Epicureanism as the spiritual essence or 'religion' of an entire community

For comparison, here is a selection of the citations in full from the excerpt above:

1. study for its own sake

(NOTE: From my reading of the extant texts, Epicurus does not advocate study "for its own sake." One studies the texts and nature to alleviate ignorance, fear, anxiety about death and gods, etc. There is always a practical application of study. For example: "Hence, since such a course is of service to all who take up natural science, I, who devote to the subject my continuous energy and reap the calm enjoyment of a life like this" (Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus)

Vatican fragment 45

The study of what is natural produces not braggarts nor windbags nor those who show off the culture that most people fight about, but those who are fearless and self-reliant and who value their own good qualities rather than the good things that have come to them from external circumstances.

Avot 6:1

The sages taught in the language of the Mishnah. Blessed be He who chose them and their teaching. Rabbi Meir said: Whoever occupies himself with the Torah for its own sake, merits many things; not only that but he is worth the whole world. He is called beloved friend; one that loves God; one that loves humankind; one that gladdens God; one that gladdens humankind. And the Torah clothes him in humility and reverence, and equips him to be righteous, pious, upright and trustworthy; it keeps him far from sin, and brings him near to merit. And people benefit from his counsel, sound knowledge, understanding and strength, as it is said, “Counsel is mine and sound wisdom; I am understanding, strength is mine” (Proverbs 8:14). And it bestows upon him royalty, dominion, and acuteness in judgment. To him are revealed the secrets of the Torah, and he is made as an ever-flowing spring, and like a stream that never ceases. And he becomes modest, long-suffering and forgiving of insult. And it magnifies him and exalts him over everything.

2. acquisition of a companion

Letter To Menoeceus, end

Meditate day and night then on this and similar things by yourself as well as together with those like yourself.

Avot 1:6

Yose ben Yochanan (a man) of Jerusalem used to say: Let thy house be wide open, and let the poor be members of thy household. Engage not in too much conversation with women. They said this with regard to one’s own wife, how much more [does the rule apply] with regard to another man’s wife. From here the Sages said: as long as a man engages in too much conversation with women, he causes evil to himself, he neglects the study of the Torah, and in the end he will inherit gehinnom.

3. diet of bread and water

Bailey, fr. 37

I am thrilled with pleasure in the body, when I live on bread and water, and I spit upon luxurious pleasures not for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow them.

(NOTE: I've also addressed the "bread and water" issue in my translation to the letter to Menoikeus. Epicurus doesn't call us to have a life of "privation"... See Avot 6:4 below)

Avot 6:4

Such is the way [of a life] of Torah: you shall eat bread with salt, and rationed water shall you drink; you shall sleep on the ground, your life will be one of privation, and in Torah shall you labor. If you do this, “Happy shall you be and it shall be good for you” (Psalms 128:2): “Happy shall you be” in this world, “and it shall be good for you” in the world to come.

4. avoidance of public office

NOTE: We're fairly familiar with the "avoidance of public office" trope in current and former discussions here on the forum. A number of papers shared here have called that idea into question with respect to the ancient Epicureans.

Avot 1:10-11

Shimon ben Shetach used to say: be thorough in the interrogation of witnesses, and be careful with your words, lest from them they learn to lie.

Shemaiah and Abtalion received [the oral tradition] from them. Shemaiah used to say: love work, hate acting the superior, and do not attempt to draw near to the ruling authority.

Those four will do to illustrate my point. The citations have the most superficial similarities. The Epicurean "bread and water" sentiment especially has nothing to do with the living a life of privation. They could all be the result of convergent evolution. The statement "Agreements, however, both in content and literary form, between rabbinism and Epicureanism" does not deliver on its claim to be "striking." Your assertion that the Jewish movements (which it appears you're including Christianity under that name) copied aspects of Epicurus's philosophy doesn't seem to be substantiated by what I've seen

Quote from Peter Konstans (with numbers added)

Are we in agreement that (1) Epicureanism was the first major cult that spread its message chiefly though the medium of epistolography and (2) the first major school that envisioned a community of equals and friends without the mediations of poltical authority?

Unfortunately, I don't think we're in agreement on those two points. "Spreading its message chiefly through the medium of epistolography" doesn't strike me as quite accurate. One issue is that Epicurus had to communicate with his far-flung communities by letter during his lifetime. That was the means of communication, both for him and for Paul. They used similar media in similar circumstances. That doesn't mean Paul was inspired by Epicurus. I'm not sure how many letters we have from Epicurus's successors. It seems from the lists and extant texts, especially from Philodemus, that the Epicureans were much more interested in writing treatises than letters. Epicurus seems to have written as many treatises/books as letters, especially considering On Nature is 37 books itself.

On point 2, I'm not sure what you mean by "without the mediations of poltical authority." I wanted to also ask when you refer to the "community of equals and friends" are you referring to Epicurus's inclusion of women and enslaved people in his community, or the relative equality of students (of all kinds) in the Garden? Because I get from some of the texts that there was a definite hierarchy of teachers and students within the Garden for purposes of Epicurean education while they also thought of themselves as friends in time of need (and at other times as well).

I agree that Epicureanism was a potent, vital, active school of philosophy in the ancient world with communities from France (Gaul) to as far away as the area of modern Turkey in Oenoanda. But I maintain that similar strategies does not require inspiration or copying. Superficial similarities can simply be that religions and philosophies came up with similar solutions to similar problems.

Thank you for taking the time to pull together those sources! I find the first one as to "study for its own sake" particularly interesting.

Peter I want to say as an aside that it is going to take some time for me to read and follow what you just wrote. Sometimes I am finding what you write agreeable to me, sometimes less so, but I can say with confidence that your contributions are very stimulating and I appreciate the time you are taking in making them.

Peter Konstans , it would be extremely helpful if you would break up your writing into proper paragraphs. With all due respect, I can't even read what you just posted: it just comes across as an overwhelming stream of words.

In the interest of respecting the ideas that you're expressing, please consider giving some time to formatting your posts in such a way as to maximize what could prove to be a very interesting discussion.

Thanks! Godfrey

Quote from Peter Konstans

This is a very interesting discussion and there is much to discuss here.

I would agree that this is an interesting discussion from an intellectual perspective; however, I'm beginning to ask what the practical benefit is. And I say this in reference to the current discussion and to DeWitt's penchant for uncovering Epicurean origins of Christian practices and doctrine. While I remain unconvinced and skeptical of much of these alleged connections among Epicureanism, Judaism, and Christianity, I also don't see why it should be important other than for historical curiosity. It's not as if we who find value in Epicurus's philosophy will suddenly see the light, so to speak, and convert to Christian or Jewish practice.

You have included a voluminous amount of information and commentary in your post no. 26 so I do not have time at this moment to respond to it all. Below is merely a start and not meant to comprehensively reply in any way. I'll try to come back to it later, but you raise some interesting points, not all of which I agree with.

Quote from Peter Konstans

For now I will focus on the claim that Epicureanism is about 'living your life to the fullest instead of being a victim on the cross'. This ignores the fact that 'living your life to the fullest' was not the easiest thing to do in antiquity.

I would quibble with the formulation "living your life to the fullest," although I realize that's a popular way of phrasing it. From my perspective, Epicurus's philosophy is about experiencing the available pleasure at every moment of our lives, every moment of our existence. My perspective on the mention of "bread and water" in the Letter to Menoikeus and elsewhere is about taking pleasure in quotidian experiences like a simple meal we may eat every day. "Living life to the fullest" sounds too much like the skydiving, popular culture "carpe diem" "fear of missing out" "you only live once" idea. While those experiences may be part of Epicurus's philosophy, it's not the primary message.

Quote from Peter Konstans

Mary Beard and Vaclav Smil

For those unfamiliar with Beard and Smil:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beard_(classicist) 

Vaclav Smil - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Quote from Peter Konstans

If you oppose luxury you have to embrace minimalism and if you are skeptical toward political ambitions you have to embrace the modesty of a life with limited public exposure within the confines of a small community of friends.

From my reading of the extant texts, I do not see Epicurus opposing luxury when it is available nor do I see him advocating an embrace of minimalism. Additionally, Epicurus did not sequester himself nor his students within the walls of the Garden. His house was inside the city walls of Athens. He took part, and encouraged his students to do the same, in the rites and festivals of his city. As one example of one who has confronted this "minimalist" Epicurus idea, Dr. Emily Austin's recent book does an excellent job of putting the myth of Epicurus's ascetism/minimalism to rest.

That's all I have time for right now. More to come later possibly.

Some targeted comments:

Quote from Don

While I remain unconvinced and skeptical of much of these alleged connections among Epicureanism, Judaism, and Christianity, I also don't see why it should be important other than for historical curiosity. It's not as if we who find value in Epicurus's philosophy will suddenly see the light, so to speak, and convert to Christian or Jewish practice.

I agree with Don that the interest is not at all something that should motivate us to be more embracing of Christianity or Judaism, any more than those cults embrace Epicurus. But this is one of those areas where people differ, and I would include myself in the list of those who was so indoctrinated into Christianity at an early age that it remains fascinating, even later in life, to explore the parallels. And as as manner of exploring the learning about Epicurus, these parallels are going to be of interest to many, and probably a majority, of people who investigate Epicurus, as they provide familiar landmarks during the exploration.

Quote from Don

I would quibble with the formulation "living your life to the fullest," although I realize that's a popular way of phrasing it. From my perspective, Epicurus's philosophy is about experiencing the available pleasure at every moment of our lives, every moment of our existence.

I see nothing contradictory between those two sentences, but the twist probably comes with the word "available." I don't think Don suggests that you just sit and wait to see what pleasure falls in your lap, but unless you make clear that it is indeed appropriate to go out and seek pleasure, then many people will misunderstand this as a Buddhist-sounding call to retreat inward.

Quote from Don

"Living life to the fullest" sounds too much like the skydiving, popular culture "carpe diem" "fear of missing out" "you only live once" idea. While those experiences may be part of Epicurus's philosophy, it's not the primary message.

This is where the contradiction comes in. I do think "you only live once" when properly understood is Epicurean, and I do think it is pretty much the primary message.

Quote from Peter Konstans

When the ancient Epicureans rejected luxury they automatically and unambiguously rejected political ambition since you didn't get to have the one without the other. If you oppose luxury you have to embrace minimalism and if you are skeptical toward political ambitions you have to embrace the modesty of a life with limited public exposure within the confines of a small community of friends.

Now here I have to part with Peter somewhat. I don't think the Epicureans reject luxury and embrace minimalism per se, and I think that is a huge mistake of modern Epicureans to imply that minimalism should be the norm. I think the message is that you cultivate your surroundings and adapt to circumstances. You work the fields in the summer and feast in the fall. You intelligently embrace luxury where it can be enjoyed without pain that outweighs the benefits of it. You savor the little that you may have when luxury is not available, but you never aim at either minimalism or luxury as ends in themselves. There is no other word that describes the end of life given by Nature other than "Pleasure."

As to pleasure being the only description of the end: ("Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing remains; it follows that Nature herself is the judge of that which is in accordance with or contrary to nature. What does Nature perceive or what does she judge of, beside pleasure and pain, to guide her actions of desire and of avoidance?")

As to not targeting minimalism or luxury: ([130] Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgment on all these matters. For the good on certain occasions we treat as bad, and conversely the bad as good. And again independence of desire we think a great good — not that we may at all times enjoy but a few things, but that, if we do not possess many, we may enjoy the few in the genuine persuasion that those have the sweetest pleasure in luxury who least need it, and that all that is natural is easy to be obtained, but that which is superfluous is hard. And so plain savours bring us a pleasure equal to a luxurious diet, when all the pain due to want is removed; and bread and water produce the highest pleasure, when one who needs them puts them to his lips. [131] To grow accustomed therefore to simple and not luxurious diet gives us health to the full, and makes a man alert for the needful employments of life, and when after long intervals we approach luxuries disposes us better towards them, and fits us to be fearless of fortune.)

Quote from Cassius

I do think "you only live once" when properly understood is Epicurean, and I do think it is pretty much the primary message.

Fully agree with "properly understood." I was referring in my post the popular YOLO acronym.

YOLO (aphorism) - Wikipedia

Quote

The word was criticized for its use in conjunction with reckless behavior, most notably in a Twitter post by aspiring rapper Ervin McKinness just prior to his death, caused by driving drunk at 120 mph (193 km/h)

Yes, I think most of us will agree that driving drunk at 120 mph would generally expected to be an un-Epicurean thing to do.

You'd have to stretch pretty hard to come up with circumstances where that would be the prudent thing to do.

But having said that, I am sure some of our active minds here could probably come up with hypotheticals to show that even "Don't drive drunk at 120 mph" isn't handed down by god or written in the great list of Platonic ideals in the sky!

Of course once again there's the problem with hypotheticals..... practical minds don't enjoy them and they quickly get insufferable.

Quote from Cassius

it remains fascinating, even later in life, to explore the parallels [between Christianity and Epicureanism]

Oh, I would include myself as someone who finds that topic interesting. I've just never seen any parallels (with maybe one exception - see below) that convince me of anything other than convergent evolution. I could maybe see Catholic confession as a perversion of frank criticism, but even that may only be superficial without my knowledge of the wider ancient cultural context.

I've seen a lot of proof texting and applying an almost Rorschach Testing to these topics. It seems people, scholars included, see what they want to see.

Another very interesting post and I am glad you are pleased with the level of engagement. I am no longer sure if you are Greek or German but your English is top notch!

So are you saying that you have found in your studies that there is in fact not much of a historical precedent for the use of letter-writing for spread of philosophical ideas before Epicurus?

I would want to see more resources, but per this Wikipedia article, letter writing dates back at least to ancient Egypt:

Epistle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I suspect that Paul wrote letters because he was responding to the same social and political pressures that the Epicureans were responding to, whether or not there was any connection between the two traditions--both groups were barred from teaching in the Gymnasia, the Agora, and the Roman Forum. So they found recourse in one of the only options left to them. This was a stroke of great luck for us, as Zeno's whole output from the Stoa is lost except in fragments while Epicurus' letters survive.

In the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, a similar phenomenon developed called the Republic of Letters, a complex web of private correspondence for the transmission of ideas. Ironically, the term was first used by Francesco Barbaro in a letter to Poggio Bracciolini, and in the very same year--1417--that saw the rediscovery of Lucretius by the latter. In one surviving letter, a friend of Poggio pleads with him to be more guarded in his writing--a letter stops being private if it falls into the wrong hands, after all.

Poggio's letter written in admiration of Jerome of Prague, a heretic murdered by the Church at the Council of Constance, is here.

Discussions like this always lead me back to how much we've lost.

Paul founded probably 20 churches, conceivably wrote letters to each maybe once a year over 10 years. That's potentially 200 letters.

We have 7 undisputed letters left.

Epicurus had communities of friends in Asia Minor and probably wrote regularly.

We have 3 whole letters plus fragments of a few others.

And the numbers get worse for older civilizations or those not deemed worthy of transcribing or transmitting.

An interesting paper on the topic of ancient letter writing theory:

Ancient Epistolary Theory: a Brief Overview

Ancient Epistolary Theory: a Brief Overview

www.academia.edu

Some quotes:

The oldest preserved letter that contains the epistolary formulas typical for the subsequent epistolographic practice is the letter of Cyrus to Cyaxares, inserted in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (Κύρου παιδεία) (Xen. Cyrop. 4.5. 27-33). Cyropaedia was written around 370 BC. The letters that the manuscript tradition assigns to Plato are also dated to this period approximately.

In the Second Philippic, Cicero calls letters аmicorum colloquia absentium ‘conversation between absent friends’ (Cic. Phil. 2.4).

Interesting to me, the paper also includes numerous types of letters written in the ancient Greek world.

Here's another one:

‘Paul’s Letter Opening and its Relationship to Ancient Greek Letters: A Study in Epistolary Presence,’ in S.E. Porter and Sean A. Adams (eds.), Paul and the Ancient Letter Form (PAST 6; Brill, 2010), 33-55.

‘Paul’s Letter Opening and its Relationship to Ancient Greek Letters: A Study in Epistolary Presence,’ in S.E. Porter and Sean A. Adams (eds.), Paul and the…

www.academia.edu

The study of epistolography and Paul is a vital undertaking if we are to understand Paul•s relationship to the Greco-Roman world of letter writing. Paul did not write in a vacuum, but was rather trained in the letter writing principles of his day.

Personal letters constitute the most common letter tradition of the ancient world, whose general format remained fairly constant from the third century B.C. to into the third century A.D.1

Most openings are short, direct and with very little expansion, with the overwhelming number of letter openings having the following formula: A to B, Greetings with an occasional health wish.

It is clear from his letters that Paul's standard greeting is not the traditional χαιρειν, but rather he employs his now signature "Grace to you and peace" with the additional !from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

It is interesting to evaluate the nature of χάρις υμίν και ειρηνη. It is clear that there is a relationship between χαρις and χαιρειν, in that they both are derived from the same root.44

This similarity is beyond chance and suggests that Paul was adapting his letter greeting from the traditional χαιρειν form.45 Furthermore, Paul•s use of peace is parallel to the Hebrew letter form. As mentioned above, Ezra 4:17-22 and 5:7-17 both utilize the "To Y, Shalom" formula. However, in the LXX the word used toto translate "shalom" is ειρηνη. It appears that Paul was incorporating the Hebrew greeting into his letters and combined it with the noun form of the verb χαιρειν to create his letter greeting.

I'll stop quoting there, but it seems to me that Paul is simply part of a letter writing tradition within the larger Greco-Roman and Jewish culture in which he lived. I see no reason to try to establish a link specifically between Epicurus's letter writing and Paul's activity.

FYI

Material Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World (500 B.C. – 300 A.D.), De Gruyter 2017

Ancient letters had formatting and stylistic conventions that were carefully respected by their writers. This book provides the first comprehensive study of…

www.academia.edu

(Full book)

I found this excerpt interesting, putting Epicurus and Paul in a wider context, noting both similarities and differences within that context:

Quote

Early literary letters were probably collected and edited by students or readers after the death of their authors. The main common characteristic of these letters is that they bear only the external characteristics of letters; in fact, they are rhetorical or philosophical treatises, and can only be placed at the borderline of the epistolary genre. The letters of Plato and the letter of Thucydides are rather συγγράμματα (treatises), in accordance with Demetrius’s understanding of the proper style of a letter.124 In imperial Roman and late antique times, philosophical doctrines continue to be written in epistolary form, in the style of the Epicurean letter. Such are, for example, the didactic letters of Seneca,125 the Stoic letters of Musonius Rufus (1st

c. AD), and the philosophical letters of the neopythagorian Apollonius of Tyana (1st c. AD). To the same type may be classified the letters of Saint Paul, although the latter were sent not only for the purpose of teaching, but also for the spiritual support and practical organisation of newly-established churches. In Late Antiquity, letters that include philosophical doctrines are those of the emperor Julian the Apostate and the church fathers, especially the Cappadocians Saint Basil and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, also, a large collection of letters (about 1600), including correspondence with Saint Basil, has survived from the teacher of rhetoric, Libanius (AD 314–393). (p.25-26)