TedM

I thought Amaleq was just kidding. The passage is by Josephus and while it is talking about a religious doctrine of others the meaning of the phrase is pretty clearly that of the flesh of humans on this earth, isn't it? Even if it isn't Josephus' own words, we can at least say that Paul isn't making up the term and that the term is clear. Even though Carrier concluded that "The actual phrase used, kata sarka, is indeed odd if it is supposed to emphasize an earthly sojourn.", the quote by Josephus seem to go against such a conclusion. Maybe the term isn't so odd after all.

ted

GakuseiDon

Actually, the questions from me and Muller related to "where is the evidence that the demons lived in a fleshy sublunary realm separate from our own?" But I think we both agree now, as per your quote from Carrier: the sublunary realm extended from the moon to the earth. There is no separate sublunary realm.

I apologise for that.

Sorry, but I can't remember that. Can you point me to that link, please?

Clivedurdle

Rubbish - the flesh here is not human!

First, this is recounting a doctrine a group held.

Second - what is this "most subtile air (aer?)".

This is a hypothesis of how the world works, an attempt to explain the interactions of bodies and souls and understand death.

Maybe we might get somewhere if we look seriously at these doctrines from an anthropoligical and psychological perspective. They should not be dismissed as psycho-babble but as authentic attempts to explain a very confusing world. It is alien. Let us seriously look at what they believed and how and why they drew the fantastic conclusions they did by misinterpreting and misunderstanding how things work.

BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning had a discussion of child abuse by an African pastor who has been telling his congregation that certain children are witches. An African woman commented "I am african, I believe in (African word for demons).

Most beliefs are due to rational minds getting the wrong end of the stick and jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Can we please look at this flesh stuff as truly alien and different, and attempt to work out why and how they came to the beliefs they did. Genesis has the sons of god having intercourse with women - the world view was probably of a completely interrelated universe. When did heaven become spiritual and separate from the earth?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/

Go to 8:10

GakuseiDon

Well, yes it is. That seems to be clear. I don't see how you can read this any other way. Can you explain why the "flesh" here is not human flesh?

It is a standard view of the time AFAICS. Corruptible flesh in the sublunar realm, the soul formed from air. On death, the airy soul is released from the bonds of flesh and by nature of its lightness mounts upwards, past the orbit of the moon and beyond.

It's literally air, the stuff we breathe.

There is a great book that Doherty also refers to:

Dillon, John. The Middle Platonists: 80 BC to AD 220.

Dillon outlines the views and cosmology of all the major Middle Platonists in the period. Very interesting and very useful for this discussion.

Ahab

Just a short comment here:
I'm sure you are correct that their views of what the essential nature of say air or flesh is are quite different than our modern concepts. But that doesn't mean they weren't actually referring to human flesh.
For instance, they didn't consider water to be made of H2O, but when they asked for a drink of water they were referring to the same liquid that comes out of our taps. Weren't they?.

Ted Hoffman

So, are you a mythicist in denial?
I understand.
Explaining the Silence

Gdon advances four explanations for the silence by second century Christian apologists on the historical details about Jesus. Before we look at them, let us review the setting under which these apologies were composed, for what and for who.

J. Tixeront, in A Handbook of Patrology, 1920 (available online at ECW), explains that apologists aimed at defending Christians against accusations brought against them, which included atheism, indolence and other calumnies. Their work was therefore both defensive and explanatory. Some of the apologies were presented as letters addressed to the emperor(s), while some were aimed directly at the public. The public constituted both the pagans and the Jews, and the apologies addressed each of these groups. Some apologies, like Epistle to Diognetus and Theophilus’ books were directed at individuals. Tixeront writes:

“Among the apologies against the Jews may be cited St. Justin's Dialogue with Trypho. In these apologies the expository and demonstrative character predominates. The Jews harbored many prejudices which had to be removed, and a spirit of hatred which had to be overcome; indeed, they were not the last to spread popular calumnies against the Christians and denounce them to the authorities. But in the writings addressed to them the Apologists are less intent on refuting their accusations than on convincing them of the divine mission of Jesus Christ and the truth of his religion. Consequently, their purpose was to demonstrate the messiahship of Our Lord and for this demonstration they use mostly the argument from the prophecies, their thorough knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures proving very useful for this purpose.�

With this introduction, let us now examine GDon’s explanations for the silence on the historical details about Jesus in the writings of Christian apologists

GDon argues:

1. The apologists were more concerned with stopping the persecutions against the Christians of the day than converting their audience: Many of the authors wrote to the Emperor of the day or the pagan public, as a plea for justice against the persecutions taking place, rather than as a vehicle for conversion. We can see this in the writings of HJers like Justin and Tertullian, as well as in Doherty's MJ writers like Minucius Felix.

GDon’s argument can be stated as follows: The historical details about Jesus’ life were only used by apologists for converting the audience. But the apologists were more concerned with stopping the persecutions against the Christians of the day than converting their audience; therefore the apologists did not mention historical details about Jesus’ life.

GDon has not demonstrated that the historical details about Jesus were only mentioned to audiences when the purpose was to convert them. As such, his argument is not valid. An example that disproves GDon's assumption is Theophilus’ To Autolycus, where the apologist denounces Paganism and extols Christianity in a work that is clearly designed to win converts. Yet, Theophilus fails to provide any historical details about Jesus in that work. He even defines the word “Christian� without mentioning Jesus! This example illustrates to us that the apologists did not use historical details about Jesus only to win converts. GDon’s explanation is therefore incorrect.

GDon’s second explanation for the silence is as follows:

2. The names 'Christian' and 'Christ' were hated: Tacitus, at the start of the 2nd C, refers to Christianity as 'a pernicious superstition', charged with the hatred of all mankind. Pliny the Younger punished those who continued to call themselves 'Christians'. Not a few of the apologists addressed letters to the Emperors of the day, decrying this injustice of persecution for ‘the sake of a name’. Tertullian in "Ad nationes" notes that Christians were being punished 'in the name of the founder' … and wondered what harm there was in a name, all the while refusing to give the name of the founder.

GDon is claiming here that because the name ‘Christ’ and ‘Christians’ were hated, apologists avoided them and they thereby ended up omitting the historical details about Jesus in that process.

First of all, ‘Christ’ is not a name but a title meaning ‘the anointed one’. Secondly, we have seen from writings like Didache and Athenagoras’ A Plea for The Christians that Christ is a title that is not preserved for Jesus of Nazareth alone. Thirdly, the claim that Christian apologists avoided the word ‘Christ’ and ‘Christians’ is proven false when we examine the following works which have the word ‘Christians’ appearing severally: Athenagoras’ A Plea for the Christians, The Octavius of Minucius Felix, Theophilus’ To Autolycus and Epistle to Diognetus.

Common sense also dictates that one would have no effective way of defending Christians without referring to them (the Christians) in the course of that defense. GDon’s second explanation is therefore also false.

GDon’s third explanation is:

3. Christianity was viewed as a barbarous new religion: Another charge by pagans against Christianity was that it was a new barbarous religion. New sects were regarded suspiciously by the Romans, and nearly all the apologists stressed Christianity's 'antiquity' via its Jewish roots, over its more recent origin. As Karen Armstrong points out in her book "The History of God", the Roman ethos was strictly conservative, and Christians were regarded with contempt as a sect of fanatics who had committed the cardinal sin of breaking with the parent faith. The apologists often referred to the ancient Hebrew prophets to try to show a continuation from ancient times.

First of all, this explanation assumes that the apologists directed their arguments at the Romans alone. This is incorrect because as Tixeront has explained above, some of the apologies were presented as letters addressed to the emperor(s) while some were aimed directly at the public, who comprised Jews and pagans. Secondly, Christianity is constructed upon the belief that the putative coming of Jesus Christ was a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. Based on this, we can still grant GDon’s proposition that “all the apologists stressed Christianity's 'antiquity' via its Jewish roots� without that proposition necessarily entailing omission of historical details about Jesus. Thus the apologists could still have stressed Christianity’s vaunted antiquity and link a historical Jesus to Jewish prophecies. Indeed, the claim of prophecy fulfillment would have portrayed Christianity as even more potent compared to pagan religions. As Tixeront writes above: “[The apologists’] purpose was to demonstrate the messiahship of [Jesus]�. To demonstrate this messiahship [to the Jewish audience], the apologists would therefore have quoted the Old Testament prophecies regarding the messiah. But the apologists fail to link Jesus of Nazareth to Jewish roots. This explanation therefore also fails to account for the silence.

GDon’s last explanation is as follows:

4. The writer adopted different approaches to different audiences. From the writers with multiple letters still extant we can see that they varied their approach to different audiences. It is noted that only Justin Martyr, for example, insists strongly on the theology of the Logos in his "Apology" to the pagans, but much less so in his "Dialogue with the Jew Tryphon". Tertullian’s “Apology� and “Ad nationes� were probably written in the same year, yet the “Apology� contains many direct references to a HJ, while “Ad nationes� has none.

This argument foils itself because by the same argument one would expect some of the apologists to mention historical details about a HJ. But before the year 180, Justin is the only major apologist who mentions historical details about a HJ. The silence that pervades the other apologetic works is so ‘loud’ that GDon himself has undertaken to explain the silence. And yet, in a befuddled sense, he is arguing that the audience was so varied that the silence was widespread. The alleged variability of the audience does not correspond with the silence, which contrawise, is not varied but pervasive. Thus GDon’s last attempt at an explanation also fails. Tertullian of course wrote beyond 180CE and is therefore outside the scope of our analysis.

Conclusion

We can see from the above that GDon, despite his earnest efforts, commits some significant errors in his attempts at explaining the silence on the historical details about Jesus while refuting Doherty’s evaluation of second century apologists. Some other errors GDon commits include treating Ignatius, Basilides, Heracleon and Polycarp as apologists. Plus, the section GDon addresses in Doherty’s book is titled Jesus in the Christian Apologists. GDon has no excuse to include Ignatius in his list, except perhaps to falsely amplify the extent of his “rebuttal� and purportedly “false� exclusions by Doherty. Going beyond the scope of Doherty’s argument by including Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria in his list is equally wrong and renders a huge chunk of GDon’s argument irrelevant. As GDon declares that Doherty has not examined all the literature of the period and announces that Doherty has “badly misrepresented� the literature, the situation is rich with irony. And Doherty correctly points out that “GDon has misread the overall picture�.

Here

Amaleq13

It was a genuine observation that I considered funny.

I think there has been a misunderstanding of what Carrier was actually arguing. He was not claiming that kata sarka MUST be understoood as referring to something other than literal flesh but that it CAN be understood otherwise and that Doherty supports that interpretation with OTHER EVIDENCE:

Based on the dictionary entry Jeffrey has provided, however, I do not understand how the translator obtained "bonds of the flesh" from kata sarka but I also don't see how it avoids a sense that the described "flesh" is not the true reality represented by the soul. IOW, what this passage suggests to me (and I only aspire to be considered a beginner in studying biblical Greek) is that this sect considered all as only an "appearance" temporarily taken on by the soul.

TedM

That's a better way of putting it than mine. I agree.


I agree that that is what he is saying.


Which is the orthodox view also--a soul temporarily in a body. The 'taking on' is consistent with incarnation into a human also. This could have happened elsewhere, in another realm which is unseen, but I dont 'see' the evidence for it in Paul nor the reference by Josephus.

ted

Clivedurdle

Irrelevant! They had a set of beliefs that there were four elements, there were myriads of spirits, that Adam was made out of clay and Eve out of his rib, that when you breathed your last breath your spirit lefty you - ie spirit and breath are the same - not just coterminus or sharing the same space.

If your assumptions about what life is, what death is, that demons are everywhere - remember Robert Hooke had not drawn a flea under a microscope - that the earth is the centre of the universe, you will draw radically different conclusions about it all.

I get the strong feeling there is a huge amount of reading back concepts that just were not there - like if demons dwelt in the air was heaven thought of as supernatural or just another place where god lived in the cosmos - when was the concept of supernatural invented?

I deliberately picked on most subtile aer because that leads to the conclusion it probably is not the same thing as we define as air - it sounds like it is in some form the bringer of life, - how exactly was living defined?

Ahab

So you say, yet I see nothing in your post that actually substantiates that.
The ancients obviously had different ideas about what constituted air or water. Yet they still breathed it and drank it. We don't have to share their concepts of what those elements were composed of to assume that when they said 'air' or 'water' or 'flesh' that they were referring to the same things we are.

I did the same for water. Obviously, they would not have defined water as being composed of H2O. That doesn't mean they couldn't refer to the same thing we do when we say:"The glass is full of water."