EarlDoherty

Don, you know as well as I do that you have quoted only from the earlier exchange on Ocellus between us, whereas the later one you simply allude to in passing was the more significant in regard to what I said about your use of him in this thread. (And this is the best you can do in answer to my posting about the hash you have made in regard to Platonic principles?)

In most cases I am not willing to spend a lot of time and effort digging out passages from years-old IIDB postings. (What do you do, keep them in a personal library? I don't.) It's usually not necessary, especially as you end up twisting them anyway. And when you quote old threads yourself, you can be very selective and often misleading, as in this case. That's the real 'rubbish.'

I'll remark on the following:

This absolutely distorted comment is typical of your deliberately misleading approach. What do you mean "rather than"? Are you saying I don't deal with critical scholarship? Is that what you are going to declare in your review, implying that I only deal with apologists? That's nonsense and you know it. Both The Jesus Puzzle and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man are chock full of quoting from and dealing with critical and traditional scholarship (from A to Z--William Arnal and Harold Attridge to Jonathan Z. Smith), far more than with acknowledged apologists (unless you want to style someone like Robert Van Voorst an apologist, which is halfway right).

Anyway, what is wrong with including apologists in one's discussion, especially when the general public is often familiar only with the views of apologists like William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas? You also know as well as anyone else here that my writings are directed as much at the general public as at critical scholars. OTOH, nowhere in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, do I address Craig or Habermas or their sorry like, and the only acknowledged apologists I deal with are Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, mainly because their book can sometimes be a cut above the usual crap apologists spew out and has made a widespread splash. And where I deal with Eddy & Boyd, it is always in conjunction with the views of critical scholarship as well. Robert Price, too, has dealt with Eddy and Boyd. Have you heaped scorn on him for it, or accused him of ignoring critical scholarship?

As ever, Don, you are unconscionable, and to borrow your own language which the mods seem to have accepted, your above quote is virtually tantamount to lying. If I do trouble to address your review, I will post it on my website, and rest assured that if it is no better than what you have offered here, I will take it and you apart.

Until then, this is my last word here to you.

Earl Doherty

GakuseiDon

For F's sake, QUOTE me. Stop all these ridiculous accusations and innuendos.

I do. I save some of these exchanges, for later reference. Would you like to see that later exchange, the one you called "more significant in regard" to what was said? I don't have the link, but maybe Toto can find it in the archives.

Here it is: After going back and forward about the significance of my quote from Ocellus (whom we ended up calling Pseudo-Ocellus, since the 2nd C BCE writing was attributed to Ocellus but not thought to be from Ocellus himself), you END UP AGREEING WITH ME on the Ocellus quote:

Quote:

Originally Posted by GDon Quote: Originally Posted by EarlDoherty One of the reasons why I have no interest in reopening a major debate with you, Don, is because in the last one I was unable to get across to you that all these claims you make around Middle Platonism do not, contrary to your insistence, discredit my own presentation. I am quite willing to acknowledge that Pseudo-Ocellus (as far as he goes) may well represent the basic essence of Middle Platonic views of the universe, and I have never said that any writer contradicts that essential view. (My emphasis in the above) Thank you. That is an important concession, and I appreciate that. It is a point that I've been trying to make for a while. Quote: Originally Posted by EarlDoherty What I have said (or should have stated more directly) is that some writers contradict your usage and conclusions from that view, namely that crucifixion of a descending deity could not take place anywhere below the moon except on earth itself, or that somehow this sublunar region was so monolithically homogeneous that such an event could not be placed anywhere but on earth. If we are talking about views about the sublunar realm around Paul's time, then I disagree. AFAICS the literature is pretty clear about what people believed regarding the sublunar realm, and that is because they could see it when they looked up. There was some speculation about what went on around the Moon, though, where the corruptible and temporary met the incorruptible and permanent. But that speculation had nothing to do with "fleshy activities" relating to the gods AFAIK (Carrier's badly used quote from Plutarch to the contrary).

So, in other words, YOU DAMN WELL AGREED WITH ME on Ocellus. And note that there is NOT even a hint of my making a "ludicrous claim that the obscure figure of Ocellus and his even more obscure lost writings somehow governed everything that was permitted to be thought and presented throughout the entire world of Middle Platonism, including any Jewish dimension of it", you damn hypocrite.

Earl, the easiest way to stop this 'twisting' is to PROVIDE ACTUAL QUOTES.

No, only that there is no point in dealing with apologetic arguments if critical scholarship has gone in another direction. I give examples in my review.

As I say in my review:

Doherty's frequent references to Christian apologetic views gives the book a strange slant. He often brings up arguments by apologists (e.g. “Apologists place crucial importance on this passage, and it usually involves some form of special pleading” (page 76)), and I have to wonder: why? If the argument is bad, why not present the viewpoint of critical scholarship? And if the argument is good, what does it matter whether it is used by apologists or not?

There is nothing wrong with that, if criticizing apologetics is the direction of the book. But let me ask you: in a scholarly book on Christian origins, how much attention should be paid to apologetic arguments?

Then at least QUOTE me before making any more stupid accusations about what I claim.

mountainman

Good question.


Further good questions. The mythical jesus promoted by Earl certainly gets the historicists hopping about.

But how can you say that when we dont really know when it was written or by whom?
Oh I know. You have been keeping abreast of mainstream opinion. Fair enough then.

We know who invented the Matrix and when they did so. We cannot say the same about the NT apocrypha (NTA). Everyone seems comfortable with the idea that nobody wrote it in an unknown century.

It is standard to expect a Greek original for most of these NTA in any case. This text is no exception.
See post #7 for the details. And we are also dealing here with Plato after all.
After all, why did those uneducated pagans have to follow Plato and not the HJ?

Its obvious that one possibility is that the author was trying to tell his Greek [Pagan] audience a different kind of story about the HJ. A story that they would not read about in the books of the canon.

mountainman

Here's a quote GakuseiDon, from your review:

Me too man. (My bolding)


An open mind is useful sometimes.

Of course, so is a closed mind. The question is whether your review of Earl's work demonstrates your admitted bias towards allocating at least some historicity for the new and strange god who stood behind the Greek nomina sacra J_S in the new and strange Greek literary testaments of the "early christians".

There is an old saying :

"The picture may be bad. But why spit on it?"

mountainman

Dear GakuseiDon,

Your review of Earl's work encourages me to seek Earl's book JESUS: NEITHER GOD NOR MAN..

Best wishes,



Pete Brown

GakuseiDon

That's good, Pete. I also write in my review:

JNGNM contains a lot of material on early Christianity which is well laid out and easy to read, and I would recommend this book to people interested in the topic based on that alone.

I hope that people DO get Earl's book, and that they read it, and that this gets them interested in the topic of early Christian and pagan philosophy.

aa5874

Well, your BELIEF about your Jesus is illogical and absurd. You FIRST admit there is very little evidence for your Jesus and then IMMEDIATELY claim that you believe you have a STRONG case.

What UTTER NONSENSE. You have a weak case or no case at all for your Jesus.

It is those who have very good evidence that may attempt to claim they have a good case.

In fact, you have NO evidence whatsoever that Jesus Christ was ever considered a man by "Paul" or the author of gMark.

Your assertion about your Jesus DISCREDITS the NT and you have NO external source to support your CONTRADICTION of the NT authors.

It is INCREDIBLY CLEAR that in Galatians 1.1 that it was claimed that "Paul" was NOT the Apostle of a man.

It is also very CLEAR that in Galatians 1.11-12 that a Pauline writer said that he CERTIFIED that he did NOT get his Gospel from a man.

And, further, in gMark, Jesus walked on water, transfigured and was RAISED from the dead.

There is ZERO indication in gMark and the Pauline writings that Jesus was just a man and it is in the very gMark where Jesus claimed he was the Son of the Blessed and would COME in the clouds of heaven.

You are USING PURE IMAGINATION as a CRITIC.

You are NO CRITIC. You appear to be just an Apologist who perhaps want to go to heaven to be with your LORD and Saviour Jesus. Your ALTERNATIVE "theory" is completely UNSUBSTANTIATED.

What is a good book for early Christian and pagan thinking?

It is NOT the Pauline writer. He claimed he LIED for the Glory of God.

GakuseiDon

Doherty's stunning hypocrisy on Ocellus aside (Earl, I have put our latest exchange in my personal library, for the next time you trot out your ridiculous allegations about what I claim), there are two things that I think we can come away with from this thread:

Point 1. It is possible to make reasonable assumptions about what they would have thought back then from the extant literature available today. For example, Kapyong placed the Heavenly Jerusalem in the sublunar realm initially, but after reconsidering it, he placed it in the upper heavens. Now, you won't find a single statement in ancient literature about where or where not the Heavenly Jerusalem can be placed. However, we can build a picture of ancient thought, and evaluate concepts against that picture. And we do have quite a lot of information about ancient thought to work from.

Another example is whether Satan could go into the upper heavens and crucify a heavenly spiritual being there. I doubt anyone, not even Doherty, would think that this would have made sense to anyone back then. But again, while we don't have any clear statement to say "Satan can't crucify a heavenly being in the upper heavens", we do have enough information from the extant literature to build a picture to indicate such thinking is unlikely.

Doherty and Kapyong have gone the right way around trying to build a picture to support a "World of Myth", by positing that early examples do build a picture that supports a WoM concept. My contention is that the picture that we do have does not support this.

And that leads onto my point (2), which is about the topic in the OP:

Point 2: The Vision of Isaiah part of the AoI is used by Doherty as strong evidence for his theory. I myself think it is strong evidence against his theory.

Doherty argues that the Slav/L2 versions arguably show the Beloved descending into the firmament, where he is crucified by Satan and the demons. If this is the case, then it is strong evidence for his theory.

I argue that all versions of the AoI, including the Slav/L2 VoI versions, show the Beloved descending into the firmament and the air, and explicitly taking on the forms of the creatures of those areas. However, all versions indicate that the Beloved will also take on Isaiah's form, i.e. the form of a man. Arguably the only place remaining for this to happen is the earth.

Now, if I am right, it adds to the picture that is built about where taking on the form of a man was thought to be located. It suggests that an 'incarnation' into the firmament and/or the air would not be in the form of a man, so providing indirect support elsewhere about the significance of 'taking on the form of a man'.

On the other hand, if Doherty is correct about the Slav/L2 versions, then it adds powerful evidence towards his theory, and we would have to see how the concept would read in other settings, including in Paul.

I do hope that Kapyong continues examining the literature, though letting the literature speak for itself rather than trying to veiw it through the prism of Doherty's understanding. The idea of the earth and the firmament being 'platonic planes' instead of points of comparison doesn't make much sense according to ancient beliefs (and I guess from what Doherty wrote above he agrees with me there), so you need to be careful on the analysis side.

Kapyong

Gday,

But surely it happened in the lower heavens after Jesus descended there?

In the Air Beneath the Moon, the 1st heaven, under the firmament.
Where the "prince of power of the air" does his dastardly deeds.

Yah,
I hope to put together a version based just on the Slav/L2 texts.

My source was Charlesworth's "The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha" 2 Vols. (or via: amazon.co.uk)

It has somewhat better apparatus than the copy you linked.


K.

GakuseiDon

Sure, and that's what Doherty claims. But my point is: if someone wanted to argue that Satan could go into the UPPER heavens and crucify the Son there, how would you argue against it? You won't find any statement in ancient literature that says "Satan can't go into the upper heavens and do bad things there." But I doubt anyone would hold that such a belief was possible in those times.

My Point 1 was this: we do have information from extant literature to build a picture of how they thought back then, and so the ability to test ideas (like Doherty's) against that picture. AoI (as per my Point 2) feds into that.

I'll look forward to what you find out!