spin

Here's the thing, Robert: you might want to but you actually don't. You are merely riffing here....

I'm happily aware of il Nolano. There's a lovely romantic statue to him in Campo de' Fiori in Rome, where he was fried for the pope's pleasure. And I've been to the Mocenigo palazzo on the Gran Canal where Bruno stayed.

I'm sorry, you can't cope with the "recycler" definition, but his ideas were not new: his cosmological views were neoplatonic strained through Nicola Cusano. His major efforts were in the field of memory for which sadly no-one seems interested. Upon his death his ideas were ignored. Galileo goes back to Nicola and forward to Copernicus (who in turn goes back to Nicola's mate Peuerbach).

Being a fan of Bruno I see him for what he was, a philosophical shit-stirrer.

As indicated above, Bruno was recycling Nicola Cusano. But I'm more interested in your waxing logorrheic. There is this romantic blunder that sees the return to classical interest as the right path, turning a cultural cold shoulder to what has been called the "dark ages", that marvelously fertile explosion of technology after the stultifying classical era. This was Petrarca who gave us this silly idea, then Vasari who gave us the ostentatiously absurd "renaissance" of classical thought.

You don't really seem to like my term "personal ontology". It's always put in quotes. Is there a problem in my idiosyncratic term? ie the individual's inner construction of what is?

This notion of "interpersonal ontology" is ultimately an artefact of hegemony, expressing an imposed vision of reality.

And how is it that you become a pundit on what this "Christological heuristic" seeks to do? You seem to be expressing a fragment of your personal ontology, adrift from reality. It would be nice if you could tie around it a rope that is anchored to a tree or some other point fixed to the ground.

What you've said is so far removed from the foundational christologies of christianity that it becomes a new entity which has only used those christologies as a springboard.

Think of epistemology as that rope I mentioned. It's not scientific per se, though science only functions with a clear epistemological foundation, but then, so does most logical communication.

Again, none of this is based on any contemporary or near contemporary literary context for Judeo-christian ideas. It makes me wonder exactly where these cogitations come from.

Everyone lives in their own private Idaho... until they have to open their mouths and say something that is intended to be significant to someone else. They can stay in Idaho or communicate.

I don't know what you know about astronomy. Is it the Richard Krauss type of astronomy or is it the almagest type? I don't really understand what you mean by grounding your ontology to astronomy.

I'm trying to get at the nature of ontology. By describing it as personal, I get to the point that there are billions of ontologies (one in each head) and hegemonic constructions that you might call ontologies are archetypical of fragments of individual ontologies, though they are archetypical in the sense that the internalization process transforms the hegemonic constructs. (Incidentally, one of the many problems involved in getting a computer to talk is that the computer lacks an ontology.)

Science provides ontological input accompanied by a relevant epistemology, in that it attempts to say what is and how it is known. But there is a lot more to the world than what is covered by science.

That's one of the interesting things about facts. They require external confirmation.

As I haven't noted it, you use the term "myth" in a way that is different from a strict sense in the religious context of a narrative bearing a religious concept and from the general use of a culturally prevalent falsehood. For me Sagan's was an image, not a myth. We have to get very European with our use of "myth" to approach what you seem to convey in the term. And when I think of Barthes, I'd think he is being playful with the notion.

Science is partially hobbled by the fact that it is necessarily conveyed through language which involves an artificial and arbitrary chunking of the world into mentally manipulable junket data, words being the vessels for the junket.

I'm starting to cringe every time you mention "majesty". I think you're doing it deliberately. I see no problem of the "majesty of Christ", other than what you impute. You're just trying to revive within you that symphony and song, but the Abyssinian tart has pissed off, bro.

Gosh, would you consider how big old stories like the seduction of Enkidu or Gilgamesh's search for eternal life or Prometheus's pains for doing a good thing might contribute?? Why do you find yourself in a rut over Jesus? It seems to me that you need to let go of the bullshit and start again afresh, rather than clutch as much as you can while you are going down. An empty basket allows you to put what you prefer in.

Does this mean you don't appreciate a good bowl of pasta or real gelato, or a good conversation, or a good book or film.... What about a good sit and think? Without the bullshit would you really self-harm? Do you honestly need a purpose in life to continue living? If you were in a vegetative state you'd keep living as long as your body were supplied nutrients. Most of you requires no purpose to function. A lobotomy might do you good.... Well, some fictitious purpose could do the same I suppose.... You could become a religionist and get a purpose of sorts. You wouldn't even have to think about it. It's just like a vegetative state except that most of your brain still functions.

If you really and truly think so, Robert.

You seem to be waxing a little too didactic here for me.

Values are an individual's internalizations. They become incorporated in the construct of the what of the world that the individual maintains. Values are particular to the person through internalization, notwithstanding their origin without the person.

(That's a small relief.)

(If you agree, you could try calling it "meaning2" to distinguish it from the default notion which deals with the content we impute to symbols.)

I don't have "an ideal vision of human purpose", which seems to me to be egocentric and anthropocentric twaddle. I don't have a vision of any type of "human purpose" just as I don't have a vision of bacterial purpose.

Sorry, without the apposite skill sets any constructed etymology will be--to use a fine English term--bollox.

Etymological analyses of any significance are based on language evidence in conjunction with whatever other evidence can be brought to bear. Without the linguistic evidence, you can say nothing of any significance about etymology. Naive remarks based purely on appearances can never cut it. One must know about the various languages involved, as appearances can often be misleading. Despite the fact that English "have" and Italian "avere" mean the same thing, they are not related etymologically. Think of "cold" and "caldo", both to do with heat, but are unrelated and in fact "hot" and "caldo" are cognates (and with a little effort I could show you how). You must be well versed in the languages otherwise you will probably talk nonsense. And an essential part of the job is to have a functional trajectory for how a word form could end up elsewhere. The Acharya S stuff that you have cited is totally lacking in such a trajectory. It just happens.

I understood the notion when originally stated, but it needed to be said in the context I gave it with regard to your complain about a too sensitive bullshit-detector that can close off some interesting conversation. There is a need for balance and for understanding what is being said.

Just think of Bruno and Savonarola.

You are free to believe whatever you want about christianity. The relationship of christianity to political hegemony is in my view sufficient to explain its longevity. This can be seen for example in the wrangle over the coronation of Charlemagne. Was it the power of the pope or the will of Charlemagne? The answer doesn't matter for it is sufficient to show the historical entanglement to show the relationship. Monastery schools taught the young political elites in the centuries following. The intertwining of temporal and spiritual power is still manifest in the burning of Bruno and the house arrest of Galileo.

You can’t hope to open up a sensible understanding of why Christianity has been such a dominant religion for such a long time, unless you have an interest in history.

You can base an ontology on anything your heart desires. For it to be of any use beyond the reaches of your head, ie indealing with the world and communicating your ideas to others, it needs an epistemology behind it.

The individuation of commitments, ie the attempt to find one's biases, is a necessary condition for all scholarly pursuits, not just in one specific field. It is not thus a prerequisite for the specific field, unless you want to include the kitchen sink... logical thinking, suspension of common sense, etc.

(Songwriting doesn't hold the key to the mystery. A mediocre song can be a number one. Think of Mull of Kintyre or most other things by Mr Mediocre. It doesn't have to be very musical at all or sung by someone with any character. Britney Spears, for example. Marketing and sales.)

You haven't answered my question: "can't one flourish without popular stories?" I wasn't asking for a definition of "flourishing" or any of the other tangents in your response here above. Do you need popular stories in order to flourish or can you live your life happily without them?

mountainman

What a wall of text.

It's in the OP.

stephan huller

Yes but there can be cringe worthy OPs.

Chili

. . . that is why we cringe,

You are an OK guy and a good sport, just your eye on religion is all fucked up.

Robert Tulip

No, I am presenting a scientific ontology. Deconstructing the supernatural paradigms of conventional religion requires some work. Giving new life to old ideas is not just recycling. The new context creates a difference. Bruno reopened a continuity with the hermetic attitude. A continuity is more than a rehash. And in any case, he was an evangelist for heliocentrism which in its Copernican form was still a new idea.The ancients wrote a lot, and had communication systems stretching from Egypt to England. In the Dark Ages people were preoccupied with staying alive, and were stultified by Christian dogma, anarchy and invasion. Beyond the wheelbarrow, what are the wonderful inventions of the Dark Ages? Ontology is the study of being. Being is objective. An inner construction is primarily meaningful to the extent it accurately describes objective reality, although fantasy does have real though lesser meaning than science. Objective reality can be seen equally by anyone. The only senses in which a personal ontology makes sense are as poetic fantasy, like Tolkien or Rawlings, or as pioneering science, like Newton and Einstein.Hegemony is inevitable. We either have good hegemony or bad hegemony. A good hegemony is conducive to human flourishing, while a bad hegemony leads to destruction. To the extent an imposed vision is true, it should produce a good hegemony. This Christological material mainly comes from the ancient orthodox Christology agreed in the creed at Chalcedon. My understanding of it comes via scholars like Oscar Cullman and John MacIntyre and Wolfhart Pannenberg, viewed through a scientific lens. In theology, the union of the Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History in the person of Jesus Christ is about the union of above and below. But this ontology has been corrupted in its conventional expression by acceptance of supernatural claims of dogma.

The other polarities I mentioned are part of convention, except for the sun and earth, which is astrotheological, and reflects a hidden allegory behind conventional theology. The tree to which this material is anchored is the objective structure of cosmic time seen in precession of the equinoxes. The union of above and below in the myth of Jesus Christ reflects ancient observation of precession. My view is that there is a hidden natural cosmology behind the ancient Christology, hidden in the lost secret mysteries of the cosmic seers, and suppressed by the church. So rather than fantastic springboard, think forensic reconstruction. What you call ‘the foundational christologies’ are in fact lost, due to the systematic orthodox destruction of evidence about Christian origins. So we have to construct plausible senarios. The Historical Jesus as founder of Christianity is not a plausible scenario. Deliberate construction of Christ as syncretic myth is plausible.
It is a reasonable question how Christian faith can be reformed for a modern age. This is where the allegorical text of the Gospels requires a new scientific hermeneutic, exploring how natural metaphors are concealed beneath the supernatural veneer. For example in John’s Apocalypse the tree of life is allegory for the zodiac, and the river of life is allegory for the galaxy.There is plenty of literary context for a reading of the Bible as cosmic allegory within the Bible itself. The problem of the New Testament is that it claims to be fact but reads as fiction. The fiction seems to conceal a deeper meaning which has not as yet been satisfactorily explained because of the dominance of supernatural and literal readings. My view is that this deeper meaning is an accurate scientific vision of the structure of time, observed in the slow movement of precession of the equinox, the star clock of history. This is a fundamental piece of astronomy as an encompassing terrestrial cosmology that was well known by classical astronomers from the time of Hipparchus 130 years before the time of Christ. It means that the authors of the Christ idea saw the shift of Ages as a guiding motif, with the position of the sun against the stars defining the ages. Do you mean Lawrence Krauss? I support modern mainstream scientific astronomy. But I consider we can add to our objective cosmology by exploring how myth is structured against the precession of the equinox, as discussed in books like Hamlet’s Mill. Ptolemy’s Almagest is obsolete in terms of his geocentric mechanics of the equant and epicycle and crank, but his sense that the universe can be imagined as centred on any individual is perfectly scientific. That is the basis of a reverse Copernican revolution as envisaged by Kant. What I mean by grounding ontology in astronomy is that earth time has a structure, seen in ice core records, whose patterns are driven by orbital cycles. These cycles can be interpreted as the framework of myth and ontology, for example in the yuga cycle reflected in the ideas of Daniel and Hesiod.An ontology is a theory of being. We have one universe. We can therefore have ontologies that correctly describe the being of the universe, or ones that don’t. Contradictory statements cannot both be true. My claim is that scientific ontology can develop an accurate theory of being based on astronomy, grounded in the precession of the equinox, interpreting Biblical cosmology as based on the construction of Christ as the alpha and omega point of the observed cosmos, the movement of the spring point from one Great Year to the next in 21 AD. I see this objective scientify cosmology as the hidden ground of Christian hegemony, as the basis of Constantine’s vision of the chi rho.

Analysing the cosmological framework is a key to reform of Christianity to make it compatible with science. I will explore this further in response to mountainman’s comment about the battle of Milvian Bridge.We have scientific ontologies and unscientific ontologies. The scientific ontologies are correct, while the unscientific ontologies are incorrect.… and ranking in terms of importance to construct a coherent worldview. My worldview is grounded in scientific understanding of the orbital cycles of the earth, with the axial spin wobble as our biggest contextual fact for the millennial framework of time. This is a paradigm shift. Galileo said ‘but it moves’. I say ‘but it wobbles’. I use myth to mean framework of meaning, which I see as the same as your “narrative bearing a religious concept.” All myths are believed by some people to be objectively true, otherwise they would not be myths. The mythic content in Carl Sagan’s pale blue dot is the Copernican error that humans are insignificant in the universe. I prefer to argue that language makes humans the most significant thing there is, as the entity in which the universe reflects upon itself through symbolic representation. Did Coleridge use the phrase “tart has pissed off, bro”? Seems somewhat modern. The maid on Mount Abora playing her dulcimer is still a live wire.

I had noticed that the concept of majesty irritates you and Stephan Huller. I have no real wish to irritate you, since you are polite, but as for Stephan, I would be happy to continue to say ning to him…

What could be more important than kingliness, as the essential question of power? The problem of majesty as a concept asks if the ‘honi soit’ of monarchy operates by force or consent. Can a king be legitimate? Is there validity in the ancient priest-king notion of representing the earth to heaven?

This board is about Biblical Criticism and History. The central claim of the Christian religion is that Christ is Lord. That is about majesty. We cannot simply dismiss the ‘Christos Kyrios’ (Christ is Lord) as meaningless, but nor should we give credence to anything supernatural. Where do we find meaning between these extremes?

Mountainman has asked what is the majesty of the Historical Jesus, suggesting the hypothesis that it was invented by Constantine. I don’t think mountainman is right, but it is good that he has drawn attention to this central mysterious concept of majesty, which has been dominated by believers but should be assessed against a phenomenological ontology. I think I mentioned earlier my interest in comparative mythology. So yes, all the big old stories should be respected. Gilgamesh has some amazing contacts with Noah and Jason and Osiris and Agastya. I am not in a rut over Jesus, it is just that Jesus Christ is the conceptualisation of connection between earth and heaven in the highest and most abstract and universal sense, so Jesus can retain his seat at God’s right hand in a scientific pantheon, even while he and God are redefined. Proverbs 29:18 says where there is no vision the people perish. Vision is a sense of purpose. An individual does not need vision, but a society does. I get the feeling our civilization is entering a death spiral as a result of lack of vision. This needs change.Sorry about that, just trying to set theology within an evolutionary framework. That is not easy when modern training sees theology and evolution as inherently in conflict.An individual does not maintain a real world. The real world is maintained socially by institutions, through shared values, refined by evolutionary precedent. Values are primarily expressed as laws, regulations and social norms.This asks the question of what meaning means when we talk about the meaning of life. My view is that the meaning of life is the good of the future. Such language melts various words together, such as meaning, purpose, telos, goal and vision.Ah, but the absence of vision of purpose is nihilism. That is the problem with the modern scientific worldview, its opposition to metaphysics makes it contemptuous of any objectivity in values. But unless we believe our values are true they lack motivating power. Values are like the grain of mustard seed, able to move mountains.Necessary but not sufficient. The hegemony of Christianity rests in its cosmology. Christian cosmology remains a mystery. An epistemology is a theory of knowledge, a systematic heuristic to assess what is true and what is false. My heuristic is that science is true and supernatural dogma is false.Paul McCartney was hardly mediocre. The Beatles had a cosmic vision of love. Although Paul was second fiddle to John Lennon. Touching the popular nerve is the heart of myth. no

mountainman

The question is related to the origin of the majesty of the Historical Jesus and the hypothesis that seems to be supported in discussion above is the majesty of the Roman Emperor Constantine was transferred to the figure of Jesus H Christ.

Whether Jesus was invented or not is irrelevant to the OP. Constantine certainly did not invent his own majesty - it came with the role of Pontifex Maximus.

sotto voce

Which had precedent, if not cause, in the Pontifex Maximus of Mosaic origin, the Kohen Gadol. So one could say that Numa Pompilius jealously copied Aaron, and Aaron was established by Jesus.

Iskander

Pontifex maximus has nothing to do with Constantine. Pontifex maximus was a republican office.


Majestas has nothing to do with Constantine

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/.../Majestas.html

The Laws of the Twelve Tables punished with death a person who stirred up an enemy against Rome or surrendered a Roman citizen to an enemy (Dig. 48 tit. 4 s3). The Leges Majestatis seem to have extended the offence of Majestas generally to all acts which impaired the Majestas Publica; and several of the special provisions of the Lex Julia are enumerated in the passage just referred to.

sotto voce

Funny things happen after I post.

Chili

No, the meaning of life is in answer to the question: "who am I?" in relation to the world I see. To explain the universe away is just like putting ointment on a wound that an existentialist would do and let 'it' be, instead of be "I Am."

The "I Am" here now is as the centre of the universe where the Son is made manifest as the Christ and be another Christ in our mythology without the name Jesus attatched to it, as in Robert the Christ now the solitary individual, and not Robert the Christian as follower of him, with 'him' now Jesus here.

In other words, you find your own genus as Man in the same image of God as son, now both God and Lord God yourself in your own being and therefore son. There is no history about, period.

It is not hard to do, Golding said, and is much like eating and drinking if one is poised to be.

It is equal to what is known as metamorphosis wherein we are inside the cocoon to live our gospel, where Jesus is acting on our behalf as insurrectionist to enable our faculty of reason itself to be raised,* so that reason will prevail, as Joyce did say. The omega is our own 'good works' of Rev. 14:12 to be enjoyed as richess added to the alpha that is retained in the TOL and is ours by inheritance for up to one thousand years, they say.

The 'old,' or alpha, is where John was from, and he was identified from the cross as the Christ to whom here now Robert's contribution is added by Jesus to be his good works enjoyed in heaven after Jesus died when his role was finished.

In the Gospels the old is added by way of betrothal via Mary and is 'cloth of religion' inside us, that is depicted by the swadling cloth the stork brings babies in by those who abandonned their own child in their flight to Egypt that prompted the Herodian massacre, and many of these ended up in Rotterdam next to the sea, but now I digress. Sorry.

It is precisely because it is an action wherein we are 'beyond theology' that the workings of the act are 'sublet' to Jesus to let 'religion' do 'its thing' for us, who so is Raphael, with Michael above and below him and never Gabriel as the Muslims do proclaim . . . and so also must die first before good time begin for them (with 72 virgins waiting there to entise their youth), just like a Christian by worshiping Jesus as follower in admiration of what Jesus did for them, while in fact, he fornicated them in their head instead and so a scorpion he gave to them to never understand.


*This is how Christians are standing on the very stone that they are trying to lift, and will stamp to say how right they are and sink their foot up to the knee on the very stone they stand.