APPENDIX CTHE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FALL OFJERUSALEM AND THE BREAKING UPOF 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’sLand 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 theBook of the Covenant, theBook of the Law, theBook of the Wars,Acts of David,Samuel the Seer, theBook of Gad, David’sSeer—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 theBook of Jasherof which an 1840 translation lies before me. This book is mentioned in the David wars, and several forgeries ofJasherappeared. It is said the genuineJasherwas brought from Jerusalem by Titus. When his officers went to plunder the city, oneSidrusfound in a secret wall chamber in an ancient scribe’s house, a library of books among which sat the old scribe reading. Somehow,Jasherwas 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’sApocalypse. In John’s Vision are two references to the Temple as still standing; and this brings up the question, was theApocalypsewritten 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 theHerod Lettersalready 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 DTHE DISPUTES AS TO THECLA INLEGEND 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 theApocryphalNew 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 theActs, 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’sChurch 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. Thegrande damewho 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, “theActs 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 ECONCERNING THE EARLY GNOSTICS ANDAPOLLOS AND APOLLONIUS AND JOHN
With the bitter and raging disputes, regarding the writing of theApocalypse; 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 theApocalypse; 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 theActs, called to confer in Rome as to the restoration of the old religions. See theLife 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 hisApocalypse. See Peters’Bible and Spade, Beckwith’sApocalypse, Turner’sEarly Church History, Malden’sNew 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 theApocalypse. 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 theRevelationon 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 (seeEvelyn’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. HisBook 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 ofthe Beebecause 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 toGenesis, theBook of Enoch, theBook of Jasher,Revelation; and should be read parallel withEzekielandDaniel. 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 theRevelationas 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 theBook 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. TheBook of the Beesays 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, theBook of the Beesays “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, theBook of the Beesays, 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. TheBook of the Beesays Philip had three daughters, who were see-ers, or prophetesses;the Actssay four. TheBook of the Beesays 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,” theBook of the Beesays, 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? TheBook of the Beesays frankly the early church did not know. They know she was healed and became a holy woman. Thecla, theBook of the Beerefers 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