GakuseiDon

I apologise for my pathological and vitriolic animosity toward mythicism and toward you in particular.

In light of your posts above, and to spare us all further pain, I will not be reviewing your Chapter 12. Thank you.

jdboy

Hell no don't stop. You've helped Earl correct a misleading statement. Writers need critics. Find another point to argue and make your argument.

EarlDoherty

Exactly. It is Don imposing the scientific literal mindset of moderns upon the first century, and when he--after pestering me to death--finds that I come up short in defining it according to his principles, or finding a clear description of such a thing in the record, he thinks this allows him to declare that nothing of the sort existed in ancient thought. We know that this is his strategy, it has been evident for years, but no matter how much we protest, he simply trudges on with the same straw-man repetition and demands.

Did Paul locate Christ's crucifixion below the moon? I don't know. Did he have the same concern for a stratiated analysis of the layers of heaven as the writer of the Ascension of Isaiah did? I don't know, though I doubt it. He relied on scripture, and if scripture said something which he took as revealing features and facets of his Christ's nature and activities, he ran with it. So did the writer of Hebrews, though he extrapolated from scripture in a rather different direction than did Paul, and he was more concerned with Platonic principles.

You know, Don is like one of the family's relatives who shows up on a regular basis and annoys everyone with the same old stories and complaints. But the family is not allowed to bar the door to him or sound off too nastily in response. In essence, we are stuck with him. Abe is another problem cousin. He visits too frequently while rarely contributing to the expenses of putting him up, and his stories are less imaginative (though sometimes dependent on Don's) and more boringly repetitive. I'm not sure what to make of our distant Australian relative who has shown up suddenly and raised the roof. Maybe he discovered that I had cut him out of my will, and he's arrived to declare me mentally incompetent.

Incidentally, none of you will be aware that Roo's diatribe on Amazon, more or less repeated here, against my writing style and other assorted features was originally submitted as a comment to Vridar on the last (or was it next-to-last?) installment in my Ehrman series, though he has expanded it somewhat since then. Neil Godfrey, who had him on moderation, looked it over and rejected it for publication, since he judged it too over the top, too personal an attack to be relevant to the topic, and essentially inaccurate or at least vastly exaggerated. (No one else but Roo has made anything like the scope of his complaint.) Because of that, Roo now directs an animosity toward Godfrey (see the Comments by both those gentlemen attached to his Amazon review) which is almost the equal of what he directs toward me.

I suppose every family has its quota of problem relatives.

Earl Doherty

Toto

Roo did give Doherty 4 out of 5 stars. And then he wrote some long turgid prose complaining about Doherty's prose . . . and then when the first comment pointed this out, he produced even more of the same sort of prose . . . .

Roo Bookaroo

GakuseiDon:


You are making a mistake. Letting yourself being intimidated and bullied by Doherty and Godfrey. The "pathological and vitriolic animosity" come from them and it is directed at you. You cannot allow yourself to internalize their animosity against you.
Their goal is to shut you up because you are an annoying Socratic gadfly and they can't stand the criticism.
There'd be more pain in your abandoning your idea than in going ahead with it.

So pick yourself together, collect your spirits, be a Mensch, as we say in New York, and show your stuff.
Do not give up, go out for a walk, cool down, and go ahead with the plan you conceived when you were of a calmer mood and had all your senses about.
If you don't, you will regret it later.

Do go ahead with your review of that ch. 12, debunk the funny concept of "The World of Myth".
(I can't help it, but this phrase always makes me chuckle and unfailingly reminds me of my visit to "The World of Sid and Marty Krofft" in Atlanta, when it was still open. It was the first indoors amusement park in the world. On top of a shopping center, if you can believe that.)

Read up about the Greek religion from professional historians: in Gilbert Murray for instance.
Check what old Edward Gibbon has to say about the "World of Myth".

You must have some of those historians' books on your shelves, for instance: Adrian Murdoch (on Julian), Charles Freeman, Henry Chadwick, Martin Goodman, Mary Beard (Religions of Rome), Michael Grant, Peter Brown, Ramsay MacMullen. Robert Louis Wilken, Ted Byfield, etc...

Don't let those two bullies frighten you. Those two are in cahoots. They just want you to disappear, you and your damn annoying comments. They think you're just another academic nudnick who's only good for dissecting minutiae.

Stand up for your convictions, and don't disappoint all those readers here who were counting on your review.
Sooner than later, the Doherty craze will be passé, and you are part of that wave. You are announcing THE END OF AN ILLUSION.
And that is what those two resent.

Remember Doherty's famous quote, the juggernaut has overswept its banks.
You are part of that juggernaut, one of its waves, or one of its wheels, whatever.

Remember the Harvard song: "Illegitimi non carborundum". It would be a crying shame if you simply gave up because they try to persecute you with their tongue-lashing.

Pull yourself together and just do it. Go ahead with your initial plan. Everybody will be thankful.
Athena, the Goddess of scholarship is watching you and supporting you. Just think about her for a minute or two, believe in her, and you'll feel your determination flowing back. Her owl is taking off to bring you inspiration and courage. Just follow her lead.

Horatio Parker

I don't call Proclus a Middle Platonist.

The sublunar realm of myth is under discussion here. Some of Proclus' work is online, so I posted it. I don't know where there is any Numenius online. If you know of some, please share.

EarlDoherty

For once, I am speechless.

Where is this guy coming from?

Earl Doherty

Sheshbazzar

I'm sure that you are painfully aware by now Earl, that this site attracts its fair share of fruitcakes with axes to grind.
Best you just persevere with presenting your material even if you have to swat at gnats from time to time.
We who have endured, have also learned how to ignore.

ApostateAbe

Very well. As promised, I will put the other topic behind us so we can examine the evidence for the belief in the "world of myth" among the ancient mystery cults. I'll focus on each point of evidence in Appendix 6 in The Jesus Puzzle one at a time, and I will then take a comprehensive view of the evidence after that. You started with a quote from Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, ch. 11 / 355B; Loeb edition, p.29).

"Therefore, Clea, whenever you hear the traditional tales which the Egyptians tell about the gods, their wanderings, dismemberments, and many experiences of this sort, you must remember what has been already said, and you must not think that any of these tales actually happened in the manner in which they are related."

As you correctly state, Plutarch took the Egyptian tales to be allegorical and non-historical. This provokes an important question, in my opinion: did the mystery cults believe that the events of their myths were both allegorical and took place in the world of myth? Each characteristic seems to exclude the other, but I suppose it is possible that they believed something that would seem contradictory to a modern thinker? Or am I not understanding you correctly at this point?

MrMacSon

So, why don't you do these things, Roo?