A Vida Maravilhosa de Apolônio de Tiana dez certos Paralelos com um de Pitágoras . Era Movido Por profunda Sabedoria e compaixão Que o SUAS em animavam Constantes Peregrinações Pela Maior parte dos Países da Europa, do Oriente Médio , chegando Pérsia Até Mesmo um bis Índia.
George Robert Stowe Mead, who always published under the initialism G.R.S. Mead, was a historian, writer, editor, translator, and an influential member of the Theosophical Society, as well as founder of the Quest Society. His scholarly works dealt mainly with the Hermetic and Gnostic religions of Late Antiquity, and were exhaustive for the time period.
After having so wholeheartedly extolled Mead's Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, I now slide over the spectrum to what might be one of his worst books.
If one really wants to know about Apollonius of Tyana, the place to go is Philostratus' biography available from the Loeb Library. But the ancients are often painful for us moderns to read, so, failing that, Mead's book is a constructive and readable appropriation of that material and the little obtainable elsewhere about the ancient philosopher and thaumaturge.
Here, unlike the Fragments, Mead's own prejudices obtrude. His aim is to set Apollonius up as an alternative to Jesus, a superior alternative, by showing how Apollonius, and others, did what Jesus supposedly did, but better. While is is certainly good to know that miracles, like raising the dead, weren't unique to Jesus but were almost necessary indicators of a religious teacher's authority, Mead's way of making such points displays a distressing animus towards Christianity, an animus which fails to see such virtues as were maintained by the early Church such as its appeal to the poor and downtrodden.
The book seems to be written for scholars of Classical Greek and Roman history and literature. It assumes that the reader is familiar with names and references of the era. I struggled a bit. I did, however, appreciate learning about a historical figure of whom I knew very little about
This is not the easiest or most engaging book to read. It is, however, an insightful look into the life of a man who rivaled the qualities of Jesus and who was significantly more well known during his life.