Review of Murphy, Deification in classical Greek philosophy and the Bible

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Deification in classical Greek philosophy and the Bible.

James Bernard Murphy, Deification in classical Greek philosophy and the Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 378. ISBN 9781009392921.

Review by
Zachary T. Hedges, Trinity College of Florida.
zachary.hedges@trinitycollege.edu

... Murphy’s project, then, is to recover a sense of this interconnectedness between philosophy and religion, as it shapes the approaches to deification expressed in (1) archaic Greek religion, (2) the teachings of the three major classical philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), and (3) the collective witness of the biblical canon. ...

Sounds like an interesting book. But any discussion of deification in the Bible is going to be incomplete and misleading unless it steps outside the major canons and includes the apocalypses in the book of 1 Enoch.

Some other deification-related thoughts pertaining to the classical and biblical worlds are here and links.

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