mountainman

Thanks Jeffrey.



cacodemon


Back where we started with "daimon" being originally neutral.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Toto

This is getting a little pointless.

Demons were spirits who were sometimes helpful but often not. Since the ancients did not understand modern science or medicine, they thought of demons as a way of explaining the things that happened in the world, which were often bad.

Christians did not hijack the word - their theology told them that any supernatural force other than Jesus (or an angel from God) was not good.

I don't see that you have stated an actual disagreement with any of this. If so, what is it?

Jeffrey Gibson

Ah yes. Wiki says it. Therefore it must be true.

But where does the author of this entry get his claim about Tychodaimon? As the TLG indicates, there is no such Greek word. Nor is there an entry for it in LSJ).

And where does he get his claim about the meaning of agathodaimon?. Certainly not from an examination of its instances in Greek literature -- which with the exception of is use of a form of the word by Aristotle (Ethica Eudemia -- Bekker page 1233b, line 4: οἷον εἰ εἰς γάμον δαπανῶν τις τοῦ ἀγαπητοῦ, πλούσιος ὤν, δοκεῖ πρέπειν ἑαυτῷ τοιαύτην κατασκευὴν οἷον ἀγαθοδαιμονιστὰς ἑστιῶντι) and where it means "persons who only drink the formal toast ('Here's to Good Luck'), with which he dinner ended", i.e., "moderate drinkers" (http://tinyurl.com/bvd76ro) --- are all 2nd century and in the majority much later).

Nor has he examined or taken account of the entry on ἀγαθοδαίμων in LSJ et alone the entry on it in LSJ:


He also seems to be unaware that there's no attestation to εὐδαιμων being used with the meaning of "angel" (citations please!), let alone, that as LSJ shows, it actually meant something quite other than (presumably on the basis of the etymological fallacy he claims it means or was used to signify.

Here's the LSJ entry:

And it's faulty reasoning linguistically, not to mention historically inaccurate and woefully lexically uninformed, to claim as he does -- presumably on the basis of the absence of the prefix κακός (note the "whereas") -- that "daimon would be [??, not is?] a neutral spirit".

The author of this Wiki entry is obviously no expert in Greek. He certainly isn't familiar with Greek literature, let alone LSJ or the TDNT or BDAG.

Curious that he overlooks the data there that shows that his claim is nonsense.

(By the way, what do you do with this evidence in Chariton's Callirhoe?

So, Pete, in citing this Wiki article as evidence to back up your case, then what we have is a textbook case of the blind following the blind.


And as to being "back" to daimon "originally" being "neutral" you are misrepresenting not only what what you quote from LSJ in your OP as saying (LSJ says no such thing) but what you yourself said about the meaning of the word in your OP.

Please give me not only

1. the earliest Greek texts in which δαίμων appears so that we can see what the "original" meaning was, but also

2. some evidence that in the 4th century CE -- which, unless you are going to renounce your claim about the origins of Christianity, is the era in which Christianity arose and the cultural matrix of its thought -- any non Christian Greek writer who used the word daimon thought that δαιμονες were neither good nor bad in character and/or neither beneficial nor harmful when they were encountered, but indifferent to them, which is what you are asserting we will have to find if you claim that before Christianity δαίμων was used by Greeks with a neutral sense.

Jeffrey

Horatio Parker

I remember reading the Apology and being surprised that there was such a thing as a good demon.

Could be our current ideas about demons have been shaped as much by Hollywood and sci-fi etc as the church. Where would an author or director get an inspiration for a good demon? It might be nice to have a daimon like Socrate's, but there's not much dramatic potential there.

Jeffrey Gibson

You know about the Nahal Hever witnesses, not to mention the Rabbinic testimony, do you. Well then, you should be easily able to tell tell me what these witnesses contain and what the Rabbinnic texts cited above actually say with respect to the LXX. Please do so.

And contextually. Are you now claiming that they are not only post 4th century -- as you have to do if you are not going to deny your claim that Christianity was a 4th century phenomenon -- but not Jewish, too?


In any case, the Nahar Hever witnesses to a pre Christian Jewsih edition of the Hebrew scrpitures in Greek are not from Qumran, are they?

Thanks for the red herring, Pete. The issue isn't the existence "at that time" (which time? the first century CE or the 4th?) of at least 70 copies of the LXX but whether your claim that "here is "no evidence that Jewish scribes were responsible for the LXX" is true.

Moreover, we all know that you are vision impaired when it comes to evidence, so appealing to "what you see" or don't see, is hardly a good criteria for determining whether there is or is not evidence for claims that you make.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

I'm not sure what bearing this has on anything being discussed. How can your lack of knowledge about something serve as evidence for what was the case historically?

In any event, are you aware that the term Plato uses for Socrates's "demon" is δαιμόνιον not δαίμων?

Jeffrey

Robert Tulip

But surely that redefinition of demon is the essence of a hijack? BC, if someone used the word daimon you would need to get the context to know if this spirit was good or bad. The term by itself was neutral. AD, you automatically knew the demon was bad, since Christianity had hijacked religion by reserving all good for the holy trinity and God's holy angels and saints, while condemning the way of the flesh as demonic.

I think part of the background here is the orthodox condemnation of the Gnostic theology of ascent, the idea that religious understanding under the guidance of a guardian angel (daimon) can bring us to divinity. Paul's idea of salvation by grace through faith sets the metaphor of ascent within what he sees as the false theology of salvation by works. One interesting Biblical example of this metaphor of ascent is seen in Jacob's Ladder.

We also have the Pauline dichotomy of spirit=good versus flesh=evil. The pagan traditions had seen much good in flesh, whereas the Christian effort to construct an alienated transcendental dogma required the anathematisation of the daimon as the false seductor of the flesh. Paul's theology required an exclusion of the pagan demons from the concept of good.

Milton's Paradise Lost shows how much the concept of demon had been mythologised by Christianity with his stark conflict between the angels who remained in heaven and the demons (or fallen angels) who had fallen (such as Isis and Osiris) from heaven to hell with Satan.

The idea that all non-Christian gods were demons and therefore evil or just imaginary illustrates the centrality of mythic narrative to the consolidation of religion, with truth entirely secondary to power.

Clivedurdle

Do we have two Pauls? A gnostic (glass darkly) one and an orthodox one? Was Paul confused about this, being evidence of a transitional period, or are there two authors?

Horatio Parker

I'm not making a historical case, I'm speculating in a motivational sense ie why ask the question in the first place.

I think everyone following this thread would agree that there's no case for the ancient Greek demon being always good or neutral.

That it was on the agenda of Constantine, Eusebius & Co also seems unlikely to me. Possibly a byproduct of judging all Greek supernatural entities as evil.

But I think the question of how did the idea of the good demon fall from the wayside is an interesting one.

I wasn't. Is this a difference of Attic vs Koine or are they separate and different concepts?

Jeffrey Gibson

And your evidence for this is what?

Please give me an instance from the use of the term δαίμων (or for that matter, of δαιμόνιον) by BCE authors in which the entity referred to by this term is viewed and/or presented as neither good nor bad in nature or character and/or neither harmful nor beneficial to human beings if and when humans encountered it.

If you like, I'll supply you with every instance of the use of at least the nominative singular and plural of the word from Homer's time down through the 1st century CE-- and then you can tell me in which, if any, of them δαίμων bears a "neutral" sense.

Jeffrey