The Pagan Jesus? - Apollonius of Tyana

in the first century there lived a man who became famous as a kind of wandering Sage he would live a life of celibacy walk around preaching and Performing various Miracles such as driving out demons and even Reviving the dead he was seen by some as a kind of divine man maybe even the son of God and at the end of his life he was taken up to heaven never to be seen again and no I am not talking about Jesus of Nazareth but rather about apollonius of Tiana one of the most fascinating figures from late Antiquity I totally stole that intro from The Scholar Bart ehrmann but in any case apollonius of Tiana was a Pythagorean philosopher who became known for performing Miracles and who lived a life that at least according to the famous stories about his life seemed to mirror in quite a lot of significant ways the famous stories about the life of Jesus Christ in the Christian narratives but who was apollonius what do we know about his life and what can we say about his connection to the most central figure in Christianity [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you the first century was certainly a very eventful period it included events that would come to shape the history of the world the destruction of Jerusalem the fire of Rome and of course the life and Ministry of Jesus of Nazareth whose following would eventually turn into the largest religion in the world we've discussed the life of Jesus in previous episodes and explored the question whether or not he existed as a historical person the scholarly consensus is that Jesus was a real guy who lived in Judea in the first half of the first century there are many reasons for these conclusions but one of the most telling ones in my opinion is that Jesus wasn't really all that unique at least from a certain perspective there were many people like Jesus at that time and in that region people who claimed to be the Messiah people who opposed the Roman authorities who had became famous for walking around performing miracles so why would Jesus in particular be made up if all these other similar people were real not one such figure in which we find many similarities is indeed that of apollonius of Tiana a really colorful character from roughly around Cappadocia and Anatolia and who would wander around the Hellenic and Mediterranean world as a kind of holy man comparisons where Jesus are made all the time on the life of apollonius is often used as an argument against the legitimacy of Christ but things aren't that simple and the subject is often sensationalized and misrepresented so what is actually going on with apollonius who was he well the first thing that we must be aware of is the fact that basically all information we have about this guy and his life comes from later sources in particular the vast majority of our information comes from a text called the life of apollonius of Tiana written in the third Century by a guy called philistratus in other words almost two centuries after he died furthermore since felastrados was a so-called sophist the text is written in a style that is meant to be first and foremost entertaining it contains many shops and stylistic features common from text from this era and many aspects of the text weren't even meant to be historically accurate necessarily but more so entertaining legendary stories in other words much if not all about philistrada's rights needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt now we do have other sources too we have for example letters that are attributed to apollonius himself many of which are uncertain in terms of their authenticity but Scholars argue that some of them may actually date back to the guy himself and these other sources can also tell us more about him or at least the public perception about who he was needless to say it's very difficult to say anything with certainty about the actual historical figure of apollonius and it's much easier to talk about the legendary apollonius Right the apollonius as he is re told or described in the famous accounts like in philistratus's life of apollonius of Tiana but it might be possible to extract some of the information from these more hegeographical accounts to get an idea of who this guy could actually have been so based on these sources that we do have access to what can we say about the life of apollonius well he's primarily remembered as a kind of Wonder working Sage the stories tend to categorize him as a Pythagorean philosopher or to be more accurate a so-called neo-pythagorean philosopher but this doesn't mean that he was a philosopher in the sense of having a bunch of knowledge about things or speculating about the nature of reality as we saw in the episode about Pythagoras being a quote-unquote Pythagorean could mean a bunch of different things apollonius lived in the 1st Century A.D and at this point neopythagoreanism and a philosophical sense had become strongly associated with ideas surrounding numbers that the fundamentals of reality was made up of numbers or mathematics and primarily that the most fundamental principle of reality was that of a monad or the one which would become so Central in late platonism but as we discussed pythagoreanism was also strongly associated with a certain quote-unquote Pythagorean way of life there was a certain way in which you could be your behave like a Pythagorean and while number speculation may have played a role in the thought of apollonius it is not so much ideas that he is associated with but exactly this way of Behaving and being which was characterized as Pythagorean what does this mean well pythagoreans were kind of expected to be something similar to what we would call hippies today they would have long beards long hair and wear patched clothing a Pythagorean would usually follow a vegetarian diet have a certain mysterious way of speaking or not speaking and would often wander around a lot from place to place because Pythagoras himself was associated with miraculous and almost Divine Powers so the later pythagoreans were often expected to be able to perform Miracles or superhuman Feats on account of the incredible power of the secret Pythagorean wisdoms that they held and apollonius basically fits into all of these characteristics he was a age probably a vegetarian with a beard and long hair who walked around the Hellenic world and Beyond doing miraculous things and the stories about his life are amazingly rich and fascinating it is said that even before he was born his mother was visited by the god Proteus to announce the birth of this amazing Sage the birth itself is similarly colorful as his mother is said to have been surrounded by Swans as she was giving birth now this has led many to associate this with the birth of the god Apollo which is also accompanied by Swans and Swan Song and this gives fuel to the idea that apollonius might have been seen by many as a kind of God on Earth or Divine being especially connected to the god Apollo as is of course suggested in his name apollonius although philistratus doesn't say anything about his Divine or non-divine nature in the actual text his birth is also accompanied by other Heavenly signs such as Thunder and other things and already we're starting to see similarities with other Divine figures including of course the story of Christ but we're getting ahead of ourselves nonetheless Apollonia is was probably from Tiana in Asia Minor as his name suggests and grew up to be a kind of philosopher as he studied under some pythagoreans but his fate isn't sealed until he makes a fateful journey to India this journey to India makes up a significant part of the life of apollonius and tells of how he traveled there to meet and study with the brahmanas who were according to him the true Originators of Pythagorean Doctrine in other words instead of studying with pythagoreans back home he went straight to the source not counting Pythagoras himself of course and that is supposedly here that he learns all his amazing wisdom and Powers because when he returns to the West he immediately becomes known as a sage and people start to gather around him for the rest of his life apollonius would wander around the Mediterranean world he would go to Greek cities in Anatolia he went to Egypt and many other places and in all these places he is said to have performed Miracles he would cast out demons he healed the sick he could just like Pythagoras himself miraculously appear in different places at the same time and many other Fantastical stories there are even stories of how he basically raises people from the dead in one very fascinating account he is said to have visited the Oracle of trifonius now this Oracle of trifonius was Infamous for being very very difficult it was a very heavy experience the person who went there would go down and descend into a dark cave and come out almost traumatized by the experience which may or may not have included some psychoactive compounds it probably did there are stories about people who would forget how to laugh for a long period after going down into this cave so it's a serious experience but apollonius however of course seems completely unfazed by the whole thing like the total badass that he is so Apollonia certainly comes off as an incredibly charismatic and colorful character he would have been seen as a pretty strange figure even for his time many of these things that he was associated with made him a very unique figure just the fact that he lived a life of celibacy was seen by most people as a complete mystery especially in pre-christian times right this was just a just this weird thing for someone to do we could sit here all day and just recount stories about apollonius as life because they are all so fascinating in one account he stops one of his students from marrying a vampire he could see into the future the stories are just endless as for his philosophical beliefs so to say we can't really say that much again this wasn't what he was associated with or famous for but being a Pythagorean in the lifestyle we might also assume or guess that he would also have held certain ideas associated with Pythagoras too like the importance of numbers and geometry perhaps reincarnation and the immortality of the Soul some accounts suggest that he would have held an idea of God the Supreme as being Transcendent above the world and therefore not in need of anything from us which we can see from his apparent rejection of animal sacrifice which was a practice that was as you probably know incredibly common in Antiquity most ancient religions had some form of animal sacrifice and Apollonia seems to have rejected this practice and this can be seen for example from one of the texts that is actually attributed to apollonius himself called on sacrifice quotes to him we must not Kindle Fire or make promise unto him of any sensible object whatsoever for he needs nothing even from beings higher than ourselves we should make use in relation to him solely the higher speech I mean that which issues not by the lips and from the noblest faculty we possess and that faculty is intelligence which needs no organ on these principles then we ought not on any account to sacrifice to the mighty and supreme god here we see him having ideas similar to philosophies associated with platonism and pythagoreanism which are so closely connected of course which imagines the Divine as a mind or noose and that our way of communicating with God is through this news and of us somehow ascending to this noetic world of the intellect and through there communicating with God and not through this material world through sacrifices and such things certainly he lived an endlessly fascinating life and his death is equally interesting indeed the death of apollonius is a kind of mystery in itself even philistratus who writes the life of apollonius admits that he doesn't really know what happened to him some stories say that he somehow got into trouble with the Roman authorities and was put on trial but that he suddenly disappeared from the courtroom never to be seen again a common idea among his followers and admirers was that he never actually died but that his soul was taken up into the heavens that he just up and disappeared one day traveling to the higher planes of existence apollonius of Tiana is a figure that baffles us even still today all the stories about his life as written in in the life of apollonius by philistratus are of course Very Fantastical um and as we've seen they also mirror in many ways the life and stories about Jesus Christ in the Christian accounts but how much of this life story of apollonius is actually chew remember philistratus wrote almost two centuries after apollonius lived and he was also a sophist that was primarily interested or concerned with entertaining his audience and for these reasons we should be careful and we should be doubtful of a lot of the information that he gives us in his book did apollonius actually travel to India for example there is of course a possibility but it's also a very convenient way to connect him to his master Pythagoras who is also said to have made the same Journey not to mention the common ancient Trope of traveling to the east to find wisdom and what about all these Miracles and travels in the West in short we can't really know much at all about apollonia's as a historical person even here there are similarities between him and Jesus because these scholarly consensus on them is pretty similar just like with Jesus it is generally agreed that apollonius was probably a real person in some regard but that most of the stories about him are later interpolations it also might be safe to assume that he was a Pythagorean who became famous for wandering around the Hellenic World performing Miracles but much more if even that can't really be said again he fits into a kind of common tendency of wandering miracle workers of this time period even in the Jewish World we have figures like honey the circle jar and perhaps even Shimon by Yokai the famed main character and mythical author of The Zohar as examples of similar figures in the region at the time and at this point I guess we should discuss the elephant in the room which is the huge number of similarities between the life of apollonius and that of Jesus as it is told in the gospels from the miraculous birth accompanied by Divine Science to performing similar Miracles even to his death or non-death there are too many similarities to be a coincidence here right again philistratus's life of apollonius of Tiana which is the source where we get the vast majority of our stories about him was written in the 3rd century not only is this long after the figuring question lived but also after the gospel accounts of Jesus had been written and basically been considered Canon with this in mind many scholars today argue that one of the main purposes of philistratus is writing this work on apollonius was as a kind of response to the Christians who by that point had become quite a powerful community in a way apollonius is constructed as the Pagan version of Christ he's portrayed as doing all the things Jesus did and even more in fact this is a way for philistratus to show that basically look we have holy men like you too your Jesus isn't so special after all so I think the answer lies somewhere in there many of these similarities may have been due to the fact that figures like them were relatively common in the first century and the very particular parallels between them may have been a direct response against the Christians and the biblical accounts by philistratus but we can be thankful for such inter-religious conversation even if it isn't so friendly in this case because it gives us such fascinating stories as that of the life of apollonius of Tiana truly one of the most interesting figures of late Antiquity even without the connections to other more famous people again it's hard to say how much of the stories about MR2 but even if we accept just the bare minimum as authentic we are still left with an incredibly intriguing and inspiring Sage slash Divine man slash philosopher Pythagorean of the kind that makes studying ancient history and philosophy so much fun I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my patrons over on patreon truly none of this would be possible without you and I am so eternally grateful for all your support thanks to your help I am able to do this as a major part of my life studying these things and conveying all this information to the larger audience including you guys all for free basically and and that is truly a blessing so thank you thank you so so so much I would like to give a very special shout out to all my patrons of the saint category and there are a few ones some I've already given a shout out to before and some new faces as well so a special thank you to wasif Khan while Muhammad Thomas Blaze Oleg K ccb6b325 to ee33c84 suhail gokal Faris badawi Mary Carmen ordones while Osiris Marcel White El gamma Khaled Rosa Brian King Emilio Dominguez fawaz Al mubaraki Jordan Friedman sankalp and Yara Amar again thank you thank you so much not just the ones I just mentioned but all of you who support me on patreon and of course all of you out there who are watching commenting and and just engaging with these videos in general it really means so much to me and I'm so happy to be able to provide free educational content it really is a blessing so thank you so much and I will see you next time [Music] thank you

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 383,833

Keywords: The pagan jesus, Apollonius of Tyana, Apollonius, Apollonius vs jesus, early christianity, pythagoreanism, 1st century, wonder working sage, similar to jesus, documentary, who was apollonius, greek philosophy, religion, ancient religion, the real jesus, did jesus exist?, ancient philosophy, paganism, polytheism, Philostratus, the life of apollonius of tyana, platonism, stoicism, ancient history, antiquity

Id: tF1OuTabqEM

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2022