EarlDoherty

A quick response to Magdlyn. I am tight for time in the next couple of days. Perhaps things will be fleshed out later.

It was common in Platonic philosophy to regard the moon as the dividing point above which was "incorruptibility" and below which was "corruptibility". Plutarch and Julian the Apostate are two accessible sources.

I don't think anyone, at least pertinent to us, regarded the firmament as an impentrable dome. And the sun and stars were definitely above the firmament in their own spheres. However, Paul suggests that he doesn't follow this system exactly, since in 2 Cor. 12 he speaks of being caught up to the third heaven, and implies that this is the highest sphere. So Don may be irrelevant in looking for evidence that Paul placed Jesus' crucifixion below the moon. We don't know enough about his own cosmology. Thus, I have never insisted that Paul had to see the crucifixion below the moon, as Don claims. But if he did, which I don't rule out, then I have been arguing with him that the ancients' understanding of the sublunar realm would not rule this out, which is what he has been maintaining.

As for the words for "firmament" I'll get back to you, because the question also involves another language besides Greek.

Earl Doherty

Magdlyn

So, it never happened? It's fiction? I see it as a chink into a perception of the moral of a myth being a personal (or shared) psychological state. But did Plutarch think it was fiction, or fact? Did it happen on earth, in "heaven," or did it never actually happen at all~ the stories are just swirling around in our minds?

Jacob's Ladder. Jack's Beanstalk. Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Mts Sinai and Olympus. Adventures in places from the past, from a mythical realm far away and long ago (or are those the same place? :Cheeky: ), or a clumsy attempt at describing a psychological or even psychotic state? I am not trying to force a 21st century view on the ancient Platonists, but am trying to show why it all seems so murky~~ it seems they had a hard time describing what happened and where they thought it happened (not to mention, why).

Is not the fourth century too late to be relevant to this discussion of Paul and his Christ's crucifixion? I'm a big fan of 2nd and 3rd century gnosticism but have been avoiding going there in this case. Surely the 4th century views (neo- as opposed to mid-Platonic) of Julian and Sallustius are even less relevent.

Julian the Philosopher aka Apostate:

Is this the only "sublunar" solid evidence you've got? 4th century?

OTOH~

These documents either pre or postdate Paul more closely. So I find them relevant and solid evidence, for time at least, if not place.

ETA: in ref to this When we are speaking of "demons", we mean Greek daemons, ie: spiritual beings, and not necessarily as evil or "satanic" beings, correct? Daemons could mean naiads and dryads of water and trees, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong. They were confined to these places and were not "airy or fiery" free-floating beings that could be inhaled or directly cause disease. They also were not creatures of "visions," (at least not solely). They were "sublunar", part of a "host" ie: population. But unseen...

Magdlyn

Genesis 1
So, Paul, being Jewish~ would there be sun and stars set in his barrier type firmament (which separates enormous bodies of water from each other), along with the moon, or would he subscribe to the Greek idea Mr Doherty suggests, that the moon and stars revolved in separate spheres? And a more permeable, or even inhabitable firmament?

Another note: if the moon, and possibly sun and stars, are set in the firmament, and some people imagined birds flying in it, and people traveling in it, do we need a third category besides sub-lunar and supra-lunar? Equi-lunar?

gurugeorge

This all sorts itself out quite comfortably I think, if one thinks of the matter somewhat like this:

Most mythic ideas originate in "astral" visions, which is something like the irruption of dreamlike "events" and "beings" into waking reality. To someone having these kinds of visions, the entities seem very real, sort of hyper-real (rather in the way that some paintings can seem hyper-real). And they seem to talk to you and you can talk back to them and get what seem like rational answers. So myths generally start with somebody having a vision (prophets, seers, etc.) of some entity or entities - god(s), spirit(s), daemon(s), whatever - either doing some stuff or saying some stuff.

Now, because these visions come from the brain, are an ability of the brain, it's plausible to assume that they partake of deep "logical" structures in the brain, the very same structures we use to "make sense" of the universe around us. i.e. the events and sayings "make sense" because they are basically just analogues of normal products of the brain that make sense of things (e.g. propositional speech and thought). Hence they can be truly allegorical in Plutarch's sense.

Also, because these kinds of visions are like dream material overlaid on ordinary perception, the Seer may well believe either that they are events and doings that can easily impinge on the material world. In fact, they won't really see all that much difference between the visions and the material world. An experience of "ascension" (say, an OOBE, combined with "astral" visions) will be experienced pretty much as an ascension into the same sky they'd normally see from the ground.

So naturally, the categories - to the people who experience these kinds of things - will seem to us to be "fuzzy".

Now I said above that "most myths originate" this way. But not many people can have this kind of full-on experience. So people who don't have these experiences make sense of them in their own way - so then you have the "memetic" element of myth, where the stories are shared, passed around, amended, altered, according to philosophical ideas, enculturational human-trainings, theological axe grindings, etc.

But there's one other aspect: sometimes these kinds of visions can precipitate another kind of experience (that can also be had on its own, without any visionary adjunct), which is the "unitive" (oceanic, non-dual, etc.) mystical experience. On those occasions the myths will reflect that unitive experience too - and can be seen as allegory for the unitive experience.

So that's a rough sketch of how it's possible to view this matter. For god's sake don't ask me to reference it, as it's the fruit of a lifetime's thinking about it, and it's my ongoing thing, but it's based on personal experience, study of comparative religion, a bit of ancient history, all the usual suspects in terms of philosophy, combined with modern cognitive science. But I hope it gives food for thought.

The main points I'd like to emphasise are that the root of it is experiential, a strong seeming-real of things, and not just some vague wishy-washy daydreaming or philosophical speculation; and that this mix of dreamlike doings and sayings overlaid on ordinary perception results in the "fuzziness" of mythical categories (especially when you introduce the subsequent memetic rearranging of them as non-experientially-understood, mere symbolic counters).

It's a peculiar ability of the brain to "click" into another state (two distinct, but often related states actually - visionary and mystical). It's also not psychotic per. se. - although it may indeed shade into some kinds of mental illness (roughly, visionary experience can shade into schizophrenia, mystical experience into depersonalisation). But people who are quite sane and rational can have these kinds of experiences with a bit of practice and effort. If you think of people like Parmenides, Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus (all the Ps! ) in the West, or people from the East like the Tibetan Buddhist Tsonghkapa, who was an incredibly, prodigiously logical thinker, yet quite happily would do ritual magic to obtain visions of deities, and was thoroughly steeped in mystical experience, you'll see this isn't the province of a few gibbering loons - it's a long, ancient tradition engaged in by people who were often smart and respectable.

The other thing I've been banging on about recently on this board with regard to this is that I don't think study of texts alone is enough to really get to the bottom of what these people were really about: the experiential dimension has to be thoroughly understood, which means that ultimately a multi-disciplinary approach is needed, to include anthropology, cognitive science, brain science, psychology, as well as the standard disciplines like history, philology, archaeology, etc.

I know this angle of approach is likely to deeply annoy the good folks here who just love poring over the texts in an art-for-arts sake way, and who dread the thought of having to try and understand all sorts of other things when the textual study is hard enough in itself, but actually what I'm talking about is a collaborative effort for the future between specialists. In the same way that modern cognitive science brings together several disciplines from philosophy on one side to neurology on the other, taking in laboratory psychology on the way, a real study of religion of the past and present that gets to the truth of it and doesn't just skim the surface, confirm everyone's prejudices, and run in circles, will have to come in this sort of way.

EarlDoherty

Another quick post to Magdlyn:

I don't think it's either correct or sensible to say that philosophers like Plutarch regarded these things as not happening at all. That sort of thing would hardly make sense in the context of the mystery religions. How could anybody be saved by something that "never happened at all"?

Allegory is allegory for something else. That something else has to be regarded as real, in whatever form. The 4th century Sallustius said that the myths represented "timeless spiritual processes", but he didn't say that those spiritual processes never happened, or were non-existent.

And just because philosophers like Plutarch and Sallustius regarded the myths as allegory, does not mean that everyone else, particular non-philosophers, had the same opinion.

As for Julian being too late, I disagree. Naturally, Neoplatonism evolved into somewhat different tale on Platonic ideas than Middle Platonism, as did the latter over original Platonism. But that does not mean that there were not basic ideas that existed as a base throughout the entire period, constantly being refined (if that's the word for it). I appeal to Julian and Sallustius because we have so little surviving on anything to do with the myths and how they functioned in the layers of heaven throughout the whole period. But they can certainly serve as a pointer to the general thought of all of Platonism.

Earl Doherty

Gamera

Well, not just as mythical, even assuming your version. It takes place not in some unknown ungrouded future, but in the context of a society where certain practices (such as preaching and capital punishment) are meaningful, and practices have histories and institutions (they don't just arise out of nothing). Once you insert a mythic figure into history (as the Norse did with their royal genaeologies), the anxieties of being in history tend to devour the mythic elements.

Which begs the question of how you could ever tell whether you have an historical figure who has been mythologized, or a mythological figure who has been historicized.

Magdlyn

Sorry you are now so pressed for time.

It has been suggested the "mysteries" were a very dramatic theatrical event with "audience participation". It becomes "real" in the telling and experiencing. We've all been swept up in a play or movie, where it feels real to us, we get the adrenaline and the tears. We suspend disbelief. Some people even think the actor is the character. Actors get approached all the time by fans who think they really are their characters.

Right. The "spiritual processes" happen. But what is the nugget of the narrative? Where did he think it came from in the first place? I am guessing he thinks it came either a happening in history which was expanded (legend, or myth "accretion") or from a vision (hallucination)~ like Paul describes. Just as we have these 2 options when discussing the Christ story, right? So, we are still no closer to determining which one it is. There is not enough evidence either way, and we fall back on being agnostic to the question.

Goes without saying. There will always be simple (perhaps not all that bright) literalists. They will insist on reading the surface story, and the true gnosis is for the "elect."

Sure. But I thought this thread was discussing more specifically, Paul's views (of where Jesus was crucified) in the first decades of the century. World events, such as the destruction of the Temple and exile of the Jews from Jerusalem, and the expansion of the Roman empire, would've impacted spiritual thought by Julian's time, just as 2 world wars, Viet Nam, and air and space travel affected spiritual thought in the 20th century.

Freke and Gandy suggest that the idea of a spiritual messiah was created by Hellenized Jews who were despairing at ever having a military victory and sought instead a more mystical savior.

As gurugeorge said:

Yeah.

gurugeorge

If that were true then Catholic orthodoxy wouldn't have flourished.

But you see there's the thing, there is a kind of assymetry between the future and the past, because our natural expectation of things in the past is that they should leave traces. It's all very well having the cute time inversion to the past. The guys who came up with the idea were transfixed by the mystical and visionary aspect of it, and probably didn't really notice the gap much. But as the idea spreads, ordinary folks naturally start to wonder more about the details. Pretty soon people "fill in the gaps" and make up stories, using doctrinaire theology, imagination, midrash, novelistic inspiration, etc., etc. Sound familiar?

You can't, really, unless you have some kind of external (non-cultic) contemporary triangulatory evidence to pin down the existence of the man mythologised. But since, in the case of Christianity, there isn't any such evidence, and nor is there any unambiguous internal (cultic documentary) evidence of any connection between the "appearance" and a human being known to any of the visionaries in their recent past, the parsimonious explanation is "myth all the way down."

Amaleq13

The most obvious possibility is that the author wanted it to appear that Paul agreed with his own beliefs. One generally writes something as though someone else wrote it because one wishes that individual actually had.

Because Paul tells us that Jesus was obedient in allowing himself to be executed.

That it is what Paul tells us repeatedly is as obvious as the fact he does not write about Jesus living a unique life.

It doesn't imply it to anyone reading Paul without your presuppositional beliefs.

Yes, you are clearly quite fond of imputing your own beliefs to him.

I've yet to lose anything to you except in your own mind and nothing I said was "personal" but entirely about the clearly ad hoc nature of your defense. IOW, it is quite obvious that you did not gather the information you are using to defend your contention prior to making the contention.

I'm sure they already have. :wave:

Johnny Skeptic

Will you please tell us what God's plan is, and how you learned about it?