Apollonius of Tyana = The Real Jesus?
May. 26th, 2020 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
causticusI've seen speculations like this floating around on the web for quite awhile now. And a commenter on JMG's Magic Monday has posed a question about the personages of Apollonius of Tyana and Jesus Christ being intertwined. The question was as follows:
JMG responded,
Because of the cosmic energies involved with shaping each respective era of our journey here on Earth, there tends to be a lot of overlap between the attributes of the most influential figures during these specific time periods. And thus the tendency to speculate that several different historical people may have in fact been the same person. I do believe that some aspects of the popular accounts of the life of Apollonius of Tyana may have indeed been assimilated into the Jesus story that was later developed after Christianity became institutionalized. But with regard to actual beliefs and practices, Apollonius himself would have had very little to do most of the things that are associated with Jesus in a theological sense. Another commenter summed this up well.
A common hazard among those of us who take a critical view of the the dogmatic Piscean religions is to take a view of hyper-parallelism when comparing and contrasting these religions and the most influential people associated with them. And this line of thinking can quickly escalate into outright conspiracy-theorizing, which of course usually ends up undermining the efforts of critical research on these topics. Crackpot theories creates an image that is just plain bad optics.
Who was Apollonius of Tyana?
Was he the 'real' Jesus or just another person born during the grand conjunction that began the age of pisces, and the followers of Jesus managed to crowd out his followers?
JMG responded,
When the Piscean era dawned, its energies inspired a new religious dispensation, and quite a few prophets and messiahs responded to that in their own ways; the followers of Jesus happened to be the most successful in one part of the world, while the followers of Muhammad, the founders of Mahayana Buddhism, and so on were more successful in other parts of the world. That's the way this sort of thing usually goes -- and of course there was a steady supply of would-be prophets and messiahs straight through the Piscean era, some of whom launched large religious movements while others didn't succeed so well. We probably have more saviors to deal with before that impulse finishes guttering out.
Because of the cosmic energies involved with shaping each respective era of our journey here on Earth, there tends to be a lot of overlap between the attributes of the most influential figures during these specific time periods. And thus the tendency to speculate that several different historical people may have in fact been the same person. I do believe that some aspects of the popular accounts of the life of Apollonius of Tyana may have indeed been assimilated into the Jesus story that was later developed after Christianity became institutionalized. But with regard to actual beliefs and practices, Apollonius himself would have had very little to do most of the things that are associated with Jesus in a theological sense. Another commenter summed this up well.
Apollonius of Tyana was a Neopythagorean adept and he didn't have any messianic claim. Early Church Fathers mixed his life story with the archetype of "dying-and-rising god" to create their version of Jesus myth.
A common hazard among those of us who take a critical view of the the dogmatic Piscean religions is to take a view of hyper-parallelism when comparing and contrasting these religions and the most influential people associated with them. And this line of thinking can quickly escalate into outright conspiracy-theorizing, which of course usually ends up undermining the efforts of critical research on these topics. Crackpot theories creates an image that is just plain bad optics.
