How Gospel Stories Were Made from Apollonius of Tyana: The Constructed Christ

Introduction: The Disturbing Similarities

When one compares the life stories found in Christian sources to those of Apollonius of Tyana, a troubling question arises: how much did the Gospel writers use stories from pagan philosophers and miracle workers to make their own story of Jesus? This is not a case of wild guessing. Serious scholars, including ancient critics of Christianity from the early formation period of Christian doctrine, explicitly made these comparisons. Around 300 CE, during Diocletian's persecution of Christians, the Roman official Hierocles wrote a long work comparing Jesus and Apollonius point by point. He said that if Christians thought of Apollonius as just a man favored by the gods despite his miracles, they should think of Jesus the same way instead of declaring him divine. The mere existence of these early pagan critiques shows that the similarities were too strong to ignore, even for those who supported the old religion.

But the comparison is not just between two people who can work miracles. Instead, it shows a systematic pattern: a way of thinking about divine-human figures that existed in the Mediterranean religious imagination long before Christianity came along. The Gospel writers may have used this way of thinking about Jesus without even realizing it, because of the culture they lived in. This essay analyzes the evidence indicating that the Gospel narratives were significantly derived from preexisting religious and literary frameworks, with Apollonius of Tyana serving as the principal example of these antecedent structures.

Apollonius of Tyana - The pagan sage and miracle worker

The Apollonius Precedent: A Pagan Prophet Already in Place

The first and most important thing to know is the order of events. Apollonius of Tyana lived around the same time as Jesus, from about 15 to 100 CE. Apollonius, on the other hand, stayed very active in Mediterranean intellectual circles even as the pagan world fell apart. His followers built temples to him all over the Roman Empire. Philosophers examined his doctrines and contested his importance. Pagan scholars could still use Apollonius as an example of divine power working through a human agent hundreds of years after he died.

Apollonius was born in Tyana, Cappadocia, and became a wandering teacher and philosopher-sage. Philostratus wrote the biography around 220 CE based on earlier sources, including the memoirs of Apollonius's friend Damis. He says that Apollonius lived an ascetic life with amazing discipline. He didn't eat meat or drink wine. He often went without food. He stayed celibate. He made a vow of complete silence for five years, but he still taught through gestures and writing during that time. He traveled a lot around the Mediterranean world, from India to Egypt to Rome, looking for and sharing knowledge.

What is even more important for understanding the Gospel parallels is that Apollonius was said to have done miracles that are very similar to those ascribed to Jesus. He made sick people better. He got rid of demons and evil spirits. Most impressively, he brought a dead girl back to life. Philostratus says that Apollonius saw a funeral procession for a young woman who had just died in Ephesus, before her wedding could be held. She lay there like she was dead, and her new husband followed the procession in tears. Apollonius, who was moved by what he saw, went up to the body, touched it, and whispered something, which was said to be a formula or holy words. The girl woke up, as if from a dream, and got up to go back to her father's house.

This miracle is very similar to the story in the Bible about Jesus bringing Jairus's daughter back to life. Jairus goes to Jesus in the Gospels and tells him that his daughter is dying. When Jesus gets to the house, she has already died, and the family is sad. "Talitha koum," which means "Little girl, get up!" is what Jesus says as he walks up to the dead girl and takes her hand. She opens her eyes and starts to walk. The story structure, the feelings around the event, and even small things like the touch and the command are very similar to the Apollonius account.

The Documentary Problem: How Old Are the Gospel Sources?

This brings up an important historical question: how do we know about the miracles of Apollonius? We know almost everything about them from Philostratus's biography, which he wrote around 220–230 CE, almost 200 years after Apollonius died. This is not a firsthand account. This is not even a secondhand story from someone who knew Apollonius. This is a complex piece of writing that was made hundreds of years after the events it claims to describe. It was written by a well-educated Greek intellectual who was supported by the empire and shaped by the literary norms and religious goals of his time.

The Gospels, on the other hand, are older. But they are also much later than the things they talk about. The Gospel of Mark, which is the first one, was probably written 35–40 years after Jesus died, around 65–75 CE. Matthew and Luke, which borrow a lot from Mark and add to the story, were probably written 50 to 70 years after the crucifixion, around 80 to 100 CE. John, the Gospel with the most developed theology, was probably written 60 to 80 years after the events, around 90 to 110 CE. There are gaps of almost a lifetime or more between the events and when they were written down. This is exactly the time period in which legends grow and change, eyewitness accounts become second- and third-hand oral tradition, theological interpretation becomes part of historical narrative, and mythic elements become part of historical figures.

It is especially interesting to note that the gap between Apollonius and Philostratus (about 150 years) is much bigger than the gaps between Jesus and the Gospel writers (35–80 years). This means that the Gospel accounts are actually farther away from eyewitness accounts than one might think at first. Mark's Gospel, composed circa 70 CE, merely 35-40 years post-crucifixion, indicates that oral tradition had sufficiently altered the narrative of events during that interval.

The Literary Borrowing: From Mark to Matthew and Luke

However, there exists more explicit evidence of literary construction within the Gospel tradition itself. Matthew and Luke did not conduct independent investigations into Jesus's life or compose narratives based on their own research or firsthand interviews. Instead, they copied Mark's Gospel in its entirety, sometimes even word for word. Scholars say that about 90% of Mark is also in Matthew, and the language is usually very similar. Luke has about half of Mark's material, and a lot of it is word-for-word.

This is not how people write down what they saw. If you were there and wrote about it, you would tell your story in your own words and from your own point of view. You wouldn't copy long sections of someone else's story word for word. Matthew and Luke did what a literary editor does: they took an existing text, copied the parts they liked, changed some things to fit their religious goals, and added new things that showed what their communities believed and cared about.

Matthew and Luke also add to Mark's stories in ways that make it seem like Jesus fits Jewish messianic expectations. Matthew includes the genealogy that links Jesus to King David. Matthew stresses that Jesus fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament. Luke puts more emphasis on Jesus's compassion for women and the poor than Mark does. These are not attempts to maintain historical accuracy but to mold a narrative for specific theological purposes.

Jesus Christ - The traditional depiction in Christian art

The Hierocles Critique: When Pagans Spoke Up About the Issue

The most convincing proof that the Gospel stories follow familiar patterns comes from the pagan criticism preserved in the work of Sossianus Hierocles, a high Roman official who lived around 300 CE. Hierocles wrote a book called The Lover of Truth that made direct comparisons between Jesus and Apollonius. He wasn't saying that Jesus was a fake because he didn't do any miracles. He contended that both Jesus and Apollonius executed comparable miracles, yet Christians irrationally asserted the uniqueness of Jesus while rejecting the divinity of Apollonius.

Hierocles's comparison is very strong because it is based on clear similarities. Both did miracles, like healing people and bringing people back to life. There were people who followed both of them. Both were taken to court, but Apollonius got away while Jesus was killed. People thought that both of them had spiritual power and authority. But what really bothered Hierocles was how illogical the Christian claims were: why should Jesus be seen as divine when Apollonius was just a man who the gods liked? If one accepts the miracle accounts of Apollonius, consistency necessitates treating Jesus in the same manner, or acknowledging that such miracles lack historical reliability.

Hierocles didn't just pull this comparison out of thin air. He was reacting to what Christians were saying. Celsus, a critic from the early second century who wrote even before Hierocles, also saw the similarities, but he was more interested in attacking Jesus's moral character and the low social status of his followers. However, both critics affirm that literate pagans in antiquity acknowledged the structural parallels between Gospel narratives and contemporary pagan accounts of divine-human figures possessing miraculous abilities.

The Council of Nicaea: When a Vote Decided Who Was Divine

The First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE may be the best proof that Gospel theology was made up. This meeting was not called to agree on historical facts about Jesus that everyone agreed on. Instead, Emperor Constantine called together bishops to settle a theological disagreement: was Jesus divine and equal to God the Father, or was he a created being, as the theologian Arius said?

This is an amazing fact from history. Almost three hundred years after Jesus was said to have been born, died on the cross, and risen from the dead, Christian leaders still couldn't agree on whether he was divine. A council would not have been needed if the Gospels had made it clear that Jesus was God. The Bible would have made the answer clear. The council was needed because the Gospel texts were unclear on this point, which meant that there could be more than one theological interpretation.

The Nicene Creed, which the council wrote, said that Jesus was "God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father." This language does not appear in the Gospels. The New Testament doesn't use the Greek word homoousios, which means "of one substance." This creed is a political decision made by church leaders, not a confirmation of a historical fact that is supported by Scripture. Constantine supported the Nicene position to enforce orthodoxy because he wanted to bring religious unity to his empire. The losing side, which included Arius and his followers, was called heretical, and their writings were destroyed and kept from being published.

This is theology that was made through politics and imperial power, not found through studying history.

The Question of Mary Magdalene: An Additional Tradition Repressed

The Gospel tradition encompasses suppressed and marginalized aspects that indicate alternative interpretations of Jesus's identity and relationships. Mary Magdalene is a good example of this process. In the earliest Christian texts, such as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and fragments found in the Nag Hammadi library, Mary Magdalene is shown to be an important disciple who received special teachings from Jesus and was the first person to see the risen Jesus. Some texts depict her role as comparable to Peter's, serving as a foundational figure for the church.

But these customs were slowly being put down. Compared to earlier texts, the canonical Gospels don't give her as much importance. Medieval Christian tradition turned her into a prostitute who was sorry for what she did, a description that isn't clearly supported by Gospel texts and was probably made up. Why? As Christian doctrine evolved and became more patriarchal, a significant female figure at the heart of the resurrection appearance and Jesus' inner circle posed a challenge to the burgeoning male ecclesiastical authority.

This is especially important for understanding how the Gospels were put together because second-century Christian thinkers, like the theologian Tatian, who put together the Diatessaron (a single story that combines the four Gospels), made a claim about it. Some early Christian texts and later historical research say that there was a tradition that Mary Magdalene was Jesus's mother, not just a follower. This tradition said that Mary Magdalene, who was known as the repentant woman of Magdala, had given birth to Jesus. In some versions, the story used certain parts of the canonical Gospels that were given to Mary of Nazareth (Jesus's mother, according to the traditional story).

This is not an improbable historical proposition. Women in the Mediterranean world of the first century could hide their pregnancies. Adoption or legal fiction could be used to change or make up a child's succession. There could be many different versions of stories about a teacher's family relationships. It is remarkable that certain early Christian sources maintain a tradition regarding Mary Magdalene's relationship with Jesus that contrasts with the canonical Gospel narrative, and that this alternative tradition was repressed as orthodoxy solidified.

The Template for the Mythic Hero

The Gospel writers were writing in a style that was already popular in the Mediterranean area, which is what all of these parallels and suppressions are based on. The mythic hero archetype, a recurring motif in ancient narratives, encompasses the following components: a supernatural or divine birth, frequently heralded by divine emissaries; a childhood characterized by exceptional wisdom or piety; a phase of seclusion or spiritual initiation; a public ministry featuring miraculous acts and instruction; a confrontation with terrestrial authorities; a demise or metamorphosis; a posthumous manifestation or ascension; and, at times, a foretold return.

This pattern can be seen in stories about Krishna, Buddha, Heracles, and many other religious and mythological people. It is a cultural way of understanding people who are different. This pattern is not made up by the Gospels; they just use it to talk about Jesus. The supernatural birth story is only in Matthew and Luke, not in Mark or Paul's letters. All of the Gospels talk about amazing things that happened during a public ministry. The Gospel narratives conclude with a death, resurrection, and ascension. These elements conform to the mythic archetype so precisely that they seem to represent literary fabrication rather than historical documentation.

Apollonius and Jesus: The Exact Similarities

When we look at Apollonius and Jesus next to each other, it becomes clear that they are very similar in structure. Both are shown as teachers with loyal students. Both are said to have done healings and exorcisms. Both are said to have brought someone back to life, specifically a young woman who was about to get married. Both meet political leaders who want to kill them, but they both live or get away from these meetings (Jesus is crucified but comes back; Apollonius disappears and comes back to followers). Both are perceived by their adherents as having divine authority and spiritual potency. Both are subject to legendary embellishment in accounts written centuries after their deaths. Both become important places for religious movements that want to shape the religious culture of the Mediterranean.

The comparison isn't perfect, and Christian apologists are right to point out the differences. But the structural similarities are too strong to be a coincidence. Instead, they say that both figures were influenced by writers who worked in the same cultural contexts and used similar literary styles and story-telling techniques to show their subjects as divine-human beings with miraculous powers.

The Hypothesis: Literary Composition

The simplest explanation for these similarities is that the Gospel writers, like Philostratus with Apollonius, were creating works of literature. They weren't writing straightforward historical biographies. They were making religious stories that would meet the spiritual and institutional needs of their communities. They used narrative templates that were already available in their culture. They chose and highlighted some details while downplaying or leaving out others. They used mythic patterns and religious categories to talk about a person from history.

This does not necessitate that the Gospel authors intentionally plagiarized the narratives of Apollonius. Instead, it suggests that they were part of a shared Mediterranean literary and religious culture that knew how to show divine-human figures with miraculous power. Apollonius exemplified a significant instance of this tradition. The Gospels utilized analogous narrative and theological frameworks concerning Jesus.

Philostratus, who wrote in the early third century, seems to have known about Gospel stories and may have planned his Apollonius biography to follow Gospel stories more closely. This supports this idea even more. By crafting a pagan savior figure endowed with miraculous abilities and loyal adherents, Philostratus illustrated that Christianity's fundamental assertions regarding Jesus were not exclusive to the faith but rather an adaptation of pre-existing Mediterranean religious archetypes.

The Theological Consequences

If the Gospel narratives are formulated as theological documents rather than historical accounts, what implications does this hold for Christian truth claims? It does not inherently imply that Christianity is false or devoid of merit. Numerous religious traditions encompass narrative frameworks in conjunction with historical elements. This means that in order to understand what Christians say, you need to be able to tell the difference between historical reporting and theological interpretation.

There was probably a historical Jesus, a Jewish preacher who preached about the end of the world and was killed by the Romans around 30–33 CE. His lessons were mostly about the Kingdom of God that was coming, repentance, and changing one's morals. His followers believed that he had come back to life and shown himself to them. However, the complex theological framework constructed upon this historical basis—the assertions that Jesus was born of a virgin, performed extraordinary miracles, physically rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven—constitute theological interpretations and narrative constructions rather than historical facts substantiated by documentary evidence.

On the other hand, just because Gospel stories are made up doesn't mean you have to throw them away. Theological narratives fulfill significant roles. They convey significance, assert existential propositions, and direct human communities towards transcendent objectives. A narrative may possess theological depth while being historically dubious.

Conclusion: An Unveiled History

Upon honest examination, the evidence indicates that the Gospel narratives were significantly developed through theological interpretation and literary composition. The authors utilized prevailing Mediterranean religious frameworks to portray Jesus, structured their narratives in accordance with the mythic hero archetype, and highlighted theological themes aligned with the requirements of their respective communities. The subsequent comparison with Apollonius, clarified by critics such as Hierocles, merely expressed what the structure and content of the Gospels themselves imply: that the depiction of Jesus in the Gospels is not mere history but theology presented in narrative form.

This assertion is not extreme. Scholars have long understood that the Gospels are theological texts influenced by the communities that created them. What is sometimes hidden, though, is how much they are influenced by well-known literary and religious models from Mediterranean antiquity. Apollonius of Tyana exemplifies the most distinct instance of preexisting templates. By examining Philostratus's construction of Apollonius's biography and the recognition of parallels between Apollonius and Jesus by ancient critics such as Hierocles, we gain insight into the literary and religious methodologies that shaped the figure of Jesus in the Gospels.

The Gospel stories are not worthless just because they are made up. Instead, understanding how they were made lets us read them with more depth and sophistication. We can see that they are powerful theological stories made by ancient communities that wanted to share their faith and experiences of transcendence through the story of a Jewish teacher whose life they turned into the cosmic drama of salvation through narrative art.