Eve-Marie Becker, Holger Strutwolf, hrsg., Platonismus und Christentum. Ihre Beziehungen und deren Grenzen. Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2022, viii-141 p.

This volume is the result of a colloquium held on May 6, 2022, which took place in honor of † Professor Barbara Aland on the occasion of her 85th birthday in the Schloss der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster. In her introduction Becker states that the early Christian movement exhibited philosophical traits from the beginning, especially in Paul’s letters that are conceptually closest to the epistles of the philosophers and — at least according to Lucan’s account — speaks directly to the philosophers at the Areopagus (Acts 17:22-31). It’s not inconsequential that Paul hailed from Tarsus, the capital of the province of Cilicia, which according to the geographer Strabo, was known for its high regard for philosophy and education, “τοσαύτη δὲ τοῖς ἐνθάδε ἀνθρώποις σπουδὴ πρός τε φιλοσοφίαν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην παιδείαν ἐγκύκλιον ἅπασαν γέγονεν ὥσθ᾽ ὑπερβέβληνται καὶ Ἀθήνας καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρειαν καὶ εἴ τινα ἄλλον τόπον δυνατὸν εἰπεῖν, ἐν ᾧ σχολαὶ καὶ διατριβαὶ φιλοσόφων γεγόνασι.” (Strab. 14.5.13). She states that it was not until the middle of the 2^nd century that ancient school philosophy became a separate topic of Christian theology. The theologian Justin Martyr, who is given the honorary title of philosopher and martyr (Tertullian, adv. Val. 5.1), reports in dialogue form how he first pursued his love for philosophy and especially the Platonic style and then was moved to abandon it. To the question : What opinion do you have of God and what is your philosophy ? Justin responds, “I will tell you what seems to me ; for philosophy is, in fact, the greatest possession, and most honorable before God, to whom it leads us and alone commends us ; and these are truly holy men who have bestowed attention on philosophy. What philosophy is, however, and the reason why it has been sent down to men, have escaped the observation of most ; for there would be neither Platonists, nor Stoics, nor Peripatetics, nor Theoretics, nor Pythagoreans, this knowledge being one” (Dial. 2.1). The main focus for Becker is the centuries of antiquity in which Christianity gained a foothold and entered the experimental field of Platonic philosophy ; the time that begins with and after the push of this topic by so-called apologetics, entering the patristic and philosophical territory. In his chapter “Schwierigkeiten bei der Beschreibung dessen, was vor aller Zeit war”, Markschies begins with the question of how to appropriately translate a Greek text. He identifies a problem related to the theme of “time”, which played an important role and has been a problem of language and thought in the history of Christian theology since its beginnings. He argues that the problem shaped the theological discussions among Christians in the first centuries more than was previously perceived, and states that a new perspective emerges if one considers disparate texts not normally considered together. He concludes that individual Neoplatonic authors like Proclus postulated about such a special, motionless and non-participable initial time as “time before time.” Even Augustine’s reflections on his differentiation of two types of time demonstrate his attempt to deal with this problem. The Christian theologians at the turn of the third and fourth centuries did not attempt this, even though Neoplatonic reflections on “There was a time…” is implicitly, but erroneously ascribed to Arius. Glancing through the works of Aphrodisias, Markschies states that for precise differentiation, it can be ascertained that Arius did not think as deeply about the problem as is suggested by a somewhat hasty but highly familiar translation. He also states that it is just as improbable the so-called Valentinian Gnostics thought about “time before time” in …