Alexandria

• Ptolemy’s library; a million manuscripts

74:8.12This spu­ri­ous doc­u­ment, re­puted to be the teach­ings of Moses, was brought to the at­ten­tion of Ptolemy, the Greek king of Egypt, who had it trans­lated into Greek by a com­mis­sion of sev­enty schol­ars for his new li­brary at Alexan­dria. And so this ac­count found its place among those writ­ings which sub­se­quently be­came a part of the later col­lec­tions of the “sa­cred scrip­tures” of the He­brew and Chris­tian re­li­gions. And through iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with these the­o­log­i­cal sys­tems, such con­cepts for a long time pro­foundly in­flu­enced the phi­los­o­phy of many Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples.

• Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek at

121:6.2In the days of Je­sus three lan­guages pre­vailed in Pales­tine: The com­mon peo­ple spoke some di­alect of Ara­maic; the priests and rab­bis spoke He­brew; the ed­u­cated classes and the bet­ter strata of Jews in gen­eral spoke Greek. The early trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at Alexan­dria was re­spon­si­ble in no small mea­sure for the sub­se­quent pre­dom­i­nance of the Greek wing of Jew­ish cul­ture and the­ol­ogy. And the writ­ings of the Chris­tian teach­ers were soon to ap­pear in the same lan­guage. The re­nais­sance of Ju­daism dates from the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. This was a vi­tal in­flu­ence which later de­ter­mined the drift of Paul’s Chris­tian cult to­ward the West in­stead of to­ward the East.

• early Christians also disciples of Philo

121:6.6The Gospel of John, the last of the nar­ra­tives of Je­sus’ earth life, was ad­dressed to the West­ern peo­ples and pre­sents its story much in the light of the view­point of the later Alexan­drian Chris­tians, who were also dis­ci­ples of the teach­ings of Philo.

• Joseph and Mary’s 2 year sojourn at

122:10.4The mas­sacre of these in­fants took place about the mid­dle of Oc­to­ber, 6 B.C., when Je­sus was a lit­tle over one year of age. But there were be­liev­ers in the com­ing Mes­siah even among Herod’s court attachés, and one of these, learn­ing of the or­der to slaugh­ter the Beth­le­hem boy ba­bies, com­mu­ni­cated with Zach­a­rias, who in turn dis­patched a mes­sen­ger to Joseph; and the night be­fore the mas­sacre Joseph and Mary de­parted from Beth­le­hem with the babe for Alexan­dria in Egypt. In or­der to avoid at­tract­ing at­ten­tion, they jour­neyed alone to Egypt with Je­sus. They went to Alexan­dria on funds pro­vided by Zach­a­rias, and there Joseph worked at his trade while Mary and Je­sus lodged with well-to-do rel­a­tives of Joseph’s fam­ily. They so­journed in Alexan­dria two full years, not re­turn­ing to Beth­le­hem un­til af­ter the death of Herod.

• Joseph and Mary’s 2 year sojourn at

123:0.1Ow­ing to the un­cer­tain­ties and anx­i­eties of their so­journ in Beth­le­hem, Mary did not wean the babe un­til they had ar­rived safely in Alexan­dria, where the fam­ily was able to set­tle down to a nor­mal life. They lived with kins­folk, and Joseph was well able to sup­port his fam­ily as he se­cured work shortly af­ter their ar­rival. He was em­ployed as a car­pen­ter for sev­eral months and then el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of fore­man of a large group of work­men em­ployed on one of the pub­lic build­ings then in pro­cess of con­struc­tion. This new ex­pe­ri­ence gave him the idea of be­com­ing a con­trac­tor and builder af­ter their re­turn to Naz­a­reth.

123:0.2All through these early years of Je­sus’ help­less in­fancy, Mary main­tained one long and con­stant vigil lest any­thing be­fall her child which might jeop­ar­dize his wel­fare or in any way in­ter­fere with his fu­ture mis­sion on earth; no mother was ever more de­voted to her child. In the home where Je­sus chanced to be there were two other chil­dren about his age, and among the near neigh­bors there were six oth­ers whose ages were suf­fi­ciently near his own to make them ac­cept­able play-fel­lows. At first Mary was dis­posed to keep Je­sus close by her side. She feared some­thing might hap­pen to him if he were al­lowed to play in the gar­den with the other chil­dren, but Joseph, with the as­sis­tance of his kins­folk, was able to con­vince her that such a course would de­prive Je­sus of the help­ful ex­pe­ri­ence of learn­ing how to ad­just him­self to chil­dren of his own age. And Mary, re­al­iz­ing that such a pro­gram of un­due shel­ter­ing and un­usual pro­tec­tion might tend to make him self-con­scious and some­what self-cen­tered, fi­nally gave as­sent to the plan of per­mit­ting the child of prom­ise to grow up just like any other child; and though she was obe­di­ent to this de­ci­sion, she made it her busi­ness al­ways to be on watch while the lit­tle folks were at play about the house or in the gar­den. Only an af­fec­tion­ate mother can know the bur­den that Mary car­ried in her heart for the safety of her son dur­ing these years of his in­fancy and early child­hood.

123:0.3Through­out the two years of their so­journ at Alexan­dria, Je­sus en­joyed good health and con­tin­ued to grow nor­mally. Aside from a few friends and rel­a­tives no one was told about Je­sus’ be­ing a “child of prom­ise.” One of Joseph’s rel­a­tives re­vealed this to a few friends in Mem­phis, de­scen­dants of the dis­tant Ikh­na­ton, and they, with a small group of Alexan­drian be­liev­ers, as­sem­bled at the pala­tial home of Joseph’s rel­a­tive-bene­fac­tor a short time be­fore the re­turn to Pales­tine to wish the Naz­a­reth fam­ily well and to pay their re­spects to the child. On this oc­ca­sion the as­sem­bled friends pre­sented Je­sus with a com­plete copy of the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. But this copy of the Jew­ish sa­cred writ­ings was not placed in Joseph’s hands un­til both he and Mary had fi­nally de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion of their Mem­phis and Alexan­drian friends to re­main in Egypt. These be­liev­ers in­sisted that the child of des­tiny would be able to ex­ert a far greater world in­flu­ence as a res­i­dent of Alexan­dria than of any des­ig­nated place in Pales­tine. These per­sua­sions de­layed their de­par­ture for Pales­tine for some time af­ter they re­ceived the news of Herod’s death.

123:0.4Joseph and Mary fi­nally took leave of Alexan­dria on a boat be­long­ing to their friend Ezraeon, bound for Joppa, ar­riv­ing at that port late in Au­gust of the year 4 B.C. They went di­rectly to Beth­le­hem, where they spent the en­tire month of Septem­ber in coun­sel with their friends and rel­a­tives con­cern­ing whether they should re­main there or re­turn to Naz­a­reth.

• Jesus › offered assistant chazanship in A.

128:5.2The week fol­low­ing the Pass­over of this year a young man from Alexan­dria came down to Naz­a­reth to ar­range for a meet­ing, later in the year, be­tween Je­sus and a group of Alexan­drian Jews at some point on the Pales­tinian coast. This con­fer­ence was set for the mid­dle of June, and Je­sus went over to Cae­sarea to meet with five promi­nent Jews of Alexan­dria, who be­sought him to es­tab­lish him­self in their city as a re­li­gious teacher, of­fer­ing as an in­duce­ment to be­gin with, the po­si­tion of as­sis­tant to the chazan in their chief syn­a­gogue.

128:5.3The spokes­men for this com­mit­tee ex­plained to Je­sus that Alexan­dria was des­tined to be­come the head­quar­ters of Jew­ish cul­ture for the en­tire world; that the Hel­lenis­tic trend of Jew­ish af­fairs had vir­tu­ally out­dis­tanced the Baby­lo­nian school of thought. They re­minded Je­sus of the omi­nous rum­blings of re­bel­lion in Je­ru­sa­lem and through­out Pales­tine and as­sured him that any up­ris­ing of the Pales­tinian Jews would be equiv­a­lent to na­tional sui­cide, that the iron hand of Rome would crush the re­bel­lion in three months, and that Je­ru­sa­lem would be de­stroyed and the tem­ple de­mol­ished, that not one stone would be left upon an­other.

128:5.4Je­sus lis­tened to all they had to say, thanked them for their con­fi­dence, and, in de­clin­ing to go to Alexan­dria, in sub­stance said, “My hour has not yet come.” They were non­plused by his ap­par­ent in­dif­fer­ence to the honor they had sought to con­fer upon him. Be­fore tak­ing leave of Je­sus, they pre­sented him with a purse in to­ken of the es­teem of his Alexan­drian friends and in com­pen­sa­tion for the time and ex­pense of com­ing over to Cae­sarea to con­fer with them. But he like­wise re­fused the money, say­ing: “The house of Joseph has never re­ceived alms, and we can­not eat an­other’s bread as long as I have strong arms and my broth­ers can la­bor.”

128:5.5His friends from Egypt set sail for home, and in sub­se­quent years, when they heard ru­mors of the Ca­per­naum boat­builder who was cre­at­ing such a com­mo­tion in Pales­tine, few of them sur­mised that he was the babe of Beth­le­hem grown up and the same strange-act­ing Galilean who had so un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion to be­come a great teacher in Alexan­dria.

• Alexandria

130:0.2From Je­ru­sa­lem they went to Cae­sarea by way of Joppa. At Cae­sarea they took a boat for Alexan­dria. From Alexan­dria they sailed for Lasea in Crete. From Crete they sailed for Carthage, touch­ing at Cyrene. At Carthage they took a boat for Naples, stop­ping at Malta, Syra­cuse, and Messina. From Naples they went to Ca­pua, whence they trav­eled by the Ap­pian Way to Rome.

130:3.1It had been an event­ful visit at Cae­sarea, and when the boat was ready, Je­sus and his two friends de­parted at noon one day for Alexan­dria in Egypt.

130:3.2The three en­joyed a most pleas­ant pas­sage to Alexan­dria. Ga­nid was de­lighted with the voy­age and kept Je­sus busy an­swer­ing ques­tions. As they ap­proached the city’s har­bor, the young man was thrilled by the great light­house of Pharos, lo­cated on the is­land which Alexan­der had joined by a mole to the main­land, thus cre­at­ing two mag­nif­i­cent har­bors and thereby mak­ing Alexan­dria the mar­itime com­mer­cial cross­roads of Africa, Asia, and Eu­rope. This great light­house was one of the seven won­ders of the world and was the fore­run­ner of all sub­se­quent light­houses. They arose early in the morn­ing to view this splen­did life­sav­ing de­vice of man, and amidst the ex­cla­ma­tions of Ga­nid Je­sus said: “And you, my son, will be like this light­house when you re­turn to In­dia, even af­ter your fa­ther is laid to rest; you will be­come like the light of life to those who sit about you in dark­ness, show­ing all who so de­sire the way to reach the har­bor of sal­va­tion in safety.” And as Ga­nid squeezed Je­sus’ hand, he said, “I will.”

130:3.3And again we re­mark that the early teach­ers of the Chris­tian re­li­gion made a great mis­take when they so ex­clu­sively turned their at­ten­tion to the west­ern civ­i­liza­tion of the Ro­man world. The teach­ings of Je­sus, as they were held by the Mes­o­po­ta­mian be­liev­ers of the first cen­tury, would have been read­ily re­ceived by the var­i­ous groups of Asi­atic re­li­gion­ists.

• attractions of this city of 1 million
• Ptolemy’s library; a million manuscripts

130:3.4By the fourth hour af­ter land­ing they were set­tled near the east­ern end of the long and broad av­enue, one hun­dred feet wide and five miles long, which stretched on out to the west­ern lim­its of this city of one mil­lion peo­ple. Af­ter the first sur­vey of the city’s chief at­trac­tions—uni­ver­sity (mu­seum), li­brary, the royal mau­soleum of Alexan­der, the palace, tem­ple of Nep­tune, the­ater, and gym­na­sium—Gonod ad­dressed him­self to busi­ness while Je­sus and Ga­nid went to the li­brary, the great­est in the world. Here were as­sem­bled nearly a mil­lion manuscripts from all the civ­i­lized world: Greece, Rome, Pales­tine, Parthia, In­dia, China, and even Japan. In this li­brary Ga­nid saw the largest col­lec­tion of In­dian lit­er­a­ture in all the world; and they spent some time here each day through­out their stay in Alexan­dria. Je­sus told Ga­nid about the trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at this place. And they dis­cussed again and again all the re­li­gions of the world, Je­sus en­deav­or­ing to point out to this young mind the truth in each, al­ways adding: “But Yah­weh is the God de­vel­oped from the rev­e­la­tions of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the covenant of Abra­ham. The Jews were the off­spring of Abra­ham and sub­se­quently oc­cu­pied the very land wherein Mel­chiz­e­dek had lived and taught, and from which he sent teach­ers to all the world; and their re­li­gion even­tu­ally por­trayed a clearer rec­og­ni­tion of the Lord God of Is­rael as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in heaven than any other world re­li­gion.”

130:3.5Un­der Je­sus’ di­rec­tion Ga­nid made a col­lec­tion of the teach­ings of all those re­li­gions of the world which rec­og­nized a Uni­ver­sal De­ity, even though they might also give more or less rec­og­ni­tion to sub­or­di­nate de­i­ties. Af­ter much dis­cus­sion Je­sus and Ga­nid de­cided that the Ro­mans had no real God in their re­li­gion, that their re­li­gion was hardly more than em­peror wor­ship. The Greeks, they con­cluded, had a phi­los­o­phy but hardly a re­li­gion with a per­sonal God. The mys­tery cults they dis­carded be­cause of the con­fu­sion of their mul­ti­plic­ity, and be­cause their var­ied con­cepts of De­ity seemed to be de­rived from other and older re­li­gions.

130:3.6Al­though these trans­la­tions were made at Alexan­dria, Ga­nid did not fi­nally ar­range these se­lec­tions and add his own per­sonal con­clu­sions un­til near the end of their so­journ in Rome. He was much sur­prised to dis­cover that the best of the au­thors of the world’s sa­cred lit­er­a­ture all more or less clearly rec­og­nized the ex­is­tence of an eter­nal God and were much in agree­ment with re­gard to his char­ac­ter and his re­la­tion­ship with mor­tal man.

• attractions of this city of 1 million
• intellectual center of Occidental world

130:3.7Je­sus and Ga­nid spent much time in the mu­seum dur­ing their stay in Alexan­dria. This mu­seum was not a col­lec­tion of rare ob­jects but rather a uni­ver­sity of fine art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture. Learned pro­fes­sors here gave daily lec­tures, and in those times this was the in­tel­lec­tual cen­ter of the Oc­ci­den­tal world. Day by day Je­sus in­ter­preted the lec­tures to Ga­nid; one day dur­ing the sec­ond week the young man ex­claimed: “Teacher Joshua, you know more than these pro­fes­sors; you should stand up and tell them the great things you have told me; they are be­fogged by much think­ing. I shall speak to my fa­ther and have him ar­range it.” Je­sus smiled, say­ing: “You are an ad­mir­ing pupil, but these teach­ers are not minded that you and I should in­struct them. The pride of un­spir­i­tu­al­ized learn­ing is a treach­er­ous thing in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. The true teacher main­tains his in­tel­lec­tual in­tegrity by ever re­main­ing a learner.”

• 70 elders ruled world’s largest synagogue

130:3.8Alexan­dria was the city of the blended cul­ture of the Oc­ci­dent and next to Rome the largest and most mag­nif­i­cent in the world. Here was lo­cated the largest Jew­ish syn­a­gogue in the world, the seat of gov­ern­ment of the Alexan­dria San­hedrin, the sev­enty rul­ing el­ders.

130:3.9Among the many men with whom Gonod trans­acted busi­ness was a cer­tain Jew­ish banker, Alexan­der, whose brother, Philo, was a fa­mous re­li­gious philoso­pher of that time. Philo was en­gaged in the laud­able but ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult task of har­mo­niz­ing Greek phi­los­o­phy and He­brew the­ol­ogy. Ga­nid and Je­sus talked much about Philo’s teach­ings and ex­pected to at­tend some of his lec­tures, but through­out their stay at Alexan­dria this fa­mous Hel­lenis­tic Jew lay sick abed.

130:3.10Je­sus com­mended to Ga­nid much in the Greek phi­los­o­phy and the Stoic doc­trines, but he im­pressed upon the lad the truth that these sys­tems of be­lief, like the in­def­i­nite teach­ings of some of his own peo­ple, were re­li­gions only in the sense that they led men to find God and en­joy a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in know­ing the Eter­nal.

• Simon Zelotes preached at

139:11.11He went to Alexan­dria and, af­ter work­ing up the Nile, pen­e­trated into the heart of Africa, ev­ery­where preach­ing the gospel of Je­sus and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers. Thus he la­bored un­til he was an old man and fee­ble. And he died and was buried in the heart of Africa.

• Jesus › offered assistant chazanship in A.

148:8.2The Greek philoso­pher who had been won for the king­dom on the pre­vi­ous tour of Gal­i­lee re­turned with cer­tain wealthy Jews of Alexan­dria, and once more they in­vited Je­sus to come to their city for the pur­pose of es­tab­lish­ing a joint school of phi­los­o­phy and re­li­gion as well as an in­fir­mary for the sick. But Je­sus cour­te­ously de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion.

• Alexandria

186:3.2As soon as Je­sus was turned over to the Ro­man sol­diers by Pi­late for cru­ci­fix­ion, a mes­sen­ger has­tened away to Geth­sem­ane to in­form David, and within five min­utes run­ners were on their way to Beth­saida, Pella, Phil­a­del­phia, Sidon, Shechem, He­bron, Da­mas­cus, and Alexan­dria. And these mes­sen­gers car­ried the news that Je­sus was about to be cru­ci­fied by the Ro­mans at the in­sis­tent be­hest of the rulers of the Jews.

186:3.3Through­out this tragic day, un­til the mes­sage fi­nally went forth that the Mas­ter had been laid in the tomb, David sent mes­sen­gers about ev­ery half hour with re­ports to the apos­tles, the Greeks, and Je­sus’ earthly fam­ily, as­sem­bled at the home of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any. When the mes­sen­gers de­parted with the word that Je­sus had been buried, David dis­missed his corps of lo­cal run­ners for the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion and for the com­ing Sab­bath of rest, in­struct­ing them to re­port to him qui­etly on Sun­day morn­ing at the home of Nicode­mus, where he pro­posed to go in hid­ing for a few days with An­drew and Si­mon Pe­ter.

• Alexandria

190:1.8These twenty-six were dis­patched to the home of Laz­a­rus in Beth­any and to all of the be­liever cen­ters, from Beer­sheba in the south to Da­mas­cus and Sidon in the north; and from Phil­a­del­phia in the east to Alexan­dria in the west.

191:6.1While the eleven apos­tles were on the way to Gal­i­lee, draw­ing near their jour­ney’s end, on Tues­day evening, April 18, at about half past eight o’clock, Je­sus ap­peared to Ro­dan and some eighty other be­liev­ers, in Alexan­dria. This was the Mas­ter’s twelfth ap­pear­ance in mor­ontia form. Je­sus ap­peared be­fore these Greeks and Jews at the con­clu­sion of the re­port of David’s mes­sen­ger re­gard­ing the cru­ci­fix­ion. This mes­sen­ger, be­ing the fifth in the Je­ru­sa­lem-Alexan­dria re­lay of run­ners, had ar­rived in Alexan­dria late that af­ter­noon, and when he had de­liv­ered his mes­sage to Ro­dan, it was de­cided to call the be­liev­ers to­gether to re­ceive this tragic word from the mes­sen­ger him­self. At about eight o’clock, the mes­sen­ger, Nathan of Busiris, came be­fore this group and told them in de­tail all that had been told him by the pre­ced­ing run­ner. Nathan ended his touch­ing recital with these words: “But David, who sends us this word, re­ports that the Mas­ter, in fore­telling his death, de­clared that he would rise again.” Even as Nathan spoke, the mor­ontia Mas­ter ap­peared there in full view of all. And when Nathan sat down, Je­sus said:

191:6.2“Peace be upon you. That which my Fa­ther sent me into the world to es­tab­lish be­longs not to a race, a na­tion, nor to a spe­cial group of teach­ers or preach­ers. This gospel of the king­dom be­longs to both Jew and gen­tile, to rich and poor, to free and bond, to male and fe­male, even to the lit­tle chil­dren. And you are all to pro­claim this gospel of love and truth by the lives which you live in the flesh. You shall love one an­other with a new and startling af­fec­tion, even as I have loved you. You will serve man­kind with a new and amaz­ing de­vo­tion, even as I have served you. And when men see you so love them, and when they be­hold how fer­vently you serve them, they will per­ceive that you have be­come faith-fel­lows of the king­dom of heaven, and they will fol­low af­ter the Spirit of Truth which they see in your lives, to the find­ing of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

191:6.3“As the Fa­ther sent me into this world, even so now send I you. You are all called to carry the good news to those who sit in dark­ness. This gospel of the king­dom be­longs to all who be­lieve it; it shall not be com­mit­ted to the cus­tody of mere priests. Soon will the Spirit of Truth come upon you, and he shall lead you into all truth. Go you, there­fore, into all the world preach­ing this gospel, and lo, I am with you al­ways, even to the end of the ages.”

191:6.4When the Mas­ter had so spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight. All that night these be­liev­ers re­mained there to­gether re­count­ing their ex­pe­ri­ences as king­dom be­liev­ers and lis­ten­ing to the many words of Ro­dan and his as­so­ciates. And they all be­lieved that Je­sus had risen from the dead. Imag­ine the sur­prise of David’s her­ald of the res­ur­rec­tion, who ar­rived the sec­ond day af­ter this, when they replied to his an­nounce­ment, say­ing: “Yes, we know, for we have seen him. He ap­peared to us day be­fore yes­ter­day.”

• in early Christian era

195:3.10Con­di­tions, how­ever, were not so bad at Alexan­dria. The early schools con­tin­ued to hold much of Je­sus’ teach­ings free from com­pro­mise. Pan­taenus taught Clement and then went on to fol­low Na­than­iel in pro­claim­ing Christ in In­dia. While some of the ide­als of Je­sus were sac­ri­ficed in the build­ing of Chris­tian­ity, it should in all fair­ness be re­corded that, by the end of the sec­ond cen­tury, prac­ti­cally all the great minds of the Greco-Ro­man world had be­come Chris­tian. The tri­umph was ap­proach­ing com­ple­tion.