La dea Atena come immagine della provvidenza di Dio e dell’assimilazione alla natura divina in Filone di Alessandria

Abstract

This paper aims to determine the allegorical-philosophical value that Athena assumed in the works of Philo of Alexandria and to identify the reasons why he mentioned the pagan goddess (or her epithets) in his writings. Through appropriate cross-references to Pythagoreanism, Stoicism, and Middle Platonism – the traditions that constituted Philo’s philosophical formation – I will try to demonstrate how Philo incorporated the Hellenistic-Early Imperial symbolic value of Athena (an embodiment of universal and providential reason, as well as human rationality striving to connect with the divine) while simultaneously maintaining the monotheistic perspective of the Bible. In this way, Philo establishes a complex relationship between his Jewish faith and Greek philosophical reason, whose combination is capable of offering, in his eyes, a valid cosmological and ethical explanation of the genesis of the universe and the place humans assume inside it.