Deir Ali

Deir Ali is a small town in Rural Damascus. The Arab Gas Pipeline passes through the area, and it supplies gas to a 250 million Euro ultramodern powerstation, located in the town; the pipeline junction at the powerstation links the power grids of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan^[1].

The town was historically a village known as lebaba, and contains the archaeological remains of a Marcionite church. These remains includes an inscription dated to 318AD, which is the oldest known surviving inscribed reference, anywhere, to Jesus:

The meeting-house of the Marcionists, in the village of Lebaba, of the Lord and Saviour Jesus the Good -Erected by the forethought of Paul a presbyter, in the year 630 Seleucid era^[2]

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ Philippe Le Bas and William Henry Waddington, Greek Inscriptions grecques et latines recueillies en Grèce et en Asie Mineure (1870), volume 3, inscription 2558. Minor reference in Gerhard Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, under Synagogue. Also obliquely referenced in the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Marcionites, using Le Bas and Waddington as a reference