, he is confident that someone else can find the higher
interpretation as long as they use ‘the spirit of Christ who said these
things’ rather than relying on ‘human means’:
It is probable that other details could be considered by

someone else who examines the matter more carefully,
the exegesis and interpretation of which appears to me to
be beyond human means and to require the spirit of
Christ who said these things, so that they are understood
as Christ said them.243
An interpreter who has the ‘spirit of Christ’ will be able to understand

the words of the text ‘as Christ said them’. That is, comprehension of
the text which goes beyond human means by applying noetic exegesis
rather than a surface reading requires the interpreter to possess the same
spirit as the original author or writer of the text. Similarly, in speaking
of how the interpreter can and should discern ‘the spiritual rationale of
243 Or., comm. in Mt. 14,6 (H.J. Vogt [ed.], Der Kommentar zum Evangelium nach
Mattäus, vol. 2 BGrL 18/30/38, Stuttgart 1983/1990/1993, 40).
the sacrifices’ described in John 6:32, Origen describes this task as one
appropriate for ‘the perfect man’:
Now to find out all the particulars of these and to state its
relation to them that sacrifice of the spiritual law which
took place in Jesus Christ (a truth greater than human
nature can comprehend) to do this belongs to no other
than the perfect man, who, by reason of use, has his
senses exercised to discern good and evil, and who is
able to say, from a truth-loving disposition, ‘We speak
wisdom among them that are perfect’. 244
Origen characterises the perfect man as some one who has cultivated
moral discernment and is able to ‘speak wisdom’. He also identifies the
interpretation of the laws in terms of the ‘spiritual law which took place
in Jesus Christ’, which I take to indicate the noetic exegesis of the laws
and sacrifices, as ‘a truth greater than human nature can comprehend’,
that is, an object of thought which only a purified νοῦς can cope with. It
should also be noted that Origen associates the state of perfection with
the result of moral exercise, so that it is not only the learnedness of the
interpreter which allows for comprehension of the noetic content of the
text, but his entire moral and spiritual character as well.
This is consistent with Origen’s thought as reflected in Peri
Archon IV.2.4 where, when he speaks of gathering the meaning of
244 Or., Jo. 6.32.

Scripture, the term translated ‘meaning’ is actually νοῦς.245 Origen also
makes this explicit in Peri Archon IV.II.3:
Or if we come to the Gospels, the accurate interpretation

(ὁ ἀκριβὴς νοῦς) even of these, since it is an interpretation
of the mind (νοῦς) of Christ, demands that grace that was
given to him who said, ‘We have the mind (νοῦν) of
Christ, that we may know the things that were freely

given to us by God [...]’.246
This brings us back to the material of Chapter Two on the belief in the
revelatory nature of the text. Given the assumed need for unity or
harmony between the knower and the known, it is not surprising that
thinkers who believe the mind of Christ to have been deposited into the
text consider a mind conforming to the mind of Christ necessary to
extract it again.
The basic requirement of the conformity of the interpreter’s mind
with that of the divine author or divine content of the text is set out also
in Didymus the Blind’s prologue to his Commentary On Zechariah, where
he states that since Scripture contains spiritual wisdom, it must be
interpreted spiritually, but such an interpretation can only be given by
245 E.A. Dively Lauro, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture Within Origen’s Exegesis,
Leiden 2005, 51.
246 Or., princ. 4.2,3 (G.W. Butterworth [ed.], On First Principles. Being Koetschau’s
Text of the ‘De Principiis’, Gloucester 1985, 274).
exegetes who have the divine spirit to lead them, and can only be
understood by those who are spiritually prepared. For these reasons
Didymus considers prayer the proper preparation for study of the
Scriptures. 247 Similarly, referring to the same commentary, Didymus
claims that ‘the person who understands it is a seer’ and in his
interpretation of Proverbs also describes the individual capable of
understanding Scripture as one possessing divine wisdom (ὁ κατὰ θεῶν
σοφός). 248 The individual capable of perceiving the higher, noetic,
revelatory content of Scripture must be ‘truly wise in the things of God’.

If this is not the case, and Scripture is not interpreted ‘according to its
deeper meaning’, then ‘neither its greatness nor that of its author is
manifest’. Manifesting the greatness of Scripture is dependent on the
character of the interpreter.249 In another passage from the Commentary
on Zechariah, Didymus again directly links the character of the
interpreter to the ability to comprehend passages of Scripture which are
obscure and riddling:
247 See for further discussion on this point W. Bienert, Allegoria und Anagoge bei
Didymos dem Blinden von Alexandria, Berlin 1972, 73, and R.C. Hill [ed.], Didymus
the Blind. Commentary on Zechariah, FaCh 111, Washington 2006.
248 Didym., Zach. 3.8–9 (Hill, 2006, 23). See also Bienert, 1972, 76.
zu Ps 35–39, PTA 6, Bonn 1969, 65): ‘One must interpret Scripture according to
its deeper meaning. This is done by the man who is truly wise in the things of
God. When (Scripture) is not interpreted thus, but insufficiently, neither its
greatness nor that of its author is manifest.’
The Godly sage who has an intellect (νόησιν) that is
developed and very focussed ‘understands (νοεῖ) a proverb,
obscure discourse, sayings of clever men, and riddles’.

Words that make announcements in a hidden manner
are riddles. The text of the prophet before us, for example,
is phrased in the manner of a riddle and proposes an
obscure teaching [...] There is a riddle in the phrase
‘Open your doors, Lebanon [Zech 11:1]: it is not to the
material mountain, lifeless as it is, or the trees on it,
removed from sense and imagination [...] that the
command is given for the doors of Lebanon to be opened
and the pines to lament the fallen cedars, but to proud
and arrogant men fallen into unlawful idol worship of
‘the rulers of this age’. 250
The person able to interpret riddling passages of Scripture is not only

godly but also has an intellect which is ‘developed and very focussed’.
This passage from Didymus also provides a link between the
assumption presently under discussion and that of the distribution of
the ordinary referent and the deeper meaning of the text across the
categories of sensible and intelligible discussed in the first section of this
chapter. The interpreter needs ‘an intellect that is developed and very
focussed’ precisely because passages such as Zechariah 11:1 do not refer
250 Didym., Zach. 11 (Hill, 2006, 253).

to a material mountain, but to the intelligible quality of the spiritual state

of certain people.
In his Commentary on the Psalms, Didymus expresses the need for
special insight metaphorically:
One must also say the following: It is impossible to

understand grammatical words if one has no insight into
the (meaning of) the letters, and it is not possible to
understand philosophical words if one has no knowledge
of the theory which initiates one into them. In the same
way it is also impossible to understand the things of God
without godly insight.251
Godly insight is required if one is to read the things of God, just as one
must know one’s letters in order to read words. Didymus characterises
Scripture, or those passages of Scripture requiring special interpretation,
as ‘philosophical words’ which can only be understood by those who
have knowledge of the relevant theory. The interpreter must be working
within the same system of signification as the author of Scripture.
In Evagrius, the process by which the interpreter can achieve the
necessary conformity of his mind to the intelligible content of Scripture
is set out as part of his ascetic and spiritual curriculum. As we have seen
above, Evagrius describes the act of perceiving the divine wisdom, both
251 Didym., ps. 31 (M. Gronewald [ed.], Didymos der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar III zu
Ps 29–34, PTA 8, Bonn 1969, 145–147).
in Scripture and in Creation, as a type of contemplation called θεωρία
φυσική. This type of contemplation consists of applying the rehabilitated
νοῦς to Scripture or Creation. The (even partially) properly functioning
νοῦς of the human individual is able to recognise divine wisdom because
divine wisdom is also νοῦς. The interpreter conforms his mind to what
Evagrius calls ‘the divine wisdom’ by cultivating his perception to the

point that he will consistently recognise the divine wisdom revealed in
Scripture, on the basis of the familiar Neoplatonic principle that like can
only be known by like. Clearly then, the key to legitimate interpretation
on this scheme is the successful rehabilitation and proper functioning of
the νοῦς. For Evagrius, this is achieved by purifying the body through
asceticism and disciplining the passions of the psyche so that it no

longer interferes with the function of the νοῦς. Thus, just as in Origen
and Didymus, it is the spiritual maturity of the interpreter which

enables interpretation and guarantees the legitimacy of the interpreter.
Since a large portion of his writings are dedicated to teaching and
explaining progress in the spiritual life, Evagrius provides a detailed
account of how the necessary degree of noetic function can be attained
and how the body and the psyche interact with the noetic potential of
the individual. For Evagrius, an ordered inner life is a necessary
condition for θεωρία φυσική, the type of contemplation of which noetic
exegesis is a subset. It is necessary because a disordered psyche

provokes undue interest in sensual and temporal things and is fertile
ground for vices. Moral failing and attachment to inappropriate objects
sabotages the campaign of the νοῦς to become pure and attached to and
able to know what is intelligible:
The spirit would not make progress nor go forth on that

happy sojourn with the band of the incorporeal beings
unless it should correct its interior. This is so because
anxiety arising from interior conflicts is calculated to turn
it back upon the things that it has left behind.252
Since ascetic discipline counteracts the enflamed state of the psyche, the
person’s desires and impulses and temptations and attachments recede from
consciousness so that consciousness can concern itself with contemplation:
The spirit that is actively leading the ascetic life with God’s
help and which draws near to contemplative knowledge
ceases to perceive the irrational part of the soul almost
completely, perhaps altogether. For this knowledge bears
it aloft and separates it from the senses.253
Virtue is not pursued for its own sake, but inasmuch as it serves to
facilitate contemplation, and θεωρία φυσική is not an end in itself:
252 Evagr. Pont., praktikos 61 (J.E. Bamberger [ed.], Evagrius. The Praktikos and
Chapters on Prayer, CistSS 4, Spencer 1970, 33).
253 Evagr. Pont., praktikos 66 (Bamberger, 1970, 34).

We seek after virtues for the sake of attaining to the inner

meaning of created things. We pursue these latter, that is
to say the inner meanings of what is created, for the sake of
attaining to the Lord who has created them. It is in the
state of prayer that he is accustomed to manifest himself. 254
For Evagrius, learning to comprehend ‘the inner meanings of what is

created’ (an exercise analogous to noetic exegesis) is part of a larger
chain of spiritual formation, starting with the attainment of virtue and
ending in the manifestation of God.
The psyche, like the νοῦς, functions well when it functions
according to nature, and has a specific purpose analogous but

subordinate to that of the νοῦς: ‘The glory and light of the mind (νοῦς) is
knowledge, but the glory and light of the soul is impassibility’.255 This
ordered state is expressed through the virtues appropriate to each part
of the person. Of particular interest here is the fact that though the
rational part of the soul is part of the psyche, when ἀπάθεια is achieved, it
shares a function with the νοῦς.
The rational soul operates according to nature when the

following conditions are realised: the concupiscible part
desires virtue; the irascible part fights to obtain it; the
254 Evagr. Pont., or. 51 (Bamberger, 1970, 63).

rational part, finally, applies itself to the contemplation of

created things.256
The details of this connection are not clearly explained in the texts, but
the fact that the rational part of the soul acts as a mechanical link
between the embodied νοῦς and the psyche explains why the psyche
must be brought into order to avoid disrupting the function of the νοῦς.
The ascetic and psychological pre-conditions for θεωρία φυσική also
explain why practitioners of noetic exegesis appear in contexts of

spiritual authority and also why their commentaries show a persistent
concern with teaching the life of virtue and with forming their students
or hearers morally as well as intellectually.
This brings us to the question of the means by which
interpretation in the manner of a philosopher or contemplative on the
basis of a rehabilitated νοῦς was actually achieved and put into practice,
256 Evagr. Pont., praktikos 86 (Bamberger, 1970, 37).

namely, the curriculum of institutions in which noetic exegesis was

practiced and taught. 257
Exegesis and Education: Acquiring Noetic Skill
In linguistics, one differentiates between language learning and

language acquisition. Language learning is the attainment of
competence in a ‘foreign’ or second language by means of formal study,
learning vocabulary and grammatical rules. Language acquisition is the
process of attaining competence in one’s own mother tongue through
the more organic course of developing cognitively and socially in the
context of that language from infancy and pairing constant exposure
with constant practice until the content and structures of the language
257 This view of the necessity of the purification of the interpreter and the
conformity of his mind to intelligible realities also appears outside of our
corpus and seems to have been a generally accepted idea. For example, the
persistent arrangement of the educational curriculum in the philosophical
schools in advancing steps of virtue implies that the individual who has
advanced through the entire course of Platonic exegesis has thereby cultivated a
high level of virtue, so that the teacher of exegesis will have achieved his
expertise in interpretation on the basis of advanced moral and spiritual
development. Also, this understanding can be observed in the theory of literary
interpretation used in the traditional treatment of Homer and Plato. Lamberton
explains this thus ‘That is, each of their imitations has a surface meaning
masking a hidden meaning intimately related to it. This structure of meaning is
itself explained as an imitation of divine goodness, which functions on two
levels. The gods provide benefits on the sense plane to all, but restirct the
benefits on the level of nous to the wise (tois emphrosin); in imitation of them, the
myths reveal the existence of the gods to everyone but restrict information
regarding their true identities to those equipped for such knowledge.’ (R.D.
Lamberton, Homer the Theologian. Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth
of the Epic Tradition, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 9,
Berkeley 1986, 141, based on Sallustius, de diis 3.2, lines 22–23 ed. Nock).
are finally fully internalized. Not only the evidence of the commentaries
and the settings in which they were produced, but also what we know
of higher philosophical curricula in the same period, suggest that the
attainment of noetic skill, including the ability to fully engage with the
noetic aspect of a text, is a process more closely analogous to language
acquisition than to language learning. While formal instruction in
preparatory and complementary disciplines played a large role, and
knowledge of grammar and issues of textual criticism were highly
valued, the actual ability to perform noetic exegesis independently was
acquired through a process of immersion and practice in a given milieu
dedicated to noetic skill. An individual undergoing this process could
not simply imitate the steps in the technique of an Origen or a Didymus
but was expected to become a certain sort of person, as discussed in the
preceding section, and to enable a special part of his or her mind
through constant practice and discipline. This characterisation of noetic
exegesis as an acquired rather than a learned skill is also supported by
the absence of any explanation of proper exegetical procedure or list of
rules which are to be learned and applied. John Dillon refers in this
connection to learning exegetical skills as a process of internalisation.258
Dillon concludes that the ‘rules’ by which noetic exegesis was
performed were not taught or recorded systematically, but were instead
a matter of practice internalised by ‘sitting at the feet of one’s master’.259
258 J. Dillon, Image, Symbol and Analogy. Three Basic Concepts of Neoplatonic Allegorical
Exegesis, in The Golden Chain. Studies in the Development of Platonism and
Christianity, Vermont 1990, 247–248.
259 Dillon, 1990, 248.

This state of affairs further confirms my theory that noetic exegesis was
governed by interpretive assumptions rather than a set technique, as
one would expect a technique to be reducible to rules and teachable.
Instead, by initiation into the educational culture presented to them
through the higher school curriculum, and by sharing the same
assumptions about the nature of the text and the purpose of reading it,
individuals acquired a sense for what constituted an appropriate
interpretation, so that through internalising the interpretive practice of
their teachers, they themselves could also generate acceptable
interpretations and perceive themselves thereby as extracting divine
revelation from the text. Thus the curriculum was not primarily
focussed on imparting to the student a catalogue of facts, rules or
methods, but rather on developing his mind in a particular direction. As
a result, this section examines the process of the acquisition of noetic
skill in terms of a curriculum of moral and mental formation, rather than
pursuing the question of how procedural rules may have been
imparted. That is, having established what sort of person one was
expected to be in order to legitimately and reliably perform noetic
exegesis, we now ask how one could become that sort of person.
Similarly, having established that the νοῦς had to be applied to the text in
order to perceive its deeper meaning, we now ask how one set about
enabling the νοῦς in order to be able to use it to interpret noetically.
One step in making the νοῦς capable of comprehending the
intelligibles was to develop the capacity for clear reasoning and the
perception of abstract principles through (to us) academic disciplines
such as logic, mathematics, geometry and astronomy. This can be

confusing since in the study of these subjects we see a part of the
individual being engaged which is definitely not the body or the
emotions but also unlike an organ intended for pure intuitive perception
of ultimate reality, as is the νοῦς in the most proper sense. The
ambivalence arises out of the different capacities of the embodied νοῦς
compared to the fully cultivated or perfected νοῦς. Even forms of
thought which are not perfectly noetic are necessary and worthwhile in
the overall rehabilitation of the νοῦς, which is why we see a large
segment of the academic concerns of the commentators and activities of

their students which does not fit either in the category of bodily and
emotional discipline nor in that of pure intuitive apprehension of the
intelligibles which is the ultimate goal of the νοῦς. The ability to deduce
abstract principles or to think logically is, for a large segment of late

antique intellectuals, not the highest function of human intelligence, but
merely a second-best capacity of the mind in its embodied state,
characterised by its dependence on concepts and language and
discursive processes. As such, however, and given the difficulty of
completely activating the νοῦς in its pure form while in the body, this
semi-functional νοῦς, in practice, actually plays a larger role in noetic
exegesis and the curricula than the pure νοῦς. After all, the process of
investigating and explaining a text, even the intelligible content of a text,

is a discursive one, couched in language and concepts. The aim of
noetic exegesis and of the greater project of enabling the νοῦς thus
remains always beyond actual achievement as long as one is still getting

at the intelligibles through the medium of the text and its explanation, or
through the learning and comprehension of geometry, for that matter.
Philosophical Formation in the Larger Cultural Context
As with the interpretive assumptions set out in each chapter, this more
practical or social aspect of noetic exegesis was also current in the larger
cultural context. The curriculum, engagement with and interest in
which is often reflected in the commentaries, was not exclusive to the
pedagogical work of the commentators represented in our sample. The
general consensus, with a high degree of flexibility and variation, was
that a three-step process was necessary to fully form the individual who
had committed to higher intellectual goals. The first step was one of
basic ordering, referred to as ethics (πρακτική), and intended to establish
basic moral behaviour in the student. On other accounts, the first step
was logic, intended to establish basic rational order in the thought
processes of the students. There was debate about which was the most
basic requirement, but the fundamental idea is that a person enters upon
the process of formation in a state of greater or lesser disarray and
initially needs be be brought into order by mastering basic rules of how
to behave, or how to think. The second step was generally that of
physics (φυσική) and made up the bulk of actual educational practice,
since the third step, θεολογική or perfect noetic apprehension of

intelligible realities, was a goal that could hardly be reached in the

embodied state and was only ever achieved partially and intermittently,
but could still be explained and described. Physics involved mastery of
the ability to understand abstract principles, such as geometrical or
astronomical rules. This phase was a course of exercise in the life of the
mind, in pursuing knowledge of the nature of things, in pushing the
mind beyond mere appearances to discover and apprehend the
principles or ideas governing them. In practice, this intermediate phase
was what occupied the bulk of the educational endeavour.
If we examine specific examples with a primary focus on those
intellectuals working, like our sample commentators, with some manner
of association with Alexandria, we find active application of this idea in
the structuring of higher philosophical education and in conceiving the
goals of the philosophical or spiritual life in general. Plotinus, the
founder of Neoplatonism, wrote on a sort of scale of virtues moving
from the political to the purificatory, and is clearly concerned with the
moral and mental cultivation of his students.260 While Porphyry,
Plotinus’ student, does not explicate a curriculum based on a series of
texts which is analogous to the one we have been examining, following
Plotinus, he also expounds a scale of virtues progressing from the
political to the purificatory to the theoretical and ending in the
paradigmatic.261 Iamblichus assigned each Platonic dialogue a place in
260 Plot., enn. 1.2; cf. D.J. O’Meara, Platonopolis. Platonic Political Philosophy in Late
Antiquity, Oxford 2003, 40; 51.
261 Porph., sent. 32 (O’Meara, 2003, 44).

a curriculum based on the Aristotelian scale of sciences and virtues, so

that each text contributed to the cultivation of a specific mental or moral
skill. It is thought that he systematised a practice which had already
been used commonly before his time. The curriculum begins with the
political virtues and practical sciences based on study of the Alcibiades,
Gorgias, and Phaedo. The intermediate step goes on to purificatory
virtues and theoretical sciences based on Cratylus and Theaetetus, ending
a preliminary cycle with an introduction to physics through the Sophist
and the Statesman, and an introduction to theology through the Phaedrus,
Symposium, and Philebus. The highest end of the curriculum is
conceived of as a second cycle, consisting of advanced study of physics
and theology based on the Timaeus and Parmenides respectively.262 This
structure shows both the consistent general progression from ethics to
physics to theology, and also the wide margin for variation and overlap
within any particular curriculum.
In Alexandria, Hypatia was an active Neoplatonist teacher.
According to the testimony of Synesius of Cyrene, one of the pagan
Hypatia’s students who later became a bishop, the aim of her teaching
was to develop and perfect the minds and souls of her students and
something like pure knowledge was seen as the highest ideal. The subject-
matter of the curriculum initially appears to contain only topics that fit
into the second phase, physics or ‘natural wisdom’. Hypatia’s own
commentaries were on mathematical treatises and while Damascius also
claims that she lectured on Plato and Aristotle, this is not enough
262 O’Meara, 2003, 63.

information to determine whether her public lectures concentrated on

Plato and Aristotle’s mathematical or scientific thought or also engaged in
interpretive discussion of the same type of passages we see in Hermeias
or Olympiodorus. 263 However, Synesius of Cyrene’s account of his
education with Hypatia reveals an overall programme of moral and
mental cultivation which included an intensely religious-philosophical
element. Synesius calls Hypatia ‘that most holy and revered philosopher’
and refers to her lessons as ‘oracular utterances’.264 Maria Dzielska has
summarised Synesius’ description of the aims pursued in his education
with Hypatia as follows:
The spark of wisdom kindled by the ‘divine guide,’ that

‘hidden spark which loves to conceal itself,’ turns into a
large flame of cognition (Ep. 139), thus concluding the
journey of the soul which Plotinus termed anagoge, the
ascension toward heaven, toward divinity. The goal of
philosophizing is achieved; the mind is in a state of
revelation, contemplation, theoria (Ep. 140; Dion 6–9). This
is the consummate experience, incontrovertible, for it
touches on prime being, true reality, the original cause of
temporal reality. This indeed is the most important
realm in human life: ‘to be given over to the things above
263 M. Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria, Revealing Antiquity 8, Cambridge 1995,

56–57.
264 Synes., ep. 5 (Dzielska, 1995, 36).

and entirely to the contemplation of Reality and the

origin of mortal things’ (Ep. 140). 265
So Hypatia also teaches with a view to the mental perfection of her

students, who are ultimately to become capable of comprehending perfect
reality. The degree of attachment of her teaching to traditional texts
cannot be established, so that the use of this curriculum is not simply part
of the definition of noetic exegesis. Presumably, it was possible to
progress through this curriculum or teach in a manner that assumed its
value and validity without necessarily basing one’s lectures in the noetic
exegesis of traditional texts. In actual practice, a given teacher could
theoretically focus on the content of the particular steps in the curriculum
rather than approaching them through commentary on texts.
In the later Platonic school, Hermeias, Ammonius and
Olympiodorus teach Aristotle propaedeutically and then go on to the
Platonic dialogues set out in a series, beginning with ethics and ending
with theology, with logic, physics, and mathematics sometimes included
in some order or other as well. We have Hermeias’ notes from
exegetical lectures on the Phaedrus and Olympiodorus’ commentaries on
the Alcibiades and the Gorgias which reflect a similar concern with the
moral and mental cultivation of the student as in the earlier pedagogical
work of Plotinus and Iamblichus. Hermeias’ son, Ammonius, also
manifests not only the use of a curriculum which includes physics and
theology as do those of the three commentators examined below. He
265 Dzielska, 1995, 48–49.

also demonstrates a belief that the mind can and should be trained to
think without reference to material bodies, which also is evidenced in
Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius. In fact, for Hermeias, exactly that sort
of training is the purpose of the curriculum:
Mathematics is between (physics and theology) with good

reason. For since we cannot be led up immediately from
natural to divine things and from what is altogether
inseparable from matter to what is altogether separable, we
travel by way of mathematicals which are in one respect
separable, another inseparable. They are actually called
mathematicals (µαθήµατα) because it is by learning (µαθεῖν)
them and by getting used to thinking without reference to

bodies that we have to be led up to divine things.266
Olympiodorus teaches from the Platonic dialogues set out in a series,

beginning with ethics and ending with theology, and since we have his
commentaries from the dialogues assigned to the first step in the
curriculum which is concerned with the attainment of virtue and which
sees ‘becoming intellect’ as the ultimate goal of philosophy, the
curriculum continues to seem very similar up into the sixth century. 267
In his Prolegomena on philosophy, Olympiodorus advocates ordering the
266 Ammon., in Porph. 12.20–13.7 ( R. Sorabji [ed.], The Philosophy of the

Commentators 200–600 AD. A Sourcebook, vol. 1, Ithaca 2005, 324).
267 Olymp., Phd. 8.1–20 .

reading of Aristotle’s treatises such that the students begin with ethics,
because: ‘One must first set in order one’s own ethical character, and
then begin the other studies’ and ‘one must put ethics before the rest
because it gives us the right rhythm and sets our ethical character in
order’.268 Thus we can observe assumptions about what is normal and
effective in pursuing the goal of the cultivation of the person in the
larger educational milieu in the form of a curriculum including moral
and mental discipline on its lower levels and aiming ultimately at the
facilitation of optimal noetic skill.
Origen’s Curriculum
A curriculum of overall moral and mental development similar to what

we have just observed in other late antique teachers can also be
identified in Origen. While a very large portion of Origen’s exegesis
reflects his concern for the spiritual development of the reader or hearer,
Origen also attaches his curriculum to specific series of books of the
Bible, though, in the prologue to his Commentary on the Song of Songs, he
sets down several alternatives. These include an explicit identification
of the order of three particular books with the three phases of what he
describes as the traditional Greek curriculum: Proverbs corresponds to
ethics or moral wisdom, Ecclesiastes to physics or natural wisdom, and
268 Olymp., proleg. 8.29–9.12 (Sorabji, 2005, vol. 1, 324.).

the Song of Songs to enoptics or inspective wisdom.269 Further on in the

same passage, Origen also considers it possible ‘that this threefold
structure of divine philosophy was prefigured in those holy and blessed
men’ Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Here Abraham corresponds to the life
of obedience or moral philosophy, while Isaac ‘[...] is an exponent of
natural philosophy, when he digs wells and searches out the roots of
things. And Jacob practices the inspective science, in that he earned the
name of Israel from his contemplation of the things of God.’270 Alternatively,
Origen claims that Christians have taken over the Jewish tradition:
[...] that all the Scriptures should be delivered to boys by

teachers and wise men, while at the same time the four
that they call δευτερώσεις—that is to say, the beginning of
Genesis, in which the creation of the world is described;

the first chapters of Ezechiel, which tell about the
cherubim; the end of that same, which contains the
building of the Temple; and this book of the Song of
Songs—should be reserved for study till the last. 271
On this account, the curriculum is based on the Scriptures generally, then

the deuteroseis, which culminates in the study of the Song of Songs.
269 Or., comm. in cant. prol. 3 (R.P. Lawson [ed.], The Song of Songs, Commentary and
Homilies, ACW 26, New York 1957, 39–40).
270 Ibid., 44–45.
271 Ibid., 23.

Origen sees advancement in the spiritual life as a matter of pursuing a

curriculum beginning with moral philosophy, ethics, and virtues like
obedience, progressing to learning about the created, natural world,
which he also calls physics or natural philosophy, and then moving on to
the highest phase, described as inspective wisdom or contemplation of
the things of God. 272 This curriculum may be put into practice in
connection with different series of books or groups of books, but what is
key is the explicit attachment of this curriculum to the study of biblical
texts, such that noetic exegesis becomes a possible method by which this
curriculum is realised.
Without rehearsing the entire discussion on Origen’s teaching
activity in Alexandria, two points are particularly relevant here. 273
Firstly, we should note the inclusion of subjects like geometry and
arithmetic as studies about which Origen is said by Eusebius to have
claimed that his students ‘would receive no small advantage from them
in understanding the Holy Scriptures’. 274 This is consistent with an
assumption on Origen’s part that the student whose ambition is to
perceive the noetic content of Scripture should first complete
272 Origen has another description of this pedagogical scheme consisting of the
mystical, physical, ethical and logical as described in fragment 14 of his
Commentary on Lamentations (E. Klostermann [ed.], Origenes, Werke, vol. 3, GCS 6,
Leipzig 1901, 241).
273 Two valuable but untranslated contributions to clarifying this question are
M. Hornschuh, Das Leben des Origenes und die Entstehung der alexandrinischen
Schule, in ZKG 71 (1960), 1–25, and 193–214, and C. Scholten, Die Alexandrinische
Katechetenschule, in JAC 38 (1989), 25–46.
274 Eus., h. e. 6.18,3–4 (Ch.F. Cruse [ed.], Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History. Complete and
Unabridged, Peabody 1998, 207–208).
preliminary studies in what he would term natural philosophy. Also,

on the vexed question of the so-called Catechetical School, it should be
noted that the term catechesis, in late antiquity, also existed outside of a
specifically Christian context and meant learning through imitation, a
kind of learning in which the student was expected to internalise what
was demonstrated by the teacher. Thus catechesis may have included
but was not by definition limited to instruction in Christian doctrine in
the same sense as the term catechesis is used today. This usage is
exemplified as late as Simplicius, the pagan philosophical teacher of the
6th century, in his discussion of a similar curriculum constructed from
the Platonic dialogues, a context which, if the characterisation of
Origen’s pedagogical work which this study suggests is correct, should
be unsurprising.275
Gregory Thaumaturgus supplies us with first-hand testimony on
the practical application of Origen’s curriculum. Although, because of
his verbosity, it is unclear from the account in his Panegyric on Origen in
which order Gregory was taught what, he does relate having been
taught geometry and astronomy, and knowledge about creation which
275 Richard Sorabji documents this usage in Simp., in cat. 5.23–6.5 (6th century) in
The Philosophy of the Commentators 200–600 AD. A Sourcebook, vol. 1,
London 2005, 322. Other usages of the term in this sense can be outlined as
follows from Liddell and Scott: def. ‘instruction by word of mouth: generally,
instruction’: Hp., praec. 13 (5th century BC); Cic., Att. 15.12,2; D. H., Dem. 50;
Chrysipp. Stoic. 3.54; Gal. 5.463; κατηχέω def. ‘teach by word of mouth: hence
generally, instruct’: Agrippa II, ap. J. vit. 65; Lucanius, asin. 48; 1Cor 14:19; Lk
1:4; Gal 6:6; ὁ κατηχούµεος τὸν λόγον Acts 18:25, κατηχήµενος τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ κυρίου
Porph., chr. 26.
fits in with the second step of Origen’s stated curriculum. 276 Gregory also
holds forth about how Origen conveyed to his students ‘the divine virtues
concerning how to act, which bring the soul’s impulses to a calm and steady
condition’ which sounds like the first step of the curriculum, the attainment of
inner order and the practical virtues.277 Gregroy also describes Origen
engaging in noetic exegesis of the Scriptures as part of his lectures, and how
‘he himself expounded and clarified the dark and enigmatic places, of which
there are many in the sacred words,’ so that we see the actual practice of
noetic exegesis used in teaching advanced students.278
Origen’s understanding of the goal of this curriculum, which is
at the same time the goal of the spiritual life, namely union with God
through perfect noetic apprehension, is fairly familiar. One passage
from the Peri Archon uses a metaphor from education to describe what
Origen thinks happens to the souls of the saints after death. He thinks
‘paradise’ is:
[...] a lecture room or school for souls [...] If anyone is

‘pure in heart’ and of unpolluted mind and well-trained
understanding he will make swifter progress and
quickly ascend.
276 Gr. Thaum., pan. Or. 8.109–114 (M. Slussser [ed.], St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. Life
and Works, FaCh 98, Washington 1998, 110).
277 Gr. Thaum., pan. Or. 9.115–119 (Slusser, 1998, 110).
278 Closer examination of this source, particularly as evidence for the practice of
noetic exegesis within this curriculum, is made in the following chapter.
After outlining the steps in this upward progress and the posthumous
curriculum which the souls work through to achieve it, Origen describes
the end of the journey thus:
And so the rational being, growing at each successive

stage, not as it grew when in this life in the flesh or body
and in the soul, but increasing in mind and intelligence,
advances as a mind already perfect to perfect
knowledge, no longer hindered by its former carnal
senses, but developing in intellectual power, ever
approaching the pure and gazing ‘face to face’, if I may
so speak, on the causes of things.279
So for Origen, the aim of his higher spiritual or philosophical

curriculum is to make the student pure in heart, of unpolluted mind and
well-trained understanding, so that after death he will be able to readily
advance to perfect knowledge. This process of mental and moral
purification, culminating in perfect knowledge of ultimate reality, is a
pattern so familiar from Neoplatonism that modern scholars have
expressed doubt about whether Origen should be characterised as a
Christian theologian or an only partially-converted philosopher. The
obvious relationship between Origen’s thought and that of non-
Christian contemporaries can less controversially be explained as
displaying all the links and similarities one would expect of a normal

relationship of thinkers pursuing common aims with the same

philosophical equipment available to them in their historical situation.
Origen also works with the familiar Platonist categorisation of
different levels of mental cultivation, from the sensual man, to the
statesman, to the philosopher:
And if a man forgets himself and is unaware of what

befits him, his whole purpose centres round bodily
experiences and in all his movements he is occupied
with the pleasures and lusts of the body. If, however, he
is one who strives to care or provide for the common
good, he applies himself either to serving the State or
obeying the magistrates or to whatever else may seem to
be clearly of benefit to people generally. But if there be a
man who can discern something better than these
activities, which appear to be connected with the body,
and can give diligent attention to wisdom and
knowledge, he will undoubtedly direct all his efforts
towards studies of this sort, with the object of learning,
through inquiry into truth, what are the causes and
reason of things. 280 As therefore in this life one man
decides that the highest good is the pleasure of the body,
another the service of the State, and another devotion to
studies and learning, so we seek to know whether in that
280 Origen is alluding to Verg., g. 2.490.

life which is the true one, the life which is said to be ‘hid
with Christ in God,’ that is, in the eternal life, there will
be for us any such order or condition of existence.281
It is essential to note here that Origen holds the leap from sensualism or
practical ethics to a higher and better form of life to be a result of ‘efforts
towards studies of this sort’. This is nothing new. However, in the
following discussion, Origen associates fleshly persons, ‘those who
reject the labour of thinking’ and ‘give way to their own desires and
lusts’ with those who interpret the prophecies in the Bible literally,282
and goes on to associate those dedicated to searching out the deeper
significance of these texts with the philosophical man who is
characterised by ‘devotion to studies and learning’. 283 In doing so,
Origen is implicitly supplying an affirmative answer to the question he
posed in the introduction to this section quoted above: Does the
differentiation of the sensual, statesmanlike, and philosophical man
obtain for Christians as well? Yes, and this can be observed in
individuals who make sensual, statesmanlike, or philosophical
interpretations of the Bible. Becoming a person capable of perceiving
the deeper significance of the Bible is, for Origen, the result of
committing to a programme of mental and moral formation.
282 Or., princ. 2.11,2 (Butterworth, 1985, 147 ff).

Didymus the Blind’s Curriculum
The evidence from the commentaries of Didymus the Blind presents a

clear-cut case of noetic exegesis functioning as part of a curriculum of
advanced spiritual development. Among the texts by Didymus in the
Tura Papyri are a collection of commentaries including stenographic
transcripts of twice-daily lessons on the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, as well
as a more finished text on Job, in which Job is interpreted as an example
of ascetic and contemplative perfection. 284 In the case of the
commentaries on the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, it is clear from the status
of the texts as direct transcripts, including (spontaneous and often
unhelpful) questions from students, that the exegesis of these texts was a
part of actual lessons. Unfortunately, we do not know whether these
books were studied in sequence as part of a three-step curriculum,
possibly beginning with the Psalms, progressing through the more
philosophical subject-matter of Ecclesiastes, and culminating in the
study of Job, whom Didymus takes to be an example of ascetic and
contemplative sainthood, or whether Didymus interpreted Scripture
with his students in any particular order at all. So while a construction
of these commentaries in a trilogy parallel to that of Origen must remain
conjectural, what is important is that Didymus teaches and forms his
students by performing noetic exegesis. The commentary on traditional
284 R.A. Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria. Virtue
and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship, Chicago 2004, 3.
texts forms the framework for mediating the process of moral and
mental formation in which Didymus’ students are engaged.
Didymus’ interpretation of biblical texts manifests examples of
instruction on all levels of the spiritual curriculum we saw in Origen
and which Origen claims were traditional. Numerous interpretations
which generate teachings on the attainment of virtue or what, on
Origen’s scheme, would be called ‘moral philosophy’, can be found and
have already been discussed in Chapter Two, since the life of virtue was
one of the intelligible referents to which a revelatory text was expected to
refer.285 While specific lessons on natural philosophy, if this is understood,
as in Origen, to indicate subjects like astronomy and mathematics, are not
typical of Didymus’ commentaries, his exegesis does include numerous
references to non-theological and, modern scholars would say, non-
biblical subjects. These could constitute points belonging to natural
philosophy or to a second step in the curriculum if Didymus understands
this as something like ‘secular learning’ or ‘general education’. For
example, in the Commentary on Psalms, Didymus reviews conceptual
categorisation of attributes and terminology based on Euclid and
Aristotle,286 and also teaches informal logic and the proper use of
285 Since a large proportion of the examples from Didymus already discussed in
this chapter, as well as the previous two, could be located in this category, we
will refrain from repeating them here.
286 Didym., ps. 21.2 (Doutreleau / Gesché / Gronewald, 1969, 103). Didymus here
refers to Gel. 1.20,9; Arist., top. 143 b 11; S. E., geom. 3.37.
syllogisms.287 In the Commentary on Job, Didymus works through the

different categories of friendship passed down from Aristotle.288
Student questions involve points of grammar and numerology, as
well as insecurity about whether a given interpretation was anagogical
or not which we observed at the beginning of this chapter. For example,
a keen student suspects a case of catechresis and queries the point. The
group in general seems to have enjoyed spotting such rhetorical quirks,
since it is brought up several times throughout the commentaries on
Psalms and Ecclesiastes, the two commentaries which most directly
reflect the pedagogical setting of their generation. In at least one case, a
student provoked a brief digression on biology, being reminded by a
reference to deer in the Psalms of the contemporary belief that deer were
able to eat snakes. 289
Didymus’ view of the purpose of the entire educational
endeavour centred on control of the body, gaining spiritual knowledge,
and attaining the noetic discipline necessary for true contemplation.
These concerns are set out together in his interpretation of Psalm 26:6:
287 Didym., ps. 21.27 (Doutreleau / Gesché / Gronewald, 1969, 207). Here we see
Didymus referring to Arist., s. e. 169 b 20 ff.; 171 b 6 ff.; top. 100 b 6 ff.;
100 b 23 ff.; 100 a 27 ff.; top. 100 a 30 ff. See also Didym., ps. 38.12
(M. Gronewald, 1969, vol. 3, 247) for discussion of how to prove contraries.
288 Didym., Job 6.16–17 (U. Hagedorn / D. Hagedorn / L. Koenen [eds.], Didymos

der Blinde. Kommentar zu Hiob III. Kap. 7.20–11.20, PTA 3, Bonn 1968, 169).
Didymus uses the classification of different types of friendship drawn from
Aristotle, as in Arist., e. e. 1236 a 16 ff.; m. m. 1209 a 5 ff.; e. n. 1156 a 7 ff.
289 Incidentally, Didymus is not the only Christian commentator who repeats this
legend while interpreting the Psalms.
‘I will sing and make hymns to the Lord’. We said about

the previous Psalms that ‘singing’ means contemplation
(θεωρίαν), when one sends praise up without instruments.
So both, he says, are given to me, I will make hymns and

sing. I will sing, in that I contemplate the truth.
Whoever concerns himself with the doctrines of piety
and considers them in knowledge and wisdom, sings.
But whoever also treats his body as an instrument, as a
cithara and psalter, by striking all of his appetites and
passions, which are in a sense strings, is able to bring
forth a melodious Psalm, makes hymns. 290
Didymus also reveals his understanding of the goals of the spiritual or

philosophical curriculum which he is teaching in three brief passages
which can be summarised here. Firstly, in his Commentary on the Psalms
(25,6–7), Didymus says, ‘[...] virtue must not stop at praxis but must go
on to theory and to the prize, to knowledge of the good itself, of the
truth’.291 Secondly, Didymus gives the following response to a student’s
request for the spiritual interpretation of Ecclesiastes 5:19: ‘Real and true
life consists in living according to philosophy and virtue.’292 And
zu Ps 22–26:10, PTA 4, Bonn 1968, 215).
291 Didym., ps. 25.6–7 (Gronewald, 1968, 171).
292 Didym., eccl. 5.19 (J. Kramer [ed.], Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zum
Ekklesiastes III. Kap. 5–6, PTA 13, Bonn 1970, 45).
thirdly, in the Commentary on Job, Didymus describes the knowledge

available to those who have achieved sainthood:
For because the philosophers do not participate in the

Holy Spirit, they do not have any precise knowledge of
these things, whereas the saints walk upon the earth and
have their citizenship in heaven at the same time. Thus
they can say ‘God gave me uncorrupted knowledge of
that which is, to know the construction of the world and
the effects of the elements, the beginning, the end, and
the middle of the times’.293
These passages reflect a picture of the goal of education and the spiritual
life which is usually considered typically Neoplatonic. For Didymus, the
prize of virtue, the virtue which is developed through the advanced
curriculum of which noetic exegesis is a part, is knowledge of the good
and of the truth. True life is life according to virtue and philosophy, a
statement which any late antique Stoic or Platonist teacher could also
have subscribed to. And the saints are superior to the philosophers not
because the Holy Spirit identifies them as Christians, but because the
Holy Spirit provides privileged access to the same goal as the
philosophers, namely knowledge of that which is. The extemporaneous
commentaries as a whole contain strikingly infrequent teaching on
Christian doctrine, focussing instead on a standard ascetical and
293 Didym., Job 11.9 (Hagedorn /Hagedorn / Koenen, 1968, 201).

philosophical agenda, praising the life of virtue, setting out biblical

characters as contemplative heroes, and encouraging the students to
orient their minds to the intelligible rather than the material.
Evagrius and Monastic Formation
Though not usually treated as in any way analogous to higher

philosophical education, another contemporary form of spiritual
pedagogy was monastic formation. The sources indicate that the
curriculum through which the monk was required to progress, and the
goal he was ultimately pursuing, were both closely related to the
educational agenda of the urban schools. Evagrius Ponticus, the primary
monastic teacher in our period, has a well-developed system of
monastic formation which is commonly described as a borrowing from
the Stoic scheme for philosophical development. In his teaching
practice, Evagrius works with a three-step course of spiritual formation
consisting of πρακτική, θεωρία φυσική, and θεωρία θεολογική. Πρακτική is a
synonym for ethics or moral philosophy, which to Evagrius means

asceticism. Θεωρία φυσική, Evagrius’ version of natural philosophy,
means for him the contemplation of the natural world and of the
Scriptures, by means of which the monk was to apply his νοῦς, which
had already been partially rehabilitated by asceticism, to the divine

wisdom which Evagrius held to have been deposited in the Scriptures
and in Creation. Θεωρία θεολογική is the highest step, and indicates the
perfect immediate contemplation of the Holy Trinity, free from images

or concepts. This scheme of progress in the spiritual life is explicated in
the Praktikos, Gnostikos, Kephalaia Gnostica, and Chapters on Prayer. It is
neither a monastic nor a Christian innovation, but reflects the same
cultural beliefs about the manner in which mental perfection could be
achieved which were also at the root of the pedagogical agenda of the
urban schools which have just been outlined.
Exegetical works on three books of the Bible, namely Proverbs,
Psalms and Ecclesiastes survive from Evagrius. The exegetical agenda
pursued by Evagrius is the application of the text to the progress of the
monk and development in the spiritual life. As with Didymus, we
cannot know in what order these books were taught, or even whether
they were consistently studied in any order at all. Evagrius does
subscribe to a set trilogy, but the trilogy he sets out in theory consists of
books other than those upon which we have surviving works by him.
Like Origen, Evagrius connects books of the Bible to the educational stages
of ethics, physics, and theology, and maps these disciplines onto Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs respectively.294 The equivocation and
inconsistency of all three of these Fathers on this point suggests that while
the books of Solomon had a privileged position, all books of the Bible were
considered a potential basis for spiritual instruction.
As with Didymus, Evagrius’ application of the text to the
spiritual development of the student on all levels of the curriculum is
294 Evagr. Pont., schol. in prov. 22.20 (247) (P. Géhin, Evagrius Ponticus. Scholies aux
Proverbes. Introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes, appendices et index, SC 340,
Paris 1987, 343).
manifested throughout his exegesis and his pedagogical writings.

Unwitting testimony in one chapter from the Kephalaia Gnostika reflects
the psychology on the basis of which this curriculum is constructed:
Who can know the structure of the world and the activity
of the elements? And who can understand the
composition of this organ of the soul? And who can
investigate how one is joined to the other, in what their
empire consists, and how they participate with one
another in such a way that the πρακτική becomes a chariot
for the reasoning soul, which strives to attain the

knowledge of God? 295
Evagrius sees attainment of passionlessness and the virtues (through

πρακτική) as enabling the reasoning soul, which in turn seeks the
knowledge of God. The questions composing this chapter all belong to

the category of natural philosophy, so that Evagrius’ inclusion of them
as worthy and desirable objects of knowledge indicates that he does
consider this type of knowledge appropriate for monks. In another
chapter, biblical locations transversed by the Hebrews are interpreted
allegorically as representing steps in spiritual development:

Egypt signifies vice, the desert the πρακτική, the land of Juda
the contemplation of bodies, Jerusalem [contemplation] of

the incorporeal, and Zion is the symbol of the Trinity.296
Vice, the state of the soul before engaging in this course of development, is
followed by ascetic discipline represented by the desert. The promised land
and its capitol represent natural contemplation (of bodies and the
incorporeal), while Zion is the ultimate goal of the soul, union with the Trinity.
As far as Evagrius’ teaching practice is concerned, it would be an
abuse of words to claim that he led a school analogous to that of Origen
or Didymus, but to a certain degree monastic formation did take place
in social structures similar to those of philosophical schools, with an
abba teaching a group of novice monks, and the monks being expected
to learn by imitation and internalisation the way of life demonstrated by
the abba. We have no evidence for monks learning geometry and
astronomy as in Origen’s school or being put through basic rhetorical
and logical exercises as with Didymus: the second phase of the
curriculum for Evagrius is still natural philosophy, but to him that
means contemplation which is within the natural capacities of the
human mind and is concerned with perceiving revelation within the
natural world and the Scriptures. This is an effective accommodation of
students who, unlike the majority of those attending Didymus’ or
Origen’s lessons, may have included the illiterate or those who had
received only very limited previous education.

Beyond the definition of the goal of the curriculum which is

apparent from putting θεωρία θεολογική at its summit, Evagrius also
reveals his understanding of the purpose of the monastic life in a letter:
Our struggle is for the contemplation of that which is and

of the Holy Trinity, and the demons wage a great war
against us to hinder us from knowing.297
So once again, the ultimate goal, the contemplation of that which is, is a
goal that any number of other teachers of advanced spiritual philosophy
would also have subscribed to. While there is variation among these
three Fathers, the same pattern of mental and moral purification
culminating in perfect knowledge can be observed consistently.
For Evagrius and the desert monks, the contemplation of
Scripture was a daily ascetic discipline: the monk was to repeat a verse
or passage of Scripture and meditate upon it until he was able to
perceive the divine wisdom within it.298 In the desert, striving to
comprehend the deeper content of Scripture became more a part of
spiritual formation than ever, being given a specific role in Evagrius’
three-step ‘curriculum’, of spiritual progress, under the name of θεωρία
φυσική. This type of contemplation required the monk to attempt to
perceive the spiritual realities contained in Scripture with a concentrated
297 Evagr. Pont., ep. 58.2 (G. Bunge, Evagrios Pontikos. Briefe aus der Wüste,
Trier 1986, 276).
298 Dysinger, 2005, 15.

mind, that is, one distracted neither by physical needs nor emotional
disorder. The monastic practice of chanting Psalms was a discipline
used to develop the special perception of Scripture’s spiritual
significance, as described in Evagrius’ Commentary on the Psalms:
‘And before the angels I will chant Psalms to you.’ To

chant psalms before the angels is to sing Psalms without
distraction: either our mind is imprinted solely by
realities symbolized (τοῖς σηµαινοµένους πράγµασιν) by the
Psalm, or else it is not imprinted. Or perhaps the one

who chants Psalms before the angels is he who
apprehends the meaning of the Psalms (ὁ νοῶν τὴν δύναµιν
τῶν ψαλµῶν).299
Here the actual act of chanting the Psalms is associated with a state of
mind which reflects the achievement of the moral and mental
curriculum we have just examined. The mind apprehends meaning, is
imprinted solely by the realities which the Psalm symbolises, or is even
so advanced as not to be imprinted at all.
Finally, it remains to clarify what exactly the relationship between
this curriculum and noetic exegesis is. The various aspects of the
curriculum (ascetic discipline, mental discipline, knowledge of abstract
principles of astronomy or geometry, etc.) serve the same overall goal as
299 Evagr. Pont., ps. 137 (Dysinger, 2005, 101).

the practice of noetic exegesis, namely the cultivation and rehabilitation

of the νοῦς. So to a degree, noetic exegesis is just one more component of
the process of spiritual development like asceticism or geometry or the

life of virtue. However, the relationship between noetic exegesis and the
curriculum as a whole is complicated by the fact that various other
aspects of the curriculum appear to be embedded in the process of
exegesis as represented in the commentaries. All of our sample
commentators make regular diversions (these only appear to be
diversions if one assumes their goal is other than it is, but quite in line
with their goals if one proceeds from the context of an overall spiritual
curriculum) to address questions of grammar or explanations of proper
rhetorical argument or principles of physics or geometry, as well as
taking every opportunity to indicate the type of contemplative vision
which is the ultimate goal of the spiritual life as they conceive it. Thus,
noetic exegesis is at the same time one of many tools in pursuing the
goal of the curriculum and also a means of facilitating or rehearsing the
other tools in this program. This double role, and the fact that the
commentaries we see are examples of noetic exegesis used as a teaching
tool by commentators already advanced in noetic skill and not of noetic
exegesis being practiced by students, explains the flexibility with which
noetic exegesis is used in the curriculum and the integration of the other
aspects of the curriculum with it. It is working toward acquiring the
ability to perform noetic exegesis which is a part of the curriculum like
any other, and the actual performance of it which is able to facilitate the
other aspects of the curriculum as well within itself. This is because the
actual fully competent performance of noetic exegesis assumes the

noetic skill toward which the curriculum as a whole is aimed.
Conclusions
In their own descriptions of how to find the noetic meaning of the text,
the sample commentators do not focus so much on procedure or
technique as on characterising and illustrating the sort of activity that is
necessary and the sort of person able to engage in it, besides specifying,
although with very moderate consistency and limited detail, the mental
equipment appropriate to the task. How can noetic exegesis be
performed? By applying an organ capable of perceiving the intelligibles
to a text whose contents are intelligible, and, consequently, by meeting
the requirements for the proper functioning of that organ, the νοῦς. Due
to the particulars of these requirements, the noetic interpreter is

expected to manifest control over his body and emotions and to both
possess and display the maximum intellectual prowess and noetic skill
attainable under embodied circumstances. Thus the noetic interpreter
appears in the roles of philosophical teacher, spiritual guide, or holy
man, since in the larger cultural context those roles all implied the
fulfilment of the physical, psychological, and emotional requirements
which corresponded closely to the requirements qualifying a noetic
exegete. Noetic skill in general is an acquired, rather than a learned,
skill, competence in which is attained, fully or partially, as part of an
overall process of moral and mental formation as reflected in a general

curriculum which appears not only in philosophical education, but also
in monastic contexts, all pursuing the same goal of enabling the νοῦς.
Thus when the question of how noetic exegesis is done is answered on a

thick description approach rather than from a phenomenological or
philological standpoint, several further points at which this practice
attained meaningfulness can be established, as well as a clearer view of
the cultural significance of this practice. Above all, it allows reasons for
its association with spirituality and moral formation to be located which
are independent of—although potentially compatible with—any
particular religious confession.
5
WHERE:
THE SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT
OF NOETIC EXEGESIS
Introduction
Interpretive assumptions arising out of beliefs about the nature and

status of the text, the metaphysical state of affairs relevant to it, and the
proper means of understanding it, have all been examined throughout
the preceding chapters, along with how such interpretive assumptions
determine the range of meaning found in a text. These assumptions in
turn determine where a given culture considers it appropriate to
undertake the task of interpretation, which is the topic of the present
chapter. Just as various communities today may believe that
appropriate exegesis of the Bible comes from the charismatic pulpit, the
Vatican, or the scholar’s desk,300 the interpretive community involved in
noetic exegesis also had its particular convictions about the appropriate
locus of the interpretive act. However, since noetic exegesis, unlike
present-day interpretation of the Bible in the communities just
mentioned, is not concerned with reaching an exclusive or authoritative
statement of the definitive meaning of the text, this issue is not as closely
300 For our purposes, debate in Eastern Block countries in the Soviet era about
where legitimate interpretation of Marx and Engels could be located would be
just as adequate an example.
related to questions of the correctness or authoritativeness of

interpretation as it is today. Instead, beliefs and assumptions about the
appropriate context for interpretation held by our sample commentators
and their interpretive communities are intricately linked with the other
interpretive assumptions we have already examined in the previous
chapters. The context in which noetic exegesis is performed must, for
example, facillitate or at least allow for the skillful application of the νοῦς
to the text, and it must either provide for or assume the attainment of
the overall mental and moral prerequisites for noetic skill just examined
in the previous chapter.
In the historical period with which we are concerned, the first
place to go for cultivation of the νοῦς was a school of advanced
philosophical formation whose curriculum, as we have seen in Chapter

Four, consisted of a programme aimed at doing exactly that, cultivating
the νοῦς. The fact that this type of formation was believed to be possible
in a school rather than, for example, some manner of magical rite, has to
do with the overall psychological structures assumed at the time within
this milieu—the νοῦς, in its pure form, was linked to the lower functions
of the νοῦς or higher functions of the psyche, and those profited from
moral and mental education, thus laying bare the ability of the νοῦς to
think purely.301 So not only is involvement in spiritual formation and

education a common characteristic in the biographies of Origen,
Didymus, and Evagrius which cannot be taken for granted, but there are
301 This psychology is discussed in more detail in Chapters Three and Four.
also clear systemic and conceptual grounds for the social location of
noetic exegesis within the framework of higher philosophical and
spiritual formation. These are rooted primarily in the following chain of
beliefs: that the νοῦς is the appropriate organ for the comprehension of
the intelligibles, that the text being interpreted has an intelligible

referent, that in order to comprehend that intelligible referent the νοῦς
must function well, that in order to function well the individual’s νοῦς
must be rehabilitated by establishing order in the body and the psyche,

and that it is desirable and possible to uncover the intelligible content of
the text.
Our commentators assumed, as was not at all eccentric in their
cultural context, that the proper way to establish the degree of bodily
and emotional order necessary to rehabilitate the νοῦς was to engage in a
course of physical and psychological discipline, whether this took the

form of reasoned moderation in food and drink and the cultivation of
inner calm, in its more gentlemanly expressions, or of radical asceticism
and the pursuit of perfect detachment through the careful and
concentrated liquidation of neurotic or disturbing thoughts and any
tendency to entertain them, as in Evagrius. The social context of noetic
exegesis in higher spiritual and philosophical formation is also
consistent with the belief that the noetic interpreter must fulfill the role
of the holy man, philosopher or spiritual guide. This is not only the case
as a result of the identification of this role with having achieved a high
level of noetic function, but also because that role was, quite logically,
commonly attributed to philosophical teachers, as we see in Porphyry’s

description of Plotinus or Gregory Thaumaturgus’ characterisation of
Origen. As a result, it was quite natural to expect a legitimate
commentator, having attained the necessary physical, emotional, and
mental status, to also be an authority on all topics involved in having
achieved that standing, including personal ethics, psychology, and even
mathematics. Without pinpointing this link between the relevant
interpretive assumptions involved in noetic exegesis and their social
expression, neither the excursions into academic areas in the
commentaries, nor the generation and use of the commentaries in an
educational context, can be explained satisfactorily.
The inclusion of attention to social context is indeed vital to the
methodological coherence of this study, which treats noetic exegesis as a
social act, drawing its significance and structure from community
assumptions. If noetic exegesis really is no more than a more stylish
name for what has usually been called allegorical interpretation, still
conceived of as the individual scholarly performance of particular
hermeneutical procedures with a view to elucidating Christian doctrine
and/or the beliefs of the interpreter through the text, then it cannot be a
proper object of thick description. This study has been concerned to
approach these commentaries as manifestations of the interpretive
assumptions and also of the social and cultural context which
determined the meaning that was found in the texts being interpreted.
This inversion of an approach to commentaries which relates them to the
texts they purport to interpret, instead relating the commentaries to the
communities which generated them to elucidate their driving concerns

and preoccupations in the form of interpretive assumptions, defines not
just the terminology used for a given practice but also the type of thing
which that practice is taken to be. As a result, the actual appearance of
noetic exegesis in the context of concrete social practices observable in
space and time and, above all, among people, is essential.
The social context of noetic exegesis also brings us back to the
tension between religious confession and cultural assumptions as
possible determining forces behind noetic exegesis. I have claimed that
specific religiously undetermined interpretive assumptions, rather than
the allegiance of commentators to a particular religious group, is what
accounts for noetic exegesis being as it was, and have repeatedly pointed
to the consistency with which particular ideas which appear here as
interpretive assumptions were also current in the larger cultural context.
However, it is not exactly eccentric to assume that the interpretation of the
Bible, as the text of choice in our sample, was an especially Christian
endeavour, and it is indeed usually portrayed as a project engaged in by
Christians, for Christians, with some sort of relationship to Christian
doctrine, and within a distinctly Christian context. This view of the nature of
early Christian commentaries has an attractive simplicity but also presents
serious difficulties when an effort to reconcile it with what is historically
discoverable is made. I will be concerned in the following to establish the
degree to which religious confession did or did not play a role in noetic
exegesis as a social act, arguing that the role of religious allegiance is a more
subtle and complex one than it first appears, but also one which, if accepted,
relieves historians of the need for cumbersome explanations of why, for

example, a long-term student of Origen could comfortably present his
thoughts in such a confessionally ambivalent manner. 302
In discussing what was believed to be the appropriate locus for
the practice of noetic exegesis I am more interested in what was typical
than with establishing a complete catalogue of what was or was not
considered possible or acceptable. While Origen’s double role as a
preacher as well as a teacher makes it clear that noetic exegesis could
also be applied in the context of church services, this context, besides
being both well-studied and deceptively obvious in the study of
Christian exegetes, is also a context that does not apply to Didymus or
Evagrius who, as far as we know, did not routinely deliver homilies nor
involve themselves in the spiritual formation of church attendees in
general. The social context which all three sample commentators did
share, along with their other interpretive assumptions, was one of
spiritual pedagogy, in which they as commentators also functioned in
the role of spiritual guides and teachers. Thus it is the meta-religious
location of all three of our sample exegetes, being intensely involved in
spiritual formation, rather than their common religious confession or
any religiously-determined locus of exegesis, which invites closer
examination of the logistical trappings of their pedagogical work, the
302 Gregory Thaumaturgus, despite having studied with Origen for several
years, in his farewell speech quotes Plato as much or more than the Bible,
and never mentions an explicitly Christian God or makes an unambiguous
reference to Christ.
student body involved, and the actual praxis of noetic exegesis as it can
be observed from outside the commentaries.
The Logistics of Higher Education in the Larger Culture
Advanced education in late antiquity involved logistical structures

much different from those current and conventional in the Western
world today. It is traditional to speak of ‘schools’, but in this particular
historical context, that term does not, in most cases, signify an institution
with a fixed physical plant in which courses are given according to a
schedule or syllabus and attendance at which is arranged by the
payment of tuition and/or a set procedure for enrolment. Instead, a
school consisted primarily of a social rather than an institutional
structure, and often consisted of nothing more or less than a habitual
group which met with a teacher for discussion and study. In late
antiquity, schools were concentrated in urban centres which saw a brisk
traffic of arrivals and departures, including both those who had come or
been sent specifically to pursue higher studies, and those who happened
to be in the city on other business and were attracted to a particular
teacher. Also, unlike in modern universities, there was no objective
measure of when a student was finished. Some students changed
teachers, and cities, several times before finding one they stayed with for
a long period. 303 That habit was developed into a topos of the search for
303 Porph., vit. Plot. 3.6–13.

the one teacher with optimal access to the truth, as we see in the
accounts of both Plotinus and Justin Martyr. Porphyry attached himself
to several teachers in the course of his life, while Amelius, another
student of Plotinus, stayed with Plotinus for twenty-four years. 304
The frequency of meetings and the degree to which they were
formally scheduled at all could vary, as could the level of pedagogical
orientation provided by the teacher, with some working systematically
toward their goal and others exercising very little authority in setting the
direction of discussion. Porphyry complains that Plotinus was of the
latter persuasion, allowing the students, or whoever turned up, to raise
questions for discussion as they pleased, which the more strait-laced
Porphyry described as resulting in a lot of pointless chatter.305 In
Alexandria, the Serapeum included lecture rooms whose use would
have had to be routinised in some manner, giving a more formal
structure to teaching there, assuming that rooms were shared by more
than one teacher and their use had to be scheduled. 306 That type of
regulated school-to-property arrangement was more the exception than
the rule, however. Meetings could also be held in the teacher’s home,
depending on the social and economic standing of the teacher, or in the
304 Porph., vit. Plot. 3.35–45.
305 Porph., vit. Plot. 4.35–38. For a full account of the practical workings of
philosophical schools, see G. Clark, Philosophic Lives and the Philosophic Life, in:
T. Hägg / Ph. Rousseau (eds.), Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity,
Transformation of the Classical Heritage 31, Berkeley 2000, 29–51, and J. Dillon,
Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity, in: A. Smith (ed.), The Philosopher and
Society in Late Antiquity. Essays in honour of Peter Brown, Swansea 2005, 1–18.
306 E. Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, Transformation
of the Classical Heritage 41, Berkeley 2006, 145.
home of the scholar’s patron, or in public places, or a combination of

any of the above. Plotinus, for example, was taken in by Gemina in
Rome and started a school from his patroness’ house, as did Origen
originally in Alexandria.307 Classes did not meet year-round, and Dillon
identifies a summer break from July to October.308
There was also variety, and a contrast with higher education as
we know it, in the question of whether and how students were expected
to pay fees. The financial logistics of higher education depended in part
on the social status of the teacher, as well as the activity of patrons. The
money accumulated had to suffice not only for the sustenance and
possible travel expenses of the teacher, but also for any writing supplies
or scribal staff or books required, especially where the teacher was
involved both in the instruction of others and in scholarship, as is typical
of our commentators. Olympiodorus, in the 6th century, is very
preoccupied with encouraging his students to pay fees, but the fact that
he is reduced to embedding persistent reminders in his lessons suggests
that he did not have much means of enforcing payment. 309 At the same
school, some manner of municipally funded chair was established for
Ammonius Hermeiou, but this again was one option among many, and
307 D.J. O’Meara, Platonopolis. Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity,

Oxford 2005, 14.
308 Porph., vit. Plot. 5.3–5. See also R. Lamberton, Homer the Theologian,
Transformation of the Classical Heritage 9, Berkeley 1986, 446.
309 Watts, 2006, 234–235. The entire subject of fees could cause awkwardness for
the teacher, since philosophers, unlike teachers of rhetoric, were promoting a
way of life above material concerns, so that any frank and direct payment
system would appear to contradict their ideals.
seems to have resulted more from his mother’s lobbying than to have
represented a typical arrangement.310 If both the teacher and the
students were of a very high social class, fee payment would have been
culturally inappropriate, and instead a bond of social obligations and
patronage would have been established and its analogy to exchanging
money for services politely ignored. Such bonds could be very
influential in both the private and public futures of the students and
often also included strong emotional attachments between teachers and
students, and among students and their fellows.
Given the highly social nature of late antique advanced
education, the composition of the student body as well as the
relationships between students and teachers and within groups of
students played a large role. While becoming part of a philosophical
teacher’s inner circle of students usually included a certain degree of
personal attachment and corresponding investment of time and loyalty,
those students who remained part of the less intensely attached outer
circle could conceivably visit the lectures of multiple teachers.311
310 Watts, 2006, 209. Ammonius’ mother, as the matriarch of a leading

philosophical dynasty, had secured an agreement that her son could take over
the public salary which had been granted to his father Hermeias before his
premature death.
311 Plotinus terms those belonging to the broader category of students who
attended more casually or with a lesser degree of commitment ἀκροαταί (Porph.,
vit. Plot. 7.1–3), and refers to those in the inner circle as ζηλωταί. This structure
was typical and is also recognisable in our commentators. One may be
reminded of present-day structures around individual charismatic professors,
with their circle of favourite graduate students and a larger group of students
who attend their classes, but Western mores tend to encounter such structures
with a degree of anxiety about nepotism and the potential for impropriety.
Examples can be found of spontaneous visits to lectures, visits

undertaken with the express purpose of arguing a different teacher’s
views, and fully uncommitted students who wandered in and out of
various teacher’s circles without necessarily seriously pursuing
philosophy. We also have some suggestion of individuals who already
had an established profession or public office visiting philosophical
lectures occassionally, out of personal interest or to demonstrate their
own cultivation and status. 312 Thus the student body of a higher
philosophical school in our period would include both individuals who
occasionally attended but had no expertise in philosophy nor any
particular or exclusive attachment to the circle they were visiting, and
also individuals pursuing serious academic study of philosophy (which
in our period subsumed a large number of disciplines today treated as
separate) and closely attached to the teacher and his or her philosophical
perspective. Plotinus’ circle in Rome, on Porphyry’s account, consisted
of fourteen regular members including three women, five politicians,
three doctors, and two literary men. 313 The image of a philosopher
surrounded by keen young men must be modified by these points. The
student body was demographically as diverse as it could be while
remaining above a certain limit of privilege and leisure. Students had to
have the leisure and resources to sit around and talk for a large portion
of their time for as long as twenty-four years, but since studying
312 All of these variations are described in Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus as well as
Gregory of Thaumaturgus’ Panegyric for Origen.

philosophy was not equivalent to gaining professional training, they

need not have been young people at the beginning of a specific career.
For many students, a deep and intense admiration for the teacher
led to a life-long bond, and their experiences with each other formed the
basis for social attachments which were maintained for decades. This
can be observed in the correspondence of Synesius of Cyrene, who had
been a student of Hypatia in Alexandria. His letters to Hypatia herself
use the highest terms of affection and esteem, and she is the one he
addresses when he finds himself ‘in such evil fortune that (he has) need
of a hydroscope’.314 His old teacher is the one he writes to with the last
clarity of his mind from his deathbed. 315 Synesius also expresses the
type of friendship pursued within the student body in a letter to his
friend and former fellow-student Herculean:
Nothing can prevent souls who seek each other form

drawing near to each other by secret paths and becoming
locked together. Now our friendship ought to be of this
character, if we are not going to shame our training in
philosophy. Do not let us be such men as simply rejoice
in the senses, and never allow the soul to enter unless the
body knocks at the door. 316
314 Synes., ep. 15.
315 Synes., ep. 16.
316 Synes., ep. 140. See also the letters ep. 139 and ep. 146 for the link of the
intensity of this relationship to the common pursuit of philosophy.
Synesius sees the intensity and soulfulness of this bond as actually

entailed by their common ‘training in philosophy’. Porphyry likewise
not only turned to his teacher for advice when suffering from
depression, but also dedicated substantial resources of time and energy
to preserving his memory and his works.
Social ties based on patronage, ties formed through common
educational experience, and ties of kinship were all interwoven with
involvement in this type of study. 317 Higher philosophical education
entailed constructing or activating relationships of patronage, which
were not only characteristic of a close student-teacher association, but
were also the economic base for the teachers and their patrons. Several
cases of overlap between school relationships and family relationships
can be observed. For example, a woman who was a student of Plotinus
(Amphiclea) married Iamblichus’ son, while Iamblichus also possibly
studied with Porphyry.318 The circle of Iamblichus was intricately
connected with empowered classes and political leaders, including the
emperor Julian.319 Plotinus not only received patronage from interested
persons or wealthy students, but also acted as patron in taking on the
dependent children of others as his wards. 320 Hypatia seems to have
been something of an institution, so that local officials would come and
317 O’Meara, 2005, 16.
318 For further kin relationships between philosophical dynasties, see Proclus,
theol. Plat. 1.26–35.
319 O’Meara, 2005, 18.

pay their respects on being elected or being re-posted to Alexandria.321

Ties to the ruling classes were close, not least because a large proportion
of students went on to become bishops, governors, consuls, or even
emperor.322 Embarking on advanced philosophical formation was, for a
student, thus not only a mental and moral undertaking, but also
entailed the construction of a network of attachments which served to
involve him or her in a section of society which understood itself as
committed to the spiritual and philosophical life, the highest and most
exclusive ideal of the time.
As is apparent from this account and as we will see in the
examination of the pedagogical activities of our commentators,
variations on these most basic arrangements were possible and frequent,
but in all cases advanced education could be and was carried out within
the framework of non-institutionalised or minimally institutionalised
social structures. That means that in the following, when we speak of
Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius as leading schools or producing noetic
exegesis in the context of a school, it is a group of people which could
involve extraordinary levels of commitment academically and
personally, to which we refer. This element of zeal and commitment and
the high esteem in which the teacher was held are all well in line with
the orientation of higher spirtual and philosophical education toward the
cultivation of the mind through careful and far-reaching exercise of all
capacities of the human individual.
321 O’Meara, 2005, 24.
322 O’Meara, 2005, 2.

Pedagogical Logistics in Origen
Since the evidence from Caesarea is highly superior to that for

Alexandria, and since Origen’s own development as a scholar was, due to
his youth, not yet at a comparable level to contemporary philosophical
teachers for much of the time he was still resident in Alexandria, we will
here focus mainly on Origen’s pedagogical work in his school in
Caesarea. This can be drawn from first-hand testimony by one of his
students, known to us as Gregory Thaumaturgus. The evidence for
Alexandria comes mainly from Eusebius, but is tangled and contentious
and includes multiple phases in Origen’s scholarly development, only the
latter of which see him at a level capable of taking on a circle of students
for higher philosophical and spiritual formation.
Very little can be established about precisely where and when
Origen’s teaching took place. In Alexandria, there is some suggestion of
him living and teaching from a patroness’ house for some period of
time, and that he had already reached a high enough status as a scholar
that people would come to hear him or question him. 323 What is not
known is to what degree Origen had a set circle of students with whom
he met on a regular basis. In Caesarea, it is clear that he had an
established school, but since Origen was simultaneously involved in
other scholarly activities, as well as delivering homilies in his capacity as
an ordained priest, it is difficult to surmise how often meetings were
actually held. It is also not impossible that there was some overlap
323 Eus., h. e. 6.

between Origen’s school and his church-based activities. Were students

encouraged to attend services and hear his homilies as a sort of
supplementary lesson? What proportion of the students were also
members of the church? Did Origen have a local patron while in Caesarea
beyond the local bishops and those who commissioned his
commentaries? And if only the local bishops were supporting him, what
exactly did they contribute? Was Origen able to use church property to
meet with students or to work on written commentaries? How was he
provided for economically? The logistical arrangements of teaching had
to allow for Origen to do a substantial quantity of other writing, as well as
performing clerical duties, at least preaching, over the same period.
Beyond that, there is no definite evidence on the basis of which the
location and frequency of Origen’s lessons in Caesarea can be established.
As for the financial component, the last information on this topic
we have from Alexandria, apart from Eusebius’ account, is the mention
of scribal staff in Origen’s Commentary on John. Origen takes up his
commentary after having left Alexandria, and mentions not only
difficulties in finding his texts on the boat, but also the fact that his
scribes had not turned up to work when the situation in Alexandria
became disconcerting, so that Origen’s progress on the commentary had
been interrupted.324 Some one had to have been paying Origen’s staff,
but we have no information about whether these costs were covered by
the commissioner of the commentary, by Origen himself, by another lay
patron, or possibly by the church. In Caesarea Origen’s basic
324 Or., Jo. 6.1.

maintenance was presumably provided by the church, inasmuch as he

was at that point an ordained priest, but it is not impossible that he also
required fees or some manner of recompense from his students in the
philosophical school, given the significant expense incurred by his
scholarly activities. Still, it is not certain, since these expenses could also
have been covered by patrons or those who commissioned the works.
Origen’s students in Caesarea included the same type of
privileged individual that we typically see in the urban schools. Of the
few we can identify specifically, Gregory went on to become bishop of
Neocaesarea, Alexander of Cappadocia also became a bishop, and
Porphyry (if he really did study with Origen even for a short time)
became a favourite student of Plotinus and a scholar in his own right.
What is relevant for our purposes is that it was possible for persons of
any religious confession or for those in transition from one to the other
to study with Origen. The student body can neither be characterised as
consisting of Christian catechumens nor of pagans being missionised.
As in comparable schools, there was a range of different relationships to
Christianity as a confession.
If we look now specifically at the evidence provided by Origen’s
student, Gregory, we can see that Gregory was brought up as a pagan,
in, as he puts it ‘the misguided customs of my native land’. His mother
may have been Christian, since he only points to his father as
‘superstitious’.325 After the loss of his father, Gregory’s mother took advice
325 Gr. Thaum., pan. Or. 5.48–9 (M. Slusser [ed.], St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. Life and
Works, FaCh 98, Washington 1998, 99).
on how to educate her sons, and the aim of studying law in Beirut was
set. When Gregory’s brother-in-law was summoned to Palestine to serve
the governor as assistant, he soon sent for his wife, Gregory’s sister. This
involved free transport to Caesarea for Gregory and his brother as well,
who were to look after their sister on the journey. It was assumed they
would then go on to Beirut, taking advantage of the opportunity to make
a large part of the trip for free. In fact they remained in Caesarea, having
been persuaded to study philosophy with Origen instead.326 This
biography locates Gregory in a well-to-do social class, not only with
proximity to public officials and governors, but also with the family
resources to allow for advanced education.
Gregory describes how he came to study with Origen, an event
which he characterises as a providential meeting, since Origen had
recently arrived in the city, and Gregory and his brother had also
travelled there as escorts for their sister who had been sent for to join her
husband. Gregory gives a characteristically dramatic account of how he
was persuaded to stop in Caesarea and study with Origen, with Origen
in the role of a hunter or fisherman and he and his brother cast as ‘wild
animals or fish or birds’. 327 Origen’s argument for engaging in
philosophical study involved
[...] saying that the only ones truly to live the life which
befits rational beings are those who strive to live uprightly,
326 Gr. Thaum., pan. Or. 5.56–61, 65 (Slusser, 1998, 101–102).
327 Gr. Thaum., pan. Or. 6.73 (Slusser, 1998, 102).

who know themselves first for who they are, and next
what the genuine goods are which a person ought to
pursue, and the truly bad things one must avoid. 328
In fact, Origen’s pitch seems to be a sort of popularised Platonism,

setting ‘most people’ who ‘wander like brute beasts without any idea of
what good and evil are or any desire to find out’ and are concerned for
material possessions and worldly honours or physical beauty,
overagainst those who concern themselves with reason and choose the
life of philosophy. 329 It is worth stating explicitly that there is no
mention in this account of Origen’s efforts to persuade people to study
philosophy with him of conversion, baptism, the Church, the Bible, or
anything exclusively or particularly Christian.
Gregory’s testimony also clearly reflects the intense emotionality
of the teacher-student bond in this particular social context. His praise
for his teacher is reminiscent of Porphyry’s characterisation of Plotinus
as only tenuously connected to the embodied state. Origen, to Gregory,
is ‘a man who looks and seems like a human being, but [...] has already
completed most of the preparation for the re-ascent to the divine
world.’330 He wishes to
330 Gr. Thaum., pan. Or. 2.10 (Slusser, 1998, 93): Περὶ γὰρ ἀνδρὸς διανοοῦµαί τι λέγειν,
φαινοµένου µὲν καὶ δοκοῦντος ἀνθρώπου, τὸ δὲ πολὺ τῆς ἕξεως τοῖς καθορᾶν δυναµένοις
ἀπεσκευασµένου ἤδε µείζονι παρασκευῇ µεταναστάσεως τῆς πρὸς τὸ θεῖον.
[...] call to mind his most godlike (θεοειδέστατον) feature,
where his inner being co-naturally touches God (ἐν αὐτῷ
συγγενὲς ὄν τυγχάνει Θεῷ) (since although for the moment it is
enclosed in what is visible and mortal, yet it is struggling

with the greatest industry to become like God). 331
Gregory refers to Origen as a holy man (θεῖος ἀνήρ), witnessing to the
degree to which Origen was perceived as fulfilling the role of spiritual

guide or visionary. 332 The transition to full commitment to the study of
philosophy is portrayed in emotionally charged terms:
Like a spark landed in the middle of our soul (τῇ ψυχῇ),
the love (ἔρως) for the most attractive Word of all, holy (ἱερόν)
and most desirable in its ineffable beauty, and for this man
who is his friend and confidant (φίλον καὶ προήγορον), was
kindled and fanned into flame. Gravely wounded by it,

I was persuaded to neglect all the affairs or studies for
which we seemed destined, including even my precious
law, and my native land and friends, those back home and
those we were to visit. Just one thing seemed dear and

beloved to me, the life of philosophy and this divine human

being (ὁ θεῖος ἄνθρωπος), its chief exponent. 333
Gregory thus, with considerable drama and in high colour, describes

how he was finally convinced to change his plans and concentrate on
studying philosophy with Origen. Granted, Gregory shows every sign
of being a particularly effusive and highly-strung individual, but the
intensity of feeling and deep admiration for the teacher involved are not
atypical for the social context of higher philosophical education. Indeed,
if philosophy entails not just the comprehension of various theories, but
the renovation and transformation of the individual even on the level of
mastery over the body and emotions, it is no wonder that the experience
of engaging in education had a strong personal dimension.
Pedagogical Logistics in Didymus
The location of Didymus’ school and the frequency of his lessons are
both uncertain. In most cases his place of work and residence is given as
Alexandria without further specification, and the historiographic
sources portray him as an ascetic. However, this does not provide any
conclusive indication that Didymus was part of a monastery, since it
was quite possible for ascetics to live independently within the city, and
it is not clear whether the historiographers providing this description
333 Gr. Thaum., pan. Or. 6.83-84 (Slusser, 1998, 104).

are freely associating Didymus with desert monasticism. In any case, as

archaeological excavations have shown, even if Didymus was a monk,
monastic cells of this period were more like individual houses than like
desolate caves or stripped-down sleeping chambers in a monastery, so
that it would have been perfectly possible to have students come
indoors with him, to allow a scribe to write at a proper table, and to
have a clean place to store books. All we can conclude with any sort of
security about the location of Didymus’ school is that Didymus lived in
or near Alexandria and was active as a teacher there. The evidence for
the frequency of Didymus’ lessons is much more plentiful than in the
case of either Origen or Evagrius, since the commentaries on the Psalms
and Ecclesiastes include some internal references to what had been
discussed the previous day or that morning. Didymus was also
engaged in dictating and editing written or commissioned
commentaries or doctrinal treatises, so that his teaching would not have
been his sole full-time activity. Still, on at least some occasions, lessons
were held twice a day, presumably in the mornings and evenings when
the heat was more tolerable and concentration more feasible. Didymus
has a fairly dominant style of teaching, in which his commentary on
each verse constitutes the lion’s share of the transcribed lessons.
While occasional questions are posed and answered, the direction and
progress of the commentary are determined by Didymus alone.
In the case of Didymus and Evagrius, where education goes
hand in hand with asceticism, the way of life of the teacher significantly
reduces the costs which needed to be covered, so that the need to require
payment from the students or their parents is similarly reduced. (Origen

also had a reputation for asceticism, but in the fourth century that had
begun to entail a higher degree of demonstrative social withdrawl than it
did early in the third.) The direct requirement of payment would have
been deemed inappropriate for teachers aiming to exemplify a life of
renunciation, but this does not exclude a more informal and less
seemingly worldly expectation that the students would bring gifts or
provide assistance. Also, Didymus still had the option of receiving
patronage or being supported in some manner by the church. With or
without an ascetic lifestyle, he had to cover the costs of books, writing
materials, scribal staff and presumably, given his visual disability, some
manner of domestic assistance.
The historiographical sources reflect the fame and reputation
enjoyed by Didymus as a scholar and spiritual teacher. Sozomen
describes Didymus as the leader of a school of holy learning in
Alexandria (τοῦ διδασκαλείου τῶν ἱερῶν µαθηµάτων). He praises Didymus’
expertise as including poetry, rhetoric, geometry, mathematics and

philosophy. 334 His lessons were something people making a tour of
ascetic heroism in Egypt stopped to see, sometimes on their way in or
out of the desert to also visit monastic teachers like Evagrius. His
visitors included Jerome and Palladius and he was part of the same
social network as Evagrius, close to Melania and Rufinus. Palladius
portrays Didymus as one of the ‘men and women who reached
perfection in the Church of Alexandria’ and lauds his keen conscience
334 Soz., h. e. 15.1

and his ‘gift of knowledge’. On Palladius’ account, Didymus is

associated with the famous ascetic Antony through having received
three visits from him. 335
But who, besides such famous guests, heard Didymus’
commentary? Who were the people whose questions and interjections
are recorded in the script of the lessons on Psalms and Ecclesiastes?
These questions are difficult to answer with any satisfactory degree of
precision. We know that women were included in the group at least
sometimes, since in one passage Didymus explicitly refers to their
presence. 336 Unfortunately, there is no way to tell whether these were
aristocratic Christian ladies demonstrating their interest in ascetic
scholarship, or ordinary women who lived nearby and attended
occasionally, or virgin ascetics who were a regular part of the group.
The fact that Didymus responds to student questions using singular
rather than plural forms would suggest that the group was small
enough for him to address students individually in a sort of a seminar or
discussion format rather than addressing a large group collectively.337
The students not only included the literate, but also those who had some
335 Pall., h. Laus. 4.
336 See Didym., eccl. 11:9 (G. Binder / L. Liesenborghs [eds.], Didymos der Blinde.
Kommentar zum Ekklesiastes VI. Kap. 11–12, PTA 9, Bonn 1969, 95) where
Didymus is addressing the question of which moral laws are valid for men and
women both. His argument is that where a masculine plural is used, it can be
assumed women are included, as a sort of compliment to the women. He gives
his own reference to the student body using a masculine plural form, despite
the fact that women are present, as substantiation of this point.
337 A.B. Nelson, The Classroom of Didymus the Blind, Ph. D. Dissertation, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor 1995, 25.
degree of familiarity with grammar and logic and some interest in

continuing in advanced studies, as we see when Didymus offers advice
on further reading to the person who is φιλόκαλος.338 This, and the fact
that the students seem to be reading along in their own (or shared)
copies of the text being discussed (they interrupt if Didymus skips a
phrase or passage), suggests that the student body was economically
similar to that of other advanced schools.339 Students or their families
would have had to have sufficient means at least to allow them to opt
out of employment for an extended period of time, since the
commentaries reflect regular attendance, and also to supply the
necessary materials and sustenance while the student remained
involved with Didymus. That is, the group attending Didymus’ lectures
included people with this level of socio-economic status, but may not
have been limited to them. The rising trend toward asceticism, if taken
up by the student, would have minimised any socio-economic limits on
who could afford to participate in Didymus’ school, and indeed the
priorities reflected in his interpretation suggest a decisive degree of
support for the ascetic life on Didymus’ part.
Some image of the students can be gained from the student

questions included in the transcripts of the Commentary on Ecclesiastes
and the Commentary on Psalms, which include more than three hundred
marked questions. The level of previous education or of present skill
338 Nelson, 1995, 26, referring to ZaT 354.18; GenT 139.12; ZaT 391.11; GenT
119.3; etc.
339 Nelson, 1995, 28.

varies somewhat, so that some students offer their own suggestions on

parallel texts which could shed light on special terms, while others pose
questions with a view to getting further examples or further explanation
of the point Didymus has just made and which they have not
understood.340 A very large portion of the questions concentrate on
asking Didymus to provide the anagogical significance of a certain term
or passage. 341 Didymus’ relationship with the students also varies, so
that some annoyance is expressed in his answers to questions where the
student has interrupted, for example, because he wants to know the
specific type of snake that deer eat (a common belief in antiquity).342 In
some cases, Didymus is irritated by a question and begins his reply in
the imperative form, exhorting the student to pay better attention or to
remember what has just been said.343 In other cases, Didymus takes up
what the student has queried and either corrects it or develops the idea
further. 344 While the students were obviously able to read and speak
Greek, there are instances in which Didymus is asked to explain special
vocabulary or particular usages. 345 In short, although we have more
specific pieces of information about Didymus than can be gathered for
Origen or Evagrius, it is not possible to focus the picture sharply enough
340 PsT 218.14–29
341 Nelson, 1995, 30.
342 Nelson, 1995, 31. Cf. PsT 296.26.
343 PsT 187.5; PsT 56.17.
344 Nelson, 1995, 30. Cf. EcclT 152.9; PsT 62.2; EcclT 62.29; PsT 62.1.
345 Nelson, 1995, 35. Cf. PsT 206.22–24.

to be able to draw a conclusion about whether and how Didymus’

school differed from that of Origen in Caesarea or Evagrius in a separate
monastic community. It may, like Origen’s, also have been urban, it may
also have been aimed at privileged people, it may have also included
pagans. It may, like Evagrius’, have been somehow displaced from the
city, it may have focussed on students committed to asceticism, it may
have been exclusively Christian in practice if not in potential. There
simply are not enough pieces of the puzzle available to construct a
complete and clear picture of Didymus’ school, let alone to compare its
logistical trappings with any others.
Pedagogical Logistics in Evagrius
Evagrius was a spiritual teacher of monks, but his social setting is not
quite as logistically distinct from that of the urban schools as it initially
appears. Recent scholarship has revised the picture of early
monasticism to emphasise the presence of educated Greek-speaking
individuals and the close interaction between monastic communities
and the social and economic structures around them. 346 It is necessary
to keep this firmly in mind when engaged with early historiographers’
picture of monasticism, which constructed a more severe break with the
outside world and a more absolute rejection of status and education
346 See for example J.E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert. Studies in Early
Egyptian Monasticism, Harrisburg 1999.
than was really the case. The monastic communities were, at least in
part, demographically analogous to the urban schools, and persons
educated in either were candidates for becoming bishops or taking up
other high offices. Also, archaeological findings reveal substantial
libraries, and further suggest that the purportedly illiterate rural
population from which some monk-converts were drawn were
frequently mixed with a demographic competent both in reading and
writing and fluent in Greek.347 While Evagrius was already well-
educated before he became a monk, he was also initially a student of the
spiritual tradition he entered in the desert, and only then progressed to
becoming a teacher.348 Those aspects of his work connected to the
higher degree to which the interpretive community in which Evagrius
worked was also a close community in economic and social terms, are
what make his situation slightly distinct from that of Origen and
Didymus. It is a difference of degree rather than kind, as Origen and
Didymus were also advocates of asceticism, for example, and in the case
of Didymus, we do not know how or where he was educated, so that a
training within the same tradition in which he later taught cannot
necessarily be excluded. The exegetical works of Evagrius themselves
do not include descriptive information about where and how they were
produced or used and, because of their elliptical style, there is an
unfortunate dearth of incidental comments which would reveal this sort
347 S. Rubenson, Evagrios Pontikos und die Theologie der Wüste, in: H.Ch. Brennecke /
E.L. Grasmück / Ch. Markschies (eds.), Logos. Festschrift für Luise Abramowski,
BZNW 67, Berlin 1993, 384–401 (386–387).
348 Rubenson, 1993, 385.

of information. Since Evagrius’ letters are equally opaque on this point,

the next best sources are the Apophthegmata Patrum on monastic teaching
generally in the communities in which Evagrius was active, and the
accounts of the historiographers.
Evagrius had a high level of interaction with a network of
educated supporters who could act as patrons, some of whom he had
known before becoming a monk, such as Melania and Rufinus. He was
able to travel to Alexandria to hear Didymus, and people wishing to hear
him occasionally or study with him temporarily without joining the
community permanently as monks were able to travel into the desert
and do so, as did John Cassian. It was also possible and customary even
for incidental travellers or curious non-Christians, including pagan
priests, to stay with the monks. 349 Thus while monastic formation and
monastic exegesis initially appear to have taken place in an
extraordinary context, and while the monks and their admirers certainly
cultivated the image of their life as exceptional and separate, monastic
communities were involved in a large portion of ordinary everyday
logistics, earning their living, coming and going, looking after guests,
and so on. It is just as much a wonder that Evagrius was able to write as
copiously as he did as it is that Origen found time amidst clerical duties
and running a school while in Caesarea or that Didymus did while
giving lectures as often as twice a day.
349 Apophth. Patr., olympus 1 (B. Ward [ed.], The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The
Alphabetical Collection, CistSS 59, Kalamazoo 1975, 160) mentions a pagan priest
who ‘came down from Scetis one day and came to my cell and slept there.’
As to the place and frequency of Evagrius’ teaching, the picture

that can be constructed is again a mere sketch. As with Origen and
Didymus, we at least know where Evagrius lived, but we don’t know
whether his teaching was performed in the framework of individual
mentoring of abba to disciple in private, or as part of communal
meetings, or both. It is not known whether he had a set group of
students exclusively attached to him, or whether, as in urban schools,
people could come and go independently as they decided. Also, the
evidence indicates an active tradition of oral commentary within
monastic communities parallel to the written commentaries of Evagrius,
which could potentially be circulated to individual monks or groups of
monks and studied in a modified social format beyond what was
allowed by direct oral commentary. Palladius reports daily meetings
between Evagrius and a group of five or six monks from outside the
community who came to be instructed outside Evagrius’ cell. 350
What is different to Origen and Didymus is one aspect of the
financial component of teaching: Since Evagrius and his students were
largely part of the same community, they were also part of the same
economic unit, which provided their living in common. Thus while
outsiders may have been unofficially expected to bring gifts, costs of
writing materials, books and any assistants had to be covered by
patronage or community earnings. Palladius, in the same passage,
comments that Evagrius ‘wrote during the year only the value of what
350 Palladius’ account of Evagrius is in h. Laus. 38. See also Socr., h. e. 3.7, 4.23;
and 7.17.
he ate—for he wrote the Oxyrhyncus characters excellently.’351 While

difficult to construe, this suggests that while Evagrius was a talented
scribe and could have earned more, he limited the practice of this trade,
and the time invested in it, to what he needed to supply himself with
food. This paints a picture of Evagrius in a position of economic self-
sufficiency as to his own upkeep, but the question of how other costs
were covered remains open. The most probable source of funding was
patronage in the form of endowments or donations from aristocratic
admirers of ascetic learning or communal funds.
As for the student body, once again the similarities to Origen and
Didymus are greater than they initially appear. While the monastic
context may suggest a high level of religious specialisation, so that
Evagrius’ students, unlike the supposed new converts trained by
Origen, would have been already advanced in their familiarity with
Christian doctrine, the sources suggest that it was possible to convert
straight from paganism to monasticism. 352 In such cases, the individuals
concerned may have in fact had less general knowledge of Christian
religion than a new urban convert. Also, although we typically picture
one abba training one disciple, there are indications of one abba having
as many as twelve disciples at a time. 353 (This is only practical given
that the number of monks who were advanced and/or adequately
educated would naturally outnumber the number of those in beginning
351 My thanks to Joel Kalvesmaki for help in deciphering the meaning of this phrase.
352 Apophth. Patr., Macarius 39 (Ward, 1975, 137).
353 Apophth. Patr., Marcus, Silvani discipulus 1 (Ward, 1975, 145).

or intermediate stages, especially as conversions to the monastic life

became more and more frequent.) As we saw with Didymus and
Origen, the social and educational status of the student body varied.
However, in the special context of desert asceticism, the degree of
variety could be even larger, since it was not necessary to have a family
able to sponsor the young person engaged in study if that young person
gave up all possessions and fasted extensively. Although learning and
education were regarded with a certain ambivalence and contrasted
with spiritual wisdom, a significant portion of Egyptian monks had
origins similar to those of Evagrius, which included an advanced
traditional education and high social status. Thus Evagrius’ teaching
had to be coherent both to other educated monks and to those without
formal education, including the illiterate. This need may explain why
the second step in his curriculum, θεωρία φυσική, allows for both the
physical world of creation and the written Scripture to serve as the basis
of contemplation, so that those monks who were unable to read could
instead ‘read’ the world around them and interpret that noetically, so to
speak, in order to perceive intelligible realities through it.
Noetic Exegesis in Practice
What is also of key import to the goals of this study is an examination of

the actual practice of interacting with texts and generating interpretations
in the social context of advanced philosophical formation. Noetic exegesis
is understood here as non-literal readings of traditional texts with a view

to the overall mental and moral formation of the individual in the
interests of developing and perfecting the νοῦς. This understanding of the
object of study not only replaces the vague and unwieldy traditional
terminology with a term that can be attached to a specific meaning, but
also points up the importance of the role of social context in the
interpretive project. In the third and fourth centuries, co-existing with
noetic exegesis, there is a wide variety of other non-figurative interpretive
practices driven by their own agenda. These non-noetic interpretive
practices include allegorical readings which, for example, are located in an
adversarial communal context and motivated by the aim of successfully
competing for the authority that can be drawn from claiming interpretive
rights over a certain text. Not all non-literal readings in late antiquity are
noetic. They can also be competitive, polemical, or esoteric. The aspect of
what defines noetic exegesis as noetic which we aim to investigate in this
section is the use to which it is put, and that use is located in the context of
advanced spiritual, mental, and moral (in late antique terms,
philosophical) formation.
The interpretation of texts for moral guidance and to provide
examples for young people is well known from the use of Homer in the
rhetorical schools, so that those who proceeded to philosophical
education would already have been introduced to this type of reading of
traditional texts. Philosophical studies built on the techniques learnt in
the rhetorical schools. The student was to apply them to philosophical
texts and their exposition, and needed rhetorical skill to discuss and
debate particular ideas or interpretations. Not only did the philosophical

schools build on the competencies attained in previous study, but the
relationship of instruction to a text was also carried over, if in augmented
form. More advanced students, students of philosophy proper,
progressed from Homer to Aristotle and Plato and commentaries on
each. The expectation that the text could render moral and philosophical
truths was carried forward and intensified at this level of education.
Plotinus’ teaching consisted basically of reading out and
discussing passages from Plato and commentaries on Plato.354 While
Lamberton expresses skepticism on the accuracy of this claim, he does
so on the grounds that the content of the Enneads, which are believed to
reflect the teachings generated by Plotinus in his lectures, are connected
to any particular passages from Plato by only the vaguest of
associations. 355 Exactly that kind of disinterest in interpreting the text as
such or defining its meaning is recognisable from our examination of
other noetic exegetes. Without the verses copied out into the
commentary, it would be very difficult indeed to see what passage from
the Bible is the basis for Didymus explaining the square of the number
six or Origen discussing the geography of Palestine. In Plotinus, what is
being interpreted is the life of the mind, and not the writings of Plato in
a strict sense.
354 Poph., vit. Plot. 14.10–14. Cf. O’Meara, 2005, 14.
355 R.D. Lamberton, The Schools of Platonic Philosophy of the Roman Empire. The
Evidence of the Biographies, in: Yun L.T. (ed.), Education in Greek and Roman
Antiquity, Leiden 2001, 433–458 (442).
The role of noetic exegesis as part of the curriculum of higher

philosophical education has already been discussed in Chapter Four. For
our present purposes we can simply add that this social context could
and did, even in circles led by non-Christians, include pronounced
spiritual and meta-religious elements. Hermeias, for example, considers
perceiving the deeper meaning of Platonic myths a means of salvation:
As a matter of custom one usually said after relating the

myths, as a sort of postscript ‘And so the myth has been
saved and it will save us, if we follow it, as he says at the
end of the Politeia, or also ‘and so the myth was lost’,
where this saying shows that we, if we follow the
appearance of the myth [the literal interpretation], we
will be lost just as appearances themselves are lost and
have no definite being, but that we, if we follow the
hidden vision [the allegorical interpretation] which the
myth mysteriously indicates, will be saved, in that we
rise up to the thought of the mythmaker himself and not
just the myth.356
It is precisely the development of the ability to move beyond the

‘appearance of the myth’, which is part of what was being mediated through
higher philosophical study, which is credited with allowing the individual to
356 Herm., Phdr. 241 e 8 (H. Bernard [ed.], Hermeias von Alexandria. Kommentar zu
Parenthetical statements are from Bernard’s German.
‘rise up to the thought of the mythmaker himself’. It is thus apparent how

noetic exegesis could be closely interwoven with the educational practice of
philosophical schools, since the overall goal of allowing the mind to rise up
towards pure thought was common to both enterprises. Here Hermeias
mentions a phrase which was ‘usually said after relating the myths’,
suggesting some sort of routine or custom in how the texts were actually
treated in the process of verbal explication. It is that kind of immediate praxis
which we now turn to in our sample commentators.
The Praxis of Noetic Exegesis in Origen’s School
Fortunately, there is direct evidence for the actual praxis of noetic

exegesis in Origen’s school in Caesarea through the testimony of
Gregory Thaumaturgus. Gregory’s account largely confirms the
theoretical picture of the curriculum examined in Chapter Four, as well
as the association of noetic exegesis with the overall moral and mental
formation of the individual. Gregory describes Origen’s engagement
with his students as analogous to the work of a farmer or gardener.357
His experience also reflects the initial phase as a process of purification
and basic ordering of the mind and body, learning proper processes of
argumentation and logical reasoning. 358 The second phase of the
358 Gr. Thaum., pan. Or. 7.98–106 (Slusser, 1998, 107-108).

curriculum, knowledge of nature, was also taught, and Gregory was

duly impressed by the results:
Then he raised us up and put us straight with other

lessons, like those in physics, explaining each existing
thing, and analyzing them with great wisdom down to
their most basic elements, and then weaving them
together by reason (τῷ λόγῷ) and going over the nature of
the entire universe and each of its parts, and the endless
alteration and transformation of the things in the world.
In the end he brought us, by his clear teaching and the
arguments which he had either learned or discovered
about the sacred arrangement of the universe and the
unsullied nature, to the point where a rational wonder
(λογικὸν θαῦµα) replaced the irrational one in our souls. It
is this most lofty and inspired learning which the

universally coveted knowledge of nature instills. What
need to mention the things that belong to sacred studies
(ἱερῶν µαθηµάτων): geometry, so dear and unambiguous to
all, and astronomy, which cruises the air? Each of these

he impressed upon our souls (ταῖς ψυχαῖς) by teaching, or
recalling it to our memory, or I do not know how best to

express it. As an unshakable base for everything else
whatever, he laid down geometry as a kind of sure
foundation; then he drew us up to the heights through

astronomy, as if, by a kind of sky-high ladder of the two
sciences, he were making heaven accessible for us.359
Gregory, it should be noted, tends to over-indulge in the area of

rhetorical flourishes, with the result that his account of the curriculum
cannot be made to line up in a sequence if his descriptions of various
elements as topmost, a sure foundation, or the highest of all, are taken to
indicate their objective relation to the other elements. However, all of
the elements of the traditional curriculum are represented. Gregory and
his fellow-students were taught not only geometry and astronomy, but
also ‘the topmost matters of all, on whose account the whole race of
philosophers labors most’. It seems the content of that phase of teaching
was the life of virtue, or the examination of the soul with a view to
attaining virtue. Gregory describes the results of these lessons thus:
‘This knowledge more than anything enabled our soul to be restored
from its discord, and to move beyond confusion to what is settled and
disciplined.’ This would suggest either a rudimentary version of the
highest phase of the curriculum, something like self-knowledge, or a
second cycle, analogous to the multiple cycles of Iamblichus, being
superimposed on the initial instruction in logic and physics. It could
also be taken as an advanced level of natural studies, moving on from
knowledge of the physical world to self-knowledge or knowledge of the

soul. 360 Gregory also refers to Origen’s teaching of theology proper, the
highest level in the curriculum. He locates this type of study squarely as
something whose mastery depends on having attained virtue, and
characterises it as aimed at coming to God and being conformed to the
divine ‘in purity of mind (καθαρῷ τῷ νῷ)’. 361
Gregory refers directly to the practice of noetic exegesis further

on in his account of all he has learned and experienced with Origen.
The actual concrete action he recounts seems to be the verbal explication
of passages of Scripture: ‘He himself expounded and clarified the dark
and enigmatic places (ὅ τί ποτε σκοτεινόν καὶ αἰνιγµατῶδες ἦν), of which
there are many in the sacred words (ἐν ταῖς ἱεραῖς φωναῖς).’362 Gregory
credits Origen’s ability to do this to his extraordinary spiritual

achievements, describing him as someone who had ‘trained himself to
receive the purity and brightness of the sayings into his own soul
(µεµελτηκότι τὰ καθαρὰ τῶν ογίων φωτεινά τε παραδέχεσθαι αὐτοῦ τῇ ψυχῇ)’363 .
This is much in line with assumptions about the type of person who is
fully capable of noetic exegesis which were discussed in Chapter Four.
Gregory also postulates a special relationship between Origen and the
ἀρχηγός (possibly Christ):
360 Gr. Thaum., pan. Or. 9.115–122 (Slusser, 1998, 110–11).

The ἀρχηγός of them all, who speaks within God’s friends
the prophets, and prompts every prophecy and mystical,

divine discourse (ὑποβάλλων πᾶσαν προφητείαν καὶ λόγον
µύστικον καὶ θεῖον), so honored him as friend as to
establish him as spokesman. 364
This special status of Origen’s allows for the intelligible content of

Scripture to be shifted, through his mediation as interpreter, from being
hinted at to being clear instruction:
Through this man he (the ἀρχηγός) brought about
instruction (τὴν διδασκαλίαν ποιούµενος) in those matters at
which he had only hinted through others (δι᾽ ἑτέρων ᾐνίξατο
µόνον), and he granted to this man to investigate and
uncover the principles of everything (τούτων τοὺς λόγους
διερευνᾶσθαι τε καὶ ἐξευρίσκειν τούτῳ δωρησάµενος) that the One
most worthy of our trust has royally decreed or declared.365
In the same way, Origen has clear knowledge of things which others are
only able to perceive vaguely. Gregory also expresses the assumption,
noted in Chapter Four and Chapter Two, that the same mental state

must be achieved by the interpreter as was experienced by the prophet

or writer composing written Scripture. In attempting to explain further
how Origen is able to interpret Scripture, he says:
I think that he says these things only by fellowship with

the divine Spirit (κοινωνίᾳ τοῦ Θείου πνεύµατος), for it takes
the same power (τῆς γὰρ αὐτῆς δυνάµενος) to listen to
prophets as it does to prophesy, and no one hears a

prophet except the one to whom the prophetic Spirit has
granted insight (σύνεσιν) into its own words.366
On this account, the manner of interpreting in which Origen engaged in

his lessons was of the same kind we have seen entailed in our
examination of the requirements of the interpreter as a person in
Chapter Four. The characterisation of interpretation as revealing what is
hidden also conforms to what we know about noetic exegesis thus far.
What comes to the foreground particularly in the context of this speech
by Gregory is the manner in which noetic exegesis was embedded in the
pedagogical context. Origen is able to pull his students up through the
curriculum built around the ultimate goal of rehabilitating the νοῦς,
because he himself has already achieved that status. By applying his

noetic abilities to exegesis, Origen exemplifies and embodies the mental
and moral clarity which a fully functioning νοῦς has provided, and

which is the ultimate aim of the curriculum with which his students are
involved. The function of noetic exegesis in the curriculum is thus
twofold. Firstly, it allows for interpretations aimed at the mental and
moral cultivation of the students. Secondly, it constitutes a performance
of full noetic skill on the part of the teacher, which both substantiates his
authority and indicates the exceptional status which the fully committed
student could potentially attain.
The Praxis of Noetic Exegesis in the School of Didymus
In the case of Didymus, the role of the interpretation of texts in teaching

is clear and fundamental. The texts being expounded are used as the basis
for every subject of concern to the school, and as far as we know their
commentary was the only type of lesson offered. Knowledge of logic,
rhetoric, and so on is only partially assumed, so that Didymus at times
explains or reviews points on these topics to compensate for the mixed
abilities in his group. So while in Origen we see the interpretation of texts as
one form of teaching alongside (presumably) separate lessons in astronomy,
geometry, or physics, in Didymus there is no known evidence of additional
non-interpretive lessons. Since it is thus not necessary to collect evidence for
noetic exegesis as a medium of instruction in the case of Didymus as we
must for Origen and Evagrius, we can instead take the opportunity to
examine an example of exegesis and articulate how it was used for mental
and moral formation in more depth.
The well-known Psalm 23 can serve as a sample for our

purposes.367 The Psalm consists of six verses, but Didymus requires
thirty-three pages to explain his interpretation. The commentary on this
Psalm begins with the transcription, on the part of the scribe, of the first
sentence of the text: ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’
Didymus begins his interpretation with a semiotic and semantic point:
‘The soul of man is called by many names, for it is called man, plant, and
much more, such as stone.’ He concludes that since none of these terms
reflect the proper being of man (κατ᾽ ουσίαν), it is appropriate to
understand such terms allegorically. This leads to and justifies

instruction on the soul based on a verse about sheep, which does not
actually explicitly refer to or use the term sheep. Didymus develops the
metaphor by describing in what way the soul can be said to grow (like a
lamb maturing), namely in terms of its practical and theoretical life. The
growth or progress of the soul is manifested through virtue, not through
a change in its nature.
Didymus introduces a second metaphor of spiritual development
as growing up. This leads him to categorise some people as children,
referring to such passages as 1Cor 3:2 and 1Pet 2:2, which also use the
image of children for the spiritually immature. Didymus then goes back
to the sheep metaphor to explain the correspondence of the needs of the
soul to its state of maturity: a soul which is still a sheep needs grass
rather than bread or meat. He then explores other words for the soul in
the same terms—the soul described as a plant needs rain and the help of
367 In Didymus’ text this is Psalm 22.

a gardener to bear fruit, and so on. Returning to the sheep metaphor,

Didymus unpacks it further as a way of referring to the soul in an
irrational state, characterised by mildness (πρᾳότητος) and in a state of
submission (εὐταθείας) to the shepherd. The soul does not want because
it is still dependent and shepherded.

Didymus moves forward to treating the phrase ‘He makes me lie
down in green pastures’ by claiming that instruction (διδασκαλία) which
is like grass is appropriate for sheep, and consists of hearing the voice of
Christ (as in Jn 10:27). The ‘sheep’ can progress from having Christ as
shepherd to having him as a teacher (as in Jn 13:13). After yet another
metaphor, contrasting resting beside quiet waters (Didymus’ text has
κατεσκήνωσεν) with actually residing in a place in terms of the analogous
contrast between being in the transitional state of developing virtue and

the final, settled state of having achieved perfection, the next sentence of
the Psalm is read. The mention of the ‘paths of righteousness’ leads to
definition of the four cardinal virtues (ἀνδρεία, δικαισύνη, σωφροσύνη,
φρόνησις), and elucidation of the nature and practice of righteousness
specifically. When the verse says ‘for his name’s sake’, Didymus
presents a theory of language according to which the association
between the phonetic units by which a thing is referred to and the
nature of the thing itself is non-arbitrary. He quotes a definition of
‘name’ as something which indicates the ἰδίας ποιότητος of what is named.
The verse which bears so much emotional weight in the Western

tradition now (‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil’) is, for Didymus, an opportunity to explain

alternative definitions of evil. Evil can be understood as the opposite of
virtue, or as the opposite of earthly goods or good fortune. This leads to
a discussion of human mistakeness about what actually constitutes
misfortune, giving examples of the use of unwelcome circumstances for
the subject’s ultimate good. Likewise, Didymus gives some definitions
of ‘shadow’: for Didymus, the shadow of death is temptation to sin.
Apparently at this point, Didymus takes a break and opens the
floor for questions, since a series of three questions is noted. One
student has not been paying attention and asks whether the term
shadow refers to ordinary shadows. Didymus answers patiently and
explains that since ordinary death is not referred to, the shadow of death
is not meant in the ordinary way either. He provides another
illustration linking death to sin and hence the shadow of death to the
temptation to sin. Another questioner, possibly the same individual,
asks ‘Was he in difficulty?’ and is answered simply, that if he had feared
(contrary to what the verse records), he would have sinned. The next
question, which, again, could easily be from the same person, is ‘In the
midst of the shadow of death—does that mean in sin?’. Didymus answers:
‘I don’t call the difficulties the shadow of death, but the surrender to them
and the cowardice which result from them.‘ His example for this is that of
the martyrs, who were in the shadow of death, but not in death itself,
apparently because they withstood the temptation to capitulate to fear.
Moving on to verse five, ‘You prepare a table before me in the
presence of my enemies’, Didymus returns to the issue of progress in
spiritual development with which he started his interpretation, and

characterises the state signified by eating from a table as a more mature
one than that signified by eating grass. The food on the table is (θείαν
παίδεθσιν) and (τὰ δόγµατα τῆς εὐσεβείας), to which the individual still
characterised as a sheep did not have access. In response to the sentence

‘You anoint my head with oil’, Didymus describes the term ‘head’ as
symbolic of the intellect (νοῦς). The Psalm closes with ‘Surely goodness
and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever.’ To Didymus, this is indicative of the final
permanent illumination of the soul.368
In the interpretation of this six-verse Psalm, Didymus constructs,
apparently on an impromptu basis, an explanation of progress in the
spiritual life, from the basic level of immaturity and dependence, to final
illumination and perfection. The attachment of this explanation to a
passage of Scripture is completely gratuitous from a practical standpoint,
as it would be both possible and easy to present that sketch of spiritual
progress independently of the text. Also, the interpretation, apart from a
few minor diversions, is coherent internally and constitutes a unified
lecture on development in virtue, challenges to virtue, and its ultimate
goal. This example of noetic exegesis in practice reflects the interpretive
assumptions observed thus far, not least in the claim that this teaching
about spiritual progress is revealed by the text. The concern for
explaining the life of virtue, how it develops, where its goal is, the
368 Didym., ps. 22.1–6 (M. Gronewald [ed.], Didymos der Blinde: Psalmenkommentar II
zu Ps 22–26:10, PTA 4, Bonn 1968, 2–37).
dangers encountered on the way, is also very much reflective of the

practical setting before an audience which expects teaching and
guidance in those matters.
Evagrius’ Praxis of Noetic Exegesis in Instruction
The text of Scripture, whether in written, spoken, or chanted form, was

part of the daily fabric of the monk’s life. It was recited or read out
while travelling, and read to those who were ill in their cells and could
not participate in the weekly Synaxis.369 The monastic context fully
exploited the parallel between the perception of revelation in the
physical created world and in the written text in order to accommodate
those monks who were indeed illiterate. On the other hand, contact
with Scripture was also easily available even to the illiterate through the
routine practice of contemplative reading aloud and of singing and
chanting Psalms from memory. In Evagrius, the praxis of noetic
exegesis is closely entangled with beliefs about progress in higher forms
of knowledge. The use of exegesis by those who have made more
progress toward perfect knowledge as a way of teaching those who are
in earlier phases is thus described, inasmuch as it is described at all, in
the Gnostikos. The title of this work refers to the monk who is already
advanced, and its content has been shown to manifest ‘a particular
369 Apophth. Patr., Antonius 18. (Ward, 1975, 5), and Apophth. Patr., Agathon 22
(Ward, 1975, 23).
monastic system of education adapted from ancient philosophy.’370 The

Gnostikos is a clear confirmation of the findings of this study, since it is a
handbook for spiritual pedagogy which proceeds from the assumption
that the Bible ‘symbolizes knowledge of all created reality, and hints at
the highest knowledge available’. 371 Also, since Evagrius is recording
not interpretation of Scripture but instruction on how to noetically
interpret Scripture for students, the target audience of the Gnostikos is
other teachers, so that we must assume an entire network of teachers
and students throughout monastic communities, rather than Evagrius
working in an exceptional role.
The middle segment of the Gnostikos, roughly from chapters
eighteen to thirty-six, provides guidelines for the praxis of applying
noetic exegesis to the spiritual life. First of all, Evagrius suggests
categorising passages of Scripture (whether allegorical or literal)
according to which phase of the spiritual life they apply to.
It is necessary to search, therefore, concerning allegorical

and literal passages (καὶ τὰς ἀλληγορίας τῶν µυστηρίων καὶ
τὰ αἰσθητά) relevant to the πρακτική, φυσική, and θεολογική.
If it is relevant to the πρακτική, it is necessary to examine
whether it treats of θυµός and what comes from it, or
rather of ἐπιθυµία and what follows it, or again of the νοῦς
370 R.D. Young, Evagrius the Iconographer. Monastic Pedagogy in the ‘Gnostikos’, in:
Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001), 45–71 (53).
371 Ibid.
and its movements. If it pertains to the φυσική, it is
necessary to note whether it makes known (σηµαίνει)
one of the doctrines concerning nature, and which one.

And if it is an allegorical passage concerning θεολογική it
is necessary to examine as far as possible whether it

provides information on the Trinity and whether it is
seen [in its] simplicity or seen as The Unity. But if it is
none of these, then it is a simple contemplation (ὅραµα
ψιλόν), or perhaps makes known (γνωριζόν) a prophecy. 372
The direct application of interpretation to spiritual formation is thus set

out systematically. Areas of knowledge including the parts of the soul,
the νοῦς, the nature of things, or the godhead are each assigned to a type
of referent. Evagrius here uses a very clean branching format. The

interpreter starts with a verse, and must then discern which of three
elements of spiritual formation the verse is relevant to. Within that
category, he must then choose from one of the alternative referents
(either the Unity or the Trinity, either the θυµός, ἐπιθυµία, or νοῦς, etc.).
Only then can the interpreter set out what the particular noetic reading
of the verse is. It should be noted that not only does this structure for
interpretation map interpretations directly onto the key elements of
spiritual development according to Evagrius, but it also presupposes the
ability of the interpreter to apply discernment and his own ability to
372 Evagr. Pont., gnostikos 18.

perceive noetic things to understand along which lines the verse should
be read. The mental process required is not mathematical or deductive,
but rather inductive and noetic.
Evagrius also provides instructions for the differentiation of
whether a text of a certain character can also be seen as a contemplation
of the same type, explaining how, once a categorisation of particular
passages is achieved, they can be applied to specific types of tasks in the
process of spiritual formation:
It is necessary to know this: that all texts of an ethical

character (ῥήµατος παραίνεσιν) do not comprise a contemplation
(νοητὸν) of an ethical character (νοητὸν παραινετικόν); no more does
a text concerning nature (φυσικοῦ) [comprise] a contemplation
(νοητὸν) on nature (νοητόν φυσικόν); but such as is of an ethical
character (προτρεπτικόν) comprises a contemplation of nature;
and such as treat of nature comprise a contemplation of ethics

(προτρεπτικόν), and the same for theology. What is said, in effect,
of the fornication and the adultery of Jerusalem, [cf. Ezra 16:15–

34] the animals of dry land and waters, and the birds, the clean
and the unclean, [cf. Lev 11:2–19] the sun that ‘rises, sets, and
returns to its place,’ [cf. Eccl 1:5] relate in the first place to
theology, in the second place to ethics, and in the third place to
physics. Now the first text relates to ethics and the two
others to physics.373
Evagrius thus differentiates the type of text and the type of

contemplation it comprises, giving an example. This indicates the
degree to which the interpretation of Scripture was directly applied to
the spiritual life, so that the monastic teacher required discernment in
this manner of differentiation to guarantee appropriate application.
Another standard for the practice of noetic exegesis is
identification of the speaker, a step taught as basic procedure in
traditional school exegesis of Homer. In this case, Evagrius is concerned
not only with identifying the speaker, but with discerning whether that
character’s words are an appropriate object for noetic exegesis:
Do not allegorize (µὴ ἀλληγορήσεις) the words of
blameworthy persons and do not seek anything spiritual

(µὴ ζητήσεις τι πνευµατικόν) in them, unless through his
divine plan God has acted [through them], as in the cases

of Balaam [cf. Num 24:17–19] and Kaiphas: [cf. Jn 11:49–
51] for the former predicted the birth, and the second the
death of the Savior. 374

Words recorded in the text by morally corrupt individuals are not, for
Evagrius, acceptable objects of noetic exegesis, because they do not
contain anything spiritual. While noting certain exceptions, Evagrius
maintains the attitude linking the quality of the human source of the text
with the capacity of the text to mediate noetic knowledge which we
observed in Chapters Two and Four. Evagrius also encourages
discretion in the application of allegorical readings generally:
You must not interpret spiritually (πνευµατικώς)
everything that lends itself to allegory (πρὸς ἀλληγορίας),
but rather only that which is fitting to the subject;

because if you do not act thus, you pass much time on
Jonas’ boat, explaining every part of its equipment. And
you will be humorous to your listeners, rather than
useful to them: all of those sitting around you will
remind you of this or that equipment, and by laughing
[they] will remind you of what you have forgotten.375
Here Evagrius shows a common-sense awareness of the potential for allegory

to get out of hand which is rarely credited to pre-modern commentators.
A substantial section of sayings concerns the attitude which
should be maintained by the teacher training his students through noetic
exegesis, again reflecting the social nature of noetic practice. One

somewhat ironical saying instructs teachers to withhold information

from students not yet advanced enough to receive it:
It is necessary sometimes to feign ignorance because

those who question are not worthy of an answer: and [in
this] you will be truthful, since you are linked to a body
and you [thus] do not yet possess complete knowledge
(γνῶσιν ἀκριβῆ τῶν πραγµάτων).376
Evagrius is optimistic about the ability of his fellow-teachers to feign

ignorance, since inasmuch as they are still in the embodied state, they are
necessarily ignorant of higher spiritual realities. While some sayings
encouraging concealment aim at a conscientious and reverent approach
to higher forms of knowledge,377 others focus on the need to protect less
mature students and use discretion in instructing them:
[Concerning] those who dispute without having γνώσεως:
it is necessary to make them approach the truth by

proceeding not from the end, but from the beginning; and
377 See for example Evagr. Pont., gnostikos 24: ‘Take care that you never, for the
sake of profit, well-being, or fleeting glory, talk about those things which should
not be revealed, and [thus] be cast out of the sacred precincts, like those selling
the pigeon chicks in the temple. (cf. Mt 21:12–13).’ and Evagr. Pont., gnostikos
27: ‘Do not, without [careful] consideration, speak about God [in Himself]; nor
should you ever define the Deity: for it is only of [things which are made or] are
composite that there can be definitions.’
it is not necessary for τῶν γνωστικῶν to tell the young
anything, nor to let them touch books of this sort, for they
are not able to resist the falls that this θεωρίας entails. That is
why, to those who are still besieged by passions it is

necessary to speak not words of peace, but how they will
triumph over their adversaries: indeed, as Ecclesiastes
says, ‘there is no discharge [from service] on the day of
battle.’ [Eccl 8:8] Those, therefore, who are still afflicted
with the passions and who peer into the λόγοι of bodies
and incorporeal [beings] resemble invalids who [carry on]

discuss[ions] concerning health. For it is when the soul is
[only] with difficulty shaken by the passions that it is
invited to taste these sweet rays of honey. 378
This reminder of what Evagrius considers the proper order in which
students should be instructed is consistent with the overall curriculum
already discussed, and, more importantly, with the reasoning behind it.
As long as a person has not attained order in the area of physical and
emotional passions and disturbances, the νοῦς is not able to function
adequately, and without noetic function augmented through the firm

basis of physical and emotional stability, it is not possible to appropriately
engage with ‘books of this sort’. It is thus the responsibility of the teacher
to monitor the development of this students and know when they are
capable of being introduced to higher forms of knowledge.

The Apophthegmata Patrum offer a final source of fleeting

glimpses into interpretive praxis in Evagrius’ social context of fourth
century asceticism. There are several examples of Scripture being
interpreted orally along the same pattern as we have observed in the
written commentaries of Evagrius. This confirms the treatment of
Evagrius’ exegetical writings as reflective of noetic exegesis as a
coherent social act, since others around him interpreted in a similar
manner. As we saw in Chapter Two, a great many interpretations
concern themselves with a moral and spiritual reading, where the text
serves as a pretext for instruction in the life of virtue:
Abba Poemen also said, ‘If Nabuzardan, the head-cook,

had not come, the temple of the Lord would not have
been burned: that is to say: if slackness and greed did
not come into the soul, the spirit would not be overcome
in combat with the enemy.’379
As we observed so often in Chapter Two, here again the referent of the

text is sought on an abstracted rather than a historical level. Abba
Poemen is not interested in who Nabuzardan was, but assumes that the
text really refers to the vices of slackness and greed and their effect on the
human spirit. In another saying, interpretation is performed by an abba
in response to a direct request by some brothers:
379 Apophth. patr., Poemen 16 (Ward, 1975, 169). The reference is to 2Kgs 24:8–9.
Some brothers came to see him and asked him, ‘What

does this saying in the book of Job mean: ‘Heaven is not
pure in his presence?’ [Job 15:15]. The old man replied,
‘The brothers have passed over their sins and inquired
about heavenly things. This is the interpretation of this
saying: ‘God alone is pure’, therefore he said, ‘Heaven is
not pure.’ ’ 380
The abba concerned does deliver a noetic interpretation which

articulates intelligible realities, but not before reprimanding the brothers
for rushing to learn of ‘heavenly things’ before working through ‘their
sins’. This is in line with the expectation that monks should first engage
in the more basic steps in the curriculum, which for them would be
asceticism and the establishment of mental and physical discipline,
before concerning themselves with advanced noetic topics.
The Apophthegmata Patrum also reveal how the act of interpreting
Scripture was a means of demonstrating advancement in the spiritual
life to one’s peers and disciples. This could take the form of
demonstration of noetic skill on the part of the abba or teacher, or a test
of the same for the students. A certain visit to Abba Anthony included
380 Apophth. patr., Zeno 4 (Ward, 1975, 66).

each person being asked to explain a certain passage, 381 and in many
cases the request by the visitor for ‘a word’ was treated as equivalent to
a request for interpretation. One saying suggests that not only was the
belief about the analogy between the mental processes of the writer and
reader of Scripture held in practice, but also that some interpreters were
so certain that reaching a noetic interpretation of a passage was a matter
requiring advanced spiritual powers that it was appropriate and
effective to directly request divine assistance:

The brethren came to Abba Anthony and laid before him
a passage from Leviticus. The old man went out into the
desert, secretly followed by Abba Ammonas, who knew
that this was his custom. Abba Anthony went a long way
off and stood there praying, crying in a loud voice, ‘God,
send Moses, to make me understand this saying’. Then
there came a voice speaking with him. Abba Ammonas
said that although he heard the voice speaking with him
he could not understand what it said. 382
381 See for example Apophth. patr., Antonius 17 (Ward, 1975, 4):

One day some old men came to see Abba Anthony. In the midst of them was
Abba Joseph. Wanting to test them, the old man suggested a text from the
Scriptures, and, beginning with the youngest, he asked them what it meant.
Each gave his opinion as he was able. But to each one the old man said, ‘You
have not understood it.’ Last of all he said to Abba Joseph, ‘How would you
explain this saying?’ and he replied, ‘I do not know’. Then Abba Anthony said,
‘He has found the way, for he has said: ‘I do not know’.
382 Apophth. patr., Antonius 26 (Ward, 1975, 7).

The book of Leviticus, consisting largely of ceremonial regulations, was a

difficult interpretive task, if it was expected to render intelligible
meaning or teachings relevant to progress in the spiritual life. Anthony
requests a visitation from Moses, the writer of the book. The conclusion
of the saying indicates that the request was granted, but that it was
impossible for the other abba to understand what was spoken, much in
line with the ideas about special forms of language or the
communication of thoughts without ordinary words which were
discussed in Chapter Three and Four.
Confession and Interpretation
A final question remains about the praxis of noetic interpretation and

the social contexts in which it was embedded. Was the social context
actually primarily noetic, or was it confessional? Were the social groups
in which noetic exegesis was undertaken institutions of religious
instruction, or were they indeed schools concerned with mental and
moral formation in a non- or meta-confessional sense? In fact, Origen’s
teaching projects in Alexandria and Caesarea have both been typically
characterised as instruction of Christian catechumens, Didymus is often
said to have taken over leadership of something called the Alexandrian
catechetical school, and monasticism certainly suggests a confessionally-
determined context. Surely the attachment of the exegetical process to
the Christian Scriptures would also indicate a confessional context for

the production and application of this type of commentary.
If we can indeed correctly characterise the social context of noetic
exegesis as one which is confessionally determined and/or synonymous
with religious instruction, we would expect several characteristics to be
observable. One would expect religious homogeneity in the student
body and between students and teachers. Also, the confession of the
teacher would be the determining factor in the decision on the part of the
student to join the group. Further, the content of instruction would focus
on doctrine or confessional identity. The student body would potentially
include anyone wishing to join or having already joined a particular
confessional group, and, lastly, the goal reflected in the teaching would
be the baptism or initiation of the members of the student body.
Religious homogeneity in the student body did not obtain in the
philosophical milieux of this period. Religious mixing was common in
the schools in and around Alexandria, for example, and while the
lectures given in more formal settings did indeed address issues which
could be considered religious in the broadest sense, such as ethics and
the origin and fate of the universe, the schools relevant to the practice of
noetic exegesis were not institutions of confessional formation or
instruction in the teachings of a particular faith. The relationship
between religious identity and education in the schools in and around
Alexandria in late antiquity is complex. On the one hand, Christopher
Haas has pointed out the role of ‘segregated’ educational institutions
which operated with a view to ‘solidifying communal differentiation’ by
instilling young people with the traditions of their respective

communities. 383 At the same time, a considerable degree of religious
mixing in the schools was possible and quite frequent. Many cases of
mixed student bodies or mixed student–teacher pairs are known. The
Neoplatonist school of Alexandria could be and was attended by
Christians. 384 The confusion in the sources about which Origen studied
under which Ammonius and which religion any of these individuals
belonged to could not have arisen if enrolment in a given school was
conditional upon conformity to the religious convictions of the
teacher. 385 Origen’s school also could be and was attended by pagans as
well as Christians, with or without those students being open to
eventual conversion.386 Eusebius describes Porphyry as having taken an
interest in Origen’s work and attending his lectures and reports that
Heraclas originally joined Origen’s school as a pagan and continued
383 Ch. Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity. Topography and Social Conflict,
Baltimore 1997, 62.
384 E.J. Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, Transformation
of the Classical Heritage 41, Berkeley 2006, 161; and Eus., h. e. 6.3.
385 For discussion of the relevant sources and reasons for confusion, see M.J.
Edwards, Ammonius, Teacher of Origen, in: JEH 44 (1993), 169–181.
386 E.J. Watts, The Student Self in Late Antiquity, in: D. Brakke / M.L. Satlow /
S. Weitzman (eds.), Religion and the Self in Antiquity, Bloomington 2005, 234–251
(251, note 55): Eus., h. e. 6.19.5 describes how Porphyry was interested in
Origen due to his reputation as a scholar and attended (at least) one of his
public lectures. Watts, 2005, 246 notes that Gregory, the writer of In Origenem
oratio panegyrica, was originally a pagan when he joined Origen’s circle in
Caesarea. Cf. Eus., h. e. 6.3 on Heraclas, who joined Origen’s school in
Alexandria as a pagan, converted, became a Christian presbyter, but continued
attending philosophical lectures with Ammonius. See also Haas, 1997, 154–155.
Cf. Aphthonius; Zach. Mit., v. Sev.
attending pagan philosophical lectures after he had become a bishop.387

Zacharias of Mytilene’s Life of Severus portrays debates between Christian
students and a pagan teacher in an Alexandrian classroom. The teachers
at the centre of each school had their own more or less recognisable
religious allegiance, but we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that
there were strictly separated schools for pagans and Christians. Religious
mixing in at least the more moderate schools, whether it be pagan
students going to lectures by Christian teachers, or the pagans Hermeias
and Olympiodorus adapting their teaching to a mixed classroom,
persisted straight through late antiquity.388 Even Proclus had a Christian
pupil who wrote On the Pupils of the Great Proclus, and the individual
known to posterity as the Pseudo-Dionysius, if not a direct pupil, was
very knowledgeable of Proclus’ work.389 Religious mixing was both
possible and normal in higher philosophical education.390
The applicability of several of the rest of these characteristics to
our commentators can be excluded on the basis of what has already
387 Eus., h. e. 6.19,5; 6.3,1–2.
388 Watts, 2006, 211. Cf. Zach. Schol., Sev. (M.A. Kugener [ed.], Vie de Sévère par
Zacharie le Scolastique. Textes syriaques, PO 2.1, Paris 1907 Pro. 1–7). Watts,
2005, 235.
389 O’Meara, 2005, 22.
390 Known Pagan-Christian and Christian-Pagan teacher–student pairs:

Ammonius Saccas and a Christian Origen (possibly), Origen and Heraclas,
Gregory, etc. (later converts), Hypatia and Synesius, unnamed sophist and
Aetius (Arian), Hierocles and Aeneus of Gaza, Horapollon and unspecified
disorderly pagan and Christian students, Hermeias and unspecified Christian
students, Ammonius Hermeiou and John Philoponus, Olympiodorus and
unspecified Christian students. For further on mixed schools see: Haas, 1997,
and Watts, 2006.
been noted. Gregory’s decision to study with Origen is nowhere

described as having anything to do with Origen’s Christianity, but
rather with Gregory’s conviction that Origen was a legitimate
philosopher.391 Also, as the description of the student bodies involved
above has shown, participation in this form of education was not truly
open to the general public. While students of philosophical schools
sometimes had other vocations, and could be fully established adult
members of the community, a large section of any religious community
would have been excluded from participation. A certain degree of
privilege was necessary, even in ascetic formats, since, at the very
minimum, the individual’s family or dependents had to be able to do
without their labour. Also, all of our commentators, not to mention their
counterparts in the larger philosophical milieu, assume not only literacy
but also a fair level of previous education. Further, participation in these
391 A lot of discussion has arisen about Gregory’s religious persuasion, since the
text of his address has been perceived as reflecting a rather odd and incomplete
knowledge of Christian doctrine. However, as both Slusser and Trigg have
pointed out, this may be just as well explained by differences between third
century Christianity and twentieth-century Christianity than by positing that
Gregory was a pagan. Efforts have also been made to describe Origen’s school
as a missionary project aimed at persuading educated pagans to join the church
(See A. Knauber, Das Anliegen der Schule des Origenes zu Cäsarea, in: MThZ
19 (1961), 182-203). This view rests on the assumption that there was a cleaner
break between paganism and Christianity than can really be substantiated for
the third century, and on the assumption that Christianity in that period did or
should exactly reflect modern perceptions of Christianity. Gregory’s own
account of himself portrays him as having been brought up with traditional
religion, but by the time he wrote the Address he was certainly conversant with
Christianity and given that he later became bishop it seems he was baptised at
some point in his life. It is not clear whether that point was before, after, or
during his stay with Origen. Given third-century attitudes toward confession
in quasi-philosophical circles, however, any of those alternatives may have been
the case. Neither the fact that Gregory studied with Origen, that he has read at
least parts of the Bible, that he never mentions Christ by name, or that he
alludes to Plato just as much as he does to the Bible, are decisive in indicating
whether he fully identified himself as a Christian at the time.
schools could not have signified special and exceptional commitment to

the pursuit of spiritual perfection if entire communities, or even all of
the clergy, were herded through them. There is no indication of the
substantial size of gathering that would be present if Didymus, for
example, were heading a school responsible for forming large numbers
of catechumens in Alexandria. Lastly, the content of instruction and its
goal have already been noted, especially in Chapter Four in the
discussion of the curriculum. The curriculum which occurs in
conjunction with noetic exegesis is by no means equivalent to
explanation of basic tenets of the Christian faith or instruction in
accepted doctrine. The goal that is pursued is perfection in virtue and
the full functioning of the νοῦς, not baptism.
If confession did not define the social context in which noetic

exegesis was performed and applied, and if these schools cannot
properly be characterised as concerned with religious instruction, how
should we characterise them instead? In short, the answer to the above
question, ‘Is the social context of noetic exegesis confessional or is it
concerned with mental and moral formation in a non- or meta-
confessional sense?’ is a firm yes. The social context of noetic exegesis is
both confessional and meta-confessional because confessionality in the
third and fourth centuries did not mean what it means today, and
religious instruction was not conceived of as it is today. Rather, there
was no inherent conflict perceived between steering interested persons
towards baptism or full identification with the teacher’s own confession,
and forming them mentally and morally in a general sense. The reason
for this is the happy oblivion to competing paradigms experienced by

participants in totalising or universalist discourse. A pagan philosophical
teacher like Hypatia did not perceive herself as teaching her students to be
good pagans, but rather as training them to live and think well in some
objective universal sense. As a result, in theory at least, anyone could
become her student, or a student of Plotinus, as long as they were
committed to that same goal. The same holds true for her colleagues,
regardless of their own personal confession. Origen did not portray
himself as peddling one type of truth among many, but as teaching the
one true philosophy, so that anyone interested in philosophy and all it
entailed socially could appropriately study with him. For Origen, his
teachings were not manifestations of a separate particularist version of
mental and moral development, but synonymous with philosophy
conceived of as the pursuit of those very goals. That is why all of these
schools, even the teaching undertaken by Evagrius, can be characterised
by their members as philosophy,392 and also why it was readiness to see
what was being taught as true philosphy, or as in some manner
constructive and helpful in the overall aim of mental and moral
formation, rather than confession, which determined who attended
lessons by which teacher.
392 Soz., h. e. 6.30,11 even describes Evagrius’ move to Sketis as going to see the
philosophers: ἐπὶ Θέαν τῶν ἐν Σκήτει φιλοσοφούντων.
Conclusions
At this point we can orient the findings of this chapter to the rest of this
study. We have already established that knowledge of intelligible
realities was the ultimate goal of advanced philosophical education, and
that the commentators under consideration here held that just such
higher truths could be discovered in traditional texts. Since engaging
with noetic exegesis of these texts could serve to train the mind to
become able to access intelligible truths, noetic exegesis served the
overall pedagogical goals of higher education. It thus functioned as part
of a curriculum intended to order the passions and cultivate the mind.
Our commentators provide explicit statements on their view of the
comprehension of intelligible reality as the ultimate purpose of the νοῦς
and the goal of the intellectual life, whether this is characterised as

philosophy, contemplation, or asceticism. The stated ultimate goal of
the intellectual life is clearly congenial to the other interpretive
assumptions driving noetic exegesis: the belief in the text’s revelatory
nature endows it with an intelligible content, an intelligible content can
only be accessed by the νοῦς and/or the virtuously ordered and
ascetically disciplined mind, the νοῦς can be cultivated and disciplined
through a particular curriculum, whose goal it is to equip the νοῦς to
comprehend the revelatory, intelligible content of the text.

Again, to make the application of these interpretive assumptions
to noetic exegesis explicit: the reader is confronted with the text of the
Bible, which is perceived as a vessel of divine revelation. Divine

revelation relates higher spiritual truths connected to the intelligible
realm. These truths must be accessed through the text. A superficial
reading of the text fails to render intelligible truth. Thus another type of
reading is necessary. Since intelligible truths can be comprehended by
the νοῦς, the text must be read by an individual who has adequately re-
activated his νοῦς and will be read better the more advanced in noetic
development the reader is. The reader advances in the adequate use of
his νοῦς the more he advances in his overall moral and mental education
and formation. Thus the ability to perform noetic exegesis is dependent

upon engaging in a process of mental cultivation through the attainment
of physical and emotional order, the practice of philosophy including
knowledge of mathematical principles, and discipline in the virtues.
Hence those who act as noetic exegetes are also found acting as
educators in asceticism, philosophical discipline, and virtue, and the
goals of the philosophical curriculum are analogous to the goals of
noetic exegesis. When the matter is considered systematically, it is not
surprising that we can observe noetic exegesis being practiced in
educational contexts, that is, contexts concerned with cultivating the
intellectual and spiritual life. Noetic exegesis is used in pedagogical
contexts not because of a desire on the part of these commentators to
teach their students the narrative content of the Bible, but rather as a
systematic and internally logical result of the ideas composing the
conceptual aspect of noetic exegesis and the interpretive assumptions
driving it.
6
NOETIC EXEGESIS
Introduction
At the outset of this study, engagement with the exegetical work of three
early Christian thinkers was oriented to two ideas, one from the
anthropologist Clifford Geertz, and one from the literary theorist Stanley
Fish. Geertz’ concept of thick description required an account of
exegesis which included the commentators’ own concerns and
preoccupations, as well as attention to the reasoning behind their
interpretive work which they themselves provide or manifest. Fish’s
literary criticism was drawn upon for the concept of interpretive
assumptions, as well as the hypothesis that the interpretive assumptions
of the community reading a text are what determines the meaning which
is found in that text. As a result, not only the identification of the relevant
interpretive assumptions, but also attention to the larger cultural and
intellectual context of those assumptions have been programmatic in the
preceding pages. This study has, on the basis of the application of these
two concepts from Geertz and Fish, been structured with each chapter
representing a question about the interpretive project which was
answered on the basis of the commentaries. The answers thus reached
represent clusters of interpretive assumptions, and each chapter has
included explanation and exemplification of how each interpretive
assumption determined the meaning found in the text and how it

coloured the exegetical project overall. A brief overview of the currency in
the larger cultural context of ideas acting as interpretive assumptions in
noetic exegesis in each chapter has been provided to substantiate the
portrayal of the findings of each chapter as assumptions which were
shared in the intellectual and, partly, exegetical community. The currency
of these ideas in non-Christian thinkers and exegetes also indicates that
the determining factors in noetic exegesis were assumptions current in the
interpretive milieux rather than religious confessions or arbitrary
individual techniques.
It now remains to collect the findings of the preceding chapters
by providing a summary thick description of noetic exegesis and by
listing and defining the interpretive assumptions which have been
identified. I will also take the opportunity to address several questions
which may serve to relate this study to the larger fields of patristics,
ancient history, and late antique studies. These include defining the
relationship of noetic exegesis to Neoplatonism, comparing and
contrasting our three sample commentators, and surveying how the
findings presented in this study may be usefully applied.
A Thick Description of Noetic Exegesis
As in the classic Geertzian example recounted in the introduction,

analysing noetic exegesis in terms of hermeneutical technique or procedure
is equivalent to offering a thin description which records the number and

manner of ‘winks’, or whatever can be observed phenomenologically. While
this type of approach is not without its merits from a philological or
theological perspective, and while it will quite possibly render a ‘correct’
account of whatever can be observed of exegesis semi-objectively, it does not
and cannot supply an account of this type of exegesis at all approximate to
the explanation which would have been given by the exegetes themselves.
A thick description of any sort of exegesis must take into account the
subjective meaning and significance of a given social practice for those
involved and explain the basis on which this practice is perceived as
coherent, valid and valuable. The issue of subjective coherence is addressed
in the summary of the relevant interpretive assumptions to follow. While
any of the axioms on the basis of which these interpretive propositions are
constructed would be considered untenable, or at least unknowable within a
logical or empirical framework, by philosophers today, that fact is
completely irrelevant for the perceived coherence of noetic exegesis by its
adherents. What is relevant is the close inter-relationships and linkages
between the various clusters of ideas and assumptions and the comfortable
inconsistency with which they are applied. The basis for the perceived
coherence of these assumptions and their applicability to exegesis will be
taken as established by the previous five chapters, so that we can now focus
on the larger question of the meaning and significance of noetic exegesis
taken as a social practice. In doing so, it is expedient to address noetic
exegesis in terms of two separate social acts, examining both the act of
performing commentary as an exegetical teacher, and the act of engaging in
a course of study as a student with a teacher who included noetic exegesis as

part of his or her curriculum.
Participating in noetic exegesis, for a student, meant engaging in a
relationship of discipleship or spiritual patronage with the teacher-exegete,
and also signified dedication to spiritual, mental, and moral advancement.
This was the case to varying degrees for younger monks who listened to or
studied Evagrius’ commentaries, students studying with Origen in
Caesarea or Alexandria or people engaging with higher spiritual matters
by reading or hearing his commentaries, and the students of Didymus the
Blind. Engaging in noetic exegesis signified one’s awareness of and
interest in a particular goal in the spiritual life, namely the cultivation of
the νοῦς. It signalled a certain superiority over those ‘simpler brethren’ for
whom a superficial understanding of biblical narratives was sufficient. It

also located the student in a relationship with individuals of spiritual
power (the noetic exegete).
For the exegete or teacher, the act of generating noetic
interpretations was not an act of authority over the text, but sooner an act
of authority over the moral and spiritual life, since advancement in that life
was the prerequisite for achieving the noetic skill needed to interpret the
text. Performing noetic exegesis signalled a high degree of moral and
mental development and of mastery over one’s physical and emotional
impulses, and thus constituted a claim to the status of the spiritually, or,
better, noetically, expert. Performing noetic exegesis was also a means of
exercising authority over the moral and spiritual lives of others, because of
the important role the study of texts credited with an intelligible content
played in higher education and formation. Noetic interpretations of given

passages often defined the moral and spiritual examples which the readers
or hearers were expected to follow and set out the standards of virtue and
knowledge. In so doing, noetic exegesis formed part of the stuff of a
relationship of spiritual patronage, which as we have seen could range
from a very formal and loose association, as between casual hearers and
their teacher, or one of deep emotionality and personal attachment.
Performing noetic exegesis also had a tacit significance in the relationship
with other exegetes from other milieux, in that it served to construe a given
text, in this case the Bible, as an appropriate object of noetic exegesis, with
all that that implied for the authority and intelligible credentials of the text.
Thus noetic exegesis has a high degree of significance as a social action,
and could even be characterised as an act of relationship, between the
teacher and the student, the community and the text, other communities
and their differing texts, etc. In all of these cases, perceiving the higher
intelligible meaning of the text constructs meaning not only for the text
itself, but also for the person of the interpreter, and the hearer, and the
entire community.
This study has treated noetic exegesis as an organic whole by
investigating not only the exegetical procedures or hermeneutical
techniques involved (such as allegorical interpretation, or various steps
rehearsed by a commentator to move from literal to moral to spiritual
levels of meaning), and by taking into account the entire network of
social, emotional, and philosophical trappings attached to the larger
interpretive project. This was especially the case in the discussion in the
previous two chapters which highlighted the close attachments possible

between students and teachers and the manner in which studying
through noetic exegesis was part of a far-reaching commitment to
personal formation on all levels, including the physical, emotional, and
intellectual. The contents of Chapters Two, Three, and Four focussed
particularly on the ideas behind the exegetical practices represented in
the commentaries and how these functioned to motivate and orient not
only noetic exegesis as it appears on paper, but also the social context in
which it originally appeared in space and time. This relationship
between particular interpretive assumptions and exegetical behaviour is
most apparent in the clear (internally) logical connection between the
belief that the νοῦς is the proper organ for perceiving the intelligibles and
the social location of noetic exegesis in groups committed to a

programme of formation believed to be effective in rehabilitating, and in
practicing the use of, the νοῦς. These points all establish noetic exegesis
as a system integrally related within itself, a state of affairs which clearly

manifested itself in the considerable difficulty which separating each
chapter’s cluster of ideas from the others in some plausible manner for
the purposes of this study presented.
Another aspect of a thick description approach is not only
inclusion of the social and subjective aspects of the object of study, but
also attention to particularity. In the case of this study, we have not
raised a claim that this type of exegesis is particular to the commentators
in our sample only, but what is striking is the historical particularity of
this practice. That is, the social and cultural context plays such a large
role in the construction of meaning in the practice of noetic exegesis (as

with any interpretive practice), that if those elements are altered, the
nature of the exegetical practice is also changed. This can be illustrated
by posing the following hypothetical question. Would the use of these
same commentaries at some other time in some other cultural context
constitute a revival or even a continuation of noetic exegesis? Indeed, the
commentaries, as written works, apart from their original oral delivery,
could be passed through space and time and read in completely different
contexts. So if a Cistercian monk in twelfth-century England, as he well
might have, had a study group dedicated to reading the commentaries of
Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius, is what he and his group are doing also
noetic exegesis? After all, there is a monastic or ascetic context, there is a
dedication to overall personal formation, and such a study group may
plausibly have included people who were also interested in topics of
rhetoric, logic, and geometry.
The answer is, of course, that noetic exegesis can no more exist in
a twelfth-century English Cistercian monastery than the post-modern
graduate seminar on literary theory can exist in a Baptist college in
Georgia in the 1950’s. Our hypothetical Cistercians, first of all, are not
generating commentary on the text of the Bible in a relationship with a
tradition of commentary on Homer, but are reading commentaries
which, to them, have already been established in the authoritative role
of patristic tradition, while they themselves would have been among the
current interpretive authorities on non-Christian literary tradition,
including Homeric myth. Secondly, the act of reading patristic
commentary in the Cistercian context has a different meaning than it did

in a late antique one: it is (among other things) an act of displaying and
rehearsing and identifying with exegetical texts from earlier Christian
tradition, and not an act of a speculative, ambiguous, and inconclusive
struggle to perceive the intelligible content of the Bible. Also, the
Cistercians would be reading in a setting in which the relationship
between the society at large and Christian religion is very different to that
obtaining in any phase of late antiquity. Any awareness of Platonism or
Neoplatonism or Stoicism or concepts from Aristotelian logic as
represented in the texts was an awareness of philosophies the better part
of a millenium farther away than they were for the original commentators.
Beyond these differences on the level of the acts and behaviours
involved, the ideas and beliefs, or interpretive assumptions, involved,
must have been different, having necessarily originated from twelfth-
century western European culture and not from late antique
Mediterranean culture. Where our sample commentators considered the
text a vessel of divine revelation, the Cistercian readers or hearers
(especially when reading the commentaries, rather than the Bible)
considered them a deposit of authority and tradition. While our sample
commentators found themselves in difficulties when faced with
intelligible truths encased in, for them, ontologically inadequate
ordinary language, the same problem simply did not occur for
Cistercian readers. The relevant problem with language for them would
have been adequate skill in Greek or Latin, languages which played a
different role in their cultures than in that of Evagrius, Origen, and
Didymus. While an attentive and devoted disposition was quite

possibly encouraged, the application of some part of the self called the
νοῦς was not required for the comprehension of the commentaries, or the
Bible, nor were the commentaries treated as concealing some other

significance beyond what could be perceived by listening intelligently
and devotedly. Also, while noetic exegetes were very anxious to subdue
the emotions in order to enable spiritual concentration, the Cistercian
tradition saw no such contradiction and indeed encouraged affectivity
as part of religious life. So without operating on the basis of the same
interpretive assumptions, noetic exegesis can neither exist nor be
participated in, and without the social context and larger cultural
framework which make it mean what it means, something superficially
similar might exist, but it would mean something different, and
therefore be something different, to the people engaged in it.
To take another example, even if some one in California today
familiarised themselves with and assented to all the same beliefs as
represented in the interpretive assumptions just set out, and found a sort
of hermeneutical guru to study with, pursued exactly the curriculum
followed by late antique teachers, and so on, that person would still not
be practicing noetic exegesis. That person would instead be imitating an
intriguing foreign cultural practice, a behaviour which itself is a well-
established part of the Californian social act of esoteric eccentricity, and
not a case of noetic exegesis in action. Finally, it cannot be stressed
enough that since noetic exegesis is not a name for any particular
hermeneutical technique, it cannot be imitated and still be itself. It is
itself if and only if the interpretive assumptions set out in this study are
not only held, but truly assumed, by the commentators and their
students and if the entire set of ideas and behaviours involved in it draw
their value, validity, and significance from the cultural context within
which they indeed did so. Noetic exegesis is not simply the product of
the application of certain exegetical rules or logic or of a given
hermeneutical technique. It is a complex interpretive project which
depended on the particularities of culture and social relationships to
develop and function.
The Interpretive Assumptions Governing Noetic Exegesis
Each of the main chapters of this study have addressed a cluster of

concepts or ideas which constitute interpretive assumptions which
govern noetic exegesis or, in other words, determine the type of
interpretation which can be generated within that system and be
considered valid and valuable by members of the interpreting
community. Here we can set these assumptions out not just in
individual clusters but also as a closely interlinking system.
1.) The text is a vessel of divine revelation.
i. The divine reveals things through the text which pertain to the
intelligible realm and which are constructive in moral and
spiritual development.
ii. The divine does not reveal things through the text which are
banal or inappropriate to the divine nature.
iii. Where the text is composed by a writer, beyond the divine author,
that writer functions in the role of a visionary or prophet, conveying
a vision of higher realities by means of human language.
2.) The text has a surface narrative with a sensible referent and also, in many
passages, an intelligible referent.
i. The text cannot have always and only an ordinary referent since
it is divine revelation and as such must contain intelligible truths.
ii. Intelligible truths are worthwhile and important objects of study
for the human mind.
iii. Intelligible truths cannot be expressed in ordinary language read
as such.
iv. Intelligible truths cannot be perceived using propositional
thought or mental concepts.
v. The intelligible truths in the text must be perceived non-
propositionally and in some manner that circumvents
ordinary language.
3.) The text can be properly read and interpreted noetically.
i. The νοῦς is the appropriate organ for perceiving intelligible truths.
ii. A person who is able to perceive intelligible truths consistently

and accurately functions in the role of a holy man or spiritual
guide or philosopher.
iii. Anyone who wants to become able to apply their νοῦς to the text
and interpret it noetically must enable the νοῦς through a process
of spiritual, moral, and mental formation.
4.) The νοῦς can be cultivated and used in its most cultivated form in the context
of advanced philosophical education.
i. A curriculum of moral and mental formation can appropriately

be pursued under the guidance of an individual who has already
achieved moral and mental excellence.
ii. Such a process of formation can be facillitated by noetic
commentary since the explication of intelligible content develops
the human psyche and mind.
These assumptions are the answers to the questions posed at the outset
of this study as to what the text is, why it requires special interpretation,
and how and where that interpretation may properly be performed.
They are indeed assumptions since their appearance in the
commentaries is usually incidental and marginal and since they are

presented with rhetorical alacrity, or incredulity at the idea that anyone
could disagree with these points. They are interpretive inasmuch as they
motivate and determine a particular direction and type of interpretation.
A large part of Stanley Fish’s argument for the determinative role
of interpretive assumptions is connected to the role of context in
drawing conclusions about what a text means. It is not the context in
which the text was written which is meant, however, but rather that in
which it is read. Under that umbrella term we find the interpretive
community itself, the social structures of which they are a part, the
culture in which they are reading, and all their ideas and concerns. I
have in this study been engaged not in relating the commentary to the
text it proposes to interpret, but rather relating the commentary to the
interpretive community which generated the interpretation in question.
The genre of commentary thus provides a particularly well-structured
test case for the idea that it is the reader, and not the text, that
determines the meaning found.
Noetic Exegesis, Neoplatonist Influence, and Cultural Context
One might ask whether there is a real difference between the conclusion
of some scholars of patristic exegesis that non-literal Christian exegesis
was as it was largely because of Neoplatonist ‘influence’, and the
conclusion of this study that noetic exegesis in these particular three
exegetes was as it was because of the specific interpretive assumptions

just summarised. After all, belief in the universal metaphysical
categories of sensible and intelligible, in the usefulness of the νοῦς in
perceiving the intelligibles and its valuation as the part of the human
person which should most urgently be cultivated, as well as the
tradition of education as overall moral and mental formation, are all
familiar aspects of Neoplatonism. Given this close similarity, it is
necessary to grapple with the problem of what sort of relationship in
fact obtains between Neoplatonism and noetic exegesis, and what
grounds this study has provided, if any, for shifting away from simply
describing our sample exegetes as Christian Neoplatonists.
A very common way of explaining the observable similarity
between supposedly Christian practices or ideas and those of other
groups within the larger culture in which they are observed (such as
Neoplatonism) is to postulate a relationship of influence. On this model,
Christian thinkers are portrayed either as adopting and adapting certain
non-Christian ideas and practices for the purpose of articulating the
Gospel to their contemporaries, or as having been influenced, in a
negative sense, by foreign ideas without being sufficiently conscious of
the incursion of these ideas to prevent them from corrupting a clear and
correct expression of Christianity. In either case, the basic idea is that the
reason for the similarity between familiar Neoplatonist ideas and the
exegetical practices of commentators like Origen, Didymus, and
Evagrius is that the ideas concerned were transferred from one paradigm
(Neoplatonism) to another (Christianity). The resultant relationship is

one of uni-lateral transfer between two analogous but distinct bodies.
This model presents several serious difficulties for reasons of
historical and cultural coherence, and even more serious difficulties if it
is to be applied to the relationship between Neoplatonism and noetic
exegesis among the commentators in our sample. The largest difficulty
is that, if one wants to establish a case for influence, one must not only
observe similarity between ideas and practices present among two
groups of thinkers, but must also demonstrate which ideas or practices
were moved from which thinker to which other, and make a plausible
case not only for how and where this could have happened, but also
provide some account of the motivation or necessity of the ‘receiving’
thinkers to draw the given idea or practice from the ‘giving’ thinkers
rather than developing it independently or appropriating it from
elsewhere, and, most fundamentally, must demonstrate that there really
were two separate discrete groups at the basis of such a relationship.
It is not at all apparent how any of these requirements can be met
in the present case. If we observe both Origen and Plotinus believing in
the existence of the νοῦς as the appropriate organ for comprehending the
intelligibles, are we to conclude that Origen got this idea from Plotinus,
his younger contemporary? Why would one not conclude exactly the
opposite, namely that Plotinus got his idea from Origen, the elder and
more established scholar at the time? And why would either of these
thinkers need to borrow the idea from each other at all, when any
number of other contemporary or earlier thinkers, not least of all Plato,

could be found who thought something very similar?
This model of the interaction beween Neoplatonist philosophy
and its role in exegesis of Homer or Plato and non-literal patristic
exegesis as one of uni-lateral influence is not coherent. Christian thinkers
cannot and should not be said to have ‘borrowed’ or ‘taken over’ pagan
exegetical traditions or concepts or practices, because saying so makes
several problematic assumptions. Firstly, it procedes on the assumption
that Christians had some other option, but chose from a neutral vantage
point to integrate traditional ideas into their separate independent
systems. The implausibility of such a situation should be clear after
decades of post-modern theory arguing for the impossibility of thinking
or operating independently of any particular paradigm, as one would
have to do if one were to deliberately pick and choose ideas to adapt into
one’s own system. Secondly, it fails to differentiate between ideas and
practices which—for contemporary Christians—were religiously marked
as pagan, and those which were simply culturally obvious. And finally,
such a model constructs a false dichotomy between Christians as
members of a religion, conceived as if it existed separate from culture, and
pagans as members of a culture, so that any appearance of known
elements of contemporary culture in Christian writings is perceived as
something pagan invading from outside.
The ideas and practices just examined could appear completely
obvious and natural to both Neoplatonists and Christians precisely
because they were not religiously marked: they are not dependent on
Christian doctrine nor on adherence to any particular school of

philosophy. While certain schools (anything involving strict materialism,
for example) are excluded, it is certainly a larger group than that
consisting of academic Neoplatonist philosophy that can be found to
accept the interpretive assumptions collected in this study. Thinkers we
today categorise as Christian were just as much a part of their culture as
anybody else, and so the alacrity with which they applied common
concepts usually characterised as Neoplatonist, and their understanding
of the means and ends of the exegetical endeavour which we also find in
exegetes characterised by scholars as Neoplatonist, is perfectly explicable
on the grounds of common culture and the fact that they were engaged
in the same interpretive project with the same ends.
The best case that can be made for noetic exegesis being a result
of non-Christian influence is based on the clear similarities observable
when these are compared with Neoplatonist exegesis of Homer, for
example. This very similarity, however, undermines the entire argument
for influence, since this argument requires two distinct groups to start
out with. If one is faced with contemporaries who engage in more or
less the same practice based on more or less the same ideas, it is
unnecessary and arbitrary to artificially separate them into two groups in
order to then argue that one influenced the other. The assumption that
two groups did indeed obtain is a result of the assumption that
exegetical practices were determined by religious identity, and that
religious identity in late antiquity must be analogous to confessional
identity in modern Europe or America. This study should suffice to
dissolve that assumption, so that there is no reason to separate noetic

exegetes into two groups based on religious identity or to persist in using
an influence model.
A large part of the purpose of approaching noetic exegesis in an
alternative manner is to avoid awkward problems which result from an
influence model, like those just outlined, or those resulting from simply
describing our sample commentators as Neoplatonist Christians or
Neoplatonist exegetes. Conflating the categories Neoplatonist and
Christian is just as uninstructive as setting up the two categories in the
first place. In attempting to explain what a Neoplatonist Christian is, one
would automatically be forced back onto presuppositions very similar to
those evident in the influence model, describing a supposed
Neoplatonist Christian as a Christian influenced by Neoplatonism or
some one who integrates both Christian and Neoplatonist ideas.
The broadest description of the culture upon which noetic
exegesis depends is ‘late antique intellectual culture’. This, however, is
less than satisfactory, since on some accounts late antiquity covers the
entire period from the second to the eighth centuries, so that a wide
range of shifts and movements in intellectual culture were involved. A
more specific description would be ‘late antique higher educational
culture between the second and fourth centuries’, as this would cover
those exegetes we now know to have engaged in noetic exegesis (and
their students and hearers) and still leave room for contemporaries, like
Porphyry, of whom engagement in noetic exegesis is strongly suspected
by this author. While this latter alternative is small enough to be
significantly more informative than its broader counterpart, it is still

very large and has the advantage of leaving the issue of the religious
identity of the commentators completely open.
Another way to define the cultural context which formed the
foundation for the validity and significance of noetic exegesis would be
to draw some conclusions about who could or could not participate.
Simply put, no one who opposes any of the interpretive assumptions by
which noetic exegesis is governed could participate in it. That is, any
radical materialists or any one else who denied the existence of
divinities or the intelligible realm as such would be excluded. While this
philosophical position was relatively unusual in late antiquity,
Didymus’ response to criticism of figural interpretation does suggest
that at least some people (‘whole sects among both pagans and
Christians’) did hold it and that they objected to Didymus’
interpretations exactly because they denied the existence of any sort of
intelligible realm. Also, anyone who denied the capacity of traditional
texts (no matter which ones) to convey divine revelation or intelligible
truths would be excluded, since the basis of interpretation and its
general direction would be contradicted by such a belief. Anyone who
denied the existence of the νοῦς or the ability of human beings to use
some higher part of the mind capable of pure intuitive thought or of

perceiving the intelligibles would likewise be unable to participate.
Within those intellectual or philosophical boundaries, however,
everyone, whether Pagan, Gnostic, Jew, Arian, or Orthodox, could
potentially participate. Even individuals who did not fully understand,
intellectually, any of the interpretive assumptions involved, but still,

perhaps because of the authority of the commentator or because they
had been sent to a school or were attached to a community where this
sort of commentary was practiced, could participate, as long as they
allowed for the value and validity of the interpretive assumptions which
drove noetic exegesis. Clearly, this type of demarcation is more difficult
than assigning practices to the category of pagan, Christian, Gnostic, or
Jewish, and the next two decades of scholarship promise innovation and
further articulation of how historians of late antiquity can instead
connect given practices to social groups.
Noetic Exegesis, Patristics, and Ancient History
The primary contribution of this study to a historically constructive

approach to exegesis and especially to early Christian readings of the Bible
is the establishment of noetic exegesis not only as a practice which is
driven by specific identifiable interpretive assumptions, but also and
especially as a social act. The social element of noetic exegesis arises not
only out of its generation, performance, and application in the social
context of education and spiritual formation, but also out of the social role
given to the interpreter or exegete as spiritual guide or holy man. The
social nature of noetic exegesis cannot be accurately categorised as merely
one more interesting characteristic to catalogue, since it is inextricably
linked to the conceptual elements of noetic exegesis as well. That is, the
contextualisation of noetic exegesis in the social groups of students and

teachers or ascetics and spiritual guides need not have arisen without its
attachment to the belief that it must be performed with the νοῦς and that
the νοῦς requires rehabilitation through moral and mental formation. At the
same time, noetic interpretations need not so persistently have focussed on

moral examples or instruction in right living and thinking, and certainly
need not have constantly interjected school topics into the interpretation of
Genesis, if it was not being performed in this particular social setting.
While the impossibility of determining the direction of causality in this link
may be frustrating, it is perfectly normal and natural in cases where the
meaning given to a certain action and the action which is symbolic of a
particular meaning each form and influence each other.
Finally, it remains to state in what manner this study contributes
to the larger scholarly endeavour. Firstly, in its concrete findings, it
establishes the conceptual structural coherence of commentaries often
found difficult and opaque, thus moving them a step further out of
obscurity and toward comprehensibility. Secondly, in its theoretical and
methodological aspect, it demonstrates a scholarly interaction with early
Christian exegetical writings which produces findings relevant to
disciplines other than theology or philology. In so doing, it strengthens
the foundation for access to these exegetical works by scholars from
other disciplines such as history, literary theory, anthropology, and
sociology. Most importantly, while several of the individual
components of the ideas presented here as interpretive assumptions are
already known, their systematisation and the recognition and
demonstration of their relevance to early Christian exegesis has not

previously been attempted or achieved. Knowing how noetic exegesis
works, what makes it go, what it is and why it’s there at all can
contribute to further study of other categories of non-literal
interpretation in late antiquity, to tracing changes in the connection
between religion and education, and to uncovering the mechanisms
which produced the authority and the charisma of the philosophical
teacher in this period. Noetic exegesis is not only part of the gorgeously
complex human behaviour of interpretation, but also an essentially late
antique answer to questions about what the human mind is and what
should be done with it.
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Note on Translations:
Translations of ancient sources are not my own in most cases, but

originate with the person noted in brackets following the citation. That
is, for example, (Ward, 34) indicates the translation by Benedicta Ward of
the Apophthegmata Patrum as listed in the bibliography.
In cases where a German or French translation and edition were used,

such as the Scholia of Evagrius, translations into English are my own,
although the original editor and translator are still cited.
In a few cases where English translations were not otherwise available,

online public-domain translations were used. This applies to Origen’s
Commentary on John from Philip Schaff’s edition and translation of the
Ante-Nicene Fathers available at www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.html,
and Luke Dysinger’s translation of Guillaumont’s edition of Evagrius’
Kephalaia Gnostica and Gnostikos from www.ldysinger.com/Evagrius/
02_Gno_Keph/00a_start.htm. Since neither an edition nor a published
translation exist for Evagrius’ Scholia on Psalms, Luke Dysinger’s
translation of selected scholia from www.ldysinger.com/Evagrius/
08_Psalms/00a_start.htm was also used.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is a slightly revised version of my 2008 dissertation which was

completed at the University of Erfurt under the supervision of Professor
Jörg Rüpke and Professor Johan Leemans. These scholars contributed a
mercilessly acute eye for systematic coherence from the perspective of
Roman religion and the history of religions, on the one hand, and
unflinching standards of honorable work and the morality of the intellect
rooted in the tradition of continental patristics, on the other. The research
for this book was financed by a Christoph Martin Wieland stipend and a
start-up stipend from the Interdisciplinary Forum on Religion, both of the
University of Erfurt.
I would also like to thank the editors of this series. The recognition
and encouragement of David Brakke when this book was first proposed
were key in allowing it to come to fruition, as was the commendation of
Anders-Christian Jacobsen at Aarhus. Jörg Ulrich has promptly and
cheerfully dealt with final editing and typesetting issues, seeing through
the last steps of this long process.
There are many junior and senior colleagues in both Europe and
the United States who, while some of them have no formal association with
my work at all, have contributed significantly to the development of this
project, and my own development, by embodying scholarly good
sportsmanship, frankness, and love for their craft. I would like to express my
thanks, admiration, and appreciation for those people here. I would especially
like to thank Elizabeth Depalma Digeser for her decisive, sure-handed, and
generous guidance. Joel Kalvesmaki of Dumbarton Oaks Institute also
contributed the attention of his meticulous and patient mind to solving a key
problem in a passage on the scribal work of Evagrius.
Ivo Gottwald spent three years with this project in the house,
steadfastly providing me with the time and logistics to invest in it. In the
final stages of preparing this manuscript, he has performed marathons of
heroic thoroughness in setting the text and adjusting all of the scholarly
apparatus to the ECCA style sheet. His dependability, constancy, and
perpetually disgruntled charm have been and continue to be a treasured
anchor. It is to him that this book is dedicated.
Blossom Stefaniw
Leipzig, September 2009
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Blossom Stefaniw was born in the United States and brought up in

Papua New Guinea. After graduating from highschool in 1994, she
pursued undergraduate studies in literature, linguistics, and theology,
while taking employment as a field hand in the summers. Her studies
were interrupted by a year of work divided between the Central African
Republic and a L’Arche community in Seattle. Having completed her
B.A. in 1999, she pursued a diploma in classical studies before moving
on to take a Masters of Theology from the University of Wales,
completed with distinction in 2004. Her studies were completed in
Germany in the form of a PhD at the University of Erfurt. Blossom
Stefaniw is presently pursuing teaching and research in religious studies
at the University of Erfurt.
Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity
Edited by David Brakke, Anders-Christian Jacobsen,

and Jörg Ulrich
Vol. 1 David Brakke / Anders-Christian Jacobsen / Jörg Ulrich (eds.): Beyond Reception. Mutual
Influences between Antique Religion, Judaism, and Early Christianity. 2006.
Vol. 2 Jakob Engberg: Impulsore Chresto. Opposition to Christianity in the Roman Empire c.
50-250 AD. 2007.
Vol. 3 Anders-Christian Jacobsen / Jörg Ulrich (eds./Hrsg.): Three Greek Apologists. Drei griechi-
sche Apologeten. Origen, Eusebius, and Athanasius. Origenes, Eusebius und Athanasius.
2007.
Vol. 4 Anders-Christian Jacobsen / Jörg Ulrich / David Brakke (eds.): Critique and Apologetics.
Jews, Christians and Pagans in Antiquity. 2009.
Vol. 5 Jörg Ulrich / Anders-Christian Jacobsen / Maijastina Kahlos (eds.): Continuity and Disconti-
nuity in Early Christian Apologetics. 2009.
Vol. 6 Blossom Stefaniw: Mind, Text, and Commentary. Noetic Exegesis in Origen of Alexandria,
Didymus the Blind, and Evagrius Ponticus. 2010.
www.peterlang.de

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EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Zugl.: Erfurt, Univ., Diss., 2008

Sample Exegetes and Source Texts 16

Origen of Alexandria (185–254) 20

Didymus the Blind (c. 313–c. 398) 23

Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–c. 400) 27

Christians and Pagans 42

Precedent and Progress in the Interpretation of Interpretation 43

The Larger Cultural Context 63

The Nature of the Text and Exegetical Controversy 73

Traditional Texts as Media of Revelation in the Sample Commentators 86

The Authors of Traditional Texts as Visionaries and Prophets 96

Perceiving the Moral and Spiritual Referent 132

The Intelligible and the Sensible:

Ordinary Language and Perfect Knowledge:

Contemporary Psychology and the Cognitive Equipment

Embodying Noetic Skill: the Interpreter

Exegesis and Education: Acquiring Noetic Skill 266

Philosophical Formation in the Larger Cultural Context 270

Origen’s Curriculum 276

Didymus the Blind’s Curriculum 284

Evagrius and Monastic Formation 289

The Logistics of Higher Education in the Larger Culture 305

Pedagogical Logistics in Origen 313

Pedagogical Logistics in Didymus 319

Pedagogical Logistics in Evagrius 325

Noetic Exegesis in Practice 330

The Praxis of Noetic Exegesis in Origen’s School 334

The Praxis of Noetic Exegesis in the School of Didymus 340

Evagrius’ Praxis of Noetic Exegesis in Instruction 345

Confession and Interpretation 356

A Thick Description of Noetic Exegesis 366

The Interpretive Assumptions Governing Noetic Exegesis 374

Noetic Exegesis, Neoplatonist Influence, and Cultural Context 377

Noetic Exegesis, Patristics, and Ancient History 384

The act of interpretation is an essential and quotidian function of the

explained systematically by examining the concerns prevalent in the

exegesis, here termed noetic, and to demonstrate that it is this

means of noetic comprehension of the higher significance of the text and

the topic of this investigation could be stated as the identification and

1 A full discussion of this terminology is provided below. The νοῦς is a mental

leads to the most basic assumption, without which there would be no

explanation for biblical exegesis in these three late antique

Sample Exegetes and Source Texts

A study of commentaries is a study of the collaboration of readers with

applied to medieval allegory or other figural methods of interpreting the

understood as part of an interpretive tradition rather than either

driving it were exclusively or particularly Christian. The sources do not

6 Didym., ps. 38.12 (M. Gronewald [ed.], Didymos der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar IV

Origen of Alexandria (185–254)

I begin this study chronologically with Origen, in spite of the tradition of

Origen’s understanding of what constitutes legitimate exegesis, why one

8 In this account I largely follow the biography provided by M. Hornschuh in Das

controversy even within his lifetime, and a series of teachings attributed to

9 A review of the various characterisations of Origen can be found in the

Didymus the Blind (c. 313–c. 398)

Didymus the Blind is known not only as an exegete or scholar but as a

and Ecclesiastes.12 An additional commentary on Job is in a more fully

While Didymus is not nearly as controversial a figure for modern

Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–c. 400)

The inclusion of Evagrius Ponticus expands the geographic range of this

14 This account is based on Sinkewicz’s summary of the evidence on the life of

on Philo and Clement.15 Osborne does not offer an explicit definition of