Toto

The question relates to Middle Platonism in particular, and whether specialists in ancient philosophy would agree with Doherty's understanding of Middle Platonism.

Malachi151

Well, there is:

Is the translation correct? Is the dating correct? If so, what are the implications?

Jeffrey Gibson

He has, so far as I know, nothing more than a BA. Do you know differently?

Umm.. really? You know this how? And is the time and effort he has expended anything mote that the time and effort he put into exploring the commentaries and the literature on the Epistle to the Hebrews that's out there or that he had actually explored when he posted his comments on what the majority of commentators believed about the end of the Epistle?

Except that it's not a yes or no question. And the issue is not D's capability to understand ancient philosophy (though given both how he has frequently misunderstood things he's read and his meager grasp of Greek, one does have to wonder about this), but the question of whether, no matter how much "effort" he has (or, doubtless, will inevitably and with indignation, claim he has) put into doing so, he actually does understand Middle Platonism.

Moreover, how would you be able to recognize that he does understand it given your admission that you yourself haven't put the time and effort that you yourself acknowledge one needs to/ must expend to grasp what its all about and that you have no expertise in ancient philosophy and/or Middle Platonism?

Jeffrey

Doug Shaver

I don't remember saying they should. I simply asserted that Doherty's thesis is plausible. There was no implication that my saying so made it so.

Whether my assertion was correct depends on whether, as a matter of fact, Middle Platonic beliefs -- insofar as we know what they were -- were consistent with what Doherty says Paul was claiming about the Christ. After a few years of amateur research, I have not yet found any facts about Middle Platonism that contradict Doherty. That research, by the way, has included frequent inquiries of people who think Doherty is wrong to offer some facts about Middle Platonism contrary to his thesis. They haven't done it.

In my lexicon, plausibility is established for a thesis if it is consistent with the relevant facts it purports to explain and is not inconsistent with any of them. A plausible thesis is not necessarily a credible thesis. I happen to think that Doherty is also credible, but a proper defense of that assertion would require an argument rather more extensive than the one I have for his plausibility.

GakuseiDon

But do you not see what you are saying here? If no-one knows whether Doherty's understanding of Middle Platonism is correct, how can anyone say that Doherty's theory about "sublunar fleshly realms" is correct or not?

I used to think that Doherty was the best of the mythicist positions. But now I'm afraid I see him in the same bracket as Acharya and Tom Harpur. Like them, he doesn't back up his claims (in his case, about what pagans believed back in Paul's time). Like them, his supporters just refer people back to his books whenever questions are raised about details. Like them, people critical of his theories are labeled as apologists even if they are atheists. And finally, like them, if you question points of Doherty's theories too closely, his supporters go quiet. I've tried to start a number of threads to discuss SPECIFIC points on Doherty's theories, looking for sources to back up some of his claims, but unless Doherty joins in, the thread dies. Many of his supporters regard him as having "the best explanation": few seem willing to look into the details. As an experiment, I'll start a new thread on a specific claim raised by Doherty, and let's see how many Doherty supporters are interested in joining in. At the least, I'd like you to have a look and comment on whether my criticism is valid.

I'm the first to admit that I am just an interested amateur in this area, and Doherty almost certainly has more expertise. But then, in the same way, so does Acharya. All I can say is that I've followed up all the references that I can, and his theory just doesn't fly. In fact, some of the statements he has made (like the sublunar realm being an "overlapping dimension", or demons(!) being higher Platonic forms) simply are counter to the beliefs of the day. Just the other day, Ted Hoffman talked about demons sharing the perfect realm of the gods, an impossible notion to people of Paul's time AFAIK. Doherty looked over the thread and didn't correct him, which I thought was interesting.

What is needed is a mythicist to go through Doherty's references, and see whether they support his "sublunar myth" ideas. (Doug Shaver, if you are reading: I don't mean to see if they are inconsistent with Doherty's theory, but whether his stated references actually support it). The only one I've seen is Carrier and his comments about Plutarch's "Isis and Osiris". I started a thread where I layed out an argument that Carrier was mistaken, but IIRC the thread just died, as all such threads do.

Anyway, until Doherty or his supporters start producing references from primary sources, they can believe anything they like -- just as I don't really care if Acharya supporters believe that Krishna and Mithras were virgin-born and crucified. If they think that Acharya has the references even if they personally can't reproduce them, then good luck to them. But if an Acharya supporter said that they didn't know whether specialists in that field would support her, what would you say to them?

GakuseiDon

Doug, I'll start a new thread on this very thing shortly. I'd like you to join in if you have time.

This isn't related to the new thread that I'll start, but how about this: Paul talks about Jesus being the descendent of people presumed to be historical. Paul also talks about Jesus being in the flesh. Are these things consistent with Middle Platonist beliefs about non-earthly gods? Heck, I'll make it even broader: Did ANY Middle Platonists believe that the myths of the gods (like Attis castrating himself with a knife) was carried out in a non-earthly realm? Where in fact did they place the gods' activities?

Doug Shaver

I understand two propositions to be inconsistent if they cannot both be true. That does not exclude the possibility that they could both be false. If they are contradictory, though, it is impossible for them to be either both true or both false. Given two contradictory propositions, one (and only one) of them has to be true.

Doherty's thesis depends on Middle Platonists, or some subset of them, believing certain things about the structure of the universe. What I'm referring to would be evidence that no Middle Platonist believed anything of the sort. The proposition "No Middle Platonist believed X" would be inconsistent with "Paul believed X, and he got that notion from Middle Platonist influences."

I don't see why. Nothing about the manner of his formation would imply anything about the manner in which he died.

He doesn't have to be left aside. The issue of whether anybody at that time believed Mithras was crucified does not stand or fall on whether Justin Martyr thought anybody believed it.

Your interpretation of what Middle Platonists were thinking of when they wrote about "flesh" is not the kind of evidence I have in mind.

Not until I see those examples for myself. You haven't shown me any. All you've shown me is your personal conviction that they exist.

spamandham

Caution is warranted here. Many of the passages that have Paul referring to an earthly Jesus are contended by one or more reputable scholars to be later additions.

Doug Shaver

I hope I'll have time. We'll see.

I haven't become an expert on Middle Platonism yet. I'm working on it, but I'm having to cope with severe time constraints.

I can say that my efforts so far have failed to turn up anything (besides arguments from personal incredulity) demonstrating that Paul's statements about Jesus' lineage and his fleshly nature were contrary to anything that some Middle Platonists would likely have believed. That is, provided that the key terms, in the original Greek and to the people who spoke and thought in that language, would have had meanings foreign to the senses associated with the English words into which they are usually translated.

Of course one may reasonably ask, "But what else could he have meant?" Personally, I don't know. Doherty has his answers. I don't know if they're right, but they could be for all I know. I have not seen anybody present a cogent argument showing that they can't be right.

And for my money, he doesn't have to right about how those passages should be interpreted. Here are a few data that make me think so:

(1) Just for a moment, set aside "seed of David," "born of woman," and the one or two similar passages that historicists keep reverting to. It seems to me that everything else in the authentic Pauline corpus, plus every other document of Christian origin that is uncontroversially of first-century provenance, minus only the canonical gospels, shows us a Christ Jesus who, so far as the writers were aware, had never set foot in this world and who, even if he had appeared in this world at some time and in some way, was a god or something very like a god, not just some charismatic rabbi preaching to whatever crowds he could attract by healing a few lepers and doing a few exorcisms.

(2) The gospels, canonical and otherwise, are easily explicable as works of fiction needing no basis whatsoever in oral traditions about such a charismatic rabbi.

(3) If some charismatic rabbi had done something so spectacular, impressive, momentous, or whatever, as to persuade a handful of his Jewish followers that he was a god or something very like a god, then the secular record of the first century would not have ignored him the way it obviously did.

Now, against all, that, we have three or four remarks by Paul that seem to suggest Jesus' ordinary humanity -- if their key terms, as rendered in English, are construed the way modern English-speakers would normally construe them. It seems to me that any plausible alternative construal is sufficient to make them fit an ahistoricist hypthesis. Considering the weight of all the other evidence against historicity, I think it's not much of a reach if we have to say, "Well, they must have been interpolated," but I don't think ahistoricists really need to go there.

Jeffrey Gibson

Could you tell us please, just what the nature and extent of your efforts have so far actually been? What exactly have you actually read on/about Middle Platonism, let alone of the actual works of the Middle Platonists themselves?? And is what you have read in the secondary literature considered by acknowledged experts in MP to be any good? Do you know?

Jeffrey