Vorkosigan

1. Negative evidence: That Paul never mentions them as occuring in our own.

2. Positive evidence. As pointed out by Earl, many passages appear to say that Jesus was not crucified on earth.

Vorkosigan

GakuseiDon

Well now. That is the main sticking point mentioned in the OP. A "reality that is near or overlaps our own" is an idea that is familiar to our modern mindset, but from I've read, the choices available to Middle Platonists (other than allegorical) were (1) above the firmament, and (2) below the firmament. Since demons didn't exist above the firmament, that means Christ had to have been crucified below the firmament. And the evidence is that the earth and air below the firmament formed one continuous realm. There is no "reality that is near or overlaps our own" below the firmament.

What are the most convincing passages that appear to say that Jesus was not crucified on earth, in your opinion?

EarlDoherty

Don is still stymied by his obsession with literalism, while I think Vorkosigan has put it best and most succinctly:

“…the key point is to realize that Paul does not know these events as historical events but understands them as events that have occurred in some other reality that is near or overlaps our own.�

I will present a modern parallel which I hope will clarify things, but to lead into it I’ll try to answer a few of Don's points first:

No, the blurring is what took place among various people’s outlook on the mythical stories of the savior-gods. Both outlooks were based on Middle Platonism. I have said that we cannot be sure, due to the dearth of writings on the subject, exactly how the devotee-in-the-street regarded the myths. Since they began as stories placed in primordial times on earth, they may have survived in that interpretation in some people’s minds. Moving further along the spectrum, others would regard them as taking place in some real fashion in a higher reality. Whether you want to label that ‘fashion’ as a literal happening, or some other definition, may be difficult to decide, and in any case doesn’t matter. The believer was convinced that they happened in some fashion in that higher reality. I would place Paul in such a category. He knew they had happened (whether he could envision them graphically or not, I don’t know) because scripture told him so. Then we have at the other end of the spectrum those philosophers who were too sophisticated to accept any ‘literal’ interpretation of the myths and interpreted them entirely as allegory, but even in that case they would still represent real spiritual processes that the human mind had no other way of describing.

Note, by the way, that when Plutarch admonishes Clea not to regard these myths as having literally happened, this indicates that it was a common practice to do just that, to interpret them literally.

Note, too, that if Middle Platonists postulated a sub-lunar realm where the demons operated, this had to entail the idea that such demons actually did something in that realm. One couldn’t say that the demons acted ‘allegorically’. If Middle Platonism thereby involved the concept that spiritual activities by spiritual beings took place in spheres above the surface of the earth, then why are you baulking at the idea that certain religious groups could regard their gods as actually doing something in those spiritual spheres? And since one of the fundamental concepts of the age (Platonic and otherwise) was that things existed in the heavens which were the spiritual counterpart of material things on earth, what is the problem in accepting that believers imagined their gods doing earth-like things, in earth-like landscapes, using earth-like utensils, and so on? Some minds no doubt imagined those things quite literally, others perhaps reserved judgment on how literal the counterpart nature was, still others would have labeled it all allegory representing very non-literal processes. The fact that it is all, from one end of the spectrum to the other, gibberish to us (or ought to be) should not prevent us from realizing that for the ancients it was a thriving philosophical and religious industry. And that by attempting to bring our modern scientific understanding to it we are engaging in an exercise in futility.

The answer is yes, but within the context of mythical thinking. The problem is, neither I—nor you—are able to get our minds around that manner of thinking, as evidenced by your use of the word “literally� above. If it is used to mean ‘in some dimension of reality’, then yes. If it means—which you are implying—in a literal fashion such as we understand it, then the answer is no. One could ask the same question of the Ascension of Isaiah. Here is an elaborate description of the descent of the Son, various activities he performs as he passes through each heavenly sphere, and a crucifixion portrayed as occurring in the firmament at the hands of spirit forces. Does the author mean this “literally�? He certainly doesn’t say it’s allegorical. It’s a vision supposedly experienced by Isaiah, so he must have regarded it as ‘factual’ in some supernatural context.

A proper answer to this question would require asking it of an ancient. Ask it of the eunuch-priests of Cybele, who explained their practice of self-castration by the myth of Attis’ own castration. I doubt that they would say “it never happened,� that it was mere allegory, but I can’t tell you exactly how they envisioned it as ‘happening’ in the mythical world.

There are the spiritual equivalent to trees. And if you ask me to explain how that could be, what they constitute, how an intelligent adult mind of the time could conceive of such a thing, I can’t give you an answer. But maybe I can illuminate it in this way:

For the Greeks, Hades was an actual physical place under the earth. (Whether every Greek actually believed that, I don’t know.) For the early Christians, I suspect, Hell was an actual physical place as well, with material fire, no doubt envisioned as within the earth (just as heaven was a place ‘up above’, though in God’s highest spiritual sphere rather than a material one). Leaving the more sophisticated minds aside, the average believer for many centuries believed that Hell was where the damned’s resurrected fleshly bodies would go to be tortured for eternity. Then along comes modern science, which reveals the true structure of the universe, what the interior of the earth is like, that it contains no hell, and that there is no heaven above, no matter how high one goes. Do believers stop believing in heaven and hell? Unfortunately, not, at least not many of them. How do they explain hell in light of this new knowledge? Well, they might say, it’s not strictly material, but it must be some form of equivalent. After all, our fleshly bodies go there, and they have to suffer in some way. There must be some kind of fire, a spiritual equivalent to it. It’s in a reality that bears some resemblance to our own, but different. As to where it is, today’s believer might be hard pressed to say in any specific fashion, but if we had a contemporary philosophy which identified a “where� to put it (such as the ancients did with Middle Platonism), then that question would be answered: ah, it’s in that sphere of ‘other reality’ identified by the philosophers. Then there are those few, progressive theologians (if that’s not an oxymoron) who go the Plutarch route: oh, Hell isn’t ‘anywhere’ and certainly doesn’t exist as a place of torture. Hell is an allegorical representation of a state of being separated from God and the pain that this creates.

As in ancient times and minds, so in modern times and minds. The determined believer will adjust, he will backtrack, he will move toward 'otherworldly' explanations and envisionings. If I insisted to you that you can't believe in hell or heaven (if you believe in such things) because a strict application of the accepted rules of reality don't make room for such places, if I produced a modern Ocellus which made it seem impossible, would you stop believing?

If this doesn’t help you grasp how the ancients could have viewed their spiritual realms where the activities of gods took place, or how they could have insisted on doing so regardless of theoretical impediments, then I don’t know what else to suggest.

Finally, I note you say in your latest post:

You seem to think that you have a silver bullet here, with which if you just keep firing it you can bring the whole Jesus mythicism case crashing down. I think enough has been said to show that this just isn’t so. If none of the ancient view of the supra-/sub-lunary universe bears any relation to reality, and there is no scientific standard it has to adhere to, you just don’t seem to accept that the believer is free to do anything he likes with it, he is free to allow anything to take place within it. He doesn’t have to answer to you, or to me, or to some principle of consistency which you are ferociously hanging onto. He can do whatever he wants with that sublunary realm. He won’t be arrested for it, and he probably won’t be ridiculed for it (which he would ignore anyway). If he wants to have his Jesus crucified on some kind of spiritual tree 3 miles up, he’ll go ahead and do it, and we can sputter all we like. I showed you, as clear as day, that the writer of the Ascension of Isaiah regarded the earth and the firmament as, for certain practical purposes, two separate realms, or two distinct parts of one realm, or however he might have phrased it. He probably never heard of Ocellus. For all I know, he may never have heard of Plato. But he took the ideas of his time, adapted or fudged them, built on ancient precedents and created his picture of the descending god crucified by the demons to rescue the souls of the righteous. If you think you can reach back 20 centuries and impose on him what you think he should or shouldn’t have written or believed according to what you think should have been the proper interpretation of Middle Platonism, well, lots of luck.

Solo

Earl, your theory doesn't work. Paul's Christ is indeed mythical but the crucifixion plot does not fall into any "sub-lunar" category; most likely it was a real historical event around which Paul spun his mythical wool. Paul ridicules the libertine Nazorean elements and baits them with the fact of crucifixion, as a scandal to the Jew and a folly to the Greek. This would not have worked had the event itself been of mythical origin. I really get a chuckle over the Cor 2:6-8 interpretations of the "archontes" as demons. The "rulers" cannot be demons because Paul employs a conditional grammatical construct when he talks about them. If they had had wisdom (ei gar egnosan...) they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory, he says. So, to paraphrase the likes of you, "if demons were not demons they would not have molested a theological abstract" ! Hmmmm.......don't think so.

No there is something else here. Definitely something else ! It was Paul who first deified the obscure small-time prophet from Galilee by giving "a cosmic meaning" to his execution, by supplying a mystical, paradoxical afferent to the cross as a symbol of shame and defeat. He would know nothing among his flock than Jesus Christ and him crucified ! This "gibberish", by the way can be understood, if one reads the NT (and the great religions in general) as originally an ancient therapy for what is today known as bipolar disorder. Don't believe me ? Start reading the gospels with Luke 6:21.

GakuseiDon

Yeah, I think that it is indeed a silver bullet, since "a reality close to or overlapping our own" under the firmament as a view held by the people at that time is unsupportable by the evidence. I have no doubt that others will be questioning you on these points.
Sure, and I agree. If the evidence is there, then we need to follow it, regardless of how we ourselves regard the rationality (or irrationality) of that view.
Thanks! Of course, I have pretty much the same criticism towards the idea of "a reality close to or overlapping our own" under the firmament.

GakuseiDon

I've done some more digging over the last few days, and I just can't find any evidence that Middle Platonists believed in "some other reality that is near or overlaps our own" under the firmament. It just doesn't exist. As I've said, I believe that this is a modern concept that Earl is imposing on the Middle Platonists.

The sub-lunar realm extended from the firmament to earth. There is no question on this AFAICS. Earl dismisses Ocellus's comments as unrepresentative, but this isn't the case. Middle Platonists believed in a dual level cosmos - that above the firmament, and that below. The world below the firmament was subject to change and decay, and was inhabited by demons and humans. Demons were "aerial creatures". They had a "corporeality", but weren't made of flesh. And they certainly didn't live in a separate reality that was "near or overlapped our own".

Tertullian: "From dwelling in the air, and their nearness to the stars, and their commerce with the clouds"

M Felix: "There are some insincere and vagrant spirits degraded from their heavenly vigour by earthly stains and lusts... The same man also declared that demons were earthly, wandering, hostile to humanity"

Tatian: "But none of the demons possess flesh; their structure is spiritual, like that of fire or air. And only by those whom the Spirit of God dwells in and fortifies are the bodies of the demons easily seen, not at all by others"

There is no evidence that demons were thought to possess flesh in their native form (even in the Ascension of Isaiah where the demon Belial came to earth as the Emperor Nero to persecute the Christians, he came "in the flesh"). If Paul wrote from a similar belief structure, then expressing that Christ came in the flesh can only place him on earth.

I will repeat one last time: there just doesn't appear to be any evidence that Middle Platonists believed in "some other reality that is near or overlaps our own" under the firmament. It just doesn't exist. It is a modern idea that is being imposed on the Middle Platonists of the time.

I thought I might have missed something in Earl's book, so I went back to look. The closest example that Earl gives there relate to Roman allegorical concepts. Unless Earl is proposing that Paul was speaking allegorically about Christ, I can't see how they help him.

Earlier Earl asked: Where in the Platonic heavens did Attis find the knife to castrate himself with? I'd like to know what his answer is to that question. Because it just doesn't appear to be "he found it in some other reality that is near or overlaps our own under the firmament". If it was an allegorical castration, then what is the relevence to Paul?

I won't claim to be an expert on Middle Platonist views. Their views certainly varied, especially with regard to what lay above the firmament. But their views about what lay below the firmament are clear: the sub-lunar realm extended to earth, and that is where humans and demons/daimons lived. AFAICS there is no evidence that Middle Platonists believed in "some other reality that is near or overlaps our own" under the firmament in which demons acted.

I know a lot of people have been convinced by Earl's book on this point, but I have a feeling that this concept will eventually go the way of ones like a "virgin born Mithras" and a "crucified Krishna".

Ted Hoffman

Just a few questions:
1. Is it your view that Carrier too, is imposing this view?
2. Is it your view that the TDNT is also imposing the view that the ancients believed in the existence of superimposed spheres?
3. Where were the demons driven to in the Tatian's passage below?
4. Where were the first created human beings expelled to in Tatian's passage?
5. Where do you think the third heaven that Paul spoke of in 1 Corinthians existed?
6. Where are the several heavens that Jesus traversed in Ascension of Isaiah? Or are they also allegorical in your view?
7. Can you confidently say that Plutarch does not speak of the existence of a sphere above the earth?

Address to the Greeks:
TDNT, Vol VI, p.416:

EarlDoherty

Don,

Instead of going on, and on, about what you can't find and what you can't understand, why not deal directly with trying to explain the clear passages in the Ascension which I have pointed out to you:

7:10 - And as above, so also on earth, for the likeness of what is in the firmament is here on earth.

Now, if you can explain to everyone's satisfaction how this indicates that there is no distinction whatever between the earth and the firmament, please do so.

7:28 - And again he took me up into the fourth heaven, and the height from the third to the fourth heaven was greater than (from) earth to the firmament.

Please explain to us how there can be a "distance" from earth to the firmament if they are both to be regarded as precisely the same region.

If 7:9 can speak of the angel and Isaiah "going up" into the firmament and there seeing something they didn't see on earth, namely Satan and his hosts engaged in a great struggle, this indicates that, for this writer at least, a distinction and separation existed between the surface of the earth and the upper reaches of the air, where things went on that did not go on at earth level. Since they took place among spirit beings, the implication is that they were spirit activities. Some of those spirit activities could have been, as outlined in chapter 9, the crucifixion of a descending god from the supra-lunary regions. Please explain how this could not be so.

I don't care what Ocellus says. And by the way, I do not claim that Ocellus misrepresented the norm. This is another thing you cannot seem to grasp. Since the structure of the universe was not arrived at by scientific means, and there was no centralized authority to determine or impose 'correct belief', different people were free to apply the concept in any way they chose. If Paul, or the writer of the Ascension, chose to interpret Christ's activities in the heavens in a certain way, they could do so, even in contradiction to the way you think it should have been done. If some writers chose to see various levels of distinction or activity within the sub-lunary realm, as is clear from the Ascension, then they could do so.

I notice you have gone back even further and are now claiming that there can be no application of the word "flesh" to any spiritual entity or sphere. Sorry, but I'm not going to reargue everything from square one all over again.

GakuseiDon

Yes. He misread Muller's original comment, as Muller explains in the OP to this thread. Muller says that there is no evidence of an intermediate world between the earth and the heavens. Carrier took that to mean that Muller was saying there was no evidence for a "dual cosmos" (heavens above the firmament and earth below the firmament). Muller states in the OP that he had to rephrase this point since his original comment was misunderstood.

Keep in mind that I am discussing about what is believed about the world below the firmament.
Yes. What does it say about superimposed spheres below the firmament?
From above the firmament ("heaven") to the world below the firmament.
From the Garden of Eden to the outside world.
Above the firmament.
No, there were seven heavens above the firmament.
No, I just haven't seen any evidence that he believed in superimposed spheres below the firmament.

It's like "the crucified Krishna" that you'll see spread around the internet. I can't rule out that there was some myth where Krishna was crucified, all I can do is ask for the evidence.

GakuseiDon

There IS a distinction between the earth and the firmament, or rather the earth and the air. But the likeness is related to "struggle" and "envy over trifles". Demons were subjected to the same kinds of lusts.

Maybe we are still disagreeing about what the firmament is? I say that it is the dome that separates the world below from the heavens above. Satan and the demons were on the world side of the firmament. Satan was the "god of this world", which extended from the earth to the firmament.

The firmament is the dome that you can see in the sky. There is a distance between the earth and the firmament. IIRC the distance was actually guessed at by ancient writers. In fact, I was going to cite that same passage as evidence for me, since the implication was that the earth was directly connected to the firmament, and it didn't form a separate world.
Correct. As Tertullian wrote, the demons were up in the clouds, and so could predict when rain was going to fall.
Sure, it is possible. Just like it is possible that there may be a myth where, for example, Krishna was crucified. It just comes down to the evidence.
I have no problems with that. As I think we both agree, it comes down to the evidence. What I don't see is any evidence that it represents "some other reality that is near or overlaps our own" under the firmament.
I just thought it is interesting that First Century and Second Century writers wrote that demons were formed from air or fire, and denied that they had flesh. It is a definite contrast to the writings of Paul if Paul is claiming that Christ was in the flesh AND had the same type of body as a demon when he was crucified by Satan.