EarlDoherty

The key aspect of my particular ‘rendition’ of the mythicist case which most people seem to seize on is the location of Christ’s crucifixion: not on earth itself but in some heavenly, spiritual realm at the hands of evil spirits. I’m not entirely sure that I should claim this as original (among mythicists) to myself, at least as a general idea, but it is dependent on a lot of other ideas whose observation is certainly not original to me: that of descending and ascending gods through layers of the heavens, Platonic-style (such things existed outside Platonism as well) correspondences between the spiritual and material, between the corruptible and incorruptible, and so on. These latter ideas were part of the intellectual baggage of the time, and I don’t think there are any here who would make a blanket denial of them (such as Bernard Muller seems to have done), so I’m not going to bother defending them, although certain details about them may well be pertinent and could come up for discussion.

Essential to the concept of crucifixion in a realm above the earth is the usage of the phrase kata sarka, but no matter how many times I try to explain myself on this, there are those who still seem to protest on a wrong basis.

Kata sarka (or closely similar words) is a surprisingly frequent phrase in the New Testament epistles (and even outside the NT, as in 1 Clement), describing certain features of their Christ Jesus. In fact, it is curiously stereotypical, as if it was a handy way of referring to something for which there was no other handy way—such as using common phraseology we would all tend to use and expect, like ‘during his life on earth’ or by mentioning the places, times, figures of a supposed earthly event. People like Jeffrey and Don regularly demand other examples from ancient literature of the usage of such a phrase with the meaning or significance I suggest, and I have not supplied any outside Christian writings. I have often said that I don’t regard this as surprising, because the only context in which one could reasonably expect to find such a usage is in savior-god mythology, and we all know that such literature is rarely forthcoming from pagan sources, either because it was essentially verboten, or because it was subsequently destroyed by triumphant Christianity. And the few philosophers we have who discuss such matters as descending gods (Plutarch, Julian, Sallustius) do not use the phrase. It is, however, rampant in early Christian writings and quite conceivably it is a usage particular to that movement, something not unreasonable to postulate.

But first I want to set the scene with a few observations about those Christian writings earlier than the Gospels, or at least before any witness to their widespread dissemination.

Paul and the other first-century epistle writers refer to Jesus’s crucifixion or death many times. In not a single instance do they say anything (by design or accident) which would locate such an event in historical time and place, or associate it with any contemporary human characters or events. The same is true of all the usages of kata sarka (or variants, such as “days of his flesh� in Hebrews 5:7, where what ‘happens’ in those days is drawn from scripture). This in itself is astonishing. Nor can we accept a blanket dismissal of the argument from silence. The AfS is valid in certain circumstances, and if your gut reaction tells you there is something wrong with this picture, then this is certainly one of those circumstances. (Of course, we get an equally astonishing silence on all aspects of Jesus’ life on earth throughout the entire early record.)

I am well aware that there are two references in the Pauline corpus that in fact do such a thing. 1 Thess. 2:15-16 with its reference to “the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus� and 1 Timothy 6:13 with its reference to Pilate. Both, however, are compromised, if not disqualified. The dismissal of authenticity for these passages has been argued many times, the former as an interpolation, the latter as part of a 2nd century product (the Pastorals). Of course, there are those who resist such judgments. But these rejections as being authentic to Paul are not made by mythicists (though we are happy to agree), but by mainstream scholars. All I want to do here is make the point that they have to be rejected as reliable and cannot be used to ‘disprove’ my contention.

Nowhere does Paul (or pseudo-Paul) state that he derives his information about Christ, even his death and resurrection, from historical sources, another astonishing observation. Several statements (such as Rom. 1:1-4, 16:25-26, Eph. 3:5, etc.) point to scripture and revelation (two sides of the same coin) as the source. This includes more subtle indications like 1 Thess. 4:14 or 1 Cor. 15:15, but it also includes 15:3-4, the statement of Paul’s basic gospel. As I have argued many times, to square with Gal. 1:11-12 we have to assume that this gospel is through revelation, giving a meaning to “received� of ‘by revelation’ and to kata tas graphas of ‘as we learn/discover from the sacred writings’ (by revelation). (Please don’t point out that the latter is not a literal translation. I know it isn’t. It is a paraphrase to illustrate what I claim is Paul’s meaning behind it, as in, “according to the newspaper, the mayor died yesterday�).

Even the single reference to what seems like an historical Gospel event, 1 Cor. 11:23’s Lord’s Supper words, is seriously compromised by Paul saying that he got this info “from the Lord,� which can only reasonably mean through personal revelation. (And I know all about the apo vs. para distinction, but it wasn’t always applied in practice.) In fact, this makes it consistent with my general observation: that Paul is deriving—or creating—his info about Christ from revelation, no doubt meaning his own study of scripture under the imagined guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The concept of the revelation of Christ saturates the epistles, to the virtual exclusion of all other descriptive means. Christ is “revealed� in the present time using ‘revelation’ verbs (not participles, though there may be the odd participial form lurking somewhere, I don’t recall) like phanerow and apokaluptw. Different apostles preach different Jesuses by the Spirit, no one traces authority or doctrine back to Jesus himself, God appoints apostles rather than Jesus having done so (as, most importantly, in Galatians 2:8), the gospel they preach is God’s not Jesus’, the Jews failed to respond to apostles not to Jesus, the expected “coming� of Jesus is not a return, and on and on. We have passages like Titus 1:3 which leave no room for a recent Jesus, and we have a statement in Hebrews 8:4 which virtually tells us outright that Jesus had never been on earth. I’ve itemized all these things before. There is no sign of Jesus living and preaching in their recent past—something, I maintain, that would be impossible if he had been there and impelled the movement.

Paul makes one statement about the agency of Christ’s death: 1 Cor. 2:8: “the rulers of this age.� Too bad he wasn’t at all clear that he meant rulers of this earth, or that if he meant the demon spirits (according to a “majority of scholars� in the opinion of Paul Ellingworth) that he wasn’t talking about spirits simply behind human rulers. Too bad he went on in Romans 11 to speak of the guilt of the Jews in killing the prophets without mentioning their killing of Jesus, or in 13:3-4 to say that “Rulers hold no terrors for them who do right…(the ruler) is the minister of God for your own good,� which certainly is a poor indicator that he had any knowledge of Pilate or Caiaphas being responsible for Jesus’ death. And too bad that once we get into and beyond the Gospels, any agency of demon spirits operating behind the human agents in Christ’s death completely evaporates.

This is not a simple argument from silence. The silence has been replaced by a positive picture pointing in a very different direction. If I speak of appreciating sights and sounds of the landscape when I am traveling, one wouldn’t simply say that I was silent about traveling by plane, I am virtually telling you that I travel by car or train. All the early epistle writers are just as clearly telling us about their faith’s mode of travel. Later generations have been imposing something else on them.

People like Don and Jeffrey suggest it is near lunacy to regard Paul and the other epistle writers as suggesting that Christ was crucified anywhere but on earth in their own time, but the evidence for that contention in the record itself (and I’ve only scratched the surface here) is virtually non-existent unless one simply reads historicism into it—which I don’t think they would support as a valid methodological exercise.

So where does kata sarka fit into all this? There is a mistaken opinion by some that I am assigning a different meaning to the word sarx that is illegitimate or not found anywhere else. This is simply not so. My basic statement was in The Jesus Puzzle, p.122:

I note that Jeffrey has generously supplied us with one of the definitions of sarx from the BDAG, which supports my contention of the “counterpart� or “likeness� of flesh idea, and I’ll quote it here:

“Of flesh other than human,� including “transcendent entities� who “take on� this “other kind of flesh� when they enter the fleshly realm of humans—which, if we are to concur with Don’s insistence that the sublunary sphere is an unbroken entity (more on which later), has to extend all the way up to the moon, giving Christ plenty of space to engage in his sacrifice, in his ‘other kind of flesh,’ at the hands of the demons without setting foot on the ground. Note also, as I say in The Jesus Puzzle (p.103 and n.47), that according to the Theological Dictionary of the NT (VII, p.128) the demonic spiritual powers belonged to the realm of flesh and were thought of as in some way corporeal, though they possessed ‘heavenly’ versions of earthly bodies. Which is consistent with the BDAG definition quoted above.

Thus, in one way or another, sarx refers to what everyone wants it to refer to, namely the realm of humanity, the world of flesh, things pertaining to the flesh, the material and corruptible; things belonging to, or taken on, in that ‘geographical’ location, the region below the moon. In Platonic terms, it refers to the sphere or conditions within that limit. This is why I appeal to Barrett’s translation, because this is how he translates kata sarka in Rom. 1:3: “in the sphere of the flesh.� It matters not what he himself may envision as included in that realm, or how he himself would locate Christ’s activities within it. The translation is a valid one, and it is valid for me to step beyond Barrett’s understanding and ask: yes, but what does that sphere encompass and what can go on in it? For Platonism and the philosophers, extending all the way to Julian, the essence of the sublunary realm was its corruptibility, its capacity for change, suffering, death, regeneration, etc. For a god to undergo that, he had to enter the sublunary realm. That’s all we can say. Beyond that, in interpreting Paul’s thought, all bets are off. He never says that Christ suffered on earth, in actual human flesh, at the hands of human beings, and he and his fellow epistle writers say a lot of other stuff relating to demons and spiritual dimensions and non-historical sources. I am simply proposing that kata sarka and related terminology can fit into a mythical interpretation without contravening any grammatical or conceptual rules within the language and philosophy of the time.

Naturally, this doesn’t mean that kata sarka always refers to such a thing. It’s a phrase with a wide variety of meaning and application in different contexts. And even within the mythical context, it enjoys different nuances. Some of those nuances are hard to pin down. Did the Son ‘take on’ his nature as “of David’s stock� only when he entered the sublunary realm? Did Paul even think in those terms? I don’t know. Would he and others have dissected whatever concept he has in mind that closely, would he have been bothered by the niceties and difficulties our modern, scientific minds seem to have such trouble with? I doubt it. Someone pointed out earlier in this thread that their thinking, their world view, was so alien and unenlightened in comparison to our own, that we are on shaky ground even in thinking that we can or should apply our standards to interpreting what they meant or thought. Some of their ideas were truly bonkers. Do I know exactly what Paul meant in Romans 1:3? No. What I am convinced of is that he believed it as being in some way true because scripture told him so (and because he had absorbed elements of the philosophy of his time to which he related it). He tells us flat out that he got this idea from scripture, from the gospel of God as told in the prophets (1:1-2), and we all know those prophets told that the Messiah would be ‘sprung from David’. Paul took the liberty of giving it a different understanding than the prophets had, in accord with his own mystical thought and new interpretations of the Christ/Messiah and what he read, according to the divine revelation he believed he was getting. Or perhaps the concept in verse 3 entirely predated Paul.

I think it is also basically misguided to claim that Paul could not have been using this phrase to refer to something which was meaningful to his circles but which is not witnessed to elsewhere, or which our modern lexicons do not annotate. (“Kata with the accusative cannot mean such-and-such because such-and-such a Lexicon says so!�) Language is a living thing, and can be pressed into service even by individual writers to express something they want to say. (The use of oikumene in Hebrews 1:6 to refer to a clearly heavenly scene is an example.) But here’s a point so far overlooked. Most seem to agree that Paul’s usage of “kata sarka� or “en sarki� is an odd way to refer to simple human incarnation; why this peculiar expression? However, it is not restricted to Paul. This kind of phraseology, as I said, is found throughout the early Christian record. This cannot be a coincidence, but it makes even less sense that multiple communities across half an empire would adopt something which was allegedly so peculiar to refer to something allegedly so simple, that they would all regularly pass up using simple and more direct language. We have to assume, then, that for them it was not peculiar, but was rather a mode of expression which spread because it served a purpose and had a meaning for that faith community which did not need to be explained once it was established. It seems to have meant a movement by the savior god Christ (never identified with a recent Gospel Jesus in all those early, possibly pre-Pauline ‘hymns’ someone recently itemized here) down into the “fleshly� realm to take on features of that realm and perform his salvific act. Why do modern lexicons not take such a particular application of this expression into account? Because they are not attuned to recognizing it, since it cannot square with orthodoxy and an historical Jesus for Paul. (Just as Burton, for all his Greek erudition, is forced to declare that ‘revelation’ verbs like phanerow refer in such-and-such cases in the epistles to Jesus’ “appearance in the flesh� on earth! [ICC Galatians, p. 434.] He simply declares this, with no independent first-century basis to back it up.)

There could be a lot more said (and I’ve said it in many places on my website) on kata sarka, but I’m trying not to write a book here. No doubt there will be objections raised of one form or another. But I do want to briefly address Don’s favorite subject. He is a prime example of someone who gets stuck on perceived technicalities without really considering how something works in practice. I’ve misplaced my copy of the Official Middle Platonist Manual on the Sublunary Realm, so I’m going to have to wing it.

Except in regard to the Ascension of Isaiah, I did not in The Jesus Puzzle focus specifically on the idea of the area below the moon, but rather on general distinctions between the material and spiritual, higher and lower worlds, corruptible and incorruptible, and so on, and on the counterpart activity and relationships between what went on in the layers of that dual universe. I frankly don’t know if Paul thought in specific terms of above and below the moon. It looks like the author of the Ascension did, although he doesn’t use the word in relation to his reference to the firmament. But all this fixation on whether the sublunary area was officially defined as a unity or some kind of multiplicity is a red herring. The question is, how was it regarded—or ‘used’—in practice? And the best indicator we have from any document is the Ascension. I quote two passages from it:

From being on earth, Christ “ascended� and only then was “in the firmament,� where he could transform himself (though he chose not to). Earlier, from a position of standing on the surface of the earth, Isaiah and the angel rose “into the firmament.� “Above� in the firmament, where Satan and his angels are engaged in a struggle, occurs something which has a “likeness� to things on earth. If language means anything, the writer is referring to two different locations—in his mind—between which movement can be spoken of, two locations which can be compared, in which respective things go on which bear a relationship to one another. Official doctrines (if there were any) about what the sublunary realm constituted, a unity or multiplicity, are beside the point. What is important is the writer’s own understanding and use of his material to express his faith.

We can compare that to our modern understanding. Incidentally, Knibb gives a definition of “the firmament� on p. 166, note ‘g’: “the vault of the sky (cf. Gen 1:6-8), here thought of as separating the earth from the seven heavens.� But even Knibb is being woolly—and offering multiplicity. What is the definition of the “sky�? Usually we think of it as “the clouds or upper air, the upper atmosphere of the earth� (my dictionary’s definition). But is there a boundary between the air at the level you and I breathe and that cloud layer? Certainly not. But we still think in terms of levels and distinctions. Look at our terms air, sky, firmament. When we are standing on earth we certainly would not say we are standing in the sky, or in the firmament. Yet within the earth’s atmosphere there are no such official or scientific distinctions, no such layers in any real sense. It’s just that in our thinking and usage we give them distinctions, and we assign different characteristics and activities to them. So, clearly, did the author of the Ascension. If he moved from the surface of the earth “into the firmament� then for him there was a distinction, even if it didn’t conform to Ocellus’ Manual. Remember that we’re talking about ideas here, ideas that had no scientific basis (let alone relation to reality), and no central authority to dogmatize. I don’t care what Ocellus says. He wasn’t writing about Christ or the descending Son. The author of the Ascension was.

I don’t know what distance the ancients envisioned between the earth and the moon. I suggest it had plenty of room in it for imagining different areas and locations in which things could take place. Satan and his evil angels were “struggling� not on the surface of the earth, but up there, up in the firmament as the Ascension puts it. If they were struggling on earth, then the writer would be saying that “as on earth, so also on earth.� I trust Don can see that this makes no sense.

And what were the evil angels/demon spirits? Were they material, human flesh? Of course not, even if they could be spoken of as “corporeal� or having some semblance in form. If they were “struggling� this was an essentially spiritual activity, by spiritual beings, invisible to humans. (When the demons were working their mischief right on earth, they certainly weren’t visible.) If their activities were counterpart to human activities, then (given the fundamental Platonic duality of spiritual vs. material) those activities were spiritual. If those demons inhabited the sublunary sphere, then that sphere could include spiritual things and activities. If some spiritual being from a higher sphere entered the sublunary one, he could perform and undergo spiritual activities, take on characteristics of a (lower) spiritual nature, though with certain close correspondences to such things of a material nature, the “corruptible� aspect of the sublunary region.

And that’s what the Ascension tells us. That the Son descended into the region inhabited by “the god of that world�, who did not know who he was, and they (not Pilate) laid their hands on him and hung him on a tree. His descent and identity is spoken of as “concealed from the heavens,� from the god and his minions who hang him (not from earth or earthly rulers). And if Don once again raises his difficulty in conceiving of “trees� in a spiritual or mythical sense, I will give him the same answers I did before. (Or I just might not bother.) There certainly are a lot of problems and inconsistencies within the text of the Ascension, with its multiple manuscript lines and wealth of editing indications, and we’ve discussed them at great length before, but all the fixation on the technicalities cannot rule out an envisioning of the spiritual crucifixion of the Son in the sublunary realm at the hands of spirit forces. We can’t interview the author (or editors) to get all the problems resolved, even assuming they had resolved any such contradictions in their own minds. I suspect they didn’t, and didn’t care. Faith has a habit of evolving without such concerns as scientific rules and common sense, and simply adapts and glosses over. We still see plenty of that in our own day. I could appeal to all sorts of logical impediments and scientific objections to many aspects of Christian faith (no doubt including some which Don holds to), but that doesn’t mean the believer is going to abandon them.

And while I don’t suggest that there was a direct continuity or contiguity between Paul’s circles and those of the author of the Ascension, they are living in the same philosophical world within a common cosmological framework (even if details or interpretations could vary), and the Ascension of Isaiah’s descending Son killed by the demons of the firmament points directly to the meaning of 1 Corinthians 2:8 and its rulers of this age who crucified the Lord of Glory unwittingly while he was kata sarka.

I will turn Katie over to whoever wants the next dance.

Best wishes,
Earl Doherty

TedM

Hi Earl.

Even though you may prefer to focus on the kata sarka, since you have presented a picture for the earliest epistles as part of your background for your viewpoint, I'd like to respond to it. I don't think it is as clear as you do. I don't care to debate the specifics (either--as I'm sure you don't), but since you present them as though they are undeniable facts, I feel the need to present information which suggests that is not the case:

Your statements are numbered, and in bold.

1. Paul and the other first-century epistle writers refer to Jesus’s crucifixion or death many times. In not a single instance do they say anything (by design or accident) which would locate such an event in historical time and place, or associate it with any contemporary human characters or events.

3 different authors seem to place Jesus’ death on earth, two of them in Jerusalem:

Rom 9:33 says Jesus was a stumbling block to Jews, and that the stumbling took place in Zion (Jerusalem) Gal 5:11 says the stumbling block is the cross This may be an indication that Paul is aware that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem

Hebrews 13:12 says he shed his blood outside the city gate, which is implied from the previous chapter to be Jerusalem

1 Clement 16:8 says he gave up his life from the EARTH


2. The same is true of all the usages of kata sarka (or variants, such as “days of his flesh� in Hebrews 5:7, where what ‘happens’ in those days is drawn from scripture). This in itself is astonishing.

In response to the idea that Jesus-flesh connection is based on a scriptures:

Pauls speaks of Jesus’ bloodshed, crucifixion, and resurrection many times, yet rarely uses scripture as support. Paul mentions his burial twice, without scriptural support.

In 2 Cor 10:1 Paul says Jesus was meek and gentle without providing scriptural support

Galation 1:19 refers to James as “the Lord’s brother� in a matter of fact way, without any explanation or scriptural support

The author of 1 Peter claims to have been the apostle Peter and twice claims to have witnessed Jesus’ sufferings (1:1, 5:1)

1 John 1:1 may be saying that Jesus was seen, heard and touched by the author and others

In the Didache, where he is called David’s Son, he is referred to as a teacher 4:1, and it includes a number of sayings from his gospel which match the written gospels


3. Nowhere does Paul (or pseudo-Paul) state that he derives his information about Christ, even his death and resurrection, from historical sources, another astonishing observation.

Paul actually says little about his source for information about Jesus’ death and resurrection. In 1 Cor 15 he says he ‘received’ the information about Jesus’ death and appearances, though he doesn’t say from who. It is reasonable to conclude that the ‘creed’ wasn’t received through scriptures.


4. Several statements (such as Rom. 1:1-4, 16:25-26, Eph. 3:5, etc.) point to scripture and revelation (two sides of the same coin) as the source.

AFAIK Paul’s references to revelation are to the revelation of his gospel to the Gentiles, something which he DID get from scripture. I don’t recall Paul attributing information about Jesus’ death to the scriptures other than one time in Galations when he refers to the curse of hanging on a tree.


5. Even the single reference to what seems like an historical Gospel event, 1 Cor. 11:23’s Lord’s Supper words, is seriously compromised by Paul saying that he got this info “from the Lord,� which can only reasonably mean through personal revelation. (And I know all about the apo vs. para distinction, but it wasn’t always applied in practice.) In fact, this makes it consistent with my general observation: that Paul is deriving—or creating—his info about Christ from revelation, no doubt meaning his own study of scripture under the imagined guidance of the Holy Spirit.

While it is consistent, I disagree with saying that “from the Lord� can ONLY reasonably mean through personal revelation, since Paul’s use of the word ‘apo’ can reasonably be used to designate receiving information through others that originally came from Jesus.


6. The concept of the revelation of Christ saturates the epistles, to the virtual exclusion of all other descriptive means.

I’m not sure I agree that the ‘revelation of Christ’ saturates the epistles. I welcome a complete review of every reference. I think this would ‘reveal’ that the revelation isn’t of Christ, but is of the gospel of salvation to all mankind. It is interesting to me that the most descriptive reference to the resurrection uses a different word than revelation, a word that means ‘appeared’. When Paul defends his status as apostle he writes “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord�? This sounds more like a visual experience of some kind than a scriptural revelation.

7. ..no one traces authority or doctrine back to Jesus himself

Hebrews 2:3 may have: (salvation)�was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him�

1 Clement 13:2 does “He taught ‘have mercy that ye may receive mercy’�
And 13:3, 49:1 says he was a holy teacher, giving commandments, and 42:3 says he had apostles whom he charged to spread his message 42:3

The Didache does: 4:1 says he was a teacher 8:2, 11:3, 15:3,4 says he had a gospel and 8:2 repeats the Lord’s prayer that comes from his gospel


8: God appoints apostles rather than Jesus having done so (as, most importantly, in Galatians 2:8)

1 Clement 42:3 says it was Jesus who charged the apostles to spread his message


9. the gospel they preach is God’s not Jesus’

Jesus never called the gospel his own, and neither did the gospel writers, with one exception It was God’s gospel. And, Paul's gospel was one of salvation to GENTILES, which he supports using scripture.


10 the Jews failed to respond to apostles not to Jesus

Paul says in Rom 9:33 that it is Jesus that is the stone on Zion that the Jews had stumbled over


11. the expected “coming� of Jesus is not a return

Paul’s words about it are no different from those of the gospel writers.

Hebrews 9:28 refers to a ‘return’


12. We have passages like Titus 1:3 which leave no room for a recent Jesus

Sure it does, since it isn’t talking about the manifestation of Jesus himself, but of eternal life for all man--which could indeed have only been made clear (manifested) after Jesus’ death and resurrection.


13. and we have a statement in Hebrews 8:4 which virtually tells us outright that Jesus had never been on earth.

Not necessarily, as I see it. It depends on how the verse is emphasized. It may well just be saying that if Jesus were on earth NOW he wouldn’t be carrying on the old covenant as a priest. Switch ‘Now if Jesus were on earth he wouldn’t be a priest’ to “If Jesus were on earth now he wouldn’t be a priest.� Since the author refers to Jesus’ days in the flesh and being like a man in every respect, and ‘sinners’ (that would be men) being hostile to him, and being crucified outside the city gate, descended from Judah, and to his ‘second’ appearance, it seems a bit too dogmatic to insist that this verse tells us Jesus had never been on earth.


Although clear, and detailed historical events and names would be much more helpful, and the lack of them does leave open other interpretations, I don’t think the silence is as great as you seem to.

ted

krosero

I hope it has not escaped your attention that Richard Carrier, in the thread from which you split your post above, responded to HJ claims on the wrong basis, too. He told us that KATA SARKA was a peculiar way to say “located on the earth� – a very plain and uncontroversial statement by Carrier. SARKA means “flesh�, not “earth.� Moreover, Paul is talking about Christ’s relationship to David. He is directly talking about Christ and David. To say that he has picked a strange way to talk about Christ and the earth is not only a criticism on the wrong basis, but practically a useless critique.

The location that HJ scholars talk about comes from the context (as Richard himself says, more fairly, about mythicists). The connection with David suggests the location; and so does the word “flesh� (though obviously you disagree about which location). One thing I think both sides should be clear on by now is that neither side is claiming that Paul’s KATA SARKA represents a direct statement about Christ’s location. It’s a direct statement about David and flesh, nothing more.

Savior-god mythology, as you imply, and have argued elsewhere, was once abundant in pagan sources. Why would Christianity remove instances of KATA SARKA (with a non-earthly location) from those sources? (And it might be pertinent here to ask for a little manuscript evidence of even one deletion or change). The reason I ask is that you have said HJ belief came about almost as an innocent mistake: people mistook Paul, Q1, Q2, and Mark to describe literal incarnation. Those people would certainly have had no reason to remove KATA SARKA, as an indicator of non-earthly activities, from pagan sources; they would just have taken such instances to be pagan and, like all paganism, mistaken. If you mean Constantine’s church, well, then the claim is that the later church knew that KATA SARKA, when found in pagan sources to describe a non-earthly location, could not be left in the manuscripts even as mistaken paganism, because it would somehow give away indications that Christ was actually mythical or believed to be mythical.

Conspiracy theories are never easy to make sense out of – and calling your idea a conspiracy theory, even if ultimately untrue, would certainly be understandable.

I agree that the two verses are not Paul’s. They certainly cannot “disprove� your contention that Paul worshipped an unearthly Christ. But then again, none of Paul’s own passages can “disprove� your contention (and they have not been allowed to falsify it). Disproof is the wrong standard (and its lack, outside of the field of mathematics, is a weak defense). No single verse can "prove" or "disprove" historicism or mythicism. What we look for – and I know you’ve said this yourself – is an argument that best explains a wide variety of data.
Paul certainly knew about rulers who had done evil to his own people; and he knew of evil rulers among his own people. You say that we should not try to make sense of the contradictions in the Ascension, the Bible, or any religious document – especially ancient ones. You say that no scientific sense can be made of nonsensical things. They just didn’t understand science. They just didn’t understand, you keep telling us, morals except in the most primitive and barbarous way. So here we have a possible contradiction in Paul’s moral universe: if he knows about Christ’s death at the hands of earthly rulers, he makes no sense turning around and hypocritically advising people generally to respect authority as part of God’s will (even when he plainly regarded Christ’s death as God’s will). You won’t make anything of other contradictions, but here you want to make a lot of this contradiction.
“Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot� (Luke 22:3).

You’ve gone into such length in summarizing all your reasons for suspecting and concluding that Christ was mythical. I take this to mean that all your observations should be included in an argument to a best explanation – that all of this pushes us toward reading KATA SARKA in Romans 1:3 a certain way. I take it, the more you speak about things that have nothing to do with KATA SARKA, as a tacit admission that the most direct applicable evidence – i.e., all other instances of KATA SARKA – are less important than your indirect argument about Romans 1:3 from other considerations.
I certainly concur with Don’s argument that the sublunary sphere is an unbroken entity extending all the way up to the moon, in the sense that there were no borders between the earthly realm of human flesh and the air that lay underneath the dome or firmament. Yet you say that the “fleshly realm of humans … has to extend all the way up to the moon.� Don has certainly never said this. And in the unfortunate way that you have put it, no one here will agree that the realm of humans extended up to the moon. What you mean is that the realm of flesh extended up there – and that the realm of human beings extended to about as high as human beings could jump off the ground or their rooftops. Clarifying this way, we see that Don’s argument is no help at all; what you need is some evidence that the air above the earth was referred to as part of the “sphere of flesh.�
Really? Look at this translation (the RSV): “the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh".

Paul is saying that the "previous" promise of the scriptures has been fulfilled. What makes it, for you, a “flat out� discovery in the pages of scripture? Or is this just hyperbole? What pre-existing translation would you offer as best? And what would be your own translation?

(These are, just to be clear, not rhetorical questions).
Indeed, if I were to say in English, “Christ, who was God's son, came nevertheless from David’s stock in the sphere of the flesh,� and someone were to tell me, “That’s such a strange way to refer to simple human incarnation,� I would say, “What are you talking about?�

Yes, indeed, “in the sphere of the flesh� is an odd way to state directly that Christ was born on earth, if Paul were actually attempting to say that. It’s a perfect way to say that a figure from higher spheres had a certain lineage in the sphere of flesh.

In fact, there are strange ways to say that. What if Paul had wanted to say that David was Christ’s ancestor, and had said, “Christ was born on the earth� (with the corresponding Greek words). Then someone could truly respond with this:

“What a strange way to get the point about David across. Why not just talk about David directly? I mean, if Paul is talking like this, I don’t deny that he could be referring to David; but I’m here to tell you, that this is one strange way to talk about David, if that was Paul’s intention.�
Why don’t we just stop paying attention to the lexicons, and just make our arguments in the most unscholarly and willy-nilly fashion, if those things that happen to be against our theory are just easily dismissed as old orthodoxy?

The whole point is to prove that historicism is false, not to assume its falseness, conveniently, when you want to paint a coherent picture.
Maybe he knew that flesh was described as being on the earth, except when explicitly noted (as for example, Isaiah’s explicit report that he left the ground and entered the firmament).

I am going to answer this because I have made the same objections as Don, and I have never meant (nor can I imagine Don’s words to mean) the scientific viability of such a thing as trees in a spiritual realm. You are protesting on the wrong basis. The question is whether the ancients ever placed trees in the firmament, and if so, how. The easiest thing in the world is to sidestep the evidence by saying that it makes no logical sense to you.

EarlDoherty

I want to add one piece of fine-tuning to my earlier posting. Someone called my attention to the fact that Jeffrey, on another thread, was arguing that kata with the accusative, when referring to motion (and of course it does not always refer to motion), relates only to ‘horizontal’ motion rather than vertical. I don’t disagree with this as a grammatical rule (though rules are often broken). But I may have been misleading if I was understood as suggesting that the phrase we are examining, in the cases we are examining, directly referred to motion. I think it’s clear it does not. The ‘downward’ motion involved is an idea that lies behind the use of the phrase, not in the phrase itself.

I am not, for example, suggesting that kata sarka in Romans 1:3 or 9:5 is itself referring to a ‘downward’ movement of Christ, Here it refers to a feature or state of Christ, being “of David’s seed� or “from the Israelites� (in the sense of belonging to them in regard to his “of the flesh� nature). This is why I suggest one way to think of the phrase is “in relation to the flesh� or, like Barrett, “in the sphere of the flesh.� This is not motion, no more than the twin phrase in 1:4, kata pneuma refers to an ‘upward’ movement into heaven, but to something that happened to him when he was in that pure spiritual state, having reentered heaven.

The ‘movement down’ idea lies in the context. Christ takes on this feature/state/nature because he has descended the heavens to enter the “sphere of flesh,� the region of corruptibility where he can suffer and die at the hands of the demon spirits. 1 Peter 3:18 says he was put to death sarki, but raised alive pneumati (here using the dative). I think that the use of “kata� is not that much different, simply orienting the thought toward Christ’s temporary relationship with the realm of flesh (“according to�, if you like), which he takes on when he descends. But it is not the direct purpose of the kata sarka phrase to refer to or describe that descending motion.

Thus I think that Jeffrey is arguing a moot point.

Anyway, this is just a clarification, and perhaps there will be occasion to expand on it or discuss it in future.

Unfortunately, I do not have time tonight to address any of the points raised by TedM or Krosero, many of which are not directly on the kata sarka question. In any case, I don't want to be drawn off onto a lot of tangents. I'll look at their posts again when I have more time in a few days.

Best wishes,
Earl Doherty

GakuseiDon

Earl, you write so charmingly! Even though I disagree with many of your points, it is a pleasure to read your posts.

Allow me to take up the next dance with Katie Sarka, to the lesser known Beatles song, "Katie Sarka in the Sky, with Daemons".

Muller was saying that there were no separate spheres in the sublunar realm, and I agreed. Muller was criticised by both you and Richard Carrier on this. I'd suspected that Richard had misunderstood Muller's point (as you did also, I'm afraid), and this was confirmed recently when Ted Hoffman posted this (my emphasis):

Carrier has noted that the "sublunary sphere" was a catch-all phrase referring to the realm of the earth, everything below the orbit of the moon, which had been imagined even since Aristotle as being the realm of change and decay (while from the moon on up was the realm of permanence and indecay...

Per Aristotelian cosmogony, the purpose of the spheres was to rotate and hold the planetary bodies. There being no body between the earth an the moon, the ancients would have had no reason to believe there was another sphere between these two bodies. Recall that I stated earlier that the "sublunary realm" was a catch-all phase for everything below the orbit of the moon, including the earth.

The "sublunar realm" concept has caused so much confusion for people here. One person (let's call him "Clive" to protect his anonymity) is sure that you placed Christ's crucifixion in the third heaven; others that you are suggesting a separate "fleshy" reality overlapping our own, (kind of like in a Twilight Zone I suspect); others, as a separate world altogether where pagans believed that Attis castrated himself with a knife.

I think that a lot of people who support your theory are hazy on what the sublunar realm is. Perhaps they believe it is not possible for us to understand the ancient concept, so a fuzzy idea is about all we can expect, and thus there isn't much point looking further into this.

But I believe that it is of the utmost importance, which is why I've spent so much time looking into the topic myself (though I'm interested in it for other reasons now). I honestly don't understand why your supporters haven't.

You now talk about things in terms of locales, which is fair enough. Since air (and fire) was regarded as a "spiritual" substance, I agree that it is possible to talk about a "spiritual" world in the air and an "earthly/fleshy" world on the ground.

Now that Richard Carrier is looking into this, I strongly suspect that he himself will find the evidence that will either confirm or sink your hypothesis. So far, I can only see him going down the track that I went down (though he is probably travelling faster and smarter!), so I think I know which it will be. But we will see.

And that's fair enough. We shouldn't read historicism into it.

But if you are going to appeal to the common beliefs of the day, then we should judge your interpretations against those beliefs. I'm not saying that it is "near lunacy to regard Paul suggesting Christ as being crucified anywhere on earth", merely that the idea is not supportable if you are appealing to Middle Platonists beliefs.

Now, I'm not saying that Paul's beliefs have to be understandable to us. They don't. But if you are going to talk in terms of what people in Paul's time believed, then we can pass some judgements to see how compatible they are.

For example, Paul may have believed that Christ was crucified by demons in the third heaven, as "Clive" believes you are suggesting. But I think that both you and I can point to passages in Philo and Plutarch to show fairly conclusively that this would not have been compatible at all with Middle Platonists' beliefs. It isn't a matter of it being "irrational", simply whether it is in compliance with what people thought.

But imagine that "Clive" said that we shouldn't suppose that Paul held rational beliefs! How would you answer this other than to say "but it is incompatible to the beliefs of the day"?

Could "Clive" still be right, that Paul believed that Christ was crucified in the third heaven anyway? Sure! But, since the evidence that we DO have wouldn't support it, it would be the more unlikely position to take.

And that is why I believe that you don't have a case, I'm afraid. In my understanding of Middle Platonists' beliefs, your position is the more unlikely. There is no place for "Katie Sarka in the Sky with Daemons".

Isn't John Dillon's The Middle Platonists as useful as any Official Manual? If anyone knows a better book that lays out the Middle Platonists systematically and comprehensively in terms of their ethics, cosmology and influences, I'd like to know about it.

I used Ocellus since his views about the supralunar and sublunar universe are representative of Middle Platonists' views generally. You are basically saying "you don't care what Middle Platonists say". That's fine, of course. But it means that you are taking a position against the grain of the Middle Platonists of the day. I don't see any incompatibility in AoI, though AoI is more Philo than Ocellus.

Satan and his evil angels were struggling in the sky. People were struggling on the earth (AoI even give an example earlier). I see no problem with the AoI here. But you seem to want to turn the idea into a Platonic "higher world" and "lower world" scenario, where counterparts between the two exist. But the idea of such counterparts both existing in the sublunar region simply didn't exist in Middle Platonism. It's just not there, Earl.

AoI is stating a similarity between demons and people. To turn demons into a Platonic example of a higher counterpart is bizarre, I'm afraid, Earl. If you want to claim that AoI is outside normal Middle Platonic beliefs, then fair enough, but that makes your position more unlikely.

Sure, spiritual beings could perform and undergo spiritual activities. So, can we start to compile a list of spiritual activities from the literature?

I know that they were responsible for making rain and winds, and could inspire oracles. Can you add more?

EarlDoherty

I’m going to have to make brief, ‘spot’ responses here, at least for a couple of days, and they won’t be too well organized. (The bulk of the below is a quote from my website.) As far as Don goes, he hasn’t really given me too much to sink my teeth into, but I’ll have a closer look at his posting again later. For now, I’ll make a few comments now and then, when I can squeeze them in, on what Krosero and TedM have had to say.

It seems to me that it is Don who is claiming it makes no logical sense. Because he can’t envision trees in the spiritual/mythical world, neither did the ancients. I asked him on a previous thread whether he thought the “heavenly Jerusalem� contained the spiritual equivalent of streets, walls, etc. Was it all some kind of heavenly cloud formations? In Hebrews, the author explicitly speaks of Jesus bringing his own blood into a heavenly sanctuary which is closely compared with the one on earth. Are you telling me that the author and his readers did not envision this as somehow similar to the earthly “copy� (which is what he calls it)? More than one author speaks of robes and crowns for the righteous in heaven. What were all these things made of, what shape did they have? Do you really think they were regarded as simply allegorical, with no resemblance to earthly versions, no spiritual “reality�? Don, I think it was, suggested that Attis’ self-castration was all allegorical, including in the minds of believers. Do you think the Galli (eunuch priests of the Great Mother cult) sliced off their own genitals under the influence of a myth they regarded as simply allegorical and did not really happen in some spiritual/mythical world?

Plutarch and Sallustius may have been too sophisticated thinkers to regard them as anything other than allegorical, but the fact that they have to declare them as such (and Plutarch gave “Clea� a cautionary warning about taking them literally), would indicate that they were in fact regarded NOT as allegorical in the general mind.

Krosero also appeals to the RSV translation of Romans 1:1-3 to try to “detach� verse 3’s “of the seed of David kata sarka� from the “gospel of God,� which is what Jeffrey tried to do back on the JesusMysteries list a few years ago, as I mentioned previously. There are several translations which in fact do not detach the two thoughts. I think this is such a key point in regard to understanding this passage and Paul’s thought generally, that I am going to dig out my response to him at that time and post it here in a few days.

But if we are going to be tied too closely to ‘received wisdom’ and never strike out in questioning directions which might contravene the “official� word (whether in lexicons or from a “majority� of scholars), we’ll never get anywhere. What is “willy-nilly� for the orthodox, is for others “breaking new ground.�

One other thing. I am not saying that I believe (even if there is no surviving evidence) that Christians “lifted� such a use of kata sarka from pagan savior-god mythology. I have no reason to think they did, or did not, and I floated the possibility that it was their own innovative usage. My point was that we can’t tell if others used it as well because of the dearth of surviving records where we might expect to find such a usage.

So as not to neglect TedM, I hope he realizes that every one of his counter-objections to my general observations about what the epistles say and do not say (e.g., Hebrews 8:4, 9:28, 1 Clement 42, etc., etc.,) has been answered, sometimes more than once, on my website. What I will do over the course of a few days is pick out those passages and post them here, since I have no time to compose fresh responses. Right now, I’ll pick the one he made in regard to Hebrews 8:4. The following is a section from my rebuttal to Mike Licona, which is the most comprehensive comment I have yet made on the subject (I apologize for its length):

jakejonesiv

Hi Earl,

It is agreed this is all myth. I have a couple of questions.

Do you see anything that would have prevented the rulers/archons or angels/stoicheai from descending to the surface of the earth itself? Surely, the god of this world would be conceived to reign over the surface of the earth as well as the air. If this is true, then if they happened to catch an incognito docetic Jesus, they would have had the power to crucify him in either realm, right? They wouldn't need human agents either way. If not, why not? :

How do you reconcile "the location of Christ’s crucifixion: not on earth itself but in some heavenly, spiritual realm" with Ephesians 4:9-10?

Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?
He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.

Jake Jones IV

andrewcriddle

In discussing Hebrews 8:4 I think it helps to distinguish the earth (EA), lower heaven (LH) the sublunar realm, and higher heaven (HH), the very presence of God.

I agree with Earl Doherty that in Hebrews the priestly sacrifice of Christ, the offering of his blood in the heavenly tabernacle, occurs in HH, the question is where does verse 8:4 imply that the death itself occurs.

Earl Doherty presents an interesting case that in isolation 8:4 could well mean that the passion of Christ itself occurred in HH. However we know from the rest of Hebrews that the death of Christ takes place in the days of his flesh when he is made lower than the angels and it is hard to see how this can possibly refer to HH.

Therefore either a/ the verse has no implications about where the death itself occurrred, or b/ it requires the death to have occurred on EA with the meaning that if Christ had not stopped being on EA he could not have started being a high priest or c/ it means that although it is not necessary for the death, as distinct from the offering, to be in HH it must be in LH and cannot be in EA.

The problem with c/ is that i/ I can find nothing in Hebrews or elsewhere to explain why the author of Hebrews should believe this ii/ Even if the author did believe this, it seems a point even less relevant to his general argument, in this chapter, than the traditional understanding of the verse.

Andrew Criddle

GakuseiDon

Earl, perhaps you have misunderstood Krosero's point. As he says, "The question is whether the ancients ever placed trees in the firmament, and if so, how". I've never claimed that because I "can’t envision trees in the spiritual/mythical world, neither did the ancients". Please stop saying that. I've always said that we have to go with the evidence. The evidence suggests that the ancients didn't.

In the last post, you talked about "spiritual activities" in the air. I suggested we make a list. Let's expand the list to include actual objects located between the moon and the earth. So far I've found birds, demons and clouds.

Earl, you seem to get confused between what exists above the firmament, and what exists below. Clouds exist below the firmament. I'm not aware that ancients placed clouds above the firmament. The "heavenly Jerusalem" existed above the firmament. Perhaps it had streets, walls, etc. Certainly AoI talks of "thrones" and "garments". But what about between the moon and the earth? What is placed there?

Again, it isn't a question of logic, but what the Middle Platonists themselves believed. If you want to appeal to Middle Platonic beliefs, then isn't it reasonable to question you on this?

Earl, these are good questions, and when I asked you to actually answer similar questions, I think you said "we don't know the answer". Can you clarify your answers to these questions, please? And provide references as well, if that's okay.

Others have asked similar rhetorical questions. "Do you think the ancients believed that Zeus literally stood in snow on Mt Olympus?" But I don't see why we shouldn't try to answer the question one way or the other, using the available literature.

AFAICS, the answer is: these events were regarded as happening on earth, or were regarded as allegorical, so didn't happen at all. But I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

Plutarch is cautioning "Clea" to not take them literally...? Literally on earth, or literally in a "world of myth"? AFAICS, it is the first one.

Earl, can you list references in ancient writings that placed mythical events like Attis's self-castration in a non-allegorical setting and not on earth?

the_cave

Hello, all.

I think an attempt is being made here to harmonize Paul with the Ascension of Isaiah. The Ascension, even in its earliest form, seems to clearly state that the Beloved descends to Earth, and lives as a man among men. The relevant passages have been discussed here before, but I'd be happy to provide them again if necessary.

The Ascension also states that earthly events are reflected in the heavens. I therefore see no trouble with an author who believes that the Beloved was crucified, in some manner, on Earth, with a parallel event in the heavens--even in the "sub-lunar realm". The two seem to be treated as one, to me.