Numenio interprete di Tim. 28b7

Numenius is certainly one of the most original and influential thinkers of Middle Platonism. His thought belongs to the dogmatic Platonic tendency of the Imperial age. Like any of his contemporary Platonists, for Numenius, the Timaeus plays a fundamental role, being the dialogue that mostly inspired Middle Platonic philosophy. Nevertheless, there are no traces in Numenius of his reading of Tim. 28b7, the famous passage in which Plato alludes to the generation of the cosmos. This passage generated a huge debate in Middle Platonism between “literalist” and “metaphorical” interpreters about the generation of the cosmos. Numenius, according to the fragments, does not express himself explicitly on this issue, but it is unlikely that he did not take a position. The aim of my contribution is to identify some elements among Numenius’ fragments that can be traced back to his reading of Tim. 28b7. I intend to show how Numenius conceived the cosmos as generated from a pre-cosmic condition and therefore his interpretation of Timaeus is not to be counted among the metaphorical ones. In particular, I will analyse the “temporalist” lexicon employed by Numenius in order to show how he uses it precisely to support such a reading, which is also the only one possible if one sticks to Numenian doctrine.