Horatio Parker

The organization of the canon was influenced by the practices of the Greek philosophical schools.

Celsus has a point.

If Jesus is the mythic Christian equivalent of the Platonic Form of the Good, the totality of intelligibility of the Good Itself. The Form of the Good also being called the First Son of God.

Paul, Colossians 1:15: He's on the right track, but it's hardly Plotinus.

sotto voce

What euphemism, what kindness. These dudes did not study heresy, they were heretics. First rank heretics. Egregious heretics. You show me an 'early father', I'll show you a johnny-come-lately, under cover, imperial stooge.

Close, but let's rephrase. We are therefore looking at more pseudo-Christian historical bullshit.

"More?" I hear you cry. Yes, indeed. Even in the NT we read of bovine by-products already available. 'Jesus was never here.' 'The dead are not raised.' 'Resurrection has already taken place.'

'You must be circumcised.' Humanism, not christ-ism.

So there were bovines aplenty— shepherds to feed 'only themselves'... teachers to 'secretly introduce destructive heresies'... 'false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ'. 'Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth.' Hymenaeus and Philetus, whose heresy 'spread like gangrene'.

'Diotrephes, who loves to be first'... and there's the main clue. Diotrephes represents 'early fathers', and more since. Christianity presented 'the offence of the cross'. Diotrephes resented that offence, so exalted himself, to oppose it. Humanism, not christ-ism. Exaltation; concomitant heresy.

So what was more natural than humanist Plato presented as a proto-Christian, to ease the minds of pagans faced with the new faith? Justin, Clement and Augustine were early syncretists, because this new faith, unlike others, would not wither and die. Plato, Socrates and the Early and Middle Stoics must have been influenced to some degree by the diaspora, with its Scripture; but they were certainly not proselytes, of which there were many. One cannot of course predict what they would have personally made of Paul in the Areopagus— but they certainly could not have smoothly absorbed him into their philosophies. Not both-and, but either-or.

Elijah

They can, we just first have to establish what ideas are coming from Homer and poets, and which ideas are coming from philosophers. The idea of self sacrifice as nobility may be found in many places but the idea of not fearing death as a philosophical point comes from Plato's work. There is no need to go to a war-hero to find the source of the idea of facing your death as noble.

True, but one of the most famous stories and figures of the time was the trial of Socrates. Now maybe the author of the Gospel is telling a story in the fashion of the poets about a God represented anthropomorphically walking around in a narrative, or he could be presenting a story about the ideal kind of king, from the Greek philosophers' perspective. It is possible that somebody combined the ideas into a story about a god walking around who was also the philosopher king, but they would then be using the writing method criticized by philosophers for centuries in the process.

Elijah

And every Greek who was educated knew Plato and rejected Homer's representations of the Gods.

Horatio Parker

This is the value of the MJ movement. If the Gospels are treated as literature, these connections and influences can be examined and better understood.

What "needs"? Because there was no need, according to you, to refer to Achilles or Odysseus than they didn't?

And again, I don't see what's to prevent an author from liking(and using) both the Phaedo and Homer.

I agree that Socrates, through the "natural man" idea of the Cynics, was a more influential figure in the development of Christianity than the Homeric heroes. But it doesn't necessarily follow that there was no influence.

mountainman

If we treat the NT as literature and not a "Humorless Holy Writ" then we see the epic story of the predicted Odyssean Second Coming, now in the 21st century reduced to a bumper-sticker format: "Jesus is Coming Back! Quick! Look busy !!"

The Greeks were free to, and freely rejected all gods as authorities. The Greeks laughed at their gods and their gods laughed at them. The essence of the Greek intellectual tradition was that "Socrates critical questioning is not a menace to the state religious cults."



The Romans OTOH were extremely serious - GRAVITAS - about everything.

The Roman Character


"'Weight' was the quality they most respected;
'Gravitas' was the typical Roman virtue.
By 'gravitas' they meant
the type of personality that must be taken seriously;
they were serious men themselves and they demanded
that they should be treated with respect."

--- The Roman Character, SPQR; Kennedy & White (1944)

Hence the value of the Flavian hypothesis - a Roman influence behind the authorship of the canonical NT.

sotto voce

The character of criminals, as ever.


:realitycheck:

Elijah

There is no ideological contribution, that I see, that is needed to explain the story in the Gospels. Neither Achilles or Odysseus are going to help you understand what the guy is doing up on the cross, so instead have the potential to cause someone to misunderstand the point of the Gospels because they aren’t looking in the right place for the influence.
Because they are in conflict with one another. For the philosophically minded individual “ there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” and they had the opinion ,“we are well aware that poetry being such as we have described is not to be regarded seriously as attaining to the truth” Republic
What is the influence that you think is coming from Homer that is necessary to build the Christian ideology/story?

Horatio Parker

Because *you* don't see them doesn't mean they're not there. The Gospels were written for an ancient audience. A&O were figures they understood and were familiar with.
I think you've only demonstrated that A&O have no spiritual meaning for you.

Please show me any Christians with an awareness of the Republic's attitude toward poetry.

Besides, the subject of poetry in the Republic is a complicated one. My favorite theory is that poetry in the sense the Republic is concerned with was constructed in order to facilitate memorization. We're talking about times when vital public records were kept orally, when there were no written records to rely on. People had to memorize regardless of whether or not they understood what they memorized. This is the practice that Plato inveighed against. You can't be in a state of being without contemplating, and you can't contemplate if you're thoughtlessly regurgitating data. Dialectic requires awareness.

What I consider necessary is irrelevant. What Mark evidently considered necessary was to show that Jesus was greater than the Homeric heroes.

Elijah

Sure, but unless somebody can show some then there is no reason to believe that A&O had any influence on the story of Jesus.
Demonstrate the spiritual meaning anyone had around the time of Jesus, so that we can determine if they could of had an influence on the story.

” How, then, does Plato blame Homer for saying that the gods are not inflexible”

“Whom, then, you men of Greece, do you call your teachers of religion? The poets? It will do your cause no good to say so to men who know the poets; for they know how very ridiculous a theogony they have composed—as we can learn from Homer, your most distinguished and prince of poets.” Justin, Hortatory Address to the Greeks


“Let poetry also approach to us (for philosophy alone will not suffice): poetry which is wholly occupied with falsehood— which scarcely will make confession of the truth, but will rather own to God its deviations into fable.”

“To me, therefore, that Thracian Orpheus, that Theban, and that Methymnæan,— men, and yet unworthy of the name,— seem to have been deceivers, who, under the pretence of poetry corrupting human life, possessed by a spirit of artful sorcery for purposes of destruction, celebrating crimes in their orgies, and making human woes the materials of religious worship, were the first to entice men to idols; nay, to build up the stupidity of the nations with blocks of wood and stone,— that is, statues and images,— subjecting to the yoke of extremest bondage the truly noble freedom of those who lived as free citizens under heaven by their songs and incantations.” Clement, Exhortation of the Heathen

I think Plato’s attitude towards the poets was common knowledge, even to those who weren’t educated on the subject.
I think the main issue was, as Justin pointed out, about the gods being constant or not.

And by greater than Homeric heroes, did the writer intend to show a platonic philosopher king? Maybe fulfilling the role of an expected Jewish king who appears to be working towards establishing Plato’s actual republic on Earth?