A Roman Jesus

Based on the following description, whom do you think I might be describing?:.

This man lived during the first century of the Roman Empire. According to ancient sources, he was born to a woman who was visited by a supernatural being who told her that she would conceive a divine son. As the child grew into manhood, he became a wandering preacher — he told his followers to live for spiritual things, not material. His disciples who followed him believed his teachings to be inspired, and the man divine. Their beliefs were partially held in place because they thought the man performed miracles, such as healing sick people, casting out demons, and even raising the dead. Eventually he aroused the ire of the Roman authorities. After he died, he returned and met his followers and let them know that he lived on in a heavenly realm.

If you guessed Jesus, that is not the person I was thinking of. Of course, all the above statements apply to the Galilean who died in 30 CE and became the founder of the Christian religion. But this description also fits the man Apollonius of Tyana (d. around 97 CE), whom an author called Philostratus wrote about (using earlier sources) in the early 200s. Apollonius (likely the subject of this statue from the late 100s) was a philosopher whose ideas fall into the category “Neopythagorean,” which obviously has similarities with the teachings proselytized by Jesus.

The first-century Roman Empire was a place where apocalypticism, divinities who were also human (and vice-versa), and beliefs about a spiritual reality that superseded a material one were rife.