mountainman

FWIW thanks Andrew.

Everyone must know that most people including myself struggle with the Greek and are in a total darkness with the Hebrew.

Any assistance with these source languages is of great benefit to many.

Have a great day.

And thanks again.

mountainman

The contrast between the two terms demon and the Greek daimon on WIKI seems polemical.
And perhaps the polemic is justified, but this polemic is not originating from me. Try again.


Another false hypothesis. Try again.

The OP is about how the Greeks originally used the term, and how the early Christian authors, translators and editors,
who exclusively wrote in the Greek language, essentially subverted / rebelled against demonized the original meaning of the Greek term. Try again.

Iskander

Thanks Mountainman

The Septuagint is a Greek translation of older literature produced in Mesopotamia and elsewhere.

When the translation was written there was no “story” and later what we call now Christianity developed following the Mesopotamia-Judaic model of religion with its tradition of priesthood and a remote god supervising the behaviour of its slaves.

In the Greek model the gods are so very much like humans!! The absence of a caste of priests together with the treatment of gods by men in the Greek religion should tell you where the slaves of Allah and the slaves of the Vatican come from: they are the “ἐκτρώματι” of the fornicating slaves of Hashem and their grotesque 613 commandments!

1 Cor 15:8 As in :8 ἔσχατον δὲ πάντων ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώµατι ὤφθη κἀµοί.

Toto

????

The Septuagint is a translation of Jewish literature from Hebrew to Koine Greek. The translation did not make the literature non-Jewish.

The ἐκτρώµα is a gnostic concept that Paul (or his interpolator) applied to himself. It seems out of place here.

avi

Thanks, spin. Thanks Duvduv.

My question is related. What is the evidence that the earliest Christians did not get their notion of "DEMON", or evil god, from the Persians, rather than the Jews?

There was clearly considerable awareness of both Zoroastrianism, and Mithraism, by Roman Soldiers in the first century, on outposts at the Persian border in Mesopotamia.

Is there some reason to suspect that the Roman empire (that created Christianity) did not employ the Persian texts/ideas, and instead relied on a non-IndoEuropean language (Afro-asiatic-semitic linguistic group of the Jews (Hebrew or Syriac/Aramaic) instead? The Roman Empire stretched all the way to Britain, and encountered dozens of Indo-European languages along the way, everything from Greek and Russian to German, Netherlandic and Scandinavian languages plus Celtic and Portugese, and Romanian, and so on, and so forth. Persian and Armenian would have been much easier for them to comprehend, than Hebrew. Even Sanskrit would have been more readily understood.

Why do we assume, that the earliest Christians depended on the Jews to introduce the notion that a Demon was an evil spirit?

Toto

.. Portuguese and Romanian did not exist at the time - they are modern descendents of Latin.

The earliest Christians would have read the LXX in Greek if they did not speak Hebrew, of course.

Iskander

Christianity evolved from Judaism and Judaism evolved from the culture existing in Mesopotamia and elsewhere,

The Romanians would have spoken a language of their own and so would have done the Portuguese. And in order to illustrate the great diversity of languages in the Roman Empire to call them Portuguese and Romanian is good, but perhaps dalmacianus and lusitanus would be more acceptable to the professorial types.

mountainman

Now hang on one minute. The translation of the Hebrew Bible to the LXX by the King of Egypt in the 3rd century BCE is a LEGEND. The basis of this LEGEND is a letter inserted into Josephus the 1st century CE author. See the Letter of Aristeas, repeated by Eusebius in his "Church Thesis in History".

While I agree that the Greek LXX (as a well circulated book) must have existed before the Jesus Story, I do not agree that either the Greek LXX or the Jesus story necessarily existed in the 1st century of the common era.

I have already made the point that the oldest version of the Greek LXX - which appears in Vaticanus and other 4th century bible codices - is the version edited by Origen in the 3rd century.

Therefore the LXX existed in the 3rd century in the library of Origen, possibly in a number of translations which Origen presented in his Hexapla. But as to how much any of these versions were in circulation in the prior centuries, I do not know.

Certainly the gospel authors and Paul etc had some version Greek LXX before them.

But we still don't know the century when the gospel authors and Paul copy/pasted from this LXX.

But to bring this back to the OP.


The question therefore is when the LXX went into "wide circulation" [if at all] with this negative emphasis on the Greek term "daimon" [δαίμων].

The LEGEND of this happening in the epoch BCE is eminently questionable.

It could have happened just before the new testament was authored [whenever that may have been].




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

Somewhat related to the OP.

Definition of ENTHUSIAM:

SOURCE


This Spirit preceeded the "Holy Spirit" of the State Church.

There was absolutely NOTHING demonic about it.






εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

The earliest Christians used the Greek LXX to copy/paste phrases into the New Testament. Spin has identified where the word "Daimon" [of the Greeks] was first demonised used in the LXX (and also in Josephus).

Spin is in positively in denial of the negative spin the Christian usage put on the word.



When the cult of Augustus worshiped the "daimon" of Augustus were they worshiping a demon?

NO. They were worshiping the "guardian spirit" of Augustus. Ditto for Alexander the Great.




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia