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Originally Posted by DCHindley Earl & Doug, I am still researching Earl's sublunar realm argument. It's taking a while to better familiarize myself with Plato's original cosmology (Timeaus, Phaedrus, Republic), and the subcategories of the Universal Soul, transmigration, the "void" (even without space, not the vacuum of outer space) above the heavens where the ideas exist. Many details of his understanding of the structure of the kosmos have to be inferred from stray comments, and some are inconsistent with one another.

As Doherty argues, "Jesus Christ" (which means "The Anointed Savior") was originally a heavenly being, whose atoning death took place at the hands of demonic beings in a supernatural realm halfway between heaven and earth, a sublunar sphere where he assumed a fleshly, quasi-human form...

... [Doherty's] theory actually entails that Jesus did undergo incarnation--just not on earth... his theory is entirely compatible with Jesus "becoming a man of flesh and blood," that is, in the sublunar sphere of heaven, since, as Doherty explains several times, he had to in order to die and fulfill the law (only flesh can die, and be subject to the law, and blood was necessary for atonement)...

As Plutarch describes their view, "the soul of Osiris is everlasting and imperishable, but Typhon oftentimes dismembers his body and causes it to disappear, and Isis wanders hither and yon in her search for it, and fits it together again," because his body is perishable and for that reason is "driven hither from the upper reaches" (373a-b). In other words, for these believers Osiris is "incarnated" in the sublunar heaven and actually dies and resurrects there, later ascending beyond to the imperishable heavens...

I am also uncertain as to how literally we should regard the early cultic interpretation of Christ’s death “in the sublunar realm at the hands of demon spirits,” although it is accurate to state this in principle. That is, how literally, how graphically (even if in spiritual fashion), did Mithraic devotees regard Mithras’ slaying of the bull? How literally the self-castration of Attis? I think we can’t know for sure. Was there a difference in the literalness of outlook between the philosophers and the average devotee-in-the-street? The former’s are the only thoughts on the matter to survive, and they usually tended to render things allegorically, from Plutarch to the 4th century Sallustius. Philo speaks of a “Heavenly Man” who served as the model for the earthly man, but does he envision him walking about on two legs, complete with human functions, in some spiritual equivalent to our workaday world? Not at all. Do our modern scientific minds have the ability to “think mythically” as the ancients did? I certainly can’t. On this whole question, then, I would simply fashion the claim in this way: that, as it was possible for the devotees of the mysteries to base their faith and salvation hopes on the ‘myths’ of their savior gods—who were not regarded as having performed those acts in identifiable historical time—it would seem to be the case that the earliest cultic Christians, like Paul, envisioned the myth of Christ Jesus in the same way. I do, however, argue that the placement of such myths, both pagan and Christian, was in this period located in the upper, heavenly world, following Platonic principles, rather than in a primordial or distant past on earth. The mythic Christ was indeed “spiritual” and not material. As Carrier points out, his “Incarnation” would have been to a heavenly equivalent of flesh and experience, not one on earth...
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(This must be distinguished from the category of references that may be “human-sounding” [blood, man, born of woman, etc.], which terms Carrier acknowledges can refer to the “sublunar incarnation” aspect of the savior god Jesus’ salvation activities, in keeping with the Platonic-style philosophy of the time, particularly where mythical salvation thinking was concerned.