mountainman

Apollonius of Tyana and His Historicity

An article by Maria Dzielska.

Is anyone aware of where this article was
originally published? It has a fascinating
reference to an inscription:

There is a paper at JSTOR about this inscription:
An Epigram on Apollonius of Tyana
C. P. Jones
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 100,
Centennary Issue (1980), pp. 190-194
doi:10.2307/630745
This article consists of 6 page(s).



Best wishes,



Pete Brown

Cheerful Charlie

Alright, you convinced me. I have decided to be an Apolloni-ist. Some place around here, I have a copy of The Life Of Apollianus, I'll have to dig it out and re-read it.

Another good example is Lucian's Alexander the miracle mongerer, a fraud who has left us quite a bit of stuff, coins, statues and other goodies.

http://www.livius.org/gi-gr/glykon/glykon.html

It is interesting that Apollonius is said to be able to absolve men of their sins, as per claims about Jesus.

http://klio.uoregon.edu/tx/re/kooks&quacks.htm
We also know that the cult that grew up around Apollonius survived for many centuries after his death. An inscription from as late as the 3rd century names him as a sort of pagan "absolver of sins," sent from heaven (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., 1996). The emperor Caracalla erected a shrine to him in Tyana around 215 A.D (Dio Cassius, 78.18; for a miraculous display of clairvoyance on the part of Apollonius, see 67.18). According to one account, the ghost of Apollonius even appeared to the emperor Aurelian to convince him to stop his siege of Tyana, whereupon he also erected a shrine to him around 274 A.D. (Historia Augusta: Vita Aureliani 24.2-6).

CC

mountainman

I cant help responding to this, as IMO Lucian was forged ***
with respect to his Alexander and Peregrine. But setting
that aside for the moment, I suggest you have a wade
though on online (pdf) dissertation entitled:

BURNING KNOWLEDGE”:
STUDIES OF BOOKBURNING IN ANCIENT ROME.

Check the footnote [36] out at page 103, in regard to Lucian.

"Robert Lane Fox hypotheses that Lucian's reference to
Alexander's connections to Apollonius, mentioned an attempt
to discredit him **** , may in fact hint at his legitimacy."


And as an extra point to eventually be considered ...


*** Eusebius had the motivation and resources
to forge an extra story by Lucian (Alexander)
and substantially interpolate "Peregrine".



Best wishes,



Pete Brown

gurugeorge

I've seen what seems to me a plausible analysis of Lucian by one of the Dutch Radicals, which shows that "Peregrinus" was a pisstake of Marcion.

mountainman

IMO the common element between Lucian, Pliny, Tacitus,
Suetonius, Marcus Aurelius, Origen (Hebrew Text), Galen,
and Porphyry, is that these authors had existing works,
which were subjected to fabrication by means of various
measures of interpolation.

(In the case of Porphyry,
perhaps after his death, additional works (against
Constantine's christianity) were forged. This claim
does have an attestation in the ancient histories.)


Perhaps there were other "unknown authors' works" used
in other areas of "the fabrication of the Galilaeans". The
entire set of christian bishops, apologists and writers,
were multi-column tabulated forgeries. Celsus is also
threaded in for good measure to the army of authors.

Ammonius Saccas got claimed by ancient history and
the field of biblical history has a duplicately named
Ammonius, sketched by Eusebius, who did not quite
make the grade, as both "a christian" and "historical"
without a bifurcation of identity.


I have searched high and low and cannot find one single
epigraphic attestation to "christianity" that would pass
muster as being "unambiguous". Ancient history is silent
on the pre-nicene epoch.

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

There are a number of ONLINE versions around now.
This resource page may be useful.

By far, the best resource that I have seen to date is
the summary article by Maria Dzielska referenced.

I have only one disagreement with the author's assessment,
in the reference:

I am of the opinion that when Philostratus wrote, the new testament
had not yet been conceived. The question is, from a scientific
perspective, how can be use the evidence available to the field
of ancient history to determine which position has the greater
authenticity.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

mountainman

Translation of inscription by the author of the above
JSTOR article is as follows:

'This man, named after Apollo,
and shining forth from Tyana,
extinguished the faults of men.

The tomb in Tyana (received) his body,
but in truth heaven received him
so that he might drive out the pains of men
(or: drive pains from among men) .'

Notably Eusebius calumnifies Apollonius, and,
between his military victory of Sept 324 and
June 325 CE, Constantine's entrained christians
moved in to the eastern temples, in some cases
executing the priests, in other cases raising
the sanctuaries and temples. Robert Lane Fox
highlights this despotic intolerance ...

FOX:
Persecution of the Old Religions
p.666: "The postscript to his Oration at Antioch was to be rather more robust:
torture of pagans "in authority in the city" so that they admitted religious fraud.

[Editor: Citation required here.]


p.671: The list of pagan sites to have suffered under Constantine:

Mambre: a site of great holiness in the Hebrew testament

Jerusalem: shrine of Aphrodite, stood on the site of the crucifixion and sepulchre.

Aphaca: an offensive Phoenician centre of sacred prostitution.

Didyma: Christians seized a prophet of Apollo and had him tortured.

Antioch: Christians seized a prophet of Apollo and had him tortured.

Aigai, in Cilicia: christians raised the shrine of Asclepius.

p.672: "In the early 340's, we find the first surviving Christian texts which asks for something more,
the total intolerance of pagan worship." [FN:25] - Firmicus, De Errore 16.4

[Editor: After the rule of Constantine things went from bad to worse.
See the list of citations from "Demolish Them!",
published in Greek, Athens, 1990, by Vlasis Rassias.]

FOX: "Why were these latter shrines singled out so promptly?

(1) At Aigai, the pagan wise man Apollonius was believed
to have "turned the temple into an Academy":
this temple, or a nearby shrine, had been honoured
with a fine pagan inscription
in honour of "godlike" Apollonius,
perhaps as recently as the reign of Diocletian.

[Editor: This is an intriguing citation and led me to the
JSTOR article re: the epigram - above).]

(2) Porphyry had compiled books of Philosophy from Oracles
which publicised texts from Didyma.

(3) At Antioch, prophets were duly tortured and obliged to confess "fraud".
These reprisals are the counterpart to two written works by Eusebius,
his polemic against the books on Apollonius and his "Demonstrations of the Gospel,"
which disproved Apollo's oracles by quoting them against themselves.

[Editor: Constantine puts a big scare into the opposition religions.]

p.673: "Constantine, said Eusebius, sent his emmisaries into
"every pagan temple's recess and every gloomy cave." [FN:28] - Eus., V.C. 3.57.4

"Intolerance had never been rooted in the long history of pagan and religious thought.
After Constantine, many pagans could still extend to the new worship
a tolerance which its exclusivity refused to extend to them."

"Eusebius tells how his [Constantine's] agents broke up divine statues
and exhibited their stuffing as mere rubbish." [FN:30] - Eus., V.C. 3.54.6

p.674: The age of Constantine has been aptly described as "age of hiatus":
we can carry this notion to our major theme, the "presence of the gods".

p.679: "In the early fourth century, two aging Christian authors
had shown possible ways of "defusing" the words of the pagan gods.
Eusebius had dismissed them as demonic and used them to refute their authors,
whereas Lactantius had quoted them with Christian improvements
and claimed them as proofs of the Christian faith ... In the first
flush of the "new empire", it must have been on the christians' initiative
that torture was applied to Apollo's prophet at Didyma and to others at Antioch,
"people taken from the magistrates of the city".


Eusebian sentiment ...

They were not humble, ignorant people, Eusebius asserted proudly:
they were people of "wonderful and noble philosophy",
at Antioch civic notables, at Didyma a "prophet and philosopher",
last of the long line of cultured voices who had kept philosophy
running in oracles, the voices of Polites, Theophilus, Macer and
the rest. [FN:48] - Eus. P. Ev. 4.135C-136A.


Says FOX:

Philosophic oracles had begun when Apollo's wisdom
advanced with the culture of the prophets.
They ended when christians tortured the prophets.
who had recently helped to torture them too. [ED: DISPUTED]


[Editor: We dispute the hypothesis of pre-nicene christians !!!
If we were to know a tree by its fruit,
Christianity is not known for its toleration and peace.

Our thesis is that christianity did not exist before the rise of Constantine.
That the christian pre-nicene history is a fabrication and a pseudo-history.
That the christian persecutions and martydoms were part of the fictions.
Christianity began aggressively with Constantine's appearance.
And then within the fourth century, became itself supreme.]

mountainman

Here is a picture of the inscription to Apollonius.
HISTORICITY INDEX is increased substantially.



Notably Ammianus was non christian.

andrewcriddle

The inscription (according to the JSTOR article) probably dates from around 300 CE.

Although I agree there was a historical Apollonius the inscription is probably too late to be real evidence.

Andrew Criddle

mountainman

Hi Andrew,

What do you mean by "probably too late to be real evidence"?
Evidence of what? What precisely is your assumption?

Best wishes,


Pete Brown