Antioch

• Antioch

130:0.3Af­ter their stay in Rome they went over­land to Tar­en­tum, where they set sail for Athens in Greece, stop­ping at Nicopo­lis and Corinth. From Athens they went to Eph­esus by way of Troas. From Eph­esus they sailed for Cyprus, putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent con­sid­er­able time vis­it­ing and rest­ing on Cyprus and then sailed for An­ti­och in Syria. From An­ti­och they jour­neyed south to Sidon and then went over to Da­mas­cus. From there they trav­eled by car­a­van to Mes­o­po­ta­mia, pass­ing through Thap­sacus and Larissa. They spent some time in Baby­lon, vis­ited Ur and other places, and then went to Susa. From Susa they jour­neyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ga­nid em­barked for In­dia.

194:4.7Un­mis­tak­ably, a new fel­low­ship was aris­ing in the world. “The mul­ti­tude who be­lieved con­tin­ued stead­fastly in the apos­tles’ teach­ing and fel­low­ship, in the break­ing of bread, and in prayers.” They called each other brother and sis­ter; they greeted one an­other with a holy kiss; they min­is­tered to the poor. It was a fel­low­ship of liv­ing as well as of wor­ship. They were not com­mu­nal by de­cree but by the de­sire to share their goods with their fel­low be­liev­ers. They con­fi­dently ex­pected that Je­sus would re­turn to com­plete the es­tab­lish­ment of the Fa­ther’s king­dom dur­ing their gen­er­a­tion. This spon­ta­neous shar­ing of earthly pos­ses­sions was not a di­rect fea­ture of Je­sus’ teach­ing; it came about be­cause these men and women so sin­cerely and so con­fi­dently be­lieved that he was to re­turn any day to fin­ish his work and to con­sum­mate the king­dom. But the fi­nal re­sults of this well-meant ex­per­i­ment in thought­less broth­erly love were dis­as­trous and sor­row-breed­ing. Thou­sands of earnest be­liev­ers sold their prop­erty and dis­posed of all their cap­i­tal goods and other pro­duc­tive as­sets. With the pass­ing of time, the dwin­dling re­sources of Chris­tian “equal-shar­ing” came to an end—but the world did not. Very soon the be­liev­ers at An­ti­och were tak­ing up a col­lec­tion to keep their fel­low be­liev­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem from starv­ing.

121:8.9As ma­te­rial for the com­pi­la­tion of his Gospel, Luke first de­pended upon the story of Je­sus’ life as Paul had re­lated it to him. Luke’s Gospel is, there­fore, in some ways the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Paul. But Luke had other sources of in­for­ma­tion. He not only in­ter­viewed scores of eye­wit­nesses to the nu­mer­ous episodes of Je­sus’ life which he re­cords, but he also had with him a copy of Mark’s Gospel, that is, the first four fifths, Isador’s nar­ra­tive, and a brief rec­ord made in the year A.D. 78 at An­ti­och by a be­liever named Cedes. Luke also had a mu­ti­lated and much-edited copy of some notes pur­ported to have been made by the Apos­tle An­drew.

121:2.5Each Jew­ish syn­a­gogue tol­er­ated a fringe of gen­tile be­liev­ers, “de­vout” or “God-fear­ing” men, and it was among this fringe of pros­e­lytes that Paul made the bulk of his early con­verts to Chris­tian­ity. Even the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem pos­sessed its or­nate court of the gen­tiles. There was very close con­nec­tion be­tween the cul­ture, com­merce, and wor­ship of Je­ru­sa­lem and An­ti­och. In An­ti­och Paul’s dis­ci­ples were first called “Chris­tians.”

133:8.1An­ti­och was the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man prov­ince of Syria, and here the im­pe­rial gov­er­nor had his res­i­dence. An­ti­och had half a mil­lion in­hab­i­tants; it was the third city of the em­pire in size and the first in wicked­ness and fla­grant im­moral­ity. Gonod had con­sid­er­able busi­ness to trans­act; so Je­sus and Ga­nid were much by them­selves. They vis­ited ev­ery­thing about this poly­glot city ex­cept the grove of Daphne. Gonod and Ga­nid vis­ited this no­to­ri­ous shrine of shame, but Je­sus de­clined to ac­com­pany them. Such scenes were not so shock­ing to In­di­ans, but they were re­pel­lent to an ide­al­is­tic He­brew.

171:1.6Within a short time af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem, An­ti­och be­came the head­quar­ters of Pauline Chris­tian­ity, while Phil­a­del­phia re­mained the cen­ter of the Ab­ne­r­ian king­dom of heaven. From An­ti­och the Pauline ver­sion of the teach­ings of Je­sus and about Je­sus spread to all the West­ern world; from Phil­a­del­phia the mis­sion­ar­ies of the Ab­ne­r­ian ver­sion of the king­dom of heaven spread through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Ara­bia un­til the later times when these un­com­pro­mis­ing emis­saries of the teach­ings of Je­sus were over­whelmed by the sud­den rise of Is­lam.

133:8.2Je­sus be­came sober and re­flec­tive as he drew nearer Pales­tine and the end of their jour­ney. He vis­ited with few peo­ple in An­ti­och; he sel­dom went about in the city. Af­ter much ques­tion­ing as to why his teacher man­i­fested so lit­tle in­ter­est in An­ti­och, Ga­nid fi­nally in­duced Je­sus to say: “This city is not far from Pales­tine; maybe I shall come back here some­time.”

133:8.3Ga­nid had a very in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in An­ti­och. This young man had proved him­self an apt pupil and al­ready had be­gun to make prac­ti­cal use of some of Je­sus’ teach­ings. There was a cer­tain In­dian con­nected with his fa­ther’s busi­ness in An­ti­och who had be­come so un­pleas­ant and dis­grun­tled that his dis­missal had been con­sid­ered. When Ga­nid heard this, he be­took him­self to his fa­ther’s place of busi­ness and held a long con­fer­ence with his fel­low coun­try­man. This man felt he had been put at the wrong job. Ga­nid told him about the Fa­ther in heaven and in many ways ex­panded his views of re­li­gion. But of all that Ga­nid said, the quo­ta­tion of a He­brew proverb did the most good, and that word of wis­dom was: “What­so­ever your hand finds to do, do that with all your might.”

133:8.4Af­ter prepar­ing their lug­gage for the camel car­a­van, they passed on down to Sidon and thence over to Da­mas­cus, and af­ter three days they made ready for the long trek across the desert sands.

134:7.3At An­ti­och the Son of Man lived for over two months, work­ing, ob­serv­ing, study­ing, vis­it­ing, min­is­ter­ing, and all the while learn­ing how man lives, how he thinks, feels, and re­acts to the en­vi­ron­ment of hu­man ex­is­tence. For three weeks of this pe­riod he worked as a tent­maker. He re­mained longer in An­ti­och than at any other place he vis­ited on this trip. Ten years later, when the Apos­tle Paul was preach­ing in An­ti­och and heard his fol­low­ers speak of the doc­trines of the Da­mas­cus scribe, he lit­tle knew that his pupils had heard the voice, and lis­tened to the teach­ings, of the Mas­ter him­self.

194:4.13And then broke out the new and re­lent­less per­se­cu­tions by the Jews, so that the ac­tive teach­ers of the new re­li­gion about Je­sus, which sub­se­quently at An­ti­och was called Chris­tian­ity, went forth to the ends of the em­pire pro­claim­ing Je­sus. In car­ry­ing this mes­sage, be­fore the time of Paul the lead­er­ship was in Greek hands; and these first mis­sion­ar­ies, as also the later ones, fol­lowed the path of Alexan­der’s march of for­mer days, go­ing by way of Gaza and Tyre to An­ti­och and then over Asia Mi­nor to Mace­do­nia, then on to Rome and to the ut­ter­most parts of the em­pire.

139:2.7Pe­ter was the first of Je­sus’ apos­tles to come for­ward to de­fend the work of Philip among the Samar­i­tans and Paul among the gen­tiles; yet later on at An­ti­och he re­versed him­self when con­fronted by ridi­cul­ing Ju­daiz­ers, tem­porar­ily with­draw­ing from the gen­tiles only to bring down upon his head the fear­less de­nun­ci­a­tion of Paul.