Chapter X: 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.