Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 88

thinking of the Athenian philosophers as well, especially the stoics, and he drew on these also to highlight the supremacy of the Christian message. Following his example, I applied myself for many thoughtful days in the new library that was being created at the old temple of Serapis, studying copies of the works of the Greek philosophers they had acquired to replace the originals. As Clement had, I compared the thoughts of writers like Plato and Aristotle with Christian ideas.

Another great thinker who had lived and worked in Alexandria was Origen Adamantius, an Egyptian who initially very much followed Clement in the way he interpreted the Christian scriptures. He too knew the works of the Stoic philosophers well and emphasized comparisons between the gospels and the works of Pythagorus and other great thinkers from Athens. Idiosyncratically, Origen taught that to reach God one had to pass through many phases, the last being human. It was not an idea to everyone’s taste. But he was very well versed in the Hebrew writings as well and through his wide knowledge he had reworked the Greek version of the holy book of the Jews, the one they call the Septuagint, which had in fact been originally translated in Alexandria soon after Alexander the Great had been here. Alas there were some scholars in Alexandria who thought Origen’s writings were bordering on the heretical, especially when he called the idea of the Holy Trinity into question and in the end he had to leave the city under a cloud and he died in Caesarea.

THE JOURNEY