Philo of Alexandria - Runia

David T. Runia

Present positions

Professorial Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne 

Honorary Professor, Institute of Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University

Professor Extraordinarius, Department of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

He can be contacted at

dtrunia@gmail.com

telephone: +61 419 419 766

postal address: 4 Woodlands Drive, Ocean Grove VIC 3226, Australia

Curriculum vitae
David Runia was born in the Noord Oost Polder, The Netherlands in 1951. At the age of 4 he emigrated to Australia , where he studied Classics at the University of Melbourne , receiving his B.A. (hons) in 1974 and his M.A. in 1976. In 1977 he returned to the Netherlands , where he pursued doctoral studies at the Free University, Amsterdam . In 1983 he gained his D. Litt. degree with the thesis Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. From 1985-90 he was Huygens Senior Research Fellow at the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (NWO). During this time he was a Member of the School of Historical Studies at The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1986-87) and a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University , Canberra (1987). In 1990 he was Von Humboldt Stipendiary at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster , Germany . In 1991 he was appointed Professor Extraordinarius in Ancient Philosophy at Utrecht University . He was appointed to the Chair of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at Leiden University in 1992. From 1995 to 1999 he was Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy.

In 2002 he was appointed Master of Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne, a position from which he retired in 2016. In 2017–2018, he was Director of the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at the Australian Catholic University, of which he remains an Honorary Professor. He is also a Professorial Fellow of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

David Runia has been Editor-in-chief of The Studia Philonica Annual since its beginning in 1989 (since 1999 as co-editor with Gregory E. Sterling). He is also co-editor of the journal Vigiliae Christianae and of the series Philosophia Antiqua (both published by Brill, Leiden). In 2016 Volume 28 of The Studia Philonica Annual ​was a Festschrift in his honour, edited by Gregory E. Sterling (here).

Research Interests
David Runia’s research interests lie in (1) the area of Philo of Alexandria and Hellenistic Jewish thought, (2) the tradition of Platonism, (3) the Platonism of the Church Fathers, and (4) the study of ancient philosophical doxography.

His current research projects are:

  • Editing with David Lincicum and Courtney Friesen a comprehensive volume on the reception of Philo from Josephus to the 21st century
  • The preparation of a commentary on Philo’s De aeternitate mundi in the Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series
  • The preparation of a reading guide to Philo’s Allegorical Commentary
  • Continuation of bibliographical work on Philo through the International Philo Bibliography Project.

Publications (Select)

Books

  • Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato, doctoral dissertation Free University of Amsterdam, 2 vols. (Amsterdam 1983); revised edition Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato, Philosophia Antiqua 44 (Leiden 1986).
  • Philo of Alexandria: an Annotated Bibliography 1937-86, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 8 (Leiden 1988) [with R. Radice]; 2nd edition, Leiden 1992.
  • Exegesis and Scripture: Studies on Philo of Alexandria, Variorum Collected Studies Series (London 1990).
  • Philo in Early Christian Literature: a Survey, Compendia Rerum ad Novum Testamentum III 3 (Assen-Minneapolis 1993).
  • Philo and the Church Fathers: a Collection of Papers, Vigiliae Christianae Supplements 32 (Leiden 1995).
  • Aëtiana: The Method and Intellectual Context of a Doxographer, 3 vols. in 4, Philosophia Antiqua 73, 114, 118 (Leiden 1996, 2009–10) [with J. Mansfeld].
  • Philo of Alexandria: an Annotated Bibliography 1987-96, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae (Leiden 2000).
  • Philo of Alexandria On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses: Translation and Commentary, Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 1 (Leiden etc. 2001)
  • Proclus Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus . Volume II Book 2: Proclus on the Causes of the Cosmos and its Creation ( Cambridge University Press 2008) [with M. Share]
  • Philo of Alexandria: an Annotated Bibliography 1997–2006, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 109 (Leiden 2012).
  • Philo On Cultivation: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 4 (Leiden 2013) [with A. C. Geljon]
  • Aëtiana IV: Papers of the Melbourne Colloquium on Ancient Doxography, Philosophia Antiqua 148 (Leiden 2018) [with J. Mansfeld]
  • Philo On Planting: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 5 (Brill: Leiden 2019) [with A. C. Geljon]
  • Aëtiana V: An Edition of the Reconstructed Text of the Placita with a Commentary and a Collection of Related Texts, 4 vols., Philosophia Antiqua 153 (Brill: Leiden 2020) [with J. Mansfeld]
  • Aëtius Placita, Loeb Classical Library 555 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 2023) [with J. Mansfeld]
  • Philo of Alexandria: Collected Studies 1997–2021, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 187 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023)

Some of his more recent articles are:

  • ‘The Structure of Philo’s De plantatione and its Place in Philo’s Allegorical Commentary,’ The Studia Philonica Annual 29 (2017) 115–138.
  • ‘Epicurus and the Placita,’ in J. Mansfeld and D. T. Runia (edd.), Aëtiana IV: Papers of the Melbourne Colloquium on Ancient Doxography, Philosophia Antiqua 148 (Leiden: Brill, 2018) 377–432.
  • ‘Philo of Alexandria,’ in Oxford Bibliographies in Biblical Studies Online, DOI 10.1093/OBO/9780195393361-0095 (New York: Oxford University Press 2010, updated in 2020).
  • ‘Ancient Doxography,’ in Oxford Bibliographies in Classics Online, DOI 10.1093/OBO/9780195389661-0227 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, updated in 2020).
  • ‘Is Philo committed to the Doctrine of Reincarnation?,’ The Studia Philonica Annual 31 (2019) 107–125
  • ‘Philo, Quaestiones In Genesim 2.62 and the Problem of Deutero-Theology,’ in U. Bläsing, J. Dum-Tragut and T. M. van Lint (edd.), Armenian, Hittite and Indo-European Studies. A Commemoration Volume for Jos J.S. Weitenberg, Hebrew University Armenian Studies 15 (Leuven: Peeters, 2019) 259–269
  • ‘The Armenian Corpus of Philo and Recent Philonic Scholarship (in Armenian with summary),’ Bulletin of Matenadaran (Yerevan, Armenia) 29 (2020) 29–46
  • ‘Bios Miktos: Gregory E. Sterling, Scholar and Academic Leader,’ in D. T. Runia and M. B. Cover (eds.), The Studia Philonica Annual Volume XXXII: Studies in Honor of Greg Sterling (Atlanta 2020) 3–14
  • ‘The Virtue of Hope in the Writings and Thought of Philo of Alexandria,’ in D. T. Runia and M. B. Cover (eds.), The Studia Philonica Annual Volume XXXII: Studies in Honor of Greg Sterling (Atlanta 2020) 257–274
  • ‘Half a Century of Philonic Research since the Lyon Colloque: Some Evaluatory Reflections,’ in S. Morlet and O. Munnich (eds.), Les études philoniennes: regards sur cinquante années de recherche (1967–2017),Studies in Philo of Alexandria 13 (Leiden 2021) 21–36
  • ‘James Royse: Scholar and Connoisseur of Manuscripts, Texts and Libraries,’ in A. T. Farnes, S. D. Mackie and D. T. Runia (eds.), Ancient Texts, Papyri, and Manuscripts. Studies in Honor of James R. Royse, New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents 64 (Brill: Leiden 2022) 8–18
  • ‘The Late-Byzantine Philonic Treatise De Mundo: Analysis of its Method and Contents,’ in A. T. Farnes, S. D. Mackie and D. T. Runia (eds.), Ancient Texts, Papyri, and Manuscripts. Studies in Honor of James R. Royse, New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents 64 (Brill: Leiden 2022) 303–328
  • ‘Irreducible Texts: the Implications for an Edition of the Aëtian Placita,’ in A. Lammer and M. Jas (eds.), Received Opinions: Doxography in Antiquity and the Islamic World, Philosophia Antiqua 160 (Leiden 2022) 51–76
  • ‘Popular Philosophy and the Placita of Aëtius,’ in G. R. Kotzé and P. R. Bosman (eds.), Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity. Studies in Honor of Johan C. Thom (Leiden 2022) 64–83
  • ‘Philo, De congressu 79–80: A Famous but Problematic Text Revisited,’ Adamantius 28 (2022) 32–41
  • ‘The Aëtian Placita and Church Fathers: Creative Use of a Distinctive Mode of Ordering Knowledge,’ in L. Ayres, M. W. Champion and M. R. Crawford (edd.), The Intellectual World of Late Antique Christianity(Cambridge 2023) 198–220
  • ‘Naming Philo’s Exposition of the Law,’ The Studia Philonica Annual 35 (2023) 1–11
  • ‘References to Philo in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic Texts,’ The Studia Philonica Annual 35 (2023) 229–257 [with Yury Arzhanov and Alexander Treiger]