The Missing Page

[Quid est Veritas?]

Often we see an argument made, a sort of fallacy of association, that because there are different religions and mythologies, this is somehow problematic for the idea of Christian truths. To me, I see it in the opposite light. For man has always had a religious bent, a mythological narrative soul, that is found in all the different religions. It is after all not true that Christianity must be wholely true and other religions wholely false, for the others can be partially true, having themes and ideas brought to fulfillment in Christianity - in fact, this is expected. If Christianity was completely other to human religion in general, it would be a strong argument against it. For if there is only one God, then spiritual and divine phenomena must be related to Him; or a corruption of the forms thereof, which remains related in antithesis. This is an old idea in Christianity, the Praeparatio Evangelica, making ready for the Gospel to be received.

CS Lewis described it quite beautifully as the 'missing page': You have a disparate set of pages and someone comes along and says he has the missing page of the novel, that brings it all together. If you take this missing page, and by its details you interpret all the rest of your pages, and new meaning, a combined narrative results, then it stands to reason that this really was the missing part of this story. This is what Lewis calls True Myth, the crystallisation of mythology from some great in potentia, into actuality, into real historic existence in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. For ultimately that is where its reality and power has lain all along, a sussuration of the Gospel. The bringing to be of a mileau in which Gospel can be received and understood.

For humans learn by stories. Children observe their parents, then play act what they do, then invent stories around it, and only thereafter do they develop conscious awareness of what is being signified. So a child will ape his father, then play pretend to be a father, and only thereafter come to articulate what a Father really is. Even if his own father is a flawed one, he will come to develop an idealised idea of a 'real father' or 'good father' that his own falls short of.

So too, is religious myth and ritual. We tell stories of the divine, we play-act in ritual to commune with it, and later articulate what we are doing into Theology. Even if the last step is never reached though (and often our understanding is significantly wanting), the operative step is the ritualised mimicking. Children learn by doing, by practising sums repeatly say, or tying shoelaces or driving, even if they know theoretically what they are supposed to do. It becomes engrained, beyond thought, allowing the actual experience thereof. When you must think about doing something, you can't focus on the experience thereof, as act takes precedence; and if you stop to analyse what you are experiencing, in that moment experience ceased, but an abstraction of what had been experienced, usually wrapped in metaphor, replaces it. Think of a meal: If you stop to think about what you are tasting, you will rationalise the taste into adjectival descriptors, for instance. A child focussing on using a knife and fork, will likewise have a different experience of the meal than merely the elicited taste thereof. This is the beauty of myth, as it squares the circle: It is a narrative in which you can focus upon the idea, without over-analysing it into an abstraction of itself. It is similar to how children learn to use currency or act in social settings by playing house. It may seem a tad puerile, but a good novel or play or show will often get an idea across far better, and to more people, than hundreds of well-written treatises. This is why Nietzsche articulated his thoughts out of Hamlet for instance, in which men had understood the complexity long before the existential problem was philosophically described - and I dare say, Hamlet acts more effectively in this manner to this day.

So too religious myth has ingrained religious thought and practice into us. This is why we are told to Imitate Christ, to put Him on as it were, to thus be helped by copying Him, to approach the ineffable Divine we are incapable of understanding. Even our theology is wrapped in metaphor, just a different kind of 'story'. This is how myth has always functioned. There is anyway an anachronistic belief that ancient myths were 'believed' in the way we might believe a newspaper article. They certainly were not, as can be best shown with the multiplication of mythic tropes - the same Egyptian text might describe the Sun as Ra, the barque of Ra, a ball rolled by the scarab Khepri, swallowed and born from Hathor, etc. Myth is not a Just-So story, nor a scientific hypothesis, and it was not treated as either in the past. Varro the Roman polymath wrote extensively on their myths, what they signify, and was ambivalently approved of by Augustine, for instance. Even if a myth was believed 'true', as Augustine did for OT ones, the point thereof was often anagogic. It wasn't so much explaining the world or understanding its origins, as trying to apportion meaning within it. The ancients were very practical, as even history was taught as instructive, rather than descriptive.
Modern psychology speaks about this as well. How stories we find meaningful influence our action, even when we sometimes aren't really aware of it. Myth was meaningful, giving images and ideas that man could intuitively grasp, without necessarily articulating it as such. This is for instance where ideas like Archetypes or Hero Myths and such feature. Recent examples of this type of thinking is Jordan Petersen, Joseph Campbell/Fraser's Golden Bough or Karl Jung himself.

So now that I have explained a bit about the nature of myth, I can get to my actual content of the thread. I apologise for the long ramble...

I shall follow with interpretations of various mythic tropos and how I feel they mirror Christian understanding, and as such act as sussurations within it. My OP is already overly long, so my examples will follow in separate posts. It is important to note that what is important is the meaning attached to them, the ideas they represent, rather than the figures themselves. For there aren't hard parallels except in culturally related religious traditions, and even then parallelomania can occur, but my contentions is the content of belief lays the groundwork for Christianity as flowering thereof. Religions set up in opposition to, or borrowing from, Christianity, is of necessity excluded as they already presuppose a common set of imagery, and adjudicating between them rests on judging between their relative use thereof.

So let us finally begin...

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Rome:

An important Roman myth is the myth of Romulus and Remus. Romulus kills Remus after he crosses the Pomerium of his new city, being the ceremonial boundary thereof. The Pomerium was simply divided out by a furrow drawn in the land, that Remus crossed without a forethought. They had both set out to decide who would found their city, by taking augery of birds from the Aventine (Remus) and Capitoline (Romulus) respectively, which Romulus won. They were considered children of Mars by a Vestal Virgin, abandoned to be suckled by the wolf before being raised by shepherds.

Important points to note is that the Aventine was associated with the Plebeians, and the Capitoline with the Patricians. Further, Mars is the god of War, but not in the same manner as Ares. The latter was a god of the beserker, of the fury of war, while Mars was a calmer god of Soldiers. Discipline was important here, hence Mars has significant agricultural attributes as an orderer of the seasons and harvest, as if dressing the lines of battle.

The thing here is a foundation on fratricide, that has strong parallels to Cain and Abel - where Cain also sets out to build a city thereafter, and is also a ploughman. Cain and Abel is about pride destroying man, that Cain hadn't acted in the right spirit. Here, Romulus observes the letter of the law, which Remus flouts - obeying the Spirit thereof, as no city had as yet been built. In like manner, Cain and Abel both made sacrifices, but Abel's was accepted and Cain's rejected.
The consequence was a prophetic instance of the Conflict of the Orders, where the Plebeians merely seek the rights of citizens that the Patricians often infringe, while the latter maintain legality while still doing so.

So Romulus is legalistic self-interest vs Remus being the Spirit of the law. But Cain and Abel are also precursors of Christ - the destruction of the innocent Abel mirroring the Crucifixion. It is scapegoating in a way. So Christ maintained the Law, written on the heart, while 'working' on the Sabbath or letting the woman caught in adultery go. The Spirit of the Law vs legalistic Scribes and Pharisees.

In another way, to borrow of Augustine, it is the city of man - Romulus - destroying the city of God. The arbitrary boundary of possession was more important than fraternal feeling. What is more important for a city though, than civic fraternity? It is man falling short.

Now Rome had an old triad of Capitoline gods - Jupiter, Quirinius and Mars. These also constituted the oldest Roman priesthoods. These reflect the Indo-European three roles of Priest, Worker and Warrior.
Of these three, Quirinius, the worker, came to be associated with the deified Romulus. But Romulus was opposed to Remus, who holds the Aventine of the Plebeians - but upon becoming like the god Quirinius, he is being reconciled thereto. In divinity the petty man is reconciled as such.

A thing to note further on the Arcaic Triad: Jupiter is not Zeus, he was a god of the Oath. There was a ceremony where a nail was driven into his temple every year by the highest official of the state, representing an ongoing covenant with heaven. This is why Mithras, also a god of oaths, did so well in the later Roman Empire.
Now a special type of Jupiter was Iovis, anglified to Jove often. This was Jupiter conceived as highest god. Interestingly, the form Iovis sounds close to reconstructions of how YHWH was to be pronounced - especially Samaritan variants like Ioue. A highest god with a 'covenant' relationship? Augustine adresses this in City of God, how Varro's ideas of the Highest God clearly reflect the idea of the Father. So even if polytheists, the Romans tended especially in later years, to a form of monotheism - which was obviously very much a boon for proselytising Christianity.

Now Mars was an ordering god, as previously stated. While not a creator, his agricultural usages mimic one in controlling the seasonal nature of the world. His function as warrior is also one as protector, almost as the sustainer. In this way he is Mars Gravidus, the marcher, that keeps the world and the soldier moving on; as well as Mars Pater. But Jupiter was the Father figure, so a clear association here is made. Further Mars is associated as Mars Quirinius, and through being Romulus' father, with the third member of the Triad. Quirinius is a worker though, helping the citizenry.

While this is not a Trinity as such, there are cross-connections between these and via Mars, equation between all three gods. The idea is nascently there, while the Archaic triad was the highest idea of the divine in the early period.

I'll likely come back to Rome, but it is important to note that the Empire converted to Christianity. Their religious impulses were satiated by the Christian message. Roman religion became dead letter in its later form, empty ritual mostly. The idea of the Living God, who is more than merely a contractual partner (as Roman gods often were treated as), makes the idea of the Law written on the heart something I can see a Roman would think appealing. They invented our legal culture afterall, and it is a nice parallelism that the Letter to the Romans has so much on the Law in this vein (though likely written to Jewish converts in Rome rather than Romans).

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Norse Mythology:

There are many parallels to draw, but an important one here is Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods.

Just prior to this event, Balder the god of light, beloved of al, who was supposedly invulnerable, was slain by blind Hodur with a sprig of mistletoe. He is subsequently killed in revenge by a figure born for this purpose. Blind figures in Indo-European religion are usually associated with the Law (Blind Justice, for instance). At the end of Ragnarok, after the various gods are all killed, Balder is resurrected along with Hodur, and an Edenic paradise is created. Lif and Lifthrasir, a new couple, arise from their hiding place in a wood (likely referencing Yggdrasil, the World Tree).

So to rephrase, the Law kills the Light of the World and at the end of days a New Life arises into a new world, ruled over by the returned Light, with whom the Law has reconciled. This New Man rises from Yggdrasil, which has schematically been associated with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (also since it has the serpent Nidhogg at its roots). We further know that Odin was hung from Yggdrassil to gain knowledge. It is worth noting that Loki guided the blind Hodur's spear of mistletoe too, a figure that can and has been interpreted as a sort of Norse devil, though he is often a trickster.

Clearly we are dealing with strong tropes of redemption here, along with the World Tree giving an idea of saving man and giving rise to a reborn humanity. Is this not akin to the Cross? In many ways, the cross is the point of the world after all, God's redemptive process, and Odin also suffers by it - cursed is he that hangs on the tree.
Adding Hodur, we can show an idea again of the Letter of the Law destroying, instead of keeping the 'perfect' Balder alive. Balder is resurrected and in so doing 'resurrects' man from the World Tree, from knowing Good and Evil, ie sin.

We know Odin sacrificed himself to himself by hanging from the World Tree, and this is clearly an idea of a Passion and suffering on the cross - often conceived as wood. The very name Yggdrasil likely means something like "gallows", so suffering on the tree is an innate idea here - yet in this very suffering lies the paradise after the end of days, and man restored from within it.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

The Corn King:

This is the classic Christian parallel. The dying and reborn god, who as wheat seeds die to be raised as corn, bringing life. Often associated with a passion narrative as well, such as for instance Adonis or Tammuz. It is well known from the Golden Bough of Frazer.

In John, Christ is the Bread of Life, and symbolises His broken body by a loaf broken at the Last Supper. CS Lewis referenced this in his classic essay, The Grand Miracle, upon which much of this thread is based:


"In that sense the doctrine fits in very well, so well in fact that immediately there comes the suspicion, Is it not fitting in a great deal too well? In other words, does not the Christian story show this pattern of descent and reascent because that is part of all the nature religions of the world? We have read about it in The Golden Boughs. We all know about Adonis, and the stories of the rest of those rather tedious people; is not this one more instance of the same thing, “the dying god”? Well, yes it is. That is what makes the question subtle.

What the anthropological critic of Christianity is always saying is perfectly true. Christ is a figure of that sort. And here comes a very curious thing. When I first, after childhood, read the Gospels, I was full of that stuff about the dying god, The Golden Bough, and so on. It was to me then a very poetic, and mysterious, and quickening idea; and when I turned to the Gospels never will I forget my disappointment and repulsion at finding hardly anything about it at all. The metaphor of the seed dropping into the ground in this connection occurs (I think) twice in the New Testament, and for the rest hardly any notice is taken; it seemed to me extraordinary. You had a dying God, Who was always representative of the corn: you see Him holding the corn, that is, bread, in His hand, and saying, “This is My Body,” and from my point of view, as I then was, He did not seem to realize what He was saying. Surely there, if anywhere, this connection between the Christian story and the corn must have come out; the whole context is crying out for it. But everything goes on as if the principal actor, and still more, those about Him, were totally ignorant of what they were doing.

It is as if you got very good evidence concerning the sea serpent, but the men who brought this good evidence seemed never to have heard of sea serpents. Or to put it in another way, why was it that the only case of the “dying god” which might conceivably have been historical occurred among a people (and the only people in the whole Mediterranean world) who had not got any trace of this nature religion, and indeed seemed to know nothing about it? Why is it among them the thing suddenly appears to happen?"


---
I strongly suggest anyone unfamiliar with this essay, to go read it. It is very relevant here.

Edit: I couldn't find a nice pdf of it quickly, but you can read the essay at this site:

Christianity is One Great Miracle - The Grand Miracle by C.S. Lewis

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Egyptian Mythology:

Egyptian myths are full of rebirth. This is perhaps why Egypt was an early area of large scale Christian conversion, and the heartland of Christian monasticism. By the late third century, it is estimated Lower Egypt had a majority Christian population.

Egypt had a sort-of monotheistic tradition at Heliopolis around Ra. This eventually evolved into the historic monotheistic religion of the Aten, under Akhenaton. His Great Hymn to the Aten is full of imagery with strong parallels in Psalm 104.

The gods give life in Egypt, symbolised by the Ankh, a cross figure. At death, the soul is weighed against Ma'at or Truth, a surprising virtue ethic.

The real parallel lies in Osiris. He was connected to Ra, with the last character of his hieroglyphics often being the name Re, and by Hellenistic times had largely absorbed him. Osiris dies and is resurrected. By so doing, people who 'borrow' Osiris, a sort of Grace principle, can also taste resurrection with him. He is cut apart ny his brother Set (associated with the desert waste, and by the Greeks with the serpent Typhon) and his parts collected by his wife Isis. Their son Horus goes on to defeat Seth. Now Isis means throne, so where Osiris resides, so can be read as a parallel 'Bride of' the dying figure. This leads to new life and the defeat of the Set by a restored Osiris in Horus. The parallel to the Church as bride of Christ, with an idea of a parousial restoration seems at least suggestible, but an idea of embodying Osiris to overcome Set is there as well. Set takes over Egypt from Osiris, but is a betrayer figure, too. You can even read a parallel with the Temptation. This is suggested as a katabasis, rebirth narrative that certainly has a place here.

The Creator god Atum arose as the primevil mound appeared from the waters. This has classic Hamito-Semitic Genesis parallels of Spirit over the Waters, but there are other Egyptian creation accounts. Notably, Ptah creates by the word and by the heart, almost embodying an idea as Logos. There are also things like Khnum, the ram-headed potter, that creates children from clay; or Khepri the scarab, which suggests 'He that becomes' of which parallelism might underlie 8th century BC Judaean scarabs that have been found.

The resurrection obsessed Egyptians, grasped early on the Grace of God, of taking on the role of Christ, to be a son of God with the Son of God, as was already the case with Pharoah from earliest times, and from the New Kingdom onward, the population at large. The people as Horus or as Ra or as Osiris in some sense.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Shinto:

An interesting little myth is the disappearance of Amaterasu. She is the Sun goddess and often the premiere deity. Her brother Susanoo destroys her loom and kills her stewards, and so she retires into a cave. Without the sun, the world withers until the other gods trick her into leaving - by excessive joyfulness and a mirror to make her believe she is seeing another luminous figure.

We have Life disappearing into a cave, the Grave in other words, and returning as her luminosity is being 'mirrored'. We have the borrowing of her Light therefore, in order to bring forth Life once more. The parallel of becoming as Christ, of Imitating Him, is again here. Even the killing of her stewards can be read as destroying the people of the Light, even destroying Prophets maybe?, and the loom is a common metaphor for destiny. Amaterasu weaves the fate of men, but this was destroyed by Susanoo, a permanent change, a death, restored by the rebirth of the Sun.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Zoroastrianism:

The parallels are legion. Zoroastrianism is about upholding Arta or Truth, against Druj, the lie. It is monotheistic in that Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, created the world and from him emanated Spenta Mainyu and a series of Amesha Spentas, which are essentially adjectival principles of Goodness; opposed to them is Angra Mainyu and the forces that seek to bring decay. Now Zoroastrianism teaches that creation was good, but fell. The fine details are debatable here, but Angra Mainyu is the twin of Spenta Mainyu, while the former's creation by Ahura Mazda is denied. This may be that it was conceived that once something comes into existence, so does its negation - if blue is a colour, all other colours are not-blue, so Truth is opposed by the Lie. Spenta Mainyu came to be equated to Ahura Mazda, as Angra Mainyu came to be called Ahriman, creating a dualist cosmogony

There is also the saviour figure of the Saoshyant. He comes in a millenarian fashion to restore the world. To renovate and resurrect the dead and a final judgement occurs. To finally defeat decay and Angra Mainyu. He prepares the Haoma, a drink, that is partaken of to prepare for perfection - which is itself a divine/divinity and thus related to Ahura Mazda. In earlier Gathas, Zoroaster and his followers are given saoshyant as epithets, which was clearly equated with the doctrine of the Saoshyant in later times.

There are also the idea of the Fravashi, a spirit, the Urvan or 'soul', which is connected to the body of men. I can't help seeing a parallel here to the Soul, Spirit and Body of Christianity (which may be tripartite but dual in practice) or the Ruach and Living Nephesh of the OT.


Jesus calls himself the Truth, in like manner the devil is the prince of lies. Clearly the Saoshyant can be understood to be Jesus at the end of days. He also makes a plant-based beverage that is drunk in communion, in fact treated as if God himself. The righteous are even called saoshyants themselves, akin perhaps to being in-Christ. The fallen is restored, the dead resurrected and a perfect world results. The whole point of Zoroastrianism is restoration of the world to its original perfection, which is very close to Christianity. It even has a strong virtue ethic, in choosing Right Conduct.

Ahura Mazda is clearly conceived as a Mind, a Person in other words - but what relation does he have to the Saoshyant? Even the emanations can be equated to much Christian imagery, such as the classic virtues and theological virtues to some extent.

Now we can argue about Zoroastrian influence on Judaism in the inter-testamental period, of course, but still the ethos of both religions are quite similar. One should also bear in mind that the primary Heartland of Zoroastrianism was always Bactria, Sogdiana and Parthia, with the modern Yazd Zoroastrians still being there; and it certainly is not a prosletysing religion. It is not at all clear how any influence could occur, especially as it seems from Greek sources that the Zurvanite form was more prevalent towards the areas facing Mesopotamia (this form taught Ormazd/Ahura Mazda and Ahriman are both children of a higher neutral god Zurvan, and was highly fatalistic). This makes genuine parallels plausible. The Saoshyant doctrine might be early, but may also be late - depends how we interpret Sassanid redaction and the Saoshyant references in the Gathas. A lot can be debated here, but the overarching themes of this religion, of Salvation, Redemption, Virtue and the defeat of decay and death, sound very Christian.

Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life - a statement that sounds very Zoroastrian indeed.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

The Fourth Eclogue of Virgil.

This poem was written in about 42 BC by the great Roman poet. It is presented as a prophecy by the Sybil of Cumae, regarding the birth of a golden boy - who will usher in an age of Justice, where the Lion lays down with the lamb. Much material with clear biblical themes abound here. Where poisons depart, swords rust, peace reigns. However, this boy is deemed "not worthy of board nor bed" by the gods - who else had no room at the inn?

The child's parents cryptically do not smile at him. The entire poem is a paean to how this child will restore the world to an earlier Golden Age of Saturn, a return to the Roman Eden therefore, yet its parents do not smile on him? How can one not see the heavy burden here, or the Pieta of Mary?

Virgil also uses the term Iovis that I mentioned earlier, calling the boy the Great progeny of Jove. As mentioned earlier, this was a special form of Jupiter as Summus Deus, the highest god. Varro saw it as the form wherein all other gods were subsumed. Literally the boy is called the Son of God in an almost Christian manner, here.

The fourth Eclogue was seen as a prophecy of Christ by many early Church Fathers like Augustine, and almost universally thereafter till the Enlightenment. That is why Virgil leads Dante around Hell and Purgatory, or the Sybil of Cumae can be found on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling - next to Isaiah and Zechariah etc.

People have been trying to explain it away ever since. They say it is about a child of Augustus and Scribonia, but predates the Principate significantly and before Virgil's patron Maecenas was so closely aligned here, so this is quite unlikely. Further, it is dedicated to Pollio, but doesn't fit any of his boys by date, nor can it be his consulship. Some read it as a celebration of Virgil's own poetic art, yet what is with the disqueting notes then? Refused board and unsmiled upon? Or said to be for a child of Marc Antony and Octavia, or celebrating the Peace of Brundisium, etc. but all of this is equally unlikely.

None of the secular attempts to explain it away work very well. Why even bother? The Romans believed in prophecy. They consulted the Sybilline books sold to Tarquin frequently in times of crisis. You see omens and such awash in their culture. Why not take the poem at face value?

Beyond that, how can you explain all the Isaiah-esque imagery here? This is certainly not explained by Greco-Roman culture, and Virgil, a native of Cisalpine Gaul, clearly has no connections to anything Jewish. The Jews were after all a backwater nation at the time, so a lot of ignorance abounds in Hellenistic times about them. The commonality is stark, but the pathways to any connection meagre.

Fourth Eclogue - Publius Vergilius Maro

Muses of Sicily, essay we now
A somewhat loftier task! Not all men love
Coppice or lowly tamarisk: sing we woods,
Woods worthy of a Consul let them be.
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung
Has come and gone, and the majestic roll
Of circling centuries begins anew:
Justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign,
With a new breed of men sent down from heaven.
Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom
The iron shall cease, the golden race arise,
Befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own
Apollo reigns. And in thy consulate,
This glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin,
And the months enter on their mighty march.
Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain
Of our old wickedness, once done away,
Shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear.
He shall receive the life of gods, and see
Heroes with gods commingling, and himself
Be seen of them, and with his father's worth
Reign o'er a world at peace. For thee, O boy,
First shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth
Her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray
With foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed,
And laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves,
Untended, will the she-goats then bring home
Their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield
Shall of the monstrous lion have no fear.
Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee
Caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die,
Die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far
And wide Assyrian spices spring. But soon
As thou hast skill to read of heroes' fame,
And of thy father's deeds, and inly learn
What virtue is, the plain by slow degrees
With waving corn-crops shall to golden grow,
From the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape,
And stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew. Nathless
Yet shall there lurk within of ancient wrong
Some traces, bidding tempt the deep with ships,
Gird towns with walls, with furrows cleave the earth.
Therewith a second Tiphys shall there be,
Her hero-freight a second Argo bear;
New wars too shall arise, and once again
Some great Achilles to some Troy be sent.
Then, when the mellowing years have made thee man,
No more shall mariner sail, nor pine-tree bark
Ply traffic on the sea, but every land
Shall all things bear alike: the glebe no more
Shall feel the harrow's grip, nor vine the hook;
The sturdy ploughman shall loose yoke from steer,
Nor wool with varying colours learn to lie;
But in the meadows shall the ram himself,
Now with soft flush of purple, now with tint
Of yellow saffron, teach his fleece to shine.
While clothed in natural scarlet graze the lambs.
"Such still, such ages weave ye, as ye run,"
Sang to their spindles the consenting Fates
By Destiny's unalterable decree.
Assume thy greatness, for the time draws nigh,
Dear child of gods, great progeny of Jove!
See how it totters- the world's orbed might,
Earth, and wide ocean, and the vault profound,
All, see, enraptured of the coming time!
Ah! might such length of days to me be given,
And breath suffice me to rehearse thy deeds,
Nor Thracian Orpheus should out-sing me then,
Nor Linus, though his mother this, and that
His sire should aid- Orpheus Calliope,
And Linus fair Apollo. Nay, though Pan,
With Arcady for judge, my claim contest,
With Arcady for judge great Pan himself
Should own him foiled, and from the field retire.
Begin to greet thy mother with a smile,
O baby-boy! ten months of weariness
For thee she bore: O baby-boy, begin!
For him, on whom his parents have not smiled,
Gods deem not worthy of their board or bed.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Plato.

When reading this great sage, it is hard to miss how particularly different he thinks from his contemporaneous Pagan society. We see him extoll Justice for its own sake, champion a world beyond our own - the Forms or in the Cave. He even creates a timeless God, a creator, beyond. We see his Demiurge in the Timaeus, an timeless eternal whereupon our world exists as a shadow of the Form thereof. Now this is very much a break with Pagan ideas on creation myths - these usually entailled more a process than a start from scratch, as in primordial waters or areas of cold and heat interacting, etc. It was not the creation of things themselves, of our existence. Only the monotheists developed any idea even close to this. A world of forms, with a Form of the Good itself, has strong religious parallels to Christianity. Even the idea that the indwelling Christ, the Form to which we Christians become sons of God, trying to emulate Him, clearly has the idea of the Supreme God as the Good implicit. No wonder that Christianity did so well in a world steeped in Plato, why the Neoplatonists complained Christianity was stealing their thunder as it were. The fact is that Plato is amenable to Christ, and in many ways, Christ fulfills Plato in fact. Who is a better Philosopher-King than the image of the Messiah coming to judge at the end of days in Righteousness?

Then, we must not forget the passage in The Republic, in which the image of the Truly Righteous Man, of the really Just is told. Plato tells us, in the words of Glaucon, that such a man will be tortured and impaled - broken and killed. For only in suffering can real justice be laid bare, be truly righteous. One cannot escape Calvary here. Its juxtaposition to the fully unjust, who appears just, merely reminds of Christ rebuking the hypocrites. And remember, this is Glaucon, while Socrates - Plato's mouthpiece here - is actually arguing for the primacy of Justice, that is should be both desired for its own sake as well as its effects. If this is the case, and your best exemplar is a broken murdered man - impaled (? Crucified) no less - then are you not arguing for the emulation of a simulacrum or foreshadowing of Christ?

Plato - The Republic, Book II

Glaucon: Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and unjust, we must isolate them; there is no other way; and how is the isolation to be effected? I answer: Let the unjust man be entirely unjust, and the just man entirely just; nothing is to be taken away from either of them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the work of their respective lives. First, let the unjust be like other distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or physician, who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps within their limits, and who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover himself. So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice (he who isfound out is nobody): for the highest reach of injustice is: to be deemed just when you are not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice. If he have taken a false step he must be able to recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect, if any of his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where force is required his courage and strength, and command of money and friends. And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good. There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in justiceonly, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.

Socrates: Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two statues.

Glaucon: I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like there is no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either of them. This I will proceed to describe; but as you may think the description a little too coarse, I ask you to suppose, Socrates, that the words which follow are not mine. --Let me put them into the mouths of the eulogists of injustice: They will tell you that the just man who is thought unjustwill be scourged, racked, bound --will have his eyes burnt out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled: Then he willunderstand that he ought to seem only, and not to be, just; the words ofAeschylus may be more truly spoken of the unjust than of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality; he does not live with a view to appearances --he wants to be really unjust and not to seem only:--

His mind has a soil deep and fertile,
Out of which spring his prudent counsels. In the first place, he isthought just, and therefore bears rule in the city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage to whom he will; also he can trade and deal where he likes, and always to his own advantage, because he has no misgivings about injustice and at every contest, whether in public or private, he gets the better of his antagonists, and gains at their expense, and is rich, and out of his gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to honour in a far better style than the just, and therefore he is likely to be dearer than they are to the gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and men are said to unite in making the life of the unjust better than the life of the just.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Plato.

When reading this great sage, it is hard to miss how particularly different he thinks from his contemporaneous Pagan society. We see him extoll Justice for its own sake, champion a world beyond our own - the Forms or in the Cave. He even creates a timeless God, a creator, beyond. We see his Demiurge in the Timaeus, an timeless eternal whereupon our world exists as a shadow of the Form thereof. Now this is very much a break with Pagan ideas on creation myths - these usually entailled more a process than a start from scratch, as in primordial waters or areas of cold and heat interacting, etc. It was not the creation of things themselves, of our existence. Only the monotheists developed any idea even close to this. A world of forms, with a Form of the Good itself, has strong religious parallels to Christianity. Even the idea that the indwelling Christ, the Form to which we Christians become sons of God, trying to emulate Him, clearly has the idea of the Supreme God as the Good implicit. No wonder that Christianity did so well in a world steeped in Plato, why the Neoplatonists complained Christianity was stealing their thunder as it were. The fact is that Plato is amenable to Christ, and in many ways, Christ fulfills Plato in fact. Who is a better Philosopher-King than the image of the Messiah coming to judge at the end of days in Righteousness?

Then, we must not forget the passage in The Republic, in which the image of the Truly Righteous Man, of the really Just is told. Plato tells us, in the words of Glaucon, that such a man will be tortured and impaled - broken and killed. For only in suffering can real justice be laid bare, be truly righteous. One cannot escape Calvary here. Its juxtaposition to the fully unjust, who appears just, merely reminds of Christ rebuking the hypocrites. And remember, this is Glaucon, while Socrates - Plato's mouthpiece here - is actually arguing for the primacy of Justice, that is should be both desired for its own sake as well as its effects. If this is the case, and your best exemplar is a broken murdered man - impaled (? Crucified) no less - then are you not arguing for the emulation of a simulacrum or foreshadowing of Christ?

Are we sure that going with Plato (or Aristotle) too far is (or has been) a good choice for Christians, Quid?

No, I think we have to be very qualified in how we do so, IF we do so.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Greece:

If you look at Homer, you'll see a very specific idea of the Shades in Hades. They are gibbering imbeciles, who only gain remembrance or substance once they partake of the Blood of sacrifice given them by Odysseus. Only by that sacrifice, do they gain any semblance of their previous life. They have no strength or mind (nous) without it, though it remains temporary. What does Odysseus sacrifice though? In the blood of a sheep, the shades regain somewhat of their lives.

We also see Orpheus descending into the underworld, a Katabasis repeated by Odysseus and Aeneas. This was the grounds of the Orphic rites, of a renewal in death. Orpheus descended to bring out his wife, Eurydice - which means broad Justice. She had stepped on a Viper at her wedding feast and was bitten on the heel, thus 'Justice' descended to the underworld - can we not see shades of the Fall here?
Orpheus could not bring her out alone, though he charmed the Fates and Cerberus with his music, as he glanced back at her as he was doing so. Now Orpheus is a cognate of Orphan, the Fatherless, or perhaps the Slave etymologically. So the son without a Father, or the slave (who is not yet a slave in Christ) could not rescue Justice from the underworld, bring back the mirth of his wedding day. Justice could not be saved, as Orpheus failed to adhere to the Law as given him by Persephone (another figure who descends and returns from the underworld) and thus Death held Eurydice. Orpheus is the failed Bridegroom, whose bride remained in Hades - yet was the cult-figure of a rebirth cult, a mystery religion, so is pointing toward such a victory for man. Is not the parallelism with Christ, as descending into Hades and rescuing His Bride, the Church, quite palpable? That Christ finally returns Justice to the world? Orpheus is even further a type of Christ-figure in being torn to pieces by Maenads at his death, very symbols of frenzy. More than that though, in Bacchanalia the Maenads were supposed to free man to a beatific connection with the gods, through Wine as blood and partaking of the flesh of their god, Dionyseus (represented here in omophagia of a bull).

There are many more Greek parallels, frequently explored in Christian literature in the past, though largely forgotten today. But one must remember Paul quotes the Greek poets and pointed out the Altar to the Unknown God on the Areopagus.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Are we sure that going with Plato (or Aristotle) too far is (or has been) a good choice for Christians, Quid?

No, I think we have to be very qualified in how we do so, IF we do so.

The whole point of the thread is fulfilling other religions and their ideas. Only means they have intimations of the Truth therefore, not that we must swallow it wholesale. Plato is certainly useful reading for anyone, I think.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

The whole point of the thread is fulfilling other religions and their ideas. Only means they have intimations of the Truth therefore, not that we must swallow it wholesale. Plato is certainly useful reading for anyone, I think.

Truthfully, I have a Yin-Yang kind of rapport with Greek Philosophy, or with the idea about 'how' exactly other religions may or may not fulfill something of God's fullest intentions in the world.

And you're right; Plato (and Aristotle) can certainly be useful reading for anyone, just as it was for white-American Slavers in the Antebellum South U.S. during the 18th to 19th centuries as they worked to maintain their so-called status quo ideology supporting their Southern slave economy. So, if there are pages 'missing,' this may be a page of history we want to find, if possible, and read.

 

[FireDragon76]

It's interesting some of the Church Fathers saw Socrates as almost a type of Christ.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

It's interesting some of the Church Fathers saw Socrates as almost a type of Christ.

Yes, and after my own reading of Plato's "Apology" (of Socrates), I can see why the Church Fathers were tempted to say this. There are some interesting parallel motifs in Plato's Socratic representation to those of say, Jesus and even of Paul. Perhaps Socrates was some kind of proto-voice to that of the apostles, but I think we can only say this within certain limits.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Yes, and after my own reading of Plato's "Apology" (of Socrates), I can see why the Church Fathers were tempted to say this. There are some interesting parallel motifs in Plato's Socratic representation to those of say, Jesus and even of Paul. Perhaps Socrates was some kind of proto-voice to that of the apostles, but I think we can only say this within certain limits.

More Plato's Socrates than Xenophon's though. We are perhaps back to seeing Christian ideas in Plato. For Xenophon's Socrates didn't die for Truth, but chose to die to limit suffering. But broadly, I fully concur.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Truthfully, I have a Yin-Yang kind of rapport with Greek Philosophy, or with the idea about 'how' exactly other religions may or may not fulfill something of God's fullest intentions in the world.

And you're right; Plato (and Aristotle) can certainly be useful reading for anyone, just as it was for white-American Slavers in the Antebellum South U.S. during the 18th to 19th centuries as they worked to maintain their so-called status quo ideology supporting their Southern slave economy. So, if there are pages 'missing,' this may be a page of history we want to find, if possible, and read.

If you harp on Slavery, then you would run into a lot of cultural problems wherever you go. The Antebellum slavers referenced the OT and Paul, too. When we read texts, it isn' t static, but a dynamic between the reader and text. We bring our own understanding to it, our cultural background, which informs our understanding thereof. But you are well aware of that, though. We can read it both in historical context, and in light of current understanding, though the former is by nature just an abstract of our understanding of how we think they would have interpreted anyway... Think of the Psalms, with a lot that seems Christological, but probably was not intended by the writers in that sense originally, but became imbued by Messianic and then Christian tones. I don't think one can necessarily give primacy to the former interpretation over the latter, as regardless you are creating your own 'understanding' as such. It is akin to how a text can 'come into its own' much later than when written, when it becomes more relevant to later generations. The Greek Philosophers are very much the same - you can decry Plato for his Aristocratic leanings, or Aristotle for his imminence, but this is just importing context that does not necessarily need be there.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

If you harp on Slavery, then you would run into a lot of cultural problems wherever you go. The Antebellum slavers referenced the OT and Paul, too. When we read texts, it isn' t static, but a dynamic between the reader and text. We bring our own understanding to it, our cultural background, which informs our understanding thereof. But you are well aware of that, though. We can read it both in historical context, and in light of current understanding, though the former is by nature just an abstract of our understanding of how we think they would have interpreted anyway...

Obviously, as the fellow academically minded Christian brother that your are, you're aware of the hermeneutical dynamics at play here in our respective understandings of Plato and his philosophical concepts, such as they are. Not only that, but I'm sure that you, as does @Silmarien, and probably @FireDragon76 as well, know a whole lot more about Plato at the present moment than I do since my attention lies mostly 'elsewhere' on more socially relevant philosophical issues of our current age.

Regardless, while I agree with you and @Silmarien that Plato (and thereby Socrates), accompanied by Aristotle and an assortment of other Greek philosophers of old whom we can value as 'classical,' has value in our thought today, I have a difficult time accepting fully that a single philosopher's ideas, such as those of Plato, can and always should be considered in a fashion divorced from the totality of the rest of what that philosopher believed and left in written form. I'm leery of assuming a less than wholistic approach to study UNLESS the philosopher is known to have qualified a bona-fide recanting of earlier held beliefs and evaluations. Granted, this doesn't mean that bits of useful truth which we still find in a more or less 'socially tainted' set of writings, such as those of Plato, aren't serviceable wihin other quadrants of philosophical evaluations of the world.

However, I also have a difficult time in ignoring how erroneous interpretive measures upon old texts are used and applied, even in society today, much to the detriment of people's well-being. Since I haven't studied much of the history of Australia, I can't say how either Plato's or Aristotle's teachings played into the institution of slavery there, but since I am in the U.S., I am mindful of how classical thought like Plato's has played into slavery (and racism) in the social matrix, and I have been mindful of this for a very long time.

In fact, it isn't JUST Plato and Aristotle that I have a problem with. If we we look closely, we can find this generally racist impropriety of mind existing within the thought of many philosophers even up and through to the modern era, despite their calls to freedom or their calls to 'fraternity among men': Locke being one, Hume and Kant as well with him; Hegel as yet one more contributor to this, and there might even be a few hints in Kierkegaard of this, but that might be debatable. There are others ...

Think of the Psalms, with a lot that seems Christological, but probably was not intended by the writers in that sense originally, but became imbued by Messianic and then Christian tones.

The trick here in our hermeneutics would then be to discern qualitative processes within our respective interpretive measures where we find and denote a difference between 1) what we think the original writers meant when they first wrote, 2) what God may have intended to impart through those writings, and 3) what we in ongoing reflection upon those same 'past' conceptual entities come to see anew as we learn more about them. And this discernment will require various complex considerations of epistemology, theology and our overall movement within the Hermeneutic Circle. So, I agree with you that surface measures of meaning might be questioned, but if the Christian faith is true, then there is more there than simply what we think we understand when we read the Bible.

I don't think one can necessarily give primacy to the former interpretation over the latter, as regardless you are creating your own 'understanding' as such. It is akin to how a text can 'come into its own' much later than when written, when it becomes more relevant to later generations. The Greek Philosophers are very much the same - you can decry Plato for his Aristocratic leanings, or Aristotle for his imminence, but this is just importing context that does not necessarily need be there.

To some extent, I think you're right in saying that we 'create' own own understanding as we thread our way through useful ancient writings, such as those of Plato. But, this isn't to say that when applying the Hermeneutic Circle, we, in our subjective understandings, don't grow more closely together in time when we work together toward a more objective commonality in our respective readings ....... and then in our realized applications of those readings.

So, my point? We need to be careful with the way in which we try to 'bring in' the apparent philosophical wealth of the nations of the past (and of the present) as we attempt to understand the "truth" of our Christian faith. And Plato is no exception in this regard...

 

[FireDragon76]

More Plato's Socrates than Xenophon's though. We are perhaps back to seeing Christian ideas in Plato. For Xenophon's Socrates didn't die for Truth, but chose to die to limit suffering. But broadly, I fully concur.

Both sound like Christian themes.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Both sound like Christian themes.

You misconstrue. Xenophon's Socrates chooses to die because he is old and does not want to suffer the ignominy of exile. He feels it is better to die now healthy and in control of his faculties, then later in senility. This is much less Christian than Plato's Socrates, who dies a martyr for Truth, who'd rather die than betray it and stop philosophising. Plato's Socrates I can see as a type of Christ, but Xenophon's is an argument for euthanasia of the not terminally ill (mostly from Pride) - which I consider abhorrent, personally.