Acknowledgments

The origins of the present volume are straightforward. When researching my doctoral dissertation in 2009–2011, I found a great deal of language in my sources about something called “providence” (pronoia). Dictionary entries and highly specialized articles clarified things enough that I could proceed with the dissertation, but they failed to give me a penetrating sense of the ‘big picture’ about providence in ancient thought. I asked a theologian I knew to recommend to me a thorough, book-length study of the subject, but he didn’t know any. So I thought to myself, “well, that would be a great topic for my next book!” Little did I foresee the winding paths down which this well-intentioned resolution would lead me, and I cannot know whether I have walked under the custodianship of pronoia or nemesis. Yet what I am sure of is that I have been the beneficiary of great care and attention from colleagues, friends, and family, without whom this book would never have come to completion.

Initial research on this book was conducted under the auspices of a postdoctoral position at the University of Copenhagen, as part of the Faculty of Theology’s ‘Centre for Naturalism and Christian Semantics’ (CNCS), headed by Troels Engberg-Pedersen and Niels Henrik Gregersen. I must single Troels out for special thanks: from my first day in Copenhagen he was deeply supportive and encouraging of this project, offering criticisms and corrections of my early stabs and rescuing me from countless errors and Holzwege. CNCS roundtables were crucial at this formative phase. I thank all those who participated in them, especially Gitte Buch-Hansen, Stefan Nordgaard, Maria Pantoppidan, and Runar Thorsteinsson. Det var meget hyggeligt. Finally, I thank my sister in the plērōma, Tilde Bak Halvgaard, who shared her expertise in all things pronoia-prōtennoia, and most importantly, her friendship. In late 2012, I accepted an offer from Tonio Sebastian Richter to take up a position as project manager for the project Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC). This book has been completed with the support of DDGLC, which is funded by the funded by the German Research Council (DFG); I am grateful for their provision.

Drafts of several chapters were presented and discussed at the following conferences and workshops: a draft of chapter two was workshopped at a colloquium at the Max Weber Kolleg in Erfurt (May 2018), where I spent a semester as a junior fellow of the research group ‘Religious Individualization’; parts of chapter three were read and discussed at the Faculty of Theology at Aarhus University (April 2018); I gave papers on material from chapter four at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki (April 2012), as well as Leipzig University’s Institute of Egyptology (May and June 2013); I had the pleasure of reading an abridged version of chapter six at the Centre Léon Robin-Centre Jean Pépin-LEM, Paris (May 2019); and what became chapter seven appeared at the annual conference of the International Society of Neoplatonic Studies in Olomouc (June 2017), as well as the Department of Classics, Philosophy, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo (August 2019). I thank all those who participated in these discussions, which were instrumental in refining my work. Certain generous individuals read and critiqued drafts of sections and chapters, at times independently of the aforementioned presentations: Michael Chase, Jean-Daniel Dubois, René Falkenberg, Asuman Lätzer-Lasar, Andreea-Maria Lemnaru Carrez, Colin Marshall, Bernd-Christian Otto, Nils Arne Pedersen, Jörg Rüpke, Einar Thomassen, John D. Turner, Jan Willem van Henten, and Markus Vincent. I am indebted to them all for their invaluable insights and interventions, and have done my best to make good on them. Crucial encouragement and advice were supplied over the years by Crystal Addey, David Brakke, David Butorac, Nicola Denzey Lewis, Anne Eusterschulte, Matthew Goff, Christian Halvgaard, Matyáš Havrda, Danielle Layne, Hugo Lundhaug, Christoph Markschies, Ivan Miroshnikov, Tuomas Rasimus, Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete, Alin Suciu, Paivi Vähäkangas, and Kocku von Stuckrad. Finally, I must thank my anonymous reviewer at Brill for his or her incisive discussion of the manuscript, and important recommendations for further secondary literature. The index is by Martin White.

I have been blessed with young gods (‘research assistants’) who really do operate in the best of possible worlds: Elisabeth Koch, Janik Petersdorff, and Philip Scharfenberger, who played a vital role in the formatting and copy-editing of this text. I also thank John Finamore and Robert Berchman for their interest in the volume and for accepting it for publication in SPNP. I met John and Rob at my very first academic conference—New Orleans, in 2003. I had graduated with my bachelor’s degree less than a week earlier, but despite my youth, they were more than happy to engage, and to encourage me to study further. I remain grateful to them for their terrific openness, and it is out of that gratefulness and with great pleasure that I contribute to their series.

I met Naida Šehić around the same time I first became interested in nafaka, but it was when I married her that I began to really live with it. For a lifetime’s worth of inspiration and care, I thank my first teachers of philosophy, Charley Burns and Karin Ryuku Kempe Roshi. I dedicate this book to them.

Dylan Michael Burns

11 February 2020

Berlin-Charlottenburg