The text known as the Physiologus is unique in many ways within the ancient Greek tradition. On the one hand, this concerns the question of who wrote it: although it is named after a presumptive author, more precisely after his function as a 'describer of nature', the person of this author has not yet been historically identified. We will come back to this problem below. On the other hand, it concerns the question of when the text was written. Even if the views expressed so far differ, the various approaches all fall within the period between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD, so that it can rightly be assigned to the transition from antiquity to late antiquity. However, it must be taken into account that the 'Physiologus', more than most other texts from this era, achieved eminent distribution and importance within the entire Christian cultural area, not only at the time of its creation, but over many centuries, from the Middle Ages to the early modern period: wherever a language with a Christian background began to develop its own written tradition, it was a text that was widely used and important. to develop, the Physiologus was one of the first texts to be translated into this language, and accordingly there are numerous versions of it that have come down to us from the Western and Eastern Churches1; and the influence of the Physiologus on the visual arts in the same period is almost legendary. In view of this importance, it seems appropriate to call the 'Physiologus' an early Christian text; a designation that is not without problems, however, as will be shown below. - [Author]

Language: German