Plato on the origin of the gods 15 Nov 2009 As for the other spiritual beings [daimones], it is beyond our task to know and speak of how they came to be. We should accept on faith the assertions of those figures of the past who claimed to be the offspring of gods. They must surely have been well informed about their own ancestors. So we cannot help believing the children of the gods, even though their accounts lack plausible or compelling proofs. Rather, we should follow custom and believe them, on the ground that what they claim to be reporting are matters of their own concern. Accordingly, let us accept their account of how these gods came to be and state what it is. [Plato, Timaeus 40d4-40e6, translated by Donald J. Zeyl, Hackett Publishing 2000] It might be the case that Plato was speaking more truly than he realised, if gods are mythological humans. History Philosophy Religion
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That’s a fascinating quote. It immediately struck me as very similar in form to a common apologetic argument used by Orthodox Jews. The argument, due primarily to the Kuzari, is that Jews have an unbroken tradition of their ancestors dating back to a collective revelation at Sinai. The basic form is very similar to what Plato is arguing here. I have to wonder if the Kuzari, which was written in the 12th century is being influenced by Plato at all. Considering how much of the Kuzari is devoted to bashing Greek philosophy, I find this to be highly ironic.
The idea certainly had a strong emotive appeal. St Ides Wish “I will take nothing from my lord, said she, ‘unless he gives me his son from heaven in the form of a baby to be nursed by me’…. So that Christ came to her in the form of a baby and then she said….. Irish 9th cen. “I should like to have a great ale-feast for the king of kings; I should like the Heavenly host to be drinking it for all eternity” Irish 10th cen. Very common in early Irish poetry. Jesus himself was cu glass (lit blue/ grey, wolf/dog). This gives his legal status in early Irish law. The cu glass was a man who had lit. “followed a womens buttocks across a boundary”. The cu glass, is a male from outside the tribe who’s only legal status is through his female kindred (individuls have no legal status in Irish law, it is based on the kin group as a whole). His temptation and relationship with Satan is understood in terms of a kindred feud. Legal texts from the 6th century onward are a good source of disscussion concerning mythological humans. Ireland in particular had an early and sophisticated form of legal compensation for injury. Humans subject to supernatural transformation do occur in the texts from the 6th century and onwards. These creatures were not simply of religious interest but were also a of legal and medical concern. This often meant that supernatural creatures were sometimes not believed but could never be ruled out on a methodological basis. This development can be traced in both oral and written sources, which are often related to each other. They have a history in each rank of elite society of the period, the poet, the priest, the lawyer and the doctor. It also appears clear the peasant also took some interest in legal and medical developments as well. Rooted into many aspects of the social fabric.
I have a particular soft spot for a very early trinty of female creatures found in the Irish law of bloodletting. Three females injured in battle who are entitled to half compensation. The conrechta (recht =reason human con dog/wolf) translation would be the wolf/dog who speaks with a human voice. The confeal (the howling one) and the good wife saved by the faries (she is dumb, shapless and unsightly in oral accounts) It may play on classical accounts of human origin “mutum et turpe pecus” and more mythological and supernatural origin. But I could bore the hind legs of a donkey on this one.
I think these creatures are always the subject of some debate, wither the loathly lady is a Goddess, a creature of evil or will become the best little wife in the whole of Ireland is never certian. The so/ or not so nature of such stories creates the tension and drama that makes them entertaining and memorable. It makes them worth repeating. Redeption is always possible but shame is as much a feature of these socities as honour. An oral version of the good wife saved from the faries. “Ive heard this story about a man called Somhairle MacDonald…. This day he had been shooting on the hills and sat down on the side of a knoll for a rest. And there wasn’t a breath of wind. What should he see but a wreath of mist coming over the top of the mountian facing him across the glen. He had never seen mist move as fast as that, and this realy astonished him when it was so calm. He tought it must be something unnatural. He had gheard that shot would never harm an evil thing, so he went and put a sixpence in his gun. And the mist was coming within range, and he could see a black shadow in the middle of the wreath of mist. And he fired at it and the shot went off, and the mist vanished. But then he heard a pitiful moaning further down the hill, and he got up and went down there, and there was a women wearing nothing but her nightdress, and both thighs bleeding where the sixpence had grazed them. He spoke to her but he could get nothing out of her but a shake of the head or a movment of her hand….She could not speak a word……” If you are well versed in Scottish oral tradition she hints at many kinds of things and other stories. Which all tend to point in a particular direction away from the natural realm.
If we look at the Greek myths – which would certainly have been Plato’s sources – we will find that the gods of Olympus were directly related to the Titans. Atlas, who led the Titans to war against the Olympic gods, has been identified by some scholars as Japetos or Japheth, the Biblical son of Noah and the patriarch of Europeans. This would mean that both the Titans and the Olympic gods were in fact, originally ancestors and an extension of ancestor worship, but deified to sanction the authority of those who would be king.
I have corrected your duplicate text. No scholars I know of who are credible make that connection. While there may be echoes of actual individual stories in these mythologies, one should not presume that any actual history is preserved in these stories. Certainly the patriarch stories in Genesis are about as historical as a Superman comic.
Plus Plato was not above making up his own myths – Aristophanes’ myth about the origin of love in the Symposium being a good example…
The reference to Iapetos (sorry for the previous spelling) can be found in Apollodorus’ The Library of Greek Mythology, trans Robin Hard, Oxford World’s Classics, pp 27-29. I was not implying that the myths are necessarily history, merely that they would have been the basis for much of Plato’s world view.