GakuseiDon

Rad, from what I understand, Buddha's mother, Maya, was married to his father, a king, for many years before she became pregnant with the Buddha. I've checked on a number of Buddhist sites, and there is nothing there that says she remained a virgin after marriage.

Do you have a source that predates Christianity for your claim? Or does it come from a Christ-myther site?

GakuseiDon

But there isn't anything in there about Wisdom being portrayed as a virgin.

"Sublime word pregnant with divine lights" just seems to be using the word "pregnant" as meaning "containing". Neither that nor your second quote has anything about virginity much less Wisdom taking form as a virgin.

Ted Hoffman

What about divine lights?

How can a word be pregnant with divine lights? Are you making any allowance for allegory here - or are we reading it literally?

I can provide another citation in the next few days. I will get Dohertys reference. But I think the above can be interpreted as such.

GakuseiDon

Yes, "pregnant with divine lights" is certainly an allegory. But you said that there was a reference to a virgin giving birth to Wisdom. Perhaps my allegory reading skills aren't high, but I don't get that from the reference you gave.

I'll look forward to your further reference from Doherty's book.

Ted Hoffman

Its from first principles Don. First, Wisdom was personified as female (the earth is female - and in Epic of Gilgamesh, God impregnated virgin earth to bring forth the annunaki), wisdom gave birth, wisdom was the word (men sought her counsel in dire straits - in Job, Daniel, Proverbs etc), wisdom was with God (John), from wisdom came the Logos (after God impregnated her) or wisdom became the logos (per Johannine writings - the first century marked the shift from a female deity to a male one and by the end of the 1st century, this man was Jesus Christ). In Luke 7:35 & 11:49, Jesus refers to himself as Sophia / as the word of God.

In retrospect, my interpretation was satisfactory. How can a word be made pregnant? Why did Philo not say instead "the word full of light?" why "impregnated"? impregnated by who/what? what was it before being impregnated?

Philo was alluding to the primeval act of creation - the union between the Holy Spirit/Wisdom/Earth and God - to result in a pregnancy that culminated to the birth of the Logos.

But since you want something more direct, here is Dohertys response:
To Admins: Doherty tells me that when he tried to access B C and History forum, he got the message "Forbidden access" and wonders if there has been a change in policy since the board is supposed to be open to the general public

GakuseiDon

IronMonkey, you said that there was a reference in Philo "to a virgin giving birth to Wisdom."

You have given me "we will utter a beautiful and suitable prayer which Moses also addressed to God, praying that God may open his treasurehouse, and may lay before us his sublime word pregnant with divine lights... ".

Now, that sounds like Moses asking for understanding of "God's sublime words containing enlightenment". Where is the notion of a virgin giving birth to Wisdom"? I'm afraid it sounds like you are reading something into the text that just isn't there.

Here is a reference to Philo talking about the Wisdom as a perpetual virgin ("undefiled"). She is the daughter of God - and not the daughter of a virgin. http://www.socinian.org/philo.html

Evangelion

Yes, it's a metaphor. In fact, everything in the entire Bible is a metahor. None of it is expected to be taken literally, even those parts which specifically mention historical figures and historical events. It's all just one huge metaphor. That's all it is.

Yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is undoubtedly true that the Christians took all their ideas from Mithraism. The Old Testament had absolutely no connection whatsoever with their theology; it was, in fact, completely unknown to them, which is precisely why they found it necessarily to plagiarise Mithraism in the first place. We know that the Old Testament was totally unknown to them because the apostle Paul never once mentions Phineas (an Old Testament character) which he would undoubtedly have done if had had been familiar with the books of the Old Testament.

Lest you doubt the veracity of this assertion, I should also mention that there are several hundred Old Testament characters whose names are never mentioned by Paul, proving (beyond any shadow of a doubt) that (a) the OT never played any part in his theology and (b) he was totally unaware that such a work even existed.

While it is true that he does refer (in several places) to "the law and the prophets", no reasonable person could be expected to conclude that it was the Old Testament that he had in mind. Instead, Paul must necessarily be referring to the Code of Lipit-Ishtar (c. 1860 BC) from Isin ("the law") and the Great Old Ones of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos ("the prophets.") This point is not disputed by any rational atheist, being (a) fully supported by the majority of skeptical scholars and (b) logically demonstrable by the sensible exercise of Ockham's Razor.

The Christians also took their inspiration from Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Greek, Persian and Roman mythology, not to mention the Indian, Cornish, Maori, Chinese, Toltec, Finnish, Guatemalan, Tongan, Mexican and American Indian mythological traditions. Indeed, not one single facet of the Christian religion was in any sense original; it was all stolen (by the 1st Century Christians) from the cultures to which I have referred - yes, even those cultures which did not exist at the time.

And yes, even though it sounds a bit strange to claim that (having discovered one particular motif in one particular religious tradition) they found it necessary to take the same motif from another 3 or 4 religious traditions, that's exactly what they did. It wasn't enough to borrow a single idea from a single source; they had to "rediscover" it ad nauseum in a myriad of alternative belief systems, as Vorkosigan himself will tell you. Precisely why this was necessary, I do not know. But I'm sure that he'll explain it to you if you ask nicely.

Evangelion

In all seriousness, the logos was not a "who", but a "what." That "what" became a "who" at the birth of Christ - and having done so, it was no longer the "word" simpliciter. It was, in fact, something entirely different; the word made flesh.

Thus:

• Patristic theology of whatever school abused these texts by taking them out of context and giving them a meaning which John never intended.
  
  Functional language about the Son and the Spirit being sent into the world by the Father was transposed into that of eternal and internal relationships between Persons in the Godhead and words like "generation" and "procession" made into technical terms, which New Testament usage simply will not substantiate…
  
  John is a typical representative of the New Testament, not the anomalous exception, with one foot in the world of Greek philosophy, that he is so often presented.
  
  Robinson, J.A.T. (1984), Twelve More New Testament Studies.

• The opening sentences of John's Gospel, which might sound like the philosophy of Philo, could be understood by an educated Jew or Christian without any reference to Philo.
  
  Therefore we should not argue from Philo's meaning of "word" as a hypostasis that John also meant by "word" a pre-existing personality. In the remainder of the Gospel and in I John, "word" is never to be understood in a personal sense...
  
  It means rather the "revelation" of God which had earlier been given to Israel (10:35), had come to the Jews in Holy Scripture (5:38) and which had been entrusted to Jesus and committed by him to his disciples (8:55; 12:48; 17:6; 8, 14, 17; 1 John 1:1) and which would now be preserved by them (1 John 1:10; 2:5, 14.)
  
  The slightly personifying way in which the word is spoken of as into the world (1:9-14) is typical of the personifying style of the Old Testament references to the word (Isa. 55:11; Psa. 107:20; 147:15. cp. 2 Thess. 3:1.)
  
  It cannot be proved that the author of the prologue thought of the word as a real person. Only the historical Jesus and not the original word is said to be the Son (John 1:14, 18.) But in this Son there dwelt and worked the eternal revelation of God.
  
  Wendt, Hans (1907), System der Christlichen Lehre.

• That any expression or vehicle of God's will for the world, His saving counsel and purpose, was present in His mind, or His 'Word' from the beginning is a natural way of saying that it is not fortuitous, but the due unfolding and expression of God’s own being. This attribution of pre-existence indicates religious importance of the highest order.
  
  Rabbinic theology speaks of the Law, of God's throne of glory, of Israel and of other important objects of faith, as things which had been created by God, and were already present with Him, before the creation of the world. The same is also true of the Messiah. It is said that his name was present with God in heaven beforehand, that it was created before the world, and that it is eternal.
  
  But the reference here is not to genuine pre-existence in the strict and literal sense. This is clear from the fact that Israel is included among these pre-existent entities. This does not mean that either the nation Israel or its ancestor existed long ago in heaven, but that the community Israel, the people of God, had been from all eternity in the mind of God, as a factor in His purpose.
  
  Mowinckel, S. (1954), He Who Cometh.

• The importance of setting these texts within the historical context of meaning and of recognizing conceptuality in transition is indicated by the correlative recognition that these developments in earliest Christology took place within and as an expression of Jewish-Christian monotheism.
  
  In contrast, the too quick resort to the 'obvious' or 'plain' meaning actually becomes in some cases a resort to a form of bitheism or tritheism.
  
  [...]
  
  The conclusion which seems to emerge from our analysis thus far is that it is only with verse 14 that we can begin to speak of the personal logos. The poem uses rather impersonal language (“became flesh”), but no Christian would fail to recognize here a reference to Jesus – the word became not flesh in general but Jesus the Christ.
  
  Prior to verse 14 we are in the same realm as pre-Christian talk of wisdom and logos, the same language that we find in the wisdom tradition and in Philo, where as we have seen we are dealing with personifications rather than persons, personified actions of God rather than an individual divine being as such. The point is obscured by the fact that we have to translate the masculine "logos" as "He" throughout the poem.
  
  But if we translated "logos" as "God's utterance" instead, it would become clearer that the poem did not necessarily intend the "logos" in verses 1-13 to be thought of as a personal divine being. In other words the revolutionary significance of verse 14 may well be that it marks . . . the transition from impersonal personification to actual person.
  
  Dunn, James D. G. (1989), Christology in the Making (2nd edition), foreword.

Ted Hoffman

No I did not.

This is what I wrote:
So clearly, there is a misunderstanding.

All this time, I can see I was responding to the wrong question. I was trying to show that Philo does indicate that wisdom (a virgin) was mother to the Logos and not that wisdom was a virgin.

As to the answer to your question, I can see you have answered it in your latest post.

Evangelion - what exactly is your point?

Evangelion

You actually found it necessary to ask?