Appendix E — Concerning the Early Gnostics and Apollos and Apollonius and John
With the bitter and raging disputes, regarding the writing of the Apocalypse; whether John followed the Gnostics or the Gnostics followed John; whether John was the son of Zebedee, whose mother once pleaded that he might sit at the right hand of Christ throned in his earthly kingdom, or whether this John was a younger man; whether the Gospel was written before or after the Apocalypse; whether the “Beast” symbolized a dragon of approaching universal anarchy, or Rome’s brute power, or the goddess Roma in the Temple; whether Onesimus, the runaway slave, was Onesimus, the young bishop of Ephesus; whether the passing of Apollos is legend or fact; why a man like Apollos, of whom the contemporary literature of the day is full of references, was so completely ignored by all the early writers of the church except three or four, the last story of this volume as fiction has nothing to do.
The object has been to shun controversy as a smoke screen concealing facts under prejudice and ignorance, and use the story only to throw a flashlight on early conditions; but for students, who wish to come to their own conclusions and not have other people’s conclusions rammed down their throats, a few references will be given, which can be followed up.
First, it was self-evident to all the Christian communities by the last quarter of the first century A.D.—in which the story is timed—that Christ had not come to set up a glorified earth kingship. Rather, he had come to transmute the earth kingdom into a régime so in harmony with His own Unseen Kingdom that it would transmute the world into a New Heaven and a New Earth. This was the Christian’s job, first in getting himself cleansed of sin, second in working for humanity, and it was now apparent it was a long job stretching down the centuries; so the writings of John, instead of being “close ups” as the movies would put it, are telescopic flashes back to the night of time and creation and telescopic flashes forward to the eternity of soul and universe; and the pivot of the telescope is the little flash between past and future called “now”; and the eye looking through the telescope to past and future is John’s.
Here are a few historic facts as guide posts.
The fall of Jerusalem had driven the Christians from Antioch to Ephesus, for reasons already given—Antioch was overrun with the Army. While Ephesus was not a great commercial center like Corinth, it was the third city of the civilized world as a center of learning, worship, culture, wealth. Rome ranked first. Athens came next, Ephesus and Alexandria next.
From the time the goddess Roma was set up, the temples began to be deserted; and this infuriated Rome, who hoped to see the new deity unify her crumbling empire in a new cohesion. The Nero persecutions of 64 to 68, which had been the diversion of a cruel madman, now became the set policy of the Empire under Domitian, and ran a terrible course from 81 to 96 A.D. The Christians were dispersed, but they were not immune. Again and again we find that Demetrius, the silversmith, who gave Paul such trouble as related in the Acts, called to confer in Rome as to the restoration of the old religions. See the Life of Apollonius. The falling away from the temples not only alarmed the Empire, but dislocated trade. It hurt the silversmith’s trade from Ephesus to Damascus and cut off an enormous yearly market for the cattle and sheep of sacrifice. The pocket nerve was touched; and the cruelty of an acute anger was mingled with the most diabolical obscene falsehoods to destroy the new Christian cult.
Nothing disloyal could be proved against John; so his banishment to Patmos was revoked. Frightful volcanic fires could be seen from Patmos during John’s stay there, and the whole Mediterranean rang with the horror of the Vesuvius eruption. We may find tinges of this in his Apocalypse. See Peters’ Bible and Spade, Beckwith’s Apocalypse, Turner’s Early Church History, Malden’s New Testament, and the other authorities mentioned in former supplementary chapters. Irenæus says John settled and lived in Ephesus till the reign of Trajan. He is supposed to have come back from Patmos to Ephesus and helped in a training school for Christian workers there. Ephesus was the very center of Platonic and Gnostic learning at this time; and the Gnostic beliefs of the “Logos” or “Word” run all through John’s writings. There is a curious difference in John’s attitude to Rome in the Gospel and in the Apocalypse. The former seems to counsel rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s; in the latter, the Seven Hilled City is a Beast. Why? The only answer is a guess that hardly needs to be given. The martyrdom of the Christians had begun. Clement refers to the recall of John from Patmos after Domitian’s death. Nor could anything disloyal be proved against Apollonius. Though he openly said that he detested “tyrants,” no king need put that cap on unless it fitted; but as he frequented the temples and ignored the goddess Roma, he was considered dangerous and so was tried on the charge of having torn a boy’s entrails out for the purposes of divination. The charge was ridiculous and could not be proved, and Apollonius came back to Ephesus and frequented Crete, where Titus, the Greek and youthful Christian, had become Christian bishop by 65 A.D. The fact that the young Titus would work in the Christian Church and the aged Apollonius in the pagan temples may explain the hostility or silence of some of the church fathers to the Eastern Sage. This seems to me a more rational explanation than the Theosophists’ charge that the Christians were jealous of Apollonius as a rival in the eyes of the populace to Christ. Apollonius is never spoken of as “a rival to Christ.” He is spoken of as a worker of miracles, which could not be denied, and as a clairvoyant “see-er” of events which came to pass, like the reign of Vespasian, the deterioration of Domitian and the assassination of the tyrant. If Apollos be Apollonius—and I decline to give even an opinion on that dispute, in spite of dates, abbreviations and events pointing to only one “Apollos” sage in this era—Paul settled the matter when he said one “planted” and the other “watered” and “God gave the increase.” The rivalry was rather between Paul and Apollos—and it was a rivalry of fanatic followers, not leaders. Let us not blame the followers too harshly. Paul had made it his life work that Christianity should not be an off-shoot of Judaism but an all-embracing world religion. Apollos still preached in the pagan temples and the Christians may have feared dilutions of the pure truths with such errors as the fleshy Nicolatians, whom John denounced; if the flesh was only a garment, then it didn’t matter much what sins stained the garment—you could lay it off. Therefore liberty ran riot in the libertine and visions ran to medium frenzies. Some of these trance frenzies were of such a nature as cannot be told. In one, the initiate to the mysteries was placed naked and drugged under a high altar, on which was slain a bull. The aspirant to enter the mysteries had to open his mouth and drink of the hot blood as it poured down on him—an almost parallel ceremony with the Ancient Aztecs, where the blood was human.
To revert to the historic facts on Ephesus—it was a dream city of inexpressible beauty, basking in a wonderful sunlight between mountain and sea, with white alabaster colonnades—one hundred and twenty columns there were across the face of the Diana Temple, which was over four hundred feet long and two hundred broad—at the entrance to the Temple, to the great hippodrome reported to seat 50,000 people, to the public square park in the heart of the city, to the baths, to the circus, to the fountains. The city occupied an area of five by three miles. Coming out of the Mediterranean, ships ascended the dredged Cayster River, to a square basin landlocked and surrounded by a magnificent stone parapet. On one side were the wharfs and docks; on the other the broad steps up to Diana’s Temple. The city proper, with its public park, faced the end of the basin of the sea through more magnificent elaborate colonnades. In fact, it might be said there was neither an ungraceful nor inartistic architectural line in all Ephesus. The city might have been dedicated and consecrated to beauty. The Diana goddess was not the huntress as told in the story. The huntress had been degraded first into an Eastern Astarte presiding over the productive powers of the earth, and finally still farther degraded to the sensuous rites, which at this time were running a sort of delirious frenzied riot in the world. Cressets of naphtha petroleum oils, and asbestos soap or oils may be used to explain much of the apparent magic of altar fires that never went out and priests who could handle flame without harm; and all the magic was concentrated on the materialistic aim of obtaining revenues from the enormous traffic that passed through Ephesus to and from Asia to Rome; and the great Diana festivals were at Ephesus in spring. Earthquake and war demolished ancient Ephesus. The Diana statue was carried off to France. The stones of the beautiful Ionic columns went to build churches in Sienna and Rome. The ruins of Ephesus by 1888, when the archæologist’s spade had been busy, were a melancholy epic in crumbling stone.
Half a century ago, the legends of underground chambers in Crete were regarded as myths. To-day, we know those myths were founded on historic fact and the spade has dug up ancient Crete culture. Phillimore ridicules Flinders Petrie for accepting the story of the earthquake and storms on the night of Apollonius’ passing from human ken in the Temple at Cydonia, Crete. Yet there is not a sailor of the Mediterranean, who does not know the superstition of all Cretans at the time of the spring and fall equinoctial gales. The Island trembles and vibrates to the storms. Cretans say to this day—and there are 300,000 of them believe it—that Crete was created by a volcanic blow-up—a remnant of the submerged Atlantis—and is very delicately balanced on subterranean rocks. When the gales come, it trembles on this balance. Knossus marks the ruins of the Palace of Minos of 3000 B.C. Greek hermits still frequent the mountains of the Island and live the tranquil life of the ancient contemplative Gnostic.
Of Patmos, little is to be said except that it is not so large as the length and breadth of New York City, and was a very short run by sail from Ephesus, ships usually pausing to and from Crete. In the story, Onesimus paused on his way back. The ecstasy of the Revelation on Patmos would to-day be called “a glimpse of cosmic consciousness”; and there is no use going into the dispute whether the vision covered only the few months John was exile on Patmos, or a series of years beginning at the fall of the Holy City and extending down to the reign of Domitian, when persecution compelled the Christians to use cypher in many of their communications; and “the Beast” may have been symbolized with emperor worship, or the impending anarchy.
The story takes for granted that Onesimus, the runaway slave, was Onesimus, the young bishop. This is a disputed point. I don’t care to take up the dispute. It is nonessential to the aim of the story; but if the question of his age be asked it is easily answered. If Onesimus were a young man of twenty with Paul in Rome in 64 to 68, then by 86 to 96 A.D., when John is supposed “to have fallen asleep in Ephesus,” he would still be a young man in his forties to preside over the destinies of Christianity at the very pivotal point in Grecian Asia.
For those who like to worry disputes out as a dog worries a cat, or a cat worries a mouse, the references of the early fathers to Onesimus may be quoted:
In Ignatius’ Letters to the Ephesians, which Archbishop Usher of Oxford, 1644 (see Evelyn’s Journals), issued, and later scholars regarded as authentic letters, though corrupted in texts—when Ignatius himself was on his way to martyrdom in Rome, are found the words—“I received, therefore, in the name of God, your whole multitude in Onesimus... who, according to the flesh is your bishop... whom I beseech you... that you strive to be like unto him... and blessed be God... you are worthy... enjoy such an excellent bishop.” Then he goes on to speak of “Burrhus,” who was a handy man for Nero in the days Onesimus was in Rome, and Paul and Luke wrote of “friends in Cæsar’s household.” Again, he couples the names of Onesimus and Burrhus in the seventh verse of the first chapter. Again, he congratulates them on their Bishop in Chapter II, who commends their “good order” to Ignatius on his way to Rome in bonds. In his letter to the Magnesians he refers to Onesimus and Apollonius as working together and begs them not to use their “bishop too familiarly, owing to his youth.” Though “to appearance young, he must be obeyed, because he presides in the place of God.” In his letter from Smyrna to the Trallians, he refers to the faith having got inside the Palace at Rome; and his letter to the Philadelphians is written by “Burrhus sent from Ephesus”; and Ignatius of Antioch, to quote Turner of Oxford, “was a trusted and responsible leader.” The martyrdom of Ignatius is no longer placed as late as 107 A.D., so the discrepancy in dates here is still unsettled. (See Bishop Lightfoot.) To show how widely and wildly scholars vary in their dates, take your New Testament, note the dates of the letters at the heads of the Epistles, and compare to these dates given in Turner—Peter visits Rome 42 A.D. (See date 60 to 66 A.D. of Peter’s letters from Babylon.) Peter and Paul martyred in Rome 57 or 58 A.D. (Note the dates of Paul’s Epistles from 59 to 64 A.D.) Suicide Nero, 67 or 68 A.D. (Yet Paul’s second trial was towards the end of Nero’s life.) Death Domitian 95 or 96. (Note date of Apollonius’ prediction in Ephesus.) I give these wide variations in authorities solely to show how picayune and childish and nonessential to the picture as a whole are the minor points over which scholars have wrangled; while youth grew bored and slipped away from teachers, who wrangled instead of teaching.
All these references are not proofs, but they throw the burden of disproof on those who call Paul’s servant a “bell hop” and declare the Onesimus of Ephesus another Greek. Onesimus was the carrier of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians; and Apollos was the great Gnostic leader in Ephesus at this time.
The passing of Apollonius in Crete is too long a story to be repeated here. I have followed Flinders Petrie, though those who want to jump into the controversy over Apollonius would do well to read Phillimore’s acrid comments and the Theosophists’ who are a modern and divided edition of the ancient Gnostics. The Theosophists say Apollonius is the riddle of riddles of the first century. “No one knows where he came from or where he went.” By Empire and Church, “every means were used to sweep his memory from men’s minds,” because he would conform to neither Empire nor Church. Whether he died in Crete, or Ephesus, about 96 A.D., the modern Gnostics do not say. He remained always the aristocrat, the scorner of all outward show of piety or power. The churches of Asia actually prayed to Apollonius after his death, so one sees another reason why the church discouraged his cult, just as Paul had to stop Asiatic Greeks from worshiping him. He was lecturing in Ephesus at the time Domitian was murdered in Rome—and suddenly stopped in the middle of his lectures and described the far-off crime in the Imperial City, crying out to the assassins to strike home to the tyrant’s heart. Then he described the wild joy in the Roman city streets over the news of Domitian’s death. A descendant of Trefina’s of the Thecla legend built him a fane in Asia Minor. In those days, they called it a Temple to a new god, Apollonius. In our day, we would probably call it a memorial church.
With these hints, any one feeling it a personal mission to settle the disputes on which the flashlight has been cast by the five stories of the apostolic ages—can do the settling for his own conscience and let his fellow readers do the same.
The day has passed when youth will be bludgeoned into belief. It wants facts, or as close as it can get to facts—then it will do its own believing or disbelieving; and as Malden says, Christianity takes its stand on the ground of historic truth. Let us get the flashlight on the essential truths.