511d Philostratus, Flavius. ‘The Athenian’ (b. 175 A.D.), trans. Charles Blount. (1654-1693) The Two First Books, of Philostratus concerning the life of Apollonius Tyaneus: written originally in Greek, and now published in English: together with philological notes upon each chapter.

London: Printed for Nathaniel Thompson, next door to the sign of the Cross-Keys in Fetter-Lane, 1680

***SOLD***

Folio, 6.3 x 4 in. First English edition. A-Z4, Aa-Gg4, Hh6. This is generally a crisp and clean copy with some browning on the first four leaves. The title page is printed in red and black. This copy is bound in full modern calf with paneled boards.

“According to Dr. Adam Clarke, ‘this piece was published with the design to invalidate the testimony of the evangelists concerning the miracles of our Blessed Lord.’ A few copies only were dispersed before the work was suppressed.” (Hart)

Apollonius of Tyana, the subject of this biography, was a “Neo-Pythagorean philosopher, elevated by non-Christians to a place by the side of Christ. In the temple of Aesculapius in Ayas, Turkey, Apollonius studied medicine and philosophy, and became an ardent and lifelong adherent of Pythagoras. He observed the five years of absolute silence enjoined by the Pythagoreans, and then started on his memorable and extensive travels, which took him into all parts of the known world, made him acquainted with many prominent persons, and gave him a great reputation for wisdom. He seems to have exerted a virtuous example and to have been a religious reformer. Falling under the suspicion of Domitian, he went to Rome for his trial and was acquitted after he had endured a brief imprisonment. The last ten years of his life were passed in Greece, where he had many disciples.
“The importance of Apollonius as a religious reformer was more and more magnified, and shortly after his death statues and even temples were erected in his honor by emperors, and he was worshiped as a god. Among his prominent admirers was the talented and learned Julia Domna, wife of the emperor Severus, who requested one of her literary men, Flavius Philostratus, write for her a biography of Apollonius and for this purpose supplied him with data, including the travel-journal of his companion, the Assyrian Damis, and a collection of his letters. On the basis of these, with large additions of legendary matter and notices of every description, the book was prepared; but it was not published till after the death of the empress. It bears every evidence of being a historical novel, and its miraculous details are not deserving of analysis[!]; but non-Christians ever since have pretended to find in Apollonius a pagan Christ, and in the stories told about him, counterparts of those related of Christ and his apostles.

“The earliest person named who made this use of Philostratus’ novel is Hierocles, governor of Bithynia during the Diocletian persecution, who wrote a work against the Christians in which he instituted a comparison between Apollonius and Christ. This stirred up the church historian Eusebius, to write a refutation, in which he shows how unreliable as a source the romance of Philostratus is. The deist Charles Blount and Voltaire revived this use of Philostratus in the interest of their paganism, while in the nineteenth century Ferdinande Christian Baur called attention afresh to Philostratus’ work and elaborated the thesis that Philostratus had purposely modeled his narrative on that of the Gospels. Edward Zeller followed him in this advocacy, the Frenchman Albert Réville also. But there is no evidence that Philostratus had any knowledge of the Gospels and the Acts, and the life of the Apostle Paul is a much closer parallel to Apollonius than that of Christ, who was no peripatetic philosopher.

“We have [in Deism] the blending of a sensualistic epistemology, a mechanical-teleological metaphysics, a historical criticism, and an aprioristic ethics whose product in the shape of natural religion was destined first to undermine Christianity, then to compete with it, and finally to supplant it. These various tendencies could not show themselves fully under the ecclesiastical restraint of the Restoration, yet they appear clearly enough in the writings of Charles Blount, usually placed second to Lord Herbert of Cherbury (d. 1648) in the lists of the Deists. Like his predecessor, Blount dwells on the conflict between rival religions, and finds a standard of adjustment in a fusion of Herbert’s theory of universal characteristics with Hobbes’ prescription by the state. Like Hobbes and Spinoza, he touches serious problems of Biblical criticism at this early date. Freedom from prejudice is his boast; he asserts the supernatural character of Christianity on the basis of its miracles, after he has already rendered them dubious by parallels with non-Christian miracles.” (Schaff-Herzog)

Hart 253; Wing P-2132