krosero

I have had nothing to say about it because I've had nothing to say until now about the content of your arguments. I agree with you that this line in Theophilus cannot say anything specific about Middle Platonism. At most it can be consistent or inconsistent with Middle Platonic views, and if Theophilus quotes it approvingly, then we might be able to say that it contained nothing that he, in his own time, disagreed with. I don't know what Don was trying to do with it because he didn't say. Certainly I think if he were trying to do something specific with it, he would have to acknowledge the problem: it's Theophilus' quote of another, older text (presumably the Septuagint?). To bring up a really technical issue, maybe Theophilus is paraphrasing; but these are merely scattershot ideas and I have no expertise with which to say one way or another.

OK, this is progress, I think, because I can see now what you were referring to. You did not quote Don's exact words but I see where you got your paraphrase from.

These little phrases like "mythical realm" are being used as shorthand for more specific things, and the problem may be that on boards like this, our shorthand way of describing complex things can be totally ineffective in getting across something subtle. And if anything was ever subtle, it's the difference between you and Don on this matter. Half the time I'm not sure what it is. You both are very much moderns who turn a skeptical eye to the supernatural beliefs of the ancient world; you both agree on the general contours of Middle Platonic cosmology and have both allowed that idiosyncratic views were possible in that time.

You've even both talked about how spirits were thought to inhabit the lower sublunar world, including Sheol, the earth, and the firmament. I distinctly remember Don, even in this thread, talking about how spirits inhabited the air and mountains -- so it is not the case that he just denies that spiritual activities could take place in the firmament.

The concept I hear Don objecting to the most is the "fleshly sublunar realm", or some kind of world of myth treated as if it were a dimension or world separate from our own (analagous to the difference between sublunar and supralunar worlds; or perhaps the borders between the seven heavens above the moon). Don can correct me but I read him as saying that the entire world under the moon – our earth and the air/firmament – was not thought of as divided by Platonic dimensions but was regarded as one place, characterized by change, populated by some beings that people could see and some that they could not see; some places that people could physically travel to and some that they could not travel to.

Don seems to press this issue because if there were a separate dimension or level of reality under the moon, it would be easy for a modern exegete to insert the ancient myths into this pocket and to say that all the gods underwent, for instance, their trials in a place that was thought to be unearthly, or at any rate invisible. When Don says that people could look up and see things in the firmament with their eyeballs, he is arguing, I think, that for the ancients the firmament was part of their own world, connected to it at the earth's surface, though certainly stretching up to heights that human beings could not normally travel into.

(Disclaimer: I am not pronouncing on Middle Platonism; I am trying to say what I think Don's views are).

So if you two can be as precise as possible about your terms, you might get somewhere. Personally I think a formal debate would get you farther than these boards. I thought your formal debate on the apologists was of better quality and depth than the debates I've seen about the apologists on this board. With this matter of Middle Platonism, you two have got such a precise disagreement that formal, thoughtful salvos are your best chance.

If you want to know my view, I think that demons could have attacked Christ in the firmament in the same sense that they attacked people in the Gospels or attacked each other in Ascension chapter 7.

The problem is that Paul describes Christ as having flesh, suffering and dying in the flesh, etc. Hence Don’s critical objection to the idea of a fleshly sublunar realm not of the earth. If you grant such a place, and say that “flesh” there was regarded as the higher “counterpart” to ordinary human flesh, then you can argue that Paul’s readers automatically understood him as talking about that higher flesh in that higher, invisible realm. This is particularly so if you place all the pagan gods’ trials there, as you have done, because then someone listening to Paul knows that, well, "if a god is being spoken about, then I must assume it took place in that invisible, separate world unless I’m told otherwise. Even if I'm being told it's a descent from heaven, and an incarnation into flesh and suffering and death, I assume it took place in the firmament among invisible events, the higher counterparts to events down here."

So it becomes critical for you to successfully place Attis and Mithras, essentially, in a fleshly sublunar realm that everyone at that time, without clarification, would have assumed. Because if there was no such place, then Paul’s references to flesh, blood, suffering, death, and birth from a woman all become (as they are to us) natural indicators of stories located on the earth.

THE ASCENSION

The piece of evidence you bring up the most is the Ascension of Isaiah. Let me make a suggestion about that; this is an idea I got tonight after re-reading Don’s posts in this thread.

You've often used the lines in 7:9-10 to argue that the sublunar world was divided essentially as follows:

1. a lower realm (earth and Sheol)
2. a higher realm (the air/firmament) in which Platonic "counterparts" of the lower world took place.

Just correct me if I got that wrong.

The critical line reads:

What if the author of the Ascension is not talking about lower/higher counterparts at all but is merely saying that the firmament's inhabitants are similar in some way to human beings on the earth? That is to say: "Everywhere in this corrupted world under the moon we see fighting and envy."

From there, the protagonists proceed into a very different world: the perfect world divided into seven heavens.

It may be impossible to say what the original author meant since, as you well know, we don’t have the original form of the Ascension that is thought to be the ancestor of the surviving forms of the story. But what do you think of this sense in those two lines? Is it possible?

Kevin Rosero

andrewcriddle

FWIW the text of Ocellus Lucanus is online at http://www.archive.org/details/ocell...uson00taylrich
text version
http://ia311517.us.archive.org/1/ite...lrich_djvu.txt

Andrew Criddle

GakuseiDon

And I would agree! Why not indeed? It shouldn't be ruled out, out of hand. So, what is the next step? The next step is to go to the literature and see what we can learn about what they DID believe about what happens above the firmament and below the firmament. And THAT is where we start to have problems.

If you say that "they thought X about what was ABOVE the firmament, therefore we can assume that they thought similarly about what was UNDER the firmament", I would say that we simply can't assume this, at least not in the light of Middle Platonic ideas about a dual cosmos. The authors were pretty clear about differentiating the supralunar and sublunar realms. That is the distinction that I've always made, and that is why whether the Heavenly Jerusalem having cobblestone streets is irrelevent, at least on this particular point.

You know, in a lot of threads on this board and elsewhere, the topic comes up about whether or not the Bible teaches a flat earth. Often it will include diagrams representing how people thought the cosmos was shaped -- a flat earth, with a dome ("firmament") and then God and angels above, sitting on thrones, etc. Often there are windows in the firmament to let water in. I think we have all seen such diagrams. Now, the drawers have no hesitation depicting thrones etc above the firmament, perhaps even a cobble-streeted Heavenly Jerusalem. But what about below? Is there any depiction of a sublunar realm consistent with a Heavenly Jerusalem? As far as I know, there is not. It just seems to be clouds and the odd angel. If anyone is interested, I think reading articles on skeptical websites about how pagans and Christians viewed the cosmos would be a good primer.

Now, that doesn't mean that they didn't actually think that there were trees and even a non-earthly Jerusalem below the firmament (for example, it may have been a later development in Paul's time), but OTOH we can't just assume that they did. What DID they believe? What do the authors tell us? And that is where we start to look at the literature. Theophilus talking about birds flying in the firmament is just part of a collection of data dealing with how ancient people saw the world above them. It's mightily unfair of Doherty to make it sound like I'm hanging everything on that. Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, many others have written on the nature of the universe and the nature of demons. So let's start looking into this! Let's see what the evidence tells us formed the background of belief in those days. If Paul says something different, then fine. But if Paul is ambiguous, and one reading is consistent with the beliefs of the day, while the other reading is not, then this should be noted.

On AoI: The final redacted form shows Jesus being crucified on earth. Doherty proposes an earlier version where Satan "hangs Jesus on a tree", and proposes that this was done in a non-earthly setting, with the "earthly" sections put in later. It is reasonable to assume that later Christian interpolators updated the text to match their own beliefs, so it is fair enough that we should only expect hints of mythicism to remain. Doherty is more than entitled to look for indicators there. My concern though is that to do this, he has already assumed what those beliefs may have been. IOW, he is reading mythicism into AoI in the same way that he argues people read historicity into Paul. That's fine in some circumstances, but becomes circular if we are trying to determine whether mythicism was a belief behind it in the first place.

There've been lots of threads on the AoI, and so I will leave it at that. At the end of the day, it comes down to the evidence.

gurugeorge

And it's also consistent that people claim they have ascended or descended to parts of the sublunar realm and seen various events involving sundry bizarre entities and implements of various kinds.

So unless the ancient Jews, Greeks, etc., stole a march on the Wright brothers and the Mole Man, but for some strange reason the prophets and visionaries of those days neglected to mention their use of what must have been some wonderful contraptions, and no evidence of their use has survived (oh, and, unless, also, all those reported aerial and chthonic menageries have disappeared in the interval between ancient times and the, ahem, rediscovery of flight and the advent of the Fantastic Four), Doherty is right and you are wrong.

GakuseiDon

What kind of implements? Sources please. If it is a dream or a fiction story, then you'd need to be careful (after all, "Jack and the Beanstalk" could then be used as proof that people in our time thought that there were clouds with castles).

Right and wrong about what?

Gamera

Then what becomes not so obvious is why Paul intimates that Jesus preached peace far and wide, that he committed a crime (and hence was crucified), that he accepted people (loved them?).

He's intimated at a backstory that doesn't fit the backstory you claim his audience would have assumed.

gurugeorge

The point is that there was already a Jewish idea of the Anointed One, and the new idea that Cephas and the others, then Paul brought in, kind of revalued the values of it - brought him from the future to the past, made him a spiritual instead of military figure, a preacher of peace rather than a warrior, dying an ignominous death instead of winning a military victory. This revaluation of the value of the traditional Anointed One idea is the "stumbling block".

The paradox is that instead of being a great king winning a great military victory in the future, the Anointed One had already existed in the past, and apparently (according to the flesh) suffered the most ignominous defeat imaginable. And this is what "fooled the Archons" (who had been lying in wait for a kingly Anointed One to come, as it were). The battle was already won. This is the "good news".

It's a new version of the myth, and just as mythical as the original.

Magdlyn

This sort of recap was helpful. I agree the distinctions seem subtle.

Admittedly, I am playing catch-up. I have not read most of the discussions GDon and Mr Doherty have had on this subject here on II.

I asked earlier to be brought up to speed and GDon expressed his views in post #122. Mr Doherty rebutted and expanded on his views, in posts #135 and 136 including quotes from Plutarch, Sallustius and others.

GDon did not provide any quotes. He stated "beliefs" of his own, about the pagan and proto-Christian views of the various realms around the turn of the first millenium.

I quote

Do you have any citations for this?

Do you have citations for both POVs, from Pauline and pagan sources?

This is where Mr Doherty feels you are being naive. If spirits (demons, demi-gods, saints,angels?) in the sky were invisible, or able to be perceived only thru visions, "looking up" would not be the only way of knowing what they were doing.

As well as in trees and water, correct? Isis and Osiris were sometimes depicted as being in trees. John the Baptist was associated with water and summer. Etc. Literally? I give the ancients more credit for intelligence.

"In the air"? Below the moon? Invisible or visible? If invisible, how where they perceived? Visions? Dreams? (There can be trees in dreams.) Did they have chariots and horses in their environment?

People believe this? Never heard of a "pocket universe" before. Citation?

Quote where Paul definitively equates "Satan" with "the god of this world," please.

Can you provide quotes, please?

Your beliefs are not relevant, but thanks anyway.

Ray Moscow

Hi, Mr. Doherty. I really liked The Jesus Puzzle.

In answer to your question: see midway through Chapter XI here:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...lus-book2.html

It all appears to be commentary on Genesis.

Magdlyn

Now I will address your posts to me, and see if I am getting you.

I hear your anger and frustration. I am trying to keep an open mind.

Well actually, many today (including my in-laws, sadly!) do seem to believe, or at least want to believe, in actual people in robes playing harps on clouds in heaven. An actual "pearly gate" manned by St Peter with the keys and the book, etc, ad nauseum.

But anyway...

There is evidence, and then reasonable rational interpretation of evidence. And the evidence is scanty, and has been mostly destroyed or redacted almost beyond use, by later pious Xtian editors. This is annoying. I just have a couple areas of confusion between your POV and GDon's.

1) Why, he asks, and I now do as well, your insistence on a "fleshly sublunar realm"? Why is the moon important? Where is the evidence for this sort of halfway realm between a heaven on the one hand, and an earth and its sky below?

2) Was the firmament perceived as a dome in this period (call it 30 CE) as it was when the creation story of the OT was written (ca 700 BCE)? As a firm bowl over the earth?

3) Were the sun, planets and stars thought, by the "Greeks" to be above the moon, though? It seems that the Hebrews thought the moon, sun and stars were all stuck on an equal plane in the firmament. Did the Greeks think otherwise? Wouldn't the "lunar" plane also be the solar one?

Now, as far as the protagonist of Ascension of Isaiah going "up into the firmament": was this now seens as a "region" one could walk (or fly) around in, as opposed to a sort of metal solid barrier that held back the rain? It seems to me, in this case, the "firmament" is thought of as the first layer of heaven. Thoughts?

What is the original word for "firmament" here? Is it Greek? Is it a literal translation of the Hebrew word for firmament? Or does it actually mean: heaven (ie: just above the dome)?

I thought you did insist the crucifixion took place in the sublunar realm. I thought that was Don's main objection to your thesis.

Now you are equating "the heavens" with the "sublunar area?" I thought there was a distinction. No?

Demon spirits could exist both above and below the moon. I don't get why that even has to be an issue. Either way, it seems to me, they are invisible to the waking eye and only perceived in visions (what we might call hallucinations) and dreams, anyway.

As Jung later said, he considered the gnostics to be proto-psychologists and used the term "archetypes" (gods, demons, aeons, etc) to describe actual interior psychological states. It could have been that the Greeks felt this in some way, but lacked the language to express it the way we now do. A "higher spiritual realm" evolving out of a primordial earthly environment was a midway step on the way to psychology and now, brain chemistry function.

I will comment on the Appendix you quoted, in my next post.