Seeing with Different Eyes - Cosmology and Divination

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Chapter Two
theurgy, divination and the ascent to the gods. For Iamblichus in
particular, “the ancestral doctrines of the Assyrians” (ta Assurion patria
dogmata) are the same as those of “the sages of Chaldea” (hoi Chaldaioi
sophoi) 5 and, contrary to the prevalent scholarly opinion, these Chaldeans
cannot stricto sensu be identified as the receivers of the Chaldean Oracles
“handed down by the gods” (theoparadota). The Oracles were transmitted
through the theurgic technique of “calling” and “receiving”—the
technique of the Babylonian apilum prophets and Assyrian ecstatics of
Ishtar/Hekate—but from this observation one cannot draw a
straightforward conclusion that Julian the Chaldean and his son Julian the
Theurgist are simply Middle Platonists (the term itself being like an
academic mantra which miraculously “explains” everything), playing the
role of nebulous “Chaldean sages”.
We can certainly locate the Chaldean Oracles, as they stand in their
Hellenised form (translated into Greek hexameter verse), in a Middle
Platonic milieu which had clear affinities with Gnosticism and
Hermeticism. This seems to be quite a reasonable opinion, accepted by
Majercik and others. 6 But we cannot label this same trend of thought to
which the Oracles belong as “underworld Platonism”, 7 or go so far as
Tardieu when he argues that “the system of Oracles is incomprehensible
unless we see at its foundation the development of the Gnostic systems
around Valentinus”. 8 This simply cannot be true. The so-called Middle
Platonists and Neopythagoreans (if not Pythagoras and Plato themselves)
depended on the Eastern “pre-Platonic Platonism”, which both
mythologically and ritually embodied the archetypal patterns on which
Platonism proper is ultimately based. The explorers of Middle Platonism
are simply unaware of the Chaldean metaphysical tradition which Parpola
aptly calls “the Mesopotamian gnosis” and which stems from the complex
theologies of Enki, Nabu, Ishtar, Marduk, Ninurta and Ashur, as well as
esoteric commentaries on Enuma elish and other hieratic texts. 9 Hence,
“Chaldean” wisdom (nemequ) signifies all Assyrian and Babylonian
doctrines belonging to the esoteric tradition of apkallus whose remnants
reached the Middle Platonic, Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic
philosophers and which was reinterpreted in accord with contemporary
theological thought.
The alleged relationship of Abraham, or those who followed
“Abraham’s way of life”, with Ur of the Chaldeans (the Sumerian Ur) is a
late hermeneutical misunderstanding. As Cyrus Gordon remarks, this
Abrahamic Ur was located in northern Mesopotamia, not far from Harran,
and belonged to the Hittite Empire; the activities of his followers in Ugarit
(where there were people called abrm, according to the archives there)