Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The intrinsic opposition between Sheol and Haguel requires a geographical opposition, also. The earth divides these two realms of dead. ... The interpolator believed that Jesus was ascended from a Sheol placed under earth. I thought you believed that early Christians placed Sheol in the air, since ...

Thanks. I've seen you post threads on "ish", but I have no knowledge at all of Greek or Hebrew, so those arguments are way way outside my competence. My interest is in ancient beliefs around the gods and the supernatural, especially relating to natural philosophy/science. But it's just a h...

Congratulations! Do you have a summary of your mythicist theory that you can provide here, or a link if you've done that already?

The intrinsic opposition between Sheol and Haguel requires a geographical opposition, also. The earth divides these two realms of dead. The liberation from Haguel was made more impossible if it was placed under earth. The liberation from Sheol was made more possible if it was placed above the earth...

I thought that might be the case. So, the historicist interpolator, having the original Ascension of Isaiah in his hands, decided to rearrange the cosmology of his universe for him and the other historicist Christians, rather than remove the words about "descent" into Sheol from that one ...

It is evident that the historicist interpolator, inheriting a myth of a post-mortem descent into Sheol , has to place the Sheol under the earth (being the death, for the interpolator, happened on the earth), so confusing it with the Hell already found there. I thought that might be the case. So, th...

Thanks Ben, that is extremely helpful!

In your quote, if the passage about the "king", "sons of Israel", etc, is a late Christian interpolation, then the Sheol (mentioned shortly after) is considered obviously as being under the earth, but this only in the mind of the interpolator of the reference to the "king&q...

Not only "there is no indication here that anything else was meant" , the reference to two realms of dead implies by need the presence of one (Sheol == "realm of the dead") in Outer Space and the other (Hell == Haguel) under earth. It would make no sense at all to have two realm...

Does he give the references to Seneca, Philo, etc? I'd like to chase them up. Culianu writes in p. 20: ...the obedience to the platonic models remains much strong in the texts of Ciceron [ S. Scip. ( de rep. 6); Tusc. Disp. 1:44 s], Seneca [ Dial. 6:25] and of the pseudo-Aristotelian text de mundo ...