gentleexit

I can see the failure of the Jewish warrior God causing (or pushing to the forefront) varieties of escapism - focus on soul, focus on a world beyond - but "the influence of popularized Platonic ideas" ...

not all focus on the immaterial is necessarily Platonic (or "Greek" for that matter).

All these Jews wrote in Greek which meant drawing on its (philosophical) words for their other-worldly notions but that doesn't mean they drew on a conceptual framework that gave rise to the words. Some may have but to show that you would need clearcut echo's of, say, Timaeus, in the same way you see it in someone like Plotinus. What I'm saying is that we are too ready to cry "Plato" whenever anyone uses any of these words.

Take the Arian debate later. Clearly the "son is less than the father" could be interpreted as a godhead and a lessor creator god - aha "Plato!", "that Arius is a Philosopher!" but you don't need recourse to Plato to make the Arian argument. You just take the Septuagint and the gospels.

All I'm saying (in a very longwinded way!) is that a coincidence of words or (very) broad concept doesn't make something Platonic. And as I said earlier, in no way, do I think Gnosticism is "Platonism for the masses" (but I don't think you do either given its Jewish dominant?).

andrewcriddle

The question of Gnostic influence on Plotinus is partly a question of chronology. Do you accept that the Nag Hammadi texts Zostrianos and Allogenes are more-or-less equivalent to the texts of the same names mentioned by Porphyry ? (Most scholars currently do but not all.)
Numenius Father of NeoPlatonism has Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Philo clearly was a Jewish Platonist.
Many of the Early Church Fathers were Christian Platonists in the sense of working with a detailed knowledge of Plato and/or the later Platonists. Some of the Gnostic texts appear to be Platonic in the same way.

Andrew Criddle

Elijah

Lost me again. Platonism is a metaphysical outlook, I don’t know what you think it is or what Jewish tales have to do with it.
I’m not comfortable making the claim that reincarnation or resurrection is consistent through either group. I don’t know what you think The Myth of Er sums up or if you are taking it as literally reflecting their world view and not as a myth.

I don’t know about it making a coherent “story”, it is about trying to make a coherent explanation of the cosmos. Resurrection and reincarnation are common explanations for what happens after death if you don’t have a magical/astral realm for the dead to exist in with your particular understanding of the universe.

Lost me totally here. Are you understanding this as a philosophy explained in narrative or just a simple story?
How do you think the platonic understanding of Logos and the Jewish understanding differ and what texts is that opinion based on? You think Gnosticism was a Jewish movement that excluded Gentiles or just the Sethian branch?

“Out of Plato, come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Elijah

I think you should be looking for the redeemer in the politics, not the philosophy of the times. Plato wasn’t just about pushing a concept of god but also trying to build a perfect society. Just like Moses wasn’t about trying to push a sky god but build a republic were the Law ruled man not other men ruling over men, as was seen in Egypt. Unfortunately the law was used to oppress people and the political system in Rome couldn’t prevent Caesars from rising up and causing havoc.

Jesus again shouldn’t be seen as just pushing a particular understanding of God but pushing a political system as well. In this system the authority serves the majority and dies for them instead of leading them in battle. I think you are correct to look to the failed rebellion and messiah attempts for why the people were attracted to the Jesus concept. It’s hard to stop a rebellion where the leader is already dead and every time you kill one of his followers it helps spread the message.

Now I don’t know if he came up with the idea or it was attached to the conviction surrounding him later but it was a brilliant plan because almost 2000 years later the modern equivalent to Rome’s Senators are being sworn in on a book dedicated to him and pretending to be servants to the people. Did it totally work? No, of course not, there is still war and people are still building pyramids for a ruling class, just the slave conditions have improved and the pyramids have turned into corporations.

I think you should try to understand the redeemer aspect politically initially because it’s the easiest to get your head around. You can say a redeemer is personifying certain spiritual aspects like Logos or an Invisible god or whatnot but saying that the redeemer exists exclusively spiritually sounds more like supernatural Greek mythology then Greek philosophy.

gentleexit

A Metaphysical outlook as opposed to a ...? You're making my point. To carve off one small piece of Plato (the Timaeus basically) and see it as the essence of Platonism is anachronistic and leaves you with the likes of the summary of Platonism that Andrew posted above - a catalog of pedants only absorbed by god-heads and stars.

What does Genesis sum up? Myths of this kind capture some aspect of life. They humanize the impersonal. And Plato comes down on the side of myth over prose in both the Timaeus and the Gorgias. BTW, I don't know how to divide "supernatural Greek mythology" from "Greek philosophy" (which you allude to in another reply).

Coherent as say Orthodox Christianity provides a coherent story of soulful men and where they fit. If you prefer "account" or "explanation" to "story" then fine. What Christianity, Philosophy et al had in common was the pursuit of the nature of the cosmos in order to guide men. Their accounts existed to tell men how to live. The account isn't the end. Correct guidance is.

As for resurrection vs oblivion vs reincarnation. What death brings is central to any guiding narrative. And Plato's (and Pythagoras') laid out the latter two. Christians have the first. At the end of the Republic, Plato wrote that all our training on earth is to prepare us for the free choice we make for our next life. His successors built on this and never forgot that "Philosophy is about preparing for death". Reducing Plato to the demiurge is like reducing Christianity to their creation story.

Creation itself is merely a logos (Republic 509d-511) of the Absolute which "pours forth" as lesser and lesser potencies of the One. Logos wasn't an actor. Philo and then John's logos could sing and dance. Heraclitus' original logos was the order behind life's flux. I think in Jewish hands, it became the orderer.

As for "Jewish" and "Gentile". I'm still trying to get my head around all the ways that word "Jew" was used before solidifying in late fourth century.

Elijah

As opposed to supernatural mumbo jumbo.

I realize that Plato spoke of more than just metaphysics. We are only speaking of the contributions to Hellenized Jews and early Christians. If you think a particular view they had originated from Plato then put it forward. For me the dualism would be first and the inability to know god would be second but I don’t know what would be third.

2 Cor 4:18 “As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
This doesn’t tell me what you think the Myth of Er sums up nicely. Problem with myth is that it is very interpretive.

It’s not about dividing but interpreting the texts as philosophical or supernatural. You can either take the myths as trying to express certain symbolic aspects of the universe in art or take them as literally happening in a supernatural realm with anthropomorphic entities. Do you take the beginning of Genesis to be trying to express something symbolically about the origin of the world or supernaturally/anthropomorphically about a genie making the universe in seven days? Do you assume they are trying to speak rationally or do you assume they are speaking supernaturally?
Christianity as a moral guidance religion is only one particular understanding of what is going on. Orthodox Christianity doesn’t provide anything coherently in my mind. It’s a promise of reward in the hereafter for serving Jesus today. There is no clear moral guidance or worldview.
I don’t know about guiding narrative. Is that a genre of text you are proposing? What happens after we die is a question we all ask of anyone who claims to know how the world works so you have to be ready for that question if you are a philosopher.

I’m not reducing Plato to the Demiurge at all.
I’m not sure what you think the Greek version is but I’m just guessing you’re saying they took a metaphysical universal force of some type and anthropomorphized it? And they think of these entities as existing in supernatural magical realms with ability to materialize when needed?

While that may be a good conversation, do you see any reason I should worry about my statement of it being platonic metaphysics packaged for the masses?

DCHindley

I hope I have not given the impression that I think Jesus himself was influenced by Platonic dualism. In fact, I have long maintained that Jesus was looking foprward to the realization of a kingdom of God right here on earth, and while I am on the fence as to how he thought this was to be affected (human started revolution against Rome or divine intervention, or some combination) or what part he himself hoped to play (as God's annointed king or simply a preacher asking folks to prepare themselves for what was surely coming), I am sure that the original Jesus Party was not anything like later Christianity.

I propose that a wing within the Jesus Party, composed of gentiles who had converted to Judaism in hopes of participating in this coming age of justice and fruitfulness, had undergone a profound transformation in the aftermath of the failed Jewish rebellion against Rome. Facing the reality that no such earthly kingdom was going to happen anytime soon, and frustrated by the social chaos and displays of inter-ethnic hatred and animosoty it had brought out of folks, both gentile and Jewish, they were pretty much forced to radically revise their self understanding, and that revision involved transforming Jesus from a messianic figure into a redeemer of faithful mankind. They rejected their conversions and the Jewish law, but still considered themselves part of God's chosen people, and not a few of them felt that the blessings of God had been transferred to them from the Jews, who were now rejected.

More of that insane and clearly wrong hypothesis and how Pauline books come into the mix can be found by looking at posts I have made here on this discussion group, but has little to do with Platonic ideas, other than as one of the many influences that allowed those poor schmucks to transform Jesus from a political firebrand into a mystical savior.

DCH

gentleexit

And you said "By the masses I mean that it’s the basic philosophical greek worldview without having to go read greek philosophy." I disagreed with that, hold that a few snippets and overlaps don't count as "Platonic Philosophy" or "Greek worldview" (as for gnosticism not being a mass movement, that's another conversation). Also I said that Gnosticism with its evil creator was fundamentally not Platonic (it's Persian if anything) as Plotinus so eloquently pointed out (Enneads III 8, V 5, V 8, II 9).

"eternal" does not mean "static" or unchanging per se (we can argue whether it has to as change implies time but the Jews could never fully accept the logic of that position or else their moody god couldn't be "the one".), "transient" opposes this eternal. This isn't the same as the perfect, removed, unchanging One layers away from our world of flux.

The logic seems to be: Greek and Jew present a split cosmos. A dual! Two duals! And these are the same, kinda, superficially. Oh so one must have led to the other. This can't be coincidence given how we all think or from further east. Plato first. Hence, the thought is from him.

Let me give you one: "you would not seek me if you had not already found me" (Plato, Theaetetus). "Seek and you shall find"? Or Minos going to the cave to get laws from Zeus. Is the Moses story an echo or maybe a copy or did Plato copy? Someone must have copied, right?

Unknowable god: Think Job. The Jews didn't need Plato or his predecessors for that.

I think Er is straightforward (which is why Plato liked the form). His model was Odysseus' trip to Hades but he enlarges to sum up much of what he says more prosaicly elsewhere. Souls are first judged, rewarded or punished (a 1000 years is mentioned for punishment - oh is this the same thousand used by Christians? Another hijack!), and then brought to a field where they can contemplate the intelligible order and beauty of the cosmos - the orbits of the planets, the harmony of the spheres. Neither the gods nor the intelligible order of nature determines the shape and outcome of human lives. On the contrary, individual souls choose the form of their future life on the basis of what they have learned or failed to learn in their previous existence. Both learning and rewards take place in this life, not the next. Both the learning and the results are the individual’s own responsibility.

BTW, later Platonists tried to move beyond inevitable return. Porphyry interpreted Homer's Circe (cycle) as something to move beyond. Here is India's oblivion.

You can read them both ways. Which is one value of myth. This flexibility is why Plato credited the form over prose to capture "the unknowable". We are a prose culture. For us "that's a myth" is negative. But that's us.

Supernatural vs philosophical (or "supernatural mumbo jumbo"), that's anachronistic. They had no "supernatural" in the way we see it. I think you are too much the man of the dividing enlightenment. Begone spooks and let's rescue this little bit of the Greeks, make them rationalists. And this enlightenment Plato is the one in most summaries and introductions still, safely "unreligious".

philosopher or priest or whatever label we want to attach to those that claim to know such things (and with his definition of the purpose of Philosophy, Plato was one of them). More positively (and contemporary with your Gnostics), Plotinus wrote "What shows God to us is virtue, as it comes to be in the soul, accompanied by wisdom. Without this genuine virtue, God is only a word." Philosophy was specifically a moral preparation for death.

I'm not proposing any genre - they had plenty back then. What I am saying is that all of those genres were used with guidance in mind. Plato was no naturalist. Neither was his "worldview" or the goal of his musings.

There was no "metaphysical" divide. Yes some-places there is talk of this world being an illusion etc but the dominant theme is continuum, emanation from the static with metaphors of light (Plotinus) or distance (Iamblichus). They used the same terms in many ways, even "simple" ones. "Zeus" was the highest god or the first tier we see or less still or all of the above and you need context. From what I see, the Jews simpler conception of divinity (an all-in-one from anger to influence to sublime remove) meant their reuse of Greek philosophical words was both selective and more straightforward.

Which gets me to - I think we overlook the importance of language in itself for what needs to be expressed. Writing in Greek forced the Jews to address the words of Philosophy and remake them. The words had to be tackled but this didn't mean they adopted a wholly alien "worldview". They heard the words but never echo'ed the likes of "the soul that has seen the most of being shall enter into a human offspring, which shall become a philosopher (Phaedrus 248d)."

Elijah

No, it’s probably me making incorrect assumptions of what you were suggesting. My bad. I had thought you were looking to the Platonic/Gnostic worldview to look for the spiritual redeemer the story of Jesus is based off. Sorry, I think I had conversations mixed up.
In the beginning is the Jesus party your standard living Messiah trying to overcome Rome movement or was it always ideologically pushing the dead Messiah movement?

So you suggest that the Gentiles rejected the law later after a failed rebellion and not that the law was sidestepped by certain Jews (Paul) in order to help ease Gentiles into the Christian camp?

I don’t know where your understanding of a redeemer is coming from, text wise or what exactly you think the early Christians thought Jesus could do to save them.

For me it’s about the redeemer aspect there is about the resurrection of the dead and eternal life concepts the early Christians were pushing. Christianity has the easiest way into the hereafter ever; you just have to believe that Jesus is the savior and when they resurrect him he will bring back everyone who believed in him. It doesn’t matter what you do in this life as long as you believe in Jesus your sins will be forgiven and you will receive eternal life when the resurrection begins. You don’t have to obey the law or live life a certain way or eat this or that you just had to believe in Jesus and you are put on the list.
Not sure what you think the transformation was or what the influence was exactly.