Cynics

130:8.1The first stop on the way to Italy was at the is­land of Malta. Here Je­sus had a long talk with a down­hearted and dis­cour­aged young man named Claudus. This fel­low had con­tem­plated tak­ing his life, but when he had fin­ished talk­ing with the scribe of Da­mas­cus, he said: “I will face life like a man; I am through play­ing the cow­ard. I will go back to my peo­ple and be­gin all over again.” Shortly he be­came an en­thu­si­as­tic preacher of the Cyn­ics, and still later on he joined hands with Pe­ter in pro­claim­ing Chris­tian­ity in Rome and Naples, and af­ter the death of Pe­ter he went on to Spain preach­ing the gospel. But he never knew that the man who in­spired him in Malta was the Je­sus whom he sub­se­quently pro­claimed the world’s De­liv­erer.

98:3.9The last stand of the dwin­dling band of Salem be­liev­ers was made by an earnest group of preach­ers, the Cyn­ics, who ex­horted the Ro­mans to aban­don their wild and sense­less re­li­gious rit­u­als and re­turn to a form of wor­ship em­body­ing Mel­chiz­e­dek’s gospel as it had been mod­i­fied and con­tam­i­nated through con­tact with the phi­los­o­phy of the Greeks. But the peo­ple at large re­jected the Cyn­ics; they pre­ferred to plunge into the rit­u­als of the mys­ter­ies, which not only of­fered hopes of per­sonal sal­va­tion but also grat­i­fied the de­sire for di­ver­sion, ex­cite­ment, and en­ter­tain­ment.

133:2.1While tar­ry­ing at the ship land­ing, wait­ing for the boat to un­load cargo, the trav­el­ers ob­served a man mis­treat­ing his wife. As was his cus­tom, Je­sus in­ter­vened in be­half of the per­son sub­jected to at­tack. He stepped up be­hind the irate hus­band and, tap­ping him gen­tly on the shoul­der, said: “My friend, may I speak with you in pri­vate for a mo­ment?” The an­gry man was non­plused by such an ap­proach and, af­ter a mo­ment of em­bar­rass­ing hes­i­ta­tion, stam­mered out—“er—why—yes, what do you want with me?” When Je­sus had led him to one side, he said: “My friend, I per­ceive that some­thing ter­ri­ble must have hap­pened to you; I very much de­sire that you tell me what could hap­pen to such a strong man to lead him to at­tack his wife, the mother of his chil­dren, and that right out here be­fore all eyes. I am sure you must feel that you have some good rea­son for this as­sault. What did the woman do to de­serve such treat­ment from her hus­band? As I look upon you, I think I dis­cern in your face the love of jus­tice if not the de­sire to show mercy. I ven­ture to say that, if you found me out by the way­side, at­tacked by rob­bers, you would un­hesi­tat­ingly rush to my res­cue. I dare say you have done many such brave things in the course of your life. Now, my friend, tell me what is the mat­ter? Did the woman do some­thing wrong, or did you fool­ishly lose your head and thought­lessly as­sault her?” It was not so much what he said that touched this man’s heart as the kindly look and the sym­pa­thetic smile which Je­sus be­stowed upon him at the con­clu­sion of his re­marks. Said the man: “I per­ceive you are a priest of the Cyn­ics, and I am thank­ful you re­strained me. My wife has done no great wrong; she is a good woman, but she ir­ri­tates me by the man­ner in which she picks on me in pub­lic, and I lose my tem­per. I am sorry for my lack of self-con­trol, and I prom­ise to try to live up to my for­mer pledge to one of your broth­ers who taught me the bet­ter way many years ago. I prom­ise you.”

132:0.4Je­sus learned much about men while in Rome, but the most valu­able of all the man­i­fold ex­pe­ri­ences of his six months’ so­journ in that city was his con­tact with, and in­flu­ence upon, the re­li­gious lead­ers of the em­pire’s cap­i­tal. Be­fore the end of the first week in Rome Je­sus had sought out, and had made the ac­quain­tance of, the worth-while lead­ers of the Cyn­ics, the Sto­ics, and the mys­tery cults, in par­tic­u­lar the Mith­raic group. Whether or not it was ap­par­ent to Je­sus that the Jews were go­ing to re­ject his mis­sion, he most cer­tainly fore­saw that his mes­sen­gers were pres­ently com­ing to Rome to pro­claim the king­dom of heaven; and he there­fore set about, in the most amaz­ing man­ner, to pre­pare the way for the bet­ter and more cer­tain re­cep­tion of their mes­sage. He se­lected five of the lead­ing Sto­ics, eleven of the Cyn­ics, and six­teen of the mys­tery-cult lead­ers and spent much of his spare time for al­most six months in in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with these re­li­gious teach­ers. And this was his method of in­struc­tion: Never once did he at­tack their er­rors or even men­tion the flaws in their teach­ings. In each case he would se­lect the truth in what they taught and then pro­ceed so to em­bel­lish and il­lu­mi­nate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this en­hance­ment of the truth ef­fec­tively crowded out the as­so­ci­ated er­ror; and thus were these Je­sus-taught men and women pre­pared for the sub­se­quent rec­og­ni­tion of ad­di­tional and sim­i­lar truths in the teach­ings of the early Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. It was this early ac­cep­tance of the teach­ings of the gospel preach­ers which gave that pow­er­ful im­pe­tus to the rapid spread of Chris­tian­ity in Rome and from there through­out the em­pire.

98:0.2For a long time in Eu­rope the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies car­ried on their ac­tiv­i­ties, be­com­ing grad­u­ally ab­sorbed into many of the cults and rit­ual groups which pe­ri­od­i­cally arose. Among those who main­tained the Salem teach­ings in the purest form must be men­tioned the Cyn­ics. These preach­ers of faith and trust in God were still func­tion­ing in Ro­man Eu­rope in the first cen­tury af­ter Christ, be­ing later in­cor­po­rated into the newly form­ing Chris­tian re­li­gion.

132:2.1Mar­dus was the ac­knowl­edged leader of the Cyn­ics of Rome, and he be­came a great friend of the scribe of Da­mas­cus. Day af­ter day he con­versed with Je­sus, and night upon night he lis­tened to his su­per­nal teach­ing. Among the more im­por­tant dis­cus­sions with Mar­dus was the one de­signed to an­swer this sin­cere Cynic’s ques­tion about good and evil. In sub­stance, and in twen­ti­eth-cen­tury phrase­ol­ogy, Je­sus said: