Talk:Apollonius of Tyana/Archive 1

Inconsistency?
In the first paragraph it says he was born "2" (which would mean 2 A.D. unless 2 B.C.), but further down it says he was born a few years before the Christian era (i.e. B.C.). AnonMoos 22:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

There is no authority for the date of either 2 A.D. or 2 B.C. Philostratus is our only source for his age, and according to him Apollonius was still a young man about the year 17 A.D., and lived to the reign of Nerva (ruled 96-98). He also says that "some people say he passed a hundred." Anon. 26 June 2006.

Apostle Paul
The statement "Some scholars, both ancient and contemporary, believe that Apollonius was actually the Apostle Paul, as many of his teachings coincide with those of Paul" sounds most weird. I find it difficult to imagine even a single scholar (ancient or modern) able to conceive such monstrous nonsense. Who were, or are, those scholars? It should be pointed out that ancient Pythagoreans as well as Platonists were keenly aware of the fact that their teachings were incompatible with Jewish and Christian thought. 85.212.204.34 21:29, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
 * No source mentioned, none to be found? Whack it. (It may be subtle vandalism, there are miscreants who delight in contaminating articles with material that is not obviously wrong.) Stan 03:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Caption "Nazarene"
The image caption adds the word "Nazarene", which is not mentioned at all in the body of the article, and is dubious and confusing. It seems to be based on a later interpretation. AnonMoos 15:05, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

There is no authority for "Nazarene," and I have no idea where this picture comes from, but it is certainly not an actual portrait of Apollonius. Anon., 28 april 2007.

Apollonius in Modern Culture - Balinus
The quote from This Hideous Strength does not refer to Apollonius. Merlin is referring to the 'Dolorous Stroke' when Balin smote King Pellam (Malory, Morte d'Arthur, book II)--Bruce McClintock 01:59, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

It is certainly true that this page (in fact the whole article) could and probably should be extensively re-written. For example, the supposed portrait of Apollonius is obviously not by Raphael, and there is no reason to suppose it represents Apollonius. But what would be the point of removing it? Since Apollonius is both a figure of history and also (e.g. for a theosophist like G. R. S. Mead) a cult-figure, it is doubtful if you could ever get agreement on the "truth" about him. Anon.

Cleanup
This article basically reflects the late nineteenth century state of research on Apollonius (except for the section "Apollonius in modern culture"). I am the author of the Apollonius article in the German wikipedia which reflects the present state of research. It is still far from excellent, but I could translate it to replace the present English article (except for the section on modern culture). I think that would surely be an improvement. But first I want to ask whether anyone disagrees. 89.59.17.107 10:56, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I have completed the cleanup and replaced the old version by the new one. 84.151.238.31 15:11, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

You did an excellent job. Thank you! Arion 17:37, 7 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your appreciation. As you are interested in the topic, may I draw your attention to Life of Apollonius Tyana (sic!) where I made a suggestion on the talk page. A registered user should fix that, it doesn't look nice at all. 84.151.238.31 00:41, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Older
Apollonius of Tyana was cited by Penn Jilette in the second season of Penn & Teller's show, "Bullshit", as historical proof that there were many competing "prophets" on par with Jesus of Nazareth in his day, and that it provides proof that it was not unusual at the time for prophets to have many claims of miracles. -10/16/05


 * Added that to the article. Wilybadger 23:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Some random US show is in no way relevant to the figure of Apollonius. Str1977 (talk) 11:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Allegedliness
(ok, I know it's not a word) Lots of the more extraordinary claims in the article are listed with the word "alleged" in front of them. Now, I have no problem with that in principle, but in the interest of being consistent, shouldn't we remove those? I don't see anything similar in nature on articles about Jesus, Zoraster, Krishna or any other religious figure. I suggest we remove them from this article or add them to those. Wilybadger (talk) 03:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't be misled by Wikipedian "NPOV". It's not really the same thing as culturally neutral. Wikipedia's bias is very specifically American publicly-educated lower-middle-management pop-culture suburban Christian post-teener. ---Wetman (talk) 20:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Sources: "Modern Christian scholars..."
While reading the article today, I came across this line in the Sources section; "Modern Christian scholars challenge its credibility in many regards", referring of course to Life of Apollonius of Tyana. While this may be true, the citation at the end of the sentence doesn't exactly match the claim. Instead we are directed to an essay by Prof. Ewen L. Bowie of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, "Apollonius of Tyana: Tradition and Reality", in the scholarly work: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, which appears to be a work on the history of Rome published by Walter de Gruyter & Co and by the Archaeological Institute of America. This does not appear to be a Christian work (at least not specifically). The specialty of the author of the essay, Ewen L. Bowie, appears to be "Early Greek Elegiac and Iambic Poetry, Hellenistic Poetry, Greek Literary Culture of the Roman empire, especially the Greek Novels and Poetry". I haven't read the essay personally, but it appears clear to me that it was not written by a "Christian scholar" per se. I'm editing this section by deleting the word "Christian" as this appears to be a bit misleading and weasel wordy. I'd be happy to hear any objections though.--Adrift* (talk) 05:35, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The introduction
"Charles P. Eells (Life and Times of Apollonius, 1923, p.3) states that his date of birth was three years before Jesus, whose date of birth is also uncertain. However, Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, places him staying in the court of King Vardanes I of Parthia for a while, who ruled between c.40–47 CE. Apollonius began a five year silence at about the age of 20, and after the completion of this silence travelled to Mesopotamia and Iran. Philostratus also mentions emperors Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and Nerva at various points throughout Apollonius’ life. Given this information, a timeline of roughly the years 15–98 CE can be established for his adult life."

What confuses me is that the sentence beginning "However..." does not appear to contradict anything that comes before or after it. Lacking any knowledge of the subject, I won't attempt to correct this. JustinBlank (talk) 06:05, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

POV from the git-go
"A contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, the life and wandering mission of Apollonius is often compared to his." Since there's no good evidence that either of them ever existed, calling them "contemporary" is a stretch. Many people believe that the two stories are just variations of the same myth.

It's a recurring theme in Wikipedia that religious stories are described as if they are history. -- 23:39, 26 October 2009 Jive Dadson


 * Unfortunately, the view you express does not have support from mainstream scholarship in the field of ancient history. AnonMoos (talk) 22:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Redirect from Appollonius Thyaneus?
I was reading a quote from some seventeenth century Scottish witchcraft trial testimony that referenced "Appollonius Thyaneus." This variant on his name shows up in thousands of Google search results, but no results for Wikipedia. It took me forever to find the relevant Wikipedia entry by looking up various synonyms and trying different searches. As a non-registered user, I don't know how to do redirects. Can someone set up a redirect from Appollonius Thyaneus to this article? 71.67.96.221 (talk) 01:25, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It has been done. -Pollinosisss (talk) 06:50, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

POV of "Historical Impact" section
Basically, it needs to be re-written by someone who knows more about this than me.

"Apart from this extravagant eulogy, it is absurd to regard Apollonius merely as a vulgar charlatan and miracle-monger. If we cut away the mass of mere fiction which Philostratus accumulated, we have left a highly imaginative, earnest reformer who attempted to promote a spirit of practical morality." That line just doesn't seem NPOV to me, and the rest is a little off too. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.142.101.23 (talk) 04:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC).


 * Yea, I don't think you need to know much about it to recognize that as NPOV. As a rule, I'm a bit bold and scrap obvious POV like that whether I know that much about the subject or not. --User:Brentt


 * Howabout reading Lucian of Samasota before writing such bullshit?!!--207.191.211.248 (talk) 12:47, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

"around the time of Christ" (opening paragraph)
Christ is a term of faith. I propose replacing Christ with Jesus of Nazareth. Matt2h (talk) 05:40, 7 November 2010 (UTC)


 * However, "BC" and "AD" are themselves abbreviations for "terms of faith". AnonMoos (talk) 02:32, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Invalid characters
There's an invalid character in the middle of that. What should it be? I can't find the phrase on the Web except sources derived from WP. Hairy Dude (talk) 01:58, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
 * the Risāla fī ta�ṯīr ar-rūḥānīyāt fī l-murakkabāt (Treatise on the influence of the spiritual beings on the composite things)


 * تأثير apparently; I just replaced the mysterious character with an apostrophe for hamza (glottal stop)... AnonMoos (talk) 02:41, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

References to Sources
Well there are almost none. The main body of the work presents a Vita of the sage, but doesn't spend much time delineating where any of the information is drawn from. This article needs considerable work before it is a useful source of information on Apollonius and anything other than entertaining.


 * Most of it is probably based on the Life of Apollonius Tyana, or interpretations of it. AnonMoos 15:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

There exist other sources. One place they are assembled is the 1901 compendium and discussion Apollonius of Tyana by G.R.S. Mead (Reprinted, NY: University Books, 1966). That said, the only contemporary accounts of his travels are the journals of his disciple Damis, which are incorporated into the Philostratus biography (which for the early years draws from writings of Maximus of AEgae). The journals themselves have not survived, and there may be some doubt as to the biographer's veracity, as he was a sophist, i.e., a professional writer. Mead says there exist some "short enigmatic letters of Apollonius".

I have removed the "allegedly" from the account of Damis's journals. Is there some reason to doubt them? If so, it should be provided. Even then, "presumably" or some such would give a less negative connotation.

The only way I can think of satisfying the request for more detail is excerpting from Mead, which is rich with detail, and cites numerous later sources. Regarding complaints that there is insufficient documentation in contemporary accounts, I should point out that there is far more contemporary writing than we have about Jesus, whose only contemporary was Josephus. The earliest gospels are two generations removed. --Josephbyrd 12:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Almost all of our "knowledge" of Apollonius comes from the eight-book Life of Apollonius written by Philostratus ca. 220. There is a collection of some 100 letters, not all by Apollonius, some of them pretty obviously fictional, but some scholars think that these provide the only sound basis for reconstructing his life. Philostratus mentions three earlier authors as sources of information (apart from the letters, oral tradition, etc.). One of these is a certain Maximus of Aegeae, an imperial secretary; the second is certain Moeragenes, about whom Philostratus says only that he wrote an unreliable four-volume biography of Apollonius; and the third, the one most quoted by Philostratus, is Apollonius' alleged Boswell, Damis. There is no independent way of verifying whether these three existed, but most scholars tend to think that Maximus is a real person and a reliable source, Moeragenes may be real and more reliable than Philostratus alleges, while Damis is a fiction (not necessarily made up by Philostratus). There is just one earlier extant reference to Apollonius, in Lucian's Alexander the False Prophet, where Lucian simply says of Alexander that he "had associated with the famous Apollonius and knew all his bag of tricks." I have tried to clean up the "Historical Impact" section, too. By the way, Josephus was born about 38 AD, so his life did not overlap with that of Jesus. Anon. 2 May 2007.

This page needs an overhaul. There is recent archaelogical evidence for Apollonius. See the link to the inscription in the Adana Museum. XXXX 3 April 2011 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.217.231.23 (talk) 19:35, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

column, read
in notes to a column dedicated to Apollonius, which is carved top to bottom with thousands of images; from those notes in my from my earlier reading and so from memory, Apollonius, was reputed to have spent time at Alexandria's famous library, where he "read every book in the library" ; and then with scribes began to dictate a book a day for longer time, from having absorbed the massive amount of info ...; noting that THE MATH in that library INCLUDED modern ideas and modern math subjects though 2,000 years ago ,... josephus herodicus jr ... ; ) !! 24.186.56.245 (talk) aka iam —Preceding undated comment added 16:51, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Dreadful agglomeration of rubbish
We all know that a camel has been defined as a horse as designed by a committee. This article is almost unreadable, packed with diffuse rubbish. Quite controversial claims are referenced to a dozen pages of a book, probably spuriously. There's no proper structure, and reading through it pains the eyes.

A Wikipedia triumph! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.147.142.18 (talk) 18:53, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Why is his Birthdate listed as 15 AD?
Rather then the 3 BC that Philostratus seems to have given him?--JaredMithrandir (talk) 23:46, 30 April 2019 (UTC)