Apollonius Of Tyana

[AlchoPwn]

I have noted a gap in our collected Forteana, so for the sake of completion I am putting up this piece on Apollonius of Tyana. Not many people have heard of him, and those who have generally do so from comparisons made between Apollonius and Jesus, as they were both 1st Century wonder workers in the Middle East. Some scholars have even put forwards the argument that Apollonius was actually one and the same person as Jesus, but Jesus was the Judaified version of Apollonius.

The supporters of Jesus and Apollonius hated to each other. Jesus’ supporters such as early Christian authors Eusebius, Lactantius, Augustine and John Chrysostom, wrote of Apollonius as a satanic sorcerer full of deception and evil powers. On the other side, Pagans used Apollonius to diminish the stature of Jesus as savior and wonder-worker, as the miracles of Apollonius were very similar in quality and quantity. This animosity between Apollonius and Jesus resumed when the life of Apollonius was again used to attack Christianity and the Church starting the 17th century. To suggest that Jesus and Apollonius were one and the same person seems, therefore, unlikely. On the other hand, their depiction as essentially beared men with a faintly otherworldly look to them does bear some comparison. Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that every depiction of Jesus from the 2nd Century is in fact

Apollonius was born in Tyana where he was educated in the Neo-Pythagorean school of Philosophy. This school was an attempt to reproduce the cult-like conditions of the Pythagorean Academy on Samos, off the Turkish coast of the Aegean. Tyana itself was a town in Cappadocia, and had been the site of an attempted resurgence by the Hittite Empire, that failed with the Bronze Age collapse.

Apollonius was educated with the Neo-Pythagoreans included a period of 5 years silence, which is reminiscent of the Trappists as well as Vipassana meditation.

Apollonius travelled widely in the Ancient World, but primarily he lived and travelled in the East. He went on pilgrimage to India in his younger years, where he defeated shape-changers and demons, while studying astrology and divination with local wonder workers. He travelled extensively in the Parthian Empire, and even went to Egypt and Ethiopia. Periodically Apollonius rails against tyrannical rule from Rome, and is arrested for it, even going to prison on a number of occasions, but fights the charges and wins (unlike Jesus apparently). He performs a great many wonders of healing, primarily dealing with the driving out of various unclean spirits. Apollonius even raised the dead. He eventually dies on Crete at the ripe old age of 100 and subsequently returns to witnesses to show them that there is an afterlife. While accused of being a sorcerer on 2 occasions, the book by Philostratus on the Life of Apollonius tries to show that he was an intensely moral person with divine inspiration rather than daimonic. While Apollonius travelled in Roman Palestine around the time that Jesus would have been active, there is no evidence that they ever met, though other commentators have wondered if they did, and there has been considerable supposition on this point, but it is irrelevant. The book, on the whole is a very interesting travel log of the ancient world, offering many insights into the politics, philosophy, and supernatural beliefs of the time.

There have been a number of theories about the identities of Apollonius and Jesus. It has been suggested that Timothy from the bible is in fact Damis, disciple of Apollonius and if one only removes the “a” that we suddenly have Pollonius or St Paul. This all seems a bit far fetched, but there are marked similarities between the characters of Jesus and Apollonius, and occasionally between Apollonius and Paul, and they were all operating in the same general area around the same time. Christians have closed ranks on the matter and declared Apollonius a demonic fraud btw, despite the fact that his teachings are pretty much as compassionate and wise as Jesus at his best. Apollonius has been called the pantheist (pagan) Messiah, but people wanting to mix cultural metaphors too. Certainly Apollonius is a figure that calls into question the uniqueness of Jesus and both his powers and his message in the ancient world. Accusations about of the Christians deliberately editing Apollonius of Tyana out of history, or making him seem less important of a figure than he was. It certainly can’t hurt to familiarize yourself with some of the writings and draw your own conclusions.

The Life of Apollonius by Philostratus
Wikipedia Entry on Apollonius
Short Pro-Apollonius doco from YouTube

 

[Kondoru]

Was he a Messanaic figure?

There were several Messiahs.

 

[AlchoPwn]

Was he a Messanaic figure? There were several Messiahs.

It is something of a misnomer to call him a messianic figure, but bad scholars do. A messiah is an divinely anointed holy king of Israel, who crosses the line between secular and religious authority, like David and Solomon. It is more realistic to say that when the early Christians pointed to Jesus and said "our guy has amazing magical powers as proof of his divinity" the pantheists would point to Apollonius of Tyana and say "yeah, our gods did that too thru Apollonius recently". Then the Christians would say "Our guy raised the dead" and the pantheists would say "So did Apollonius. Then the Christians would say "our guy was crucified and rose from the dead", to which the pantheists would say, "that only makes your Jesus a convicted felon, our Apollonius won his court cases against long odds, and died a free and revered man."

In essence Apollonius was the pantheist wonder worker whose deeds equalled Jesus, more than a competing Jewish messiah, like, say, John the Baptist. Some pundits have tried to equate Apollonius with Jesus, or Apollonius with St Paul, and suggest they were somehow the same person, misunderstood and mis-relayed by ancient historians. There are certainly similarities between these figures and the stories told about them, but then, some of the parables of Jesus can be attributed to the Buddha centuries earlier, but nobody pretends that Jesus and Gautama Buddha are the same person (unless you want to split esoteric hairs in Buddhist doctrine and suggest that all enlightened figures are part of the same entity).