" Thales the Theologian": Criticism of the Aristotelian framing.

When tracing the time period of Thales’s fragments, we are amazed at the fact that many writers continued to quote his fragments over many centuries, a period that continued for about one thousand seven hundred years until the Muslim writers reached it. Although these fragments carry many religious and theological ideas, they have been ignored among researchers. The moderns, even those who were able to link the beginning of Greek philosophy to religious beliefs, had no mention of Thales in their works - except for a few that did not touch on anything other than the fragments mentioned by Aristotle from Jaeger to Adam Drozdek.
The researcher assumes that Aristotle set a general framing for the ideas of the early natural thinkers φύσικοι (Thales - Anaximander - Anaximenes), and others. He took away their religious ideas and made them philosophers - despite the similarity of some of what they brought to mythological ideas, and despite the theological truths that those ideas carry. This may be due to Plato, his teacher, unjustifiably ignoring the ideas of Thales and the Seven Sages despite his clear appreciation for them, and he followed the approach of Aristotle for the most part. Modern researchers relied in their research on those fragments provided by Aristotle and no one else, which resulted in the emergence of many incorrect interpretations and conclusions and obscured many other ideas.
Aristotle introduced the term “naturalists” to represent a framing for Thales’ thought, a frame that does not detract from its content and does not express its diversity and intellectual richness only, but also exposes it to distortion and amputation. Therefore, the researcher attempts to prove this hypothesis and find out its causes and impact on later scholars. He also attempts to present and analyze the theological ideas that were ignored by Before researchers
In proving the research hypothesis, we rely on the use of the inductive and analytical approach, based on analyzing primary sources, and reaching the overall conclusion through studying the details
The research is divided into two main parts. The first deals with our sources on Thales’ thought, and examines Plato’s position on Thales and the theological poets. The second part deals with the position of Aristotle and modern researchers on Thales, and how Aristotle caused his classification and incomplete transmission and his effort to establish his concept of the “naturalists” with false proof by creating a framework.