nightshadetwine wrote: ↑Sat Sep 08, 2018 1:57 pm
... I've been entertaining an idea that Paul sees Jesus the same way that Plutarch sees Osiris in "Isis and Osiris" and Philo sees the Logos. Plutarch sees Osiris as the "Logos" that is a mediator or intermediary between god and humanity. Philo says the logos is "god's first born son" which is also a mediator between humanity and god. This concept of god or the divine needing a mediator to reach humanity or the physical realm is something you find in middle Platonism.
From The Gospel of Thomas and Plato : A Study of the Impact of Platonism on the Fifth Gospel By Ivan Miroshnikov:
The double role of Plutarch's Osiris is determined by his intermediary status: in order to act as an intermediary between the transcendent God and the world, he needs to participate in both transcendence and immanence. The very same double role is ascribed to Logos in Philo: according to Mos. 2.127, the cosmic Logos deals with both "the incorporeal and paradigmatic forms" and the visible objects that imitate these forms. The fact that Philo's Logos and Plutarch's Osiris are functionally identical and that Osiris can also be called Logos demonstrates that Philo's philosophy of Logos was part of a larger Middle Platonist tradition and that this tradition as a whole should be recognized as a possible background for the Johannine Logos
The Logos doctrine is something you find in the Hebrew scriptures too but it seems to originally come from ancient Egyptian religion.
From "The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt" by Richard H. Wilkinson:
The text alludes to the Heliopolitan creation account centered on the god Atum, but goes on to claim that the Memphite god Ptah preceded the sun god and that it was Ptah who created Atum and ultimately the other gods and all else 'through his heart and through his tongue'. The expression alludes to the conscious planning of creation and it's execution through rational thought and speech, and this story of creation ex nihilo as attributed to Ptah by the priests of Memphis is the earliest known example of the so-called 'logos' doctrine in whuch the world is formed through a god's creative speech...It lies before, and in line with, the philosophical concepts found in the Hebrew Bible where 'God said, let there be light, and there was light'(Genesis 1:3), and the Christian scriptures which state that 'In the beginning was the word[logos]...and the word was God...all things were made by him...
So Osiris and Jesus can both be seen as the Logos and they both die and resurrect. The death symbolizes the partaking of the logos in the physical world or world of matter. This idea of a mediator who comes from a divine realm or comes from god is something you find in the mystery religions. The mystery god or goddess partakes in some kind of experience or suffering in a "lower" realm like the physical realm or the underworld. By entering the lower realms and "dying" they are able to "connect" humanity to the divine/God. This is why the initiate into the mystery religion would identify with the dying and rising god or goddess.
From "Following Osiris: Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia" By Mark Smith:
But the crucial significance of Osiris for them lay in what he personally had experienced. His life, death, and resurrection were perceived to be particularly momentous in relation to their own fates, and thus they figure more prominently in the textual record than do accounts of the exploits of other divinities. Moreover, because so much importance was invested in the fact that these were events actually experienced by a real individual, and not merely abstractions, personal detail was essential in recounting them.
From "Reading Dionysus: Euripides’ Bacchae and the Cultural Contestations of Greeks, Jews, Romans, and Christians" by Courtney Friesen
Not only does Paul employ language that reflects mystery cults in several places, his Christian community resembles them in various ways.They met in secret or exclusive groups, employed esoteric symbols, and practiced initiations, which involved identification with the god’s suffering and rebirth.
From "The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations" by Jan Bremmer and Andrew Erskine
Dionysos and Persephone, who, in spite of being immortals, suffer some events which can be interpreted as death and resurrection in tales in which human beings participate in one way or another. Both gods act as mediators who grant the initiates salvation and divinization. The initiates hope to be identified with Dionysos after death...
From "The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era: Exploring the Background of Early Christianity" By James S. Jeffers:
The initiates also learned the central secret of the group, typically involving how to achieve union with the cult's deity. Another common element of mystery religions was a myth telling how the deity had either defeated his or her enemies or returned to life after death. As the cult member shared in the god's triumph, he or she was redeemed from the earthly and temporal.
From "Exploring the New Testament World: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Jesus and the First Christians" By Albert Bell:
Most of the gods associated with mystery cults had some connection with a cycle of death and rebirth or with going into the underworld and coming out alive...The association of grain or vegetation of any type with death and rebirth is not difficult to make. Each year the seed is put into the ground (buried) and comes up again (rebirth, resurrection). This was a familiar symbol to an agrarian society, so familiar that Paul even used it in his discussion of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:35-44.
Plutarch associates Isis with matter: from The Gospel of Thomas and Plato : A Study of the Impact of Platonism on the Fifth Gospel By Ivan Miroshnikov:
Thus, according to Plutarch, Isis is matter...
A lot of the divine mediators or mystery gods are born to mortal women impregnated by a god or the divine. So the mortal woman could just be symbolic for matter like Plutarch says of Isis. So
when Paul says Christ was "born of a woman" maybe he's just saying that Christ, as the "logos" or mediator sent by god, entered or partook in a "lower" realm, the realm of matter. Not that Christ was literally born to a mortal woman. Greco-Roman religion had a belief that the incarnating soul symbolically "dies" when it enters the lower/physical realms of matter. Physical realm is the realm of death. This is why the "logos" or divine mediator/savior dies in mythology.
From Plato's Gorgias, 492e-493a:
Well, life as you describe it is a strange affair. I should not be surprised, you know, if Euripides was right when he said, 'Who knows, if life be death, and death be life?' And perhaps we are actually dead, for once heard one of our wise men say that we are now dead, and that our body is a tomb, and that that part of the soul in which dwell the desires is of a nature to be swayed and to shift to and fro.
From Plato's Cratylus, 400b:
For some say that the body is the grave of the soul which may be thought to be buried in our present life;
Paul says that Christ died and rose three days later. The divine mediator/savior always "dies" by partaking in the physical realm and "rises" by partaking in the divine realm. Although the savior/mediator rises or ascends to heaven he/she doesn't completely leave humanity because humanity now has a connection to the divine/god through the mediator/savior. Plutarch says that the body of Osiris is "The images from this with which the sensible and corporeal is impressed...like impressions of seals in wax", so when the mediator/savior "dies" or partakes in the physical realm it leaves it's "impression" on the physical realm ...