THE QUESTION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAITH AND SCIENCE IN THE BOOK OF NEMESIUS OF EMESA «ON THE NATURE OF MAN»

Abstract

The fourth-century Greek philosopher Nemesios Emesatsi's work "On the Nature of Man" was translated into Armenian by Stepanos Syunetsi with the support of Davit Hyupatos in the last period of the Greek school, in the eighth century. It was an important repository of knowledge for Armenian natural science and natural philosophy bibliography. The Armenian text of this book was copied throughout the Middle Ages. The Armenian translated text of the book has been preserved in numerous copies (about 65 manuscripts). As proof of the continuously growing interest in Nemesius's book, many solutions, reasons, interpretations have been preserved, which added to the Armenian natural philosophy literature during the flowering of Greek influence, preparing the basis for the formation of these directions in the Armenian national science. It is not surprising that quotations from the book of Nemesius are quite a frequent phenomenon in the works of various Armenian authors of the Middle Ages. The large number of copied manuscripts and the citation of individual sections and even complete chapters from this book in the works of many Armenian authors indicate that the book was a kind of anthropology textbook in medieval Armenia. This encyclopedic work is important for Christian philosophy in general. Ancient and Christian natural philosophical and anthropological ideas about the creation of man, his nature, his place and role in nature, his mental and physical properties are presented here. Seeking to reconcile ancient rationalist approaches with biblical ideas, Nemesius's goal is not only to set forth his own views, but to collect and transfer existing theories to medieval Christian culture. In this way, he presents ancient natural philosophy in the light of Christian ideology. The article presents the question of the relationship between natural philosophical and theological ideas in the book «On the Nature of man».