DB Roy wrote:The early Christians read their scriptures allegorically and not as literal history as far as the higher mysteries are concerned.
Yes, this is a key point, about how interpretation of text is subject to evolutionary drift under strong selective pressure. Assumptions about meaning that were prevalent in the early church could have been lost completely under the weight of later ideology. This applies especially to the problem of literalism.
It is essential to consider how far religious thinkers in the ancient world mixed up fact and fantasy. A fantasy is always more impressive when packaged as fact, but over time the packaging can come to be imagined as the content where that meets social incentives.
DB Roy wrote: Their principles were encoded as a historical tale and sold that way to the lower initiates of the cult but the higher initiates knew better.
In regard to this observation of cultic structure, there is much in common between early Christianity and Freemasonry with its degrees of initiation. This is a topic that is subject to strong suppression by the church, such that Christianity has been hollowed out, an empty shell with its original content lost. Masonic traditions have also changed over time, but study of their origins in pagan ritual indicate strong structural links with religion. The higher initiates in the early church understood the allegorical nature of religious language, as this is the only explanation for why there is such strong solar and cosmic imagery in Christianity.
DB Roy wrote:As the 3rd century Church Father, Origen, put it: the gospels were literally false but allegorically true. Origen stated that "the spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in a material falsehood.” He said that “simpletons” would be better off to believe literally even though the literal reading is false because they wouldn’t comprehend anything higher.
This principle of the noble lie from Plato is playing with fire. It is seductive for an institution to put out a ‘simplified’ or distorted version of its ideas because the common illiterate masses cannot understand and are not interested in less sensational and more complex teaching. When people believe the lie though, the spiritual truth is overwhelmed by the material falsehood. That is what happened to Origen’s own ideas. The ability of the original initiates to maintain control was broken by the mass appeal of the fantasy.
DB Roy wrote: Eusebius agreed with this line of reasoning wholeheartedly.
I would like to see some quotes from Eusebius about his ‘pious fraud’ theories.
DB Roy wrote: But this kind of reasoning goes back at least as far as Plato who also endorsed it. In fact, Eusebius quoted Plato from Laws in support of it. The same argument is advanced in Republic.
And Plato imagined that he could play philosopher king to the tyrant Dionysus of Syracuse, and was rapidly exposed as politically naïve.
DB Roy wrote:
Clement of Alexandria agree with the words of Plato in that the common people cannot handle the truth and must be told falsehoods in which the truths are veiled in allegory, myth and riddle.
Clement had some sympathy for Gnostic ideas and like his pupil Origen was later condemned as a heretic despite being among the principle early advocates for literal faith, for example explicitly denouncing the Gnostic view that the disciples were allegory for the zodiac.
DB Roy wrote: Augustine, some centuries later, condemned this view but defended when it came to the bible meaning that he actually supported it.
Yes, Augustine is a hypocrite, but this is typical for apologists who say whatever is convenient. Augustine promoted literal faith but in his discussion of the seven days of creation in Genesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegoric ... f_creation said “things may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters.”