Freethought & Rationalism Archive

EarlDoherty · 06-07-2008, 10:00 AM

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Originally Posted by JeffreyGibson

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Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

That, of course, includes Jeffrey Gibson—oh no, wait. Jeffrey has often given evidence that he challenges without reading what it is he is challenging,

Often? How many times exactly? And in which messages specifically?

Ah, Jeffrey, you are sooo predictable.

We should all take note that you haven’t actually answered my contention, much less denied it. You have done what you always do, avoid addressing the matter and asking further questions which are designed to put off dealing with whatever the contention is and imply that it is wrong. A recent example of this tactical approach is your response to Toto on the subject of Paul’s references to his persecution of Christians and the comparison with Acts. While you offered no criticism of concrete substance to Toto’s statements, you asked a series of snide questions implying that such views were all wet. When you—unexpectedly, I’m sure—received answers from Toto that showed that it was rather you who were soggy with H20, what did we get? No admission of such, but a supercilious dismissal of the whole thing (“I see.”), leaving you free to indulge in the same antics the next time around. (I personally don’t think you should be allowed to get away with that kind of thing. But maybe that’s just me.)

Is my above contention you’ve quoted wrong? I certainly recall times when the board has been discussing articles published by people like Malachi, for example, and you clearly challenged things that were being said about it on the thread without actually reading the article itself. I’m not going to take the time and effort to search out and pinpoint these things. (No doubt it would get down to an argument about the definition of “often”.) But let’s briefly look at one which we certainly all remember, in regard to my Hebrews article.

In my reading to that point when I made my unfortunate remark about the ending of Hebrews, I had gained the impression that the general view among scholars was that it was not regarded as authentic. That impression was wrong, as it turned out, but it was at least gained in all honesty, if more than a bit prematurely. And I admitted the error.

You, OTOH, made a statement about my article that could only have been based on a deliberate implication that you had read it. Since the statement was diametrically wrong, that implication was wrong and knowingly so.

That’s the difference between you and me. And I thank you for confirming that.

(May I remind you of an equally false implication on your part that a Professor of Richard Carrier’s at Columbia had called into question Carrier’s competence in Greek, whereas, unbeknownst to us at the time, it was simply his refusal to respond to your e-mail trying to elicit such a criticism which was the sole basis of your implication. My obsession with discrediting opposing views would never be that great, and that, too, is the difference between you and me.)

The other difference is that, regardless of my mistaken impression, I actually presented arguments to address the question in view, whether the ending of Hebrews could reasonably be regarded as authentic. You, OTOH, apart from taking the occasion to call into question in the most vitriolic terms my scholarship, integrity and manhood, made no effort whatever to address those arguments, thus demonstrating that you’re very good at obfuscation and personal attacks, but not so good at informative and substantive input, much less at countering my arguments in any meaningful fashion.

And I never did get a chance to thank you for confirming that as well.

Earl Doherty

Jeffrey Gibson · 06-07-2008, 10:28 AM

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Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffreyGibson

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Often? How many times exactly? And in which messages specifically?

Ah, Jeffrey, you are sooo predictable.[

Since none of what appears in your message actually deals with, let alone answers, my specific question of where specifically and how many times exactly I have given evidence that I challenge without reading what it is I am challenging, I ask again

"Often? How many times exactly (have I challenged without reading what it is I am challenging)? And in which messages specifically?

Please give me an exact number and the URLs to the messages in which I've reputedly done this.

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(May I remind you of an equally false implication on your part that a Professor of Richard Carrier’s at Columbia had called into question Carrier’s competence in Greek,

Can you show me where I ever claimed that any professor of RC's, let alone a professor of RC's at Columbia (i.e., his supervisor), called into question Carrier's competence in Greek?

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whereas, unbeknownst to us at the time, it was simply his refusal to respond to your e-mail trying to elicit such a criticism which was the sole basis of your implication.

You know this for a fact, do you -- that it was the refusal of one of RC's professors (specifically his advisor) to reply to me that was the basis of any kind, let alone the sole basis, for my saying what I said regarding a Columbia professor's evaluation of Carrier's Greek?

Jeffrey

Clivedurdle · 06-07-2008, 10:45 AM

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Robert Bartlett The natural and supernatural in the middle ages (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Interestingly demons were put in the category of natural, and there are fascinating discussions about the evolution of the term supernatural - it seems it was born with the scholastics and the mendicants.

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=242639

As the distinction between spiritual and natural seems to be something from the middle ages, and we have plentiful evidence of our abilities to make one plus one equal twenty seven, would someone kindly explain in what realm did Hercules taking the weight off Atlas's shoulders occur? Was it the sublunar realm?

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How did people of the medieval period explain physical phenomena, such as eclipses or the distribution of land and water on the globe? What creatures did they think they might encounter: angels, devils, witches, dogheaded people? This fascinating book explores the ways in which medieval people categorized the world, concentrating on the division between the natural and the supernatural and showing how the idea of the supernatural came to be invented in the Middle Ages. Robert Bartlett examines how theologians and others sought to draw lines between the natural, the miraculous, the marvelous and the monstrous, and the many conceptual problems they encountered as they did so. The final chapter explores the extraordinary thought-world of Roger Bacon as a case study exemplifying these issues. By recovering the mentalities of medieval writers and thinkers the book raises the critical question of how we deal with beliefs we no longer share.

Jeffrey Gibson · 06-07-2008, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Quote:

Robert Bartlett The natural and supernatural in the middle ages (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Interestingly demons were put in the category of natural, and there are fascinating discussions about the evolution of the term supernatural - it seems it was born with the scholastics and the mendicants.

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=242639

As the distinction between spiritual and natural seems to be something from the middle ages, and we have plentiful evidence of our abilities to make one plus one equal twenty seven, would someone kindly explain in what realm did Hercules taking the weight off Atlas's shoulders occur? Was it the sublunar realm?

Perhaps if you point us to who it was who told us the story (i.e., the particular mythographer or mythographer in whose works it is to be found -- the scholiast on Apollonius? Pseudo-Apollodours? Pausanius?) and where it is (or was reported to have been) recounted or depicted (in Phrekydes? on the chest of Kypselos, on the wood group carved by Theokles for the treasury of the Epipimidians at Olympos? on a Black-Figure cup signed by Nearchos and on a shield band found in Sicily?), we could find out.

Jeffrey

Clivedurdle · 06-07-2008, 02:37 PM

Trying to define this term sublunar a bit better!

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astrology Purposes of astrology

Nature and significance » Significance of astral omens

The view that the stars make manifest the divine will is closest to the concept that lies behind the ancient Mesopotamian collections of celestial omens. Their primary purpose was to inform the royal court of impending disaster or success. These might take the forms of meteorological or epidemic phenomena affecting entire human, animal, or plant populations. Frequently, however, they involved the military affairs of the state or the personal lives of the ruler and his family. Since the celestial omina were regarded not as deterministic but rather as indicative—as a kind of symbolic language in which the gods communicated with men about the future and as only a part of a vast array of ominous events—it was believed that their unpleasant forebodings might be mitigated or nullified by ritual means or by contrary omens. The bāru (the official prognosticator), who observed and interpreted the celestial omina, was thus in a position to advise his royal employer on the means of avoiding misfortunes; the omens provided a basis for intelligent action rather than an indication of an inexorable fate.

Nature and significance » Purposes of astrology

The original purpose of astrology, on the other hand, was to inform the individual of the course of his life on the basis of the positions of the planets and of the zodiacal signs (the 12 astrological constellations) at the moment of his birth or conception. From this science, called genethlialogy (casting nativities), were developed the fundamental techniques of astrology. The main subdivisions of astrology that developed after genethlialogy are general, catarchic, and interrogatory..........

Historical development » Astral omens in the ancient Middle East

The astral omens employed in Mesopotamian divination were later commingled with what came to be known as astrology in the strict sense of the term and constituted within astrology a branch described as natural astrology. Though lunar eclipses apparently were regarded as ominous at a somewhat earlier period, the period of the 1st dynasty of Babylon (18th to 16th centuries bc) was the time when the cuneiform text Enūma Anu Enlil, devoted to celestial omina, was initiated. The final collection and codification of this series, however, was not accomplished before the beginning of the 1st millennium bc. But the tablets that have survived—mainly from the Assyrian library of King Ashurbanipal (7th century bc)—indicate that a standard version never existed. Each copy had its own characteristic contents and organization designed to facilitate its owner’s consultation of the omens.
The common categories into which the omens of Enūma Anu Enlil were considered to fall were four, named after the chief gods involved in the ominous communication: Sin, Shamash, Adad, and Ishtar. Sin (the Moon) contains omens involving such lunar phenomena as first crescents, eclipses, halos, and conjunctions with various fixed stars; Shamash (the Sun) deals with omens involving such solar phenomena as eclipses, simultaneous observations of two suns, and perihelia (additional suns); Adad (the weather god) is concerned with omens involving meteorological phenomena, such as thunder, lightning, and cloud formations, as well as earthquakes; and Ishtar (Venus) contains omens involving planetary phenomena such as first and last visibilities, stations (the points at which the planets appear to stand still), acronychal risings (rising of the planet in the east when the Sun sets in the west), and conjunctions with the fixed stars.
Though these omens are often cited in the reports of a network of observers established throughout the Assyrian empire in the 7th century bc, they seem to have lost their popularity late in the period of the Persian domination of Mesopotamia (ending in the 4th century bc). During the later period new efforts were made, in a large number of works called Diaries, to find the correct correlations between celestial phenomena and terrestrial events. Before this development, however, portions of the older omen series were transmitted to Egypt, Greece, and India as a direct result of Achaemenid domination (the Achaemenian dynasty ruled in Persia from 559 to 330 bc) of these cultural areas or of their border regions.......

Historical development » Astral omens in Egypt, Greece, India, and China

The evidence for a transmission of lunar omens to Egypt in the Achaemenian period lies primarily in a demotic papyrus based on an original of about 500 bc. A more extensive use of Mesopotamian celestial omens is attested by the fragments of a book written in Greek in the 2nd century bc and claimed as a work addressed to a King Nechepso by the priest Petosiris. From this source, among others, the contents of Enūma Anu Enlil were included in the second book of the Apotelesmatika, or “Work on Astrology” (commonly called the Tetrabiblos, or “Four Books”), by Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer of the 2nd century ad; the first book of an astrological compendium, by Hephaestion of Thebes, a Greco-Egyptian astrologer of the 5th century ad; and the On Signs of John Lydus, a Byzantine bureaucrat of the 6th century. Yet another channel of transmission to the Greeks was through the Magusaeans of Asia Minor, a group of Iranian settlers influenced by Babylonian ideas. Their teachings are preserved in several Classical works on natural history, primarily that of Pliny the Elder (c. ad 23–79), and the Geoponica (a late collection of agricultural lore).
In various Middle Eastern languages there also exist many texts dealing with celestial omens, though their sources and the question as to whether they are directly descended from a Mesopotamian tradition or are derived from Greek or Indian intermediaries is yet to be investigated. Of these texts the most important are those ascribed to Hermes Trismegistos by the Harranians and now preserved in Arabic, the Book of the Zodiac of the Mandaeans (a Gnostic sect still existing in Iraq and Khuzistan), the Apocalypse, attributed to the biblical prophet Daniel (extant in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic versions), and The Book of the Bee in Syriac.
The transmission of Mesopotamian omen literature to India, including the material in Enūma Anu Enlil, apparently took place in the 5th century bc during the Achaemenid occupation of the Indus valley. The first traces are found in Buddhist texts of this period, and Buddhist missionaries were instrumental in carrying this material to Central Asia, China, Tibet, Japan, and Southeast Asia. But the most important of the works of this Indian tradition and the oldest extant one in Sanskrit is the earliest version of the as-yet-unpublished Gargasamhita (“Compositions of Garga”) of about the 1st century ad. The original Mesopotamian material was modified so as to fit into the Indian conception of society, including the system of the four castes and the duty of the upper castes to perform the samskaras (sanctifying ceremonies).
There are numerous later compilations of omens in Sanskrit—of which the most notable are the Brhatsamhita, or “Great Composition,” of Varahamihira (c. 550), the Jain Bhadrabahu-samhita, or “Composition of Bhadrabahu” (c. 10th century), and the Parishishtas (“Supplements”) of the Atharvaveda (perhaps 10th or 11th century)—though these add little to the tradition. But in the works of the 13th century and later, entitled Tājika, there is a massive infusion of the Arabic adaptations of the originally Mesopotamian celestial omens as transmitted through Persian (Tājika) translations. In Tājika the omens are closely connected with general astrology; in the earlier Sanskrit texts their connections with astrology had been primarily in the fields of military and catarchic astrology.

Historical development » Astrology in the Hellenistic period (3rd century bc to 3rd century ad)

In the 3rd century bc and perhaps somewhat earlier, Babylonian diviners began—for the purpose of predicting the course of an individual’s life—to utilize some planetary omens: positions relative to the horizon, latitudes, retrogressions, and other positions at the moment of birth or of computed conception. This method was still far from astrology, but its evolution was more or less contemporary and parallel with the development of the science of genethlialogy in Hellenistic Egypt.

Equally obscure are those individuals who, living in Egypt under the Ptolemies (a Greek dynasty ruling 305–30 bc), mathematicized the concept of a correspondence between the macrocosm (“larger order,” or universe) and the microcosm (“smaller order,” or man) as interpreted in terms of Platonic or Aristotelian theories concerning the Earth as the centre of the planetary system. They conceived of the ecliptic (the apparent orbital circle of the Sun) as being divided into 12 equal parts, or zodiacal signs, each of which consists of 30°; in this they followed the Babylonians. They further regarded each of these 12 signs as the domicile (or house) of a planet and subdivided each into various parts—decans of 10° each, fines (“bounds”) of varying lengths, and dōdecatēmoria of 2°30′ each—each of which is also dominated by a planet. Scattered at various points throughout the ecliptic are the planets’ degrees of exaltation (high influence), opposite to which are their degrees of dejection (low influence). Various arcs of the zodiac, then, are either primarily or secondarily subject to each planet, whose strength and influence in a geniture (nativity) depend partially on its position relative to these arcs and to those of its friends and enemies.

Furthermore, each zodiacal sign has a special relation with a part of the human body. The 12 signs are further divided into four triplicities, each of which governs one of the four elements. Numerous pairs of opposites (male-female, diurnal-nocturnal, hot-cold, and others), based on the speculations of the followers of Pythagoras, a Greek mystical philosopher of the 6th century bc, are connected with consecutive pairs of signs. Finally, a wide variety of substances in the elemental world and attributes of human character are more or less arbitrarily associated with the different signs. These lists of interrelationships provide the rationale for many of the astrologer’s predictions.

An individual planet’s influences are related both to its general indications when regarded as ominous in Mesopotamian texts and to the traits of its presiding deity in Greek mythology. But on them are also superimposed the system of the four elements and their four qualities, the Pythagorean opposites, and lists of sublunar substances. Furthermore, as in the omens, the modes of the planetary motions are carefully considered, since their strengths are partially determined by their phases with respect to the Sun. Also, they exert a mutual influence both by occupying each other’s houses and by means of conjunction and aspects—opposition (to the 7th) and quartile (to the 4th or 10th) generally being considered bad, trine (to the 5th or 9th) and sextile (to the 3rd or 11th) good.

Moreover, as the planetary orbits revolve from west to east, the zodiac rotates daily about the Earth in the opposite sense. From a given spot on the Earth’s surface this latter motion—if the ecliptic were a visible circle—would appear as a succession of signs rising one after the other above the eastern horizon. Astrologers regard the one that is momentarily in the ascendant as the first place, the one to follow it as the second, and so on, with the one that rose immediately prior to the ascendant being the 12th. In genethlialogy each place in this dōdecatropos determines an aspect of the life of the native (one born under a particular sign); in other forms of astrology the place determines some appropriate aspect of the sublunar world.

Astrologers, then, cast a horoscope by first determining for the given moment and locality the boundaries of the 12 places and the longitudes and latitudes of the seven planets. They read this horoscope by examining the intricate geometric interrelationships of the signs and their parts and of the planets of varying computed strengths with the places and each other and by associating with each element in the horoscope its list of sublunary correspondences.

Any horoscopic diagram, of course, will yield a vast number of predictions, including many that are contradictory or extravagant. Astrologers thus must rely on their knowledge of the client’s social, ethnic, and economic background and on their own experience to guide them in avoiding error and attaining credibility.

Since about 100 bc the above method has been the essential procedure of astrology, though various refinements and additional devices occasionally have been introduced, including those associated with the Hermetic tradition of Hermes Trismegistos and with Dorotheus of Sidon, an influential astrological poet of the third quarter of the 1st century ad. One is the system of lots, which are influential points as distant from some specified points in the horoscopic diagram as two planets are from each other. A second is the prorogator, a point on the ecliptic that, traveling at the rate of one degree of oblique ascension a year toward either the descendant or ascendant, determines a person’s length of life. Another is the method of continuous horoscopy, under which anniversary diagrams are compared with the base nativity to provide annual readings. And, finally, certain periods of life are apportioned to their governing planets in a fixed sequence; these period governors in turn share their authority with the other planets by granting them subperiods.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...#ref=ref414639

Thought so. Under the moon is the real world, where the stars influence what happens to kings and farmers.

According to the flesh is not what we understand now!

Jeffrey Gibson · 06-07-2008, 02:43 PM

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Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Trying to define this term sublunar a bit better!

And, IMO, not doing a good job at all.

How on earth is the unprovenanced material you produce helpful in this regard??

Jeffrey

Clivedurdle · 06-07-2008, 03:04 PM

Because sublunar is part of an astrological world view and guess what...

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The Visit of the Magi

1After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi[e] from the east came to Jerusalem 2and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east[f] and have come to worship him."

GakuseiDon · 06-08-2008, 03:36 AM

I had been planning to start one final thread on Doherty's theory as it related to pagan thought, but coincidently the topic brought up here is close to the one I wanted to start, so this will be my last post for a while on any boards on the topic of mythicism, both "copycat" version and Earl's theory. (I'm not going anywhere, btw, I'm just no longer interested in posting on mythicism unless something new comes up. I do though plan to write a few articles on the subject that I will post on my website at some stage.).

Now, before I respond to Earl, let me emphasize that I don't have any qualifications in this area. I don't have any relevant language skills. I have a hobbyist's interest in the writings around the first few centuries CE, and that's about it. So I am always a little embarrassed when I make claims that IMHO Earl is wrong. But, wrong I think he is, and I will go into some details below.

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Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

There are certainly points to be responded to, but my main concern is that you are still maintaining much the same thing as you always have. You still say essentially that I have provided no evidence, meaning evidence that is direct and unequivocal, and in my last posting here (as I have done many times in the past) I made an admission of this. When are you going to accept that and stop making that specific demand?

I have accepted it, and now I am questioning your indirect and equivocal evidence. I have been questioning the relevance of your 'indicators', have I not? Your indicators don't support how you claim Paul thought, as I hope to show in further detail below. If I am correct, then YOUR 'indicators' that don't support your points about Paul become MY 'indicators' that you are on the wrong track.

Yes, it is unreasonable to expect you to have to provide direct and unequivocal evidence to support your views. But if your indicators don't support your views either, then I'm not sure what you have left I'm afraid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

As you point out, Paul (and I’ve certainly expressed this opinion before) is not an allegorist. He has what we might call a ‘literal’ view of the matter of Christ’s crucifixion and suffering in the spiritual world at the hands of the demon spirits, so he doesn’t fall into the same category as Plutarch. But to repeat again one my main points, different types of views about the behaviour of spiritual entities can be surveyed to come to some judgment about what certain ones of them are liable to have thought as well, especially when evidence within the early Christian record points to such a degree of commonality, including in Paul. One of your tactics seems to be to try to eliminate all those indicators on the grounds that they are not exactly like the object in question. I don’t accept that.

And I wouldn't expect you to accept that. It's where you draw the line that matters. Comparing a non-allegorist like Paul with allegorists like Plutarch and Sallustius may be valid in some situations, and not valid in others. I think we both agree that it makes no more sense to automatically reject all such indicators, as it would be to automatically accept all. It comes down to an examination of each point, and how it either matches or doesn't match the thinking of the day.

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Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

However, I will appeal to something resembling your stance in the matter of your quote of Tacitus as alleged proof that pagan writers did not regard the activities of gods as taking place in a spiritual dimension. It is legitimate to make a distinction between salvation activities of the turn of the era period when Middle Platonism was in full bloom, and the traditional Greek and Roman myths (meaning legends, or using the term “mythology” in the traditional sense of ‘Greek mythology’). I would hardly claim that everything from Homer to Hesiod to the whole of ancient world discussion of what gods and goddesses, or legendary kings and queens of the distant past, are traditionally said to have done, were all transported to the spiritual upper world, reproducing the entire landscape of the Mediterranean (below the moon?) where all these things were now regarded as having happened. That would be ludicrous on my part, and I certainly hope you don’t seriously think I am advocating that.

I agree, that is something you have not advocated. But then I'm not sure why you don't. I don't think you've thought through what you are actually advocating. You don't take all the myths into the spiritual upper world? Then let's take a quote from your book:

p.98:

In this higher world, the myths of the mystery cults and of earliest Christianity were placed. Here the savior god Attis had been castrated, here Mithras had slain the bull, here Osiris had been dismembered.

Here is one of the myths about Attis, as described by Pausanias in the 2nd C CE:
http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias7B.html

"... Hermesianax, the elegiac poet, says in a poem that he was the son of Galaus the Phrygian, and that he was a eunuch from birth. The account of Hermesianax goes on to say that, on growing up, Attis migrated to Lydia and celebrated for the Lydians the orgies of the Mother; that he rose to such honor with her that Zeus, being wroth at it, sent a boar to destroy the tillage of the Lydians."

You see, the reason that Attis castrates himself is that he is driven mad by the Great Mother, Cybele. Now, notice that the myth includes other gods like Zeus and Cybele to make sense of it. If you are not advocating that every god or goddess isn't transported to the spiritual upper world, what parts of the myths dealing with Attis and his castration WAS transported there? Is the myth of Attis that takes place in "the higher world" devoid of Cybele, Zeus, the boar and the city of Lydia? Was Attis castrated only, with no surrounding story?

I suppose you may repeat "we can't hope to understand what they were thinking!" But the problem comes because you are trying to jam ideas into there that never existed. If we remove the idea that the myths were supposed to have happened in a higher world, the problem disappears.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

By the way, note that part of your Tacitus example really works against you, since Jupiter hardly drove Saturn from his throne on earth, unless you want to maintain that Tacitus regarded that throne as physically located on the upper slopes of Mt. Olympus. Do you?

Well, yes I certainly do maintain that Tacitus regarded Jupiter as driving Saturn from his throne on earth. I'm very surprised that you don't! Are you trying to say that Tacitus didn't think this was done on earth??? Given your statement just above this, your question about Tacitus is a bit surprising.

As I've said before, Romans and Greeks had no problems putting their gods into the stories of their past as actual historical people. Jupiter driving out Saturn around the time Moses lead the Exodus from Egypt as described by Tacitus is an example. Here is Minicius Felix on the subject:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co.../octavius.html

"This Saturn then, driven from Crete, by the fear of his raging son, had come to Italy, and, received by the hospitality of Janus, taught those unskilled and rustic men many things,--as, being something of a Greek, and polished,--to print letters for instance, to coin money, to make instruments... He was declared, however, to be the son of earth or of heaven, because among the Italians he was of unknown parents; as even to this day we call those who appear unexpectedly, sent from heaven, those who are ignoble and unknown, sons of the earth. His son Jupiter reigned at Crete after his father was driven out. There he died, there he had sons. To this day the cave of Jupiter is visited, and his sepulchre is shown, and he is convicted of being human by those very sacred rites of his."

From what I've read, this is how the pagans thought:

* Some thought that their gods were just people around whom legends grew. IIRC Heracles founded Thebes. His son took part in the Trojan war.
* Some thought that those people were "heroes" who became daemons. In their daemon state, they floated around the air and around statues, and could be invoked for protection. Some acted as intermediaries between earth and the true gods.
* Around Paul's time, some thought that virtuous daemons could ascend beyond the firmament and become true gods.
* Philosophers thought that the myths were stories representing the actions of cosmic forces, set in motion by the true gods. That is, the myths probably didn't happen, but they have a deeper significance that explains the workings of the universe.

Those are the main streams of thought that I have found. The myths either happened on earth, or they were set on earth but were not thought to have happened at all, being allegories or legends. The myths are never set in "a higher world", in the way that you claim they set the story of Attis and Paul set the story of Jesus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

Your thinking is a bit skewed here, and I’ve brought this up before. We can readily imagine sophisticated philosophers like Plutarch, Sallustius and Julian reinterpreting the myths as allegories. But, contrary to what I seem to remember you once claiming, this does not mean that they thought nothing at all happened. It’s just that, as Plutarch says, the things that “happened” were not literally as the myth recounts. But as Sallustius says, what “happened” were “timeless spiritual processes.” That is not “nothing.” So I ask you, how can “timeless spiritual processes” happen on earth?

It's a curious question, Earl, and touches on what I wrote before: Paul placed Christ's crucifixion in the past, so how do references to "timeless processes" help you? Are these indicators for your reading of Paul or against your reading? All those writers placed the myths on earth, regardless of whether they believed they actually happened or not. Again, are not these indicators AGAINST you rather than for you?

Let's look at how Julian and Sallustius approached those myths. They were Neoplatonists who wrote in the 4th C CE. Neoplatonism was a development from Middle Platonism, but the themes I'll use are compatible with what we see earlier.

Julian was probably influenced by Christianity. He certainly believed that some tales told by the Romans were based in fact. For example, Julian writes:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/toj/toj04.htm

But no one will dare to affirm that a body, though it should be composed of the purest æther, is better than an undefiled soul, such as the demiurgus assigned to Hercules: for his soul, prior to her incarnation, then was, and appeared to be, more efficacious than when she consented to a conjunction with body. For a providential attention to these inferior concerns is much easier to Hercules now, having wholly departed to his universal father, than it was formerly, when, being invested with flesh, he was educated among men.

So Julian believes that some of the stories, at least, were true. Was Hercules placed in a higher world? No, I don't think so. Perhaps you may say he was influenced by Christianity, but so what? This is the text that you are using for your indicators.

Julian describes the significance of the myth of Cybele and Attis this way:

For the ancients in interpreting the causes of things which have a perpetual subsistence, or rather in exploring the nature of the gods under the inspiring influence of the gods themselves, when they had discovered the objects of their investigation, concealed them under the veil of incredible fables, that through the paradoxical and apparently incongruous nature of the fictions, we might be secretly excited to an enquiry after the truth; an utility which is merely irrational, and which takes place through symbols only, being, in my opinion, sufficient for the simple part of mankind; but to those who are prudentially skillful, an emolument respecting the truth of the gods can then alone take place, when any one inquiring after it, discovers and receives it under the guiding influence of the gods themselves.

So: the common man believes the myths took place on earth. The more sophisticated believe they didn't happen at all, but are indicative of the actions of the gods. Pretty much the same that you stated in Appendix 6. But do they suggest anything about the myths occurring in a higher world? No, not at all.

In Appendix 6, you refer to Julian's statement that "Attis as a demigod who "seems to lean and incline toward matter", which appears to be an indicator of yours that "this suggests an intermediate sphere where gods can get close to the material world and do things which have an impact upon it". I honestly have no idea how a Fourth C CE statement paralleling orthodox Christianity's views of the Logos emanating from the pure God and affecting the material world can be an indicator for your non-orthodox views of early Christianity.

Sallustius also places the myth on earth, though he doesn't appear to believe it happened:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/2923/sallustius1.html

... they say that the Mother of the Gods seeing Attis lying by the river Gallus fell in love with him, took him, crowned him with her cap of stars, and thereafter kept him with her. He fell in love with a nymph and left the Mother to live with her. For this the Mother of the Gods made Attis go mad and cut off his genital organs and leave them with the nymph, and then return and dwell with her.

Now the Mother of the Gods is the principle that generates life; that is why she is called Mother. Attis is the creator of all things which are born and die; that is why he is said to have been found by the river Gallus. For Gallus signifies the Galaxy, or Milky Way, the point at which body subject to passion begins...

Again, Sallustius places the myth on earth, though the myth has hidden truths.

As an aside, another interesting passage I found in Sallustius was this:

Of the bodies in the cosmos, some imitate mind and move in orbits; some imitate soul and move in a straight line, fire and air upward, earth and water downward... in every sphere 'down' means 'toward the center', for the center is furthest distant from every point, and heavy things fall 'down' and fall to the earth...

I'll expand this argument in my article, but in short: flesh was regarded as being made up of earth and water (plus a little air and fire), and so would have been regarded as naturally falling downwards, to the earth. The implications is that Paul's use of "flesh" would have been an indicator that he regarded Jesus as being on earth.

So, from everything that I've seen, there is no indication that the myths were thought to have occurred in a non-earthly world. The myths were always set on earth. Some thought that the myths didn't actually happen, either because they were just legends or because they held a deeper significance. But they were always set on earth.

As I said earlier, I think a lot of the problems and inconsistencies that your theory has that you scratch your head over are because you keep trying to jam ideas into Paul that just were never part of the thinking of the time. Once you fit Paul into the common Hellenistic thinking of the day -- the stories were set up earth, but they point to some higher meaning, the inconsistencies simply disappear (*). That's what convinces me that you are wrong, I'm afraid, Earl.

Now, I suspect by now people reading this post (if I haven't bored everyone to sleep yet!) will realise that if I am right, it doesn't mean that Paul regarded Jesus as historical. It's an argument for another day, but Paul may have no more believed that Jesus was a historical figure than Sallustius believed Attis was a historical figure. But if the setting was on earth (which would be consistent with everything I have seen from pagan writings), then your idea of "myths set in a higher world" cannot stand as it is.

As I said at the top, I'm not going anywhere, but this will be my last post on mythicism for a while. Thanks for your time, Earl, and I look forward to the next edition of your book.

________________________________

(*) Another argument for another day: Aside from the occasional nature of Paul's letters, I speculate that one reason for the low number of details about Jesus was because Paul was only interested in those things that had a higher significance: mainly Jesus's crucifixion and death, and whatever he could find in the Hebrew Scriptures.

EarlDoherty · 06-09-2008, 10:05 AM

Hello, Don. This will hopefully be my last contribution as well. But I’m glad we had this exchange because I think I now have a better understanding of what’s going on. You recently said that you felt I was arguing in a circular fashion, and while I don’t think I laid out my material in Part Four in a way that should have indicated that, you may have come away with that impression. I get the idea that you have interpreted me as though I were saying: the pagans placed the myths of their savior gods in the upper world, therefore we have good reason to interpret Paul that way. Actually, my movement was in the opposite direction. I have always worked first with the early Christian record, and come to a heavenly-realm understanding of it through internal evidence (supported by the unworkability of an earthly understanding of that record). My interpretation has not been governed by an a priori Platonic reading of the mystery cult myths, although I was of course familiar with them and Platonic cosmology in general and could recognize that my findings within the early Christian record would fit into the latter scheme of things. They were mutually supportive.

The subsequent step was a consideration of the cultic myths to determine the degree of Platonic influence on those myths during the turn of the era period and beyond. I came to the conclusion that it was reasonable to assume that there was a certain amount of reorientation of the myths toward a higher-realm interpretation, and while unfortunately there is no surviving clear-cut statement to that effect, there was evidence in that direction to support it, such as I outlined in my Appendix 6. And so I appealed to such a reading as a corroboration of my heavenly-world analysis of the early Christian record. But the latter is not dependent on the former; it can stand on its own. However, as I said in my previous post, when we see Platonic influence and interpretation in everything from Philo to Gnosticism and early Christianity (the nature of the Son in Paul and Hebrews has an undeniable Logos/Platonic dimension to it, alongside the Jewish and in some aspects overshadowing it), it is not unreasonable to use this as further support for the idea of a Platonic reorientation within the mystery cults; they were hardly to be considered immune to the pervading influence of Middle Platonism which we seem to find almost everywhere else.

So my arguments about the mystery myths are support for my interpretation of the ‘cosmic Christ’, not a necessary pillar for its adoption in the first place. There is no circularity involved. The real difficulty in all this lies in the fact that the pagan myths were largely established before Platonism, and they naturally continued to be described in their traditional earthly settings and terminology. When Pausanias in the 2nd century, or Tacitus for that matter, outline such myths, that continues to be their language. I don’t know whether either Pausanias or Tacitus was a devotee of the cult of Attis; there is no reason to think they were. So their failure to express any reorientation of those myths within a more Platonic interpretation is understandable.

Besides, there is another very important distinction you are overlooking. For the most part, the myths of the gods existed quite apart from their use in the mysteries. One didn’t have to be a devotee of the Eleusis cult to know about the myth of Demeter and Kore, nor a devotee of the Dionysos cult to know the legends about Dionysos. What the cults did was to take those traditional myths, which everyone was familiar with, and incorporate them into mystery religions which overlaid an interpretation upon them in regard to the idea of personal salvation, an interpretation which was kept secret and knowledge of which gave the devotee a better outlook on life and anticipation about an afterlife. You are free to cite all sorts of ancient discussions of the myths of Attis, Dionysos, Isis and Osiris, etc., but these will have nothing to do with the specific question of how they were understood within the context of the mystery cults that were founded on the raw material of those myths. Everyone knew the myth of Egyptian Isis and Osiris; it long predated the Hellenistic salvation cult that evolved later. (The native Egyptian ‘cult’ of Osiris going back into the Old Kingdom was not a “mystery cult” in the later sense of the term, and certainly owed absolutely nothing to Hellenism or Platonism.) But not everyone knew the understanding of that myth as conceived by the Hellenistic cult of Osiris, and any writer not in the latter group, or not choosing to address it—as Plutarch did—would have no reason to present the myth in any other than the traditional earth-based way. In fact, anyone was essentially forbidden to do so. So the language of Pausanias, Tacitus, or anyone else of that sort is irrelevant and cannot be used as an argument against my position.

Your appeal to Minucius Felix is quite misleading. The context shows that Felix is anxious to discredit the old myths of Jupiter and Saturn, and other gods, by demonstrating them to have been men. He is arguing for the Euhemerus theory, in order to reduce the pagan gods to mere mortals. He even speaks of Jupiter’s “death” and tomb. This is hardly a context in which he would place them, or the specific interpretation of any savior gods among them, in a heavenly setting, which would only go completely contrary to his purpose. (I have to say that you are too often guilty of offering examples and ‘proofs’ which are invalid or contrary to the position you are trying to support, as you famously did in regard to the second century Apologists.)

But let’s look at your appeal to Sallustius. He, somewhat like Plutarch, was concerned with the ‘hidden meaning’ of the myths, although not solely from the point of view of the Attis cult itself. (I don’t know if we know whether he was a devotee of the cult, I’d have to reread Nock’s study of him. Plutarch was a devotee of Dionysos but not, as far as I know, of Osiris.) I will reproduce your quote from Sallustius, but you stopped too soon. I’ll add what came after.

Quote:

... they say that the Mother of the Gods seeing Attis lying by the river Gallus fell in love with him, took him, crowned him with her cap of stars, and thereafter kept him with her. He fell in love with a nymph and left the Mother to live with her. For this the Mother of the Gods made Attis go mad and cut off his genital organs and leave them with the nymph, and then return and dwell with her.

Now the Mother of the Gods is the principle that generates life; that is why she is called Mother. Attis is the creator of all things which are born and die; that is why he is said to have been found by the river Gallus. For Gallus signifies the Galaxy, or Milky Way, the point at which body subject to passion begins...

First of all, as I said above, Sallustius is simply recounting the traditional myth. You can hardly make hay out of the fact that he does so in terms of its ancient placement on earth. But he continues:

Quote:

Now as the primary gods make perfect the secondary, the Mother loves Attis and gives him celestial powers. That is what the cap means. Attis loves a nymph: the nymphs preside over generation, since all that is generated is fluid. But since the process of generation must be stopped somewhere, and not allowed to generate something worse than the worst, the creator who makes these things casts away his generative powers into the creation and is joined to the Gods again. Now these things never happened, but always are. And mind sees all things at once, but reason (or speech) expresses some first and others after. Thus, as the myth is in accord with the cosmos, we for that reason keep a festival imitating the cosmos, for how could we attain higher order?

I’m not going to pretend that I can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. To the modern mind, this is not much better than gibberish, though we are able to ‘understand’ how ancient philosophers could arrive at this kind of thinking. For such as Sallustius, the myth, as he says, “is in accord with the cosmos,” which is hardly to be thought of as not encompassing the spiritual layers of the universe. Attis possesses “celestial powers.” As symbolized by his association with a “nymph,” he is the god of generation, a power he gives up through self-castration. Just as Plutarch has spoken of the actions of Osiris and Isis in a non-physical way (repeatedly dying and resurrecting is not a physical earthly process), so Sallustius (as does Julian as well) is trying to make the Attis myth signify and reveal “timeless spiritual processes.” And he may well be referring to the mystery cult in saying that “we keep a festival imitating the cosmos.” What else is this “festival” but the festival of Attis as observed in its ‘passion week’ commemorating the emasculation, death and (so to speak) resurrection of the god? That festival/myth represents, as you put it yourself, “the actions of cosmic forces.” But there were actions; it was not ‘nothing’ that happened. In minds like Plutarch’s and Sallustius’s, it just wasn’t the literal actions depicted in the myths.

(One cult was a little different. Mithras’ slaying of the bull is part of a ‘cult legend’ that could be said to take place on earth—the hunt and pursuit of the bull into a cave and the shedding of its blood, followed by the sacred meal with the sun god—but it owed its features to astronomical processes. In fact, unlike the other mysteries, this legend seems to have been a product of the cult itself, rather than a pre-existing myth which the cult made use of. Here we have a myth (though a fairly basic one, and one that can be extracted only from physical artefacts, no literature survives) which owes its existence to observations and philosophies about the heavens, an astral religion. It does not go back to Persian roots.)

The question is, the one we always come back to, how did the average devotee see things? Let’s establish one thing. The philosophers did transplant the myths, and it was under the influence of Platonic philosophy. They transplanted them to the spiritual world, as allegories of cosmic forces. For them, the myths now represented things that happen(ed) beyond earth, or at the very least included places and actions that were beyond earth, heavenly and spiritual things. (Even if called ‘timeless,’ such processes are not static.) Attis did not literally suffer castration and death on one occasion under an earthly pine tree; whatever they represented, he underwent those things as part of the cosmic processes. It would seem that the cultic Osiris, in Plutarch’s mind, similarly did not die a physical death on one occasion on earth. Therefore, we can say that where philosophy was concerned, the mystery cult myths were reoriented from a primordial past to a Platonic higher world. That is clear; we do have acceptable ‘evidence’ for that in those writings, along with other writers like Philo and some Platonic philosophers for this general tendency in turn of the era thinking.

But if philosophers were guilty of reorientation of the myths under the influence of prevailing philosophies, can we blithely claim that no one else was subject to the same influences, that this was an isolated elitist phenomenon? Can we claim that all those Jewish intertestamental writings (whose authors were hardly of the intellectual caliber of a Plutarch), presenting us with divine figures and forces operating in the heavens, such as in the Similitudes of Enoch, or the Shepherd of Hermas, or the Ascension of Isaiah—they too were an isolated phenomenon of their own? In the mind of the author of the Similitudes, the Son of Man operated in the heavens, but no, never Attis? The Son in the Ascension was envisioned as hung on a tree by Satan in the firmament, but we dare not place the dismemberment of Osiris there in any pagan mind? The author of Hebrews has Jesus bringing his blood into heaven itself and smearing it on the altar of the heavenly sanctuary, but no, let’s not have Mithras envisioned by any pagan as shedding the bull’s blood somewhere in the sphere of the stars whose movements have been depicted in that very myth? It is highly unlikely that the officiant priests of the cultic rites were so unsophisticated and so out of touch with and immune to prevailing philosophy that they failed to ‘modernize’ in some degree the understanding and knowledge about the meaning of the myths and rituals as imparted to the initiated.

You talked about the “deeper significance that explains the workings of the universe,” but in what setting for the general populace was that more relevant than in the mystery cults? We lack the specific record which would reveal how that deeper significance was regarded because the mysteries were so secretive (and, as well, thanks to Christian rooting out of any such records: when the temples and Mithraea were demolished, any literature or holy books went into oblivion along with them), but every indication and every bit of logic tells us that the myths were no longer regarded simply or solely as literal stories of some ancient past on earth. There are no grounds for maintaining that, in the mystical understanding of the cults themselves, the myths were always and necessarily understood as unfolding on earth and only on earth.

And if we have any example clearly laid before us of an officiant priest/apostle of a new religious cult moving in a world of mystical understanding, it is Paul of Tarsus. As for your final comment:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don

Once you fit Paul into the common Hellenistic thinking of the day -- the stories were set up earth, but they point to some higher meaning, the inconsistencies simply disappear (*). That's what convinces me that you are wrong, I'm afraid, Earl.

As I said, the stories were set on earth because that’s where they were set when the myths were initially developed. You can’t simply appeal to that situation to maintain that no evolution of thought could have taken place. But you speak of “inconsistencies.” The most blatant inconsistency is staring us right in the face. If common Hellenistic thinking took a story set on earth and gave it a higher meaning, and that is the model we should interpret Paul by, where is such a story in the Pauline message? Plutarch, Sallustius, Julian, they all outline the myth and then explain its meaning. But not a single early Christian writer provides such an equivalent: the Gospel story and its events set on earth with historical markers. How can one present a "higher meaning" without mentioning the thing that is being so interpreted? Hebrews supplies a heavenly myth; others supply scriptural myths. There is no higher meaning given to an earthly event unless you read that alleged Gospel ‘event’ into them. You say in your footnote that Paul “was only interested in those things that had a higher significance.” But it’s those very “things” that are missing. All he gives us is the higher significance, and in terms which easily lead us (if we have an open mind and eschew imposing the Gospels onto the epistles) to conclude that both the acts of salvation and their significance were “higher.” Both exist in a spiritual dimension, with links and effects and guarantees on humanity in the physical dimension. That’s Platonism, that's Paul’s picture, and that’s the elephant in the room.

Earl Doherty

Rick Sumner · 06-09-2008, 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

What is comes down to for me is that the evidence is a mess rather akin to a Rorschach inkblot.

Royalties?

Quote:

Perhaps his greatest contribution was showing that the Quest of the Historical Jesus frequently amounts to little more than a literary equivalent to Rorschach's inkblots: What we see in the image is ultimately a reflection of self.

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