The Soul-Body Compound in Didymus the Blind’s Commentary on Genesis and its Neoplatonic Background
The Soul-Body Compound in Didymus the Blind’s Commentary on Genesis and its Neoplatonic Background

Summary/Abstract: This article concentrates on the view of the soul-body compound as presented by Didymus the Blind in his Commentary on Genesis, and also on some characteristic traits of Neoplatonic psychology which can be found in this text. A closer inspection of Commentary on Genesis reveals that what Didymus presents as the soul-body compound can be understood equally well as the compound of the superior intellectual soul conceived as a transcendent essence of the soul, and the ensouled body which is already a compound of the material body and the inferior irrational soul acting similarly to the body’s immanent form. Therefore, it seems plausible to surmise that it is this kind of solution to the soul-body problem which Henry Blumenthal called the marriage of dualism and hylomorphism, and which left its mark not only on later Platonic tradition, but presumably also on Didymus.

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