General Platonism/Hellenism History

[jaybreak]

Vox Day referenced the post that contained these comments, here. There are some interesting claims re: Platonism and Hellenization in general.

This question isn't directed to anyone in particular. Possibly Ed more than anyone, since he has the most suited background for discerning this stuff. And it's not even a question--it's more just a presentation of ideas.

Original link for this comment. I'm well aware he's addressing Hellenized Christianity more so, but interesting claim nonetheless:

I’m well aware that Christian believers will find this unacceptable, but I’ve long since come to an unoriginal conclusion: Christianity is triumphant renovated Zoroastrianism. It is not a continuation of Judaism mixed with some Hellenic ideas derived from Neoplatonism & Orphism.

Ideologically, Christians owe most of their world-view to Zarathustra & his followers: 1) dualism (not di-theism), 2) angelology, 3) World Savior, not a local Messiah, 4) figure of the Evil One, who is more like Zoroastrians’ Ahriman than traditional Jewish Satan, 5) great final conflagration, very visual & scary apocalypse- again, more Persian than Judaic, 6) fierce sense of election of God’s favorite group of people, which dwarfs Jewish chosen people story- again, Zoroastrian, 7) image of Heaven & Hell, which is absent in classical Judaism, 8) resurrection of the dead.

Of course, Christians don’t care – theologically- for fire; they have a strong sense of guilt (unlike classic Zoroastrians); phraseologically & iconographically, Christians derive their mythology from Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, but: take away Zoroastrian ideas from Christianity & you’ll be left with zero, zippo, zilch.

Normative Judaism is not the birth place of Christianity; Essenes & other intertestamental pro-Persian sectarians are.

Original link here:

Judaism is ethical henotheism which became ethical monotheism. It is a this-wordly religion focused primarily on covenant with God & ethical behavior, the purpose of human life being in fulfilling God’s commandments. From ca. 500 BC to 300 AD, many foreign elements, chiefly from Zoroastrianism (angels, resurrection of the body, Messiah, Hell as the state of divine retribution post-mortem, the end of times,..) & Hellenic (immortality of the soul, Plato’s concept of spiritual cultivation through learning, Neo-Platonic idea of unicity of Being & man’s possibility of direct communion with God, erotic love as the metaphor for God’s love,..) have been assimilated, theoretically, in Judaism’s religious practice, but the stress remains on this life with meager interest in metaphysical & otherworldly dimensions of religion.

This comment has a quote from someone named Harold Bloom:

One is that nowhere in the whole of the Tanakh does it say that a whole people can make themselves holy through study of texts. That’s a purely Platonic idea, and comes out of Plato’s Laws. That simply shows how thoroughly Platonized the rabbis of the second century were. The other one, which I say in this book and it has already given some offense, is that in fact not only is Judaism, which is a product of the second century of the common era—and it’s worked out by people like you know Akiba and his friends and opponents like Ishmael and Tarphon and the others, is a younger religion than Christianity is. Christianity in some form exists in the first century of the common era. What we now call Judaism comes along in the second century of the common era. Christianity is actually the older religion, though it infuriates Jews when you say that to them.

[Ed Hurst]

Oh, my; what a mixed bag of stuff.

Key item: Zoroastrianism arose on the fringe of the Ancient Near East. It contains some primordial revelation, but lacks the refinement of Moses on Mt. Sinai, and the refinement of Jesus as the Son of God. Thus, Zoroastrian religion is not the source of angels, for example, because those were already in Hebrew Scripture going back at least to Abraham. But Zoroastrianism did infect the early New Testament churches. It wasn't a major problem, so it doesn't appear in the narrative, but it was there. It crept in mostly via it's prior influence on Judaism, which then slipped into the churches via the Judaizers. It was also backdoor Hellenism.

It's quite true that Judaism isn't Old Testament religion; I've said that often enough. And it's quite true that today's Judaism solidified long after Christ ascended to Heaven. Indeed, Judaism continued to develop until recent history. Who knows when it may morph yet more? When I talk about the Hellenism of Judaism, that was the biggest single step down into Hell. They kept taking more and more steps into the pit of lies, but talking too much about that in public risks being associated with Neo-Nazis and their particular brand of historical revisionism. It's not a secret that I keep, but something that isn't often pertinent to what we are doing. I've mentioned Kabbalism and I've studied how that developed as a feature of orthodox Judaism. It might be easier to simply pass on a good source for that, but it's a massive PDF ebook and tough to read. It's worth researching how Kabbalism is their dirty secret.

But the comments that list Zoroastrian elements in Western Christianity is largely correct. (1) Dualism: I've poked at that before in teaching that Satan serves God and is in no wise a peer of Christ. (2) Angeology: Their existence is not a Zoroastrian idea, but the common notions about them are. (3) Savior of the World: This is contextual; it doesn't have a simple consistent meaning. It's a mystical term. However, He is essentially the Savior only of those who embrace His Covenant. (4) The Evil One: See my item 1. (5) Final Conflict: This is not Zoroastrian; it is ANE. It has always been a parable widely referenced in many religions. (6) Chosen People: Again, this is ANE, as is the notion of revocation and adoption of a new family. (7) Afterlife: Judaism avoided direct mention, but the concept was not absent. It was mystical. It was also an appropriate concept because Jesus used the terms Heaven and Hell, but we have to understand their meaning as parables in the Hebrew context. (8) Resurrection: Again, an ANE concept, not solely Zoroastrian. Job spoke of this, his words quoted in the famous hymn, "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth." Job appears to predate Abraham.

Christianity wasn't meant to be a radical departure theologically from Old Testament religion; it was meant to be a different covenant based on the same essential revelation of truth. Taking away Zoroastrianism, except for the imagery Jesus borrowed, would leave a very different kind of Christian belief system, but it wouldn't gut genuine faith in Christ as the final revelation of God's will.

The comment about henotheism misses the point. Most Hebrew people did indeed believe that way, despite Moses' direct statements that there was only one God (for example, Deuteronomy 4:35, 39, etc.). It was part of what made them so quickly fall into idolatry. They learned their lesson in Babylon, but at the cost of losing too much that was even more valuable. The exposure to Babylon and Persia was the beginning of sorrows, setting them up for the fatal blow of Hellenism. In the Exile, materialism took root.

Ask questions.

[IainH]

I ain't even gonna try to compete with you two eggheads but, when I read the Gospels, it seems to me that Jesus spends a lot of time taking out the trash and pointing the people he's talking to back to Moses and Noah. He quotes a heap of Deuteronomy. In the rest of NT the warnings against allowing pagan and Jewish practices, the judaizers, you refer to Ed, into the Church is, I believe a catch all term (judaizers).
 It is well known that throughout the ancient world, peoples tended towards henotheism, while at the same time allowing other deities to be worshiped. Any new mystical revelation was absorbed by these varies religions creating a situation where cross "pollination" would occur and was perfectly acceptable. Many paths same destination is not at all new. The Torah stands out as the one text which forbad such things and insisted on one way to God. While the exile did result in the first setting of the Hebrew canon, in the realm of ideas they were contaminated and ripe for Hellenization, as you point out. Jesus preached primarily to the Jews, reawakening the hearts of his disciples with His personification of the Law in Himself. They, when sent out to spread the Gospel to non Jews, who were conditioned to integrate new with old, the first thing after awakening their hearts was to deprogram all the junk. This is very much akin to what we as heart led believers face Now!

[jaybreak]

Ed - With your comments and Iain's, it reminded me of some fallacy of reasoning. I don't remember the name of it, or if it even has a formal name. Skeptics presume that if you can demonstrate that a religious belief system was synthesized from the belief systems of (usually) geographically surrounding cultures, that somehow "explains" the synthesized belief system in material terms. And being able to explain it in that way, it's presumed, is a way to defeat the metaphysical aspect of it. So the underlying assumption is that if material causes can explain how something came about, there can be no metaphysical cause.

I (and I assume, all of us here) don't see it that way. Material causes don't exclude metaphysical causes. Just about everything can be explained materially; the presumption that it defeats supernatural causes remains just that: a presumption. That someone can prove Christianity is a melting pot of other religions only acts as "further proof" to other skeptics, who have already rejected the idea of a God a priori (and to nominal Christians who hold a cultural belief in Christianity, who would take such a proof as acceptable).

Ed - you mentioned in a blog post before that prophecies always leave a aspect of deniability to non-believers. I feel like that idea is along these lines as well: the prophecies makes sense to us as believers because we already believe in the first place. The prophecies aren't convincing enough to non-believers if they can trace it to material causes.

[Ed Hurst]

That would be the Fallacy of Single Cause.

The whole question of faith cannot be answered via logic. We state that bluntly. It's connected to what I posted on your blog today. That's why I say it boils down to epistemology; I refuse to be bound by the materialistic logic of Aristotle. I further refuse to debate faith and belief. But for those who can't let it rest, I offer the very well established academic references to ANE epistemology. As long as they refuse to explore that and account for it, there is no debate. Yes, faith and God's response always leaves plausible deniability to those who refuse to move outside the Aristotelian system. This is why I am comfortable with Phenomenology.

[IainH]

Huzzah! My brothers! There is no debate and there can be no debate ever.