rlogan

I made it up that moment.

Just that you were carrying the discussion further. That it might get to a higher level.

But really it isn't giving me an intellectual woodie and it's more fun to think about the organized criminal mafia of religious frauds.

Vorkosigan

But there is no "average pagan" who has average beliefs. It isn't about what they believe, but what they do. Enumerating and describing beliefs is what elites do, not ordinary polytheists. Ordinary polytheists just lived them and didn't worry about whether they made sense to outsiders or not. Here's the passage that has so exercised us:

For the average pagan, the bulk of the workings of the universe went on in the vast unseen spiritual realm (the "genuine" part of the universe) which began at the lowest level of the "air" and extended ever upward through the various layers of heaven. Here a savior god like Mithras could slay a bull, and Attis could be castrated.

It's irrelevant where some compiler of myths placed the birth or marriage of Mithras, because he had a problem: he was writing a text and so was forced to put down The Answer. Ordinary polytheists do not bother with such mundanities.

Well, what would count as evidence? Well, all of religious anthropology and comparative religion research. Are you aware of any ancient culture which held that there were no supernatural entities in charge of the world? There are none. So as humans, the ancient pagans were of course supernaturalists.

So let's move on. Are you aware of any ancient cultures that located the activities of their supernatural entities in a realm that started on the earth and extended downward without limit? I'd love to hear about one.

Essentially Doherty is saying: the ancient pagans behaved as if the earth and the area above it, extending vaguely and indefinitely out to Somewhere, was inhabited by many different types of spiritual entities who strove with each other and made trouble for mortals. Since such beliefs are nearly universal among humans, it seems to me that what Doherty is saying is plain common sense. In other words, the evidence comes from the behavior of all other humans, who (1) believe in supernatural entities and (2) regard them as living in a realm that extends upward from the earth and includes it.

Doherty's problem is the same as any compiler of myths: he has to give "an answer." But there is no answer. If you asked Paul where Jesus was crucified, he'd give you "an answer" but it wouldn't mean anything; it would just be "an answer." Seventh heaven? Sure! Jerusalem? 'Hokay! Whoever wrote Paul's letters was a polytheist learning to think like a text-based religionist, but the polytheist keeps breaking through, and so Paul spends lots of time talking about his subjective experiences, like going up to the third heaven, for example.

The fact the pagans placed the activities of their gods on earth -- SOME of their activities -- in no way refutes Doherty's point about how the pagans conceived their world to be. You just pick out on paragraph of Doherty's text and miss all the parts where he points out that the earth is connected to the lowest part of the "air", that demons there carry out activities on earth, that gods become mortal and appear on earth, etc, etc, etc. Doherty is hugely aware that the pagans had gods who carried out their activities on earth.

Doherty also says:

• "The Greco-Roman savior gods inhabited the mythical realm. Whether this realm was conceived of by the ordinary initiate as belonging to a primordial past on earth, or to a Platonic higher world, might be difficult to say. No doubt such concepts evolved over time."

In other words, when you look at the totality of what Doherty is saying, it is a commonsense description of something that is inherently difficult to get a grip on -- the subjective experience of polytheists who couldn't be bothered to define how the Gods they interacted with actually went about the business of existing. You're asking "But how is Greek religion defined?" and the answer is "that is not a relevant question." Not even to Doherty's argument. Because...

........what Doherty says, even if it is wholly wrong, is irrelevant. Why? Because the one point that Doherty hammers home over and over is that you have to read what the texts say and not what Christians make them say. And when you do that, the silences are deafening. In other words, in the end it hardly matters where "the pagans" thought their gods did stuff; the issue is where Paul and the other early epistle writers who had visions of Jesus thought Jesus did stuff. And it certainly was not on earth, or they would have made that plain -- which they never do.

So really, you haven't identified a relevant issue here, Don. What you're really hoping to do is throw up something to discredit Doherty, scattershot style.

Let's focus on the real issue: there are two possible readings of the NT epistles: in reading one, they are figuratively talking about real person (the conventional reading) and avoiding any historical references to him; while in Model 2, they are talking about someone who was never a historical person but who appeared in our reality and was accessed through visions.

Let's further assume that Doherty knows nothing about Hellenistic religious belief and is completely wrong in every single one of his beliefs. This impacts the model 1 vs. model 2 problem how?

Michael

GakuseiDon

What evidence do you mean? It's evidence I am asking for. I'm trying to find data that supports Doherty's view of pagan beliefs.

From what I've read in Plutarch, Tacitus and others, I can see that some believed that Jupiter has a tomb in Crete, some believed that Osiris was buried in Egypt, Isis was a near-contemporary of Moses, Hercules lived around the time of Troy. I can see how some believed that the gods were people around whom legends accrued. I can see how some thought that the myths were allegories for natural and cosmic forces, and so didn't happen at all.

What I can't see is evidence supporting Doherty's view.

I agree. We can better understand Christianity, for example, by placing it in the context of the religions and religious thoughts around it. That's part of the reason I'm bringing this topic up.

GakuseiDon

That's fine, but I don't want to talk about Paul at this stage. I want to concentrate on Doherty's views on what the pagans believed.

I'm not interested in discussing the NT epistles now. I'm only interested in seeing if there is any data to support Doherty's view of the beliefs of "the average pagan". If you don't think that impacts Doherty's thoughts on early Christianity, then that's fine.

If I understand you correctly, you don't know of any evidence from the texts of that time to support Doherty, but then you don't expect to find it, since it wouldn't have occured to the pagans of that time to have put such information down. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Does that summarize your view correctly?

GakuseiDon

"Gakusei" is a Japanese word meaning "student". "Gak" doesn't sound so friendly! Call me "Don".

Is it, then, fruitless to try to understand the religious concepts of people 2000 years ago? Or if it isn't fruitless, what is the best way to try to understand them?

Amaleq13

If "where" was irrelevant to their beliefs, why would we expect them to make any reference to location let alone make it plain?

jgibson000

Leaving aside the issue of how it begs the question to label these things "mundanities" and to assume, as you seem to do, that the text mentioned was not written for "ordinary polytheists", how do you know that "ordinary Greco Roman" polytheists" (was there any such beastie?) didn't "bother" with them? What's your evidence?

And doesn't the existence and establishment of shrines and temples at specificl locales, not to mention the cult given in these places (presumably under a sense of divine constraint, not to mention appropriateness) through-out the year and at festivals by the "ordinary Grego-Roman polytheists" who were devoted to the gods of these shrines, argue otherwise?

Jeffrey

jgibson000

This, of course, assumes that Doherty is reading the texts "objectively" and not through his own filters of what he thinks they say.

But his frequent use of selective quotation from, and downright misreadings of, the authorities that he uses to prove that the texts say what he "objectively" reads them to say and his numerous misunderstandings, misreadings, and skewings of the Greek syntax and vocabulary of the texts he reads, are, in my eyes at least, strong evidence that he not only does no such thing, but is incapable of reading them for what they say.

What is the criteria you are using to determine what is and is not "plain"?

More importantly, are you actually saying that the sole source of Paul's (or any other NT writer's/early Christian's) "knowledge" of where Jesus "did stuff" or, more importantly, where "stuff was done to Jesus" is visions of Jesus that he (and they) had?

Was it a vision of Jesus and where he "did stuff" that led Paul to be a persecutor of the early Church?

Jeffrey Gibson

Clivedurdle

http://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/current...AA/paper2.html

(University of Cambridge Dept of Social Anthropology)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=169780

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...ternetinfidels

jgibson000

I'm blown down not only by your assininity in giving me URLs when I asked you not to, but to know how it is that anything within these URLs (one of which doesn't work) stands as an answer to any of the questions I asked you or as proof of the things you must demonstrate for your claims about how "alchemy" is the background of, and informs, the "themes" you find in the NT.

I think it's time to say "put up or shut up".

JG