stephan huller

As part of my decision to question the value of mythicism and the need for putting more atheists in higher learning, I would like to put forward an example of how I think scholarship should be carried out.

I think we need to acknowledge that the God of the Pentateuch was anthropomorphic.

It is as plain as Exodus 24:10. The conclusion is inescapable. The 'spirit God' that Jews and Christians claim to worship now is a later invention, more a result of embarrassment of the Jews and proselytes coming face to face with Plato. The actual 'God of the Bible' looked like Bob Marley's Haile Selassie in 'Get Up Stand Up' (or Jesus in the gospel for those who prefer books to music).

I think once we get everyone to acknowledge that the author of the gospel could clearly have conceived of a narrative where God literally walks around the earth in anthropomorphic form (= Jesus) we provide some much needed context for the 'mythicism' claim.

In other words, the Christians were saying Jesus was the man sitting on throne and witnessed by Moses and the elders in the Pentateuch. Even the Marcionites said this.

sotto voce

Not vice versa, then.

stephan huller

How would the followers of Plato have felt inferior to revelation of the god of the Jews and the law of Moses? Read Celsus.

sotto voce

Because the Jews had a discrete, personal, sympathetic and practical deity? One who made sensible laws like "Don't shift your neighbour's boundary fences when he's not looking"? Always seemed a good idea to me, that, especially after a neighbour shifted my boundary fence!

Was he Plato's teacher, then?

stephan huller

The question isn't whether the Jewish God was good but whether or not Platonism demonstrated he couldn't be perfect

gurugeorge

Son of, surely? Not The Man himself, but his Son. Going back to the ancient idea of Messiahship as simply another form of Middle Eastern God-King-ship, like the Pharaoh (cf. Thomas Thompson)

I think Robert Price talks in his review of Thomas L Thompson (or it might be Margaret Barker?) about how interesting it is that the Christian sense of Messiah actually hearkens back to that older meaning of "Anointed One" - not just a human hero inspired by God, but literally the Son of God on earth.

But yes, interesting point and a goodly reminder.

sotto voce

Jews didn't buy that idea, either. The deity of Abram was as supernal as that of any later Israelite. If anyone was influenced, it was Greeks, not Jews, who, as the Romans discovered, paid no attention whatever to confounded Gentiles.

stephan huller

I have no idea what you are saying sotto voce. Yet nothing I am saying has any originality. When the Jews came into contact with the Greeks the effect was quite profound. Plato had tapped into something which prevented the educated Jews from taking the Pentateuch literally. Celsus ridicules the Jews on this account - i.e. their need to allegorize what is plainly said in the Torah. Why? Because mighty God is a living man and living men can't be God Almighty.

The examples of Philo and Marqe would suffice to demonstrate that Hebrew culture (surely someone can come up with a word to replace 'Jews' as a blanket statement for Jews and Samaritans) at the turn of the Common Era was absolutely transformed by Plato. It forced them to lie about who was sitting on the throne in Exodus chapter 24, who met Moses on the mountain etc. It isn't often that a foreign writer utterly transforms an alien culture but that's the effect Plato had on the Hebrews.

Another example of the Samaritan interest in Plato - Justin (I don't believe that he was a Gentile living in Nablus). Another example of Samaritan interest in Plato - Marinus, the successor of Proclus the Platonist. http://books.google.com/books?id=iHl...arinus&f=false Nablus (= Neapolis) may well have been a center of Platonism in the Near East for all we know.

stephan huller

No, the Rastas have it right (perhaps because they are so fucking high they are incapable of deceit). The plain meaning of the Torah is that Moses and the elders saw God. There is no mention of him having a Son. When did the nonsense about God having a Son get introduced? Probably after even a superficial reading of Plato demonstrated to anyone with a conscience that the god of the Torah couldn't be 'God Almighty.' Celsus mentions that Christians and Jews used the concept of Son of God.

Chili

It was wrong for Moses to see God and thatis why he never had a son.