Clivedurdle

The definition of who are the goodies and who are the baddies is probably critically important here.

Zarathustra has divided the world into the camps of the Most High and as xianity interprets it Satan.

But the gnostics say the way of light is by knowing thyself. The fundies though say they are the way and the gnostics and their yogic ideas are of Satan - this is actually asserted today by fundi xians.

It is another example of propaganda - the big lie. "I am the way the truth and the life". "Works makes you free."

mountainman

I dont think so.


The "graeco-romans" were grieved. The greek part scrambled to protect the ancient heritage while the Roman part scrambled to become bishops.

Yes of course. Plato, Pythagoras, Euclid, Apollonius, Plotinus, Porphyry, Arius of Alaxandria and the library of Alexandria had one thing in common. They were not part of the Roman idea of a state monotheistic religion. The epoch in which the greks were preserved ended with christianity. Instead the new greek testament was preserved. Quite a loss in standard of the lit.


The gnostic temples were destroyed. The gnostic (Hellenistic) services were no longer required by order c.324 CE. Ambrose and Theophilus and Jerome and Rufinus and Cyril represented the "retrospective" elite state monotheistic christians who lived tax-free in the basilicas which had been erected over the foundations of the gnostic temples. The gnostics went to the desert with Pachomius and others. They are known to have authored a set of new testament apocryphal tractates after Nicaea from remote places such as the Syrian deserts and Nag Hammadi. These apocrypha are not written by orthodox christians at all, they were written by the Hellenistic nation under seige conditions.

A different mindset was a result of the orthodox christians with the imperial christian emperors (and their armies) being victorious over the pre-exisrtent Hellenistic civilisation. The victors censored the controversies over the authenticity of the new testament and wrote our "history". The "losers", the gnostics, authored "unofficial whopping yarns about the historical jesus and the travels of the twelve apostles" which were extremely popular with the Hellenistic resistance against "christianity".

mountainman

Here are a few primer questions:

(1) Who destroyed the ancient Hellenistic architecture?
(2) Who destroyed the ancient Hellenistic literature?
(3) Who was responsible for persecution and intolerance towards the Hellenistic civilisation in the fourth century?
(4) Never mind the Roman "civilisation" - who destroyed the Hellenistic civilisation?
(5) What does the Codex Theodosianus tell us?

mountainman

Confront them with the reality of the archaeology, which says they have no position at the table of 2009, since they have no archaeology. Archaeology finished the fundamental arguments with the "Old Testament". Now its time to turn to the archaeology of the NT.

New Testament archaeology does not exist beyond a certain century. Confront them with the politics of that century. Take no backward steps without the appropriate evidence, and allow them to walk away shaking their empty heads filled with Constantinian dreams of an historical jesus. Their faith shall be their reward.

Elijah

Yea this is a surprisingly difficult point to get across which I take blame for but I do feel that if you were familiar with the argument you should be able to recognize what I am trying to say regardless of my poor articulation of it. I don’t know if you’ve never been exposed/understood someone who was trying to interpret Plato rationally within the context of reality and their experience or you have never been exposed to those who assume he is speaking of Gods and spiritual elements as they do in normal pagan mythology.

Granted there are those who try to rationalize a superstitious understanding and those who fall short of a rational understanding but a general attempt to understand the work one way or the other is the basis of an interpretation. Either you assume Plato and other Philosophers are trying to explain the world rationally or assume they were just pushing the same supernatural/superstitious entities as the Poets of the time with different attitudes.
I didn’t follow what you were saying above but this is a good example of either interpreting something as rational as in meditative/eastern or like a séance where they contact ghosts. If Plotinus believed in separate beings then you should be able to cite their nature from his text, not from a legend surrounding him of a ritual/spiritual experience.
You take your best guess and realize you could be wrong. For me, anything that can’t be possible in reality I take as a sign to understand as symbolic/mythical (keeping in mind that what is considered possible varies). How anyone else interpreted it doesn’t matter a whole lot. I tend to lean more towards the rational (giving the benefit of the doubt) side of the scale because I would rather assume incorrectly that someone is saying something more rational then they are, then assume they are saying nonsense because I’m more comfortable being wrong in that way.

Now there are also problems with distinguishing between a mythological story with historical elements and a historical story with mythological elements. Along with actual aspects to mythological presentations. Like you can believe that Adam is presented mythologically in Genesis but believe actually we do descend from a common ancestor.
It’s not the time for brevity with explaining your take on god/logos, I still have only one concept of God for you. I can’t tell if you are just imagining the same god/concept with different powers. I don’t know if you’re going, this god throws lightning, this god brings order, this god you can’t see, this god doesn’t have a body so he gets labeled a force, but it’s really all the same anthropomorphic concept repackaged.
I imagine if this conversation is an indication of your standard conversation then I can see that most of your arguments come down to labels and word choices. Granted most disagreements may arise out of inconsistent/vague word choice but once you understand how the other person is using the word you should just move on, instead of looking to find the perfect label with the perfect definition that completely encapsulates whatever concept/group you are trying to discuss. It just stalls the conversation.

I’m not sure what you are referencing in Euthyphro. Euthyphro seems to have more to do with the discussion we are having above about interpreting the poets and the contradictions their stories bring involving gods. Socrates tries to point out to Euthryphro, who believes that the gods actually/literally do fight like in the stories, which this leads to contradiction about what is pious since what is pious is what is approved of by the gods and they disagree. It’s not the medium of poetry itself that Plato has a problem with; it’s how the gods are depicted and how it is interpreted.

gentleexit

This is why I mentioned the Euthyphro. How to define loaded words like "piety" or "rational", ones "everybody knows", without pointing, listing? My read of that dialog is Socrates exposing the difficulty of definition. Euthyphro claims "knowledge of religion and of things pious and impious so very exact". In the end, he runs from Socrates who claims that he "leave me in despair". I know this is pedantic but it is in keeping with Plato and it does avoid all too quick, comfortable conclusion.

Ok, let me cut the "Euthyphro'ing". Let's say Psychological vs Anthromorphic understanding of divinity. We know Platonists had the former. Did they also maintain the latter? Or when they wrote of external entities, sentiments like "oh the poets are wrong. The gods wouldn't do that", "god" was figurative. It means "orders of soul" etc.

Read Proclus or Iamblichus before him and there's a hierarchy of Angels and Arch-Angels and Daemons etc. Is this, to use your words, "the same anthropomorphic concept repackaged"? Or is it just distinguishing progressions from the One, albeit named and treated in a very similar way to traditional gods?

The only way I can see these lower orders as psychological is in the broad sense that everything is in the "psyche" of the One.

Elijah

I don’t know where your understanding is coming from. I’m pretty sure it comes down to the comment below.

Soc. And do you really believe that the gods, fought with one another, and had dire quarrels, battles, and the like, as the poets say, and as you may see represented in the works of great artists? The temples are full of them; and notably the robe of Athene, which is carried up to the Acropolis at the great Panathenaea, is embroidered with them. Are all these tales of the gods true, Euthyphro?

Euth. Yes, Socrates;…

He is using the young man’s literal take on the stories of the poets as a way of showing how what is pious is inconsistent since it is supposed to coincide with what the gods want and they quarrel.
I interpret the angels and daemons rationally as well. I’m probably in an extreme minority in that but I’m just not comfortable looking to religious paintings and Sunday morning cartoons for reference about spiritual/philosophical concepts. Now there was tons of variation and I’m sure some people understood daemons/angels as anthropomorphic entities existing in some in-between realm but I don’t know if that would have been considered correct then and how often that was being taught by the philosophers.

These are from Iamblichus on the Mysteries. (don’t know context or credibility of text.)

“But if we assert with certain persons, that the Gods are pure intellects, but that daemons, being psychical, participate of intellect ;”

“But, concerning the causes of divination, it is dubious whether a God, an angel, or a daemon, or sonic other power, is present in manifestations, or divinations, or certain other sacred energies, as is the case with those powers that are drawn down through you [priests] by the necessities with which invocation is attended.

Or does the soul assert and imagine these things, and are they, as some think, the passions of the soul, excited from small incentives?”

“For daemons, indeed, are invisible, and by no means to be apprehended by sense; but the Gods transcend rational knowledge and material intelligence. And, because they are unknown and unapparent to these, they are thus denominated ; but are said to be invisible in a way very different from that in which this is asserted of daemons.”

“For one absurdity in it, and which is the first that presents itself to the view, is this, that it makes daemons to be generable and corruptible.”

Now I try to understand the daemon stuff usually like memes but they had additional things that affected the psyche relating to them as well which causes a lot of confusion. Throw in the rituals and the manifestation or visions involved and it becomes increasingly difficult to pick out the reason from the superficially superstitious appearances.

In the above text the writer goes to great lengths trying to articulate that while daemons exist it is irrational to think sacrificing to them matters or that they are actually appearing in manifestations.

While the forces/gods of the universe may move the motions of the universe there was another aspect of the spiritual side that needed to be explained because what moves man is often idea based. Now how they understood the nature of these memes/ideas/daemons probably wasn’t correct but even today the actual nature of ideas/memes/information is debatable and difficult to articulate which leads to confusion. What they did recognize though was that beyond our five physical senses the stream of ideas that was/is running in front of our consciousness and was/is often directing the actions and causing problems for people. Now the nature of these memes/daemons was debatable but the fact that they could influence men and be spread through a group was realized. Also that the daemons/memes themselves could be influenced was realized but not understood properly, as is now.

Even today it could be articulated superstitiously that Bush had or was a daemon but in reality what is being said is that he had a faulty/destructive set of memes that was given to him by his parents and supported by the circumstances of his life which eventually manifested themselves in his actions.

gentleexit

I like the parallel. We all talk of ideas (or forces) as if they were actors "going up and down", "raging" or "collapsing" etc. It's how our minds work. What can't be seen is made visible.

The question remains - did any of the men we're discussing see daemons et al as a class of impersonal force or influence? Did they see their personable dress as just vehicles to make discussion easier? Did anybody discussing "invoking aid" from such "beings" just mean being in harmony with nature?

Way back, Empedocles has "love" and "strife" for the attraction and separation of matter. And way late, so does Iamblichus. This makes matter seem personable but maybe "seem" is the operative word, seem to us.

After all, you have statements like sacrifice thrice as Apollo had tripod; 6th day to venus as that is first that partakes of every number, 8th day to Hercules as born in seventh month. Numbers following practice or nature and nothing more. This doesn't mandate a personal Apollo.

Maybe - as I think you're saying - we prosaic people can't see metaphor and attribute a literal understanding to people who simply expressed themselves more poetically than we do.

But it's a good exercise. Could the giants of late Platonism be interpreted this way? Even Iamblichus.

I don't have time in the next few days but I will try that point of view on Plotinus and then the (bad but only) Thomas Taylor of Iamblichus by week's end.

p.s. dropped Euthyphro. I don't agree with you but that's a tangent.

andrewcriddle

FWIW There is now a modern scholarly translation of Iamblichus' De Mysteriis (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Andrew Criddle

gentleexit

thx Andrew. And there's a preview on google books. The "divine Iamblichus", what did he think of the divine ...