The quenchless light

by Agnes C. Laut

THE FAMILY OF HEROD THE GREAT

Titus, Vespasian’s son, not yet thirty, will be more fully described in the chapter on the fall of Jerusalem. Keep him distinct in your mind from Titus, the Greek evangelist of Crete, who became Bishop.

Philemon, the merchant of Colossé, Paul’s friend, was converted to the new faith in Corinth or Athens.

Who were “the friends in Cæsar’s household” of whom Paul wrote? Bishop Lightfoot shows of the forty-three Christianized Jews and Greeks, who met Paul when he reached Rome, and whose names may be found in the letter to the Romans; many were in Roman governmental positions of trust. Their names can be found scattered through the Acts and the apostolic letters to Rome and Asia.

There seems almost no reason to doubt that the great Epaphroditus, the 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.