Bible Dictionaries
Damascus, Damascenes

　　Damascus ( II. i. [1885] 185).

　　St. Paul had instructions to deal summarily ‘with any that were of the way’ (Acts 9:2), but the letters which he carried ‘for the synagogues’ (Acts 9:2) were never delivered, and his ‘commission’ (Acts 26:12) was never executed. One of the Christians whom he intended to ‘bring bound to Jerusalem’ (Acts 9:2) baptized him (Acts 9:18), and ‘with the disciples who were at Damascus’ (Acts 9:19) he enjoyed his first Christian fellowship. None of them were among the confessors who afterwards haunted him ‘with their remembered faces, dear men and women whom’ he ‘sought and slew.’ In Damascus he ‘preached Jesus’ (Acts 9:20), the substance of his gospel being ‘that he is the Son of God,’ ‘that this is the Christ’ (Acts 9:20; Acts 9:22). The incident of St. Paul’s escape from conspirators by his being let down over the city wall in a basket (q.v. [Note: quod vide, which see.]