The legend of the “Babylonian Hermes” in late antique literature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47850/RL.2023.4.1.15-28Keywords:
Greece and the East, Babylon, Hermeticism, Enoch, Idris, secret knowledge, prophetic.Abstract
The article continues the author's research on the ancients' perceptions of intercultural interaction. Following the study of the legend of Pythagoras' journey to the East [Afonasin, Afonasina, 2019] and “biblical borrowings” in Greek philosophy [Afonasin, 2022], this paper deals with the “Persian” trace in medieval Hermeticism. The first part of the paper deals with the Harranian astrology, the second with Greco-Persian alchemy of Sassanid times. Given the state of our evidence, we cannot say how things really were. However, some of the observations made in the paper should clarify what seems to be the ways in which the intercultural transformation of knowledge has been, and usually is, taking place.
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