In more news of dogs not barking, Inger Kuin is reviewing the late Frederick Brenk. Brenk's thing was Plutarch, right to the end of a 93-year life. Amazing man; almost as amazing as his subject.
If you think you don't know Plutarch you probably actually do - through Shakespeare.
Plutarch was a Delphist, Brenk tells us - and a Platonist, suggesting that he figured that Delphi was where to listen to the words of the One God. I've heard elsewhere (and Brenk probably notes it in his text) that the man was quite the patriot as well, excoriating Herodotus for his solicitude to the Persian. Plutarch didn't think much of Egyptian religion; but was willing to accept the Hellenised and Platonised bastardisation which his compatriots made thereof. One wonders what Plutarch would have made of Philo even of Josephus.
Plutarch is said to have died after AD 119 therefore after the Diaspora Revolt under Trajan. Our man would have been an old man then. But as Brenk proves, entering one's eighth decade doesn't necessarily stop a man, or even tenth.
Plutarch would have written in the times of younger Pliny, before Lucian then Celsus; he was assuredly a contemporary of all four Gospels and related "satyrica". As such Plutarch should have had some interest in Christianity. But we own nothing of whatever he said. This silence has attracted the notice of minimalists such as Vridar. Brenk doesn't explain why so quiet; his aim is to lay out the evidence, so others can argue the point.
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