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Bardaisan (11 July 154 – 222 AD; , Bar Dayṣān; also Bardaiṣan), known in Arabic as ibn Dayṣān () and in Latin as Bardesanes, was a Syriac-speaking Prods Oktor Skjaervo. Bardesanes. Encyclopædia Iranica. Volume III. Fasc. 7-8. . Christian writer and teacher with a gnosticism background, and founder of the Bardaisanites.
A scientist, scholar, astrologer, philosopher, hymnwriter, and poet, Bardaisan was also renowned for his knowledge of India, on which he wrote a book, now lost. According to the early Christian historian Eusebius, Bardaisan was at one time a follower of the gnostic Valentinus, but later opposed Valentinianism and also wrote against Marcionism. Historia Ecclesiastica, 4.30.
Owing to political disturbances in Edessa, Bardaisan and his parents moved for a while to Hierapolis (now Manbij), a strong centre of Babylonianism. Here, the boy was brought up in the house of a priest Anuduzbar. In this school he learnt all the intricacies of Babylonian astrology, a training that permanently influenced his mind and proved the bane of his later life. At the age of twenty-five he happened to hear the homilies of Hystaspes, the Bishop of Edessa, received instruction, was baptized, and even admitted to the diaconate or the priesthood. "Priesthood", however, may merely imply that he ranked as one of the college of presbyters, because Bardaisen remained in the world and had a son called Harmonius, who according to Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History, was "deeply versed in Grecian erudition, and was the first to subdue his native tongue to meters and musical laws; these verses he delivered to the choirs". When Abgar IX, the friend of his youth, ascended the throne (179), Bardaisan took his place at court. While a sincere Christian, he was clearly no ascetic, but dressed in finery "with and caftan", according to Ephrem, one of his critics.
Alternatively, Epiphanius of Salamis and Bar Hebraeus assert that he was first an orthodox Christian and only afterwards became an adept of Valentinus, even creating his own heterodox Christian dogma (Bardaisanism) by mixing its doctrines with Babylonian astrology. Bardaisan has often been described as a gnostic who denied the resurrection of the body and the works of Ephrem the Syriac suggest that he explained the origin of the world by a process of emanation from the supreme God whom he called the Father of the Living. As a result, his teachings would form the basis of the Manichaeism and later of the batini sects of Shia Islam. Bardaisan and his movement were subjected to critical that claimed, probably falsely, that he became a Valentinian Gnostic out of disappointed ambitions in the Christian church. In particular, he was vigorously combated by St. Ephrem who mentioned him in his hymns:
This view has come under criticism as these sources likely quote later Bardaisanites, whereas Eusebius and Porphyry are known to quote directly from authentic fragments of Bardaisan's work. Sozomen specifically reports that Bardaisan taught about palingenesis (παλιγγενεσίας), that is the rebirth of physical bodies, and in his authentic fragments (which includes a treatise on the resurrection) Bardaisan affirms the resurrection of the body but believed it to be a transformation from a corruptible body into an incorruptible body, which is what he meant by "spiritual bodies" elsewhere. While some Bardaisanites after the rise of Manichaeism considered the creation of bodies to be necessarily evil, Bardaisan himself only considered bodies to be sinful if they were mortal and that 'the body of resurrection and the body humans had prior to the fall is a body created from pure matter without any mixture with darkness'. Bardaisan himself was not dualistic but monistic, in that he considered God to exist and evil not to, 'and those who are in evil are in weakness and not in force'.
Nevertheless, criticism about Bardaisan's belief in seven ουσιαι or 'itye (substances) that pre-existed Creation, from which God fashioned everything, was more accurate and may have put Bardaisan beyond the bounds of mainstream orthodoxy. "Bardaisan refers only to the elements as 'itye, not to plants or animals", though he also uses the term to refer to the seven planets. Even so, Bardaisan clearly described these celestial beings as created beings subordinate to God.
A certain Marinus, a follower of Bardaisan and a dualist, who is addressed in the "Dialogue of Adamantius", held the doctrine of a twofold primeval being; for the devil, according to him is not created by God. He was also a Docetist, as he denied Christ's birth of a woman. Bardaisan's form of gnosticism influenced Manichaeism.
Ephrem the Syrian's zealous efforts to suppress this powerful heresy were not entirely successful. Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa in 431–432, found it flourishing everywhere. Its existence in the seventh century is attested by Jacob of Edessa; in the eighth by George, Bishop of the Arabs; in the tenth by the historian al-Masudi; and even in the twelfth by al-Shahrastani. Bardaisanism seems to have merged first into Valentinianism and then into common Manichaeism.
Like the Early Christians, Bardaisan believed in an Almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth, whose will is absolute, and to whom all things are subject. God endowed man with freedom of will to work out his salvation and allowed the world to be a mixture of good and evil, light and darkness. All things, even those we now consider inanimate, have a measure of liberty. In all of them the light has to overcome the darkness.
Al-Shahrastani states: "The followers of Daisan believe in two elements, light and darkness. The light causes the good, deliberately and with free will; the darkness causes the evil, but by force of nature and necessity. They believe that light is a living thing, possessing knowledge, might, perception and understanding; and from it movement and life take their source; but that darkness is dead, ignorant, feeble, rigid and soulless, without activity and discrimination; and they hold that the evil within them is the outcome of their nature and is done without their co-operation". cites Haarbrucker tr. (Halle, 1850), I, 293.
He apparently denied the resurrection of the body, although he believed Christ's body was endowed with incorruptibility as with a special gift. Bardaisan postulated that after six thousand years this Earth would have an end, and a world without evil would take its place.
Bardaisan also thought the sun, moon and planets were living beings, to whom, under God, the government of this world was largely entrusted; and though man was free, he was strongly influenced for good or for evil by the constellations. According to St. Ephrem, Sun and Moon were considered male and female principles, and the ideas of heaven amongst the Bardaisanites were not without an admixture of sensuality (or "obscenities"). Led by the fact that "spirit" is feminine in Syriac, Bardaisan might have held unorthodox views on the Trinity.
Bardaisan's cosmology and commentary on it only survives in much later sources, but can be outlined as follows. The world began with the four pure and uncreated elements of light, wind, fire, water, respectively located in East, West, South, North (and are each able to move throughout their own, individual regions). Above the plane on which these four pure elements rest is the Lord, and below is the darkness. At one time and by chance, the four pure elements exceeded their boundaries and began to mix. Taking up the opportune chance, darkness also mixed with them. Distressed, the elements appeal to God to separate the darkness from them, but God is only partially successful in this procedure. The Lord uses the mix to create the world, but the remaining darkness in the mix acts as the cause of evil in the world since then and until today. The world is allotted a period of 6,000 years to exist. Purifications through conception and birth take place, but at the end of the allotted period for the Earth, a definitive purification will take place that will expunge darkness from the world.H.J.W. Drivers, Bardaisan of Edessa, Gorgias Press 2014, 122-123.
Patristics scholar Ilaria Ramelli has argued that Bardaisan may have been one of the first Christian supporters of Apocatastasis (universal restoration),Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 112-113. citing especially the following passage in Bardaisan's Book of the Laws of Countries as evidence for his belief in this doctrine:
There will come a time when even this capacity for harm that remains in mankind will be brought to an end by the instruction that will obtain in a different arrangement of things. And, once that new world will be constituted, all evil movements will cease, all rebellions will come to an end, and the fools will be persuaded, and the lacks will be filled, and there will be safety and peace, as a gift of the Lord of all natures.Bardaisan, Book of the Laws of Countries, 608-611 Nau; as translated by Ilaria Ramelli in The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 112-113.
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