Ted Hoffman

Tatian in Address 20 says that demons are at "a more excellent order of things than exists here now." And he says in Address 15 that "none of the demons posess flesh: their structure is spiritual, like that of fire or air. And only by those whom the spirit of God dwells in and fortifies are the bodies of the demons easily seen..."
This means that, in general (at least to some), demons were not of this world and that is why magicians and witches had to "bind" them for them to be involved in our activities. Or they (demons) could choose to posess people and use them. Or they could reincarnate. Or they could appear to people in visions or as apparitions. Those are the mechanisms through which demons could be involved in mankinds activities on earth.
You can nitpick and talk about the aer if you like but my statement about the order of occupation is still correct: Spiritual beings (gods, demons etc) occupied the upper, incorruptible layers and mankind occupied the lower, corruptible layers (earth).
see AoI Jesus crosses the heavens while incarnating in different forms to disguise himself from the different occupiers.
I can only sympathize.
If we can have war and sacrifice above the earth (Revelation 12:7-9, AoI, Hebrew 9:24 etc) we can have death above the earth. Inanna was not killed on earth (feel free to argue that the nether world was earth). Point being, killing does not have to be on earth.

Solo

Yeah, maybe it's not a particularly good analogy, besides it should have been 'conceptual tools' not 'cognitive tools'. I was thinking 'cognitive separation' and abstract concepts available in a particular historical period and locale.

Jiri

GakuseiDon

It's not nitpicking. Talking about demons existing in the "incorruptible" layers, e.g. higher heavens, in a "Middle Platonic" cosmos is simply wrong. (IIRC Enoch has them there, but they are there to be tortured by good spirits. Note that Enoch isn't "Middle Platonic")

Perhaps then "incarnate" isn't the best word to use, given that it suggests taking on an earthly (fleshly) body. But yes, in AoI, Jesus takes on the form of the occupants in each level.

Sure, I suppose it is possible. I'm not aware of any references to violent death in the sublunar realm above the earth, though. Anyway, my point is that it wasn't unusual for Satan to be said to be the cause of misfortune on earth.

Solo

Ted, I've joined this thread to make some points to Gamera. You responded to me making some points which I thought were off the subject but worth exploring, especially the one on tipping of the hat that J. was invented.

Now, of course, you can break of a dialogue with anyone at any time. But it's not a good form, Ted, doing that after you have casually accused someone of witholding relevant information from you and carelessly mishandled the views they hold.

Jiri

TedM

Sorry you see it that way. I simply asked a question about the person you quoted because I didn't know the answer, and it wasn't clear to me that you weren't only seeing a portion of his overall viewpoint. I asked the question because I thought I had read once that GJohn was not taken as seriously in the past as it might be now for reasons OTHER THAN what you mentioned. I wasn't just making up skeptical questions for no reason. No offense was intended.

Sorry but I don't want to take the time to try and decipher your views further. Especially when the thread has already gone so far off topic, though I admit I contributed with the post you responded to.

It now appears to be getting back on topic, and I would like for that to remain the case.

ted

Ted Hoffman

So you bring up the homogenity argument again while the documentary record shows that we had a riotous diversity of beliefs. What does the virginal conception mean to you wrt to dualistic worlview of pure vs impure? Syncretism? A continuum?
Plus, you ignore the following:
1. Plato's depiction of the terrestrial/ heavenly dichotomy, which we find in Symposium and Timaeus is vague and does not allow for the rigid separation that you are advocating. It is Aristotle who later formalized this dualism in works like De Caelo. In other words, you are erecting fences and drawing boundaries where Plato erected none.

2. Plato envisioned intermediary beings between man and God see Pseudo platonic writing of Axiochus among others. The platonic heaven was not purely ethereal and was occupied by non-ethereal, even material beings. This is clear in the writings of Origen (De Principiis, Contra Celsum), Ascension of Isaiah and several other documents that I dont feel bothered enough to look up.
Yes, carn denotes flesh. But you get the meaning. The nitpick is hardly helpful.
Fallacy of equivocation: Paul is not blaming Satan for worldly misfortunes, he is specifically accusing the rulers of this world (demons) of having killed Jesus.

Note that you have shifted the argument from denying that archontes referred to demons, to grudgingly admitting that Satan was usually accused of causing misfortunes, including killing people.
By the way, it's rather silly to deny that archontes refers to demons. Most scholars agree that they do refer to demons as mythicists argue. The point of disagreement is that whereas these scholars argue that these demons were behind the actions of their human agents, mythicists think they directly killed Jesus in another realm. Get that point clearly.

TedM

Since most scholars believe the context more adequately supports the idea that humans killed Jesus and not demons without human intervention, it appears to me that your appeal to majority only works against your mythicist view. It is completely OUT of context to conclude that humans weren't involved in the 1 Cor passage because Paul had spent most of the last 20 or so verses discussing HUMAN wisdom, not DEMONIC lack of wisdom. It's really quite obvious.

How do you explain Paul's sudden jump from talking about human wisdom to demons lack of wisdom? How do you explain Paul's comment that had the archons understood who Jesus was they wouldn't have killed him? Do you think Paul was saying that a more enlightened demon would not have killed Jesus? Do you think these demons are the "sinners" in Hebrews that its writer says were "hostile" toward Jesus?

These are the points I made once before to you, and if I recall correctly you declined to reply. Since you appear well-informed I am curious as to what your thoughts are on this.

ted

Gamera

That's the problem: we can't trace it. Not textually. All we have are the gospels and epistles (and a few apocalyptic texts, which is a special genre about the future).

The gospels fit squarely into the Graeco-Roman biographical tradition. The espistles aren't narratives at all, but commmentaries.

So, you are begging the question by discerning "layers" and developments that are not before us, but are assumed in order to reach the conclusion you want. And that is the problem of the silences the OP points out.

Gamera

I know I"m being ask that and the answer is easy. Historical fiction is obviously novelesque and includes perspectives not available to historicians (like what's going on in a person's thoughts). And so usually in the first page you know it is historical fiction and you know the events as portrayed did not happen as portrayed.

Now historical fiction may include real events (like a war), but the narrative itself is fictional, and doesn't purport to be otherwise. If it did otherwise, it wouldn't be historical fiction. It would be history (and we could tell that by the first page also).

Gamera

Pointing out Doherty's inability to explain the process hardly shows a strong position.

Memoires are never historically accurate. The are by definition biased and hence cannot be taken as history. That's why we call them memoires and not histories.

I do. And have concluded, based on the nature of the text before us, and the nature of what we mean by historicity, that Jesus was an historical figure. That doesn't mean that the gospels are anything but texts, just like Tacitus' Annuls. Discourse isn't life; it has it's own rules and permuations That isn't a limitation relating just to Jesus, but relating to Pericles, Shakespeare, and President Kennedy.

So one epistomological problem at a time.