The Imposter Whose Miracles Were Compared to Those of Jesus Christ

Apollonius of Tyana & Jesus ChristPhoto byPublic domain and JoeyEspo984 - CC BY-SA 4.0

According to historians, the Greek Philosopher Apollonius of Tyana was an enlightened savant and a wandering ascetic who performed miracles that, once studied, were very similar to the miracles performed by Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, Apollonius didn’t leave behind any books that professed his religion. Still, a biographical novel written about him by the Sophist Philostratus presents him as a miracle worker who traveled extensively beyond Greece and Asia minor.

As a wandering teacher, Apollonius traveled to Italy, Spain, North Africa, Mesopotamia, India, and Ethiopia. Moreover, like Jesus Christ, to whom he is mistakenly compared, Apollonius despised injustice and openly opposed Rome’s Emperor Nero and the tyrant Domitian.

The date of Apollonius’s birth is unknown. However, Philostratus’s writings suggest that he was a contemporary of Jesus Christ who was born around 3 BC and died at 100 years old. Moreover, Apollonius was born to a respected, wealthy family and later became influenced by the teachings of Pythagoras.

According to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Apollonius is depicted as a miracle worker who not only performed great miracles but also rivaled those performed by Jesus Christ. In fact, the first miracle attributed to Apollonius happened before he was born as a supernatural being told the mother of Apollonius that she was to conceive a divine Child. This encounter sounds precisely like the Virgin Mary and the Angel who informed her about the child she would soon bring to the world.

Moreover, Apollonius performed similar miracles to Jesus, such as raising the dead, saving a city from the plague, and telling events taking place in faraway places through his extrasensory perception. However, the similarities with Jesus don’t stop there. Apollonius’s miracles earned him enemies, so his antagonists handed over to the Roman authorities for Judgement. Moreover, after his death, Apollonius returned from the dead, met his followers, and disappeared to heaven like Jesus Christ.

Although antichristians used Apollonius’s supposed miracles to persecute Christians, the Roman governor Hierocles went far by mocking Christians and claimed in published pamphlets that Apollonius far exceeded Jesus Christ in his miracles. However, there are significant spiritual differences between Jesus Christ and Apollonius. Whereas Jesus taught about God and how he answered prayers, Apollonius taught that prayers were useless and believed in the intellect to converse with God.

While the story of Apollonius is fascinating and goes against everything we believe about the miracles associated with Jesus Christ, there is no evidence to suggest that he was a prophet or a holy man. Furthermore, there is no proof indicating that Apollonius was the Anti-Christ of the time, considering his teachings and “miracles” were used to persecute Christians. Nevertheless, as a performer of great miracles and as a contemporary of Jesus Christ, the story of Apollonius is interesting, if not surprising.