Plato’s Legacy
By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.Genesis 3:19 NASB
Return to the ground– suveka el ha’adamah says the text. We recognize the verb and the noun, šûb andʾădāmâ (“to turn/return” and “ground/earth”). But do we really grasp the implications?
The most important figure in the thinking of the West is Plato. No, not Moses, although he provided the basis of Western common law. No, not Jesus, despite his enormous impact on the spiritual consciousness of the West. It’s Plato. His ideas undergird the very fabric of how we view the world, that is, what assumptions we make about the way the world is metaphysically put together. One of Plato’s most significant contributions to Western thinking is dualism, the separation of the spiritual and the material, the idea that human beings consist of an eternal soul wedded (precariously and disastrously) to a physical body. Plato’s dualism ultimately contributes to our understanding of nature itself, defined as everything except us. It is the basis of our understanding of God as a transcendent Being. It stands behind the Church’s teaching about the “soul,” heaven, hell and eternal destiny. It is the theological justification of the abysmal practice of the Inquisition, allowing people to be bodily tortured until they confessed Jesus so that their “souls” might be saved. The Inquisition was nothing more that religiously sanctioned murder. The person died. The “soul” didn’t separate from the body and rise to heaven.
But that’s not all.
“Dualism—cleaving into two what which is one—colours all our beliefs on health and illness. . . . Unlike many other disciplines, medicine has yet to assimilate an important lesson of Einstein’s theory of relativity: that the position of an observer will influence the phenomenon being observed and affect the results of the observation. The unexamined assumption of the scientist both determine and limit what he or she will discover, . .”[1]
“Here we confront the inadequacy of language. Even to speak about links between mind and body is to imply that two discrete entities are somehow connected to each other. Yet in life there is no such separation; there is no body that is not mind, no mind that is not body. The word mindbody has been suggested to convey the real state of things.”[2]
Maté is right to be concerned about the paucity of Greek to capture the inextricable homogeneous existence of human being, or for all sentient creatures. But he doesn’t need to fear. There is a language that perfectly reflects this total homogeneity. The Hebrew word group of nephesh is the expression of this non-dualistic nature. Nephesh is not just the Hebrew equivalent of the mind-body-spirit Greek idea. It is more than that since it fundamentally involves relationships and community.
But let’s just consider one implication. “There is no body that is not mind, no mind that is not body,” writes Maté. Hebrew agrees. But this means that we do not exist as the combination of a MIND and a BODY. One cannot exist without the other. So when we die, we stop existing. There isn’t any “soul” that trundles off to heaven to wait for the return of the “resurrected” body. We just stop being. We return to the ground. Our animating spirit (which is basically on loan from God) returns to Him. We cease. This is why Jewish thought in the first century concerned itself with the general resurrection, because at that point God would bring back into existence all those who had died. [We will not undertake a lengthy discussion of she’ol and how it fits into all this.]
Dualism allows the separation of the body and the continued existence of the soul. It works for Plato. It does not work for Moses. Yes, I know this is emotionally distressing. We want to believe that our lost loved ones are “up there” looking down on us and waiting. But the biblical idea of nephesh doesn’t allow this hopeful fantasy. It doesn’t allow going to hell as an immediate punishment either. We wait, whether alive or not, for the resurrection. (Actually, that isn’t quite right, is it, since only the living can wait.) The dead “sleep,” as Hebrew puts it. They will return—when God raises them all.
As modern medicine discovers the homogeneity of human life, it simply reaffirms what the biblical account considered perfectly obvious since the time of Genesis. Man is not a composite. He doesn’t exist independently of his Creator or his environment. Everything is connected.
Topical Index: nephesh, adama’, human being, dualism, heaven, hell, Genesis 3:19
[1]Gabor Maté, When the Body Says NO: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection, (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York) 2003, p. 3.
…and so the renewing of the mind and the adjustment of the paradigm continues. I have thought quite a lot about this recently, especially as I have friends who claim they have seen their loved ones in heaven, and in the past I’ve watched a number of youtube clips about people going to heaven and hell, as well as reading books about it. I always found it a fascinating “study”, but many times things didn’t add up and were quite bizarre. So, what is all of that? What causes people to experience those things? I know some of those are hoaxes, but some seem to be genuine experiences. Any suggestions?
It’s a shame we won’t go into a discussion about sheol . When people ask me about that (or about Abraham’s bosom) I don’t have answers. Another time maybe?
What is a dream in our ‘sleep’ state? Do we consider that an ‘experience’? And do you not dream of things you know? Do we awake in the morning to share our ‘experiences’ during our sleep that ‘seemed so real’?
One time for me, at the completion of a terrible car accident, I regained consciousness feeling as if I was sitting on my mom’s living room couch. I was told I said, ‘Wow that was incredible’ which is exactly the words I was saying when I was sitting on that couch. What was the real ‘experience’?
Richard Gambino,
I am a dreamer (used in the literal sense here). I have also had visions within my dreams.
Shavuot and Peter’s quotation: “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” . . . Acts 2:17 ESV
Much power is given in the Semitic world to dreams and visions. Just research all the stories of the Muslim people experiencing dreams and visions in encountering Yeshua. The King of the Universe knows how to speak the language of these beautiful people! Also look through the Biblical text and noticice the weight given to dreams and visions. We in the West may be a bit uncomfortabe with this, but the feeling of discomfort is ours and not in the stories of the Scriptures.
Why wouldn’t the poured out Spirit give substance and reality to our dreams and visions?
YHVH is King!
Ask yourself “what is an experience?” Answer with an understanding of the entire, undivided nephesh that is seamlessly connected with the rest of reality around you and it will become obvious that if all of you is not ‘doing’ it with everything else around you in real time, none of you is because “it” is merely a projection of the mind.
I struggle with this a lot with the precious people around me who are involved with drugs and other occult. You ought to see what they claim to have ‘experienced’! And what about schitzophrenia and other bizarre projections of the mind onto reality? These people are reacting with their entire nephesh, for sure, but, is it connecting with the rest of reality in real time? If it is not seamless, it is not real.
People are capable of making up nonsense. I believe that nonsense is an attempt to project our disconnect with reality onto reality. C.S. Lewis said something to the effect that nonsense – even when we say it about God – is still nonsense. If it cannot walk around on its own two legs in reality I say we have a problem, Houston.
Let’s be careful not to confuse “real” with “experience.” Whatever you experience, no matter how or in whatever way, is your experience. It is REAL to you. The pain in my finger right now is REAL even if you don’t feel it and doubt that it exists, and even if my pain has no physical basis. It is still real to me. That is MY experience. The questions we need to ask are about how my experience aligns with the outside world. Those are questions about what we call reality and they are not so easily determined.
So there is subjective (“even if my pain has no physical basis. It is still real to me. That is MY experience”) and objective ( “how my experience aligns with the outside world”) reality. I have tended patients with subjective fascia pain so real they consumed morphine like it was water. But doctors could find no objective basis for that pain. It was projected ONTO their reality. I don’t think we are going to get where we need to go until we can develop (discover?) a better way to think about and talk about reality. Let’s start over!
P.S. I think the essence (and subsequent consequences) of sin is that very disconnect with reality. This is the broad term of the occult: anything that injects itself between myself and reality; a prophylactic for reality, so to speak, because sinners are disconnected from (and are therefore afraid of) that reality and need something to hide behind. Pain itself I have seen can be occultic and therefore used to hide behind from reality. Pain, therefore, can be a healer or a destroyer, depending on how we choose to interact with it.
You have hit upon the philosophical problem of the external world. It has consumed thinkers for 3000 years. Maybe we need to “start over” in an entirely new direction.
Laurita,
You said: “Pain itself I have seen can be occultic and therefore used to hide behind from reality.” I find this thought true. Can two walk together unless they are in agreement? When you have a long history of pain, it is so easy to go down this forbidden but wide road. Unfortunately we know where this broad path leads to.
We become more intimate with our pain than our glorious Messiah. Truly occultic! And it ought not to be so!!
I have a busy day of repentance and work ahead of me.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
YHVH is King!
Pain was never something we were to live in, but to pass through. “Even though I walk through the valley” . . . “We pass from death unto life” . . . Pain was never designed to bear the ungodly fruit we see today.
We are supposed to dwell, live, walk in LIFE! “Abide in Me” (Messiah’s words). . . “Live in the Spirit” . . . “Walk in the Spirit” (Paul’s terminology) . . .
Hard words to say in that valley; hard words to mean when you aren’t in it.
I think the whole idea of being asleep in God when we leave this earth is quite pleasant. What a wonderful place to be until the great Resurrection ! We will all get to experience the reunion at the same time! Sounds like a good description of glory!
Just as Jesus said several times, she/he is just asleep. We practice dying every night and are resurrected every morning. If we had paid attention to the ‘modeling’ of death we all experience many times over in our lives, death would not seem so fearful. But we’re really not very good at paying attention to what is happening around us, are we?
Richard! This concept has never been introduced to me in the way you wrote it and I am just gape-mouthed right now. Thank you for this!
This is so good! NOW we are getting to the bottom layers of the lies that cause us to be confused as well as disconnected. Thank you so much, Skip! I find myself tasked with attempting to reset the thinking of people all around me who are genuinely led astray by this dualistic nonsense. Truth surely has its very own ring.
Dualism, I believe, is the very essence of the dialectic wherein what was “joined together” by God is “put asunder”; the essence of the fracturing of creation. Our paradigms are built out of our experience, so of course that paradigm is going to mirror the fracture we walk in.
The Greeks were good observers; they saw the fracture and concluded (because they could not, like you said, separate themselves from their observation of reality) that all of reality was thus divided from itself. They wrongly then concluded that the same held true for everything else – even in the metaphysical realm; even God. They projected an image of their fractured, ‘other’ selves onto Him, and we are doing that, too – just like we have been taught.
I think Hellenism gave both Jews and early Christians a WAY to divide themselves from each other, via that dialectic, and we are still suffering from that diabolical division to this very day; tens of thousands of denominations (fractions) in, and counting. I also find it more than a little disturbing that Hellenism gave the Jews of those first centuries a platform to separate themselves from themselves (there weren’t just Pharisees and Sadducees). I have seen estimates that there were about as many divisions of Jews then as there are Christians today. We learned it from the best!
“The Greeks were good observers” maybe so, but you’ve got to wonder at their powers of observation. 🙂 What I “wonder” about is that, for all their brilliance in philosophical meanderings, how is it that they were unable (or unwilling) to take a step further back and instead of carving out the obvious divisions displayed in creation, they didn’t note the fact that bringing those “divisions” (ie, a plant and the dirt it’s planted in) to a place of mutual benefit is exactly what maintains life and actually increases it. It would seem as if that fact is just as obvious as the other. I also “wonder” if guys like Plato weren’t more along the lines of state sponsored disinformants than great philosophers. 🙂
As I was reading this, Jeremiah 17:9 came to mind. it says, deceitful the heart above all and desperately wicked”…..the desperately wicked translation is the term “anush” and is “wicked” or “evil” in the sense of being in need, frail, desperate. It’s also the same root as the 3rd from Adam, Enosh in whose time men began to call on the name of YHWH. As God declared, it’s not good the man being alone. Perhaps that goes a bit further than just Eve and speaks to the very essence of the formation of mankind in creation. The one was separated in order for unity to occur, the 2 becoming one speaks to a lack being supplied. The world system is concerned with duplication, not unity.
“Duplication not unity”? That’s a useful distinction, Robert!
I, too, suspect that Plato (and others) subscribed to a secret belief system that differed from his PC one he published for the public; that being the very hallmark of members of secret organizations (which there is evidence to suggest he was a member of) dedicated to unholy insider confederations and worship of the powers of darkness.
The Greeks were looking for confirmation bias, just as we do, for sure. They were just tired of being afraid of (worshiping) everything, I think, so they started the elimination process: “this is not God; this, too, is not God”. They just so happened to whack enough of those moles we forgot to check all that they whacked. I think they threw God out with the bathwater because they lacked the ability to see Him IN BETWEEN the everything they were so busy cataloguing and recategorizing.
I think life scares sinners; as they are, after all, the choosers of death. Therefore I see them worshiping life (as we tend to worship all we FEAR) in sun, procreative and rebirth rituals, for instance (which, by the way, are alive and well in most of today’s religions as well as in those pesky secret societies) instead of being able to observe it objectively, for fear is what keeps us from being able to dispassionately observe anything we are afraid of. Fear is where I think we project the unknown – what we are not seeing or understanding – onto something.
I believe only love has the ability to “spiritually discern” (1Cor. 2:14) itself; love being that glue you describe that harmonizes reality. Therefore I suspect that all those who are afraid of (are worshiping) life as an unfathomable mystery lack the ability to discern the mechanisms of love which are the very essence of that life. Even today I see researchers who get close to the edge of discrete matter – that edge where that matter collaborates with other matter and reality – start backpedaling to keep themselves from starting to say stuff that sounds metaphysical, or at least like the spiritual MAY be the same stuff as the material. I have to laugh to keep from crying.
Thank you Skip, this explains my point on yesterday’s TW. It also explains the nonsense of a vulnerable G-d that can be killed by his enemies. The Messiah / Annointed/ Christ was the chosen one by Yah to manifest His spirit (in oneness-Echad- and to communicate His message, His will to humanity. I like this, thank you!
For those interested in listening to Gabor Mate’s talk (2013) on “When the Body Says No…” here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6IL8WVyMMs
Thank you Lucille!
You are welcome Larry.. it’s a ‘game changer’ from traditional thinking. I’ve listened to many vids related to this topic, by far Gabor Mate is the best yet. Shalom my friend.
Thank you, Lucille. It’s an awesome video. Xxx
You are welcome Olga! Lots to digest with interesting threads to explore which I’ve been doing most of the afternoon. Shalom.
An old theologian friend of mine posted on Facebook the following: “For the past week some people have worshipped John McCain. Others despise him. It is time for someone to speak the truth in this matter. John McCain’s soul is either in hell or heaven. Nobody knows which place is his eternal home. This I do know, there is no tertium quid.”
We have not talked in several years! The last time I remember a conversation face to face was when we were talking about the commandments. It was around the “moral commandments” and I told him that I have found none of Yah’s commandments to be “immoral”! He turned and walked away. LOL
BTW, I did comment on his Greek “tertium quid”. I said that I had to look that up since it was Greek to me!
Thanks, Skip, for all you do for us!
Maybe someone can help me ? Just the other day, a conversation came up, the topic was intriguing, to say the least.
What happens in the natural , also happens in the spiritual,. My question which happens first? Would it be the spiritual because God’s word is always first, but to some the natural because they see it.?
Instead of the word “first” try “simultaneous”. We are trained to think of ‘physical’ reality to be somehow separate from ‘spiritual’ reality. Instead, I have found it helpful to think of them as different manifestations of the same reality, just as light waves and particles are different manifestations of the same light.
But perhaps we have already ASSUMED a Platonic reality when we separate physical and spiritual. Is there not just ONE reality manifested as ONE, perceived as many. We can break it apart as the Greeks did, exquisitely, but in the end is it still not ONE unified whole?
“Perceived as many”. Did the Greek world make the mistake of using their perceptions of that fracture as the way reality really is? Which is to say, before sin, were we created to experience (see) them as “ONE”? Is the differentiation between the spiritual and the physical only possible in the sinful heart? Would the restoration of creation in us enable us to ‘see’ (experience) them both as one again?
Would this then explain, as you wrote about somewhere a while ago (perhaps Lewis pointed this out, too), why the ancients made no differentiation between the physical and the spiritual – why the sky and the heaven of God’s throne appeared the same to them? There was no spiritual as opposed to the physical in the ancient world. Interestingly, this is still the case in most indigenous cultures to this day.
Only later did the Greeks tell us that the sky was a physical phenomenon and it was ridiculous to think God actually lived there. Nobody who inherited that Greek legacy, I think, still worships toward the sky as God’s literal throne. Am I getting warm?
Yes, Indeed. Imagine what the world would be like if we “saw” it as ONE, seeing it all connected at once.
Well, I guess for starters we would then see no difference between worship (and prayer) in our everyday activity as opposed to being more ‘spiritual’ (religious) in formally prescribed forms of both? In such a world, it seems, religion (so-called “spirituality”) itself would lose all significance. Oops, I think I may have just stepped in some sacred cow pies!
See my comment to Laurita. Your assumption of “physical” and “spiritual” is already Platonic. Yes, that’s how the West see reality, but is that really the case?
“Here we confront the inadequacy of language. Even to speak about links between mind and body is to imply that two discrete entities are somehow connected to each other. Yet in life there is no such separation; there is no body that is not mind, no mind that is not body. The word mindbody has been suggested to convey the real state of things.” Gabor Mate
Y’all are going to have to forgive me or ignore me, but this topic is highly interesting to me (bet you couldn’t tell). Thanks to Lucille’s link, another lecture by Mate’ (When the Body Says No:Mind/body Unity and the Stress-Disease Connection W/ Dr. Gabor Maté) emphasizes the fact that the gut sends a lot more messages (via the vagus nerve) to the brain than vice versa, and that it supercrunches ALL brain data, in return (astounding statement). He says that if you have a “gut feeling” it is going to be much more right than what your comparatively feeble conscious intellect is going to be working off of – or even your emotions, which he says are an outgrowth of what you happen to be believing (or not).
This makes me wonder more about the emphasis of the ancients on the “belly” (abdominal cavity) as being the better source. Almost nobody (until very recently) thought the brain was important at all; at least until the West went looking for confirmation bias of its insistence that the mind was somehow independent/superior to matter. Even today we have a thousand ways, taught as ‘righteousness’, even, for ignoring the instinctual info about what is actually happening around us in favor of an intellect that can be stuffed/overwritten with unverified data (facts) that may or may not have any corollary in reality: a mistake no gut (which, if I am understanding Mate’ correctly, has access to complete, unedited (unfiltered) experience as well as all brain activity) would ever make.
Laurita, I am right there with you. The wonder and amazement… how intricately we are made, all for his glory! Getting under the covering of our skin is my journey of AWE! Realizing ALL that has made up my life so far, tells a story. As I see it, an ongoing and almost repetitive story from the “beginning”, the garden. Unraveling the mystery of my tiny cosmos, my ‘mindbody’, connects many more dots in the mosaic of my journey. In some ways this understanding soothes the nagging questions of “who am I?” “why am I here?”… so on. Those deep, unreachable wounds of yesteryear,… repressed memories, flood back, the repetitive patterns of brokenness stare me in the face. When I read the Apocalypse of the Patriarchs, I see my life interwoven with their testimonies. They are broken, REALLY broken! No different than you or me. So, we repeat and repeat. What Gabor Mate’ reveals in his life long work (and others who are ‘discovering’ deeper and deeper mysteries of our mindbody), is our ‘humanity or humanness’ from our first breath to our last. It’s the big…”DISCONNECT” experience! I realize I am but a ‘child’ in this process of learning what our creator, Yah, is telling me. It’s there, right there for those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. As someone who, in my broken/misplaced identity, tends to remain in the back of the room, observing rather than participating, I want to throw off the lies and stand in the light, stand in the glory of Yah. It’s coming… oh yeah! Shalom sister… much love to you on your journey with Yah!
Brett,
I hope you don’t mind if I offer my two cents here. Now, please understand that I’m not stating that the following is the intention of those with whom you were speaking and/or you necessarily.
By the way you framed your question I’m reminded of a concept found in Hermeticism called “As Above, So Below”, as interpreted in Ritual Magick, and even in some hyper-charismatic “Christian” circles. It means what happens in the spiritual realm (Above), affects the natural realm (Below). With this in mind, the goal for the adherent is to unite with the Entity or entities in the spiritual realm in order to use this power to change the physical/natural. So, by force of will, one can effect change in the physical by using spiritual forces.
You can see how one author explains it here, under “Magic”: themystica dot com/as-above-so-below/
Also here: wicca-spirituality dot com/essence-of-magick.html
Alarmingly, Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible The Message substitutes “as above, so below” for “on earth as it is in heaven”.
The best lies are always 99.99% Ivory soap (I am not suggesting that this particular lie has that level of truth to it, of course). There is nothing worse than when the truth is used to further the interests of evil. The “devils believe, and tremble”, but they assuredly use that fact to further their motivation to deceive us about what they themselves “believe”.
Laurita,
Yep, the best lies are small diversions from the truth.
Kenneth Copeland exemplifies this “As Above, So Below” (AASB) principle in action, which, as per Word of Faith doctrine, he calls the “force of faith” (think Star Wars). According to Copeland, God Himself used this force in the creation event. You can download a short booklet on it here: kcm dot org/download/file/fid/4427
A corollary to “AASB” is “as within, so without”, and Copeland uses this concept, as well. THIS is what undergirds a LOT of hyper-charismatic “Christian” teaching.
You said it best (with a great example, too).
I think if we were attracted to evil and darkness, all that kingdom would have to do is say “here is evil and darkness” and we would follow. Because we are hardwired for truth and light and life and love, however, we have to be lied to and told “here is truth and light and life and love” with some sort of bait-and-switch attached.
So how do we know if something is true? The best help I got when I went to ask this question is the verse that says that when we obey we will “know of the doctrine”. It also helps me know who else is speaking truth. All I have to do is look at their life and compare that to the great Standard we have been given; the Law and the words of Yeshua; and see if they are in obedience. Whoops! I looked at myself in that mirror and decided I had better shut up!
The only person I know about who “knows” about death and the hereafter
is Yeshua. But I know someone else whose story is compelling.
My dearest best friend on this earth was tragically electrocuted at 18,
suffering 3rd degree burns over 85% of his body. Few ever survive.
He and I often talk about the reality he encountered. He was consciously
awake several feet up over his body which was feverishly being worked on by
the doctors in the operating room. He recalls how strange and odd it was to
actually be looking down at your body. Yet he maintains he was extraordinarily
calm and at peace . . . because of “Who” was with him! God’s presence was beyond
words, he recounts, and his state of being was also beyond articulation. (This often reminds
me of Paul being caught up to the third heaven.) Suddenly, my friend was given a choice.
He was told: “You can come with me, or you can go back to your body.” Being only 18, he opted
for his body and in a split second was back in it. I’m always reminded of my dear friend every time
I read these words of Yeshua: “And if I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back and
take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Just finished reading today’s word. Haven’t checked out any comments yet but wanted to say how much sense this makes to me. I think as humans we have a need for a good feeling story, so we gravitate to and grab at that which provides that good feeling, like a happy ending. Of course, it is a happy ending but just different than we thought. It makes more sense to me that we would all be asleep in Christ and all be resurrected at the same time as well as we who are alive when God comes back for his body. I’m not totally buying all of this because it is a totally new way of thinking for me, but it makes sense and it fits for the most part, except for the teaching about the great cloud of witnesses. Exciting new possibilities of thinking! Thanks for going out there on the ledge for us, Skip!
I want to thank those who gave me some feedback yesterday from my sharing. It’s difficult exposing who you are to others but so necessary for connection. I started rereading the book by Skip and Laurita, “ 31 Days of Transformation”. The second days writing from yesterday was phenomenal to me. Really helped me to understand the whole idea of vulnerability, shame, humility etc. Praying for increased understanding in this regard so that I can experience the freedom that God has offered us. The dynamics aren’t totally clear yet to me but the promise to us is that if any of us lacks wisdom we can ask of God gives to all men liberally! He wants us to be in the”know” so that we can walk in freedom.
Once again, this group is a real asset to that happening! I like the whole idea of being stretched, I know there is a certain amount of discomfort in the stretching, but we are increased in the stretching! Shalom
Paul delves into this in his discussion of the resurrection body (1 Cor 15:35-57). The rubber meets the road at verse 44, in which he juxtaposes the “natural body” (sōma psychikon) with the “spiritual body” (sōma pneumatikon). In the next verse he goes back to Gen. 2:7, acknowledging that Adam became a “living ‘soul’” (psychēn zōsan), while the ‘second Adam’ became a “life-giving spirit”, or “vivifying spirit” (pneuma zō̧opoioun). In verse 47, “the first man [was] from the dust of the earth, the second man from Heaven” (ho prōtos anthrōpos ek gēs choikos, ho deuteros anthrōpos ex ouranou). Then Paul states that, though we are born in the likeness of man, we shall bear the likeness of “the man from heaven” (v. 49).
In verse 50 he juxtaposes the perishable (phthora) with the imperishable (aphthorsia). Paul continues with this through to verse 54 in which he compares the perishable and the imperishable body with, respectively, the mortal (ho thnētos – the adjective ‘subject to death’ [thanatos] substantivized) and immortality (athanasia), culminating in ‘death swallowed up in victory’ (katepothē ho thanatos eis nikos = swallowed up the death in[to] victory).