Numenius of Apamea

Life and Works

Numenius of Apamea was a Middle Platonist philosopher active in the second century CE, probably during the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. He was born in Apamea in Syria, a Hellenistic city within the Roman Empire that was a crossroads of Greek, Jewish, and Near Eastern cultures. This multicultural environment is often cited as a background for his sustained interest in comparing Greek philosophy with Eastern and Jewish traditions.

Little is known of Numenius’ life, and no complete work survives. His writings are preserved in fragments quoted mainly by later authors, especially the Neoplatonist Porphyry, the Christian apologist Origen, and the anthologist Eusebius of Caesarea. These secondary sources transmit excerpts and paraphrases, often in polemical contexts, which has made reconstructing his thought a matter of scholarly interpretation and debate.

Ancient testimonies attribute several works to him, among them:

• On the Good (Peri Tagathou), his most important and frequently cited treatise, in which he expounds his theology and metaphysics;
• On the Immortality of the Soul;
• On the Incorruptibility of the Soul;
• On Numbers;
• and a work often called On the Divergence of the Academics from Plato, where he criticizes the later Platonic Academy for deviating from what he takes to be Plato’s original doctrine.

A distinctive feature of Numenius is his comparative project. He famously asked, “What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic Greek?” This remark encapsulates his conviction that Plato’s philosophy coincides with an older, universal wisdom found among Pythagoreans, Jews, Egyptians, Persians, and Indians. Numenius thus appears as one of the earliest systematic proponents of a philosophia perennis—a perennial philosophy uniting Greek thought with various religious traditions.

Metaphysics and Theology

Numenius’ metaphysics centers on a hierarchical reality governed by distinct levels of divinity. Our knowledge of this system mainly derives from the fragments of On the Good.

He distinguishes at least three divine principles:

1. The First God (the Good)
   The highest principle is a transcendent, utterly simple and immutable god, identified with the Good of Plato’s Republic. This first god is beyond all change, action, and mixture with matter. He is pure being and goodness, turned entirely toward himself in contemplative self-knowledge. Numenius stresses that this highest god neither directly creates nor interacts with the material world, in order to safeguard his absolute purity and immutability.

2. The Second God (Demiurgic Intellect)
   Below the first principle stands a second god, often called the demiurge or intellect. This god contemplates the first, receives from him the paradigms or forms, and orders the cosmos by turning toward matter. The second god thus mediates between the purely intelligible realm and the sensible world. In some fragments, Numenius describes the second god as becoming “twofold” when it directs part of itself toward matter, thereby experiencing division and conflict between the higher, contemplative aspect and the lower, world‑ordering aspect.

3. World Soul and Cosmos
   Related to this second god is a world soul that animates the universe. The world soul, when entangled with matter, can become disordered and must be turned back toward the intelligible realm. In this layered structure, the cosmos is good insofar as it participates in the order and rationality of the divine intellect, but it is also the site of mixture with matter, which Numenius (in common with many Platonists) characterizes as a source of disorder and evil.

Scholars often observe that this tripartite structure anticipates the later Neoplatonic distinctions between the One, Intellect, and Soul. While Numenius does not yet have the fully articulated system of Plotinus, his insistence on a radical transcendence of the first god and the mediating role of a second god marks a clear shift beyond earlier Middle Platonism.

Numenius also shows strong Pythagorean tendencies. His references to numbers, harmony, and proportion suggest that he regarded mathematical order as a key to understanding the structure of the intelligible realm and its reflection in the cosmos. At the same time, he reads Plato through a religious and mythological lens, placing more emphasis on divine hierarchy, revelation, and ritual language than many earlier Platonists.

Ethics, Religion, and Influence

Ethically, Numenius maintains a characteristically Platonic and Pythagorean emphasis on the soul’s purification and ascent. Human beings, for him, possess a rational soul akin to the divine, but presently bound to a mortal body and influenced by matter. The task of philosophy is to liberate the soul from attachment to bodily desires and the sensible world, redirecting it toward contemplation of the first and second gods.

This moral journey involves:

• Ascetic practices, including moderation in pleasures and a focus on inner purity;
• Philosophical contemplation, which aligns the soul with the order of the intelligible realm;
• and an appreciation of religious traditions and sacred texts as bearers of ancient wisdom.

Numenius’ esteem for Jewish and Eastern traditions suggests that he saw revelation and philosophical reasoning as complementary avenues to the same truth. Proponents of this view consider him an important figure in the development of religious Platonism, in which philosophy is not merely rational inquiry but also a path of spiritual transformation.

His influence on later philosophy is widely acknowledged, though interpreted differently by scholars:

• On Plotinus and Neoplatonism: Ancient sources report that Plotinus’ teacher, Ammonius Saccas, used Numenius’ works, and that Plotinus himself was sometimes accused of borrowing from Numenius. Modern scholars debate the extent of this dependence, but most agree that Numenius helped prepare the conceptual ground for Neoplatonism, especially through his doctrine of multiple hierarchical gods and his strong transcendence of the first principle.

• On Christian thought: Christian authors such as Origen and Eusebius cite Numenius in defense of the compatibility of Greek philosophy with Christian doctrine. They found his references to a supreme god, intermediary divine powers, and a rationally ordered cosmos congenial to Christian theology, even as they rejected or reinterpreted aspects of his polytheism and cosmology.

• On the history of Platonism: In modern scholarship, Numenius is often classified as a Middle Platonist with Neopythagorean elements and viewed as a crucial transitional figure between earlier Platonism and the fully developed systems of the third and later centuries. Some interpreters emphasize his role in formulating a universalist, syncretic Platonism; others stress his contribution to the shift from a primarily logical and epistemological reading of Plato to a more theological and mystical interpretation.

Critics of Numenius, both ancient and modern, sometimes argue that his intense dualism of god and matter risks undermining the goodness and unity of the cosmos, and that his reliance on non‑Greek traditions complicates claims about a strictly Platonic orthodoxy. Proponents, however, regard these same features as innovative attempts to address enduring problems about evil, divine transcendence, and the universality of wisdom.

Although extant only in fragments, Numenius of Apamea remains an important figure for understanding the religious turn in late ancient Platonism, the emergence of Neoplatonism, and the dialogue between Greek philosophy and Jewish and Eastern traditions in the Roman imperial period. His synthesis of Plato, Pythagoras, and “barbarian” wisdom continues to attract interest in studies of ancient metaphysics, comparative religion, and the history of philosophical theology.