Leucius Charinus wrote:GakuseiDon wrote:Kapyong wrote:Indeed, GakuseiDon, there is no specific text that claims flesh for the Air Beneath the Moon, but many claim corruption, change, birth etc. for that region, I don't think it's a leap for Paul to have seen all Beneath the Moon as 'fleshly'.
I think it is a leap, if you are referring to daemons and souls in the air. Looking at the literature, they are described as made up of air and/or fire, which is why they float. As soon as they start to take on 'fleshly' attributes, they sink back down to the ground.
That is not what I interpret the ancients to be expressing in their literature.
Fair enough. In that case, the best way forward would be to actually reproduce what the ancients express. Otherwise it would be too easy to propose they thought something different, in order to suit some modern belief. Now, it can be granted that they may have believed anything, but that is all the more reason to be cautious about what they did believe. So let's actually quote them!
From everything I've read, I don't think Kapyong proposal that there was a belief that everything "Beneath the Moon" was thought of as 'fleshly' is correct. The belief seems to me to be both explicit and implicit that 'fleshly' things were only on the earth. Could there have been such a belief? Sure! Many things are possible, but not everything has evidence. Again, the best thing to do is to actually quote the beliefs and work from that.
Leucius Charinus wrote:The Stoics and the Platonists are quite explicit in when they refer to as the "daemon" as one's own individual guardian spirit. Everything was thought to be composed of the 4 (or 5 if you examine the quintessential aether) elements of nature. The spirits who in habited the sublunar realm, where all is in a state of flux, are both within and without every living being.
Technically, "sublunar realm" also included the earth. Guardian spirits were also known as one's "genius", which can relate to a person or a location. From here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_%28mythology%29
Leucius Charinus wrote:The fleshy references point to what they thought about the "embodied spirit" and the birth-life-death cycle beneath the influence of the moon.
No, not that I can tell from their literature. The fleshly references refer to the substances that make up the body, and were inevitably related to earthly properties.
Living things were made of the four elements. Flesh, for example, contained some of each element. Empedokles (450 BCE)
wrote that:
- Flesh is the product of equal parts of the four elements mixed together, and sinews of double portions of fire and earth mixed together, and the claws of animals are the product of sinews chilled by contact with the air, and bones of two equal parts of water and of earth and four parts of fire mingled together...
Plutarch gives the various theories of his day with regards to how those elements 'move'. Anything made of earth and water had a natural tendency to travel in a downwards direction. Anything made of air or fire are 'carried aloft'.
According to Plutarch:
- Plato saith that it is neither heavy nor light in its own nature, when it exists in its own place; but being in the place where another should be, then it has an inclination by which it tends to gravity or levity.
Aristotle saith that, if we simply consider things in their own nature, the earth only is to be judged heavy, and fire light; but air and water are on occasions heavy and at other times light.
The Stoics think that of the four elements two are light, fire and air; two ponderous, earth and water; that which is naturally light doth by its own nature, not by any inclination, recede from its own centre; but that which is heavy doth by its own nature tend to its centre; for the centre is not a heavy thing in itself.
Epicurus thinks that bodies are not limited; but the first bodies, which are simple bodies, and all those composed of them, all acknowledge gravity; that all atoms are moved, some perpendicularly, some obliquely; some are carried aloft either by immediate impulse or with vibrations.
Objects consisting of earth and water – including flesh – were naturally weighed down, and attracted to the earth. Things made of air and fire naturally floated. Ironically, early Greeks thought that the heavens were filled with fire, since fire naturally travelled upwards.
Spiritual beings -- including daemons and disembodied souls -- were made from air or fire, which is why they could fly.
As Plutarch writes:
- He affirms that our soul is nothing but air; it is that which constitutes and preserves; the whole world is invested with spirit and air. For spirit and air are synonymous.
“Daemons” were beings made of fire and/or air who lived in the air as well as floating around locations on earth. They were regarded as an intermediate being between humans and the true gods above the firmament, and passed on messages from the gods to humans, and the prayers of humans to the gods. The pagan writer Apuleuis (Second Century CE)
gives us this description (my emphasis):
- Moreover, there are certain divine middle powers, situatved in this interval of the air, between the highest ether and earth, which is in the lowest place, through whom our desires and our deserts pass to the Gods. These are called by a Greek name daemons, who, being placed between the terrestrial and celestial inhabitants, transmit prayers from the one, and gifts from the other. They likewise carry supplications from the one, and auxiliaries from the other, as certain interpreters and saluters of both. Through these same daemons, as Plato says in the Banquet, all denunciations, the various miracles of enchanters, and all the species of presages, are directed. Prefects, from among the number of these, providentially attend to every thing, according to the province assigned to each; either by the formation of dreams, or causing the fissures in entrails, or governing the flights of some birds, and instructing the songs of others, or by inspiring prophets, or hurling thunder, or producing the coruscations of lightning in the clouds; or causing other things zto take place, by which we obtain a knowledge of future events. And it is requisite to think that all these particulars are effected by the will, the power, and authority of the celestial Gods, but by the compliance, operations, and ministrant offices of daemons, for it was through the employment, the operations, and the providential attention of these, that dreams predicted to Hannibal the loss of one of his eyes; that the inspection of the viscera previously announced to Flaminius the danger of a great slaughter; and that auguries granted to Accius Navius the miracle of the whetstone. It is also through these that forerunning indications of future empire are imparted to certain persons; as that an eagle covered the head of Tarquinius Priscus, and that a flame illuminated the head of Servius Tullius. And lastly, to these are owing all the presages of diviners, the expiations of the Hetruscans, the enclosure of places struck by lightning, and the verses of the Sibyls; all which, as I have said, are effected by certain powers that are media between men and Gods.
Apuleius gives a description of the bodies of daemons:
- But if the clouds fly loftily, all of which originate from, and again flow downward to, the earth, what should you at length think of the bodies of daemons, which are much less dense, and therefore so much more attenuated than clouds? For they are not conglobed from a feculent nebula and a tumid darkness, as the clouds are, but they consist of that most pure, liquid, and serene element of air, and on this account are not easily visible to the human eye, unless they exhibit an image of themselves by divine command.
For they are capable, in the same manner as we are, of suffering all the mitigations or incitements of souls; so as to be stimulated by anger, made to incline by pity, allured by gifts, appeased by prayers, exasperated by contumely, soothed by honours, and changed by all other things, in the same way that we are. Indeed, that I may comprehend the nature of them by a definition, daemons are in their genus animals, in their species rational, in mind passive, in body arial, and in time perpetual. Of these five characteristics which I have mentioned, the three first are the same as those which we possess, the fourth is peculiar to them, and the last is common to them with the immortal Gods, from whom they differ in being obnoxious to passion. Hence, as I think, daemons are not absurdly denominated passive, because they are subject to the same perturbations that we are.
Early Christians used the same Greek word (though nowadays we spell it “demon”), but for them the daemons were deceivers, actually fallen angels pretending to be the Greek and Roman gods and demanding sacrifices. Their purpose was to lead men away from God by confusing them with talk of myths and gods. Demons, they said, copied stories found in the Old Testament in creating the Greek myths, in order to deceive Christians later on.
Demons were evil 'spiritual' creatures – that is, made up of 'spiritual' elements of fire or air, weighed down by their own lusts. The Second Century Christian apologist
Tatian writes:
- But none of the demons possess flesh; their structure is spiritual, like that of fire or air. And only by those whom the Spirit of God dwells in and fortifies are the bodies of the demons easily seen, not at all by others,--I mean those who possess only soul; for the inferior has not the ability to apprehend the superior. On this account the nature of the demons has no place for repentance; for they are the reflection of matter and of wickedness.
Another Second Century apologist, Minucius Felix, writes:
- The same man also declared that demons were earthly, wandering, hostile to humanity. What said Plato, who believed that it was a hard thing to find out God? Does not he also, without hesitation, tell of both angels and demons? And in his Symposium also, does not he endeavour to explain the nature of demons? For he will have it to be a substance between mortal and immortal--that is, mediate between body and spirit, compounded by mingling of earthly weight and heavenly lightness
These impure spirits, therefore--the demons--as is shown by the Magi, by the philosophers, and by Plato, consecrated under statues and images, lurk there, and by their afflatus attain the authority as of a present deity; while in the meantime they are breathed into the prophets, while they dwell in the shrines, while sometimes they animate the fibres of the entrails, control the flights of birds, direct the lots, are the cause of oracles involved in many falsehoods.
Clement of Alexandria writes of impure spirits, weighed down by an earthly and watery nature, and condemned to flit about graves and tombs.
He writes:
- How, then, can shades and demons be still reckoned gods, being in reality unclean and impure spirits, acknowledged by all to be of an earthly and watery nature, sinking downwards by their own weight, and flitting about graves and tombs, about which they appear dimly, being but shadowy phantasms?
