Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Elijah · 04-03-2009, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChristMyth

Quote:

If you just see Jesus as another guy killed for preaching what he shouldn’t, you are missing the point of the story.

And what point would that be?

He’s a messiah claimant pushing an ideological/spiritual understanding of what the messiah should be/do.

He’s trying to get the people to serve the king who serves and dies for the people, instead of the kings who want the people to serve and die for them. The reason for the titles and stories of him doing impossible feats was just to make him seem more messiah like instead of just a poor guy who was executed.

andrewcriddle · 04-04-2009, 07:38 AM

I'm not sure how far it is relevant, but it is IMO interesting that the Pseudo-Platonic Socratic Dialogue Theages (c 325 CE) does seem to make Socrates into a figure in close touch with the divine.

The mysterious sign of which Socrated speaks in the authentically Platonic dialogues becomes here a sort of divine voice; and being close to Socrates becomes an intrinsic source of spiritual enlightenment.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle · 04-04-2009, 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

the Pseudo-Platonic Socratic Dialogue Theages (c 325 CE)

c 325 CE should be c 325 BCE

Sorry

Andrew Criddle

mountainman · 04-04-2009, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChristMyth

Why wasn't Socrates deified?

Because according to Constantine "Socrates critical questioning ... menace to the state".

Here is the citation from Robin Lane-Fox.

Quote:

Constantine's Orations to the Saints

At p.646/7 Fox suggests that Constantine's Oration to the Saints
was authored and orated by Constantine "at Antioch, Good Friday, 325".
Most ancient historians are today convinced that Constantine
both authored and read aloud this "document" in 324/325 CE.
It contains a number of novel social and political insights,
and a whole string of fraudulent misprepresentations:

(1) Berates the philosophers: "Socrates critical questioning ... menace to the state".
"Pythagoras had stolen his teaching from Egypt, Plato believed there were many gods."
"Plato strived for the unknowable ... wrote about a first and second God."

[Editor: When critical questioning is a menace to the state there's a problem.
When military supremacists edict for the destruction of the writings
of leading present and past academics (eg: Porphyry, Arius, Apollonius of Tyana)
by book burning, it is a clear and unambiguous signal (from modern history)
that we are dealing with a malevolent dictator, a megalomaniac with a big army.]

(2) Berates the poets as worse than the philosophers;
because "poets wrote falsely about the gods".
FOX: "In a few broad sweeps, Constantine had damned
the free use of reason and banished poetic imagination."

bacht · 04-06-2009, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChristMyth

Why wasn't Socrates deified?

The reason I ask is because if you compare Socrates to some of the ideas presented about a HJ, the it would only make sense that latter followers of the writings of Plato would have wrapped mythological images around their long dead teacher. Why don't we have a "Son of God" named Socrates who preformed miracles, healed the sick, and rose from the dead after drinking hemlock?

Shouldn't there have been followers who would have happily added to the myth and made the memory of their leader just as grand as the Gods?

What would have made Jesus, if he is considered just an ethical teacher, so interesting that such stories would have been created to promote the idea that not only was he a great teacher but also God incarnate? Compared to Socrates, he's teachings weren't all that great for their time and not even the historians of his day seemed to know who he was. Yet, 2000 years later, the only people who read Plato are those who sit through philosophy or literature class while the Bible is read somewhere every Sunday (or Sat. depending on which faith you happen to follow).

Christmyth

I think a better comparison would be Alexander, conqueror of the known world. Much better candidate for deification a la the Roman emperors.

No Robots · 04-06-2009, 10:31 AM

Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend / by Richard Stoneman (Yale, 2008). Review.

ChristMyth · 04-06-2009, 02:09 PM

Okay, so how many people actually believed the Alexander stories were true? Its one thing to write made up stories about people claiming they were a god for entertainment value and quite another for someone to start preaching these stories were fact (a.k.a. Paul).

If people were led to believe Alexander was, in fact, a god, where is his Paul?

Christmyth

No Robots · 04-06-2009, 02:42 PM

Sources on the Deification of Alexander.

Solo · 04-06-2009, 02:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buck Laser

The OP sort of infers that Plato was deified. I don't think that's really the case. Nevertheless, Platonic thought had a tremendous effect on Xty's development. Well, actually it was neoplatonism that provided the philosophica core for Christianity.

Socrates probably escaped deification for a couple of reasons. First, the Greek pantheon was already pretty well populated; and second, I don't think there was any tradition of deifying mortals in Greece.

There is a third possibility: Socrates did not claim to be anything but an ordinary mortal and did not insist on a special, let alone familiar, relationship to divinity. My favourite is Socrates' during his trial proving that the Delphi Oracle did not lie when it designated him the wisest of all humans ( in Plato's Apologia). How could god lie ? But if Socrates accepted this designation he would have been immodest, surely not a sign of superior wisdom. How to solve this dilemma ? The philosopher's philosopher concludes (after a clever expose) that if the god sees him as the wisest, he means to say that human wisdom is really worth nothing, and consists only in knowing that one knows nothing.

Jiri

gentleexit · 04-07-2009, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChristMyth

...
If people were led to believe Alexander was, in fact, a god, where is his Paul?

Alexander was meant to have bemoaned having no Homer to sing his praises. "Oh happy youth, who found a Homer to herald thy praise!", he said of Achilles.

As for being a "god" - if you believe in "guiding spirits" (your daemon) then it is logical that the great have greater guides. Socrates too had a daemon guide, presumably a great one.

The extent to which this was a "being" as opposed to part of your soul or a higher soul inducing your soul differed with the writer and audience. Plotinus focused on soul - later men, wrote as if daemons were lofty neighbors.

This interplay of "god-soul" and "man-soul" caused problems for the Christians. Did Jesus' "god-soul" replace his "man-soul" and if so, when? Or did he always have both - it's a mystery!

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04-04-2009, 07:38 AM	#12
andrewcriddle Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Birmingham UK Posts: 4,876	I'm not sure how far it is relevant, but it is IMO interesting that the Pseudo-Platonic Socratic Dialogue Theages (c 325 CE) does seem to make Socrates into a figure in close touch with the divine. The mysterious sign of which Socrated speaks in the authentically Platonic dialogues becomes here a sort of divine voice; and being close to Socrates becomes an intrinsic source of spiritual enlightenment. Andrew Criddle

04-06-2009, 10:31 AM	#16
No Robots Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Edmonton Posts: 5,679	Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend / by Richard Stoneman (Yale, 2008). Review.

04-06-2009, 02:09 PM	#17
ChristMyth Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: US Posts: 1,055	Okay, so how many people actually believed the Alexander stories were true? Its one thing to write made up stories about people claiming they were a god for entertainment value and quite another for someone to start preaching these stories were fact (a.k.a. Paul). If people were led to believe Alexander was, in fact, a god, where is his Paul? Christmyth

04-06-2009, 02:42 PM	#18
No Robots Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Edmonton Posts: 5,679	Sources on the Deification of Alexander.

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