Paul also should be recognized as departing from '2nd Temple Judaism' when he said this world would be replaced by another one. Connecting a personal conviction to a change in the grounds of our existence is different than hoping the Creator will help you overcome suffering and oppression in this one.

In that way, one can see Job as the antithesis of Paul. Certainty of righteousness is no guarantee of outcomes. Job had to fend off his 'friends' who insisted that such an algorithm was in place.

Your question is worthy; It makes me nervous to venture a reply, but I will try.

I take your point that invoking a single creator is to locate the source of evil within the creation. One big difference between the story of Genesis and Timaeus is that the Creator and Man have a direct interaction with each other that changes over time in the first story while the Craftsman of the Timaeus brings all the components of the world into the realm of Becoming and that structure does not change even though our experience within it does.

There is a myth of the age of man's innocence in Plato's Statesman. It consits of the Pilot reversing the motion of the entire cosmos when disorder threatened its existence. Time and growth go backwards in the repair sessions. Once the place is reset, time runs forward again, and the Pilot lets go of the tiller. Our age is described as such:

For men, deprived of the care of the deity who had possessed and tended us, since most of the beasts who were by nature unfriendly had grown fierce, and they themselves were feeble and unprotected, were ravaged by the beasts [274c] and were in the first ages still without resources or skill; the food which had formerly offered itself freely had failed them, and they did not yet know how to provide for themselves, because no necessity had hitherto compelled them. On all these accounts they were in great straits; and that is the reason why the gifts of the gods that are told of in the old traditions were given us with the needful information and instruction,—fire by Prometheus, the arts by Hephaestus and the goddess who is his fellow-artisan, seeds and plants by other deities.1 [274d] And from these has arisen all that constitutes human life, since, as I said a moment ago, the care of the gods had failed men and they had to direct their own lives and take care of themselves, like the whole universe, which we imitate and follow through all time, being born and living now in our present manner and in that other epoch in the other manner. — Plato, Statesman, 274b, translated by Fowler

To see our condition in that way is sharply different from the story of our relation to a Creator who can spare us from evil if he wills it. We are given the choice to follow the way of the righteous and that is the possibility of our happiness as expressed in Psalm 1. But we need more help than that to overcome what confronts us. It is in that register I hear Paul saying that he needs help in his struggle with sin. The Creator as a participant in our person.

I could say more but figure I shouldn't bring too many points forward at a time.

No argument with your description.

The story of his conversion and the subsequent interchanges with Christians in Jerusalem suggests the 'co-option" was not only a narrative made after the fact but an attempt to marginalize some people in real time.

Paul was the academic mostly responsible for Greek Philosophy influencing Christianity at its very beginning. — Joe Mello

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.

Apart from Paul, apostles referred to the direct witnesses and disciples of Jesus. He hacked himself into a time he had not personally experienced. Let's call whatever that might be something different than an academy.

I wasn't thinking of it in terms of the ultimate source for the idea of Monotheism.

Platonism and Neo-Platonism do make references to Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries but both of those are firmly ensconced in the Homeric theogony. The dominant theme of Platonism in the first three Centuries, however, was the unity of a cosmic whole whose nature is ordered by the same agency that permits us to understand it.

That is radically different from the talk of one cosmic order being replaced by a new one in the immediate future. Plotinus railed against those who said the cosmos needed to be saved from the evil that ruled it. He directed this rebuke toward the Gnostics: Paul could have taken their place in the penalty box.

So it's an attempt to arianize Jesus. To un-Jew him. — Olivier5

That is the context of what I was asking schopenhauer1 about upthread. Is the emphasis upon Hellenization an evolved development of the replacement theology advanced by Paul and company?

Grimes, for example, says the prophetic tradition brought nothing to the party. That approach is more honest than saying the tradition was actually different than what most historical accounts record. In both cases, however, the view directly challenges Augustine placing the revelation of the 'Israelites' above the fruits of Athens.

Of course I can say what a Christian is for myself. — Apollodorus

Then do it.

I was not testifying to an unshakeable belief in scholarship. You questioned the results of certain studies. You have not presented the standard you measure them by.

Of course I can say what a Christian is for myself — Apollodorus

Then go for it.

It does have something to do with this thread since you have been saying the scholarship is tainted in the context of it.

I was not making a claim about the 'Hellenistic influence on Jesus', you were, sort of, in a vague and fuzzy fashion.

You seem to want to make a claim upon what is Christian or not but cannot say what it is for yourself.

One common element between the experiences of the Jews and Christians, under the rule of alien empires, is the refusal to swear or submit to gods other than what they actually believed. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple because of this refusal. Christians were fed to lions for the same reason.
Those are examples of testimony, when people don't surrender their convictions in the face of terrible consequences.

I am a Christian by my understanding of it. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the texts and my own experience in that light. I don't need to google it. From my point of view, saying what something is against, is a testimony. You wear the garment too lightly.

So, you treat the matter as something that is common knowledge while unable to give your own testimony. In my congregation, we refer to that as cowardice.

What is a Christian?

That statement does not fit in with you saying to Fooloso4:

"anti-Christian activists like yourself cite other anti-Christian activists like Ehrman as their "eminent authority." You aren't fooling anyone."

They are doing a good job of fooling me. I don't see how the differences of opinion about historical conditions are attempts to establish a nefarious narrative in this matter. What part of it is anti-Christian?

What I wonder is how these disputes about Hellenization relate to theological views on the Christan side. There are many texts in early Christianity that see the new world as the replacement of the old in regard to what was practiced and believed by the Jews.

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

Your account discounts the role of the Essenes and Enoch groups in viewing the matter beyond the sweaty business of winning wars. The notion expressed in Isaiah that the 'rivers would reverse flow' to Zion is not simply a claim upon real estate but concerned the rest of the world.

I meant to give the word its due as a Hellenistic concept. I question that it is the only reference to the importance of speaking words in the different traditions.

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.

There is the whole dialogue of creation where God says for beings to be and they emerge within certain conditions.
Proverb 16:1 is "The plans of the mind belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord."
In Job, the test is if the righteous man will admit to a sin which he knows he has not committed. He does not admit it.
Peter is said to betray Jesus by what he does not say.
In the conversation Pilate is purported to have had with Jesus, Pilate asks, 'are you the king of the Jews?" the reply is "Thou sayest."

This observation is not to claim one set of references takes precedence over others. It is only to note that translating the word "word" is going to be a tough rugby ball to grab in the ensuing scrum.

This maps well with Jesus' tendencies to reject this world as inherently corrupt, and the Devil as dwelling in it. — Olivier5

Whatever the source of that idea, it is incongruous with the Platonic teaching, expressed continuously over hundreds of years before Jesus, that there can only be a single universe and that evil is distance from the Good that provides order to it.

I am not aware of any place where Plotinus uses language like: "the doctrine of the Will of the One."

In the 'chain of realities' the One is not the direct source of the manifold of creation. Intelligence is the source of different beings. Intelligence reflects the One as an image of it. But it is not said that Intelligence is a change for the One. The use of the word 'will' in this case is to impute a meaning that is not intended by Plotinus.

Augustine took the Neo-Platonist cosmology and fused it with the kingdom of his 'heavenly father.' The One of Plotinus does not drop agents of his will onto the streets of Jerusalem or kick people out of Paradise.

I remember. I acknowledged that but wanted to emphasize that the observation did not pit mind against matter. What stands as objective criteria is what is in tension with experience as it is experienced.

It is a model in so far as it allows to have the 'physical' to be taken for granted.
But I will leave it there. I see that my reasoning only interests you up to the point where I don't support this "attitude."

Lewontin views the matter ideologically for purposes that do not address the limits of scientific method. If the method rejects the top-down structure of divine intellect as an explanation of causes, it no longer has a bottoms-up either. All of the formal elements used before the method to help explain the causes of phenomena are now phenomena themselves. If that half of the dyad is no longer given, the other half no longer has a job. The comparison of simple and complex beings, that was partially given by the structure of Nature as Aristotle understood it, must now be worked out in the models.

The models keep changing because they are being tested against objective criteria. How far the method may get to discovering the nature of the whole cosmos is not circumscribed by its use. There are models that use information theory and the structure of development to explain phenomena. The need to confirm these objectively is different than claiming only certain models are possible.

As I mentioned earlier, Chalmer's hard problem may be too difficult to solve. At the very least, Chalmer is not declaring victory nor defeat. The problem with the 'scientism' model is that it gives itself a limit that the method itself does not.

I am going to take some time answering. Thank you for assembling your answer.

I read Gerson's lecture; you gave me the link to the text of it. I have read a good portion of the book that lecture is basically the preface of. The "Ur-Platonism" is interesting as a general narrative but has lots of problems in the close reading of actual texts. I won't go on at length about what you have not read of Gerson.

Phenomena is what is shown and experienced. Science is empiricism. When you say Carl Sagan said, 'cosmos is all there is', and by that, he means the cosmos as discerned scientifically," is Sagan truly reducing phenomena to what can be proven in a model? Is his observation not similar to the humility expressed in the Timaeus? We live in this place. That circumstance and the conditions bounded by its existence is the foundation of anything that happens within that circumstance.

In regard to Nagel to describing the origin of the scientific method, my difficulty with relating it to the meanings of 'materiality' is whether that is an observation of what those descriptions will not satisfy or a limit on the practice itself. Do you think of it as a garbage-in garbage-out scenario?

In this discussion of 'materialism', I have been looking for a way to acknowledge Nagel's narrative of how the scientific method came about without accepting that it restricts all of its possible outcomes to descriptions of physical stuff isolated from all other physical stuff. Models have to agree with phenomena. The phenomena never signed an agreement listing what could be revealed by the process.

In that context, Gerson's schema is a response to Rorty's rejection of Plato. That conflict has its own terms that are far away from how to understand original texts. As far as I understand it, I disagree with both of them. I make no special claim at understanding either of them.

As for what Gerson thinks himself outside of that debate, there are many points where I disagree. Apart from his 'schema', I have read a number of his arguments devoted to Aristotle's text that I doubt the old guy would agree with.

Maybe there should be a discussion devoted to Gerson. He seems to be a big man on campus here.

Edit to add: I just ran a search on Gerson on the web site. This has been going on for years.

I think I understand Gerson's thesis and its relation to the development of the scientific method.

Since you spoke approvingly of phenomenology, I was asking where you thought it fit in Gerson's schema where 'Platonism' or 'Naturalism' are the only possible approaches and the attempts to find 'rapprochement' between the two are a fool's errand"

Phenomenology is not materialist nor mechanistic. It does look for a nature or environment where events happen. Does it require the possibility of "perfect cognition" that Gerson has on the Platonist checklist? And so on.

Well, that does count as an agenda. Disregard my previous reserve on that point. This place is stranger than I thought.

For my part, I don't want to assign an agenda to someone assigning an agenda. i can oppose it or question it without doing that.

That is my ideal, anyway, which I often fail to accomplish.

Yes. Click on the link Fooloso4 provided.

This part is quite exiting: "anti-Christian activists like yourself cite other anti-Christian activists like Ehrman as their "eminent authority". You aren't fooling anyone."

Do the activists go to secret meetings in order to train together? Are special handshakes involved?

And who will be the "Christian" in this matter? There are so many interpretations and forms of worship under this name that it is like being Anti-Smith as an agenda. Even self-identified anti-Christians have to say what it is before they slap it up the side of the head.

Absolutely! And it is precisely because they have started to incorporate the phenomenological and 'embodied cognition' approaches, which in turn grew out of the movement away from old-school scientific materialism. — Wayfarer

I have been reading quite a bit of Lloyd Gerson upon the strength of your recommendation. I have a growing number of problems with his thesis but leaving that aside, how does phenomenology fit into Gerson's schema where 'Platonism' or 'Naturalism' are the only possible approaches and the attempts to find 'rapprochement' between the two are a fool's errand?

He likes to say that St. Paul “cut out” the Greek tradition from Christianity — Dermot Griffin

Another possibility is that Grimes is overstating the presence of an element and has come up with a cause to explain its apparent absence. The natural question to ask is if there are other accounts that give some evidence for this "cutting out."

Exactly! I was hoping that the passage I quoted reinforced the point you were making. — Wayfarer

I was mostly hoping to challenge the utility of framing the project as a ""promissory materialism" while acknowledging Nagel's point about scientific method.

If sufficient evidence appeared proving Grimes’ thesis, then yes, I would not have a problem with that. — Dermot Griffin

Grimes also claimed that the core of Jesus' message did not reflect the concerns or concepts of Judaism. I hope the contributions by schopenhauer1 and Oliver5, amongst others here, show how ridiculous that claim is.

What I find to be particularly galling about Grimes' idea is that it means that Jesus was importing one religion into another, like a Manchurian Candidate taking control of an alien territory. It is as if the Letter to the Hebrews had been written before all the rest had happened.

Scientific models rely upon relating measurable entities to each other and testing to see if the models leave phenomena out or not. I understand Nagel's point that the model is not made out of components that cannot be approached this way. My point is that the models, in this case, are attempting to verify their validity against the very elements it cannot include within in itself. They attempt to overcome the duality that the method brought into existence.

Toward that end, the project does not involve the metaphysics of mind versus matter. The experience of subjectivity is accepted as phenomena. To explain what causes it through these models is difficult, maybe too difficult. I think that framing the problem as merely ""promissory materialism" misses the audacious uncertainty of the enterprise. That was one of Chalmers' observations, after all.

So, if Grimes turned out to be correct, you would have no problem with that?