He was a stylite attached to the monastery of Atarib and part of a circle of Syriac intellectuals active in northern Syria under the Umayyad dynasty.
[4] Other evidence suggests that John corrected Jacob's chronology of Muḥammad by giving him a reign of ten years (622–632).
[2] In favour of the identity is the fact that the grammatical treatise is dependent on Jacob of Edessa's grammar;[d] against it that it is preserved only in a Nestorian manuscript.
[7] Although his own writings are largely lost, something of John's intellect and education can be gathered from the surviving eleven letters of Jacob of Edessa and four of George addressed to him.
They show a circle of intellectuals discussing a broad variety of topics: chronology, history, philosophy, astronomy, literary criticism and biblical exegesis.