minor spellings aside, any proposed cult of "Jesus the Good" evidence?

[StephenGoranson]

Mr. Alias, you wrote, Mon Jan 01, 2024 1:01 pm
"So it is a good thing to see whether [Morton} Smith murdered someone or whatever."
I don't think he murdered anyone and don't know anyone who does, or claims such.
Morton Smith did some good research.
Pantuck is a physician, an honorable profession.
I have tried to present history and myth as interacting, not an either/or.
If you wish to misrepresent my view on that, that's on you.

[Secret Alias]

He's not just a physician. He's saved thousands of lives. Thanks to Morton Smith. He wanted to be in thus verdammten field. Helped Isser put together his Dositheus book. Saved lives instead through cancer treatment. Thanks to Madiotes.

[billd89]

How many experts in the useless field of Biblical research can claim raising up a savior of lives? Do you ever think about Pantuck? ... Every life that Pantuck saves owes a little bit of that goodness to Morton Smith.

You're probably vastly overstating the 'debt' Pantuck's genius & skill owed to one of his professors. otoh, I could not possibly overstate my own 'debt' to those two Classical historians at Hopkins who actually published "so little" (in the words of Prof. Gary Ferngren) yet saved my life, decades after their work. (Recently: the more I look, the more I see a clear-cut relation in their 1938 ms. to colleague & friend W.F. Albright's work... re: the "God" in the Big Book!)

Millions of lives were saved.


For Philo Judaeus & cosmopolitan First C. Judaism, what was The Good? It sounds like a (Judeo-Egyptian?) deity reference, by context -- I will find out what these other three (definitions?) were named.

DVC 2. And the prohairesis {=intentionality: life-purpose} of these philosophers is immediately apparent by their designation (for etymologically they are called Therapeutae and Therapeutrides), either because they would profess an art (viz., as parapsychiatrists) stronger than what’s around the cities – for one treats only bodies, yet the other ministers to souls of the ten mental maladies, oppressively grievous and almost incurable, afflicted by hedonisms and cravings and pains, and greedy fears, and follies and iniquities, and all other passions and the plethora of never-ending vices – or because from Nature and the Sacred Laws they have been instructed to serve The Existent: superior to The Good, purer than The One, and more ancient than The Monad.

[Secret Alias]

You're right. I've never talked to him. Made it up out of my own imagination again. Never saved anyone from death either https://www.obroncology.com/clinical-ro ... asco-gu-22 What a loser. Could have been studying the Bible instead of wasting his time doing something stupid like curing cancer. Like a guy who can solve cancer wouldn't know whether Morton Smith was really a ne'er do well. It takes the special genius of a winner who reads old forgotten books to divine the inner workings of the human soul.

[billd89]

Who or what Deity was 'The Good' (concept) which Philo is tacitly belittling at DVC 2?

What were Followers of 'The Good' theosophy called, as Jewish heretics, in the First Century Diaspora?

By (my reading of) the context of De Vita Contemplativa, they must have been competitors: a rival cult to his Lake Mareotis "Therapeutae." I'm not presuming they were also itinerant healers, but they must also have been known to proselytize their philosophy in the Jewish milieu c.15 AD.

[DCHindley]

billd89,

DVC2: "... because from Nature and the Sacred Laws they have been instructed to serve The Existent: superior to The Good, purer than The One, and more ancient than The Monad."

That is, IMHO, just Philo promoting his altered form of middle-Platonism current in Alexandria, by contrasting his unified Godhead (all summed up in the Judean god of Genesis) with the commonly discussed Platonic cosmic principles floating around in the Alexandrian philosophere (The Good, The One and The Monad). Plato and his followers over time had proposed multiple basic cosmic principals, which Philo amended to make a system compatible with statements about the Judean god in Genesis (YHWH, Ho Ohn, the one who exists).

Doesn't Dillon or someone extensively comment about the these same concepts as modified by various middle-Platonic philosophers? I think that pursuing the Good (e..g., Therapeutes were a bunch of New Agers) will lead you on a wild goose chase.

DCH (gotta go and wash the sheets, clean the stovetop, etc. - blah)

[DCHindley]

Who or what Deity was 'The Good' (concept) which Philo is tacitly belittling at DVC 2?

What were Followers of 'The Good' theosophy called, as Jewish heretics, in the First Century Diaspora?

By (my reading of) the context of De Vita Contemplativa, they must have been competitors: a rival cult to his Lake Mareotis "Therapeutae." I'm not presuming they were also itinerant healers, but they must also have been known to proselytize their philosophy in the Jewish milieu c.15 AD.

I don't have much time today to respond (also have to go to post office for stamps and mail a check), but I did want to comment on the idea that there was a cross empire network of burned-out politicians & former social climbers who hung out in similar "hippie commune" type groups, of which the one on Lake Mareotes in Alexandria was an example. Philo or the final editors of this book talks of reading and serious discussing of commentaries on books of their founders, but I am not sure he was talking about "Moses" or the pentateuch.

A while ago I attempted to look at this account and identified several strata:

A) There is a bare bones description of their meetings and practices probably based on private notebook entries. These were likely Philo's own notes from his youth when he was still a well educated Roman youth free to explore. This was probably before he returned to examining his Judean roots.

B) Then an expansion of the significance of these observations, probably by Philo himself. A few moralizations. He may have already returned to his Judean roots by this point. He may have developed his unique adaptation of Platonism by this point, but I see little of that unique POV in this comments about the Therapeutae.

C) Finally, an editor/publisher, someone much more worldly than Philo (maybe his thoroughly Romanized uncle Tiberius Alexander?), adds a bit by greatly expanding Philo's comments in B, but a level removed from him (a Roman, not a practicing Judean, POV).

Per one of Philo's own comments upon his notebook descriptions, in On the Contemplative Life or Suppliants (Περι Βιου Θεωρητικου Η Ικετων, De Vita Contemplativa)

1.21 Now this class of persons may be met with in many places, for it was fitting that both Greece and the country of the barbarians should partake of whatever is perfectly good; and there is the greatest number of such men in Egypt, in every one of the districts, or nomi as they are called, and especially around Alexandria;

This shouldn't have to be rocket science!

More like organic chemistry ...

DCH

(Hindley, David C) Analysis of philo's De vita contemplativa 1.1-90 (C D Yonge, vol 1, 1854, color analysis 2013-02-12).pdf

(98.25 KiB) Downloaded 15 times

This document uses color and indentation to show these levels of redaction.
*Red indicates Philo's original notes (A).
*Blue indicated his added moralizations (B).
*Unaccented (black) text identifies the extensive additions and comments of the final editor (C).

Qualifications for such an analysis: Absolutely none. They are just relatively informed, although not infallible, observations similar to my musings about the Pauline letters.

For a link to this book, in both Unicode Greek and F H Colson's English translation, see:
https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus-data/L363.pdf

[Leucius Charinus]

Who or what Deity was 'The Good' (concept) which Philo is tacitly belittling at DVC 2?

What were Followers of 'The Good' theosophy called, as Jewish heretics, in the First Century Diaspora?

χρηστός (Chrestos) - "ethical, righteous, good, just, upright, virtuous".
χριστός (Christos) - "Christ"

• The Jewish are included but the deity of the good concept/ epithets applied to the departed in the sepulchral epigraphy of the Greeks in all ages, pre-Christian as well as post-Christian, and as such is found constantly recurring in the "Corpus Inscriptionum."

Attention SG !!
Cult of the Good' evidence

CHRESTOS: A RELIGIOUS EPITHET; ITS IMPORT AND INFLUENCE.
J. B. MITCHELL, 1880

https://archive.org/details/chrestosareligi00mitcgoog

The Epithet χρηστός


p.12

It is clear from those passages [from the "Fathers" - Greek: Justin, Clement of Alexandria; Latin: Tertullian, Lactantius, Jerome) that the Christians were accustomed to get the credit of being good and gracious because the word χρηστός when uttered had the same pronunciation as χριστός; but it may also be inferred from them that it was a very usual thing to write the words Christ and Christian with η in place of ι.

Reference to ancient Christian epigraphy shows this inference to be correct and proves that such was the fact. Careful search through the Christian inscriptions, numbering 1,287, in the fourth volume of Boeckh's "Corpus Inscriptionum," [1] published in 1877, fails to discover a single instance of earlier date than the third century, wherein the word Christ is not written Chrest or else Chreist. The two earliest of all the Christian inscriptions of known date are those which are numbered respectively 9,727 and 9,288 ; in the former the name occurs in the form of ΧΡΗΣΤΟΣ (CHRESTOS), in the latter in that of XPEICTE.


The word Christian written in full is found in only twelve instances, but although these extend to very late ages, in one-third the spelling is with η (i.e. χρηστός - Chrestos). The numbers borne by the four inscriptions in question are:

add.
2,883 d;
3,857 g;
3,857 p;
9,481,

the word occurring with the latter spelling twice in 3,857 p. In connection with the latter inscription the editor of the "Corpus Inscriptionum" makes the following note :

• "Ceterum h.l. observabis lusum nominum CHRESTIAN CHRESTOS Quod at tempus attinet n. 3,865 1. docet denominationem illam in hoc tractu
  seculo tertio obtinuisse."
  
  TRANSLATION: "Furthermore, h.l. you will observe the game of names CHRESTIAN CHRESTOS As for the time n. 3,865 1. teaches that denomination in this passage obtained in the third century."

The admirable indices to Boeckh's great work, which afford the means of arriving at the above result with so much certainty, on being further questioned, reveal that which in all probability greatly conduced to the confusion between the two words.

In a spiritual or mystic sense the word χρηστός (Chrestos) was one of the epithets applied to the departed in the sepulchral epigraphy of the Greeks in all ages, pre-Christian as well as post-Christian, and as such is found constantly recurring in the "Corpus Inscriptionum." There are thirty-two instances to be counted in the index, and several more have been met with since the publication of Boeckh's text

It was more especially in the epitaphs which were inscribed on the kind of monument styled ηρωον (hero) that the word χρηστός (Chrestos) was used, the most common combination being the invocation ΗΡΩΣ ΧΡΗΣΤΣ ΧΑΙΡΕ.

ΗΡΩΣ (Hero of the Trojan War)
ΧΡΗΣΤΣ (CHRESTOS: "ethical, righteous, good, just, upright, virtuous".),
ΧΑΙΡΕ (HELLO)?

The ηρωον χρηστός (Good heroes) were in fact the saved or redeemed souls, the Pagan saints.

Fully to understand what was meant by the use of the expression χρηστός (Chrestos) applied to the departed, it is necessary to call to mind that it constituted the distinctive title of the divinities who ruled the next world, and in particular of 'Aeons' or Pluto, King of Hades and Judge of Souls; and that the same title was conferred on those who left his awful tribunal justified, and who then became ol χρηστός (Chrestos) "the good " par excellence. The solemn title of χρηστός (Chrestos), Bonus, was not given to any other divinity, but only to the fate-disposing pair, ^A8>y9 and Ilepo-e(f>6vriy and the ubiquitous mystic *Ep/Li^9, and sometimes, as by courtesy, to their subordinates.

///

It is not difficult to divine what must have been the influence of this universally recognised significance of the title χρηστός (Chrestos) on Pagan society, familiar as it was, in one form or another, with the eschatological doctrines of the ancient religions, when the χριστός (Christos) of the Gospel was presented to them. That this eschatology was well known not only to the Pagans but also to the section of Jewish society ......

///

Chapter xii. of the Book of the Apocalypse reads like a paragraph of Plutarch's treatise " De I side et Osiride," and the latter portion of Chapter xxv. of the Gospel according to Matthew like a passage from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The Book of the Dead or of the Departure, a copy of which was placed in every coffin, contained the things necessary for salvation- and requisite to be known to every one on entering on his justification before the dre^d tribunal installed in the Hall of Truth. Here sat the two-and-forty assessors or elders (Apoc. iv., 4) presided over by Hesir-Onnofri (Osiris χρηστός [Chrestos]) in his character of King of Kar-neter (Matth. xxv., 34, 40), clothed in a white or glistening robe and seated on his throne (Matth. xxv., 3 1 ; Apoc. iv.,. 4), before which were placed the four genii having severally the head of jackal, ape, man, and hawk or eagle (Apoc. iv., 6), and the recording angel Tot (the Word) with his book of "the things done in the body" (Apoc. v., 2, 7; X., 2, 9, 10; 2 Cor. v., 10). Addressing himself in succession to each of his judges, the defunct was required for his justification to declare that he had not committed such and such a sin.

[Chrestos = "ethical, righteous, good, just, upright, virtuous"]

"I have not blasphemed (taken the name of the Lord in vain)/* he was expected to say ;
I have not cheated ;
I have not stolen;
I have not caused strife;
I have treated no one with cruelty ;
I have occasioned no disorders;
I have not been an idler ;
I have not been given to drunkenness;
I have given no unjust orders;
I have not been indiscreet through idle curiosity;
I have not indulged in vain talk nor in evil speaking;
I have used violence to no one ;
I have caused no one to fear unjustly ;
I have not been envious ;
I have never spoken evil of the king nor of my parents;
I have not brought any false accusation."

Besides such negative pleas advanced by the defunct in favour of his innocence, there were others of a positive kind.

"I have made the requisite offerings to the Gods ; for the love of God I have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, and shelter to the destitute." — Matth. xxv., 42-44.


(" Das Todenbuch des Egypter," von K. R. Lepsius; Leipzig, 1842. " Ritual of the Dead," by Samuel Birch ; Appendix to Bunsen's " Egypt's Place in History," vol. vi., pp. 125-333; Lond., 1867. " Le Rituel Fun^raire de TEgypte," par Charles Lenormant, pp. 9-1 1 ; Paris, 1862.)


[1] Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum; Author: August Boeckh
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_s5X4lUGIFBkC

NOTE: Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum (or its descendents) should be searchable today in 2024.
Who can confirm what this 1880 author has to say above?

[Secret Alias]

We still haven't discussed or countered the argument that Greek translators approximated the Hebrew name Shilo to mean something like "the Right One."

[Peter Kirby]

• The Jewish are included but the deity of the good concept/ epithets applied to the departed in the sepulchral epigraphy of the Greeks in all ages, pre-Christian as well as post-Christian, and as such is found constantly recurring in the "Corpus Inscriptionum."

Attention SG !!
Cult of the Good' evidence

The statement "the deity of the good concept/epithets applied to the departed in the sepulchral epigraphy of the Greeks in all ages" shows (and this is with the most generous possible spin I can put on it) a lack of understanding.

The phrase in the book - "χρηστός (Chrestos) was one of the epithets applied to the departed" - has morphed above into "the deity of the good concept/ epithets applied to the departed," without any explanation and, of course, in a way that cannot be viewed favorably.

Who can confirm what this 1880 author has to say above?

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