stephan huller

Yes and to show you how weird the formulation of Luke 23.29 is which you point out Charles there is show I once saw in Canada called 'Without Breasts There is No Paradise' that comes out of Latin America (a Columbian telenovela originally called Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Without...Is_No_Paradise

This is the NATURAL WAY of looking at breasts. The saying of Jesus always struck me as jarring. Just think about it. What is more sacred than 'mother's milk'? What is more blessed than the comfort a baby derives from sleeping resting on a pair of soft cushions almost 'designed' as pillows? What brings more joy that 'peak' a lover gets when he first sees his beloved's breasts as she walks naked before him.

The Colombians seem to have it right. Breasts are symbol of paradise. Even the idea of Abraham's bosom is related to this concept.

But ...

All this is CONDEMNED in that one statement of Jesus. It must derive from a tradition which 'cut off' things related to sexuality and procreation.

Clivedurdle

Very arguable that it has ever become normal! The wondrous varieties - I like 7th century daoist xianity - like the South American Catholic African mixes, southern Baptists, copts and Russian Orthodoxes and Quakers.

Clivedurdle

Mormon underpants may be a modern version of this.

Whitewashed walls, and whitegoods are definitely related to puritan traditions avoiding the multimedia experience of life.

Going back to Freud, thanatos and death cults?

charles

Everyone keeps thinking here about references in the canonical texts but Clement mentions a 'Gospel of the Egyptians' which a number of scholars have connected with Secret Mark. All the references reflect (to me at least) the presence of rituals which prevent sexual procreation:

Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. 9. 64.

Whence it is with reason that after the Word had told about the End, Salome saith: Until when shall men continue to die? (Now, the Scripture speaks of man in two senses, the one that is seen, and the soul: and again, of him that is in a state of salvation, and him that is not: and sin is called the death of the soul) and it is advisedly that the Lord makes an answer: So long as women bear children.

66. And why do not they who walk by anything rather than the true rule of the Gospel go on to quote the rest of that which was said to Salome: for when she had said, 'I have done well, then, in not bearing children?' (as if childbearing were not the right thing to accept) the Lord answers and says: Every plant eat thou, but that which hath bitterness eat not.

iii. 13. 92. When Salome inquired when the things concerning which she asked should be known, the Lord said: When ye have trampled on the garment of shame, and when the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female. In the first place, then, we have not this saying in the four Gospels that have been delivered to us, but in that according to the Egyptians.

(The so-called Second Epistle of Clement has this, in a slightly different form, c. xii. 2: For the Lord himself being asked by some one when his kingdom should come, said: When the two shall be one, and the outside (that which is without) as the inside (that which is within), and themale with the female neither male nor female.)

There are allusions to the saying in the Apocryphal Acts, see pp. 335, 429, 450.

iii. 6. 45. The Lord said to Salome when she inquired: How long shall death prevail? 'As long as ye women bera children', not because life is an ill, and the creation evil: but as showing the sequence of nature: for in all cases birth is followed by decay.

Excerpts from Theodotus, 67. And when the Saviour says to Salome that there shall be death as long as women bear children, he did not say it as abusing birth, for that is necessary for the salvation of believers.

Strom. iii. 9. 63. But those who set themselves against God's creation because of continence, which has a fair-sounding name, quote also those words which were spoken to Salome, of which I made mention before. They are contained, I think (or I take it) in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. For they say that 'the Savior himself said: I came to destroy the works of the female'. By female he means lust: by works, birth and decay.

Hippolytus against Heresies, v. 7. (The Naassenes) say that the soul is very hard to find and to perceive; for it does not continue in the same fashion or shape or in one emotion so that one can either describe it or comprehend its essence. And they have these various changes of the soul, set forth in the Gospel entitled according to the Egyptians.

Epiphanius, Heresy lxii. 2 (Sabellians). Their whole deceit (error) and the strength of it they draw from some apocryphal books, especially from what is called the Egyptian Gospel, to which some have given that name. For in it many suchlike things are recorded (or attributed) as from the person of the Saviour, said in a corner, purporting that he showed his disciples that the same person was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Doesn't it seem as Luke 23.29 is just the tip of the iceberg in the original gospel of the Egyptians? There seems to have been a lot more references that were taken out.

aa5874

But, Jesus was talking to Jewish people in gLuke 23. It was the Jewish people who were morons based on your interpretation.

Jesus was talking to Jewish people in gLuke 23. So it was the Jewish women who had their breasts lopped off and the Jewish men who had their penises severed based on your view.

stephan huller

Well guys, I can only speak from personal experience but I was more enamored with breasts when I was first going through puberty. It was a period where in popular culture it was 'the bigger the better.' But once I had more sex I tended to focus more on a woman's behind. I don't know why that is. There are some who argue that female apes signal other male apes by 'flashing ass' but I also think that there I had empirical evidence to suggest that women with a rounder behind were actually more sexual than women with flabby or non-existent posteriors.

Anyway, the point is that I am not sure that breasts are really a symbol of sexuality. They were in western culture for a while. But in the ancient world I would assume that such symbolism would be more connected with motherhood, child rearing, fertility.

That's why the connection between Luke 23:29 and the Gospel of the Egyptians material makes intuitive sense. The 'perfect men' as Clive calls them can't have sex because they were already emasculated and now the 'perfect women' remove their breasts to symbolize their rejection of child birth.

The only question I have is whether 'women' or 'woman' can any longer be associated exclusively with 'women after the flesh' - i.e. 'actual women.' Couldn't the emasculated men have also been called 'girls' or 'women' as we see in the Golden Ass.

stephan huller

AA,

Well that's a good question AA, what happened during the Roman reconquest of Jerusalem? What happened to Jewish prisoners of war and war captives were 'redeemed'? I don't know. The women are told by Jesus that there will come a time when women will think its blessed to be barren.

This is seems to indicate the usual raping that accompanies a conquest of a subject people or perhaps the accompanying killing and slaughter that those conquered women must have endured in 70 CE.

But the men - where the men emasculated? Josephus doesn't say anything about this? I don't even know where you would look this up. It is an interesting question - were Christian emasculation rituals originally connected with the fate of war captives 'redeemed' after the capture of Jerusalem?

I don't know, but it's worth investigating ...

maryhelena

Thank you, arnoldo, for bringing a little sense of reason to all this castration talk. Whether or not some christians took a literal view of certain words in the NT is irrelevant. For heavens sake - a literal interpretation of the gospel Jesus story is still very much in evidence - and there is no historical evidence to back up such a literal reading. That some misguided individuals decided for a ritual castration is mind-boggling in its senselessness. Endeavors to turn a theology/spirituality movement into a bizarre and farcical side-show is deplorable. Mutilation is as sick a phenomena today as it was back then. To suggest that such a practice was ever an acceptable part of christian belief is to bring ridicule and dishonor upon that movement. Sure, interpretation is part of the equation re seeking to understand the NT. However, any interpretation that results in the degradation of our human nature displays not insight, not wisdom, but irrationality in the extreme. We do a disservice to those NT writers were we to be so short-sighted in our interpretation of their words.

A basic 'principle' of intellectual ideas is that not all of our intellectual 'furniture' is suitable for our physical home. Not all ideas can be translated, transformed, into physical practices that enable our humanity to flourish. Philosophically, psychologically, we can be whatever takes our fancy - like the angels in heaven, sexless - but the real world we live in lives by a very different code. The reality code. Male and Female as the necessary categories by which human life exists and continues to flourish. To imagine that the NT writers were seeking to negate this 'law' - by encouraging ritual castration - is a terrible reflection of a distorted mind.

stephan huller

I see so once again we already 'know the truth' ahead of time and our duty is just to make the facts 'agree' with our presuppositions. The goddess speaks.

I bet you had never even come across one of these references which started the discussion (save for Origen) but again - with the faint glimmer of hope that you might actually CONSIDER NEW EVIDENCE before you arrive or reinforce your pre-existent beliefs on a subject here is that list of sources related to the cockless ideal that started this discussion:

1. Jesus (Tertullian Monogamy 5. 6)
2. St. Mark (Philosophumena, VII, xxx) finger = figurative reference to the male member in all ancient languages
3. St. Paul (Tertullian Monogamy 3)
4. St John (Tertullian Monogamy 17 ‘spado’; Jerome vol. vii. p. 655 ‘eunuchus’; cf. Leucius Acts of John)
5. All the disciples except Peter "Petrum solum invenio maritum, per socrum; monogamum praesumo, per Ecclesiam, quae super illum aedificata, omnem gradum ordinis sui de monogamis erat collocatura. Caeteros cum maritos non invenio; aut spadones intelligam necesse est, aut continentes." (De Monogamia 8.4)
6. 'Marcion' and the Marcionite priesthood - "more ill-conducted also is Marcion than the wild beasts of that barbarous land: for is any beaver (Lat. castor) more self-castrating than this man who has abolished
marriage?" (Tert Against Marcion 1.1); "he [Marcion] contracts no marriages, nor recognizes them when contracted, refuses baptism except to the celibate or the eunuch, keeping it back until death or divorce. How then can you call his Christ a bridegroom? This title belongs to him who has joined together male and female, not to one who has put them asunder." (Tert Against Marcion 4. 11) "an outrageous thing, if that god is going to make us sons to himself, who by depriving us of matrimony has made it impossible for us to get sons for ourselves. How can he promote his own to that title which he has already abolished ? I cannot become the son of a eunuch, especially when I have for Father the same one whom all things have. For just as he who is the Creator of the universe is the Father of all things, so he who is the creator of no substance is but a eunuch. Even if the Creator had not conjoined the male and the female, even if he had not granted offspring to all living creatures whatsoever, I was in this relation to him before there was paradise, before there was sin, before the expulsion, before the two became one" (ibid 4.17); "among that god's adherents no flesh is baptized except it be virgin or widowed or unmarried, or has purchased baptism by divorce: as though even eunuch's flesh was born of anything but marital intercourse" (Tert Against Marcion 1.29); "can anyone indeed be called abstinent when deprived of that which he is to abstain from? Is there any temperance in eating and drinking during famine? Or any putting away of ambition in poverty? Or any bridling of passion in castration?" (ibid); "But before I come to the interpretation of this verse (Matt 19:12), it has yet to be said that Marcion, if he had acted with a little consistency, when he prohibited allegorical interpretations of the scripture, would have rejected these verses too as having not been said by the Savior; he would have had to consider that one would either have to accept (if one says that the Savior said this) that the one who has become a believer should dare to subject himself obediently to such things, or else, if it is not right to risk something like that, because it gives a bad reputation to the Word, one would not be able to believe that these words come from the Savior unless they could be interpreted allegorically."(Origen Commentary on Matthew 15.3)
7. the Egyptian contemporaries of the unnamed Alexandrian in Justin's report (Justin I Apol. 29) "And that you may understand that promiscuous intercourse is not one of our mysteries, one of our number a short time ago presented to Felix the governor in Alexandria a petition, craving that permission might be given to a surgeon to make him an eunuch. For the surgeons there said that they were forbidden to do this without the permission of the governor. And when Felix absolutely refused to sign such a permission, the youth remained single, and was satisfied with his own approving conscience, and the approval of those who thought as he did."
8. Valentinus (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata iii.13-14) and presumably many Valentinians
9. Basilides and the Basilidians. "Reciting the views of different heretics on Marriage, Clement (Strom. iii. 508 ff.) mentions first its approval by the Valentinians, and then gives specimens of the teaching of Basilides (οἱ ἀπὸ Β.) and his son Isidore, by way of rebuke to the immorality of the later Basilidians, before proceeding to the sects which favoured licence, and to those which treated marriage as unholy. He first reports the exposition of Matt. xix. 11 f. (or a similar evangelic passage), in which there is nothing specially to note except the interpretation of the last class of eunuchs as those who remain in celibacy to avoid the distracting cares of providing a livelihood. He goes on to the paraphrase of I. Cor. vii. 9, interposing in the midst an illustrative sentence from Isidore, and transcribes the language used about the class above mentioned. "But suppose a young man either poor or (?) depressed [κατηφής seems at least less unlikely than κατωφερής], and in accordance with the word [in the Gospel] unwilling to marry, let him not separate from his brother; let him say 'I have entered into the holy place [τὰ ἅγια, probably the communion of the church], nothing can befall me'; but if he have a suspicion [? self-distrust, ὑπονοίαν ἔχῃ], let him say, 'Brother, lay thy hand on me, that I may sin not,' and he shall receive help both to mind and to senses (νοητὴν καὶ αἰσθητήν); let him only have the will to carry out completely what is good, and he shall succeed. But sometimes we say with the lips, 'We will not sin,' while our thoughts are turned towards sinning: such an one abstains by reason of fear from doing what he wills, lest the punishment be reckoned to his account. But the estate of mankind has only certain things at once necessary and natural, clothing being necessary and natural, but τὸ τῶν ἀφροδισίων natural, yet not necessary" [Wace, Dictionary of Christian Biography p. 214]
10. Athenagoras of Alexandria who calls the unmarried state eunouchía, and the unmarried man eunuoûchos (Suppl. 33-34)
11. Julius Cassianus (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata iii.13-14)
12. Montanus (Jerome Epist. 41.4 describes Montanus as “a eunuch and half-man” abscisum et semiuirim; See Greville Freeman, "Montanism and the Pagan Cults of Phrygia," Dominican Studies 3 ( 1950) : 297-3 16; Benko, Virgin Goddess chapter 4, Gorec “Cultural Bases of Montanism”
13. Hyacinthus described by Hippolytus (Philosophumena 5.7) 'a presbyter, though an eunuch rather advanced in life.' He was a trusted agent of Marcia, the official concubine of the Emperor Commodus. I suspect he came over from Alexandria.
14. Marcus Aurelius Prosenes from procurator of the wine-cellar under Commodus to chief chamberlain of Septimius Severus. His continued - and unmolested - presence in the Imperial court is a clear sign that the persecution of Christians is very important to understand that members of the officially sanctioned Church were unaffected by the trials in Egypt.
15. Carpophorus identified as "from the household of the Emperor" (Hipp. Ref. 9.12) involved in the intrigue with Hyacinthus to free the future Pope Callixtus.(not EXPLICITLY identified as a eunuch)
16. Pope Demetrius of Alexandria Origen's political master and described by Severus of Al'Ashmunein as a eunuch from some lost source.
17. Origen of Alexandria
18. Proculus Toracion Christian who healed Septimius Severus and stayed on his household until his death. May be the same as the Proclus the Montanist who was also in the company of Severus and friendly with Caracalla (not EXPLICITLY identified as a eunuch)
19. The eunuchs of the court of the Emperor Diocletian (after the anti-Christian edict of 303 CE “shortly after, a fire broke out in the palace and suspicion fell upon the Christians, notably upon the palace eunuchs ... the eunuchs of his household, before so trusted, Dorotheus, Gorgonius, Petrus, were put to death.”[Wace, Dictionary p. 446]

And against all this that I present here 'we know that there were no real castration rituals in earliest Christianity' because we inherited this idea from ancestors. Nothing more, nothing less. But then again you must be right ...

aa5874

But, you suppose to know Jewish history.

Before the Fall of the Temple did Jewish women have their breasts lopped off to make them barren?

Now, once a woman is know to be Barren cutting off her breast is completely Useless.

And, further the removal of a woman's breasts do NOT make the woman Barren.

Your convolution is ENDLESS.

You have provided another convolution.