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 @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
@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 @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.
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