andrewcriddle

This is about Aeneas descending into Hades and coming back to the world of the living.

It is not quite death and resurrection as normally understood.

Andrew Criddle

Iskander

Yes. It is about coming back from the dead. There are several translations both in verse and in prose some speaking of being returned not to the ordinary life before death, but to a heavenly realm...

It is about Aeneas visiting the darkness of the realm of Pluto as others had done before him –Ulysses, Heracles...- and retuning to ordinary life , as Jesus would also do later in the pagan ‘poem’ of Paul.


Virgil says Aeneas visited the dead, spoke to the dead... and returned to his wife and friends as others had done before him, all of it the courtesy of a generous god , and as Jesus will do later and as the baptized in Paul’s ‘immersion in the death of Christ’ will also do; and as Aeneas did, all of it the courtesy of another generous god.

Pagan Romans believed that humans could return to life after having ‘gone’ to the Avernus – translated as Hades, Pluto, hell, ...or simply left as Avernus with a footnote and my post was posted to suggest that hallucination need not be involved to believe the pagan idea of returning from ‘ the darkness of the underworld = burial”

andrewcriddle

I don't think viewing the stars here can plausibly be translated as returning to a heavenly realm.
I think we are in agreement that the passage is about descending living into Hades and subsequently returning to the world of the living.

Andrew Criddle

Iskander

Perhaps not, but I have in front of me, Virgil, The Aeneid, Translated by C. Day Lewis, Oxford World’s Classics, page 159.


But to retrace your steps, to find the way back to daylight
That is the task, the hard thing. A few, because of Jove’s
Just love, or exalted to heaven by their own flame of goodness
Men born from gods have done it.





Further in the Aeneid, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, Bantam Classic, verse 178ff

But to recall you steps, to rise again
Into the upper air: that is the labor;
That is the task. A few, whom Jupiter
In kindness has loved or whom blazing worth
Has raised to heaven as gods’ sons, returned


Further in the Aeneid, a prose translation by David West, Penguin books, pg 134
But to retrace your steps and escape to the upper air, that is the task, that is the labour. Some few have succeeded, sons of the gods, loved and favoured by Jupiter or raised to heavens by the flame of their own virtue


There are more translations, of course! but I am tired. I posted the translation by John Dryden because I could copy and paste it from a website.

andrewcriddle

I meant skies not stars sorry. In any case this is a paraphrase, literally it is something like return to the breezes above
I think, as you mentioned below, that the reference to being raised to the Heavens is an allusion to Heracles. Heracles visited Hades and returned to the world of the living. Some time afterwards Heracles dies (in fire) and is raised to heaven to become one of the Gods.

Andrew Criddle

Iskander

sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,


But,
call back, regain
steps
overcome , conquer
escape, avoid
breeze,air,heaven


But to return, and view the cheerful skies-
But to retrace your steps, to find the way back to daylight
But to recall you steps, to rise again
Into the upper air: that is the labor;
But to retrace your steps and escape to the upper air



Yes , breeze is right, and it is about visiting the dead living under the surface of the earth and returning to the living on the surface of the Earth; and about who and what makes that feat possible.


The poem suggest the existence of a culture where worshipping any god would make it possible to return from the realm of death where living corpses abide to the realm of the sky, breeze, air, ascending to where the living Aeneas, Heracles , my cousin, your friend... enjoy life.


It is this cultural environment what made it easy for Paul to adapt the dream of a Jewish man – -the “I have a dream” of the American Rev. Luther—to the dream of resurrection for worshippers of the new god.


Thus adapted this new multithreaded god was declared to be the only life returning god and the enforcer of the dogmas and laws approved by the Imperial Papist Church – Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus!!

aa5874

The fact that the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus Codices have been found we can see in the earliest gMark that the character called Peter did NOT have any hallucinations about a resurrection of the character called Jesus.

The very last thing Peter did was to DENY that he knew Jesus.

Mark 14 Those are the LAST words of Peter in the short-ending gMark.

The author of gMark utterly disgraced Peter as a LIAR. gMark's Jesus supposedly Predicted Correctly that Peter would LIE Multiple times and Deny him.

But, it was the women visitors to the tomb that were told of the resurrection of Jesus, NOT Peter, and they told NO-ONE Jesus was raised from the dead.

Mark 16 It is extremely clear that Peter and the disciples were NOT told of the resurrection in the earliest gMark story.

The short-ending gMark Jesus story ENDED without any resurrection visits of Jesus.

It was the INTERPOLATORS that added the resurrection visits. The resurrection visits are NOT original and are total fiction--not hallucinations of Peter in gMark.

Iskander

Pagan Romans during the reign of the emperor Cesar Augustus wrote this

The Aeneid , book VI verses 124ff

Translated by Theodore C. Williams


Thus, to the altar clinging, did he pray :
The Sibyl thus replied : “Offspring of Heaven,
Anchises' son, the downward path to death
Is easy; all the livelong night and day
Dark Pluto's door stands open for a guest.
But 0! remounting to the world of light,
This is a task indeed, a strife supreme.
Few, very few, whom righteous Jove did bless,
Or quenchless virtue carried to the stars,
Children of gods, have such a victory won.

"Easy is the descent to Avernus, for the door to the underworld lies open both day and night. But to retrace your steps and return to the breezes above-- that's the task, that's the toil."

aa5874

The short-ending gMark found in the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus Codices are extremely important to understand that the crucifixion and resurrection of the so-called Jesus, the Son of God and water-walker had NOTHING whatsoever to do with Universal Salvation.

The gMark story was simple a Myth Fable that was Believed to be true.

The story is rather simple. A story that even the illiterate can understand without any COMPLICATED theological doctrine.

Jesus, the Son of God and Messiah came, did miracles for the Jews, Fed the Jews, Healed the Jews, RAISED their dead and they turned around and had him crucified.

The Jews "STABBED" the Son of God in his "back".

The Jews are going to PAY.

The Jewish Temple will Fall and Jerusalem will be made desolate. Then the resurrected Jesus will COME back.

Mark It would appear that it was NOT the resurrection story but the claim of the Second Coming that most likely had a massive impact on people who believed the short-ending gMARK story.

Even today, 1800 years later, the claim that Jesus is COMING BACK has a severe impact on believers.

Iskander

I don’t think the ‘second coming’ is of any importance in contemporary religious thinking.


The liberator was coming to free the people among whom Jesus was living: his brother, sisters, mother, and father, the liberator was coming for his fellow Judeans ,to deliver the ‘kingdom of god’ which must have been understood then as the realization of the expected divine intervention in their history. It is a recurring theme in the history of the Israelites.

Christians may be afraid of what happens to their soul when they die; it is then that they are judged, but the rising of the dead in physical form at the end of time is easily ignored as unnecessary and too late to mean anything.