Rodan of Alexandria

• harmonized philosophy with Judaism

121:6.3Though the Hel­le­nized Jew­ish be­liefs were very lit­tle in­flu­enced by the teach­ings of the Epi­cure­ans, they were very ma­te­ri­ally af­fected by the phi­los­o­phy of Plato and the self-ab­ne­ga­tion doc­trines of the Sto­ics. The great in­road of Sto­icism is ex­em­pli­fied by the Fourth Book of the Mac­cabees; the pen­e­tra­tion of both Pla­tonic phi­los­o­phy and Stoic doc­trines is ex­hib­ited in the Wis­dom of Sol­o­mon. The Hel­le­nized Jews brought to the He­brew scrip­tures such an al­le­gor­i­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion that they found no dif­fi­culty in con­form­ing He­brew the­ol­ogy with their revered Aris­totelian phi­los­o­phy. But this all led to dis­as­trous con­fu­sion un­til these prob­lems were taken in hand by Philo of Alexan­dria, who pro­ceeded to har­mo­nize and sys­tem­ize Greek phi­los­o­phy and He­brew the­ol­ogy into a com­pact and fairly con­sis­tent sys­tem of re­li­gious be­lief and prac­tice. And it was this later teach­ing of com­bined Greek phi­los­o­phy and He­brew the­ol­ogy that pre­vailed in Pales­tine when Je­sus lived and taught, and which Paul uti­lized as the foun­da­tion on which to build his more ad­vanced and en­light­en­ing cult of Chris­tian­ity.

121:6.4Philo was a great teacher; not since Moses had there lived a man who ex­erted such a pro­found in­flu­ence on the eth­i­cal and re­li­gious thought of the Oc­ci­den­tal world. In the mat­ter of the com­bi­na­tion of the bet­ter el­e­ments in con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous sys­tems of eth­i­cal and re­li­gious teach­ings, there have been seven out­stand­ing hu­man teach­ers: Sethard, Moses, Zoroaster, Lao-tse, Bud­dha, Philo, and Paul.

121:6.5Many, but not all, of Philo’s in­con­sis­ten­cies re­sult­ing from an ef­fort to com­bine Greek mys­ti­cal phi­los­o­phy and Ro­man Stoic doc­trines with the le­gal­is­tic the­ol­ogy of the He­brews, Paul rec­og­nized and wisely elim­i­nated from his pre-Chris­tian ba­sic the­ol­ogy. Philo led the way for Paul more fully to re­store the con­cept of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, which had long been dor­mant in Jew­ish the­ol­ogy. In only one mat­ter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or to tran­scend the teach­ings of this wealthy and ed­u­cated Jew of Alexan­dria, and that was the doc­trine of the atone­ment; Philo taught de­liv­er­ance from the doc­trine of for­give­ness only by the shed­ding of blood. He also pos­si­bly glimpsed the re­al­ity and pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers more clearly than did Paul. But Paul’s the­ory of orig­i­nal sin, the doc­trines of hered­i­tary guilt and in­nate evil and re­demp­tion there­from, was par­tially Mith­raic in ori­gin, hav­ing lit­tle in com­mon with He­brew the­ol­ogy, Philo’s phi­los­o­phy, or Je­sus’ teach­ings. Some phases of Paul’s teach­ings re­gard­ing orig­i­nal sin and the atone­ment were orig­i­nal with him­self.

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.

• harmonized philosophy with Judaism

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.

• harmonized philosophy with Judaism

146:1.3Many of the bet­ter of the Baby­lo­nian and Per­sian ideas of light and dark­ness, good and evil, time and eter­nity, were later in­cor­po­rated in the doc­trines of so-called Chris­tian­ity, and their in­clu­sion ren­dered the Chris­tian teach­ings more im­me­di­ately ac­cept­able to the peo­ples of the Near East. In like man­ner, the in­clu­sion of many of Plato’s the­o­ries of the ideal spirit or in­vis­i­ble pat­terns of all things vis­i­ble and ma­te­rial, as later adapted by Philo to the He­brew the­ol­ogy, made Paul’s Chris­tian teach­ings more easy of ac­cep­tance by the west­ern Greeks.

• Jesus assigned Nathaniel and Thomas to talk with
• Jesus declined to enter into conference with

160:0.1On Sun­day morn­ing, Septem­ber 18, An­drew an­nounced that no work would be planned for the com­ing week. All of the apos­tles, ex­cept Na­than­iel and Thomas, went home to visit their fam­i­lies or to so­journ with friends. This week Je­sus en­joyed a pe­riod of al­most com­plete rest, but Na­than­iel and Thomas were very busy with their dis­cus­sions with a cer­tain Greek philoso­pher from Alexan­dria named Ro­dan. This Greek had re­cently be­come a dis­ci­ple of Je­sus through the teach­ing of one of Ab­ner’s as­so­ciates who had con­ducted a mis­sion at Alexan­dria. Ro­dan was now earnestly en­gaged in the task of har­mo­niz­ing his phi­los­o­phy of life with Je­sus’ new re­li­gious teach­ings, and he had come to Ma­g­a­dan hop­ing that the Mas­ter would talk these prob­lems over with him. He also de­sired to se­cure a first­hand and au­thor­i­ta­tive ver­sion of the gospel from ei­ther Je­sus or one of his apos­tles. Though the Mas­ter de­clined to en­ter into such a con­fer­ence with Ro­dan, he did re­ceive him gra­ciously and im­me­di­ately di­rected that Na­than­iel and Thomas should lis­ten to all he had to say and tell him about the gospel in re­turn.

• one of greatest of his race

160:5.14And thus ended the dis­ser­ta­tions of the Greek philoso­pher, one of the great­est of his race, who had be­come a be­liever in the gospel of Je­sus.

• instructed by former apostle of John the Baptist
• Jesus assigned Nathaniel and Thomas to talk with

161:0.2When the hour came to leave for Je­ru­sa­lem, Na­than­iel and Thomas were still in the midst of their dis­cus­sions with Ro­dan of Alexan­dria, and they se­cured the Mas­ter’s per­mis­sion to re­main at Ma­g­a­dan for a few days. And so, while Je­sus and the ten were on their way to Je­ru­sa­lem, Na­than­iel and Thomas were en­gaged in earnest de­bate with Ro­dan. The week prior, in which Ro­dan had ex­pounded his phi­los­o­phy, Thomas and Na­than­iel had al­ter­nated in pre­sent­ing the gospel of the king­dom to the Greek philoso­pher. Ro­dan dis­cov­ered that he had been well in­structed in Je­sus’ teach­ings by one of the for­mer apos­tles of John the Bap­tist who had been his teacher at Alexan­dria.

• Jesus declined to enter into conference with

161:1.2Ro­dan con­tended that the fact of per­son­al­ity con­sists in the co­ex­is­tent fact of full and mu­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween be­ings of equal­ity, be­ings who are ca­pa­ble of sym­pa­thetic un­der­stand­ing. Said Ro­dan: “In or­der to be a per­son, God must have sym­bols of spirit com­mu­ni­ca­tion which would en­able him to be­come fully un­der­stood by those who make con­tact with him. But since God is in­fi­nite and eter­nal, the Cre­ator of all other be­ings, it fol­lows that, as re­gards be­ings of equal­ity, God is alone in the uni­verse. There are none equal to him; there are none with whom he can com­mu­ni­cate as an equal. God in­deed may be the source of all per­son­al­ity, but as such he is tran­scen­dent to per­son­al­ity, even as the Cre­ator is above and be­yond the crea­ture.”

• martyred in Greece

161:2.12Ro­dan made his way back to Alexan­dria, where he long taught his phi­los­o­phy in the school of Meganta. He be­came a mighty man in the later af­fairs of the king­dom of heaven; he was a faith­ful be­liever to the end of his earth days, yield­ing up his life in Greece with oth­ers when the per­se­cu­tions were at their height.

• instructed inquiring Greeks

177:3.5Shortly af­ter noon, more than twenty of the Greeks who had met with Je­sus and the twelve at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea ar­rived at the camp, and Pe­ter and John spent sev­eral hours in con­fer­ence with them. These Greeks, at least some of them, were well ad­vanced in the knowl­edge of the king­dom, hav­ing been in­structed by Ro­dan at Alexan­dria.

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.”

• pupils of R. converted Stephen and Barnabas

194:4.11And so all went well in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til the time of the com­ing of the Greeks in large num­bers from Alexan­dria. Two of the pupils of Ro­dan ar­rived in Je­ru­sa­lem and made many con­verts from among the Hel­lenists. Among their early con­verts were Stephen and Bar­na­bas. These able Greeks did not so much have the Jew­ish view­point, and they did not so well con­form to the Jew­ish mode of wor­ship and other cer­e­mo­nial prac­tices. And it was the do­ings of these Greek be­liev­ers that ter­mi­nated the peace­ful re­la­tions be­tween the Je­sus broth­er­hood and the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees. Stephen and his Greek as­so­ciate be­gan to preach more as Je­sus taught, and this brought them into im­me­di­ate con­flict with the Jew­ish rulers. In one of Stephen’s pub­lic ser­mons, when he reached the ob­jec­tion­able part of the dis­course, they dis­pensed with all for­mal­i­ties of trial and pro­ceeded to stone him to death on the spot.