Adaptations of the Biblical Myth of Creation in the Treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum and in Philo of Alexandria and their Mutual Comparison

AbstraAbstraAbstraAbstractctctct: This thesis deals with the adaptations of the biblical cosmogony, as portrayed in the fist two chapters of Genesi, in the hermetic treatises Corpus hermeticum I (=Poimandres), Corpus hermeticum III (= The Sacred Discourse) and in the work De opificio mundi ("On the Creation of the World") by the jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. All the three authors share the same common ground, which are the Bible in it's greek translation (Septuagint) and the contemporary greek philosophy, mainly the stoicism and the (middle)platonism. Although all of them strive to create some type of universalistic philosophycal-religious system, each of them reaches his goal by different means. The hermetists pick out of the biblical texts only those elements, which appear to them to be the most abstract and universal and they do not hesitate to add to them many of their own ideas, and to alter the text to make it look more scientific and philosophical than the original biblical myth. Philo also tries to create certain universalistic system, but proceeds in the opposite way. He tries to fill all the specificaly jewish elements, which hermetists ignore, with a new universal philosophical meaning. Apart from this, the comparison allows us to trace various differences between the teachings of our..