judge

Kapyong are you going to address any of the points Don raised in post #3...or just ignore them?

Suggesting these points are merely, Don saying ""No it's not. Doherty is wrong", seems disingenuous on your part, dont you think?

Stop dodging and deal with the content of Dons response please.

GakuseiDon

The other part of my answer is that they are comparisons.

I speculate that this is a refer-back to another passage. Here is the context:

Chapter 7:
9. And we ascended to the firmament, I and he, and there I saw Sammael and his hosts, and there was great fighting therein and the angels of Satan were envying one another.
10. And as above so on the earth also; for the likeness of that which is in the firmament is here on the earth.

So, what is happening on the earth? From Chapter 3:

Chapter 3:

29. And there will be great hatred in the shepherds and elders towards each other.
30. For there will be great jealousy in the last days; for every one will say what is pleasing in his own eyes.
31. And they will make of none effect the prophecy of the prophets which were before me, and these my visions also will they make of none effect, in order to speak after the impulse of their own hearts.

The author is comparing the behaviour of demons with that of some Christians (presumably of his day). In both cases, there is fighting and jealosy. In both cases, this will be the situation just before the Beloved comes. In both cases, they are ignorant about the coming of the Beloved. But they are not "platonic counterparts". It has nothing to do with Platonism. Even if it were not a 'refer-back', it is a reference to the state of the earth, and the envying that is going on there, that will be destroyed when the Beloved comes.

You too, Kapyong. I appreciate you looking into it as much as you have, and I do hope you will continue your investigation into how they thought in those days. It's truly a fascinating topic in itself.

EarlDoherty

Good grief! Talk about a straw-man interpretation. I have never maintained that what the demons are said to do in their realm of the lower heavens was a perfect “Platonic form” of which earthly comparisons are imperfect copies in the Platonic sense. Nor does the text of the Ascension say any such a thing. All that I took the AoI 7 to do for my purposes was demonstrate that the realm of the demons immediately below the moon was regarded as a separate location to that of the surface of the earth or the atmosphere immediately above the earth, since (as Kapyong pointed out as well) both areas were spoken of separately, each containing separate activities, one on the part of demons in their location and the other on the part of humans in their location.

Don, you swore up and down ad infinitum that this was not the case, that there was no such distinction, so please don’t tell me and everyone else here that you have now lost sight of what I was claiming about this passage and fabricating some ridiculous classic Platonic statement about demons and humans being Platonic counterparts. This sort of thing is what makes you so infuriating to deal with, and regularly invites an accusation of being deliberately deceptive about what your opponents are claiming.

The other thing I took AoI 7 to demonstrate is that some of the sort of things that go on on earth were also conceived as being able to take place in heaven. The “envying” (or struggle) of the demons in the firmament was being compared by Isaiah’s angel to similar activities among humans on earth. I took this as an indicator that an activity like a crucifixion on earth could also be seen as able to take place in the demonic realm of the firmament. That is all that the passage says, and all that I claimed for it. There certainly was never the slightest suggestion on my part that the demonic envying constituted a Platonic Form in the classic sense, the “reality” governing the earthly envying. Of course that would be laughed out of court. Once again, that argument between us over the years was never couched in such terms by me, and your imputation and presentation of that now either constitutes a failure on your part to remember clearly anything of the debates we have had (which would call into question many of your other claims about what has constituted my position) or a deliberate twisting of my ideas.

You quote Wells:

The simple possible occurrence of crucifixion in both places, of course. It doesn’t have to be the crucifixion of Christ on earth and the crucifixion of Christ in the heavens. It is simply an answer to your claim that crucifixion itself could not take place in the heavens. I don’t for a minute believe that you have forgotten that, or that you cannot recognize that Wells, too, seems to have twisted my position into saying that the crucifixion of Christ in the heavens is a “spiritual reality” in the Platonic sense. I don’t know where he got that from anything I’ve written no more than where you got it.

As for the AoI being the ‘sole’ piece of evidence I have supplied for my World of Myth, that’s ridiculous. My chapter 12, Conceiving the World of Myth, presents all sorts of pictures presented by writers of the time, both Jewish and pagan, of human-like and earth-like things conceived to go on in the heavens, participated in by spiritual and post-death humans, at times clothed in spirit-world “bodies”, and there again (and no one would think otherwise), none of it was regarded as constituting some kind of spiritual reality of Platonic “Forms”. Such conceptions of heavenly activities would in no way exclude the inclusion of a crucifixion of a descending Son, or the location of such an event in a sphere beneath the moon. Those descriptions show that the so-called pure Platonic principles of what could go on where (corruptibility vs. incorruptibility, suffering and death, for example) were wildly un-adhered to, especially in Jewish thought. Again, your constant past ranting about the legitimacy of the sublunar concept is shown to be baseless.

All this defining of classic Platonic philosophy overlooks the fact (which I incessantly point out as well) that three centuries after Plato himself, and given the utter fluidity of all disciplines of philosophy in the ancient world, one cannot appeal to Plato himself to rigidly define what could or could not be envisioned by individual sects or writers or the needs of a given group’s own faith and invention, especially in the realm of Jewish sectarianism, which is what we are dealing with here. This is like your long-ago 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 do yourself and us no service with these antics.

As for your dissection of R. H. Charles’ views of what was in the ‘original’ Ascension of Isaiah, one wonders why you did not trouble to compare that beginning-of-the-20th-century analysis with that of Michael Knibb in the 1980s. You choose to put all your eggs in a 1912 basket when even Charles’ own arguments which you quote entail an obvious bias and body of assumption on his part which has helped determine his conclusions (not that Knibb doesn’t show certain biases on his own part). But taking apart Charles’ presentation is not something I can do tonight, and I may not devote the time to doing so. Certainly Knibb’s analysis of the passage differs from Charles’ in important aspects. (Either you are not aware of that, or else you are deliberately ignoring them and leading others to assume they don't exist.) Also, even though you claim to have read my new book, you fail to mention that I do directly address the question of the phrase about the Son seemingly said to take on human form (p.122, as part of an extensive discussion of the AoI issues).

Anyway, I’m leaving it at that, before my frustration with you leads me down paths the mods might find objectionable.

Earl Doherty

GakuseiDon

It was DCH that talked about perfect Platonic forms, not me. But any kind of Platonism where demons are platonic counterparts to humans is simply against any platonism that I have ever read about.

Now, Kapyong wrote above "Note that here a pair of corresponding Platonic planes is specifically mentioned (As Above So On the Earth) : Firmament - Earth. On Earth we find a "likeness" of what is in the firmament."

Do you agree with Kapyong that "Platonic planes" describes the relationship between the firmament and the earth? If so, can you explain what is the "platonic" relationship between demons and humans?

My argument was your description of the firmament as "some other reality that is near or overlaps our own" (see the link I give below). I argued that you could travel from the earth, through the air (and the demons) and onto the Moon. They were continuous areas. We could look up and see the firmament and the demons (if we had the eyes to see them); the demons could look down to us on earth. Demons could float down to earth, without transversing dimensions or realities. Demons lived in the air because it was their nature, not because each area "contained separate activities, one on the part of demons in their location and the other on the part of humans in their location."

Earl, it would be nice if you actually QUOTE me on these things I apparently say. I do you the courtesy of quoting you; please respond in kind.

Here is what you say on your website, after we discussed AoI a few years ago. My emphasis:
http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net...sAscension.htm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Earl on his website Quote: Originally Posted by GDon "In the firmament" means "in the sky". Certainly birds weren't flying in a spirit world. No, Don, if you would open your mind a little instead of trying to fight a rearguard action at every step of the way, you would see that this still doesn't work. Consider: Ascension of Isaiah 7:9 - "And we went up into the firmament...for the likeness of what is in the firmament is here on earth." Does it make any sense to say: "And we went up into the sky...for the likeness of what is in the sky is here on earth."? Obviously not. The whole point of counterpart correspondences between material and spiritual is that they exist in two different dimensions. That's basic to Platonic thinking, going right back to Plato. This is the principle being stated here.

Now, let's review what you claimed in your last post on this thread:

... please don’t tell me and everyone else here that you have now lost sight of what I was claiming about this passage and fabricating some ridiculous classic Platonic statement about demons and humans being Platonic counterparts.

Okay. Please answer clearly: is there any kind of "platonic relationship" between humans and demons? If so, what is it?

I agree. It is a **comparison** (my emphasis above), as I pointed out to Kapyong. Kapyong, do you agree that this is what I claimed?

Er... "a crucifixion on earth could also be seen as able to take place in the demonic realm of the firmament"? Just like envying on earth was conceived as occurring in the firmament as well? Am I reading that correctly? How does this help you, since you claim that there was a crucifixion in the demonic realm, and none on earth?

That's about as far as I got. You make at least one more stupid accusation about what I apparently argue, with no quotes from me to support it, as usual. I'm just no longer interested in responding to your crap and adhoc arguments. No doubt you will respond to my review of "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man", and people will think "Doherty has responded, all is right with the world!" And good luck to them.

EarlDoherty

Where on earth, or in heaven, did you get the idea that I said that demons themselves are platonic counterparts to humans themselves? What kind of sense would that make? I also did not say that the demonic firmament and the earth are themselves counterpart “Platonic planes”. And certainly the Ascension of Isaiah 7 says no such thing either. It can be said that a Platonic principle is that the heavens (in general) and the earth (in general)—or the spiritual and material realms, to put it another way—are counterpart realities, the former being more ‘real’ or ‘primary’ in relation to the latter; and that certain things in the material realm are imperfect ‘copies’ of things (or “Forms”) in the spiritual realm. But how you can proceed from that principle to saying—or accusing me of saying—that demons are somehow counterparts to humans is beyond me.

What I have said about what the AoI 7 indicates is that there were counterpart activities envisioned, activities of the demons and activities of humans, and those activities took place in different locations, the former in the firmament which was the domain of the demons, and the latter on earth, the domain of humans. Ergo, the activity of crucifixion by humans could have a counterpart activity of crucifixion by the demons, each performed in its own realm, earth and firmament.

I don’t know what you think to accomplish by saying that the surface/atmosphere on/just above the earth is “continuous” with the “air/firmament” below the moon inhabited by demons. This does not preclude speaking of actions by the demons in that higher atmosphere and actions by humans on the surface of the earth as being two different actions performed in two different locations. Did I ever say there was a barrier between the two? A fence? A toll booth? Does any Platonist, ancient or modern, speak of barrier, fence, or toll booth between the various layers of heaven above the moon? Yet the literature I have quoted speaks of all sorts of different spiritual beings and activities inhabiting and taking place in those different layers of the heavens. Whether they are “continuous” or not, the AoI 7 clearly makes a distinction in location between the firmament and the earth, and a comparison/correspondence in activity between what goes on in those two locations. Thus, as crucifixion takes place on earth, crucifixion can also take place in the heavens (in this case in the firmament), the AoI being one piece of evidence to support this contention. Why is this so difficult for you to understand?

You have been reading far too much into my use of the word “reality” in that quote from my site, and trying to hold me to some kind of Platonic contradiction you seem to envision is involved—something like: the ‘higher Platonic reality’ strictly lies in the realm of incorruptibility above the moon, where Forms are perfect and suffering and death does not take place, so locating the crucifixion of Christ below the moon would mean it is not part of that higher reality. This is a ‘technicality’ that would do justice to the cleverest mob lawyer!

First of all, I have repeatedly pointed out that this kind of strict thinking and locating of various activities in the heavens (above or below the moon) was simply not followed. My chapter on “Conceiving the World of Myth” gives all sorts of examples of this, so your technicality would prove absolutely nothing.

More important, my (non-strictly Platonic) use of the word “reality” was perfectly legitimate in the broad use I made of it, even if the area between the earth and moon were “continuous.” If a sect declares that the demons have crucified the Son in some heavenly location, that surely constitutes “some other reality”. And if it is below the moon (and I have repeatedly acknowledged that Paul does not specify or may not have thought in those exact terms), then that “reality” is “near or overlaps our own”.

You quote me as having said: “The whole point of counterpart correspondences between material and spiritual is that they exist in two different dimensions. That's basic to Platonic thinking, going right back to Plato.”

Then you quote me from this thread: “... please don’t tell me and everyone else here that you have now lost sight of what I was claiming about this passage and fabricating some ridiculous classic Platonic statement about demons and humans being Platonic counterparts.”

Now what contradiction do you see in this? Once more, you seem to be trying to rigidify the term “dimensions” so as to exclude the heavenly crucifixion theory, as though the firmament and the earth, since they are supposedly “continuous,” are therefore not “different dimensions.” Another attempt at a technicality. But again, if demons are doing something to a spiritual being not on earth, it’s hardly some kind of error to style this as taking place in a different dimension, whether it’s above or below the moon. And your second quote of me stands. Correspondences in activities between material and spiritual is, as I have stated before, not saying that those counterparts extend to such a thing between demons and humans. Counterpart correspondences between material and spiritual is indeed a basic element of Platonic thinking, but that does not mean you can apply it in every conceivable fashion. Some of it would indeed be ridiculous.

This whole attempt on your part is nothing more than an overblown semantic exercise, full of invalid extrapolations anyone should be able to recognize. I can’t believe I am devoting this much time to countering them. You can count on this being the last time.

I am beginning to understand the history of our endless debates, Don. Are you not capable of comprehending simple language and ideas? I said “an activity like a crucifixion on earth,” not the specific crucifixion of Christ on earth. Naturally I see no such thing as the latter taking place; I claim his crucifixion took place in the heavens. My phrase “an activity like a crucifixion on earth” refers to the general idea, the general practice, of crucifying someone/anyone on earth—the act/practice of crucifixion itself. According to AoI 7, things taking place on earth also have counterparts taking place in heaven. My suggestion is that, according to that principle, if a crucifixion can take place earth, then a crucifixion can take place in the firmament. It doesn’t have to involve the same person!!!

One concluding observation about counterpart entities. I hardly believe that classic Platonism ever envisioned a multitude of corresponding entities between heaven and earth, every sort of angel or daemon having a human counterpart. And it certainly never envisioned that the demons as a group had a counterpart in humans as a group. One of the things it did envision was a form of Heavenly Man, an emanation of God Himself, who served as model for the created earthly man. What I believe developed only within sectarian religious circles of the Middle Platonic period (perhaps arising out of Daniel 7), was that certain heavenly entities, divine or semi-divine, could have a counterpart relationship to certain groups on earth, sharing certain characteristics with them; this sharing of features—which thinkers like Paul could turn into concepts like “Christ in you” and “the body of Christ” being a composite of the spiritual Christ himself and human believers linked to him—this mystical joining of spiritual and material beings created guarantees between them and served as the basis for salvation mythology.

Such a salvation philosophy, present as well in the mysteries (though to what extent or what degree of similarity to the Pauline type is difficult to know because of the dearth of witness on the former side), can be styled “paradigmatic parallelism.” The paradigm and its activities are in heaven, the parallels are in humans on earth and in their consequent destiny. A good example is found in the Similitudes of Enoch, in the parallel between the Messiah/Son of Man/Righteous One in heaven and the righteous saints of the Enochian sect on earth. This is not precisely the same thing as the classic Platonic Forms and copies, type and antitype. Neither the Enochians nor Paul style the individual believer an exact counterpart, a copy of Christ in heaven. But through unity with the saving god, achieved through the magical/mystical act of baptism (“baptism into Christ” and sharing in the death of Christ, etc.) a relationship is set up which owes a debt going back to classic Platonism and the latter’s own roots, and illustrates how established concepts in a given era, ‘things in the air’, will give rise to all sorts of applications and evolutions which have to be examined on their own merits, according to what those innovators have made of them. This is why whatever the Christian/Pauline concept of Christ’s sacrifice in the heavens, taking place in another ‘mythical’ (meaning not of this material earthly world) dimension, we cannot try to straitjacket it into the limits of some other expression or precedent.

If this thread is any indication, Don’s upcoming review of my book will certainly be a doozy. Unfortunately, I know I am probably going to be forced into responding to it. (Aaarrrggg!)

Earl Doherty

GakuseiDon

Earl, my review of "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man" is now up. It can be found here:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus...M_Review1.html

The review is over four webpages. The first page is the review. The other three pages go into issues raised by your theories.

Contents of the four webpages in my review:
1. Review Summary (where I give my overall impression of the book)
2. Early Christian Writings (including the strange silence on a historical Jesus)
3. Paul and Paul's Jesus
4. World of Myth (your controversial views on pagan mythology)

judge

When you do so earl do you think you might be able to lift your game, and include some content, and actually address points raised with some detail, rather than just waffling.

GakuseiDon

And also if he could actually quote me when he makes ridiculous accusations about what I claim, that would be good also. For example, on the last page, Doherty states:

This is like your long-ago 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 do yourself and us no service with these antics.

What absolute rubbish. It is yet another over-the-top comment by Doherty, that IMHO borders on lying. It's like his accusation that I claim that "the Jesus Myth fails to live up to modern scientific standards", something that I have never ever claimed. I have always approached Doherty's theories from the perspective of whether they would make sense to the people of Paul's time, something that I've repeated many many times.

Let me give the background, so people can see how ridiculous Earl is being. Earl and I discussed Ocellus in this thread. I had quoted from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Middle Platonism. I wrote:
To anyone who knows about Middle Platonism, this is fairly standard stuff. Nothing controversial here at all. And note that it isn't MY claim; it is a quote from the article on Middle Platonism. Also note that this represents the extent of my use of Ocellus and his views, other than some follow-up comments on Ocellus traded with Doherty in that thread. How on earth he sees me claiming that Ocellus "governed everything that was permitted to be thought and presented throughout the entire world of Middle Platonism, including any Jewish dimension of it" I have no idea. He is being either careless or deceptive.

Doherty went on to claim that Ocellus' view was "immaterial", to which I responded:

I'm not sure why you regard Ocellus's understanding as immaterial. He was a Middle Platonist, and his view - of a dual level universe consisting of a supra-lunar realm (above the firmament) and sub-lunar realm (below the firmament) - is consistent with other Middle Platonists AFAICS.

Doherty responded further on, amazingly saying "I do not claim that Ocellus misrepresented the norm", which was pretty much my point: that my quote from the IEP article was a fairly standard view as found in the literature of the time. Doherty wrote:

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.

To which I responded:

I have no problems with that. As I think we both agree, it comes down to the evidence.

Again, notice that there is nothing there by me claiming that it has "to live up to modern scientific standards" or "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". I have repeatedly criticized Earl's theories from the perspective of the literature of the day. I have done this by quoting Earl, from his website and his books, and other sources.

Now, lets see what Doherty wrote in "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man": On page 112:

Gods are usually accorded perfection, which means that they must live in a perfect realm... the demon spirits, part of the realm of corruptibility, were located in the area below the moon, although their activities extended down to earth as well.

Compare that to the quote from Ocellus that Earl so objected to. Absolutely bizarre.

I suspect that Earl does this to preach to the choir. Rather than tackling the evidence, I suppose it is far easier to adhom one's opponents. For those who read my review, notice how he often deals with apologetic arguments rather than critical scholarship. Can you imagine a peer-reviewed article going on about the views of apologists???

Earl, your tendency to "play the man" rather than the argument is remarkably consistent. If you genuinely believe that these ridiculous accusations are accurate, then you have a problem. If you are making these ridiculous accusations as some part of a strategy to deflect attention from your weak theories, then please stop. Either way, stop making these ridiculous accusations. If you want to accuse me of making some ridiculous comment (and no doubt I do make them occasionally), have the decency to quote me. Thank you.

dog-on

GDon, what do you think Paul meant by the term "third heaven"?

Additionally, as he refers to a third heaven, what do you think his view of the first and second heavens was?

GakuseiDon

It may be related to the ideas we find in 2 Enoch, where the Third Heaven is the place which is "prepared for the righteous, who endure all manner of offence from those that exasperate their souls" (which would fit in with Paul's claims of persecution elsewhere).

If Paul followed the cosmology of 2 Enoch, then he might have thought that the First Heaven as clouds containing angels looking over the storehouses of snow, and the Second Heaven as a place of darkness, where apostates are punished by angels.

The problem is that Paul rarely talks about cosmology or the heavens (compare with 2 Enoch, Ascension of Isaiah, Book of Revelation, etc, which are chockful with such talk). This appears to be a concern of later Christianity, possibly as Christ became 'more divine'. (According to Paul, Christ is appointed "Son of God" by the resurrection -- Paul doesn't seem to consider Christ as Son of God before that.)

So it is hard to get any idea of how Paul viewed the universe. He seems stunningly uninterested. He only mentions the sun, moon and the stars once, in the same passage (1 Cor 15:41). There are a handful of references to "heaven/s" (ouranos) and "heavenly" (epouranios), but Paul only enumerates the heavens once (2 Cor. 12:2). In all other uses, the word "heaven" appears to mean the abode of God. There are no "lower heavens" under the firmament, and Satan is "the prince of the powers of the air", which suggests a cosmology similar to the AoI. However, there is very little in Paul to help us with this.

If anyone knows of any passages within Paul that might help us decide what Paul's cosmology (esp his First Heaven and Second Heaven) might have been, please bring them out!