Steven Carr

Abe continues to blank out from his mind the question 'Where was this Jerusalem above us that Paul talks about?'

Everybody else, apart from Abe, can see that Paul talks about a world above us.

As does the author of Hebrews who places a tabernacle above us.

rlogan

No, and I understand what he is saying when pointing out GDon's style of argument. It's baffling to contend with for its lack of coherency on the whole, while busying itself mightily in convoluted minutia.

ie Jesus is not mythical because there were either no myths or too many myths for there to be any kind of statement about myths, and since we can't speak about them generally then we cannot speak of them specifically which is why myths at the same time both exist and do not exist depending on whether I am at the beginning or the end of this sentence.

Horatio Parker - you're saying you are "not sure" about something without actually locating what it is that you disagree with, and end up repeating essentially the same thing.

MrMacSon

I think you're both essentially saying the same thing ....

GakuseiDon

My argument is that there is no evidence that pagans thought that their saviour myths took place in a "World of Myth". Forget the Christian side for a moment. As far as I know, Doherty's view of pagan beliefs is not even on the radar of modern scholarship. You will not find "World of Myth" or anything similar in any books on pagan religions and mystery cults. But why not? Scholars aren't likely to be avoiding such a concept for its ramifications on earliest Christianity. I think it is unknown because there is no evidence for it. Doherty has to read it into texts of allegorists like Plutarch.

If there is evidence that pagans thought that their saviour myths took place in a "World of Myth", let's get the evidence out there now, and stun scholars of pagan beliefs with the information! Let's investigate this together right here or split this into a new thread, using Doherty's books or websites, or primary sources, or other secondary sources, to see what the evidence actually is!

To frame what we are investigating, I've reproduced below some of Doherty's comments on "the World of Myth" and mystery cults. Doherty's views on what they believed below in Blue, while the issue of lack of information about what mystery cults believed is in Red:

From "The Jesus Puzzle":

The Greek salvation myths inhabit the same mythical world. They too can spin stories about their deities, born in caves, slain by other gods, sleeping and dining and speaking. None of these activities were regarded as taking place in history or on earth itself. (page 22)

If Paul knows of this "Supper" not through human reportage but by personal revelation, this removes the whole scene from any necessity of having taken place in history. It can be assigned to the realm of myth, where similar scenes in the mystery cults were located. (page 49)

From "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man":

For all its jarring incongruity with our modern outlook, not to mention centuries of tradition about an earthly Jesus, this is a view that would have been perfectly at home in the philosophical and mythical thinking of the time. It was, in fact, a view shared by a whole range of pagan salvation cults, each of which had its own savior god who had performed deeds in the mythical world. Like Paul's Christ, savior gods such as Attis and Osiris had been killed; like Paul's Christ, Osiris had been buried (after being dismembered); like Christ on the third day, Adonis and Dionysos had been resurrected from death. It will be argued that in the cults all these things were not regarded as historical; they had taken place in the Platonic world of myth and higher reality, a world to be looked at in detail in Part Four. (Page 19)

Some of these circles--though again not all--envisioned this Jesus as having undergone self-sacrifice in the supernatural world, the same realm where the activities of other savior gods of the era were now seen as having taken place. (Page 85)

The exact interpretations of the mystery cult myths during the period when Christianity was developing, the stories of gods like Osiris, Attis, Mithras, Dionysos whose acts provided personal salvation to their devotees (to be looked at in detail in the next chapter), are hard to pin down. We possess virtually no writings about the mysteries which explain the meaning of the myths themselves, since this was forbidden; certainly none from the average believer or apostle of the cults. What we have are a few writings by philosophers who seek to impose an allegorical interpretation on the myths. Plutarch is the most notable, virtually the only one from the turn of the era period, which is why we rely so much on his Isis and Osiris with its discussion of the myths of the Egyptian savior deities. Other hints and deductions which can be derived from archeological remains, such as the Mithraic monuments, can also be informative. (Page 100)

This is not to say that such an interpretation of Christian myth is dependent on establishing the same thing in regard to the mystery cults. Rather, the latter will provide corroboration and a wider context in which to understand and set the conclusions which can be drawn from the early Christian writings themselves. It is that early Christian record which reveals the nature of the original Christian belief in a heavenly Christ. (Page 101)

This is the reason why we are groping in the dark to try to understand how the savior god myths were conceived within the cults. We have virtually no writings of the period on the subject to reflect those conceptions. Plutarch (end of the 1st century) is almost our only source from the turn of the era, and we must work through his personal disposition to render it all allegorical. (Page 146)

Pagan writers seem not to have used "flesh" (sarx) when talking about the nature of the gods, but it must be stated once again that we have virtually no exegetical literature about the mystery cults and their savior deities, and it would be only in the context of such religious beliefs that we could expect to find language similar to that which Christians used when speaking of their savior deity. Thus, the demand by dissenters for examples of such parallel language outside Christianity is unrealistic. (Page 159)

From Doherty's website:

http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net...sAscension.htm

We don't even know if the Attis 'passion week' celebrations had Attis dying in the firmament, because no sources are that specific. We don't know if Osiris was 'buried' in the firmament because no sources are that specific. We don't know if Christ died for our sins and was buried in the firmament, because Paul and the others aren't that specific. But because of our understanding of the thought of the time, we can assume these specifics.

Finally, Doherty's response to Bart Ehrman's comments along the same lines in Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?". From Vridar (my bolding):

http://vridar.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/30014/

Probably the most unfortunate aspect of my earlier book was a failure of nuance on a key point. Ehrman says:

In the first edition of Doherty’s book, he claimed that it was in this higher realm that the key divine events of the mysteries transpired; it was there, for example, that Attis had been castrated, that Osiris had been dismembered, and that Mithras had slain the bull. In his second edition he admits that in fact we do not know if that is true and that we do not have any reflections on such things by any of the cult devotees themselves since we don’t have a single writing from any of the adherents of the ancient mystery cults. Yet he still insists that philosophers under the influence of Plato—such as Plutarch, whom we have met—certainly interpreted things this way. (DJE? p. 253)

First, although the words say so, I needed to have stressed that it was only in the context of interpretations within the mystery cults themselves, and not those of the common man-in-the-street or the average writer speaking of the traditional myths (such as the historian Tacitus or the geographer Pausanias), that I am claiming that a reorientation to the upper world took place for the activities of the savior gods, under the influence of Platonism. And even that may not have been complete, for the age-old setting of the traditional myths in a primordial time on earth would still have made its influence felt.

Still, even though we have no literature directly addressing the activities of the cults and the interpretations of their myths, there are many indicators in the record we do have to suggest that such a reorientation to a Platonic higher world did take place. (In The Jesus Puzzle, I devoted an Appendix to focusing on that evidence, and in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, such discussion was made a part of the main text.)

Thus in The Jesus Puzzle my too-firm claim about the relocation of the cultic mysteries’ myths to the upper world needed to be qualified as “deducible from the evidence,” even if not firmly demonstrated. Ehrman’s claim that I admit that “in fact we do not know if that is true” similarly needs qualification. In both books I have marshalled a great deal of evidence and argument to justify the postulation that, in the minds of the priests and philosophers of the cults and the devotees who had such things explained to them during the secret rituals, the myths were indeed thought of as transpiring in a heavenly dimension.

andrewcriddle

On the specific point of Galatians 4:26 I'm doubtful whether Jerusalem above refers to the current location of the Jerusalem involved. It possibly is better understood as Jerusalem from above i.e. above refers to the source rather than location of this Jerusalem. (Hagar = present Jerusalem is explicitly referred to here as from Mount Sinai. )

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

Welcome to a "World of Myth". Please remember this is Only the Greek "World of Myth". And do not ever forget that Christians did NOT fall from the Sky--they are the same Greeks and Romans who accepted the World of Myth as history.


See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ogical_figures


1 Immortals
1.1 Olympian deities
1.2 Primordial deities
1.3 Titans
1.4 Gigantes (giants)
1.5 Personified concepts
1.6 Chthonic deities
1.7 Sea deities
1.8 Sky deities
1.9 Rustic deities
1.10 Agricultural deities
1.11 Deified mortals
1.12 Health deities
1.13 Other deities

2 Mortals
2.1 Heroes
2.2 Notable women
2.3 Kings
2.4 Seers
2.5 Amazons
2.6 Inmates of Tartarus
2.7 Minor figures

ApostateAbe

I actually think minutiae is important, because Doherty's entire case is made of minutiae, the same with anyone else's case. An accurate ancient model of myths is something I take to be especially important, because it helps us decide which propositions concerning the myths of Jesus are plausible and which are not. For example, in The Jesus Puzzle, Earl Doherty uses his points about the "World of Myth" to lead into his claim that Christ being "born of a woman, born under the law," in Galatians 4:4 was actually written and interpreted by early Christians to mean that the birth took place in the "higher realm," not on earth. If you don't already accept Doherty's model of the ancient "World of Myth," then this claim comes off as highly preposterous. If you do accept Doherty's model of ancient myths, then his claim about Galatians 4:4 looks plausible.

ApostateAbe

So you would rather just berate me. Well, at least it is entertaining.

Iskander

There is only one single world of myth inhabited by different names reading from different scripts.


The ancients were unified by their belief in the existence of a world of myth and in the power of that world of myth over us all. The ancients shared that one world of myth, in the same manner as contemporaries share the same one world of myth today.


There is one and only one omniscient and omnipotent world of myth together with many distinct ‘world of myth’. Each world of myth is unique and omnipotent and omniscient, but there is only one ‘multiternity’ world of myth.


There is only one world of myth to inspire all.

ApostateAbe

That is approximately what Doherty believes myths to have been in the ancient times. It fits universalist ideology, but it needs to follow from the evidence, not just wishful thinking, and it seemingly does not follow from the evidence.