Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600 -- Fiction
Half a century ago, the legends of underground chambers in Crete were
regarded as myths. To-day, we know those myths were founded on historic
fact and the spade has dug up ancient Crete culture. Phillimore
ridicules Flinders Petrie for accepting the story of the earthquake and
storms on the night of Apollonius’ passing from human ken in the Temple
at Cydonia, Crete. Yet there is not a sailor of the Mediterranean, who
does not know the superstition of all Cretans at the time of the spring
and fall equinoctial gales. The Island trembles and vibrates to the
storms. Cretans say to this day—and there are 300,000 of them believe
it—that Crete was created by a volcanic blow-up—a remnant of the
submerged Atlantis—and is very delicately balanced on subterranean
rocks. When the gales come, it trembles on this balance. Knossus marks
the ruins of the Palace of Minos of 3000 B.C. Greek hermits still
frequent the mountains of the Island and live the tranquil life of the
ancient contemplative Gnostic.
Of Patmos, little is to be said except that it is not so large as the
length and breadth of New York City, and was a very short run by sail
from Ephesus, ships usually pausing to and from Crete. In the story,
Onesimus paused on his way back. The ecstasy of the _Revelation_ on
Patmos would to-day be called “a glimpse of cosmic consciousness”; and
there is no use going into the dispute whether the vision covered only
the few months John was exile on Patmos, or a series of years beginning
at the fall of the Holy City and extending down to the reign of
Domitian, when persecution compelled the Christians to use cypher in
many of their communications; and “the Beast” may have been symbolized
with emperor worship, or the impending anarchy.
The story takes for granted that Onesimus, the runaway slave, was
Onesimus, the young bishop. This is a disputed point. I don’t care to
take up the dispute. It is nonessential to the aim of the story; but if
the question of his age be asked it is easily answered. If Onesimus were
a young man of twenty with Paul in Rome in 64 to 68, then by 86 to 96
A.D., when John is supposed “to have fallen asleep in Ephesus,” he would
still be a young man in his forties to preside over the destinies of
Christianity at the very pivotal point in Grecian Asia.
For those who like to worry disputes out as a dog worries a cat, or a
cat worries a mouse, the references of the early fathers to Onesimus may
be quoted:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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