 So, Dr. Litwet, thank you again for joining me. Absolutely, Jason. So glad to be here. Awesome. So last time we touched on barbarian wisdom and antiquity, and this time I actually want to focus on something that's kind of adjacent to that, which is the allegorical reading and interpretation of the Greek myths, and especially in a figure named Cornutus, who is a very important figure in the development of the allegorical method. You know, this is something that started with Stoics. It was adopted by middle and then later Neoplatonism. And finally, and most importantly, through figures like Clement of Alexandria, Origen, you find this in Christianity. So, go ahead and tell us a little bit more about Cornutus. Well, first of all, for those who are interested in Native African theology, Cornutus is from North Africa, and he is a Latin speaker, and moves to Rome as a grammarian and makes his name known, perhaps in the larger family of Seneca. And he writes a wonderful book, which now has a beautiful translation from George Boy's Stones, which I can either recommend, which I believe Boy's Stones just calls it Greek theology, but we'll get that. Yeah, Greek theology. So basically, Cornutus writes for those whom he wants to properly interpret the gods. So he's a first century figure, is exactly contemporary with the likes of Seneca. He's active in the reign of Claudius and Nero. And so he's also contemporary with these, you know, so-called apostles, probably a generation or so before the Gospel writers, and at least 100 years before the so-called Christian apologists. But what's interesting about Cornutus is he is trying to increase piety in his audience. And I think Christian apologists will point out later, about a century later, is that the Greek gods, they do some nasty things, and they appear in Homer and Hesiod, especially in somewhat embarrassing ways. So for instance, Zeus says that he one time strung up his wife with a set of anvils and strung her up, and essentially fixed her in midair, as if she's sort of like in cruciform shape. And that's just not a very nice thing to do. And then Hera plays a nasty trick on Zeus by grabbing the girdle of Aphrodite, and basically making her husband so horny he can't stop from having sex with Hera. And, you know, he creates a cloud in order to protect that sight from anyone else. And then the very probably the most famous episode is Hephaestus sets a trap for his wife, Aphrodite, and her adulterous lover, Ares, by setting up an invisible system of wires in the bed in which they are making love, which catches them in the act, quite literally in the act, completely naked. And all the gods are invited to see these gods, these two adulterous gods, who are in a sense frozen in the act of orgasm, trapped by invisible wires, and everybody laughs their heads off. So these are kinds of stories that Christians later took offense at. And obviously Cornutus is part of a long tradition where he's explaining, and to some extent defending, what the true meaning of these stories is. Because his theory is that the divisors of these poems and the divisors of language itself were sages back in antiquity who told these somewhat salacious stories to entice a kind of superficial audience. But inside these stories they embedded enigmas and hints of deeper theological truths, and they did so by using various names and words, so that the very names of the deities embed information about their true character. So Cornutus's point is that on the surface level of what happens in the story isn't really the theological meaning of the story and isn't really the deep meaning which the writers of the story want you to pick out. And Cornutus then sets up a guide where he goes through almost all of the 12 Olympian deities and he uses etymology to show you the deeper meaning of who these gods really are, why they're worthy of worship, and how you should really understand the poetry. Absolutely. You mentioned George Boystone's translation of Greek theology. He also wrote a really fascinating book called Post-Hellenistic Philosophy, a study of its development from the Stoics to Origin, and in that book he focused on Cornutus in one of the early chapters, and he said something really fascinating, just touching upon what you were talking about in terms of how the wisdom was transmitted in allegory. I quote, he says, Cornutus believed that the philosopher's wisdom had been transmitted through and is handled by the poets as the early Stoics had argued. So like you said, he's in a tradition that kind of goes far back, and he's taking this up, and I think it's also important to mention that he was a contemporary with a person that we met in our previous video, Karimon. Cornutus and Karimon inherited from Posidonius a similar allegorical method of reading text. And like I said earlier, not only did the Stoics latch onto this, but it didn't really catch headway until later on in the Middle Platonic milieu, but then when it really latched on, you find that with figures like Porphyry and then later with Origin, and they just really take that and run with it. So is it fair to say that this is kind of a common koine, so to speak, for lack of a better term at this time? Well, it's invented by religious believers to defend religious myth. Again, the question is commonly asked, did the Greeks believe in their myths? And the answer is yes and no, because they could read at multiple levels. You know, they didn't believe the embarrassing and weird stuff literally happened, at least intellectuals didn't, but they did believe that there was on some level a secret and edifying meaning that could be used by those who are wise, because it is those who are wise and sages who originally came up with the names of the gods because they had access, more direct perceptible access to the truth. And it turns out that the Christians more or less borrow and adapt this entire scheme because they, when they, at least among the so-called orthodox, when they, I adopt the Hebrew Bible, they get a whole raft of embarrassing stories. You know, the daughters of Lot secretly having sex with their father in a cave thinking that the world has ended when it really hasn't. You know, the rape of a woman in Judges who was raped to death and Amnon's rape of his half-sister. I mean, think about it, like the Christian Bible is full of stories just like what the Greeks had to deal with in Homer and Hesiod. So they both had to adapt those same techniques to say that, okay, there's a sort of divine wisdom in these stories, even though the superficial meaning is atrocious, right? They're creative enough to defend their own religious mythology, whether on the historical or the allegorical level. And if they're on the allegorical level, then they are seeking for the deep meat of the theological truths, truths that are actually spoken about God. Absolutely. And yeah, it's in my estimation that Cornutus is definitely a figure that more people, especially people who study early Christianity and antiquity, should really know about. So where exactly can somebody begin with that journey? Yeah, or a modern believer in pagan religion, because what Cornutus is doing, and I think it's useful for all westerners to realize this, is that Cornutus is doing what any religious believer would do today, that is defending their own cultural lore from the cultured despisers, who will later become the Christians. And then the Christians themselves have to defend their cultural lore against their cultural despisers. And seeing them think on their feet is really important, because these gods are just as much part of the western tradition as, you know, Yahweh. I mean, Zeus and Yahweh, they've always had their issues, but their devotees have done the best that they can to interpret the cultural lore in such a way as to bring out those deeper theological truths, which are, in most cases, something like ethical, moral, and theological truths, which, you know, the Christians didn't invent. It was the Stoics and Platonists who got to that hundreds of years before them. Well said. So yeah, in my estimation, nobody does that better than Plutarch and Isis on Osiris, and anything by Philep. So everybody check that out. Everybody go check out Dr. Litwa on Patreon, check out his channel. He has a mystery course right now with MythVision. We'll put a link in the description. Dr. Litwa, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me. Absolutely, Jason. Thanks so much for having me.