Friday, May 20, 2005

What happened to the Library?

What happened to the Library of ancient Alexandria? No undisputable response to this question seems to have appeared so far, but 26-28 September 2004 there was a conference in Alexandria dealing with just this question: What happened to the Ancient Library in Alexandria? The conference was a part of a greater project on Alexandria which aims at making the BA a center for research and a depository of all forms of information on the Ancient Library of Alexandria, Alexandrian scholarship and other related topics.
See link on the page mentioned above; here you will also find a link to a detailed program of the conference (Word), list of contributors, and a link to abstracts of the papers given.

One of the papers, that by Magdy Kilany, has the curious title of "Indications of Early Christian Tradition in Philo" (sic!). The abstract, however, seems to indicate that it deals rather with the influence of Philo on early Christian thinking, than with 'Indications of Early Christian Tradition in Philo.'

Abstract:
"This paper will try to prove that Philo was the first to make philosophy at the service of religion and so he is considered as a forerunner both for Christian and Muslim philosophers. However, it concentrates mainly on his influence on Christian thought. The argument will depend on his original texts, comparing them with quotations from the Gospels to clarify this idea.
Philo used Plato’s allegorical method of interpretation to interpret the Old Testament. Through this method, the writings of Philo contributed to the formation of the early Christian concept of Christ and his divinity. To illustrate the above mentioned idea, the paper will deal with the origins of the word of God which became Jesus himself afterwards."

I presume the papers read at the conference will be published in a year or so. If you have any information on this, please use the comments field below.

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