Raising children is an important part of growing up. Especially if one wants to be an authority on human nature. Like without family aren't we missing an important human experience? — Athena

Well, you should know my stance on procreation by now, Athena.

That being said, taking my usual antinatalism off the table, and being more of a "existential psychologist", using Maslow's Hierarchy as a model of some sort of needs of the individual...

What do you think of society's way of relating with others? You talk about a sort of pseudo-homesteading that you did in Oregon. If we are not talking about a cultish-commune type society, I'm assuming you had to meet a partner (assuming in your case a husband), go through a sort of dating/courting/falling in love process, decide to create new people in the world and raise them a certain way, be able to provide for yourself and family with some sort of job in the broader economic system which allows for things to survive.. EVEN in just these very "typical" circumstances, people can have a hard time in almost every one of those processes.... everything from sustaining a good job, finding a partner, and living some ideal life of perfect harmony where one has a clockwork routine of baking pies and making furniture, while the kids are helping churn the butter, and helping cultivate the garden.. Ya know it's just like the Hobbits or something, right? It all works out, and everyone's needs are met in perfect harmony :roll:. That image indeed is its own romanticism.. It is the pull for Tolkien's world, for fantasy idealism.

What attracts our attention is usually tied to our perceived potential - our capacity to interact intentionally with the world. But in moments when we are genuinely doing nothing, fully awake and alert (such as in meditation), we are able to explore a more complete awareness of reality, inclusive of what has no need of our potential to interact. I’m not saying this is an easy state to reach, and there is certainly plenty on our radar to pull our attention back to what society says we ‘should’ be striving for. But both Buddhism and Taoism encourage an intentional stillness or emptiness that enables us to embody the quality and logic of reality, without striving. In this state, we relate to the possibility for energy to flow freely, the possibility of no suffering - and with this develop an awareness of our own creative capacity to intentionally minimise suffering in the way we connect and collaborate. The more we can embody this ‘stillness’, the more we realise that there is nothing we need to be striving-for in any moment in time - only allowing for a free flow of possible energy. — Possibility

I think it is telling that we have to "get" to some state by meditative techniques in the FIRST PLACE. Again, this is not countering anything Schopenhauer had said with my original OP quote, especially the part in bold. That is to say: Just more proof of his point that if BEING was something absolutely POSITIVE in itself, we would want for NOTHING, because BEING would be its own satisfaction. The lack at the heart of motivations and "getting caught up in the drama and affairs of this or that person, story, hobby, value".

Loneliness is simply a specific kind of boredom. It is longing for social connection. But why is there this longing? Schopenhauer would posit a striving-after that has no end. Just more proof of his point that if BEING was something absolutely POSITIVE in itself, we would want for NOTHING, because BEING would be its own satisfaction. The lack at the heart of motivations and "getting caught up in the drama and affairs of this or that person, story, hobby, value".

Schopenhauer's view is gloomy, indeed.
No one has a really good solution to this, only good suggestions. And funny thing is, after we're told by Schopenhauer, we turn to other philosophers for a silver lining. A mind can do wonders without altering our surrounding. Just the shift in mind. Although a change in surrounding can temporarily alleviate it. That's why we're all escapist in one form or another. Some bury themselves in art and music, others in paid work, and still other in hobbies. — L'éléphant

Excellent points! :up:

You need to read the texts more closely. Saul was a cop hunting down Christians for committing heresy according to his form of Jewish Law. He changed teams on the way to Damascus to punish Christians there. He didn't get a Master's degree before he assumed the role of Paul the Apostle. — Paine

Paul was a Hellenistic Jew from Asia Minor (Tarsus) with a pretty good Greek education in forms of Greek rhetoric as seen in the epistles. This was his background before he even got to Jerusalem and even by his own admission was searching for where he belonged. He found it with his own syntheses of Hellenistic concepts, mystery cult , and the original Jesus movement he co-opted to his own syntheses and cause.

I went back and checked all my posts in this thread. In not a single one did I express any indignance. — T Clark

Indignant: feeling or showing anger or annoyance at what is perceived as unfair treatment.

Again, if you won't accept my own statement about my own experience of my own self, there's nothing more for us to talk about. — T Clark

I do read, fiction and non-fiction. I participate on the forum. I swim. I do my physical therapy exercises. — T Clark

So he picks the wrong hobbies, and his main point is thus wrong? C'mon.

I don't think you understand how this works, at least works for me. The motivation to do things comes from inside me. I picture a spring bubbling up from under the ground. Just because I do stuff doesn't mean I'm keeping myself busy. Sometimes nothing bubbles up, so I just pay attention and wait. It doesn't usually take long. — T Clark

Right, you are in stasis and have no thoughts until activated. No, not no empathy, just annoyance of the façade. You are in control of what you do, right? Or are you being controlled by the inner man inside you that activates and deactivates you? I'm really curious at how you are different than all other humanity.

I guess you and schopenhauer1 lack imagination and empathy. You can't imagine other people experiencing things different from what you do. You don't seem to understand that others may feel differently. — T Clark

I just think we do feel the same thing, and you are lacking imagination and empathy to understand how what you are feeling is actually coinciding with what I'm describing but instead you become indignant at the words I am using to describe what amounts to the same thing.. Humans are not so far apart as you are attempting to say. We are different, but not different BEINGS. You can drop the, "We are just soo vaaastly different.. chasm of deeeep differences.". Anyways, if what you say about the division of incommensurable understanding of humans to other humans, than bye bye existential similarities of pessimism and hello pessimism of the alone.. Pick your poison, I guess.

Shall we test you by placing you on a desert island, alone? — baker

@Janus

Yep, second this. I love how we have gotten to the point in our competitive endeavors where people try to posture about their motivations never coming from boredom. As you said, at the heart of "getting caught up in X" is the boredom of WANTING to get caught up in X. It amazes me that people's wanting to "best" others goes as far as to try to deny, for the sake of argument, a crucial animal/human component of existence. I don't believe one iota of people who claim "I don't experience boredom" and further say shit like, "Cause I have a perfectly serene center.. I AM the BUDDHA!!". As stated, take away the little pursuits to get caught up in, and they'll be bored. Why the fuck are they arguing with me? They should be content in their existential repose, no?

Added more.

I think Schopenhauer characterizes it best why it's actually a form of suffering:

Life presents itself chiefly as a task—the task, I mean, of subsisting at all, gagner sa vie. If this is accomplished, life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of doing something with that which has been won—of warding off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need. The first task is to win something; the second, to banish the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it is a burden.

Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to ​boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us—an illusion which vanishes when we reach it; or else when we are occupied with some purely intellectual interest—when in reality we have stepped forth from life to look upon it from the outside, much after the manner of spectators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment its aim is attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what we mean by boredom. The hankering after what is strange and uncommon—an innate and ineradicable tendency of human nature—shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious. — Schopenhauer

I bolded his most important proof there. It is not "Oh, I had a good day, and another one there!" It's not about hedonic calculus. Even Schopenhauer's argument is least effective when he tries to tally up the woes and goods and weigh them. It is not to do with this outer drapery. Rather, it is about the necessary suffering of the condition itself; the life of a self-reflective animal. The stress itself of subsisting and the restless-lack (existential boredom) underlying it all.

Thomas Ligotti had used a dark (but effective) turn of phrase for the feeling of existential boredom- MALIGNANTLY USELESS (always capitalized). You get glimpses of this feeling when not "caught up" in the task itself. It is akin to an emotional "broken tool" in Heideggerian terminology. It is the feeling of unease of the non-escape of the restless, "who cares, but I have to care and caught up in a task.. for survival, for maintenance, to occupy my mindspace.. but then, I don't want to do this, but I have no choice, and on, and on" reoccurring nature of living and subsisting itself.

And you won’t answer my previous post. Why?

Anyway, what is "traditional Judaism"? Judaism in the time of Jesus was relatively new. As shown by Silverman and Finkelstein (The Bible Unearthed), Jews had been polytheistic for most of their history. There probably had been monolatrous and even monotheistic tendencies for some time - as among the Greeks and others - but monotheism proper was relatively recent and only imposed itself after the construction of the Second Temple - which, if we think about it, is pretty late when compared with the supposition that Jews were monotheistic in the 2nd millennium BC or earlier. — Apollodorus

You insult my intelligence by quoting me stuff I already know and then latching into stuff you want to argue about.

What you quote is also well known. I mean Judaism as reconstructed by Ezra and Nehemiah after Babylonian exile with priests as head of a Temple complex and a belief in the idea of a covenantal Law and commandments.

Im not sure cause you haven’t directly answered my last post. I do not believe you go through life without existential awareness at this point and think either you simply don’t really know what I’m asking or you don’t have a prefrontal cortex which by our discussion itself couldn’t be the case.

On what? An underline? Perry mason would indeed lose all his cases with no evidence.

I'm ridiculous because I disagree with you? Because I experience things differently than you do? I don't get it. — T Clark

Because you think you don't experience boredom, and that we have radically different ways of being in the world. I just call supreme bullshit, I'm sorry. And you don't seem severely autistic or cognitively an impacted human in some way to allow for that kind of evaluation.

I do the things I do because I want to. Because I enjoy them, e.g. participating on the forum. It is not unusual for me to do nothing. — T Clark

Not doing nothing, doesn't mean you are not motivated by a sort of existential boredom. Why do you do things that you like to do rather than do nothing? I don't get it. Why not literally do nothing once you put food in pie hole, and you make sure you have enough money for heat if necessary and a roof over your head, and maintenance things like that. Why don't you just sit in a dark room somewhere and do nothing at all? You can turn yourself off, right? Because you don't get bored, right?

It has always been clear that you and I have very different understandings of human motivation and behavior. You have always seemed unable to see that many, perhaps most, people find life interesting; worthwhile; and, often, enjoyable. The fact that you can't imagine living without boredom is a case in point. — T Clark

You're ridiculous. I am not saying they are mutually exclusive. But look at the motivations for what motivates you beyond remedial things (survival, comfort, comforting others in times of need).. These are bandaids that we do, sidetracks of subsisting in life and with others, until we must face ourselves/existence faces us directly. Why do you keep yourself busy? Same as @baker's question.

When you are not working to survive and be comfortable.. I presume you don't just sit.. Something motivates you.. even to sit.

Well normal human cognitive function is often impaired by severe mental conditions, or physical brain alterations like a lobotomy. I doubt those apply to you..so being you’re in the spectrum of average functioning human, I call bullshit.

Thank you.. I am very keen to learn about historical developments in ideas an human culture. I think it also helps orient philosophical ideas and their origins from broader cultural trends.

That certainly isn't true of me or most of the people I know. Again, you seem to be projecting your own feelings onto others. — T Clark

Why are you on here?
I'm excavating the root of the reasons we give.. So give your intermediary reasons first.. I get it.

My two cents on Romanticism as I am pondering it now...
The Enlightenment of the 17-18th centuries sought out to understand the world using what they referred to as "Reason". This idea, borrowed from the Stoics but changed slightly to mean empirical reasoning and not necessarily some "Universal Reason" (though there was some of this too with Deism). It was simply the notion brought about from the New Science being explored by Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Huygens, Descartes, Boyle, et al.

However, the scientific worldview seemed to constantly focus on the empirical and even with that, Political Science was the main focus. The individual human condition was given short-shrift. The 19th century can be seen as a sort of backlash.. Existentialism started the trend of "the individual" and the existential questions of life. What does it mean to be a human consciousness, from the interior perspective, not just the empirical one. These types of human struggles are captured more in art, literature, feelings, personal observations and experiences, etc.. The individual was being more captured by people like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, etc.

But one can say Romanticism proper was this kind of middle ground in the early 1800s between the "political-oriented" 18th century and the personal oriented 19th century. It was from late 1700s-early 1800s and often turned politics into identity-politics.. Rousseau and his general "General Will", Herder, or Schelling and Fichte's emphasis on ethnic politics helped push movements that divided Europe less on Imperial or Universal lines and more on common cultural and historical ties. It was not universal in the Enlightenment sense of only worrying about the individual's rights and securities, but about cultural identity. Individualistic, but at the level of culture, not the person. That would be more emphasized with the Existentialists.

That's why people provoke others into wars, to relieve their own boredom. — baker

Putin? haha

But in a more allegorical sense too, Schopenhauer had a good quote on our own need for "something" besides boredom. We are in a way, always at war with existence:

If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature. — Schopenhauer

Against that background, is the desire to amplify the importance of Hellenization reinforce the replacement idea or under-cut it? — Paine

Neither, though this brings up major questions in the historiography of Early Christianity and its implications in general for the Christian development.

There are a lot of things to consider here regarding the general historiography. There are basically several schools of thought you have to keep in mind:

1) The religious (supersessionist/replacement theology) view: The New Testament is more/less accurate. The history and traditions of the Christian Church are basically correct as they have developed in the Catholic, Protestant, and various Orthodox denomination. This view sees Jesus as part of a trinune godhead whereby Jesus represents the "Son" element was sent from the "Father" element in order to "redeem" mankind through his death and resurrection. The main thing here is his teachings and bodily resurrection were meant to completely change the "Old Covenant" that the Jewish Law represented. Being "right with God" meant, believing in the power and teachings of Jesus, the resurrected Son of God who was with The Father since almost the start of creation. Thus, the "Old Testament" (Hebrew Scriptures) is all discussion of the prelude of these concepts.. Logos, Son of God, redemption through faith without following the law, the deeds and biography of Jesus, it's all "there" in the Old Testament...Prophesizing and extolling this, with Jesus fulfilling these prophesies. That is to say, Jesus would have believed all the things taught by the Church about him and his beliefs as it developed into the proto-Orthodox Church (Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant beliefs mainly).

This religious view is not taken seriously by anyone outside schools of theology and religious adherents. In other words, most secular scholars would never take this to actually be the case. Rather, it is to excavate probabilities based not on dogma, but on the variety of resources available and with the understanding that religions don't come out full-baked but have developments that retroactively create a mythic-history to justify their doctrines and legitimacy as "true".

2) I'll just call this the "mainstream consensus" (Jesus a Jew of His Time) view. That is to say, Jesus the Jewish X (teacher, Pharisee, Essene, am ha-aretz (peasant) Galilean, etc.). That is to say, the Jesus of the first view mentioned is alien to his culture and the historical evidence of the Second Temple Judaism that was actually practiced. That is to also say that Jesus was only interpreting how to follow the Torah/Mosaic Law) and would be horribly aghast at the idea that he was trying to advocate for abrogating or ending it. It takes into account much more heavily what historians like Josephus wrote about, the histories informed by Maccabees, and apocrypha books. It takes into account the historical elements that are directly or indirectly explained in the Talmud, Church Father writings, non-canonical Gospels, Dead Sea Scrolls, understanding Paul's biases in his Epistles, and Acts, Jewish practices and beliefs represented in the Gospels that were downplayed or ignored, Philo of Alexandria and his Hellenistic contrast with traditional Judaic understanding, etc.

Basically, using historical methodologies and using the assumption that just as Greek philosophy is a cultural development out of a place, time, and culture, the same goes for the context for Jesus and the Jesus Movement/Jewish Christians. It must be understood in the greater cultural context of Second Temple Judaism. If Jesus was truly born in a certain place, and to a certain society, that should be the where one looks for how Jesus was representative of a strand of Judaism of that time. Thus, most people try to see to what extent he was representative of an apocalyptic Judaism (like the Essenes or Zealots), or a certain halachic approach (like a certain sect of Pharisee like Hillel.. which is my view), or that he was similar to other miracle workers (like Honi the Circle Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa, who are discussed in Josephus and the Talmud), or a Galilean Jew (versus the southern Judeans around Jerusalem or contra the Pharisees). This would emphasize that Jesus (Yeshua/Joshua) had actual brothers (not cousins or step-brothers) such as James (Jacob), and Simeon, Jude, and Joses. That the Ebionites and Nazarenes were Jewish Christian groups that kept the Torah and were rebuked by Church Fathers (which is how we know of them).. That Paul in his writings and Acts seems to be AGAINST the original group headed by James and had more contention than has been discussed (in Galatians, Paul is very angry with James and Peter). The fact that James also killed by high priests associated with Caiaphas.. suggesting perhaps even a familial feud with reformists and entrenched power in Jerusalem. There are so many ways to understand the Jewish context of Jesus and his early following.

Most scholars believe it is Paul who became the pivot point and how Jesus started becoming more "the Christ". Paul represents the beginning of the process of Hellenization. Same with the Book of John, as seeming to be influenced by Philo and Hellenistic ideas of Logos. A resurrecting god-man that dies for your sins seems introduced by Paul, and moves the Jewish messianic redeemer deeper into general Mediterranean "mystery-cult" and away from nationalist messiah that perhaps Jesus was originally seen as..

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Judaism/Hellenistic-Judaism-4th-century-bce-2nd-century-ce
Great article that can explain a lot if you haven't been studying this.

3) The alternate view.. I'll call this a sort of mainstream-consensus reactionary view. That is to say, some scholars try to push the idea that the "hellenistic" elements that were started under Paul and further developed by early Gospel writers and Church Fathers, were actually a part of some strand of Second Temple Judaism in Palestine itself. So Boyarin makes the move, for example, that Logos could have been a concept in certain elements of Judaism.. The most recent debates in this camp, often revolve around the Book of Enoch and how influential that may have been. This I think is the more interesting parts of this view.. That perhaps in certain strands of Jewish thought (even in Rabbinic writing later on as represented by Jewish Mystical texts like Enoch 3), that there was a concept that the messiah is linked to a not only an earthly King and be redemptive in the nationalist sense (Return of the King to restore order politically and metaphysically), but that indeed, somehow this redeemer would be connected to the Son of Man that was described in Daniel. The Son of Man is a vague concept that may have gotten attached with the idea of Enoch becoming an angel (eventually tied with Metatron), and the Metatron was connected as a sort of protector/redeemer of Israel.. And so for someone to claim they are or is the herald for the Son of Man, means they are linked with this redeemer angel in some way.. However, this is very speculative of later developments of the idea of Metatron, and many consider anachronistic to place this idea of Metatron in its full form retrospectively to the time of Jesus when that concept was not quite fully developed yet.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Metatron

Anyways, a ton more can be said.. but I'm giving a lot of broad strokes as to how I am organizing this but are good places to start looking at this.

BTW the question of (compulsory) reclining at Passover is an interesting one as (1) the custom of reclining at table seems to have been widespread, and (2) it may not be quite as old as it is thought in its compulsory Passover form. — Apollodorus

So you are basically just restating what I just said. Okay. Now I'm beginning to think you just like arguing for arguing's sake as you are now seeing disagreements where there aren't any.

That’s the big question, isn’t it? Here is one way of looking at it: — Apollodorus

Yeah you aren't paying attention to what I wrote earlier about similar matters, so not going to speak much on this. I am familiar on Boyarin's ideas on this. There is also the idea of the shekinah, etc. etc. One can try to connect it, and this is very much up for debate.

It is definitely something that was discussed previously by Philo. But to what extent this is traditional Judaism is more tenuous. It seems more a product from Plato via Philo (or someone of similar schools of thought) than anything directly in mainstream Palestinian sects (who were not studying Hellenistic Judaism or concepts).

Also, if you want to bring up the Enoch connection of a sort of "head of angels" and that is fair game, but you didn't really connect it. I do know Boyrain is very much involved in that kind of connection of Enoch-Metatron and possible Early Christian connections. He is also considered very extreme and out of the mainstream with a lot of scholars. His popular book is called Jewish Christ and that should tell you something of the connections he's trying to make. There was also an author before him, Alan Segal who wrote about similar matters about certain "minim" discussed in the Talmud, and the book's name was Two Powers in Heaven. That tells you right there, what the heretical belief was.

Jefferson also wrote the Contstitution. — Garrett Travers

Also, as a minor point, Jefferson didn't write the US Constitution. He wasn't at the Constitutional Convention. More involved people were Hamilton, Madison, John Jay, Franklin, etc. Jefferson did help write Virginia's constitution and the main drafts of the Declaration of Independence and whose theory influenced others of that founding group.

Yes I know most of this. I am not diminishing the influence of Epicureanism, by stating what I stated. Most educated philosophers of the Enlightenment drew from major themes in Greek philosophy. Epicureanism was one of the major schools.

I'd like to know what your thoughts are then, regarding the rivalry between the Epicureans and the Stoics. What do you think the major points of contention were and why one was closer to truth than the other. I know Stoics were also pretty influential.

Well, Epicureans pre-date Christians, but I can see the ones that were around after Constantine using the same methods. What I meant was, after a thousand years of Medieval dogmatism (attachment to theology and revelation as the root of philosophy), it took people like Spinoza to completely separate the two.. Even Descartes with his skepticism, and (otherwise) naturalists like Newton had God central to their own philosophies (despite their excellent mathematical and scientific work). You can see some precursors in Italian Renaissance philosophers though, like Bruno. Hobbes seemed to be pretty atheistic too. Spinoza specifically focused on Biblical revelation/history though, and its deconstruction through a critical-historical method. It was turning theology and revelation into not much more than religious anthropology.

Yep, I think it was Baruch Spinoza who pretty much cleared the way for critical reading of the Bible and religion in general?

Spinoza argued that theology and philosophy must be kept separate, particularly in the reading of scripture. Whereas the goal of theology is obedience, philosophy aims at understanding rational truth. Scripture does not teach philosophy and thus cannot be made to conform with it, otherwise the meaning of scripture will be distorted. Conversely, if reason is made subservient to scripture, then, Spinoza argues, "the prejudices of a common people of long ago... will gain a hold on his understanding and darken it." — Spinoza Wiki Article

I said this in another thread. You can use all the philosophy in the world to bolster something, but if the core element of it is that it is "revelation" from the supernatural, and therefore "it cannot NOT be true" because of this, it can't really swim with the other philosophies because everything has to fit that supernatural revelation that cannot NOT be true.

If the philosophy becomes based on a must-be-true "revelation" from a supernatural being.. All the philosophy in the world that tries to bolster it can't help it become true.

I think it should be noted what general Hellenistic diffusion was part of Roman Palestine already in Jesus’ time versus what came part of Christianity after Jesus’ death when more urbane, literate, and well-travelled Jews and gentiles would write about it, and subsequently added layers of Greek, gnostic, and mystery cult inspired theology.

For example, it is well known the Herodians and Hasmoneans before them were highly intertwined with the broader Greek world. Architecture and gymnasiums and theaters were established. It is also well known of the ancient Jewish practice of reclining like the Greeks. It’s mentioned in modern day Passover seders. It’s in the Haggadahs.

Logos, the significance of a resurrecting god, substance, rhetorical styled epistles vs rabbinic styled midrash or strict halachic rules of Dead Sea Scroll sect, or essence and substance, virtues, matter and form, even the idea of communion, etc. can be considered added as part and parcel of later layers of Christianity that developed when it spread to the greater Near East, and Mediterranean world.

It was an extension of the same argument you were having. DA671 was claiming that X (suffering, imposition, negative) cannot be alleviated for the unborn as there is no "one" who is alleviated. I was simply arguing what I think is the same idea, which is that it is about states of affairs of what happens if someone is born. Do you (the parent) create a state of affairs of X (imposition in this case) or don't you? It's not about whether the non-existent nobody is alleviated.

Is it possible yes, just not probable. And what are we calling Palestine? Decapolis, Caesarea, Perea? Gentile Palestine if you will.

Well, I don't know what their "mitigating circumstances" might have been, but I think the guys that wrote the NT were (a) religious-minded Jews and (b) spoke Greek .... :wink: — Apollodorus

We actually don't know who the people who wrote the NT were! That's Ehrman's point! His (many people's) conjecture is they were urbane members somewhere in the Empire.. Who can say.. Maybe Antioch.. maybe Alexandria, etc. Most likely not Palestine itself. All we know is they were highly literate (actually writing in Greek) . precisely the people Jesus was not supposed to be hanging out with or came from. Paul is the only person with perhaps the most substantiated authorship, and by his own account he was a thoroughly Hellenized diasporan Jew with Roman citizenship even (something most Jews in Judea did not have the status of).

Modern scholarship has enough knowledge of 1st-century Koine Greek dialects to tell the difference between, say the LXX which is Alexandrian Greek, and the NT which is Palestinian Greek.

And Greek linguistic and even cultural influence on Palestinian Jews was considerable. Many Jews even gave their children Greek names, e.g., Nicodemus of the Jewish Council at Jerusalem. The Council itself had a name derived from Greek: Sanhedrin from synedrion, etc. — Apollodorus

Dude, slow your roll. Everyone who studies this knows that.

What I find particularly interesting is the Jewish synagogues with mosaics from Greek religion and mythology that were built in the region into the 600's, i.e., until the time of the Muslim conquests. Clearly, these mosaics are not mere decoration but seem to have a religious content that illustrates the cultural syncretism of the time.

The question is when exactly did this syncretism begin. I tend to believe that it must have begun prior to finding expression in art and architecture, e.g., in the 1st century if not earlier. — Apollodorus

Yes, already know that. Again, it was not common for religious-minded Jew to speak Greek unless certain mitigating circumstances or from the diaspora. Aramaic was the lingua franca. Did ancient Jews borrow from Greek motifs. Absolutely, since the time of Alexander's conquest and Hellenization.

I realized how easy it was for me to mistype words that I was reading from a book (not copy/pasting). Imagine how many more errors would be created from a scribe transcribing a book by hand! Ehrman writes a whole book about this kind of thing in Misquoting Jesus :lol:.

From Bart Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted:

What we learn stands completely at odds with what we know about the disciples of Jesus. The authors of the Gospels were highly educated, Greek-speaking Christians who probably lived outside Palestine.

That they were highly educated Greek speaker goes virtually without saying. Although there have been scholars from time to time who thought the Gospels may originally have been written in Aramaic, the overwhelming consensus today, for lots of technical linguistic reasons, is that Gospels were all written in Greek. As I've indicated, only about 10 percent of the people in teh Roman Empire, at best, could read, even fewer could write out sentences, far fewer still could actually compose narratives in a rudimentary level, and very few indeed could compose extended literary works like the Gospels. To be sure, the Gospels are not the most refined books to appear in the empire- far from it. Still, they are coherent narratives written by highly trained authors who knew how to construct a story and carry out their literary aims with finesse.

Whoever these authors were, they were unusually gifted Christians of a later generation. Scholars debate where they lived and worked, but their ignorance of Palestinian geography and Jewish customs suggests they composed their works somewhere else in the empire- presumably in a large urban area where they could have received a decent education and where there would have been a relatively large community of Christians.

These authors were not lower-class, illiterate, Aramaic-speaking peasants from Galilee. But isn't it possible that, say John wrote the Gospel as an old man? That as a young man he was an illiterate, Aramaic-speaking day laborer- a fisherman from the time he was old enough to help haul a net- but that as an old man he wrote a Gospel?

I suppose it's possible. It would mean that after Jesus' resurrection, John decided to go to school and become literate. he learned the basics of reading, picked up the rudiments of writing, and learned Greek, well enough to become completely fluent. by the time he was an old man he had mastered composition and was able to write a Gospel. Is this likely? It hardly seems so. John and the other followers of Jesus had other things on their minds after experiencing Jesus' resurrection. For one thing, they though they had to convert the world and run the church.

That people could write Greek that region is not disputed either. It is not if this then cannot be that kind of thinking. What we do know is the first gospel was written at least 30-40 years after Jesus' death.. Obviously it would have to be someone with a good deal of education in Greek. Doesn't mean gentiles or Hellenistic Jews didn't contribute to the New Testament's writings.. They clearly did from Mark up to John..John clearly being the most Greek in style.

Plus, if there was Persian influence on Judaism, why not Greek? Why do scholars speak of Hellenistic Judaism? And what about Jewish texts like the Book of Wisdom and Maccabees 2, 3, 4 that were composed in Greek and show clear Greek influence? — Apollodorus

No one is denying Hellenistic forms of Judaism existed, only the influence it had on Judea and Galilee regions as opposed to the diaspora. No one disputes the kind of Hellenistic influences on Alexandrian, Antochian, Ionian, and Greek Jews. Another region with less Hellenistic influence was Babylonian region under Parthians.

Enoch is an interesting odd insertion in that era. It probably shouldn't be diminished that this aspect had influence on certain Jewish groups like the Essenes. It can be argued that Son of Man = Enoch = Metatron = Angel of Judgement = Angel of the Lord = Head of the Archangels, etc. etc. etc.

Even Rabbinic Judaism, in early Mystical (but not quite Kabblah proper) place a lot of emphasis on Metatron/Enoch.

The Babylonian Talmud mentions Metatron by name in three places: Hagigah 15a, Sanhedrin 38b and Avodah Zarah 3b.

Hagigah 15a describes Elisha ben Abuyah in Paradise seeing Metatron sitting down (an action that is not done in the presence of God). Elishah ben Abuyah therefore looks to Metatron as a deity and says heretically: "There are indeed two powers in Heaven!"[34] The rabbis explain that Metatron had permission to sit because of his function as the Heavenly Scribe, writing down the deeds of Israel.[35] The Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 "strokes with fiery rods" to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished.[36]

In Sanhedrin 38b one of the minim tells Rabbi Idith that Metatron should be worshiped because he has a name like his master. Rabbi Idith uses the same passage Exodus 23:21 to show that Metatron was an angel and not a deity and thus should not be worshiped. Furthermore, as an angel Metatron has no power to pardon transgressions nor was he to be received even as a messenger of forgiveness.[36][37][38]

In Avodah Zarah 3b, the Talmud hypothesizes as to how God spends His day. It is suggested that in the fourth quarter of the day God sits and instructs the school children, while in the preceding three quarters Metatron may take God's place or God may do this among other tasks.[39]

Yevamot 16b records an utterance, "I have been young; also I have been old" found in Psalm 37:25. The Talmud here attributes this utterance to the Chief Angel and Prince of the World, whom the rabbinic tradition identifies as Metatron.[40] — Wikipedia Metatron

Metatron also appears in the Pseudepigrapha including Shi'ur Qomah, and most prominently in the Hebrew Merkabah Book of Enoch, also called 3 Enoch or Sefer Hekhalot (Book of [the Heavenly] Palaces). The book describes the link between Enoch, son of Jared (great grandfather of Noah) and his transformation into the angel Metatron. His grand title "the lesser YHVH" resurfaces here. The word Metatron is numerically equivalent to Shaddai (God) in Hebrew gematria; therefore, he is said to have a "Name like his Master".

Metatron says, "He [the Holy One]... called me, 'The lesser YHVH' in the presence of his whole household in the height, as it is written, 'my name is in him.'" (12:5, Alexander's translation.) The narrator of this book, supposedly Rabbi Ishmael, tells how Metatron guided him through Heaven and explained its wonders. 3 Enoch presents Metatron in two ways: as a primordial angel (9:2–13:2) and as the transformation of Enoch after he was assumed into Heaven.[44][45]

And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. [Genesis 5:24 KJV.]

This Enoch, whose flesh was turned to flame, his veins to fire, his eye-lashes to flashes of lightning, his eye-balls to flaming torches, and whom God placed on a throne next to the throne of glory, received after this heavenly transformation the name Metatron.[46]

Metatron "the Youth", a title previously used in 3 Enoch, where it appears to mean "servant".[45] It identifies him as the angel that led the people of Israel through the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt (again referring to Exodus 23:21, see above), and describes him as a heavenly priest.

In the later Ecstatic Kabbalah, Metatron is a messianic figure.[47]

The Zohar describes Metatron as the "King of the angels."[48] and associates the concept of Metatron with that of the divine name Shadday.[49] Zohar commentaries such as the "Ohr Yakar" by Moses ben Jacob Cordovero explain the Zohar as meaning that Metatron as the head of Yetzira[50] This corresponds closely with Maimonides' description of the Talmudic "Prince of the World",[51] traditionally associated with Metatron,[52] as the core "Active Intellect."[53][54]

The Zohar describes several biblical figures as metaphors for Metatron. Examples are Enoch,[55][56] Joseph,[57][58] Eliezer,[59] Joshua,[60] and others. The Zohar finds the word "youth" used to describe Joseph and Joshua a hint that the figures are a metaphor to Metatron, and also the concept of "servant" by Eliezer as a reference to Metatron.[61] The Staff of Moses is also described by the Zohar[56] as a reference to Metatron. The Zohar also states that the two tets in "totaphot" of the phylacteries are a reference to Metatron.[62] The Zohar draws distinction between Metatron and Michael.[63] While Michael is described repeatedly in the Zohar as the figure represented by the High Priest, Metatron is represented by the structure of the tabernacle itself.[63]

Logos obviously has meaning in the narrative as a Greek word but how it is used as a source of creation is evident in Judaic literature in many different roles as well. — Paine

I think you are misplacing Logos.. How it is used in John seems very much akin to Philo of Alexandria's usage.. It was more influenced from that variation of a broader Greek concept that may have been mixed with a bit of Gnosticism from Alexandria which I wouldn't doubt influenced Philo's Hellenistic Judaism...

Philo (c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD), a Hellenized Jew, used the term logos to mean an intermediary divine being or demiurge.[8] Philo followed the Platonic distinction between imperfect matter and perfect Form, and therefore intermediary beings were necessary to bridge the enormous gap between God and the material world.[31] The logos was the highest of these intermediary beings, and was called by Philo "the first-born of God".[31] Philo also wrote that "the Logos of the living God is the bond of everything, holding all things together and binding all the parts, and prevents them from being dissolved and separated".[32]

Plato's Theory of Forms was located within the logos, but the logos also acted on behalf of God in the physical world.[31] In particular, the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) was identified with the logos by Philo, who also said that the logos was God's instrument in the creation of the Universe.[31] — Philo of Alexandria Wikipedia Article