andrewcriddle

This post is something I've been thinking about trying to write for some time and the recent revival of the thread Open Challenge: Rebuttal to Doherty has made me attempt it.

I think that the use of Platonic concepts by Doherty and others may involve the blurring of at least three different issues, and I'm going to try and explain what I mean and why I think so.

Just to clarify; this post is not concerned with how far the details of early Christian writings support or oppose interpreatation in some 'spiritual sense', nor is it about 'heavenly worlds in Ancient thought as a whole. It is an attempt to clarify how 'heavenly worlds' were used in more or less orthodox Platonism in the Early Christian period.

I think that there are three separate issues the allegorical, the psychic and the gnostic use of 'heavenly worlds' concepts.

a/ the allegorical. In Hellenistic and later thought lurid and/or offensive myths are reinterpreted in a more suitable edifying enlightened etc sense. Sometimes, particularly when carried out by Platonists, this reinterpretation resulted in the myth being referred to events in a 'heavenly world'.

A standard example is Isis and Osiris by Plutarch. In which after examining several edifying reinterpretation of the lurid original Plutarch finally prefers an interpretation in the 'heavenly world' in which Osiris is the Creator/Demiurge, Isis is matter, the body of Osiris is the works of the Demiurge in the material world, Typhon/Set is the active evil spiritual principle of chaos and disorder, and the death and dismemberment of Osiris's body represents the way in which order, structure and design in the material world is continually eroded by the forces of chaos and disorder.

There are IMO at least two problems about using this sort of material to argue that Middle Platonists regarded stories about dying gods as referring to death in a heavenly world. Firstly 'Isis and Osiris' taken as a whole primarily demonstrates how a really determined allegorist can make almost anything mean almost anything, it is not evidence for how such narratives would be initially understood. Secondly one of Plutarch's concerns is to avoid any real death of Osiris whether on earth or in heaven. His interpretation gives us a real seriously intended divine Osiris. But this Osiris does not die in anything but the most metaphorical sense, his works within the sensible world are eroded by the forces of chaos but he himself remains untouched.

b/ the psychic . In Middle Platonism, the soul after departing from the body at death lingers in the realm of the visible heavens, usually between earth and moon, either because the soul (as distinct from the mind) is intrinsically corporeal, or becuse it posesses (at least initially) some form of astral body. The human soul after death shares this realm with souls yet to enter bodies and daimons or demigods, powerful souls that will never enter material bodies. This realm is not an archetypal version of life on Earth although the souls within it, freed from the material world can perceive much more easily the archetypal forms than can people on earth. (The above account is somewhat vague because of the variability of views among Middle Platonists on this issue)

Examples of this sort of teaching are PlutarchOn the Face in the Moon and the 10th Book of the Hermetica (listed as book 4 for some unknown reason in a bad online translation). Plutarch's 'Obsolescence of Oracles' is also relevant but apparently not online.

These sources are 2nd century CE (or possibly very late 1st century) but this type of thinking almost certainly goes back at least to Posidonius in the 1st century BCE. However, the doctrine varied between Platonists, and there may be a problem in giving too much weight to for example Plutarch's own idiosyncracies.

Souls in this realm can according to Plutarch die, this applies both to ex-humans and daimons. However, death here in an immaterial state is very different from death on earth and violent death appears excluded in principle for those free of the material world.

'Face in the Moon' In general this immaterial state is very different from life on Earth and not a plausible place to transfer narratives apparently occurring in the material world on Earth, particularly narratives involving violent death. (Plutarch does transfer, to this realm, things which are apparently happening in Hades, but this is a different issue.).

c/ the gnostic. In all forms of dogmatic Platonism there is a crucial distinction between the visible world and the intelligible forms or ideas which are the basis for structure in the visible world. In some Ancient Platonism this realm of ideas, ouside our space-time is composed not of abstract formulae nor of thoughts in the divine mind but of living active archetypal beings. In some versions these concrete exemplars include archetypes of evils as well as goods, and hence there could well be accounts of the death of a transcendent figure occurring in this type of intelligible world. (Although good examples are hard to find.)

However this is not a Middle Platonic way of thinking. n Middle Platonism the ideas are rather definitely thoughhts in the mind of the Creator not autonomous living active beings. See Philo of Alexandria On the Creation of the World

These concepts enter Platonism in the 2nd century CE as part of the transition from Middle Platonism to Neo-Platonism* probably under broadly defined 'gnostic' influence (ie including the Hermetica as 'gnostic'). The Poimandres (warning bad translation) may have an early version of these ideas.

Plotinus Enneads is relevant as he criticises these ideas and tries to provide an alternative, see particularly Ennead 5 tractate 5 'THAT THE INTELLECTUAL BEINGS ARE NOT OUTSIDE THE INTELLECTUAL-PRINCIPLE: AND ON THE NATURE OF THE GOOD.'

The absense of these ideas from Middle Platonism proper makes their relevance to the earliest forms of Christianity very doubtful.

In conclusion All of the ways in which 'heavenly worlds' are relevant to Ancient Platonism seem dubious candidates for the role assigned them by Doherty and others, but dubious in different ways. Blurring these different issues together does not reduce these problems, but does make them much less obvious.

Andrew Criddle

* [added per AC's next post]

andrewcriddle

This should have read

These concepts enter Platonism in the 2nd century CE as part of the transition from Middle Platonism to Neo-Platonism probably under broadly defined 'gnostic' influence (ie including the Hermetica as 'gnostic').

Andrew Criddle

GakuseiDon

I'm bumping this for comment, since it is relevent to the thread I just started here: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=141513