Johan C. Thom

The collection of sayings known as _acusmata_ represent some of the earliest evidence for Pythagorean teaching. The sayings are therefore potentially of extreme importance in determining the ethics and way of life of the early Pythagorean community; but their original meaning is often disputed. “The Pythagorean _Acusmata_” allows for both literal and non-literal interpretations, striving to achieve some balance between the two. The first part of the discussion is devoted to a survey of _acusmata_ that have a bearing on ethics, followed by some general, tentative conclusions about the ethics of the sayings. These include that it is overly simplistic to postulate two mutually exclusive ancient approaches to the _acusmata_, that is, a literal approach and an allegorical one, or to try to distinguish between two types of ethics, an “acusmatic” ethics based on a narrow, literal interpretation, and a “mathematic” ethics based on a more open, rational interpretation.

The treatise _De mundo_ (_On the Cosmos_), dated around the 1st century BCE, offers a cosmology in the Peripatetic tradition which draws also on Platonic and Stoic thought and subordinates what happens in the cosmos to the might of an omnipotent god. Thus the work is paradigmatic for the philosophical and religious concepts of the early imperial age, which offer points of contact with nascent Christianity. In line with the aims of the SAPERE series, this volume on _De mundo_ is explicitly interdisciplinary by nature, bringing together contributions from scholars from a broad spectrum of disciplines and specialisations which focus on specific topics, each from its own disciplinary perspective. The volume contains a Greek text and translation of _De mundo_ as well as interpretive essays on the language and style, geography, cosmotheology and the reception in or possible influence of _De mundo_ in various intellectual traditions.

Abraham J. Malherbe was one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the past half century. He is especially known for his use of Hellenistic moral philosophy in the interpretation of New Testament texts, especially Pauline literature. Whilst the comparative study of New Testament and Greco-Roman material remains a contentious approach in scholarship, Malherbe’s work provides important pointers in how to make such comparisons in a meaningful and reasoned manner, by paying due respect to the integrity of the texts being compared and to the function textual elements have within their own contexts. I discussed the salient features of Malherbe’s approach, focusing in particular on his study of topoi. One of the most significant findings was Malherbe’s emphasis on the dialectical combination of common and individual elements in such topoi, which enabled ancient authors to embed their own texts within the cultural discourse of their time. His approach opens the way to further research of the New Testament within its philosophical context without requiring proof of a genealogical relationship between the texts or authors concerned.