S.C.Carlson

Amazon is also recommending Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (1992) by Rosalind Thomas, but I've never read that book either.

Stephen

gstafleu

Yes. Exactly. That is the crux of the matter.

It is easy to forget that we live in a very unusual situation these days: we actually have a very reliable way to find out how the world works and how to describe it. As a result, we now have very reliable explanations of how the world works. But that is very new, since the Renaissance, basically. In that sense "sanity" did indeed strike us humans sometime in that period.

In the old days people did simply not understand how the world worked, and explanations involving gods, demons, spirits and what have you were quite reasonable: there simply was nothing to contradict them. But now we know better, and hence people who seriously propose such explanations today are thought to be not quite sane. But that is because today they both should and could know better. This was not the case in ancient times.

"Hearing voices" was thus not a sign of insanity in those days. Just remember the propensity of the mind to give external metaphors for introspective events ("my inner eye saw...," "my inner ear heard..."). These days people are assumed to know that such voices are not "real," and that assumption is reasonable. In ancient times such an assumption was not reasonable, however.

There are some remnants of this situation in our current culture. AFAIK the DSM excludes religious beliefs as indications of a disorder in some cases, while it would be "natural" to call the behavior in question a disorder. That is because if people are brought up in a certain way, the belief system is so much part of their world that you cannot call it a disorder. Certainly, believing in a personal God is as much of a disorder as believing in a guardian angel, or in the tooth fairy. The difference is just that if people have been brought up from childhood with that belief, it just doesn't get you anywhere to describe it as a disorder.

So, back to the OP, thinking that he was being tormented by Satan and thinking that he was hearing Jesus speak to him, does not indicate Paul was insane. Not in those days. If we had someone making the same statements today, however, it would be safe to diagnose a disorder, even the religion-exception in the DSM does not get you out of that one.

Gerard Stafleu

Didymus

I don't see how Paul's madness would cause us to doubt the existence of an oral tradition about Jesus. There've been many oral traditions regarding fictional characters. But the "madman" aspect would suggest that the oral tradition didn't begin with an earthly Jesus, but with preacher Paul's fever dreams.

Ddms

Lógos Sokratikós

Those were immensely insane times.

I recommend Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels by Richard Carrier.

aa5874

So how do you explain John 10.20, some Jews thought Jesus was mad?

John 10.20 And how do you explain that Jesus the son of Ananus was declared a madman, as written by Josephus?

The ancients did not know as much as we do today, but they had some idea of what it means to be mad.

Or if they only guessed Jesus was mad, it turned out they were right, if the stories are true.

Now, when one reads the writings of Josephus, even though people were superstitious, I cannot find where he mentioned any personal experiences or encounters with angels, ghosts, or was healed miraculously, in fact when Josephus fell from his horse, he went to physician, and when he took his three acquintances from the crucifixion, he also took them to a physician.

It is my view that if Jesus did exist and said the words as recorded, the ancient Jews, as in John 10.20, would have truly declared Jesus a madman.

bacht

Right, John could have been re-working Mark 3:

Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat.

And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, "He is beside himself." v 19b-21

...

And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him.

And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you."

And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"

And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!

Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother." v 31-35

gstafleu

I didn't say that the ancients did not have a concept of madness. They did, and in a way it is the same as ours: a too significant deviation from the pattern established by the culture.

Yes, they did. But their practical criteria were not the same as ours. For them believing in gods and ghosts was quite normal, for us it is not. In both cases madness was defined as a deviation from the normal pattern, but when it comes to how the world works, our normal pattern is quite different from theirs, and thus our madness (in that respect) quite different from theirs.

Gerard Stafleu

Toto

Was epilepsy considered "madness" or being touched by the divine in the first century?

aa5874

But over four hundred years before the Jesus stories, Hippocrates claimed epilepsy, called the "Sacred Disease," had a natural cause.

Hippocrates on the "Sacred Disease" at about 400BCE, It is likely Jesus may have been called a MADMAN by the Jews and Greeks, he thought epilepsy was caused by demons, if the story is true. Those who followed the medical practices of Hippocrates would have laughed at Jesus with his madness.

The Dagda

Galen in the 4th century said Epilepsy was a disorder of the brain. 1000 years later European and Islamic scholars thought it was due to evil spirits. lol medicine eh?