THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

views were aired amongst the literati of the fledgling Ptolemaic state. At this time
many of the sacred books of the Orient were finding their way into koine Greek, the
lingua franca of the new empire. The state of flux within the Academy can bee seen
by the shift from Xenocratian dualism to a more implicitly Stoic thrust under his
successor Polemon who headed the Academy following the death of Xenocrates in
314 B.C.E.: one of Polemon’s pupils was the Stoic Zeno. Arcesilaus and, later,
Carneades, instituted the pre-eminence of skeptical method in the New Academy in
the 2nd century B.C.E., and so we have all major philosophical contenders vying for
control of this academic throne in a relatively short period of time. 34
It is at this juncture that Alexandria begins to loom large in the developing
picture of dualist thought. With the fragmentation of Alexander’s empire, the eastern
links with the sources of Greek culture became far more tenuous by the beginning of
the second century B.C.E. Alexandria, ideally suited to become the ancient world’s
intellectual and economic clearing house par excellence, was beginning to manifest
the fruits of a particularly successful result of Alexander’s push for synthesis with
foreign elements The Ptolemaic penchant for research resulted in the establishment of
the famous libraries, and the intellectual research undertaken there also included a
syncretistic assimilation of diverse religious elements, from the Persian Ahura Mazda,
to even a consideration of Buddhist metaphysical claims from the far off realm of
Ashoka. 35
34
This skeptic influence is much reduced in Dillon’s work and mars his overall appreciation of
the period. One must ask why “the skeptical tradition has no place in Middle Platonism,”
(The Middle Platonists, 43 – Dillon himself does not answer this question) when Gnostic
thought, Hermeticism, the Chaldean Oracles, even the “Persian influence,” attain some
measure of attention, be it ever so cursory.
35
It seems certain that Buddhist emissaries from the Indian king Ashoka arrived in Alexandria
around 200 B.C.E., a period of mounting religious excitement in Egypt. See Samuel K.
Eddy, The King is Dead: Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism 334-31 B.C.
(Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 278.