Clivedurdle

Could we define clearly how people thought when writing the new testament?

We have examples of new adams, virgin births, resurrections, healing, gods becoming human, kata sarka...

Their beliefs probably had logical flaws, but something us humans are good at is creating structures - what are the structures people are using when writing these ideas?

How did they think so that they thought Jesus could heal by spitting on clay and putting it on a blind person's eye, or they thought the devil could take you to a high mountain etc.

Rejecting all this as mumbo jumbo misses the point - what was their world view that led them to conclude these things were real?

Remember even Darwin knew nothing about genes. The new testament is truly alien and if we are to understand it we must be clear about how they thought.

Ray Moscow

I suppose we have to read a lot of the contemporary literature to begin to understand how they thought. (A time machine would be even better!)

There are a lot of similar miracle stories from that period that made it into writing but not into the Bible. Robert Price describes a lot of them in his books, e.g. The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.

My opinion (not necessarily the most learned) is that learned people often took such stories metaphorically, whereas the simple took them at face value.

Godless Dave

It's a good question, and a difficult one. Judea at the time the New Testament was written was overlapped by several different cultures: the Jews who had lived there for centuries; the Samaritans who had lived there even longer; the Roman invaders (who mostly spoke Greek, but were part of a Roman political entity); probably a lingering Persian influence; and who knows what else.

Clivedurdle

I want to look at the biological beliefs especially and their interaction with religious ideas - for example the brain as a cooling system, and that one about garlic and vaginas was it? It might highlight what flesh and spirit and soul and life and death actually meant then, and therefore what was possible.

Who was that American theologian discussing semen again?

Clivedurdle

How would a first century Linnaeus have classified beasties?

I assume there would be humans with flesh and gods with spirits and mixed beasties like Jesus with bits of each. But what was flesh thought to be then?

I think a relationship of flesh to clay is agreed, and spirit to fire. But what of air and water?

Why was it thought possible to change water into wine or walk on water? What is bread into flesh and wine into blood about?

What was their logic about that they thought this was possible?

Are we making a very significant category error in saying these are miracles or goddidit? If they thought the 'supernatural" was part of 'natural" they must have thought there were real cause and effects going on - the idea of a miracle is a later one once we had split the natural and supernatural.

The stories are of Jesus doing stuff - like spittle and clay - what is the logic that thought that is how the world works?

Ray Moscow

I suppose the Hellenised intellectuals would have deferred to Aristotle on most matters biological.

I have no idea about the less-Hellenised Judeans.

I found this interesting summary of Aristotle's biological thoughts: http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/aris-bio.htm

Ray Moscow

Clivedurdle: I think a relationship of flesh to clay is agreed, and spirit to fire. But what of air and water?

There were three "baptisms" (immersions or transformations): water, air/wind (spirit) and fire. All three are mentioned in the NT. I woud think that "flesh" would be the "earth" element, which completes the four.

Isn't this a Dionysian or similar mysteries allusion?

Allusion to the Moses/Joshua/Elijah water crossing stories from the Hebrew Bible.

Probably borrowed from "pagan" mysteries religions. There is just no way a nonhellenised Jew would make this connection.

In most of these, I don't think what we would think of as "natural" causes were the cause -- it was something "divine", magical or mysterious. But the ease with which these magic things are reported indicates that they weren't considered that unusual or "supernatural", as we would call them.

It seemed to be a common belief that "great" people could do magic, anyway.

Clivedurdle

For example

Are there underlying ideas here that we miss? We assume today that Tertullian knows the differences between plants and animals and is talking allegorically but was he?

Did plants and animals have the same sort of flesh? What was flesh as far as they were concerned? Why sacrifice and then roast your lamb?

The above reminds me of Fraser!

Ray Moscow

Even the Hebrew Bible uses these plant allegories (as does the NT), and Tertullian seems to be continuing the same thing.

However, I don't know whether he knew the difference between plants and animals, but as an educated guy he probably had some knowledge of the natural history as known then (which I suppose comes back to Aristotle and his "On Plants" and his essays on animals).

But maybe he had not done as much reading in these things after all.

Clivedurdle

Can we look in more detail at these baptisms? What were they thought to achieve?

I am arguing that we are assuming their thought patterns were similar to ours. They were not.