authentic christianity prior to platonism didn't have separate souls from the body. things like demons being disembodied nephilim are later changes
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@lizzie @monkey old judaism has just a grab-bag of facts and history about cosmogony while christianity developed into a coherent philosophical viewpoint even if one agrees with it. judaism seems to me like it branched and went all over the place, like maimonides helped coalesce rabbinic judaism but then there was kabbalah that by the 1200s became literally insane
@sun
Nephilim is a bastardised reference to Canaanite warriors (metaphorically featured as giants because of their intimidating prowess). As to "authentic" Christinanity, that's really debatable given the dozens if not hundreds of different competing Jesus cults in the first 3 centuries. Some which claim direct disciplic succession from apostles that actually learned from Jesus personally during his life (Basilidians, Naassenes, etc), were later vilified as heretics and persecuted into non-existence. They also incorporated Greek myths and philosophy into their theology. Nor was there any such thing "prior to Platonism" since Judajism and Christinanity were thoroughly immersed in the Hellenic cultural context by the turn of the millennium. The vast majority of Jews at that time didn't even speak or understand Hebrew, since they'd grown up with Greek as their first language and their schooling (if any) primarily involved Greco-Roman literature. Hence the oldest complete copies of OT and NT are in Greek and directly reference characters/concepts from Greek myth and Stoic/Platonic philosophy (eg. Hades, Sophia, Heosphoros, Logos, Psyche, etc). Even the name Jesus itself is from Ieso (recuperation) the daughter of Aesculapius, and Christoi (initiates of Aesculapius), who was among other things also Soter (savior).
Nephilim is a bastardised reference to Canaanite warriors (metaphorically featured as giants because of their intimidating prowess). As to "authentic" Christinanity, that's really debatable given the dozens if not hundreds of different competing Jesus cults in the first 3 centuries. Some which claim direct disciplic succession from apostles that actually learned from Jesus personally during his life (Basilidians, Naassenes, etc), were later vilified as heretics and persecuted into non-existence. They also incorporated Greek myths and philosophy into their theology. Nor was there any such thing "prior to Platonism" since Judajism and Christinanity were thoroughly immersed in the Hellenic cultural context by the turn of the millennium. The vast majority of Jews at that time didn't even speak or understand Hebrew, since they'd grown up with Greek as their first language and their schooling (if any) primarily involved Greco-Roman literature. Hence the oldest complete copies of OT and NT are in Greek and directly reference characters/concepts from Greek myth and Stoic/Platonic philosophy (eg. Hades, Sophia, Heosphoros, Logos, Psyche, etc). Even the name Jesus itself is from Ieso (recuperation) the daughter of Aesculapius, and Christoi (initiates of Aesculapius), who was among other things also Soter (savior).
@toiletpaper I am very familiar, I have an angle I'm coming at with this
@toiletpaper it's personal tbh
@sun
It's important to make a distinction between unverified personal gnosis (UPG), and historically/empirically verifiable facts. Either one is fine, but confusing/conflating the two is disingenuous.
It's important to make a distinction between unverified personal gnosis (UPG), and historically/empirically verifiable facts. Either one is fine, but confusing/conflating the two is disingenuous.
@toiletpaper there is personal revelation, and there is liturgical revelation
@sun
> liturgical revelation
This is the more interesting to me in this context. If it has a historical basis, I'd like to know from where.
> liturgical revelation
This is the more interesting to me in this context. If it has a historical basis, I'd like to know from where.
@toiletpaper what I mean is, I can have revelation that is given to me and is applicable to me, anyone can, but I can't have revelation for the entire Church unless I am a prophet
@sun there is no prior to platonism Christianity. Christ was a Hellenic jew
@tides he was a priest in the eternal order of melchizedek!
@sun
Fair enough. But you made a historical claim about "authentic christianity prior to platonism didn't have separate souls from the body". Presumably you know that this debate also existed in Platonism and Stoicism at that time. But more to the point is what you mean by "authentic christianity prior to platonism". That seems like a historical claim that should be based on extant source material, rather than `I hallucinated it`.
Fair enough. But you made a historical claim about "authentic christianity prior to platonism didn't have separate souls from the body". Presumably you know that this debate also existed in Platonism and Stoicism at that time. But more to the point is what you mean by "authentic christianity prior to platonism". That seems like a historical claim that should be based on extant source material, rather than `I hallucinated it`.
@toiletpaper I'm not defending it and I barely made a claim, you can ignore it. what I meant is, historically it wasn't always a doctrine that there were disembodied spirits. nobody knows which one is true but its a fact that the existing writings find this (we lost more writing than we have though so it's hard to say)
@sun what does this imply to you specifically
@tides christianity always existed.
@sun @lizzie @monkey
> kabbalah that by the 1200s
I'm curious about this too. By the accounts I'm aware of Kabbalah first came into existence as such in the 1300's with the Zohar and didn't really take off until the 16th century with Moses ben Jacob Cordovero followed by his successor Isaac Luria. Prior to that there was the Greek Isopsephia mixed with neoplatonic cosmology about emanations (ie. what inspired the tree of life / sephirot), and a fair degree of cross over with Merkabah/Hekalot mysticism, which itself was largely riffiing on Babylonian and Canaanite cosmology.
> kabbalah that by the 1200s
I'm curious about this too. By the accounts I'm aware of Kabbalah first came into existence as such in the 1300's with the Zohar and didn't really take off until the 16th century with Moses ben Jacob Cordovero followed by his successor Isaac Luria. Prior to that there was the Greek Isopsephia mixed with neoplatonic cosmology about emanations (ie. what inspired the tree of life / sephirot), and a fair degree of cross over with Merkabah/Hekalot mysticism, which itself was largely riffiing on Babylonian and Canaanite cosmology.
@toiletpaper @lizzie @monkey it came from oral tradition prior to the zohar, the point being the idea of souls and soul vessels was a hundreds of years later innovation
@toiletpaper @lizzie @monkey I was reading about this trying to understand Chabad and the historical backing of these beliefs
@sun @lizzie @monkey
Okay. But if you look at the wider cultural context of the region, the idea of a soul and it's many parts, and the question of whether it's viewed as distinct from the body or not, was hardly invented by Jews/Christians. The entire premise as it arrived in Christinanity is mainly from Platonism, but then there were the Stoics who also influenced Platonism who were thoroughly materialist determinists and disavowed even the idea of free will as such. But for better or worse that's where Christinanity got it's idea of the Logos and the trinity (originally To Hen [the One], Nous/Logos [reason/intellect], and Psyche [soul]) for which the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are mere personifications.
Okay. But if you look at the wider cultural context of the region, the idea of a soul and it's many parts, and the question of whether it's viewed as distinct from the body or not, was hardly invented by Jews/Christians. The entire premise as it arrived in Christinanity is mainly from Platonism, but then there were the Stoics who also influenced Platonism who were thoroughly materialist determinists and disavowed even the idea of free will as such. But for better or worse that's where Christinanity got it's idea of the Logos and the trinity (originally To Hen [the One], Nous/Logos [reason/intellect], and Psyche [soul]) for which the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are mere personifications.
@toiletpaper @lizzie @monkey also I am working backward from the pretty solid scientific evidence that stands against mind-body dualism. so I am trying to conform my beliefs to empirical evidence. I realize there is still no help in understanding subjective experience, though
@sun this feels like a stretch...
@sun @lizzie @monkey
My personal view is that mind-body dualism is an artefact of qualia (ie. subjective inner experience). It seems that there is an experiential difference between inner and outer worlds. But whether that's objectively true is questionable and likely impossible to answer. As such the whole idea of mind-body dualism is no different than the sensation that sight is different from touch. They're just different qualities of a singular unitary experience.
In that sense I tend to lean closer to the Stoic interpretation, where the entire natural world is a manifestation of the divine ordering principal, and there is nothing that can rightly be considered "supernatural" per se. On a tangent though, magick (ie. the ability to influence natural events/phenomena) was also a direct outgrowth of Stoic physics related to their understanding of sympathy and contagion, which later got incorporated into middle Platonism, and in bastardised form Judajism, Christinanity and Islame.
My personal view is that mind-body dualism is an artefact of qualia (ie. subjective inner experience). It seems that there is an experiential difference between inner and outer worlds. But whether that's objectively true is questionable and likely impossible to answer. As such the whole idea of mind-body dualism is no different than the sensation that sight is different from touch. They're just different qualities of a singular unitary experience.
In that sense I tend to lean closer to the Stoic interpretation, where the entire natural world is a manifestation of the divine ordering principal, and there is nothing that can rightly be considered "supernatural" per se. On a tangent though, magick (ie. the ability to influence natural events/phenomena) was also a direct outgrowth of Stoic physics related to their understanding of sympathy and contagion, which later got incorporated into middle Platonism, and in bastardised form Judajism, Christinanity and Islame.
@sun is that later? i thought purely spiritual beings like angels and demons were always understood
@pernia they were physical
@sun how doe? did they have matter? i only know something i asked chatgpt abt that told me aquinas believed angels learned more intuitively albeit nondynamically about the universe, and thats only because they don't have matter and thus cannot "sense" things in the world, only understand them when God gives them the knowledge.
@pernia that was over a thousand years later
@sun yea well i guess i'm asking whats the picture before then? was satan a physical yet immortal being that harassed people?
@pernia satan is a job title for an angel
@pernia @sun
Angel is from Angelos (daughter of Zeus and Hera) and means "messenger". Demon is from daimon/daemon (divider/allotter) which referred to all kinds of spirits and Gods (eg. Agathodaemon, the Good God) without necessarily implying any moral quality. The moral connotation was a later addition from Abrahamic moral dualism. Angels in the BuyBull are typically references to Mesopotamian astronomy. For example the Cherub in Isaiah, which represents the 4 fixed signs of the zodiac (lion: leo; bull: taurus; man: aquarius; eagle: scorpio), where the zodiac is featured as the throne/wheel/palace of God. or Lucifer (originally Shahar [Dawn] and Shalim [Dusk], then Phosphoros and Hesperos, then Lucifer) which represents the planet Venus (same as the star and crescent, the Byzantine emblem of Hecate). Often the idea of daemons in the negative sense was related to illness, particularly mental illness, which is particularly evident in the writings of Michael Psellos (11th century Byzantine monk) which kicked off the fad of Christian demonology. That's mirrored in other cultures, particularly Shamanism, such as the Maras of Buddhism (eg. Bön/Chöd) which represent things like depression, addiction, anger, and so on. Even Jewish demonology in 1 Enoch can be interpreted (rightly) in this context. So exorcism in that sense is basically a way of helping people achieve a psychological transformation (aka: soul retrieval), and in the Chöd rite specifically involves evoking the demons into manifestation in order to make friends with them. Medieval and Middle Ages demonology like the Abramelin Rite and the Lemegeton does essentially the same thing albeit via a much more convoluted processes, with the goal of ultimately uniting the magician with their Holy Guardian Angel (ie. their divine self, or Freudian/Jungian superego).
Angel is from Angelos (daughter of Zeus and Hera) and means "messenger". Demon is from daimon/daemon (divider/allotter) which referred to all kinds of spirits and Gods (eg. Agathodaemon, the Good God) without necessarily implying any moral quality. The moral connotation was a later addition from Abrahamic moral dualism. Angels in the BuyBull are typically references to Mesopotamian astronomy. For example the Cherub in Isaiah, which represents the 4 fixed signs of the zodiac (lion: leo; bull: taurus; man: aquarius; eagle: scorpio), where the zodiac is featured as the throne/wheel/palace of God. or Lucifer (originally Shahar [Dawn] and Shalim [Dusk], then Phosphoros and Hesperos, then Lucifer) which represents the planet Venus (same as the star and crescent, the Byzantine emblem of Hecate). Often the idea of daemons in the negative sense was related to illness, particularly mental illness, which is particularly evident in the writings of Michael Psellos (11th century Byzantine monk) which kicked off the fad of Christian demonology. That's mirrored in other cultures, particularly Shamanism, such as the Maras of Buddhism (eg. Bön/Chöd) which represent things like depression, addiction, anger, and so on. Even Jewish demonology in 1 Enoch can be interpreted (rightly) in this context. So exorcism in that sense is basically a way of helping people achieve a psychological transformation (aka: soul retrieval), and in the Chöd rite specifically involves evoking the demons into manifestation in order to make friends with them. Medieval and Middle Ages demonology like the Abramelin Rite and the Lemegeton does essentially the same thing albeit via a much more convoluted processes, with the goal of ultimately uniting the magician with their Holy Guardian Angel (ie. their divine self, or Freudian/Jungian superego).
@toiletpaper @pernia they weren't spirits though there was a hierarchy of anthropomorphic races
@toiletpaper @pernia it is implied before enoch, there was no implication of incorporeal until after enoch iirc
@toiletpaper @pernia I just mean there's nothing indicating they're incorporeal at all. that's the implication
@sun @pernia
Sure. Same could be said of any/every mythological character. But then there's philosophy...
For instance there's nothing indicating that the Cat in the Hat or Spiderman are incorporeal either, but I don't think too many people will make the mistake of confusing an allegorical/metaphorical story for objective reality (the gullible/superstitious notwithstanding).
Sure. Same could be said of any/every mythological character. But then there's philosophy...
For instance there's nothing indicating that the Cat in the Hat or Spiderman are incorporeal either, but I don't think too many people will make the mistake of confusing an allegorical/metaphorical story for objective reality (the gullible/superstitious notwithstanding).
@toiletpaper @pernia according to game rules cat in the hat is not incorporeal
@toiletpaper @pernia maybe we disagree but as soon as you get one degree of separation away from whomever invented these stories, they were taken literally even if they also functioned as metaphor
@sun @pernia
Absolutely. Personally though, my agenda is to bring people back to a more nuanced and historically grounded understanding so they can shed the pervasive delusions which occur when sacred narratives like that end up in the hands of the uninitiated and then virally promoted to/by the gullible and superstitious on behalf of `spiritual` grifters. That's why in my view Christinanity is and arguably (according to Tacitus, Suetonius, Porphyry, Julian, etc) always was far more a superstition than a legitimate religion.
Absolutely. Personally though, my agenda is to bring people back to a more nuanced and historically grounded understanding so they can shed the pervasive delusions which occur when sacred narratives like that end up in the hands of the uninitiated and then virally promoted to/by the gullible and superstitious on behalf of `spiritual` grifters. That's why in my view Christinanity is and arguably (according to Tacitus, Suetonius, Porphyry, Julian, etc) always was far more a superstition than a legitimate religion.
@toiletpaper @pernia I tried to get as far back as we can go and figure out what the documents actually said, is where I got here from
@sun @pernia
Same, albeit from a different perspective. But it's pretty difficult unless you understand the original languages and have a broader historical cultural context to go by. I tend to just wade through modern scholarship and hope for the best (referencing translations when available). But I'm also aware that even in historical times a lot of this stuff was really heavily bastardised, misunderstood, and written/edited with a political agenda, often by total grifters. You certainly don't need to take my word for that.
One thing I really love about this kinda stuff is how flexible mythology was (and arguably still is), with syncretism, complete fabrications, and so on. One of the earliest examples would be Enheduanna (daughter of Sargon of Akkad) who merged the mythologies of Inanna and Ishtar in order to facilitate the political and social merger between Akkad and Sumer. But you see this over and over and over, both for the benefit of the given peoples, and as a means of demonising them by vilifying their deities. That's why when you have demons depicted as humans, or human-demon hybrids, I tend to view it as metaphor for this kind of political agenda rather than as something people were meant to literally believe as objective fact, regardless of how it evolved and took root in the popular mind. That aside from the context of sacred/initiatory folk healing practices where demons/Gods more often represent psychological states.
Same, albeit from a different perspective. But it's pretty difficult unless you understand the original languages and have a broader historical cultural context to go by. I tend to just wade through modern scholarship and hope for the best (referencing translations when available). But I'm also aware that even in historical times a lot of this stuff was really heavily bastardised, misunderstood, and written/edited with a political agenda, often by total grifters. You certainly don't need to take my word for that.
One thing I really love about this kinda stuff is how flexible mythology was (and arguably still is), with syncretism, complete fabrications, and so on. One of the earliest examples would be Enheduanna (daughter of Sargon of Akkad) who merged the mythologies of Inanna and Ishtar in order to facilitate the political and social merger between Akkad and Sumer. But you see this over and over and over, both for the benefit of the given peoples, and as a means of demonising them by vilifying their deities. That's why when you have demons depicted as humans, or human-demon hybrids, I tend to view it as metaphor for this kind of political agenda rather than as something people were meant to literally believe as objective fact, regardless of how it evolved and took root in the popular mind. That aside from the context of sacred/initiatory folk healing practices where demons/Gods more often represent psychological states.