Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 50:2 (NA 1999)
Article: Mirrors In James 1:22-25 And Plato, "Alcibiades" 132c-133c
Author: Nicholas Denyer

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TynBul 50:2 (1999) p. 237

Mirrors In James 1:22-25 And Plato, Alcibiades 132c-133c

Nicholas Denyer

James compares someone who hears the word, but does not do it, to a man who has seen his face in a mirror. There is a stock of putatively parallel passages from biblical, rabbinic and pagan literature, transmitted by one commentator to the next, and recently expanded by L.T. Johnson.1 The franker commentators acknowledge however that this stock does little to explain James’ comparison. Thus Martin Dibelius says ‘the way the metaphor is used in our passage has no points of contact with the known examples [of mirror metaphor in antiquity]’,2 and Peter H. Davids says ‘these uses [of the mirror metaphor] have no relationship to James’.3

A more promising parallel to James’ comparison occurs in Plato’s so-called Greater Alcibiades, or Alcibiades I—the longer of the two Alcibiades dialogues ascribed to him. Here Socrates attempts to expound the old maxim ‘Know thyself.’ He argues that Alcibiades will not be able to take care of himself if he does not know what he himself is (128a-129b). He should therefore appreciate that he, indeed that any human being, is a soul, not a body, nor even a body-plus-soul; for example, when Socrates speaks to Alcibiades, he addresses his remarks, not to Alcibiades’ face, but to his soul (129b-130e). The old maxim therefore advises a soul to know itself (130e). This intellectual task for the soul can best be understood by comparison with a perceptual task for the body. An eye can see itself by seeing how it is reflected in the pupil of another eye; that is, by seeing how another sees it. Likewise, a soul can know itself by knowing how it is recorded in the intellect of another soul; that is, by knowing how another knows it. The eye will however see itself more clearly if it looks, not into another eye, but into the bigger and brighter reflecting

TynBul 50:2 (1999) p. 238

surface of a mirror. Likewise, a human soul will know itself more clearly if it knows, not how it is known by the intellect of another human soul, but how it is known by God (132c-133c). Moreover, once a soul knows itself, and not before, it will have a proper appreciation of its place in the scheme of things, and act accordingly; and this, and only this, will make it happy (133c-135c).

The key passage is at 132d-133c. It is worth translating in full, with some brief commentary in square brackets.4 ‘SO’ and ‘AL’ are Socrates and Alcibiades.

SO: ...

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