Numenius of Apamea

Numenius of Apamea is classified as a Middle Platonist. Probably influenced by Oriental ideas and doctrines of Judaism, Numenius believed that matter and God were inherently separate. Matter was evil, and therefore, by definition, a good God could have nothing to do with it. To solve the problem of how these two separate entities interacted to create the world, Numenius suggested that a demigod was responsible for creation. Numenius believed that man had two souls, one rational and the other irrational. These, in turn, paralleled two world souls, one good and the other evil. The only possibility of escape from this dualism (and from evil) was to escape from material being. Numenius seems to have influenced Plotinus to the extent that Numenius' God-demigod-matter triad is similar to Plotinus' three hypostases of being.

Marda Kaiser