stephan huller

Another peculiarity. Ousia is feminine but yesh is masculine. Why is the substance of the Father and Son feminine?

stephan huller

In the Categories, Aristotle defined ousia as the ultimate subject that underlies everything else. According to this test, a sensible individual is primary ousia, while species and genus are secondary ousiai. In the Metaphysics, ousia is the focal meaning of being, but it is divided into form, matter, and the composite of matter and form. If ousia were still determined by the subject criterion, matter would be the primary subject and hence primary ousia. But Aristotle held this to be impossible, and presented the separation (independent existence) of substance and its status as a this (tode ti) as more important criteria for deciding what is ousia. According to these new criteria, form is ousia in the primary sense, with composites of form and matter being ousia in a derivative sense. Species and genus, which are secondary ousia in the Categories, are rejected as ousiai in the Metaphysics. This has given rise to the problem of explaining the relation between form and the universal.

To search for primary ousia is tantamount to searching for primary being. Aristotle emphasized the central position of ousia in the network of categories. All other categories depend on ousia for their existence, and ousia is prior to them in time, knowledge, and definition. [Blackwell Dictionary of Philosophy p. 497]

Horatio Parker

Yes. The Dual Tradition of revelation and dialectic.

Debunked by Lorenzo Valla or some other Renaissance person.

stephan huller

But that's not the point. You can stand outside a bordello shaking your finger at everyone who keeps coming back to be satisfied by a night with 'Lucy.' Yet in order to truly understand why people are paying $400 to jump in the sack with Lucy you have to give her a try. In the same way, you can't understand Christianity without accepting that what is obviously an appropriation of Platonism was viewed as Plato stealing from Moses. It doesn't mean it is true. It just means that if you get stuck arguing with the doorman, you're never going to figure out what the big deal about Lucy is.

stephan huller

Thanks Chili for another enlightening observation. Horatio, I am not sure if Jews were completely unfamiliar with the concept of ousia. What ousia is occupied a lot of Spinoza's time.

stephan huller

Another possible connection in Judaism between Yesh and Yeshu in Abraham Abulafia's Sefer Mafteah HaShemot:

And again elsewhere (JTS 843, fol. 81a.) he makes reference to the fact that in Hebrew, the words Yeshu ben Pandera have a numerical value of 713 which is the same as that of the words, "Yesh mamzer ben hanidah " (there is a bastard, conceived in menstrual impurity).

Horatio Parker

That argument cuts both ways. If these terms have arbitrary assigned meanings, then the trinity is just an overworked recipe, or a collaborative comic book story. OTOH if there is a solid conceptual framework to the trinity, then the relationships that the terms denote should stand up to scrutiny. The story of Lucy has to be coherent. If one Lucy's customers says, "Lucys vagina is on the back of her neck and her bed is on the ceiling", I would doubt that account. Right now I'm hearing something like "Lucy ousia hypostasis being trinity Gnostic Jew Plato".

Ousia and logos are separate. Fine. What does that mean? Or, what did that mean to anyone at Nicaea that might've influenced the trinity? IOW what is it's significance?

stephan huller

Another example of Abulafia's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Abulafia) interest in connecting words related to yeshua with yesh:

It is noteworthy that Abulafia chose to describe this matter in temporal terms elicited from the expression yeshu at yhwh ke-herefayin, ''The salvation of the Lord comes as a blink of the eye.'' Since the word yeshu at is written defectively without a waw, the phrase yeshu at yhwh ke-heref ayin can be read as yesh et yhwh ke-herefayin, ''There is a moment of the Lord that is like a blink of the eye.'' The sensitivity of what is at stake is underscored by Abulafia's additional words of counsel, “Know this.” The transposition of the expression yesh at yhwh, “The salvation of the Lord,” into yesh etyhwh, “There is a moment of the Lord.'' impels the reader to attend to the gnosis of redemption, a wisdom that is linked to the ''moment of [et yhwh], the interlude of time that concurrently marks and effaces the difference between the spiritual and material, the intellectual and imaginative, the divine and daemonic. What separates good and evil is nothing but a fracture of time [http://books.google.com/books?id=ctq...he%22&f=false]

stephan huller

I don't understand what the confusion is. The interest in yesh came from the Pentateuch and the rest of the Jewish writings. Hab 3:4 speaks of 'yesh the hidden power.' There was a Jewish tradition which identified yesh with the Platonic interest in ousia but which saw yesh as an independent hypostasis. This isn't theoretical. The Bahir, Gikatilla and the Zohar know of this concept. The Jewish mystical tradition also identified yesh as the firstborn substance out of the ideas (= ayin).

Now let's turn to some clues from Celsus especially where Origen writes:

Celsus can't mean that Plato led them to know about God the Father who was superior to the Creator. Just look at what Origen says is the context of this statement:

But we already know what was 'discovered' by Jacob at Peniel and which knowledge was passed to Jews and Christians:

I don't think this is coincidence. The 'super-celestial' God is Jesus (= yesh = a personified divine ousia of the unknowable Father, the firstborn). I am not sure whether Celsus or Origen is making the ultimate connection with the INDIRECT knowledge of yesh which came to Jacob at Peniel. The direct apprehension of the ousia had to wait until the Common Era (and presumably the crucifixion).

stephan huller

A sidebar about the shape of the cross in Justin Martyr:

an later editor has added:

For the Samaritans have kept the original traditions from the beginning and there is no T-shaped cross in the ritual. It is the legs which are crossed like a tau (or in Greek a chi):