EarlDoherty

I find Don’s reply of yesterday to my earlier posting simply a lot of denial, and I maintain that I have not misrepresented him. He says nothing new in defense of what he has argued in the past and his allegations of misrepresentation. The sweeping statement that my interpretation of Paul can’t be supported from the literature, that (once again) there is “no mythical realm” in the ancient world, is ridiculous. (Once again, he has made no response to the material I presented in my Jesus Puzzle Appendix, which I quoted right here, but even that is not the extent of the argument I’ve made on this board over the course of a couple of years.) He refuses to acknowledge that, yes, most of the traditional myths did start by being envisioned in a primordial time on earth, but this of itself does not guarantee that they remained there. And more of the same here,

Of course it’s not irrelevant. (And when I challenged him whether he thought there were things like cobblestoned streets in the heavenly Jerusalem, unless I missed it he did not answer.). If one believes that there is a heavenly Jerusalem with cobblestoned streets, then why couldn’t one envision a mythical/spiritual crucifixion in the firmament by demons? Why is there an unbridgeable divide between supralunar and sublunar? The “evidence” for that kind of exclusionary distinction in thinking is non-existent, especially in any uniform sense, from philosophers to the ordinary joe. Certainly his continued refusal to accept the evidence in the Ascension, or in the implications in spiritual-world portrayal in the Enochs and some Gnostic documents hardly gives one confidence in his “lack of evidence”. If all this amounts to is his call for specific evidence that “trees existed in the air”, which is once again an example of his application of “literalness,” it’s no wonder I have dismissed him.

This is the extent and quality of the “evidence”? Do birds flying in the firmament (I’m looking that up) and spirits in the clouds and mountains rule out demon spirits crucifying below the moon? It is once again a claim, based on nothing, that there is no activity in the sublunar realm except flying birds or demons operating essentially on earth.

Finally, as for his “Ocellus saga” he quotes me as having accepted what he was maintaining about this figure. Actually, I was being naïve, and I still kick himself for not looking into “Ocellus” for myself. I knew nothing about the fellow, though I thought had a vague memory of the name (perhaps from John Dillon), but I couldn’t bring myself to think that Don had not actually located some Middle Platonic philosopher who had said something concrete on which Don was basing his claims. So I (graciously, of course), accepted that, making the point that this could not indicate a universality of thinking or application of such ideas throughout the whole of pagan and Jewish sectarian thought of the time, not the least because the Ascension clearly demonstrated that it did not.

Of course, neither then nor now has Don actually quoted from “Ocellus” in support of his contention. I find it interesting that he thinks to redeem himself from his ‘deception’ by pointing out that I was taken in by it!

But Don, I am not going to be taken in again. Where does Theophilus say birds fly in the firmament? Because he refers to “fowls of the air” and you take the latter as referring to the Middle Platonic firmament? Or because in recounting Genesis, he says: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth the creeping things that have life, and fowl flying over the earth in the firmament of heaven: and it was so”, and this is supposed to have Middle Platonic significance and demonstrate the niceties of turn-of-the-era thinking about the sublunar realm? It’s Old Testament poetry and terminology, long before anyone ever heard of Plato or Platonism. This is a prime example of the sort of use you make of “evidence” and why I simply don’t debate you anymore.

It’s too bad, because you can be an affable guy, and you certainly know how to play the innocent “what, me?” card, but please….

Earl Doherty

gurugeorge

What's wrong with Doherty's Ascension of Isaiah evidence? What about the evidence someone else presented way back in the thread about battles in heaven, etc.?

With respect GDon, I think part of the problem may be that you are doing this kind of "defending the innocents" job where it's not really warranted.

You want to defend people against a "Buffyesque" understanding of what the ancients believed. But there are "Buffyesque-like" writings such as the Ascension and in other prophetic writings (e.g. Ezekiel), and you can find hints and little nuggets in of such a view all the way from Pythagoreanism, "Orphism", common Hellenistic magic, pre-Socratic philosophy through to Graeco-Egyptian magic, neo-Pythagoreanism, Graeco-Roman magic, Hermeticism and Neoplatonism - all these go side by side, in the ancient world, with the more rationalist, materialistic understandings such as Aristotle's, Epicurus', Epictetus', "Ocellus"' or Plutarch's (Plato is I think an odd man out, he seems to have had a foot in both camps, and probably many others did too.) We have more textual evidence of the rationalist view, but that's merely accidental, and doesn't show it was the majority view; and we have scraps of textual evidence and bits of circumstantial evidence (from those schools I mentioned) of the more "Buffyesque" view. (This is analogous to what Doherty points out about the Mysteries: there is little textual evidence of what the Mysteries were about; tons and tons of evidence for what Christians - of various kinds - believed. Yet we know that the same balance is not reflected in terms of numbers and adherents of the respective religious systems.)

Supposing we had a complete record of all ancient writings, your position of restricting "evidence" to only what can be found in the texts would be reasonable, but since we don't, it isn't. There has to be some reconstruction of context, based on common elements of human nature (i.e. capacity for visions and mystical experiences), on reconstructions of pre-history, history, anthropology, social circumstances (all of of which will involve archaeology, and the speculative constructs of archeology based on archaeology's own kind of non-textual hard evidence), general beliefs about the world, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs, etc.; and then with that context in place, the scraps available for one view have to be balanced against the (accidentally) greater number of available texts representing the other view. (Actually, in another sense of "accidental", it's not accidental at all - the texts and cultic objects of those views were deliberately destroyed by Christians! Please also note that there aren't just 2 views but a spectrum, I'm just dividing into 2 for the sake of convenience of discussion.)

Actually I see a lot of similarities between the ancient strain of rationalistic "take" on myth and the Christian proto-orthodoxy. The proto-orthodox were just those sorts of people who took a more strictly rational, historical view of the myth, who preferred to have a nice, solid lineage back to their myth in a historical setting and to texts they believed came from that time, rather than having it all vague and up to individual interpretation and visions. Clearly, this was initially only one of the interpretations of the Christ myth, but it eventually unified the movement and took it over (all the other variations being accounted as "heresy" - wilful deviation - including interpretations that went even further the other way, viewing Christ as a mere human prophet).

To nonbelieving rationalists, religion is often a "dry" observance and ritual, with pale intellectual, or at best emotional and philosophical (allegorical) meaning. To believing rationalists it is richer, with deep emotional, intellectual and philosophical, even existential meaning. But actually the bulk of people who are strongly religious (and especially, who have the motivation to kick start religions from scratch, for example) are people who actually have (or rather appear to themselves to have) communication with, and visions of, religious entities. Their conviction comes from DIRECT EXPERIENCE of "the gods" (however that seeming-experience might be accounted for in terms of modern cognitive science), not from mere speculation, mere reading, emotional masturbation or mere philosophical thought. ("Pistis" originally means conviction arising from direct, experiential evidence, not some wooly "faith" - correct?)

So now, with that background, look at Paul - does he look like a rationalist to you? Or does he not look, rather, like the type of religious person who had visions and mystical experiences?

So, is his interpretation likely to be rationalistic or is it likely to be "Buffyesque"? (Bearing in mind I'm talking about tendency towards one side or another of a spectrum or continuum, not a binary either/or situation.)

krosero

I pointed out to you, Earl, that you had misinterpreted Don as insisting on modern scientific thinking when judging the ancients. Don's last reply pointed out this issue to you very specifically, going through the trouble of quoting the relevant posts; no doubt Don thought he could get you to specifically address his contention that you'd misrepresented his position with these words: "We don't believe these nonsensical things, so therefore they didn't believe them either". Don asked you to quote him on that matter to back up your interpretation of him, and all you've done in this last post is essentially to say that you're sticking to your position and that you're certain you haven't misrepresented him.

So certain are you, that you won't quote Don to justify your characterization of his views -- and equally bad, you spoke as if his specific clarification of the problem he was having with your posts, and his specific request for you to back up what you were saying, did not even exist. You insist instead that he engage you on new content (such as your Jesus Puzzle appendix), but I for one would not move forward into a debate with you if I feel that you are misrepresenting me badly and repeatedly, and showing little effort even in cut-and-dried matters like whether you've misquoted your opponent. Either Don said something or he didn't.

In fact I want to ask you now, where is Don's statement that there is "no mythical realm" (your quotations) in the ancient world?

This is a basic tenet, I think, of decent debates: addressing contentions of misquotation/misrepresentation and admitting error if necessary.

If you have not correctly quoted him, then please do everyone the favor of finding the specific phrase that Don rejects as a description of ancient thought but which you accept.

Kevin Rosero

GakuseiDon

Sure, Earl, that's exactly what I wrote. :notworthy:

I was going to draft a long, fairly ranting reply, pointing out how quite a few feel aggrieved about being misrepresented by Doherty. Non-theists, esp knowledgeable non-theists, who question Doherty are implied to have been affected by some kind of religious bias. Doherty has even accused the whole board of this. I've had the same "Don says it doesn't make sense to him, therefore ancient people wouldn't have thought it" accusation pushed at me again and again, despite asking for Doherty to provide quotes of me saying it. Doherty suddenly brings up "Ocellus" here again, and I thought "unbelievable, that shows HIM up, not me", and it was certainly off-tangent. He seemed to have raised this to provoke me, given the debate we had on it a year ago. And then something struck me...

What if he is being deliberately provocative? I dismissed it straight-away, since this is not something you would expect of someone with such a high profile as Doherty's. But my mind kept coming back to this. I've complained about how he misrepresents me so many times that he has to know that I'm not going to stand for it. I'm surprised that he doesn't just quote me to try to show me up, but Doherty just blasts away -- and not just to me, but to others. He seems to know what buttons to push. What if he wants rabid responses from those questioning him? He seems to do it when some new people leaning towards mythicism come along.

Perhaps I'm being paranoid, or maybe there is some method here, even a subconscious one, where provocation is used to try to show up the opposition...

Interesting, very interesting.

Earl, if I've misrepresented you, I apologise. I don't want to misrepresent you. Can I ask you in future to quote me where I've done this, so that I can avoid doing it in the future, please? Or at least, so that you can show people that I've done it, even if I won't recognise it myself. Thank you.

Gamera

Not only does it imply a backstory, it requires one to make it comprehensible. It is totally implausible to conclude that Paul began his narrative with: "Jesus was crucified (don't worry about who he is), and then God resurrected him (don't worry about why)."

The meaning of the resurrection resides in the backstory.

But as I have shown, Paul does indeed intimate the backstory. He tells us Jesus preached near and far; that he peached peace; that he was righteous; etc. He doesn't elaborate because his audience has already heard the story from him. He's now discussing its meaning and application, in the epistles.

Gamera

Under any theory of narrative, whether postmodern or not, "We won the battle" is clearly a narrative (albeit a brief one), as opposed to discourse about the winning of a battle (i.e., "what does the victory mean to us?").

EarlDoherty

Only a dozen or so postings earlier in this thread:

Kevin, if you can’t see that as a statement by Don that “there is ‘no mythical realm’ in the ancient world,” then it’s no wonder that we’re all talking past each other, and that no meaningful debate can take place. And this is not the first time he has made a statement like that. And how can he claim that he doesn’t impose our modern sensibilities on the ancients when he consistently says that the crucifixion couldn’t have taken place in the firmament because "there are no trees in the air"? On what is this based but his own inability to imagine that anyone could think so? He complains,

But on what ‘evidence’ does he make that statement about ‘no trees in the air’? Because some document states it? Because, he naively says, they could look up and not see any? Where does some ancient writer complain that when he looks moonward, he can’t see any trees? There is no such evidence to make such a claim. And there is very much evidence to presume that ancients could, in a mythical context, imagine that there were “trees in the air” in some sense. After all, they place all sorts of other material-sounding things and events in the layers of heaven. Why not in the sublunar realm, if that were where it had to be? Nor has he provided any evidence or justification for allowing that there could be cobblestoned streets in the supralunar realm, but no such thing in the sublunar realm? (Certainly not in Ocellus.) So what am I to think? How can I not think that he is imposing his own modern thinking on the ancient mind? What am I to make of his constant claim that I am totally misrepresenting him—if not deliberately to be provocative? If I’m being aggressive in tone, it’s because I can’t seem to get him to understand anything, let alone the problems in his own reasoning and appeal to ‘evidence,’ and my frustration is mounting. And yet I’m the one who is being dumped on by people like you.

In my last post, at the end, I pointed out a blatant case of him appealing to ‘evidence’ which is totally non-existent, even laughable. His “birds flying in the firmament” in Theophilus turns out to be that writer quoting Genesis, which could have had nothing in Theophilus’ mind (let alone the writer of Genesis' mind) to do with Middle Platonism, sublunar realms, or anything which could support Don’s contentions. He had nothing to say about that, and neither apparently have you. This has totally discredited him. This is the sort of level he argues at, the sort of ‘evidence’ he comes up with and expects everyone, myself included, to take seriously. And when I don’t, he gets all offended, accusing me of some kind of underhanded, bullying tactics. It’s preposterous, and I don’t know why I continue to bother, except that I have to defend myself against his constant claims that I haven’t answered his ‘evidence’ or that I misrepresent him.

But this is it. I’ve learned my lesson.

Earl Doherty

Gamera

Well in fact it does. Why would an author attribute this to Paul unless he thought it was Paul's gospel. As to a Jew preaching peace to gentles (which is the import here), yeah that's pretty unique, or at least the author thinks it is.

How do you know? It says Jesus was obedient. You've just assumed that the obedience involves accepting death. But that's not what Paul says. And indeed, in Phillipians, Paul makes a similar claim involving Jesus "humbling" himself, literally "listened to attentively" (hupekoos), which implies his hearing the entire storyline from God that was to lead to his crucifixion and resurrection.

You are imputing later theology into Paul, a big mistake, and a common one. Where does Paul say Jesus' "accepts" those who become Christians? Nowhere.

Here is the context of this particular quote (notice it is once again biographical)

"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. 8 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God's truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs 9 so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy, as it is written: "Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing hymns to your name." 10 Again, it says, "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people." 11 And again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and sing praises to him, all you peoples." 12 And again, Isaiah says, "The Root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; the Gentiles will hope in him."'

Nothing here about Jesus accepting Christians, but rather the biographical detail that Jesus was a "servant of the Jews" in some larger historical plan to glorify God prophesied in the OT.

Again, the simplest explanation here isn't high theology, but that Jesus, while alive "accepted" people like the audience (i.e., loved them), which is probably related to his preaching peace.

Ah personal invective -- the frequent sound of Almaleq losing yet another argument to gamera.

Let the reader decide whether preaching peace near and far, accepting others, listening attentively and obeying God's plan, etc. constitute a unique life in Paul's estimation.

gurugeorge

No it isn't because the backstory of the Anointed One was already more or less familiar, all Paul and his lot were doing was saying that rather than being someone to come, he'd actually already been and done his stuff. That was their wrinkle, their USP.

What he's saying is basically "See the Anointed One, son of David, etc., etc.? Well, the good news is he's already won his victory, it's not something to come but something that's already done and dusted. Not only that, but it's a spiritual victory greater than any merely martial or political victory, and (Paul adds) it's a victory for all humankind."

And at this point Paul's Anointed One is exactly as mythical as the Jewish Anointed One.

It's totally obvious.

GakuseiDon

I'm being very specific, Earl, as I always have been. I believe that there is no evidence to support that "Earthly myths about the gods like Attis's castration were thought to have been performed in a mythical realm". I have found evidence where writers place the myths on earth (e.g. Zeus buried in Crete, Prometheus suffered in a cave in the Caucasus, Romulus founded Rome, etc), or regarded them as metaphorical (like Plutarch). But nothing where "earthly myths" were thought to have happened in a "mythical realm".

You are, of course, right! As I have agreed any number of times, we shouldn't rule it out of hand. But because it is POSSIBLE, it doesn't mean that we can ASSUME it. What does the literature say? I've collected quotes from early writers about what they believed was taking place in the sublunar realm, and it is pretty consistent, about the nature of demons, their habitats, etc. I've suggested to you before that we get all the information about what pagans believed on their earthly myths, and analyse the data. The offer still stands. But if the picture that develops is against your theory, then that needs to be looked at. Do your supporters know that the evidence isn't there? No, they come away from your book as though you are basing your conclusions upon evidence of pagan beliefs of the time.

What I've always done is ask you for your evidence. What is the evidence for? What is the evidence against? Let's look at both sides and make an evaluation. If I make claim X, and you find nothing to support claim X in the literature, would you be happy if I just accused you of "failure of imagination"?

In a cumulative case, all these things need to be considered. Again, I'll stress that what I've always done is ask: What is the evidence for? What is the evidence against?

For a start, perhaps some of your supporters can look into seeing which one of us is right. Is there evidence that the pagans believed that their **earthly** myths took place in some "mythical realm"? (Some background: I started to focus on pagan myths after Doherty said that orthdox Christians would have destroyed similar kinds of references in Christian writings. I thought that it would be less likely that they would have destroyed writings where pagans expressed such similar beliefs. So I started asking Earl about the examples I found).