krosero

So we're coming to some agreements, but note that I'm not offering any specific "rule" that the ancients followed in their thoughts. I don't know enough to try. I do believe they had their common sense. Common sense is all I'm working with, at least on this point. What I mean is laid out more exactly in post #44.

Amaleq13

I'm not saying you are. I'm saying we can do nothing but speculate without specificity on the part of the believers. This holds true for your questions as much as it does Doherty's thesis.

How far can common sense take you if you don't know what is meant by somehow corporeal? I think Doherty assumes some degree of corporeality because of the crucifixion but I don't think he can get more specific than that.

krosero

A crucifixion in the air is the premise I've been working with, and like you, I think such a crucifixion necessarily follows from what Doherty has said. The 3-level universe you describe is fascinating and just what I would have expected the ancients to believe, from the little I know.

The point about demons resting in mountains is interesting. I noted earlier that birds, clearly material things, inhabited the sublunar air and touched the earth -- quite a different picture from Doherty's in which the air is treated as if it were another dimension. I mentioned the falling of a rock from space, and there were other things, too, which traveled between earth and the heavens: the ancients would have known that clouds turned into rain. And of course, there were mountaintops.

From the ground these peaks would seem to penetrate into the lower heaven, and perhaps even to belong to it. Demons, you say, could rest in them. Moses ascended to the mountaintop to meet God, and a meeting with divine power seems to have occurred atop a mountain at the Transfiguration. With all this, how can the ancients have regarded the air as a separate dimension?

If the ancients regarded the air as a place where the transitory and the eternal meet, and Jewish belief looked particularly to mountaintops as places to meet God, I can imagine some of Paul's audience locating the Last Supper, crucifixion and burial on mountaintops. There these things would make more sense, and would seem closer to the followers of Christ, than in the mere air. Christ could find refuge on a mountain from the demons, speak to someone at his last supper, and experience both crucifixion and burial. But the corporeality of the events would seem all the more pronounced in that case, for mountaintops were thought of as directly connected by solid rock to the world of humans; and Christ could definitely be speaking to a human being like Moses when he said "Do this in remembrance of me." Actually all of Paul's cryptic HJ statements could take place on a mountain (so long as Christ, demons, and one disciple are provided); and all the silences about a life such as it might be lived in human civilization would be explained.

That's what would happen if any significant number of people hearing Paul's (mythicist) message started wondering how much of it could have happened on mountaintops. And I think they would have wondered it. Both pagans and Jews thought of mountaintops as belonging to the realm between the transitory and the eternal. Jews in particular looked to mountaintops to find God. If Paul told people that Christ ate, suffered crucifixion on a cross, and was buried in the lower air (besides all of his corporeal-sounding references to blood and flesh), would not anyone in his audience wonder whether these events did not make more physical and theological sense on a mountaintop? God was seen by Moses on the mountaintop. Why could God's son not be seen by a disciple there?

Of course, there's nothing in Paul or the NT about Christ's story taking place on mountains. No sign of a debate about mountains, or about the heavens. No sign that Paul was concerned with the difference between higher and lower heavens; no reflections on why it was wise for God and Christ to enact the salvation drama one step above humanity's realm, the realm in which Paul himself showed relatively little detailed interest because for him it was the realm of fallenness.

And there are more silences: if "crucifixion in the earth" is not mentioned, neither is "crucifixion in the firmament." No sign that Paul wanted to say, "Unlike a crucifixion in our world, Corinthians, this was a higher kind of crucifixion, which accomplished what no earthly cross could have done."

In the Ephesians quote about the "power of the air": no mention is made that this power, specifically, crucified the Lord. Etcetera.

GakuseiDon

I will start a new thread on this, as suggested by Amaleq. I have no doubt that Doherty is implying a cosmology different from what Paul and other early Christians believed. The "sublunar realm" was literally the region between the earth and the moon, i.e. the air.

I'll try to find more on the demons, but the one that comes to mind is this view by Tatian:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...n-address.html
Such are the demons; these are they who laid down the doctrine of Fate. Their fundamental principle was the placing of animals in the heavens. For the creeping things on the earth, and those that swim in the waters, and the quadrupeds on the mountains, with which they lived when expelled from heaven,--these they dignified with celestial honour, in order that they might themselves be thought to remain in heaven

I think that it might make sense, but I can't see any evidence that this was the case. I haven't found anything to suggest that mountain-tops were necessarily more holy for being closer to the firmament, though I haven't found anything else against it, either. I didn't mean to emphasis a link between demons and mountains, and I can't see how Christ could have found refuge on a mountain from the demons, since the demons existed in the air and presumably in mountains and elsewhere.

Yep, quite the opposite, actually. Matter was transitory and impermanent, so couldn't ascend into heaven, where only incorruptible and unchanging things can live. Only a 'spirit body' could go to heaven. Thus the physical body had to be changed into a spiritual body before it could ascend through the air into the heavens beyond the orbit of the moon. These weren't separate dimensions, but an actual physical continuity, from the earth, to the air (the sublunar realm where demons and spirits literally existed - not a separate dimension!), and finally beyond the firmanent into the seven levels of heaven.

Yep. Crucifixion and burial could not take place in the sublunar realm. How can someone be crucified and buried in air???

Anyway, I'll start a new thread shortly, called "Paul, Plutarch and the Buffyverse" which will go into more details.

andrewcriddle

Not necessarily. The Greek translation is one possible interpretation of the Hebrew. Rabbinic tradition from the 2nd century CE onwards imterpreted it differently. As meaning that it is blasphemers who are hung.

Sanhedrin 6:4 explaining Deuteronomy 21:23 says Qumran texts may support the rabbinic interpretation but this is disputed.

IMO it is quite possible that a 1st century CE Jew would have interpreted the Hebrew form of the passage as Paul does rather than in the Rabbinic way.

Andrew Criddle

ichabod crane

Well OK, I won't waste your time anymore. I stand absolutely by my criticisms, and I don't think you understand them. You stand by your criticism and think I don't understand you. OK, then, we'll agree to disagree, and see you later.

krosero

For clarification: earlier I had spoken about how little sense it made to speak of Christ, in the open air, having a meal and speaking to someone, since the air provides no refuge. A mountain could provide very temporary refuge, as well as a place to stake a cross and bury a man. Small points, perhaps, especially since we're dealing with speculations.

Your phrase, "physical continuity", is a useful description, I think. It must have been a continuum between earth and the firmament: birds, rain and mountains, all physical things belonging to the history of the material world, would ensure that a continuum was perceived, since all of them penetrated into the firmament (as could a human being sitting atop a mountain).

Looking forward to that.

Amaleq13

I understand your criticisms but they are clearly of a position I do not hold. I think I've been pretty explicit in describing my actual position in contrast with the one you criticize. This is certainly not a situation of agreeing to disagree about interpretation or something. Your criticisms are based on statements I have not made and positions I do not hold. This is a fact you can either accept or ignore but it is not a question of subjective judgment. Anyone capable of reading through our exchange can see the evidence. I have corrected every one of your misunderstandings of my position with a statement either identifying my actual position or explaining how my position differs.

It is absurd for you to suggest we agree to disagree about what my position is. You either understand it or you do not. You apparently do not and I'm not sure I can be any more clear than I have been.