Greek lover of learning, to whom Josephus dedicated his volume, was the
same benevolent Greek of Philippi who supplied Paul with money for his
needs in Rome, and who carried Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and who
seems to have been under surveillance with Paul in Rome; for in Rome,
even if his eyesight would have permitted Paul to follow his mechanical
means of supporting himself by tentmaking, there was not the same demand
as in the East for tents for desert travel, or in Greece for maritime
sailcloth. Aquila and Priscilla, who came later in the Apollos story,
like Paul, were tentmakers. Paul’s knowledge of seafaring was gained as
sailcloth maker.
Always when religious faith wanes, necromancy, clairvoyance, sorcery
thrive. The Old World with its dying faiths both Roman and Grecian, was
now overrun with sorcerers of every description, practising
wonder-working and miracles by methods variously known as Black Magic
and White Magic. The knowledge of the methods underlying these powers
was undoubtedly drawn from India and Persia. Some workers were good and
some were bad. Some miracles were fraudulent and some were undoubtedly
genuine—using the word “miracle” in the sense of wonder-working; only
the Christians, the Essenes, the Gnostics, the Nazarenes refused to work
these wonders for profit. For some reason or other, probably because
they had lost faith in God, and learned magic from the Persians and the
Babylonians, the Jews had become great sorcerers in Paul’s day. More
will be given of this in the chapter on Apollos. It is given also in the
Acts.
The reference of Onesimus to the luminous look, or radiance round Paul
in the half dark, and the old Idumean’s legend of Antioch’s invading
soldiers finding nothing in the Holy of Holies of the Temple between the
Cherubim and Seraphim but a little thin blue flame, would have been
laughed out of any court of evidence by science ten years ago. Not so
to-day. The study of wireless waves is opening the door to the
wonder-world of these waves.
The caution to Timothy as the old soldier put it, “to beware the
widows,” and Paul’s somewhat severe injunctions regarding women to the
churches of Ephesus and Corinth arose from great trouble from the
activities of two women called Euodias and Syntyche, of whom nothing
more is known than that they were quarreling in the church of Clement at
Philippi, who wrote some of the finest and most universally accepted
Epistles, which are _not_ in the New Testament. Clement will be quoted
later. He was Bishop of Rome about the time John “fell asleep.” Turner,
one of the most critical of the higher critics, in his studies on _Early
Church History_, explains why Clement’s _Letters_ are not in our New
Testament. They were not disinterred from Alexandria till 1628, when
they were sent in a present to Charles I, which was seventeen years
after the _King James Version_ came out. Any one who wants to follow up
how desperately dissatisfied the King James translators felt with their
work, should read the _Journals of Evelyn_, a most devout churchman, on
his conversation with the survivors among the translators. Such letters
as Clement’s should be in supplementary readers in every Sunday School
and Church in the land.
While Paul seems to have been prisoner in Rome for certainly two years,
and before coming to Rome, prisoner in Cæsarea for at least as long, he
was not without friends in both places. Philip’s four daughters, who
were prophetesses or teachers, resided in Cæsarea; and Paul seems to
have had great latitude in seeing his friends. This was because he was
not only a Jew but a Roman citizen.
The tendency of modern scholarship is to regard Luke, the physician, as
“the man from Macedonia,” who begged for help. The Greek scholar is
supposed to have accompanied Paul as medical helper.
When Onesimus left Rome carrying the personal letter to Philemon, in 64
A.D. or thereabouts, he also carried along with one Tychicus the
circular letter to the Colossians. These facts can be found in the
postscript to the Epistles, which ought rather to be called simply
Letters with advice for the guidance of the Christians.
In the _Philemon Letter_, I have followed the Weymouth translation,
rather than the _King James Version_, or the _Revised Version_. In fact,
I had read Philemon in the old versions many times before I saw its
beauty. Then one day, I happened to read it in Spanish, and the old
message in a new language of peculiarly graphic imagery shocked me into
a visualization of the picture—the old fighter down and out in chains
awaiting death, the slave running to him for safety, and the crippled
prisoner pleading for, not his own, but the boy’s freedom. Then, I
hunted up the best modern translation I could get—which was Weymouth’s;
and the picture struck me as one of the most pathetic and beautiful
recorded in the _New Testament_. No longer I saw Paul as the hunter of
heretics, the fanatical convert, the tireless preacher of a new creed,
but as a little old man in chains waiting for the headsman’s axe and
writing to Timothy: “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my
departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my
course, I have kept the faith.” This was before his second trial. Then
there follow the sad brave lines, “Demas hath forsaken me . . . only
Luke is with me . . . At my first answer no man stood with me, but all
men forsook me . . . the Lord stood with me and strengthened me . . . I
was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.” In other words, they could
not throw Paul to the wild beasts because he claimed his Roman
citizenship; so they slew him with the headsman’s axe.
How do we know Onesimus was a mere boy, when with Paul in Rome? This
question will be answered fully in the chapter on John and Apollos.
Suffice to say, Rome had such a surplus of slaves from conquest—there
were more than 30,000 Jews enslaved after the fall of Jerusalem in 70
A.D.—that only those between the ages of eighteen and thirty were
considered of the slightest monetary value. Past thirty, they had either
won their freedom in war, in gladiatorial combat, by purchase, or had
been “worked out” and relegated to the mines, or the farm plantations,
or the galley ships, to die. Onesimus would not have been worth passage
money back to Philemon, if he had been old. The value of a slave had
fallen to $18 of modern money at this time. Human life was the cheapest
and least sacred thing in the world market. Slavery was the dry rot
eating away the underpinnings of the Roman Empire; for while, of a
population of a million and a half in Rome at this time, a tenth of the
people rolled in a luxury undreamed before or since, that tenth lived by
sapping the life blood of the slave hordes, who numbered in Rome alone,
almost a million of the populace.
The theater and judgment hall at Cæsarea, where Paul pleaded his case
before the young Herod rulers, are fully described in Josephus, or in
such modern works as have already been mentioned, or in Dr. Taylor’s
_Paul_ (1881). The city, itself, was reputed to have a population of
200,000; but it was detested by the Jews and chiefly peopled by Greeks,
Phœnicians, Romans, and the riff-raff of Rome’s Asiatic world. Jerusalem
was to the Jew the Holy City but Cæsarea was the city of the conqueror.
Here were held the carnivals, the free feasts, the races where the
chariot wheels wore grooves in the stones, the gladiatorial combats, the
torture of prisoners, the wild-beast combats, and all the hippodrome
exhibitions by which Rome tried to hold the populace loyal. Josephus
gives a description of the Herod here who had caused the death of James,
the great scene in the judgment hall, when the Herod, who was Bernice’s
first husband, appeared in coat of silver mail; how the owl flying in
was observed as an omen of ill; and the King fell in a fit of apoplexy
either from overeating or intestinal troubles.
By the time Paul and Peter perished in Rome, more than nine Christian
bishops had been tortured in the public forums and relegated as broken
wrecks to the mines. All these details will be found in the authorities
already quoted.
APPENDIX B
OLD DOCUMENTS AND MODERN VIEWS
ON THE HEROD FAMILY
The many disputed points preceding the fall of the Holy City do not
enter into this story; but as many students may care to follow up the
history for themselves, the facts of the case with the pros and cons may
be set forth.
Was the Apollos of Paul’s letters the same as Apollonius the great sage
of Asia Minor, variously known as a reformer, a gnostic, a mystic, but
refusing to ally himself with any government or any church? The early
Fathers’ antagonism to the Gnostics was so bitter that a record of it
would fill many volumes.
The New Testament references to Apollos may be counted on one hand. We
hear of him first in the _Acts_, date about 54 A.D., “And a certain Jew
named Apollos born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the
scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the
Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spoke and taught diligently
the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began
to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom when Aquila and Priscilla had
heard, they took him unto them and expounded unto him the way of God
more perfectly. And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the
brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; who, when he was
come, helped them much which had believed through grace: for he mightily
convinced the Jews and that publicly, shewing by the scriptures that
Jesus was Christ. And it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth,
Paul, having passed through the upper coasts, came to Ephesus.” These
words are written by Luke.
We next find Paul writing to the Corinthians from Philippi about 59
A.D., “Every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of
Cephas; and I of Christ. . . . For while one saith, I am of Paul and
another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who
is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed? . . . I have planted,
Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. . . . Therefore let no man
glory in men . . . whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas . . . and these
things . . . I have transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes.
. . . As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come
unto you with the brethren; but his will was not to come at this time;
but he will come when he shall have convenient time.” Then in a letter
to Titus, now Bishop of Crete, about 65 A.D., Paul begs Titus to bring
“Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey diligently, that nothing
be wanting unto them.” Titus, it should be added, was a Greek.
This is practically all that is said of Apollos, Paul’s coworker, in the
_New Testament_, except that in one of the early Luke manuscripts on the
_Acts_, Apollos is given as Apollonius; see Turner’s _Early Church
History_.
In Ignatius’ letter to the Magnesians, there is a reference to
Apollonius as a presbyter in the Asiatic Greek Church.
Many authorities, among them Luther, considered that this Apollos wrote
the _Hebrews_.
As to Apollonius, the Gnostic and Sage of Cappadocia, he shunned fame
and the populace to such an extent, though a temple was built and named
after him by a collateral descendant of the same family as rescued
Thecla, no authentic life of Apollonius was written till many years
after his activities had ceased. It is his misfortune that the legends
of his life and letters, which had passed into the hands of the Emperor
Hadrian, were handled by a supercilious court hanger-on, a Greek writer,
who knew nothing of the Gnostics and less of the Christians, and would
have considered either beneath his notice if he had known. Apollonius’
biographer was Philostratus; and though there are constant references to
him in early writings as a reformer, a revivalist, a miracle or
magic-worker, no other authoritative life of him has been given than
Philostratus’, drawn from notes compiled by Damis, Apollonius’
secretary. He seemed to have aroused as violent controversies in his
lifetime as since his death. His learning and piety, no one disputed.
His purity of life was known from India to Rome. He was born rich and
deeded his property over to his brother and his poor relatives. Yet so
great was the veneration of the populace and royalty for him, wherever
he went he lacked naught and traveled in great estate. He was born at
Tyana sometime just before or after the birth of Christ; but like Paul
born at Tarsus, he might still have been a Grecian Jew; and having
studied in Egypt, when young, his birthplace might easily have been
confused as Alexandria. By one class he was regarded as “a sorcerer,” “a
quack,” “a bonesetter in religion”; by another class, as a
miracle-worker and great revivalist; but we must not forget that the
Greeks first called Paul “a beggarly babbler.” He had the gift of
clairvoyance or prophecy, and foretold the famine mentioned in the
_Acts_, the murder of Domitian, and many other events of the period. In
his public addresses, he quoted repeatedly the language of Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John, and Paul—in fact, nine such phrases can be picked out
of Philostratus’ _Life of Apollonius_—to my mind one of the most
striking being where he speaks of “seeing through a glass darkly”—which
his enemies called the superstition of crystal gazing. Origen thought
him a sorcerer. Eusebius called him a philosopher, and in legend he
became in Greek-Asia a sort of St. George, or St. Patrick. He was known
to have been in Ephesus, Corinth and Crete from 60 to 65 A.D. Like Paul,
he had studied in Tarsus. At sixteen, he became a vegetarian or
wandering evangelist, like the Essenes. He undoubtedly possessed the
power of healing and refused all gifts for it. At Daphne Gardens, he
incurred enmity by calling the men “brute beasts.” His lodging was
always in the temples. He seemed to prefer to preach in the pagan
temples, either because he would be sure of a large audience, or secure
from interruption, or to find people whose spirits were blindly reaching
for God. He studied in Egypt, Ethiopia, India and Persia.
Of translations of his life there have been many, Berwick’s one of the
earliest English, Phillimore’s, Mead’s and Flinders Petrie’s, the best
of the latest. Phillimore’s is bitter towards other translators. Mead’s
would, of course, be biased as both Gnostic and Theosophic; but Flinders
Petrie’s can hardly be accused of any bias but scholarship. Thanks to
Flinders Petrie, the details of Apollonius’ life are now known more
fully than any other Apostle except Paul. There are still differences as
to certain dates, but roughly, I think the following dates are accepted
by the majority of scholars. Please compare with Paul’s letters.
Born 4 or 6 B.C.
Tarsus 11 A.D. as a student.
16 to 21 A.D. under the discipline of speechless silence traveling
through Asia Minor and the East.
23 to 43 A.D. teaching, preaching, studying in Antioch.
43 to 45 A.D. India and Persia.
45 to 46 A.D. Crete, Sparta, Athens, Corinth.
46 to 59 A.D. unknown.
59 to 65 A.D. Corinth, Ephesus, Crete, Greek Asia.
66 to 68 A.D. Greece, Rome, Spain, Africa, Sicily.
69 A.D. Egypt and Alexandria and Phœnicia and Antioch and the East.
83 A.D. Ephesus and Crete.
Somewhere here he suffered trial for disrespect to Emperors; a most
dramatic story as given by Phillimore.
83 to 96 A.D. preaching and teaching in Ephesus and Crete.
When he had reached the age of a century, he disappeared in Crete as
told in a later chapter.
Where Paul went out for the Gentiles to call sinners to repentance, and
Peter seems to have gone among the dispersed Jews of the Euphrates and
Rome, Apollos went forth to call “the righteous” to repentance; and from
the records of the times, the call to the sod-bound “righteous” seemed
as badly needed as the call to the sinners.
Now whether Apollos were Apollonius, I do not know. They lived in the
period in the same places. For fiction purposes to throw the flashlight
on the conditions under which the Apostles labored, it does not matter;
but granted he may have been, isn’t there a dilemma in having him East
of the Dead Sea, on his way back from the Far East?
Didn’t Apollonius, according to the legendary life of him, come back
from India by the Red Sea to Egypt? Didn’t he meet Vespasian in
Alexandria; and wasn’t he sent by Vespasian on an errand to Tarsus,
North of Palestine? How then, would he go East of the Dead Sea towards
Damascus? Fiction could brush these questions aside as immaterial in a
story; but it does not need to. From 66 to 70, every port in Egypt,
Palestine and Grecian Asia was packed with the Roman Armies hurrying to
crush Jerusalem. Christians had already hurried east of the Jordan and
Dead Sea to hide in the caves of the desert as Christ had warned them to
do, when he foretold the destruction of the Holy City. Travelers from
the Far East to Grecian Asia had to follow the Damascus Road; for they
could not safely venture in the war zone of the Coast and Jerusalem.
How do we know Peter was in Babylonia? Because he says so in one of his
letters. Critics say the Babylonia he mentions is really Rome. I leave
that dispute wide open. There is no proof Paul and Peter were together
in Rome, when the former was executed. Paul’s death is given variously
as between 67 and 69 A.D. Note John’s references in the _Apocalypse_ to
“the two witnesses” in the other world! If Peter hastened from the
Euphrates to take up the work of Paul’s dispersed followers in Rome—and
there is no proof of Peter being elsewhere in these years—he must have
hastened for Rome almost contemporaneous with the revolt that ended in
the overthrow of Jerusalem; for his death by crucifixion took place soon
after Paul’s. Onesimus’ trip to Peter in the East is, of course, pure
fiction, for Peter’s first round-robin letter to the churches of Asia
was sent by Silvanus, a friend of Paul; and very few details are known
of the second letter. They are dated 60 to 66 A.D. The Vatican books in
this period are invaluable to all students of early Christianity. They
reject ruthlessly all fabulous stories. See “Pope’s Aids to the Bible,”
Vol. II; and Fouard’s “St. Peter.”
How do I infer that in the siege of Jerusalem the Herod women were sent
for safety to the Herod Fort east of the Dead Sea instead of west?
First, because the Herod Fort on the west side of the Dead Sea was in
the hands of the rabble zealots and bandits, and was therefore against
Rome and the Herods. It was one of the first forts to be reduced after
Jerusalem. Second, because the Herod Fort east of the Dead Sea was
always an arsenal of defence against revolt and against the invasion of
Arab and Idumean from the east. Here, the Herods had their family
country place in distinction from the Palace in Jerusalem and from the
public buildings in Cæsarea on the sea. Here, Herod the Great
entertained Cleopatra and spurned her blandishments. Here, the Herods
retired with their families for family conference and often for the most
terrible crimes known in family history. It was a secret fort. Here were
the sulphur baths. Near Jericho were their pleasure gardens. Here, it is
now almost universally agreed, John Baptist was imprisoned and executed;
and Herod the Great passed the hideous days preceding his hideous death.
I can’t prove it was where they were kept for safety during the siege of
Jerusalem; but it does not seem to me there was any other place where
they could have been safely kept; for Cæsarea was in wild disorder.
Bernice had gone down to Jerusalem from her old spouse in Syria to lay
her plans for Titus, the Roman general; but as far as we know until the
end, she was not in the siege. Agrippa was with the Roman forces
throughout. Herodias’ madness and remorse can be found in her banished
husband’s letters. The final fate of the last of the Herods beneath
Vesuvius’ eruption can be found in Josephus.
Letters from Pilate to Herod, from Herod to Pilate, give the data as to
Herodias’ blindness. In these letters, Herodias’ daughter is referred to
as a younger Herodias, not as Salome. Therefore I left Salome out of
these stories. The fiction woven about Salome’s name in modern
literature seems to me the most perfect example of sensualizing and
degrading biblical records that could be devised. The most cursory
glance at the Herod family tree show she must have been little more than
a baby at the time of the Baptist’s death—certainly under eight or ten.
When you consider the colossal pyramid of unclean modern literature and
music built on Salome’s name, it isn’t much of a testimony to the modern
heart being much cleaner than the Herod heart which we condemn.
The superstition of the flower foretelling the lovers’ fate, which has
come down to our own day in the petals of the field daisy, dates back to
the very lotus flower worship of India and Egypt.
The legendary “Ardath, the Field of Flowers” is, of course, from the
Persian and will be found in the _Book of Esdras_. In fact, to
understand this whole era, no student should fail to read _Esdras_ and
_Enoch_, which are parallel in writing and sentiment to _Daniel_ and
_Revelation_. Pilate’s fate and letters will be found in the _Apocryphal
New Testament_.
Malden thinks from Paul’s letters to the people of Thessaly 54 A.D.
that, up to the assault on Jerusalem in 69-70, many of the Christians
still looked for Christ’s second coming in glory and majesty and power;
but in the letter to Cornith, when Paul had drawn his immortal picture
of “the celestial body,” it is evident the Christians knew they were
working for and in an Invisible Kingdom such as Onesimus described.
Malden gives the correct chronology in which the books of the New
Testament were written; so that one can follow the fuller and higher and
closer outlook the workers were attaining of their own mission.
Details on the trails down to the Jordan at this time can be found in
Josephus, or Thomson’s famous _Land and the Book_. There is a full
description of Machærus Fort in Thomson also.
It is interesting to note that the Roman Consul, who befriended Paul at
Corinth in the days of his work with Apollos, was Junius Galleo, a
relative of Seneca’s, which seems to bear out that Paul and Seneca knew
each other in Rome. In this period before Paul’s death, Burrhus, Nero’s
handy man, was sent again and again on messages from the Jews of Cæsarea
and Ephesus to Rome.
Where was Mariamne, Herod the Great’s proud wife, murdered by him? Her
tomb has recently been discovered near Jerusalem; but it was in the Fort
east of the Dead Sea that Herod went mad with remorse over his crime
against her.
APPENDIX C
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FALL OF
JERUSALEM AND THE BREAKING UP
OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The fall of Jerusalem was of deeper, subtler significance than the
surrender of any one of the countless cities which were subject to Rome.
Rome had passed through a few years of terrible turbulence after Nero’s
suicide in 68. When Vespasian, the steady-headed general with the Army’s
strength and loyalty behind him, surged to the crest of the turbulence
as Emperor in 69, Rome realized in order to stabilize her entire Empire,
she must crush rebellion or revolution wherever found. If one city like
Jerusalem, or one little province like Judea not much larger than
Vermont or New Hampshire, could defy Roman power, all the Eastern
provinces would flame in revolt; and there were certain considerations
that particularly embittered the Romans towards the Jews. From at least
thirty or forty years before the birth of Christ, the Jews of Jerusalem
had been granted special privileges by the Roman Senate. They were
allowed freely to exercise their own peculiar religious rites. Their
huge temple revenues from Jews in every part of the world were left
untouched by Rome. Though a head tax had been imposed from the days of
the census in Christ’s boyhood—supposed not to have exceeded from fifty
to sixty cents of modern money—the Jews paid no other tributary taxes
to Rome. Certain seaport towns, from the borders of Egypt in the south
to Asia Minor on the north, seemed to have paid some sort of municipal
tax in excise, which went to the members of the local rulers like the
Herod family as a personal revenue or bride’s dowry; and yet all local
rulers amassed colossal fortunes. How did they do it? By the perversion
of justice. While the Jews had their own courts dominated by high
priests, these court decisions were subject to appeal to Rome; and as
evident in the case of Paul and Felix and Festus at Cæsarea, a bribe
could buy freedom or friendship. Paul could have had his liberty if he
had paid a bribe. He would not and was held for two years. Then, while
the Roman generals cleaned out the robber bands and kidnappers of the
desert and Galilee and Dead Sea caves, they too often, like Felix, sold
both defeated brigands and brigand prisoners as slaves for immediate
profit.
Now the Roman in religion was all things to all men. He set up the
goddess Roma in the temples with the features of whatever emperor
happened to be ruling, not because he believed his own ruler a god, but
because he saw that the great diversity of gods in the East split the
Empire up into warring factions; and Rome aimed to unify her Empire by
religion, and doubtless winked cynically at neglect to worship the
goddess Roma, as long as no disrespect was offered the statue; but
statue, image, picture, painting—all were abhorrent to the Jew, who
regarded all outside the pale of the chosen people as cursed by God; so
the Jews abominated the conqueror Romans; and the Romans despised the
Jews as bigots, fanatics, stiff-necked factionists.
What added gall to bitterness with the Jews was that, from the time of
the captivity in Babylon and Persia, from five to seven centuries before
Christ, they had not known a national, safe, stable government of their
own. There were more Jews in Egypt and Asia Minor than in Palestine.
Faction had followed faction; revolution had followed revolution till
the Chosen People were the prey to any conqueror from Egypt to Persia;
and so there grew up the hope of a Redeemer, a Messiah, a royal son of
the line of David, to throw off the conqueror’s yoke and lead them to
victory. Such a Messiah, the prophets and the scrolls of the prophets
foretold. A Sadducee might be a bigoted sceptical materialist, but when
he heard the scrolls of the seers of 500 to 700 B.C. read, predicting
exactly what had happened to Babylonia and Assyria and Persia and
Greece, the agnostic Sadducee was not prepared to deny there might be a
Messiah. Somehow, in the modern mind, the Pharisee is held in lower
esteem than the Sadducee. The Pharisee was a gentle and, it might be,
attudinizing self-conscious poseur; but he was a scholar, and he was
liberal, and he was a gentleman. The Sadducee was a hard, ignorant,
materialistic bigot. He swore by Moses, but denied a future life and set
himself to grasp all the good things of this life within reach, and had
at the time of Christ’s death captured the best sinecures among the
offices of the high priests and council of seventy. He hated the Roman
with a bigoted, materialistic hatred, though he played politics with him
for his own job. The disappointment of both Sadducees and Pharisees at a
poor Nazarene named Jesus, calling himself the Messiah and gaining an
enormous following, flamed into delirious fanatic frenzy; and just then
rose the Zealots and Sicarii (short sword fighters) shouting “freedom at
any cost” and rallying all Jews in the Passover of spring—when more
than two million pilgrims visited the Holy City—to rise and throw off
the Roman yoke. The city gates were shut. The citizens inside had no
choice but to join the rebels, or let themselves down by ropes from the
walls at night and flee for the desert; but many citizens, knowing the
power of Rome and having all their means invested in Jerusalem, tried to
compromise. They were plundered, tortured, murdered. Women and children
were held for ransom, or hostages for the loyalty of the waverers; and
the rebellion that had flamed up in the name of “freedom” presently ran
lawless riot under an ægis better named “folly”; and for seven months
the Holy City was ruled by brute-beast crime and anarchy. If the
Sadducees and the Pharisees had intrigued with the rebellion at first,
they were now trapped in their own intrigue, for they saw their temple
chests rifled of the revenues of almost a century, the gold sheathing
ripped from the great pillars and colonnades, the holy wine brought from
vault and cellar and poured out, mingled with human blood, in a deluge
of frenzied debauch that lasted from spring till autumn—seven long
months. Famine only rendered the conditions more desperate. If the
Zealots surrendered now, they knew they would be put to the sword and
lose the loot hidden in the secret aqueduct under the Temple; so they
fought with the maniacal frenzy of cornered beasts. The Pharisees and
Sadducees of the Sanhedrim would now have surrendered to Rome; but the
Zealots pursued them into the Holy of Holies and either stabbed them
there and threw their bodies in the aqueduct below, or pursued them into
the very aqueduct, where they were slain.
Keep in mind the configuration of the Holy City at this time—the Herod
Palaces to the west, the great Temple to the east, the whole city like
an eagle’s nest on the flat top of a lofty rock. Between the Temple and
the Palaces lay the main body of the cramped, crowded city
thoroughfares. This central city lay in a slight depression. Between the
Temple east and the Palaces west ran an overhead bridge. Below ran a
very large underground aqueduct, which supplied water to the Temple. The
water supplies came from pools and cisterns used at the Palaces and were
sluiced on during the great yearly sacrifices through the aqueduct to
run under the Temple and carry off the refuse to the precipice to the
east or south of the Temple. When the sacrifices were over, the water
was turned off the aqueduct and presumably used for the Royal Palace
enclosures.
The best description of ancient Jerusalem is in Josephus covering
hundreds of pages; of modern Jerusalem is in Thomson’s _Land and Book_;
but until the transfer of control of the Holy City from Turkish power,
it has been impossible to examine the underground passages beneath the
city of which there are many, or the lines of the old Herod walls.
Within fifty years of Christ’s death, the site of the Temple was plowed
and a shrine set up to a pagan Venus.
Whichever way the war befell, the Herod regime was doomed. By rebellion,
the Jews had forfeited their privileges. There could be no royal
revenues for the Herods through local governments. If the Zealots had
triumphed, then Roman protection would no longer hold the Herod throne
secure; and the Herods were hated by the populace.
Up to the final truce portrayed in the story of the fall of the Holy
City, Titus, the commanding Roman general, had exercised great clemency
and forbearance. He had permitted refugees from the beleaguered city to
pass through his lines untouched, to the desert beyond Jordan. He had
sent emissary after emissary to the more intelligent section of rulers
to advise them to save themselves by surrender; but each peace mission
had met with treachery and insult. Twice in sorties of semipeace
messengers, Titus had been cut off from his own soldiers and almost
slain; so it was necessary to call to the aid of the regular Roman Army,
the Macedonian Mercenaries; and from that moment, Jerusalem was doomed,
for the Mercenaries were paid in plunder.
Titus was at this time not yet Emperor; but among the Jewish writers,
all rulers from Rome are referred to as Cæsar, or Emperor, or King. The
Herods were really only deputies; but they were always called Kings.
Titus was still a very young man and his leading general, Trajan, could
not have been very much past his early twenties. In the most
scandal-loving age Rome ever knew, very little has come down in history
against Vespasian and his son Titus. Both men were essentially soldiers
and cared little for the empty noise of triumph and kingship, though to
keep the populace loyal Titus erected the Great Arch, under which more
than 30,000 Jewish captives passed and on one side of which the Jewish
Tables of the Law were represented. Vespasian and Titus built the Temple
of Peace to celebrate the victory; but if you read Josephus carefully,
it will be found this was more in concession to mob politics than to
glory in triumph. It was to impress the seething East with fear of
Rome’s power.
The attempt of the Nazarenes and the scribes to save the sacred scrolls
is history, not fiction. Many old Hebrew scrolls mentioned in the Old
Testament were lost forever at this time. There were the _Book of the
Covenant_, the _Book of the Law_, the _Book of the Wars_, _Acts of
David_, _Samuel the Seer_, the _Book of Gad_, David’s _Seer_—and seven
other volumes not embodied by Ezra in Scripture, but known to the Jews.
Among the lost scrolls there is a story told of the _Book of Jasher_ of
which an 1840 translation lies before me. This book is mentioned in the
David wars, and several forgeries of _Jasher_ appeared. It is said the
genuine _Jasher_ was brought from Jerusalem by Titus. When his officers
went to plunder the city, one _Sidrus_ found in a secret wall chamber in
an ancient scribe’s house, a library of books among which sat the old
scribe reading. Somehow, _Jasher_ was carried by the Army officers to
Seville and in 1613 it was printed in Venice.
That many old scrolls were carried to Spain either by the dispersed
Jews, or by the Roman Army, there is no doubt; for after the expulsion
of the Moors from Granada centuries later, thousands of such Hebrew
volumes were burned in mistake for pagan Arabic. Intolerance and fanatic
ignorance are dangerous weapons, whether ancient or modern.
As to the interpretation given to the Zodiac and to the prophecies by
the Nazarenes in the Herod Tower the night of the fall of the Holy
City—this is fiction; and had to be, for Gnostics, Essenes, Nazarenes,
Sadducees, Pharisees, Theosophists, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Hindoo
scholars all disagreed violently on what the signs of the Zodiac
portended, or how the events proclaimed by the seers of old should be
fulfilled. There isn’t any doubt at all that the prophecy of Jeremiah
was being fulfilled literally before the very eyes of the watchers in
the Herod Towers; but when you come to the winged chariots with wheels
in Ezekiel—where the Eastern mystic would see the wheels as symbols of
planetary chains, the western literalist would see a modern aeroplane
coursing the clouds.
On one thing Eastern mystics and Western literalists would agree—the
fall of Jerusalem marked the crash of the Old and the birth of the New.
One Order had died. A New Order was born; and the old seeress voiced the
expectation which is so rife even to-day that the sword will yet give
place to the plowshare; that humanity shall pass to and is working
towards a more spiritual sphere, where we may have what the scientists
call a sixth cosmic sense and command the powers of water and air.
Wireless waves give us the first inkling of this power.
The statement that “Israel burnt her children on the walls” to the Fire
God is not fiction. It is true. It is to be found in the Bible; and
within the last ten years jars have been dug up in Palestine where the
bodies of cremated infants were so offered.
Space does not permit going into the mystic sign of a virgin in the
Zodiac. We have only to remember the Zodiac came from the Far East; and
so did the Persian magi to Christ’s manger. Another point worth noting;
the Apostles, now grown aged, knew the Messiah’s kingdom was not to be
an earthly kingship. They learned this very slowly, but the fall of the
Holy City must have clenched forever the convictions.
There is another very interesting point here, which will be discussed
more fully in the last chapter. The cry of the maniac on the walls is
not fiction. It is fact. It will be found in Josephus. It is almost the
very wording of the cries of despair in John’s _Apocalypse_. In John’s
Vision are two references to the Temple as still standing; and this
brings up the question, was the _Apocalypse_ written long before John’s
death and not somewhere round 90 A.D.?
Please note—there were bad earth tremors all over the world from 66 to
68, 69, 70 and 79, from Vesuvius to the Dead Sea. It was the last great
eruption that took the lives of the three Herod descendants on Naples
Bay; just as it was doubtless one of the earlier tremors that threw the
great Temple door to the east open during the siege. This door was
opened only once a year at the Passover.
There was a record that though Matthew passed through Cæsarea, where
Philip’s prophet daughters dwelt, and through Jerusalem on to Egypt, a
copy of his Gospel in Hebrew was first found in Cæsarea. This is
discussed fully in the volumes already named on the apostolic days.
Was “the son of one Lazarus of Bethany,” the son of Christ’s friend? The
dates would seem to prove the possibility. On the other hand, though
Bethany was a very small village, the name Lazarus was a very common
one. The story of this escape from the city is found in Josephus.
That Herodias’ husband had been banished from Palestine to the Danube
and from the Danube to Spain will be found in the _Herod Letters_
already quoted.
The location of the Antonia Tower was exactly as given in the story—a
bastioned high Tower ascended by circular steps inside, with the east
wall joining the roof and upper galleries of the Temple, the west side
of the Tower running along the parapet of the North Jerusalem Wall to
the Herod Towers of the Palaces on the west side of the city.
APPENDIX D
THE DISPUTES AS TO THECLA IN
LEGEND AND HISTORY
Concerning the story of Paul and Thecla, there are fortunately very few
controversial questions that cannot be answered definitely and simply.
Was there ever any real Thecla?
If so, how much of her story is legend, and how much history?
And of the known history, how closely have the facts been followed in
the story?
Many of the Paul and Thecla legends must be ascribed to folklore of the
Roman Road, much of it wildly exaggerated; but beneath the legends is
the fact of some young woman martyr converted by him in Iconium, Derbe
or Lystra, escaping the ordeal of wild beasts and fire, whether in
Antioch or Iconium, and leaving a tradition of having retired to the
caves, where she established one of the first monastic houses among the
Greeks, and drew away the Daphne dancing girls from sensual pagan rites
of the Temples to such an extent that the merchants of Antioch were so
maddened at the fall off in trade of sacrificial beasts, images and
incense to pleasure seekers and winterers from Rome that they plotted
against the lives of the Christian refugees hiding in the mountain
caves.
How much of her story is legend, and how much history?
Tertullian says her story, as given in the _Apocryphal_ New Testament,
was forged by a writer of Asia. Yet Eusebius, Gregory and a dozen others
before the fourth century refer to Thecla as having been a genuine
character, whom legend had obscured and magnified as mist hides and
exaggerates real figures in real life. Basil of Seleucia wrote her life
in verse. Another Scholastic reports how an emperor had visions of her.
The original version of her life on which this story is written is now
in a Greek manuscript in the Bodleian Library and was regarded by Middle
Age biblical students as largely legendary, but a picture of the status
of woman in the first century in Greek Asia. The references to the names
of Paul’s associates and the apostates from the faith are the same as in
the _Acts_, but whether Thecla is to be regarded as “the half wit,” who
followed Paul, or one of “the honorable women” won to the faith, it is
impossible to tell. It is disappointing here to have to record that
while the Catholic, Armenian and secular writers acknowledge Thecla as a
fact, the great Presbyterian divines nearly all ignore her, though they
quote in full the descriptions of Paul, from the life of Thecla. This
strikes me as not exactly according to the rules of good sport. If the
Thecla account of Paul is true, why isn’t the account of Thecla true? It
is interesting to add there is a biblical manuscript in the British
Museum, presented to Charles I, 1628, said to have been copied by
Thecla, the Martyr. It includes the Epistles of St. Clement. The Vatican
“Aid to Bible Students” wisely rejects the fables of Thecla’s Life; but
all scholars accept the fact there was a Thecla, Martyr.
Iconium itself, or Konieh of to-day, was a city of 30,000 people, noted
for its wool and leather, carpet and tent industries. It was a sort of
halfway house for the Greeks from the Isles of the Sea and the desert
travelers of Persia and Babylonia. The church where Paul preached at
Iconium has been found by modern archæologists.
What do modern scholars such as Ramsay and Turner say of Thecla?
I quote from Turner’s review of Ramsay’s _Church in the Roman Empire
before A.D. 170_: “The Acts of Paul and Thecla do not . . . come to us
. . . in the best of company . . . and contain all the marks which
characterize this whole class of forgeries.” He then refers to mistakes
in the place names of the Bodleian copy and the belittling of marriage
which betrays the author of this manuscript as a Gnostic or Essene; “and
yet . . . the details have probability . . . and it is doubtful . . .
how far it is possible to disentangle the original matter from . . .
recasts.” It was on Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts XIII, 51). He
was following the Roman Road of Augustus and branched to Iconium. He is
described as “small, bald and bow-legged, with close-meeting eyebrows
and long nose, but graceful, gracious and radiant.” Ramsay accepts this
description of Paul in the Thecla legends. At Iconium, his host was the
Onesiphorus, mentioned in his letters, and he was pestered by the
frantic jealousy of the Demas and Hermogenes, also mentioned in his
letters. Paul was accused of causing friction between man and woman; and
he was scourged and expelled from the city. There follows the story much
as I have given it here, with long details and repetitions and
embellishments left out. When Nero used the bodies of Christians as
torches for his pleasure gardens and a Herod daughter had to flee from
an old satyr, whom her dowry had bought—it is a pretty sound inference
without any legendary exaggeration that a young girl, who joined the
despised Christians and refused to marry her lover, would be treated
without mercy in an age so sensual that sex had become an untellable
part of religious worship.
And now we come to one of the proofs that Thecla was more than legend.
The _grande dame_ who adopted her is variously named Trifina, Trefina,
Tryphæna of the house of Polemon (date of reign 37 B.C. to 63 A.D.). It
was to one of the Kings of the house that Bernice was the second time
married and from whom she fled to Jerusalem. He was a converted pagan to
the Jewish faith, probably to get Bernice’s dowry. The Herod daughters
were half Arab, but they were also half of the Jewish high-priest blood;
and union with what one historian calls “these half-breed brutes” proved
too strong for even Herod blood. Trefina was daughter of a Polemon from
44 A.D. to 63 A.D. This Polemon’s wife had been a first cousin to the
Emperor Claudius and ruled over Pontus jointly with her son till about
40 A.D., when she retired. Her daughter had died, and the query is—was
her son the man who married Bernice; or had Trefina’s husband discarded
her and married Bernice? Her son was reigning at the time she passed
through Iconium. Her dead daughter’s name is given as Falconilla, the
same as in the legend of Thecla. To know the type of the vice of this
house one must read Apollonius’ _Life_.
Practically the verdict of Ramsay and Turner on Thecla is, “the _Acts of
Thecla_ . . . expand the hints of St. Luke and throw a welcome light on
the social conditions.” Luke refers to “many women” attending Paul’s
services in the house of Onesiphorus. In other words, Thecla was a
personality, but her real history is lost in legend.
Of the legend, how closely have the facts been followed in this story?
Modern decency would not permit all the details of the insults to
Thecla, so these are shortened in the story here. She was exposed not
only in the arena of Iconium but in the arena of Antioch for repulsing
the lewd advances of the city magistrate, who in one of the fêtes
represented the god Roma and proceeded to claim her as a vestal virgin.
All these details have been omitted or shortened in the story, and her
experiences have been centered at Iconium.
For the rest, the story conforms to the facts of the age. The Greeks
were the rich trader class despised by the soldierly Romans. Men were
addicted to effeminacy, jealousy, self-adornment; and the Greek matrons
chased their daughters into early marriages to avoid having evidence of
age in their family. Paul was called a “Jewish babbler” here as he was
in Greece. Girls who would neither marry nor become temple vestals were
thrust in the streets as courtesans. The red cord of the courtesan
marked the difference between the temple virgins consecrated to the god
and the temple girl kept as a bait for lust and revenue, of which one
Aphrodite Temple had a colossal revenue. Gnostics will deny that the
names of “the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost” were used in baptism
before the fourth century. I refuse to discuss the controversy—it is
nonessential to the true picture of conditions set forth in the story.
There is one interesting minor point for the argumentative to worry
over. Paul refers again and again to the man with shaved hair, the woman
with unshaved and covered head, both references really advising the
Christian away from the temple vices which becurled men and women with
short red-corded hair symbolized. There is a reference to Paul taking a
vow, himself, that carried him to Jerusalem. (Acts xviii, 18). He had
his head shaved. Now, the Thecla legend describes Paul as “bald,” like a
man who, Roman fashion, had always worn his hair short. Yet the most of
the pictures of Paul and the other early saints represent them with hair
like a thatch, beards like Druids, and expressions about as cheerful as
an inverted tablespoon, though their evangel was called “the Glad News,”
and the keynote of Paul’s life was—“Rejoice.”
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.
FINALE
At a time when our own modern world seems to be passing through a welter
similar to the apostolic ages, it may not be amiss to close by quoting
from Bishop Solomon at Lake Van, Armenia, who officiated between the
Tigris and Euphrates about 1222 A.D. His _Book of the Bee_, translated
by Wallis Budge, the great orientalist, in 1886 (Oxford), reflects many
of the ancient church traditions among the religious communities founded
by the Apostles.
The old scholar gives his work the name of _the Bee_ because the bee
culls its pure honey from all flowers; and so he attempts to cull the
best from the old records of the early church.
He begins with the creation as told in Genesis and interprets that
record partly as a mystic race record according to the Gnostics and
Theosophists, and partly as a record of fact; but he sets down both
interpretations side by side, and forces no conclusions. You get the
sense that the old scholar knows he is dealing with an epic; but whether
that epic is a myth reflecting a fact on the clouds, or a fact obscured
by myth—you must decide for yourself; for “Know, O brother,” he says,
“where there is true love, there is no fear; and where there is freedom
of speech, there is no dread . . . on subjects beyond the capacity of
our simple understanding . . . do not enquire too closely into the
divine words.”
And the advice is as good for our day as for his own.
The first thirty chapters have an amazing similarity to _Genesis_, the
_Book of Enoch_, the _Book of Jasher_, _Revelation_; and should be read
parallel with _Ezekiel_ and _Daniel_. They carry the human mind back to
the very dawn of time.
It is where the record comes down to apostolic days that it throws a
flashlight on the historic personages in the fiction of this volume.
I make no comment but set down in brief the old writer’s contributions
to historic data.
He says that Mary, the Mother of the Messiah, was brought up among the
Temple virgins. The Salome, who was the midwife at Christ’s birth,
resembles the Salome of the Gnostics’ _Pistis Sophia_. Whether the star
followed by the Magi were a star of vision, or a constellation of the
Zodiac—he does not know. He does not think the massacre of the infants
followed immediately after the visit to the manger, but within two
years. The legends of the Magi’s gifts are given very fully. He says it
was the father of Nathaniel who saved John the Baptist’s life, when
Zechariah was murdered before the altar of the Temple. This refers to
Christ’s recognition of Nathaniel later with Philip. He says Christ met
Lazarus first in Egypt, when Lazarus befriended the exiles, Joseph and
Mary. The Herodias episode is given very fully as recorded in Chapter II
here. Machærus is given as the place of John’s imprisonment and murder.
Abgar, King of Edessa, who wrote letters to Christ, finally bought
Christ’s woven seamless garment over which the soldiers cast dice.
Joseph of Arimathea, he calls a Senator. He says Mary died between her
fifty-eighth and sixty-first year. He gives very fully the ten occasions
on which Christ was seen in vision or in body—the last time by Stephen
and Paul. The upper chamber of the Last Supper had been prepared by
Lazarus to whom it belonged, by Simon the Cyrenian, who helped to carry
the cross, by Joseph, the Senator, and by Nicodemus.
His notes on the Apostles are invaluable. Peter preached in Antioch and
in Rome, where Nero crucified him, head downwards. Andrew, his brother,
went to the wild Scythians of the North. John, the son of Zebedee, the
hero of the fifth story in this volume—over whom the higher critics
have waged such bootless battle—preached in Ephesus, was exiled to
Patmos, came back to Ephesus, built a church and taught there with
Ignatius, till he “fell asleep.” John Second, a young disciple of John
the Apostle, became Bishop of Ephesus and wrote the _Revelation_ as told
him word for word by John, the friend of Christ. This brings up a
dispute hoary with age. Was the youth beloved of Christ, the first John
or the second? I cannot answer that question. The dispute as to the
death of James is unconsciously explained by the author of the _Book of
the Bee_. James was cast down from a pinnacle of the Temple. The rabble
that pursued, slew him with sword and stone. He was slain by order of
Herod, Bernice’s first husband. Philip left his prophetess daughters in
Cæsarea and worked in Phrygia, Onesimus’ home country. Thomas went from
Jerusalem to Persia and India, where he was stabbed to death for
baptizing the daughter of a great ruler. No modern scholar needs to be
told there are remnants of Thomas’ early followers yet in India. Matthew
found refuge from the Jews in Tyre and Sidon and Antioch. The _Book of
the Bee_ says nothing of his mission to Egypt. Bartholomew worked in
Armenia; Jude in Laodicea, the city of wealth and apathy; Simon Zelotes,
inward from Aleppo; James, son of Alphæus, in Tadmor—Palmyra, the
glorious; Matthias, successor to Judas, in Sicily.
In Rome, Paul sought the Gentiles; Peter, the dispersed Jews. There are
disputes here, I don’t care to go into. I have already touched on them.
Peter gave his record to Mark; Paul, his to Luke—which jibes remarkably
with the verdict of higher critics.
Luke had been the physician, who attended Lazarus—a not improbable
thing if Lazarus were in Egypt as Luke’s writings are full of reference
to the Greek culture of Alexandria, Egypt. Mark is given as a stepson of
Peter; and Rhoda was his sister. Zacchæus, the publican, was slain,
while preaching. Joseph, the Senator, transferred his labors to the ten
Greek cities of Decapolis. Nicodemus and his brother, Gamaliel, the
great philosophers, became open professors of the faith. Nathaniel was
stoned to death. Simon, son of Cleopas, became a bishop in Jerusalem.
Cephas (Peter) taught in Baalbec—the wonder of the Old World; Barnabas
in Italy; Titus in Crete; Justus in Cæsarea; Hermas, the shepherd, in
Antioch; and others of the seventy dispersed to all parts of the known
world.
Of Onesimus, the _Book of the Bee_ says “his legs were broken in Rome.”
Whether this was when he fled for protection to Paul—in which case, the
story is much more dramatic and illustrative of the beauty of Paul’s
character than I have given—or after his return from distributing
Paul’s letters to the Greeks of Asia—the record does not say. It is
probably this reference that gave rise to the young Onesimus, who became
bishop, being distinct from the young Onesimus, whom Paul sent back to
Asia Minor. The record does not say he suffered martyrdom in
Rome—simply that “his legs were broken.” Apollos, the _Book of the Bee_
says, was “burnt with fire.” I have no comment to make on that. If
Apollos were Apollonius, his fate could be ascribed to death by fire;
but if Apollos were not Apollonius, then the lack of all reference to
Apollonius, so famous from Rome to India, by a writer of the legends of
the apostolic days, is very remarkable; for Apollonius had a temple
named after him in Asia Minor and had been a great figure in his day in
Babylonia. Timothy taught and died in Ephesus. Candace’s Eunuch
established missions in Ethiopia. The foster brother of Herod is called
Manæl, not Manæn.
The names of those followers, who fell away in persecution, are much as
given in Paul’s letters and early church history—Judas, Simon, Levi,
Hymenæus, Demas—of the riots in Asia Minor. The _Book of the Bee_ says
Philip had three daughters, who were see-ers, or prophetesses; _the
Acts_ say four. The _Book of the Bee_ says each of the Twelve and of the
Seventy jotted down memories of Christ, but to avoid confusion, confided
their memories—the Twelve to Matthew and John; the Seventy to Luke and
Mark—and this, too, sustains the shots in the dark of the higher
critics.
The child, of whom Christ said, “except ye become as children,” the
_Book of the Bee_ says, grew up to be Ignatius. The children on whom
Christ laid his hands were Timothy and Titus. The Marys of the Gospel
were—Mary, the Mother of the Messiah; Mary, the mother of Cleopas;
Mary, the wife of Peter and mother of Mark; Mary, the sister of Lazarus.
Was Mary, the sinner, the Mary of Magdala out of whom were cast the
demons? The _Book of the Bee_ says frankly the early church did not
know. They know she was healed and became a holy woman. Thecla, the
_Book of the Bee_ refers to as “the Blessed”; so that I cannot regard
the legend as a fiction.
I cannot close better than to quote the prophecies of the old sage of
1200 A.D. Keep in mind exactly what has happened in Asia Minor between
1914 and 1924, and then decide for yourself whether all see-ers are
“self-hypnotized fakirs,” or “deluded epileptics having fits”—which I
have heard them called by teachers of youth. At all events, give this
old seer the same fair hearing you do to the prophecies of Roger Bacon,
the friar, who was almost contemporary, imprisoned in another part of
the world for predicting what science would accomplish; and when you
have done that fairly and squarely, lay the book down and ask yourself
what you believe. As the prophecies cover nearly twenty pages, I
condense: “the children of Ishmael will go forth from this wilderness
. . . and the fat ones of the kingdom of the Greeks . . . shall be
destroyed by Ishmael, the wild ass of the desert . . . it shall be a
merciless chastisement . . . for the sin of the Christians . . . mad
with drunkenness, anger, shameless lasciviousness . . . hence God will
deliver them over to the impurity of the Barbarians.” There follows just
what happened in the late War, the murder of men, the pollution of
women, the death of the children, the robbery of all property, the sale
into slavery of harem and desert bandit, the oppression of the poor.
“They will mock at those who frame laws. The little shall be esteemed as
the great, the despised as the honorable, from sea to sea, from east to
west, from north to south . . . hungering and thirsting and torture in
bonds . . . infants torn from their mothers’ bosoms . . . priests and
deacons slain . . . clothes for their horses out of holy vestments . . .
cattle in the churches . . . famine . . . dead bodies without any to
bury them . . . while the tyrants shall boast—‘the Christians have
neither a God, nor a deliverer.’” There follows the victory of the
Greeks and a terrible slaughter. “Egypt ravaged, Arabia burnt, Hebron
laid waste.” . . . Then shall follow “a great peace . . . joy on earth
. . . churches reopened . . . great cities rebuilt . . . for the gates
of the North” shall be opened. Twenty-two kingdoms shall come through
the gates of the North. In the plains of Joppa, the great battle will be
fought. The leader of destruction will fight there and be overthrown by
a leader of the cross from the land of Ethiopia. The leader of
destruction will delude many with “phantoms.” Hosts of the Indians will
ally themselves with him. Then will come a second Elijah (or Elias) and
lead to the great victory of the cross.
There follows the passing of the Old Order like a garment discarded for
the New when a light shall burst over humanity with the effulgent
radiance of the very heavens; when those, who are asleep shall awake
clothed in light, eternally young; when each shall treasure his eternal
light and fire in his own spirit; when the only grief shall be the grief
for transgression of laws man can never break, but which break man; when
the love of God shall extend to the meanest and poorest of all
creatures; when justice will exact “to the uttermost farthing” of
repentance for sin; when those barred from light will be those only who
persist in barring light from their spirit.
* * * * *
Here, let us close the old seer’s prophecy, be it trance or dream; for
his hope is the hope of all humanity with all its creeds for all time,
now as then.
THE END
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Transcriber’s Notes
Minor changes have been made silently to spelling and punctuation to
achieve consistency.