Jeffrey Gibson

It has more to do with the fact -- as your own experience testifies -- that the people nowadays who think that the term never had any other meaning than "evil spirit" aren't familiar with such works as the Apology and/or do not know Greek.

As you'll have seen. this is not true, and not only in Pete's case, but in Robert Tulip's as well.

But perhaps you mean everyone but Pete and Robert and Tanya (i.e. those who do not read Greek, do not know the evidence very well, and are unable to deal dispassionately with the evidence that is presented to them on this point) would agree.


It never fell from the wayside, at least among Greek writers.



No to both questions. δαιμόνιον is obviously used by Attic writers, as is δαίμων, and, as I've noted before, it is simply the substantive of the adjective δαιμόνιος .
Jeffrey

Robert Tulip

Jeffrey, you appear to have misunderstood what both Pete and me have written.

My statement was that the term daimon did not by itself reveal whether the entity described was good or evil or neutral, until Christianity gave demon a purely evil meaning.

This leaves ample room for evil demons in the early Greek kosmos, but their evilness rests in the adjectives used to describe them, not the noun daimon itself, which only acquired its pejorative content with Christianity.

Jeffrey Gibson

You've obviously not looked at the instances in Greek literature of the use of the word, or taken into account its etymological derivation, or thought much about why, if it was not thought to have any particular meaning, it, rather than some other word, was used by Greeks as a referent to what otherwise is clear are good beings and bad ones, let alone why it was thought by Greek speakers to be the translation equivalent of words like Hebrew shedim an sheir which did mean "evil beings" (cf. the LXX of Deut. 32:17. Ps. 106:37; Isaiah 65.11; Baruch 4:7_ etc..

And how do you know that the word has a pejorative meaning in Christian writings when it appears without adjectives?

In any event please provide me with a text from BCE writers where it is is clear that that the word doesn't reveal whether the entity described by it was good or evil or neutral.

Jeffrey

Robert Tulip

The statement discussed above by Heraclitus 'ethos anthropos daimon', especially in the translation from Novalis as 'character is fate', illustrates that the daimon characterises the human ethos, whether for good or ill. Our daimon or guardian angel sets our fate, which can be good or bad.

mountainman

Excellent!


I and others in this forum who cannot translate Greek to English, are still waiting for the English translations of the dozen instances you provided in Greek, claiming that these are instances where δαίμων bears a "negative" sense. I have noted that only two of these are from the epoch BCE (Hippocrates and Xenophon).

It would be excellent to see the compilation of such a complete list, but it would be of no use to the bulk of members in this forum unless it were to be accompanied by corresponding English translations.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

Thank you Andrew.




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Jeffrey Gibson

Have I missed something??? What statement? What discussion?

The statement you mention as discussed above was discussed by a Heraclitian:huh::huh: statement?

So it does have a non neutral meaning -- a force (but "guardian angel" ??? really? where do you get that?) that determines our destiny!

However, the question is whether you have understood what Novalis is stating. As a number of other scholars have argued,

e.g., H. Gomperz, "Ober die urspriingliche Reihenfolge einiger Bruchstiicke Heraklits," Hermes 58 (1923) 42-44; Thimme 48; 0. Gigon, Untersuchungen zu Heraklit (Leipzig 1935) 110; F. J. Brecht, Heraklit (Heidelberg 1936) 84-85; P. Schmitt, "Geist und Seele," Eranos-Jb 13 (1945) 167; M. Pohlenz, Der hellenische Mensch (G6ttingen 1947) 29, 65; E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951) 42, 182; G. Francois, Le Polyth/isme et l'Emploi au Singulier des Mots 9EOE, DAIMON (Diss., Paris 1957) 342; G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The PreSocratic Philosophers (Cambridge 1957) 214; A. Jeannibre, La Pensle d'Hiraclite d'tphgse (Paris 1959) 83, 113; H. Quiring, Heraklit (Berlin 1959) 113; P. Wheelwright, Heraclitus (Princeton 1959) 68; A. Lesky, "G6ttliche und menschliche Motivation im homerischen Epos," SBHeidelb 1961.4, 46-47; H. Friinkel, Dichtung und Philosophie des friihen Griechentums 2 (Munich 1962) 447; W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge 1962- ); 1.482; C. H. Kahn, "A New Look at Heraclitus," AmPhil/uar 1 (1964) 200; M. Markovich, Heraclitus (Merida, Venezuela 1967) 502; and M. L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford 1971) 154.

Heraclitus is here intent to note that man is free from the influence of a lesser deity which could determine his fate and is capable byhis own character, by his ethos, of establishing the course that his life will take.


You might also wish to note that H. Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley 1971) 84, states that for Heraclitus the word daimon meant, as he also notes it often does in Homer and afterward (a traditional idea") not only a god, but one who has the power to dispense a man's fate.

On this see Shirley Darcus, ""Daimon" as a Force Shaping "Ethos" in Heraclitus"Phoenix , Vol. 28, No. 4 (Winter, 1974), pp. 390-407. And see especially her review of the use of the word daimon from Homer down to and Heraclitus' time on pp. 394-398.

So I am afraid that this text is not an instance of what I asked you to produce to show me that in BCE Greek literature the term daimon did not by itself reveal whether the entity described was good or evil or neutral, until Christianity gave demon a purely evil meaning.


Jeffrey

mountainman

Is this supposed to be a succinct summary of the Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott Greek-English Lexicon for the word daimon?

Daimons were [guardian] spirits who were [individual] gods or goddesses, whether good or bad, positive or negative, that were posited to act as intermediaries between the individual and the spiritual universe in antiquity.




Please address the term "daimon" in the OP.

Life is a mixed bag: there is the good and the bad.



The same gospel author(s) who propagandized the "Holy Spirit" would have us believe that Jesus himself cast out the "daimons" into the swine.


In discussing "demons" you are not addressing "daimons".





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Toto

Demons/daimons were spirits, not always guardian spirits, who sometimes were presumed to be intermediaries.

You can quibble about the particulars. I still don't see the point here.

I use the terms demon and daimon interchangeably in this thread. They are at root the same term, even if the meaning has evolved over the centuries.

So what is the problem with this? You yourself admit that at least some daimons or demons were malicious.

Jeffrey Gibson

So what? Your thesis -- that you are trying to defend with your claims about who gave δαίμων a "negative" sense -- is that Christianity did not arise until the 4th century. So -- unless you are prepared to deny the validity of this claim -- any texts up to at least the mid 300s CE must be taken into account.

You can't have it both ways. If you limit what evidence may be used to test your δαίμων claim to BCE texts, then you are conceding that, contrary to your thesis, Christianity existed from the 1st century CE.
If it lists only all of the nominative forms of δαίμων, it would not be a "complete" list of all of the BCE instances of the use of δαίμων.

.

But then, if the way you've been trying to get around the Philostratus evidence shows anything, you'd just say that English transtations that showed that δαίμων was used by non Christians with a negative sense are not accurate.

So what would be the point?

Jeffrey