scribe of Damascus

• on tour of Roman world, Jesus known as

129:3.2Through­out this tour of the Ro­man world, for many rea­sons, Je­sus was known as the Da­mas­cus scribe. At Corinth and other stops on the re­turn trip he was, how­ever, known as the Jew­ish tu­tor.

• on tour of Roman world, Jesus known as

132:0.10Many were the times in the years so soon to fol­low that Pe­ter, Paul, and the other Chris­tian teach­ers in Rome heard about this scribe of Da­mas­cus who had pre­ceded them, and who had so ob­vi­ously (and as they sup­posed un­wit­tingly) pre­pared the way for their com­ing with the new gospel. Though Paul never re­ally sur­mised the iden­tity of this scribe of Da­mas­cus, he did, a short time be­fore his death, be­cause of the sim­i­lar­ity of per­sonal de­scrip­tions, reach the con­clu­sion that the “tent­maker of An­ti­och” was also the “scribe of Da­mas­cus.” On one oc­ca­sion, while preach­ing in Rome, Si­mon Pe­ter, on lis­ten­ing to a de­scrip­tion of the Da­mas­cus scribe, sur­mised that this in­di­vid­ual might have been Je­sus but quickly dis­missed the idea, know­ing full well (so he thought) that the Mas­ter had never been in Rome.

• on tour of Roman world, Jesus known as

132:3.1Nabon was a Greek Jew and fore­most among the lead­ers of the chief mys­tery cult in Rome, the Mith­raic. While this high priest of Mith­ra­ism held many con­fer­ences with the Da­mas­cus scribe, he was most per­ma­nently in­flu­enced by their dis­cus­sion of truth and faith one evening. Nabon had thought to make a con­vert of Je­sus and had even sug­gested that he re­turn to Pales­tine as a Mith­raic teacher. He lit­tle re­al­ized that Je­sus was prepar­ing him to be­come one of the early con­verts to the gospel of the king­dom. Re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy, the sub­stance of Je­sus’ teach­ing was:

• on tour of Roman world, Jesus known as

133:0.1When prepar­ing to leave Rome, Je­sus said good-bye to none of his friends. The scribe of Da­mas­cus ap­peared in Rome with­out an­nounce­ment and dis­ap­peared in like man­ner. It was a full year be­fore those who knew and loved him gave up hope of see­ing him again. Be­fore the end of the sec­ond year small groups of those who had known him found them­selves drawn to­gether by their com­mon in­ter­est in his teach­ings and through mu­tual mem­ory of their good times with him. And these small groups of Sto­ics, Cyn­ics, and mys­tery cultists con­tin­ued to hold these ir­reg­u­lar and in­for­mal meet­ings right up to the time of the ap­pear­ance in Rome of the first preach­ers of the Chris­tian re­li­gion.

• on tour of Roman world, Jesus known as

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.