Clivedurdle

Might part of the problem be that the issues of the gods and witches and their interactions with humans, is it history, myth, fantasy, fiction - any other options? - has always been an area of mists and shifting sands?

It is possible to quote various Greeks and Romans and others that seem to have very modern sensibilities - history of witchcraft discusses the divisions that were made very early between natural and magical and of the gods. They did also go and sacrifice to the appropriate gods as well.

Throughout the medieval period we have similar examples of shape shifting - is it a bird, is it a plane, no it is St Christopher with a dog face, living in a village in Siberia, who should be treated as humans because they talk and build things.

The Docetians may be either saying its a ghost or yes we thought it was a human but really it wasn't because god can't be human.

And the variety of responses is our primary evidence - they need sorting into appropriate categories - and the Jesus Chimera does seem to fit into Cyclops world - but Cyclops are an imaginative reconstruction of mammoth skulls.

Jeffrey Gibson

Is the issue "who is it who writes about Jesus", or "what it is that those who write about him say"?

In any case, it seems to me that any "argument" (or is it assertion?) that Julian belonged to a class of intellectuals who had a concept of non-historical beings apparently being placed on earth that is based on what Julian writes about Jesus in the Kronia would fail from the get go --- since the assumption behind what Julian writes about Jesus in the Kronia (which contrary to Pete'sclaim is, as G. Chr. Hansen at the Institut für Klassische Philologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin has noted, is something that Julian himself sees as a symposion, not at all as a satire [the Greek word for satura would be sillos, which Julian never uses)], is that Jesus existed historically and that the gospel accounts that Jesus associated with very real earthly "sinners" are true.

BTW, I trust that this will be taken as a "contribution" (and an "evidenced" one at that) For if it is not, then I don't know what such a beastie is, and people who accuse me of not making contributions work from a definition of "contribution" that runs counter to what this is generally understood to be.

Jeffrey

Clivedurdle

Maybe the problem is nuance - the link you put in has the words "in my opinion" about Julian.

Toto

Julian is a pre-Enlightenment intellectual, and his "Against the Galileans" treats Jesus as a regular human. Perhaps this treatment is part of the polemic against him - that he is just a human, not a God as the Galileans claim?

EarlDoherty

Because you haven’t given us anything from these or any other works. If you have actually read them or looked up something in them, why don’t you give us the benefit of the knowledge you have acquired on the subject under discussion? Why would you withhold it from us? Are you not here to take part in these discussions and share your informed views? Do you not wish to further the debate? If the answer to these questions is “no” (and it certainly seems like it) why are you here?

I’m not talking about your “knowledge” of where you can find something that someone else has said on the topic. I’m talking about knowledge you yourself possess, meaning that you have taken in what others have said, subjected it to your own analysis and come up with some new comment and insight into it based on your own abilities.

When you were asked to write an essay in ancient history when you were a student, did you simply summarize what you found in the writings of others (I assume you didn’t hand in to your professor a list of quotes from others or a list of works you were aware of which talked about the essay topic)? Were you not expected to take the writings of others, and come up with an essay which entailed some personal contribution, opinion or even hitherto unnoticed observations or interpretation? With all of your knowledge and education and superiority in whatnot, surely you are capable of that sort of thing, Jeffrey? Should that not be what we lesser mortals should expect from you, and should we not be happy thereby that you have seen fit to be here?

Unfortunately, we’ll never know unless you tell us.

So I am asking, to keep things tied to the thread and Pete’s statements and sources about Asclepius, to please give us the benefit of your knowledge and the reading you intimate you have done and demonstrate from whatever sources, primary or secondary, something which would indicate that you are justified in maintaining, as you obviously do, that Asclepius did NOT rise from death.

As I’ve said several times in the past, there is such a thing as the ‘burden of the challenge.’

Earl Doherty

LogicandReason

Good points Pete...thanks for the links.

mountainman

Dear Jeffrey,

The OP is "Would pre-Enlightenment intellectuals suspect that Jesus never existed?" and both these issues - who wrote, and what did they write - would IMO be relevant to the OP. In fact, I was almost going to ask for a list authors (the whos) who wrote about Jesus, in order to then examine what each wrote. Julian jumped the queue.

The reviewer notes:

At the end of the Symposion Constantine, finding no example of his course of life among the gods, takes shelter with Truphe and Asotia; this recalls the rhetorical transformations of the famous myth 'Hercules before the choice', but Julian's point is that Jesus hangs around with the ladies preaching remission of sins for murderers and all criminals.

What sort of an historical comment on Jesus is this? How are we to assess it? And does it provide any clue that Julian may have suspected that Jesus never existed? Have a look at the order of appearance of all the figures in the "Kronia". Who appears after Constantine, and is "found by" Constantine if it is not Jesus?

Of course it is a contribution, and a generous one (as all contributions are) and I appreciate reading the article. The reviewers closing comments are:

Best wishes,



Pete

mountainman

Dear Toto,

We need to be extremely careful about making pronouncements concerning the intentions of Julian in his three books "Against the Christians" because they do not survive at all. The introduction to the text cited above makes it clear that the text is a reconstruction of Julian's work, but that the reconstruction has not been done from the primary work of Julian.

The text - your QUOTE above - we are extracting data from is a highly polemical work of refutation by the orthodox terrorist and christian bishop Cyril of Alexandria entitled "Against Julian". You may make the assumption that Cyril is presenting Julian fairly and squarely however I should like to see this assumption plainly stated (or ratified by you and others). Cyril writes the following:

What assertions "shook many spirits"?
Did Julian suspect a literary fabrication?
Does he suspect Jesus is real or fictional?
Are we able to answer these questions
with the available data?


Best wishes,


Pete

Jeffrey Gibson

Yes, we are, given not only what Julian says in Contra Galilaeoa, but what he writes to Photius about the intent of the project he undertook in Conta Galilaeos in his Ep. 55 (for the text, see see p. 5 of Neuman's critical edition of the CG) and what Libanus says in his Or. 18. about what Julian was on about in CG.

See also the discussion of Julian's intent and his views about Jesus by R. Joseph Hoffmann in his Julian's Against the Galileans, pp. 75-83.

Jeffrey

aa5874

But, there are other passages that clearly shows that Julian, the pre-Elightenment intellectual, did really accept Jesus as a MYTH or similar to the gods of the pagans.

Against the Galileans In the passage Julian claimed Jesus was not from Judah, so how could Jesus be one of Caesar's subject? Where was he born? He was born of the Holy Spirit.