Steven Carr

Gamera really is digging himself into a big hole...

http://gop.science.house.gov/press/108/108-111a.htm

'"Let me also thank Admiral Gehman for appearing before us again today.....

Guess what? Gamera talks rubbish. The speaker had to say 'again', before appear could be said to mean reappear.

http://armedservices.house.gov/apps/...SA013107.shtml

'“Let me begin by welcoming our distinguished witnesses: The Honorable Samuel W. Bodman, Secretary of Energy, and Mr. Gene Aloise, Director of the Government Accountability Office’s Natural Resources and Environment Division. The hearing will consist of two panels today, with the Secretary appearing alone on the first. Mr. Aloise will be joined on the second panel by James Noel, Assistant Director at GAO and a principal author of the report we are releasing today. ....
“Let me thank each of you for appearing before the Subcommittee today...'


Had they already appeared before the committee? Does 'appear' mean 'reappear'? Why specify 'today', as though the speaker wants to restrict the context to one specific appearance on one day, with no implications of thanking somebody for appearing on more than one day?

gurugeorge

The "good news" of a victory in battle is not the story of the battle, it is the victory itself.

For instance, one might picture the feted herald relaxing and sitting down to a nice cup of wine, with his listeners eagerly crowding around him, asking him for what he knows of details of the battle. But suppose he gave such details - his giving his listeners those details isn't him transmitting the "good news", he already did that in telling his listeners that a victory had been won.

In Paul, his "good news" is, simply, Christ's death and resurrection. That's the victory. And that's all you can find in Paul.

Sure, that might imply a "backstory", and people might wonder about the backstory and go on to make up various backstories. (This is indeed, precisely what I think happened.)

But there's nothing in Paul to suggest that he himself gave a backstory at all.

Doug Shaver

The fact that I dispute your point does not imply that I missed it.

Yes, and it is quite different from Paul's.

Well, yes, the synoptics say that Jesus was crucified, buried, and then rose from the dead, they mention a ritual memorial meal, and two of them mention his Davidic ancestry. What else do they say about Jesus that Paul said about Jesus?

There is no biographical narrative in Paul, and he makes no connection between his Jesus and history. That makes his narrative nonbiographical and ahistorical.

Why?
The author's opinion of what Paul might have believed is irrelevant in determining what Paul did believe.

I see no justification for that presumption.

You mean the author of II Timothy? I don't think he believed Paul had written anything of the sort.

I have no hope of, nor any interest in, making my position credible to you. I'm satisfied with making it credible to the lurkers.

Amaleq13

IIUC, Gamera is considering even the most brief of accounts to qualify as an account of connected events (ie a narrative). Therefore, even "We won the battle." is considered to be a "little narrative".

I have to agree that even this brief an account requires there to be a story though I'm not sure it is legitimate to characterize the brief statement as a story.

Likewise, even Paul's briefest references to the death and resurrection of Jesus requires there to be a story.

That said, I think Rick is demonstrably correct that this story is not Paul's gospel as much as the significance of what the story means with regard to one's salvation. Gamera's conclusion simply doesn't not follow from Paul's letters. It clearly comes from somewhere else and has been imposed upon them.

EarlDoherty

All I can say, Magdlyn, (well, actually it isn’t all I can say, as you’ll see…) is don’t let Don pull the wool over your eyes. And he is about as “up to speed” as a turtle crossing a freeway. I have given up debating him directly because he pays no attention to the things you say, and holds onto his claims no matter what you lay before him.

The first thing you will notice is his confident declaration that he knows all about ancient and particularly Middle Platonism’s views of what goes on in the various layers of heaven. First of all,

Note the “I think” and “I doubt”. This is “evidence”? And note the imposition of modern scientifically-enlightened views on the thinking of the first century. You’ll find he does this a lot. We don’t believe these nonsensical things, so therefore they didn’t believe them either. This goes along with the imposition of our own penchant for literalness and exactness of thought on the minds of the ancients, especially religiously oriented ancients. (“The seed of David” must, even if derived from scripture, be required to be literally and exactly applied to a spiritual Christ in the heavens in the thought of Paul; “hung on a tree” must mean on earth “because there are no trees in the air”; the heavenly Jerusalem can’t have cobblestoned streets and…well, you get the picture.)

On the latter sort, Don seems to have backtracked, not a little because of your excellent examples of human- and earthly-sounding “heavenly events” that you pulled out of 1 and 2 Enoch. Well, OK, he seems to be saying now, those things can be attributed to the above the moon spheres, but not below the moon, except on earth. After all, if spiritual beings could do all those material-sounding things in the supralunar heavens, why couldn’t they do them just below the moon as well, and that would give my theory an opening. So that possibility has to be rejected. On what basis? He confidently gives us minute descriptions of exactly what people thought about the heavens, above and below the moon, such as:

So far so good—or almost good….

You may or may not be aware that Don is constantly haranguing me for contemporary evidence in pagan writings for certain of my claims. You might ask him to quote you sources in any writings which justify such confident, clear-cut, universal views as the above. I think you will find that it’s really just an ill-disguised case of wishful thinking. You are probably unaware of the fiasco last year when the only ‘evidence’ he offered for his tight little version of Middle Platonism was an obscure source named “Ocellus”. Not only did he not offer any quotes from this figure, it turned out that “Ocellus” was a 5th century BCE philosopher from whom we have no writings whatever, who was pseudonymously forged by a neo-Pythagorean of the 1st century BCE, of whom we have only a few surviving quotes in a 5th century CE Roman writer (all of which Don neglected to inform us, and may not have known himself). Those 5th century fragments of pseudo-Ocellus told us virtually nothing about what could go on in the various layers of the heavens, let alone anything which could justify Don’s rigid pontifications about the sublunar regions.

On this board he has long stated that such things as spiritual activities by spiritual beings (like the demon spirits) cannot take place below the moon except in the precise environs of earth itself. This is curiously based on his claim that the denizens of this planet are able to “LOOK UP” and see the sublunar dimension, and presumably all that goes on in it. Presumably there is some ‘barrier’ or other placed at the moon which blocks our sight lines beyond that point. I guess this means that all the other planetary bodies, like sun, planets and stars, were only figments of the imagination, since the ancients were under the delusion that they could “LOOK UP” see those as well, even though they lay beyond the moon. I guess it also means that the demon spirits did not really exist, since I don’t think any ancient writers claimed that they could “LOOK UP” and see those “millions of demons” that populated the space below the moon. They didn’t, according to Don, fill that space with armies and thrones either, let alone trees on which any spiritual deity could be ‘crucified’, because they could “LOOK UP” and not see any such things. He also states,

The problem is, this is an imposed, and idealized, pure classic Platonism, which by the time of Middle Platonism had long been expanded. God did not dwell just above the firmament. There were many intervening layers of heaven before one got to God’s perfect, unchanging sphere. As your examples from 1 and 2 Enoch amply demonstrate (and we could add other documents), things of a less than pure perfection could certainly go on in them, including suffering and punishment. Now, this sort of thing strictly contravenes Platonism, but this is an important point. There was a wide variety of views of what could go on in the various layers of heaven, even of how many layers there were. What the writers of the Enochs believed, and how they presented them, is not necessarily how others (Jewish and pagan) believed and presented things. Yet Don stubbornly insists on some kind of ‘uniform’ Middle Platonism, or what people could or could not see when they “LOOKED UP”, and thinks that this has utterly destroyed my presentation of Jesus mythicism. Nor will he budge from this contention no matter what.

He regularly says that I have presented no evidence for my claims about the various aspects of the sublunar realm—oh wait, yes I do appeal to the Ascension of Isaiah, but I’m completely wrong about that. Well, I’ll “bring you up to speed” briefly on this document, and you might ask Don how one particular chapter (7) shows that nothing goes on of a spiritual nature below the moon that is not on earth itself, that there is no distinction in anyone’s mind between the upper regions of the sublunar realm (the “air”) and the regions resting on earth itself.

The ‘he’, of course, is the descending Son, who is spoken of as coming to the firmament in order to destroy Satan. The later chapter 9 (which I won’t trouble to quote) is all about this Son descending through the spheres of the heavens, including the firmament, and there being “hung on a tree” by Satan and his minions, not by any human agency on earth. The Son, adopting a human-like form which conceals his identity (as in the Philippians hymn we are discussing on another thread, and reminiscent of the ‘concealment’ from Paul’s demon-spirit “rulers of this age” who killed Christ in 1 Cor. 2:8), is unrecognized by the demons in that heaven. A later passage in Ch.11, which is generally regarded as an interpolation, translates all this into a crude Gospel-like scene on earth, but in Ch. 9 itself there is no sign of any such dimension in the writer’s mind. (This document, by the way, has been heavily edited over time, with several incompatible manuscript lines, so it’s not surprising if we do not get reliable and consistent data in every detail throughout its text.)

Of course, I’ve said all this before, and much else, in response to Don’s contentions, and I have no intention of getting into another debate with him. But not only did I want to prevent him from pulling the wool over your eyes, Magdlyn, one can only so long allow someone to repeatedly make the same unfounded claims, with no acknowledgement of what has been presented against them, without speaking up.

Incidentally, I have long admitted that we have no direct quotable evidence from pagan writings of the time which place the activities and deaths of the Hellenistic savior gods in the heavens, let alone specifically the sublunar area. This does not keep Don from harping away at my ‘inability’ to supply such specifics (indicators, as in Plutarch, will not do). Of course, it doesn’t matter that we have virtually nothing of “direct quotable evidence from pagan writings” on anything to do with the mysteries, since they were under a strict proscription of secrecy. It doesn’t matter to Don that we have a lot more such evidence from non-pagan writings (as in the Ascension and the Enochs) for views very similar, or related, to what I am proposing for Paul. It doesn’t matter that it is perfectly reasonable to assume that, even in an atmosphere of generally similar thought patterns concerning savior gods and salvation faiths and their cosmological settings, in both pagan and Jewish/Christian sources, there could be a notable variety (we can see that just in the various presentations of the structure and content of the heavens), that Paul may not have shared all these details. I have not placed Paul’s crucifixion of Christ specifically below the moon, though this is suggested by his agency of the demon spirits as the crucifiers; but he may not be subscribing to the strict principles found in Don’s Middle Platonic manuals, we just don’t know.

In any case, I have many times called attention to the broader indicators of the general principle that in the time of Christianity, the older traditional way of viewing the myths of the savior gods as taking place in a primordial time on earth had evolved into Platonic views of placing them in a higher spiritual realm. These I have laid out in my Appendix 6 of The Jesus Puzzle, which Don continues to ignore (at least he fails to address it). Consequently, I am going to reproduce that Appendix text here, though in a separate posting. As I said, don’t be surprised if I don’t respond to any of Don’s future postings on this subject. If he says nothing new, or fails to address the specific points I have raised here (or in the Appendix) in any fresh or meaningful way, I will continue to ignore him. (Since I anticipate the good odds of doing so, I hesitate to suggest starting a new thread here, even though these postings may get lost in the present thread. If Magdlyn thinks she will carry it on to some extent, perhaps they should be moved to a new one.)

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Earl Doherty

Magdlyn

Thanks so much, Mr Doherty! I will read and absorb and I may start another thread containing your last 2 posts, as I do have at least one question in mind for you concerning the strata/realms/categories/spheres as perceived in this era.

GakuseiDon

I hope that people will read what I've claimed, rather than what Earl states I've claimed. I will concentrate on those points where I believe I have been misrepresented:
I've never claimed that. All I've claimed is that from what I've read, your ideas about "fleshly sublunar realms" is not supported by the literature, and in fact the literature from the time says things quite different to your claims.

I have continually urged people to look into your claims for themselves. Don't just accept your word or my word for what people believed in that time, but look at the literature itself. Without that background, how can we know if Doherty is accurately reflecting the beliefs of Paul's time?

C'mon, I'm weary of having to repeat that this is not what I am claiming at all. It has nothing to do with what we believe today, but with what the literature of the day tells us about such beliefs. If the evidence shows that Paul had different beliefs, then so be it. But if there is no evidence to support you, and the evidence is against you, then that needs to be brought out. I said that as recently as a few pages back in this thread.

The problem as I see it is that you claim that Paul had certain beliefs about the nature of the universe which aren't supportable from the literature (e.g. "earthly myths about the gods like Attis's castration were thought to have been performed in a mythical realm"), and then you interpret Paul through that lens. Unfortunately many of your readers pick up on the "mythical realm" concept and believe that it was something that formed the background of belief in those days. But it wasn't, at least from what I've found. I've tried to engage you on this many times, but all I get is you misrepresenting what I am claiming and what I am asking for. Let's just get all the evidence together first, and then analyse what is going on.

You either have no idea what I am arguing, or you are deliberately misrepresenting me.

1. I have NEVER claimed that "the heavenly Jerusalem can't have cobblestoned streets". Why on earth would I? I've made the distinction before about the difference between sublunar and supralunar, just a few pages ago to Magdlyn. In fact, I said back then that you kept bringing the heavenly Jerusalem even though it is irrelevent to what I am arguing.

2. On "the seed of David": I have continually asked for evidence from you that such a thought could be applied to non-earthly people. Either you have evidence for this or you don't. Given the face reading, and given how we see this concept used by others around Paul's time, I have to say that there is evidence against your interpretation, and I have yet to see evidence FOR your interpretation. You have already concluded that Paul is applying this to a heavenly Christ. Magdlyn, I hope you can see the problem here. What is the evidence for? What is the evidence against? Again, if Doherty wants to claim that Paul had his own idiosyncratic ideas that "seed of David" can be applied to non-earthly beings, then that's fine -- but let's make sure that we understand that the evidence (at least present in the literature) is against him.

3. “Hung on a tree” must mean on earth “because there are no trees in the air”. Yes, I would say that there is nothing in the literature to suggest a sublunar realm where trees existed. Though again, I'm calling for evidence from Doherty that such a belief existed. Let's look at the evidence for and against, then decide.

This goes beyond misrepresentation. I have not backtracked. I have always made the distinction between sublunar and supralunar, as Doherty should know well. See the "Ocellus" link I give below from a year ago, and you will see I've continually made the same points on sublunar vs supralunar.

Unbelievable. If anyone wants to see how the "Ocellus" saga played out, see this link:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=168112

I will quote Doherty from that thread:
"I am quite willing to acknowledge that Pseudo-Ocellus (as far as he goes) may well represent the basic essence of Middle Platonic views of the universe, and I have never said that any writer contradicts that essential view."

Doherty then goes on to say how, despite this, we can't rule out that Paul didn't think the way that Doherty claims he thought. And I would agree, as I always have! But what I can say, is that there is evidence AGAINST his view, and it is up to him to show evidence FOR his view.

I have said that?

When Theophilus wrote of "birds flying in the firmament", then IMHO that is evidence for how people thought in that day. Similarly when Tertullian and others talk about demon spirits flying in the clouds and the mountains.

All I am doing is going with the evidence, focusing on your claims.

C'mon, do you really think I've claimed that "nothing goes on of a spiritual nature below the moon that is not on earth itself"? Does that even sound like something that I've claimed? I've said that there is no separate "mythical sublunar realm", no alternate reality in which the myths took place.

I think it was GA Wells himself who wrote on this that your analysis would seem to then imply that a crucifixion on earth took place... But I have no problem with the envying in the firmament is bein compared to envying on earth. AoI itself earlier refers to how priests and laity on earth envy each other.

But AoI has been done to death, by me and others who have had problems with Doherty's interpretation. I urge people to look through the threads on this board for more information.

And strangely enough, I've been able to find lots of evidence from pagan writings placing the activities and deaths on earth, within history. And that goes to my point: if there is evidence AGAINST a view, and no evidence FOR a view, then we need to proceed cautiously.

Very true, especially if people believe that you HAVE provided such specifics (not that I'm claiming you are deliberately misleading them).

If they are not indicators supporting your position (which they are not), then they won't do.

That's fine, but let's be perfectly clear about what evidence you DO have, and when you believe Paul shares or doesn't share all these details.

At least you are agreeing that I am trying to work from the available literature. That is my focus. What is the evidence for? What is the evidence against? Unfortunately few seem to look into what you have presented.

I truly admire you for putting forward a new idea on this subject. It shows courage, and can't be easy. It is certainly a lot easier for people like myself to nitpick and be critical. But your growing trend of misrepresenting those who question you is worrying. Still, I would urge mythicists here to question you if they have any concerns about your ideas (I think dog-on has indicated a concern about your use of sublunar realms) If your ideas hold together, AND they don't go against the evidence from the literature of the day, then that will come out. If, on the other hand, you start to accuse even your supporters of "literalism" and "failure of imagination" if they start to question the validity of your interpretations, then that in itself will be indicative of the strength of your case.

Rick Sumner

This is such a perfect description. Succinct, colorful and an easily grasped distinction without the paragraph of "significance of the event, not the event itself. . ." I usually add in.

I hope you don't mind if I steal it from you.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

gurugeorge

Hehe, cheers Rick, yw