GakuseiDon

For those who have read Earl Doherty's "The Jesus Puzzle", the question "Where did Attis get the knife he used to castrate himself?" is rhetorical. Readers come away with the belief that First Century CE pagans thought that there existed another dimension -- a "fleshy sublunar realm" or "world of myth" -- where the people of that time placed the activities and stories of their gods. According to Doherty, it was in that "world of myth" that they believed Attis castrated himself, and it was there that some of the first Christians envisioned Christ's crucifixion, at the hands of demon spirits. As Doherty writes on his website (my emphasis):

For the average pagan and Jew, the bulk of the workings of the universe went on in the vast unseen spiritual realm (the "genuine" part of the universe) which began at the lowest level of the "air" and extended ever upward through the various layers of heaven. Here a savior god like Mithras could slay a bull, Attis could be castrated, and Christ could be hung on a tree by "the god of that world," meaning Satan (see the Ascension of Isaiah 9:14).

The problem is that there is no concrete evidence that "the average pagan and Jew" believed in such an "airy fleshy" dimension. In fact, I doubt that it would have made much sense to them. But readers of Doherty's "Jesus Puzzle" grasp his "world of myth" concept straight away, since it is a modern one that makes sense to us -- or indeed to anyone who has grown up with the idea of alternate dimensions from watching "The Twilight Zone" or "Xena Warrior Princess".

Doherty believes he can find hints of such a belief in early Christian writings like Paul's letters and the "Ascension of Isaiah". But if it was a common belief among pagans of the time, there doesn't appear to be evidence for it. I suggest that this is why Doherty needs to appeal so often to "imagination" and "thinking outside the box".

The writings of Plutarch are an excellent source for examining what the people of that time believed about the myths of their gods. Plutarch was a Greek writer and philosopher who wrote towards the end of the 1st C CE. He wrote on a number of topics, including cosmology and religious belief. More importantly, he reviewed the opinions of others in his works, so that we not only get his ideas on the topic, but those of earlier writers and contemporaries, as well as the "man in the street" view.

In my opinion, Plutarch's "Isis and Osiris" is a smoking gun against Doherty's "world of myth" concept. Plutarch recounts various interpretations of the Isis and Osiris myth, and there is nothing there that suggests activities in a non-earthly sublunar realm along the lines that Doherty has proposed.

Below, I look at Plutarch's views on myths. Along the way, I also look at Richard Carrier's comments on Plutarch that he uses in his "The Sublunar Incarnation" section of his review of Doherty's book.


A Two Tiered Universe

The people of the 1st C believed in a two-tiered universe: A sublunar realm, populated by humans and daemons (some good, some bad). This realm extended from the earth to the moon, and contained all that was temporary and changeable. They also believed in a superlunar realm above the firmament, pure and unchanging, in which the gods dwelled. The Moon marked a kind of demarcation point between the temporary and permanent.

The supralunar realm contained a number of heavenly spheres. Though people disagreed on the number of the spheres, it was the realm of the gods, of permanence and purity.

The sublunar realm only had the one sphere extending from the moon to the earth. "Fleshy" humans lived on earth, and daemons and spirits lived on earth and in the air. Daemons were made of "spiritual" substances like air or fire.

I suggest that the pagans wouldn't have known what to make of Doherty's "world of myth", nor where it could have been placed within their cosmology other than on earth. It couldn't have been placed above the firmament, because evil spirits couldn't have existed in the realm of purity. It couldn't have been below the firmament, since there was no idea of separate "dimensions" existing below the moon. Daemons lived in the air, but the only place that "fleshy" activities could have taken place was on the earth itself.

Four species of rational beings

Plutarch notes the belief that there were four "species of rational beings": (1) gods, (2) daemons, (3) heroes , and (4) humans. Plutarch put "demigods" into the "heroes" category. Some thought that there was a procession of change: from men to heroes, heroes to daemons, and, for those daemons that become "thoroughly purified by means of virtue", from daemons to gods.[1]

Pagans placed the true gods as existing above the firmament. Daemons lived in the air or on earth, and could be good or evil. Men, heroes and demigods were powerful beings who lived on earth, though the latter two could become spirits or daemons. Plutarch wrote that "Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics do conclude that daemons are essences endowed with souls", and that "the heroes are the souls separated from their bodies, some are good, some are bad". [2] These "essences" lived in the air, though, and not in any "world of myth".

Many pagans had a 'euhemeristic' view of the gods. They believed that some of the stories about the gods were told about humans or demigods around whom legends had grown. For example, Tacitus, writing around the same time as Plutarch, refers to Isis as a contemporary of Moses. [3]

More sophisticated philosophers like Plutarch believed that some myths held an allegorical meaning, and thus were not thought to have occured at all, either on earth or in a "world of myth". They were tales describing the actions of natural forces, which nevertheless were reflections of the natures of the gods themselves.


Plutarch's "Isis and Osiris"

All references below refer to Plutarch's "Isis and Osiris" [4]. In this work, the author is writing to his friend Clea to explain the various views of the "Isis and Osiris" myth. Interestingly, Plutarch finds examples from each of his "four species of rational beings" to show the different perspectives on the myth.

Plutarch starts by relating myths of those who believed that Osiris and Isis ruled Egypt and wandered around the world. Some thought that Osiris's body "lies in Busiris; for this was the place of his birth" (359c) . But Plutarch warns Clea that the legends shouldn't be taken literally, since they often have an allegorical meaning taken from nature:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...Osiris*/A.html

Therefore, Clea, whenever you hear the traditional tales which the Egyptians tell about the gods, their wanderings, dismemberments, and many experiences of this sort, you must remember what has been already said, and you must not think that any of these tales actually happened in the manner in which they are related. The facts are that they do not call the dog by the name Hermes as his proper name, but they bring into association with the most astute of their gods that animal's watchfulness and wakefulness and wisdom... Nor, again, do they believe that the sun rises as a new-born babe from the lotus, but they portray the rising of the sun in this manner to indicate allegorically the enkindling of the sun from the waters. (355B)

The idea that the myths were created to allegorically represent natural events and forces is a theme that Plutarch comes back to again and again. The myths were but reflections of "some true tale", though he points out that the more lurid parts can be discounted as against the "nature of the imperishable":

These are nearly all the important points of the legend, with the omission of the most infamous of the tales, such as that about the dismemberment of Horus and the decapitation of Isis. There is one thing that I have no need to mention to you: if they hold such opinions and relate such tales about the nature of the blessed and imperishable (in accordance with which our concept of the divine must be framed) and if such deeds and occurrences actually took place, then "Much there is to spit and cleanse the mouth", as Aeschylus has it. But the fact is that you yourself detest those persons who hold such abnormal and outlandish opinions about the gods (358e)

Next Plutarch gives the opinions of some who think that the tales were legends about "demigods", who became daemons, "an interpretative and ministering class, midway between gods and men":

Better, therefore, is the judgment of those who hold that the stories about Typhon, Osiris, and Isis, are records of experiences of neither gods nor men, but of demigods, whom Plato and Pythagoras and Xenocrates and Chrysippus, following the lead of early writers on sacred subjects, allege to have been stronger than men and, in their might, greatly surpassing our nature, yet not possessing the divine quality unmixed and uncontaminated, but with a share also in the nature of the soul and in the perceptive faculties of the body, and with a susceptibility to pleasure and pain and to whatsoever other experience is incident to these mutations, and is the source of much disquiet in some and of less in others. For in demigods, as in men, there are divers degrees of virtue and vice. (360d-e)

Plutarch dismisses the "man-in-the-street" view that the stories are about the activities of gods on earth, by moving on to a "more pleasing" philosophical views of the myths: they describe the actions of natural forces:

But now let us begin over again, and consider first the most perspicuous of those who have a reputation for expounding matters more philosophically. These men are like the Greeks who say that Cronus is but a figurative name for Chronus (Time), Hera for Air, and that the birth of Hephaestus symbolises the change of Air into Fire. And thus among the Egyptians such men say that Osiris is the Nile consorting with the Earth, which is Isis, and that the sea is Typhon into which the Nile discharges its waters and is lost to view and dissipated, esave for that part which the earth takes up and absorbs and thereby becomes fertilized. (363d)

Plutarch gives other examples on how the Osiris-Isis myth was understood as being allegorical, where Osiris is the Nile and moisture, while Typhon is the dry heat that is "anti-moisture":

Let this, then, be stated incidentally, as a matter of record that is common knowledge. But the wiser of the priests call not only the Nile Osiris and the sea Typhon, but they simply give the name of Osiris to the whole source and faculty creative of moisture, believing this to be the cause of generation and the substance of life-producing seed; and the name of Typhon they give to all that is dry, fiery, and arid, in general, and antagonistic to moisture. (364a)

Next, Plutarch describes how natural forces -- the Nile fertilizing the earth -- explains the myth of Horus's birth:

As they regard the Nile as the effusion of Osiris, so they hold and believe the earth to be the body of Isis, not all of it, but so much of it as the Nile covers, fertilizing it and uniting with it. From this union they make Horus to be born. The all-conserving and fostering Hora, that is the seasonable tempering of the surrounding air, is Horus, who they say was brought up by Leto in the marshes round about Buto; for the watery and saturated land best nurtures bthose exhalations which quench and abate aridity and dryness. (366a)

Plutarch then adds Typhon to the story, as the allegorical representation of "the power of drought". Osiris being confined to the chest was allegorical for the retreat of the Nile in summer:

The insidious scheming and usurpation of Typhon, then, is the power of drought, which gains control and dissipates the moisture which is the source of the Nile and of its rising; and his coadjutor, the Queen of the Ethiopians, signifies allegorically the south winds from Ethiopia... The story told of the shutting up of Osiris in the chest seems to mean nothing else than the vanishing and disappearance of water. (366c)

In the same vein, Plutarch describes how the Osiris myth can be made to represent the actions of natural forces acting on the Moon:

There are some who would make the legend an allegorical reference to matters touching eclipses; for the Moon suffers eclipse only when she is full, with the Sun directly opposite to her, and she falls into the shadow of the Earth, as they say Osiris fell into his coffin. Then again, the Moon herself obscures the Sun and causes solar eclipses, always on the thirtieth of the month; however, she does not completely annihilate the Sun, and likewise Isis did not annihilate Typhon. (368d)

Now we come to the part that Carrier quotes from, dealing with the sublunar realm. I'll be referring to this further below in more detail. But for now, I'll note that as before Plutarch gives the view that sees the Osiris myth as allegorical tales involving natural forces:

It is not, therefore, out of keeping that they have a legend that the soul of Osiris is everlasting and imperishable, but that his body Typhon oftentimes dismembers and causes to disappear, and that Isis wanders hither and yon in her search for it, and fits it together again; for that which really is and is perceptible and good is superior to destruction and change. The images from it with which the sensible and corporeal is impressed, and the relations, forms, and likenesses which this take upon itself, like impressions of seals in wax, are not permanently lasting, but disorder and disturbance overtakes them, being driven hither from the upper reaches, and fighting against Horus, whom Isis brings forth, beholden of all, as the image of the perceptible world... it [the destructive force of Typhon] taints waters and winds with pestilence, and it runs forth wanton even as far as the moon, oftentimes confounding and darkening the moon's brightness; according to the belief and account of the Egyptians, Typhon at one time smites the eye of Horus, and at another time snatches it out and swallows it, and then later gives it back again to the Sun. By the smiting, they refer allegorically to the monthly waning of the moon, and by the crippling, to its eclipse, which the Sun heals by shining straight upon it as soon as it has escaped the shadow of the earth. (373a-b)

At the start of the quote above, Plutarch refers back to the Egyptian myth of Osiris's body being dismembered on earth. As can be seen, Osiris is not actually being incarnated nor dismembered in the "sublunar" realm at all. The "dismemberment" story takes place on earth, and is the allegorical representation of what happens during an eclipse.

Plutarch sums up the myths with this view:

To put the matter briefly, it is not right to believe that water or the sun or the earth or the sky is Osiris or Isis; or again that fire or drought or the sea is Typhon, but simply if we attribute to Typhon whatever there is in these that is immoderate and disordered by reason of excesses or defects; and if we revere and honour what is orderly and good and beneficial as the work of Isis and as the image and reflection and reason of Osiris, we shall not be wrong. (376f)

Finally, Plutarch gives his own view: Osiris is a pure god,"uncontaminated and unpolluted and pure from all matter" (382f).

To summarize the various pagan perspectives of their myths:
1. The myths were stories about humans or demigods around whom legends accumulated
2. The myths were allegorical stories of natural forces that never actually happened, but nevertheless were somehow descriptive of the true gods.

As for the gods themselves:
1. They were beings "pure and unpolluted" that live above the firmament.
2. Some started out as humans or daemons, but through a process of purification, were able to ascend above the firmament and become gods.


Carrier's "Sublunar Incarnation Theory"

In Carrier's review of Doherty's "The Jesus Puzzle", Carrier gives some weight to Doherty's "sublunar incarnation" idea. I'll reproduce the two paragraphs where Carrier discusses Plutarch's Osiris: [5]

A contemporary analogy is Plutarch's "higher" reading of the Isis-Osiris myth ("On Isis and Osiris", composed between the 80's and 100's, the very same time as the Gospels), where he says, using the vocabulary of mystery religion, that the secret truth held by priests is that Osiris is not really under the earth, nor was he ever on earth as a king like popular myths about him claim, but is a God "far removed from the earth, uncontaminated and unpolluted and pure from all matter that is subject to destruction and death," where "he becomes the leader and king" of the souls of the dead (382e-383a). Plutarch also says "that part of the world which undergoes reproduction and destruction is contained underneath the orb of the moon, and all things in that are subjected to motion and to change" (376d). It is there, in the "outermost areas" (the "outermost part of matter"), that evil has particular dominion, and where some believers imagine Osiris being continually dismembered and reassembled (375a-b).

I agree with all but the last sentence. There is no suggestion that "some believers imagine Osiris being continually dismembered and reassembled" in a sublunar realm. Instead, the "outermost areas" is a referral back to an earlier statement by Plutarch:

The outmost parts of the land beside the mountains and bordering on the sea the Egyptians call Nephthys. This is why they give to Nephthys the name of "Finality," and say that she is the wife of Typhon. Whenever, then, the Nile overflows and with abounding waters spreads far away to those who dwell in the outermost regions, they call this the union of Osiris with Nephthys, which is proved by the upspringing of the plants. (366B)

The allegory is that when "Typhon forces his way in and seizes upon the outermost areas", i.e. the land around the Nile begins to dry up, then "we may conceive of Isis as seeming sad, and spoken of as mourning" (375a). There is nothing here about events occuring in the "outermost parts of matter". It is simply a continuation of the allegory of natural forces, of how "earth and sea and plants and animals" suffer dissolution and regeneration.

Carrier continues:

As Plutarch describes their view, "the soul of Osiris is everlasting and imperishable, but Typhon oftentimes dismembers his body and causes it to disappear, and Isis wanders hither and yon in her search for it, and fits it together again," because his body is perishable and for that reason is "driven hither from the upper reaches" (373a-b). In other words, for these believers Osiris is "incarnated" in the sublunar heaven and actually dies and resurrects there, later ascending beyond to the imperishable heavens (see also my essay "Osiris and Pagan Resurrection Myths: Assessing the Till-McFall Exchange"). Plato, says Plutarch, "calls this class of beings an interpretive and ministering class, midway between gods and men, in that they convey thither the prayers and petitions of men" (361c) and Isis and Osiris were such, but were later exalted into the heavens as full gods (361e). There are many resemblances here with Doherty's reconstructed Pauline Christology, and it is such schemes as this that prove his theory fits the ancient milieu well.

I can't see where Carrier finds that believers thought that "Osiris is "incarnated" in the sublunar heaven and actually dies and resurrects there". I can see nothing in the text that justifies the idea that Osiris "actually dies and resurrects" in a sublunar heaven, even as a daemon. I think that Carrier is reading the idea into the text, just as Doherty reads a "fleshy sublunar realm" into the text of Paul and the AoI. The myth being described here is an Osiris dismembered on earth as an allegorical story about eclipses. While the eclipse itself occurs in the heavens, the story itself is not located there.

Carrier's comments form part of a larger review of Doherty's book, so it would be unfair to dismiss his views on the topic in toto. But I believe that an examination of Plutarch doesn't support Carrier's conclusions about there being a belief that Osiris was "incarnated and resurrected" in a sublunar heaven.


Conclusion

There is no hint of a "world of myth" here along the lines that Doherty has proposed. Attis either got his knife on earth, or he never had one at all. Since Plutarch examines the different beliefs of the day, this is strong evidence against the idea that "the average pagan" believed in a "world of myth".

Doherty uses comments from Pauline writings and the Ascension of Isaiah to promote his thesis, but as far as I can see, he hasn't been able to show any beliefs in "fleshy" activities occuring in any place other than on earth, nor any belief in a "fleshy alternate dimension". The Pauline writings and the AoI can be perfectly understood in terms of the beliefs of the day as highlighted by Plutarch. I can't prove that Paul and others didn't have their own unique views, but I suggest that the lack of evidence for the "world of myth" means that, where the evidence is unclear, we should be reluctant to read it into the text.
__________________________________________________ ____________

References:

[1] Plutarch http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Oracles.html

"Hesiod, however, was the first clearly and distinctly to make four species of rational beings — gods, then daemons ‘numerous and beneficent,’ then heroes, lastly men, the demigods being ranged in the class of heroes. Others make out a change in the bodies equally with the souls, in the same way as water is seen to be produced from earth, air from water, fire from air, in consequence of the essence tending upwards, so from men to heroes, from heroes to daemons, souls of the better kind go through a transition. Of daemons, some few in long process of time, having been thoroughly purified by means of virtue, become partakers of divinity; whilst with others it comes to pass that they do not contain themselves, but becoming relaxed and dissolved again into mortal bodies, they receive an existence without light and without form, like an exhalation."

[2] Plutarch http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au...ure/book1.html

[3] Tacitus http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/histories.5.v.html

"Some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of Crete, who settled on the nearest coast of Africa about the time when Saturn was driven from his throne by the power of Jupiter. Evidence of this is sought in the name. There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the neighbouring tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a barbarous lengthening of the national name. Others assert that in the reign of Isis the overflowing population of Egypt, led by Hierosolymus and Judas, discharged itself into the neighbouring countries.

[4] Plutarch's "Isis and Osiris" begins here:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...Osiris*/A.html

[5] Carrier, Richard http://www.infidels.org/library/mode....html#Sublunar

Ted Hoffman

1. So Inanna could die and resurrect after three days in a world other than the world of myth? If yes, what was this world? If it was the earthly plane, was it a common occurence among the ancients for people to die and resurrect?
2. If it was not common, where did the ancients believe these deaths and ressurections occured?
3. What made Tammuz a god if he could die? Why did gods have to reincarnate in order to move to lower spheres?
4. What is the reason ancients introduced the concept of reincarnation?

andrewcriddle

Hi GakuseiDon

I don't entirely agree either with you or Richard Carrier here.

I think you may both be reading different passages of Isis and Osiris as if they're all talking about the same thing.

IMO Plutarch is putting forward several different explanations of the myth all (or at least most) of which he regards as to some extent true.

I agree entirely that 372-377 is NOT about demigods dying in the sub-lunar realm but IS an allegory of natural processes.

However this section does seem to be about cosmological natural processes not merely terrestrial ones. Osiris in this part of Plutarch's work represents the immaterial Platonic forms which participate in primal matter/the Platonic receptacle represented by Isis. Typhon represents the cosmological principle of disorder which perpetually seeks to dissociate ordered matter back to its primal constituents. This primarily occurs in the sub-lunar realm where we witness the neverending cycle of birth and death, production and destruction. As distinct from the unchanging world above the moon.

This whole section IMO is Plutarch taking the Isis and Osiris myth as an allegory for his (somewhat idiosyncratic) version of Platonic cosmology.

Andrew Criddle

GakuseiDon

Yes, I agree with that.

Yes, it's a good point. My focus was on the sublunar realm activities, but you are right -- I should have pointed out that these are cosmological principles. I do quote Plutarch as summing up to that effect, though I never state it outright:

To put the matter briefly, it is not right to believe that water or the sun or the earth or the sky is Osiris or Isis; or again that fire or drought or the sea is Typhon, but simply if we attribute to Typhon whatever there is in these that is immoderate and disordered by reason of excesses or defects; and if we revere and honour what is orderly and good and beneficial as the work of Isis and as the image and reflection and reason of Osiris, we shall not be wrong.

I'll update my article to that effect. Thanks Andrew!

GakuseiDon

I'm not sure how those questions are related, TedH. First, what do you mean by "world of myth"?

It would depend on the myth. Either on earth, or if it was thought to have been allegorical, not at all.

"Reincarnate"? I think you mean "incarnate". Do you mean gods appearing on earth, like Dionysus in "The Bacchae"? Or gods being born on earth, like Hercules? As I wrote in the OP, "some started out as humans or daemons, but through a process of purification, were able to ascend above the firmament and become gods."

It's an interesting question, but I have no idea of its relevence to the topic.

Ted Hoffman

[Emphasis mine]
Since you introduced the expression "world of myth" in the OP, perhaps you should define what you mean by it before we proceed.

gnosis92

one objection to the JM, one that i have, which is why i believe in a hj,
is that there doesn't seem to be any group of first or second century xians or jews who actually believed or read the pauline epistles the way doherty claimed to be common all over mediterrean.

for example marcion and iraneus & others read the pauline letters the way we do, paul when he did refer to jesus, refered to a human jesus, not a divine jesus. iraneus and tertullian and others catalogued all kinds of heresies including the gnostics and jewish xians the ebionites, but there's no mention of any group of heretics who believed in a purely spiritual savior, nor does celsus mention of it either, and he's an antichrist

while i haven't read all the first and 2nd century writers, doherty claims he has, and he doesn't refer to any group of heretics who believed what doherty claims were the beliefs of the earliest xians.

doherty's silense is my argument from silence, that if such a group did exist, doherty would show that their beliefs were cited as heresy among orthodox.
as far as doing history and determining what is probable, what likely happened, i regard the mj hypothesis to be improbable and unlikely in comparison to a hj hypothesis.

GakuseiDon

A vast unseen spiritual realm starting in the "air" where a savior god like Mithras could slay a bull, Attis could be castrated, and Christ could be hung on a tree, that was believed in by "the average pagan".

NatSciNarg

Just thinking aloud:
One problem I struggled to get past when reading Doherty's book was the proposed transition between the early believers in a spiritual, non-historical Christ, and the later believers in a fleshy, historical Jesus. I couldn't really see how or why anyone whould make that mistake (if indeed they did).
Assuming that GakuseiDon is right in that "the average pagan and Jew" didn't believe in a "world of myth" in the way Doherty suggests, is it possible that a small group of intellectual Jews created a Jesus myth to express their own ideas and beliefs, meaning the action to be within this "world of myth", but that when the stories became more widely known, the "average pagan and Jew" lacked this conceptual frame to understand them as they were intended, and instead understood the stories as occuring on Earth, in history, as that was their conceptual frame?
In this, Doherty might be on the right lines, but mistaken on the detail.

Yours rambling,
Matthew

GakuseiDon

Sure, it's possible. It would be difficult to disprove a claim that early Christians held a unique cosmological view that was mistaken by everyone else.