Doubts about the Aristotelian authorship of the Theology are as early as the sitxteenth century. There was no medieval Latin translation of the Theology of Aristotle, but in 1519 a Latin version was published in Rome (the version was done by Pietro Nicola Castellani on the basis of the previous translation, now lost, done by Moses Rovas in Cyprus), and another version was published in 1571 by Jacques Charpentier (see Fenton 1986; Kraye 1986; Aouad 1989:565). The Latin text is based on the so-called Longer Version of the Theology, in 14 chapters, whose Arabic antecedent is only fragmentarily extant (on the ‘‘Longer Version’’ see Fenton 1986, the survey of previous literature in Aouad 1989:564-570, and Treiger 2007). Soon after, Francesco Patrizi, who published the Latin version as an appendix to his Nova de universis philosophia, was struck by the difference between Aristotle’s usual position and the blatant Platonism of ‘‘his’’ Theology: the explanation he advanced was that the Theology contained the exoteric doctrine heard by Aristotle from Plato’s lips, as shown not only from Patrizi’s remarks, but also by the very title given to this appendix, Mystica Aegyptiorum et Chaldaeorum a Platone voce tradita, ab Aristotele excepta et conscripta philosophia. The solution devised by Patrizi clearly indicates his awareness that the Theology gave a nonAristotelian ring - an awareness that increased during the seventeenth century in Europe (see Kraye 1986). In the Bibliotheca Graeca (1716, III:162-164) Fabricius remarks that the doctrines of the Theology, far from being Aristotelian, are akin to those of the Hermetic Poimandres, ‘‘ut Platonicum potius aliquem quam Aristotelem auctorem esse res ipsa clamet.’’ However, Fabricius did not identify the ‘‘Platonic’’ source: this move was done by Th. Taylor at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Taylor 1812, III:403-413; see also Taylor 1816). Later on, towards the end of the century, the Orientalist F. Dieterici provided the editio princeps of the Arabic text (Dieterici 1882) and its German translation (Dieterici 1883). On the basis of this translation, V. Rose, the specialist of the Aristoteles pseudepigraphus, identified more systematically than Taylor had done the Plotinian treatises that count as a source for the various chapters of the Theology (Rose 1883). The next decisive steps in the literary history of the Arabic Plotinus belong to the twentieth century. In 1940 another Orientalist, P. Kraus, discovered in a Cairene MS an Epistle on the Divine Science attributed to al-FarabI, which he identified as the Arabic abridged version of four treatises of the fifth Ennead (Kraus 1940-1941). These four treatises are different from those lying in the background of the Theology, but share with the latter several monotheistic adaptations: this gave a hint towards the existence of an original translation of materials drawn from the Enneads, lying in the background of the two complementary texts, the Theology and the Epistle. A third Orientalist, F. Rosenthal, discovered that the ‘‘sayings’’ attributed in various doxographies and in a MS of the Bodleian Library to the so-called al-Shaykh al-YUnanT (‘‘The Greek Sage’’) were nothing if not other parts of the Arabic Plotinus (Rosenthal 1952-1955). The doxographies that include passages taken from Plotinus and attributed to the ‘‘Greek Sage'' are, chronologically arranged, the following: (1) the Muntakhab SiwTn alii ikma derived from the lost SiwTn al-Jiikma attributed to al-SijistanI, (2) al-ShahrastanI’s Kitab al-milal wa-l-nihal, and (3) al-ShahrazurI’s Rawdat al-afrah (see the relevant entries in this volume). In all likelihood, the three doxographies and the sayings of the Bodleian MS depend upon one and the same source, the lost SiwTn al-Mkma, a compilation of earlier sources that can be traced back to the beginning of the eleventh century. At variance with what happens in the case of the Theology and the Epistle, the Plotinian passages attributed to the ‘‘Greek Sage'' and the Theology do overlap here and there. The three texts - the Theology, the Epistle on the Divine Science, and the ‘‘Sayings of the Greek Sage'' - share in the same linguistic features and doctrinal adaptations, so that Rosenthal's conclusion imposes itself: they derive from one and the same ‘‘Arabic Plotinus Source.’’ When G. Endress published in 1973 his Proclus Arabus (see the entry on Proclus, Arabic in this volume), the systematic analysis of the syntax, terminology, and doctrinal adaptations that he extended also to the Arabic version of Proclus’ Elements of Theology and to the Liber de causis allowed him to conclude that the ‘‘Arabic Plotinus Source,'' together with the Elements of Theology, with their offspring known as the Liber de causis, and with some Alexander of Aphrodisias, were translated and adapted within one and the same circle of scholars: the ‘‘KindI’s circle’’ (Endress 1973,1997). On this ground, and on the basis of a reexamination of the entire dossier,
Zimmermann (1986) has advanced the hypothesis that the works by Plotinus, Proclus, and Alexander of Aphrodisias were meant to fulfil the demand for a theological complement to Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In the eyes of the scholars of this circle, and mostly of its ‘‘spiritus rector’’ al-Kindl (Endress 1997), a more detailed account of the causality of the Immobile Mover sketched in Book Lambda was needed, in order to show that Greek philosophy reached the same truth as the Qur’an about God and his creation. Such an account could be found in a set of postAristotelian authors - Alexander, Plotinus, Proclus - who stressed both the separatedness and the causality of a unique and transcendent First Principle.
There is no scholarly consensus about the details of the transformation of the ‘‘Arabic Plotinus source’’ into the Theology of Aristotle - in particular, about the two related issues of (1) the chaos versus intentional structure of the Theology, and (2) the purposiveness versus mistaken nature of the attribution to Aristotle - but the origins of the text within the Kindi’s circle and its role in building the Arabic Aristotle are established on firm grounds.
World History
