bob_the_god

I recently purchased a very old history book, more like a school textbook it was first published in the 20's by H.W Van Loon. It is quite christian in tone and treats exodus as a historical event but all of the book is reliable, other than the stuff directly based on the Bible and that is not uncommon. There is a chapter on Jesus and it does not have any writings but it has an apparent letter from a Roman army physican called Esculapius Cultellus who describes a meeting with Paul, and he states that he had been making a disturbance of himself in 62 ad, and how the slaves were getting excited about it. There is then a letter from the mans nephew who went to find out more as he was a captain with the VII Gallic Infantry who describes how Pilatus with a 'good reputation' condemmed Jesus to death, after some people had said that his inadivity ment that he was 'fallen victim to the teachings of Nazerance'. This is supposedly what an old man called Joseph told him crying naturally.

That is just a very vague summary but this book's facts are reliable and it does not do anything like fabricate things on purpose this, has anyone heard of this letter before?.I could type out the whole thing but that would be too much of a trial.

David Bowden

<a href="http://www.apollonius.net/correspondence.html" target="_blank">http://www.apollonius.net/correspondence.html</a>

This links to a page seemingly directly related to the text in question. Hope it's useful to you; I found it using Google and haven't read over it myself.

-Wanderer

Toto

Your letter is <a href="http://www.apollonius.net/correspondence.html" target="_blank">here</a> on a site devoted to Apollonius of Tyana.

The entire book appears to be on line <a href="http://www.bookvalley.com/collections/mankind/index.html" target="_blank">here</a>, for reference.

It sounds like legendary fiction. Why would you assume it is at all reliable?

spin

I just did a search for this name:

Aesculapius Cultellus

and came up with zilch other than the Loon book and someone citing from it.

No mainline Christian collection of early non-Christian references knows the source, so I'd say it's totally forgetable, as also indicated by Toto.

Kosh

C'mon, look at the name! It's like straight
out of Monty Phython's "Life of Bryan"...

Toto

On <a href="http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?isbn=0871401568&kids=y" target="_blank">the Barns and Nobel review page</a> this book is described as a "historical novel" and a tale for children 11-14.

van Loon also wrote historical fiction where his characters were able to invite (dead) historic characters to dinner for discussion.

Aesculapius of course refers to the god of medicine, and Cultellus is a small knife (presumably referring to a scalpel). The name of the soldier in the later letter is Gladius (like gladiator, get it?)

I don't think we're dealing with straight history here.

bob_the_god

thanks, i simply thourght that the book was fairly reliable, ok it had nice diagrams!, and i had not read about it before. I did not expect it to be reliable but it could have been relatively early.

Van Loon by name Van Loom by nature it seems!