Hi
Is there any connection between Socrates’s monotheism and Judaism?
Was Socrates influenced by Judaism?
I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich
Is there any evidence that Socrates was a monotheist? We don’t have any of his writings but other people who wrote about him (mainly Plato) have Socrates referring to the gods not to a god.
There is almost certainly a connection between Platonism and Christianity. See, for example, Philo, whose works were often referenced and kept in Christian libraries during the first couple of centuries of the religion. Though, later, this connection was played down and largely expunged.
But Jewish monotheism was clearly coming into form previous to 500 BC (and probably even before 600 BC), so even if Socrates was a monotheist, he was born too late to influence Judaism. It would be more likely that Zoroastrianism influenced both of them.
When and how, though? Certainly Plato was held in high regard in Christian thought all throughout the medieval era, no…?
Would you care to expand on the possibility of Zoroastrianism influencing Plato? I have heard of the possibility of Zoroastrianism influencing pre-Socratic philosophers, generally, and Heraclitus, specifically - but never Plato.
Thanks in advance.
That veers into Great Debates territory. There’s a difference, for example, between respecting that smoking is a risky habit and accepting that you’re actually killing yourself. There’s a strong argument to be made that the Christianity which Jesus taught was little more than a variant of Jewish Neoplatonism, but that is not the Christianity recorded in the orthodox works passed down to us today and the texts that we have, which are accepted to be from the 1st century, do not support that argument.
Plato does explicitly mention Zoroaster in Alcibiades I, so clearly he was aware of the religion. How much that influenced his ideas, positively or negatively, I would leave up to philosophy majors.
… Socrates repeatedly invokes not only gods, but “the god”, as in this famous passage from the Apology: “Athenians, I honor and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you” (29d). Socrates further asserts that he has been specially chosen by “the god” to persuade the people of Athens of their ignorance (23b) and that abandoning this mission would mean also abandoning his god (30a)…
or alternatively…
"Several characteristics of Socrates sound suspiciously similar to traits commonly attributed to spiritually awakened people:
Deep appreciation for not knowing
Primarily a teacher
Allegory of the cave
Love of comedy/farce/paradox
Known for meditation / samadhi? “his curious cataleptic seizures, when he stared into the distance for hours on end”
If Socrates was awakened, then at root he was likely a monotheist /pantheist /atheist as is the common way prescribed by the messengers in the most popular world religions.
I don’t speak Greek. But my understanding is that what Socrates actually said was that he obeyed his daimonion. This basically translates as divine guidance.
A modern person raised in a Judeo-Christian culture is going to translate the idea of divine guidance as coming from God. But Socrates lived in a polytheistic culture. People in his time would assume divine guidance came from a group of gods.
If Socrates had been a monotheist he would have stood separate from his contemporaries on that issue. So you would expect he would have raised the issue and explicitly discussed his beliefs. But as far as I know he did not. He simply made remarks that could be interpreted as monotheistic. But I feel that doing so is simply projecting our own monotheism back unto Socrates.
Thanks Little Nemo. Your point about
“projecting our own monotheism back unto Socrates” makes sense. Paul Johnson’s “Socrates: A Man Of Our Times” is a perfect example of this.
Socrates was a polytheist because he respectfully references a variety of Gods from the Athenian pantheon. Furthermore, he makes it clear that without a good argument against the way things are you go along with that part of things, especially when it comes to civic duties. Polytheistic religion was civic duty in Athens and he never argues it is wrong.
He talks in the translations all the time about the god because in the original he often makes references to ho theos which is indeed the singular of that noun with a definite article. But if you take it with reference to general pre-Christian Greek usage, it seems to be a way to indicate whichever specific one of the Greek gods is relevant at the moment. Greek polytheists were very humble about not knowing for sure which god should be referred to in a given situation, especially when they prayed. This is a similar usage – I will say the god because I am afraid I am not sure which of them is right to name, but I sure know one of them should be referenced – so I will keep it a bit ambiguous by not using a name, but still acknowledge that I understand there is one god in particular that presides here by using a definite article.
Most translations punt here by going super literal and translating as the god even though to a modern audience in a world shaped so heavily by Judeo-Christian-Muslim monotheism this is going to sound more familiar to them than it should.
Little Nemo, I accept your argument that Socrates was following his daemon. I don’t think we should call him a “monotheist”. But just for reference this is what Paul Johnson has to say:
page 107 “Socrates: A Man For Our Times” “Socrates did not believe in the traditional pantheon of Greek religion, with gods specializing in particular services and leading tumultuous lives that were mere mythology or fiction than serious religion. When Socrates was at his most devout, he always refers to “god” or “the god”, not “the gods”. He was a monotheist” p. 107 Paul Johnson “Socrates: A Man For Our Times”
" I will say the god because I am afraid I am not sure which of them is right to name, but I sure know one of them should be referenced – so I will keep it a bit ambiguous by not using a name, but still acknowledge that I understand there is one god in particular that presides here by using a definite article.
Most translations punt here by going super literal and translating as the god even though to a modern audience in a world shaped so heavily by Judeo-Christian-Muslim monotheism this is going to sound more familiar to them than it should."
Thank you Vaevictus. I wasn’t aware of this.
No. Not in Western Christianity, at least. Medieval Western Europe had Calcidius’a Latin translation of parts of the Timaeus and his commentary on it, and in the 1200s, the Sicillian clergyman and politician Henricus Aristippus translated the Phaedo and the Meno into Latin, but most of Plato’s stuff wasn’t known in Western Europe until the fall of Constantinople.
Vaevictus, perhaps you can recommend a good comprehensive book on the way the ancient Greeks prayed to their gods.
Prayer in Greek Religion by Simon Pulleyn
Thanks Vaevictus. Thank you all.
davidmich
The Jews don’t seem to have been much of a presence in the Classical Greek world. Herodotus doesn’t mention them at all, despite giving a pretty long description of many others peoples under Persian rule. And I don’t think any Greek writer mentions them, even in passing, prior to the conquests of Alexander. Presumably that close to the end of the Babylonian Captivity there either weren’t enough of them to attract notice, or they were too culturally assimilated with wider Mesopotamian culture to stand out as a distinct people to outsiders.
So while there’s no way to know for certain, I doubt Socrates would’ve heard of Judaism.