Christianity
Apollonius of Tyana
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, November 23, 1998
Apollonius of Tyana
Apollonius was a Cappadocian, Neo-Pythagorean philosopher, born about the period of the gospels who set up a school at Ephesus. He travelled to India to absorb eastern mysticism, visiting Nineveh and Babylon on the way. He was a true prophet, specialising in prophetic sayings, foreseeing and foretelling many future events, and was therefore styled a prophet. Indeed, Apollonius himself claimed only this skill. He foresaw a plague, and stopped it though it had started. He offended both Nero and Domitian and both accused him of treason. Though imprisoned and in chains he escaped miraculously.
Everything was subject to his miraculous power. Like Padre Pio he achieved the art of bilocation, appearing on the same day in two towns too far apart for a day’s journey. Like Jesus, his birth was foretold by an angel and he was miraculously born of a spotless virgin. His birth was celebrated with joy and singing. As an infant he showed he had divine power and was extraordinarily wise as a child. He cast out angry devils, raised the dead, cured a blind man and a man with a withered hand allowed the lame to walk again.
He was telepathic, read people’s thoughts. The laws of nature obeyed him: he caused a tree to bloom just as Christ made the fig tree wither away. Could speak in many languages he had never learned. He was called the Son of God. and “the image of the Eternal Father manifested in the flesh.” Like Christ, he remained silent. Finally, he ascended into heaven and appeared to occasional people who disbelieved in him.
Apollonius had the highest ideas of purity and holiness, and his religion was one of exalted spirituality. He taught the doctrine of the Inner Life. Like Christ, he was a religious ascetic, and remained celibate, giving what he had to the poor. He religiously opposed dancing and sexual pleasures. Unlike Christ, he ate no animal food, condemned sacrifices, and would wear no woollen garments. He also condemned gladiatorial shows. He eschewed love for wine and women, refrained from artificial ornaments and sumptuous living, and was a high-toned moral reformer, recommending the pursuit of wisdom. His temper was serene and he never got angry.
Crowds were attracted by his great miracles and his wisdom. He was followed by crowds when entering Alexandria, like Christ when entering Jerusalem. When he entered the temple of Diana, a voice from above was heard saying, “Come to heaven.” He disputed with and vanquished the wise men of Greece and Asia, as Christ did the learned doctors in the temple. “A beauty shone in his countenance,” which reminds us of Christ’s transfiguration and “the words he uttered were divine.” Apollonius, like Jesus, performed many miracles like exorcisms of demons and the raising to life of a dead girl.
He rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples after having been resurrected. Like Jesus, he even told his disciple Damis where to meet him:
Go to Dicaiarchia (Puteoli)… After you have greeted Demetrios there, set out to sea, where Calypso’s island lies. There I will appear again to you.
At this Damis asks, ”Will you be alive, or what?” Laughing, Apollonius replies, ”From my point of view, alive, but from your point of view, revived (cf Mk 14:28). During a court hearing in the Imperial Judgement Hall in Rome, the death of Apollonius was reported as: ”He disappeared.” Philostratos seems to want to create the impression that Apollonius did not die at all, like Romulus. He left the courtroom in Rome before midday and appeared (ephane) to Demetrios and Damis in Dicaiarchia near Naples in the afternoon, an impossible distance to cover in a short time. After that he showed himself to his disciples and the public over a longer time, conversing with them in Olympia for forty days. During this time he had little food, but gave the impression of being a human being with a human body. Demetrios expressed doubt, and Apollonius stretched out his hand saying:
Take hold of me. If I slip out of your grasp, then I am just a phantom from the kingdom of Phersephattes… However, if I withstand your touch, then go and convince Damis that I am alive and have not discarded my body.
Their doubts dispelled, they stood up, took hold of him, and embraced him. Apollonius’s activity came to an end with a kind of ascension into heaven. He entered a temple and vanished, but immediately the voice of singing virgins proclaimed in solemn archaic (Dorian) Greek: “Rise up from the earth! Rise up to heaven! Rise up!” After this departure Apollonius appeared once more, this time in a dream to an unbelieving disciple to convert him.
We know all this because at the start of the third century, the dowager empress, Julia Domna, second wife of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (reigned 193-211 AD), gathered about her in Rome a group of philosophers and other intellectuals known through the writings of one of their number, Philostratus, the Athenian. Flavius Philostratus studied at Athens and joined the circle of Julia Domna around 205 AD. On her death he settled in Tyre, eventually dying himself in 245 AD
Julia Domna instructed Philostratus to write a biography of Apollonius, possibly to counter the influence of Christianity on Roman civilization, although Julia’s nephew, Alexander Severus, set up statues of great men in his private chapel, among whom were Jesus, Orpheus and Apollonius. From the biography, Apollonius is a figure like the miracle working Jesus of Christianity. Many people were impressed by his history and a cult of Apollonius began. To honour and worship Apollonius, they erected shrines and other memorials.
Parallels run all the way through the stories of Jesus and of Apollonius. Both were:
- itinerant miracle workers and teachers
- rejected by townspeople and brothers who later became more favorable toward them
- accompanied by an inner circle of disciples
- credited with prophecy, exorcisms, healings, raising of the dead
- makers of severe moral demands on their hearers
- speakers in oracular style, teaching with authority
- in conflict with the established clergy at temples they visited to try to reform
- accused of practicing magic
- charged and tried by Romans for sedition and magic
- subject to legend as children of god, with precocious childhoods, demons in the wilderness, miracles, escape from actual or expected death, ascent to heaven, appearances for the conversion of unbelievers.
The question naturally arises, “How came the histories of Apollonius and Christ to be alike?”. “Was one plagiarized from the other?” Christians claim that most of Philostratus’s life is fiction, no more than a copy of the gospel accounts of Jesus, having been written 70 years after the gospels were generally accepted within Christendom. They seem quite unable to see that the life of Apollonius and those of Jesus in the New Testament are equivalent writings—devotional works aimed at impressing potential punters.
Philostratos was writing in the first half of the third century, but plainly was not copying the gospels because there are conspicuous differences. The similarities are due to Philostratos having known and used the same body of narrative traditions as the evangelists. Though Philostratus had these general sources, he based his biography of Apollonius on the work of a disciple and contemporary of Apollonius, Damis of Nineveh. Resurrection narratives follow certain patterns. Whoever initially cast into words the reports of Jesus’s resurrection, they were at home in traditions of non-Palestinian origin. It tends to confirm that they were not Palestinian Jews, but Hellenized Jews.
Philostratus laboured for Paganism to sustain it against the assaults of the Christians, so it seems odd that he should assign its doctrines to his hero and adopt as his hero’s the miracles of the sect he opposed. If he liked them so much, why would he have not joined the Christians and saved himself a lot of writing? As we saw above, Alexander Severus was happy to accept both Christ and Apollonius. Why should Philostratus have been so two-faced?
Eusebius was concerned at the popularity of the life of Apollonius by Philostratus, and felt it his duty to denigrate it, but he appreciated that he was in a tricky situation. He could not merely pooh-pooh the miracles of Apollonius because the miracles of Jesus had no better authority, and he would be undermining them too. Indeed, Jesus was a man who appeared to consort with prostitutes and riff-raff, drank wine excessively, feasted prodigiously and died as a criminal, whereas Apollonius was abstemious and saintly and had been honoured as a god in his own life. Eusebius thought he was on rough ground and based his attack merely on discrepancies in the accounts of the life of Apollonius. He accused Apollonius of being a sorcerer, and his admirers of being ignorant quacks and liars!
You have to accept that Eusebius had a brass face and a sense of humour. Philostratus was a noted intellectual of his day, a member of the court of a philosophically inclined queen and noted for his love of truth. The New Testament takes a pride in the ignorance of the apostles, the main one of whom is a self-confessed liar. The most common contemporary accusation against Jesus was that he was a magician, and the gospel accounts are chock full of inconsistencies. Anyone who claims to mend souls can only be a quack.
The anti-Christs spoken of in the New Testament often were, according to impartial history, noble, honest and righteous men. Apollonius could have been one of them. Their offence was to prove themselves equal, if not better, spiritual examples for people as the divine Christ. When their followers claimed miracles for them, there is as much proof they wrought them as that Christ did. Christian writers, like Eusebius, did not seek to deny the miracles of holy men like Apollonius but ascribed them to demonic possession. Christ performed miracles by divine power, they by the power of the devil. No one bothers to explain how they can distinguish one from the other.
Nobody now knows whether the writings of Damis preceded the gospels or not. If they did, then the Christian books could have been deliberately modelled on the work of Damis, and not the reverse as the Christians claim. Apollonius of Tyana got a start on Jesus in the recording of his miracles because the gospels were not written down until a half century after the death of Jesus but the record of Damis of Nineveh was contemporary with Apollonius.
If the gospels, written by disciples of Jesus, are to be believed, why are the stories written by the disciple of Apollonius not to be believed?
