PiiiLOSTOK<;ir>
142
PHILOSTRATUS
this traditional rendering a fuller doctrine grew up, But there is a clear difference between the idea of tin
Reading, Ex eccksiasticU PhUostorgii historiis epitome,
etfragmenta (Cantabr. 1720). There is also a French Word then prevalent in Palestine and that current af version: Ahregk dt PHistoin >/> VEglut dt Philostorge Alexandria. In Palestine the Word appears as the out- (Paris, 1676). See Fabricius, Bibl. Gr. vii, 420, etc.;
ward mediator between < lod and man. like the Angel of the Covenant; at Alexandria it appears as the spiritual connection which opens the way to revelation. The pref- ace to John's Gospel includes the element of truth in both. In the •■reck apocryphal books there is no men- tion of the Word (j'et comp. Wisd. xviii, 15). For the
Alexandrian teaching it is necessary to look :il ■ to
Philo(cir. B.C. 20-AD. 50); and the ambiguity in the meaning ol the Greek term, which has already been no- ticed, produces the greatest confusion in his treatment of
Vossius, De Hist. Gr. p. 313, etc; Scholl, Gesch, der Grieck. £t7.iii,313. Smith, Dict.ofGr.and I: s. v. See Dowling, Tntrod. to Church Hist.; Book, Eccles. Biog. viii, 72; Hagenbacb, Hist, of Doctrines, i. 328; Jortin, Remarks, ii. 121 : Stanley. Hist of East. <'h. p. 168 : Staudlin, Gesch.d. Kirchengesch, p. 72.
Philostratus, Flavius, a famous Greek Sophist, was a native of the island of Lemnos, and was burn in the second hall' of the 2d century of our aera. lie taught rhetoric first at Athens, and Eusebius therefore calls
the subject. In Philo language domineers over thought, him an Athenian, hut Eunapiusand Suidas always -peak He ha- mi one clear and consistent view of the |.o-os. of him a> a I.emnian. and he himself hints in his Life At times he assigns to it divine attributes and personal of Apollonius that he used to beat Lemnos when he was
action; and then again he affirms decidedly the abso- lute indivisibility of the divine nature. The tendency of his teaching is to lead to the conception of a twofold personality in the Godhead, though he shrinks from the recognition of such a doctrine (Z>e Monarch.% 5; De Somn. § 37; Quod. det. pot. ins. § 24; Dt Somn. § 39, etc.). Above all, his idea of the Logos was wholly dis- connected from all Messianic hope-, and was rather the philosophic substitute forthem. (See Wesfcott, Tntrod. to Gospels, p. 138-141; Dahne, Jud.- ilex. Religions- philos. [ IK) 1 ] ; (ifrorer. I'hilo, etc. [1835]; Dorner. hh Lehre v. d. Person Christi, i, 23 sq.; LUcke, Comm. i. 207, who gives an account of the earlier literature.) See Philosophy, Greek.
On the general subject, see Buch, WeisheUslekre der Hebrder (Strasb. 1851); Nicolas, Les doctrines reli- gieuses des Juifs (Par. I860).
Philostorgius ('InXoanJpyioc), an Eastern eccle- siastical historian of some note, was a native ofBorissus, in Cappadocia. He was the son ofCarteriusand Eulara- pia.aud was bom in the reign ofValentinian and Valens, in A.D. 358, according to Gothofredus (Proleg.ad Philost.
p. 5, etc.), about A.l>. 367, a rding to Vossius (J)e
I list, ffr.p.314). He was twenty years old when Euno- mius up v.) was expelled from Ctcsarea. He was edu- cated at Constantinople, and, together with his father. warmly embraced the doctrines of Eunomius. Philos- torgius wrote an ecclesiastical history, from the heresy of Arius, in A.D. 300, to the period when Theodosiu's the Younger conferred the empire of the West on Valen- tinian the Younger ( A.D. 125). The work, composed in twelve books, began respectively with the twelve letters of his name, so as to form a sort of acrostic. In this history he lost no opportunity of extolling the Ariansand Eunomians, while he overwhelmed the ortho- dox party u iih abuse, with the single exception of Greg- ory ofNazianzum. Photius charges Philostorgius with introducing gross misrepresentations and unfounded statements, ami says that the work is not a historv. but a panegyric upon the heretics. Philostorgius, never- theless, was a man of learning, and was possessed of considerable geographical and astronomical knowledge. Being a heretic, it is not to be wondered at that his work has not come down to us. An abstract of it. how- ever, was made by Photius in a Separate work, which has been preserved. Photius characterizes him as br- ing elegant in his style, making use of figurative ex- pressions, though not in excess. His figures were, bow- ever, sometimes harsh and far-fetched, and his narrative involved and indistinct (Phot. BibU cod. 10). Pho- tius's abstract was published at Geneva in 1643 by .lac. Godefroi.or Gothofredus, entitled Ecclesiastica his- to) i" . a i 'onstantino M. . I / iiqw initiis ad sua usqut U m- pora, libri xii ii Photio in epitomen contracH; nunc primum ediii a Jacobo Gothofredo, Gr.et Lot. cum svp- plementis nomuUis, indtcequt accurato, ex prolixioribus dissertationibus (Lugd. 1643, Ito), and in a somewhat corrected form, with a new Latin translation, by II. Vale- rias (Paris, 1673), together with the ecclesiastical his- tory of Theodoritus, Evagrius, and Theodoras; also by
young. He frequented the schools of the Sophists, and mentions having heard Damianus ol Ephesus, Proclus Naucratitas, and Hippodromua of Larissa. This shows
that he lived in the reign of the emperor Severus (193- 212). He also taught at Rome, where he became known and was patronized by the empress Julia, the wife of Septimius Severus, who was partial to the learned, and was surnamed "the philosophic." because she gathered about herself sueh a brilliant circle of scholars. She commissioned him to compile the biography of Apollo- nius ofTyana from some memoirs written by a certain Damis of Nineveh, who had accompanied Philostratus in his peregrinations, and which had come into her pos- session. Philostratus professes also to have used in his compilation a collection of letters of Apollonius. which were at one time in the possession of Hadrian, and were placed by that emperor in his palace at Antium, togeth- er with certain responses of the Oracle of Trophonius, which Apollonius had also collected. The biographer availed himself also, according to bis own statement, of the narrative of a certain Maxim us who had known Apollonius. The book of Philostratus displays great credulity in the compiler, and a great want of critical discrimination; it also contains many anachronisms and geographical errors. Hue! and others have imagined that the object of Philostratus was to write a parody of the life of Christ, but this seems doubtful: the parody, if intended as such, is too gross; besides which, it ap- pears from the testimony of Lampridius {Lift of Alt v. Severus), that Christ was really worshipped by some of tie' later heathen emperors, together with Abraham, Orpheus, and Apollonius, these being all looked upon as holy men and tutelary genii. That Apollonius of Tyana was a real character, a philosopher, and a travel- ler appears from various passages of ancient authors; but it is remarkable that no one mentions him until nearly a century after the time assigned for his death. The empress Julia, a Syrian by birth, was probablj fond of the marvellous ; and Philostratus, intending to enter* tain her, inserted in his book all the wonderful stories he could collect relative to his hero. It seems, h that iii the time of the great straggle between the hea- then and ( 'hristian religions under Diocletian and his im- mediate successors, some of tin- heathen writers thought of availing themselves of the Lift of Apollonius as a kind of counterpoise to the Gospel narrative. 1 1 i< r...b >. prefect of Alexandria, and an enemy of the Christians, wrote a book with that object, in the ~h:i] la com- parison between the life of Apollonius by Philostratus