Bardaisan

Bardaisan tried to create a synthesis of Christian and occult beliefs, in a way similar to Origen.

Even Bardaisan's son, Harmonius, strayed farther from the path of orthodoxy.

He also wrote refutations against Bardaisan, Mani, Marcion and others.

The 3rd century also sees Bardaisan or Bardansanes, an immediate forerunner of Mani.

Bardaisan's form of gnosticism influenced Manichaeism.

Bardaisan's catechism must have been a strange mixture of Christian doctrine and references to the signs of the Zodiac.

According to Michael the Syrian, Bardaisan had besides Harmonius two other sons, called Abgarun and Hasdu.

Against a questioning disciple called Abida, Bardaisan seeks to show that man's actions are not entirely necessitated by Fate, as the outcome of stellar combinations.

Owing to political disturbances in Edessa, Bardaisan and his parents moved for a while to Hierapolis (Mabug), a strong centre of Babylonianism.

It seems that Bardaisan and Mani composed madrāšê, and Ephrem felt that the medium was a suitable tool to use against their claims.

A fragment of an astronomical work by Bardaisan was preserved by George, Bishop of the Arab tribes, and republished by Nau.

Bardaisan mixed his Babylonian pseudo-astronomy with Christian dogma and originated a Christian sect, which was vigorously combated by St. Ephrem.

Sextus Julius Africanus says that he saw Bardaisan, with bow and arrow, mark the outline of a boy's face with his arrows on a shield which the boy held.

Whether this Antoninus is merely a friend of Bardaisan or a Roman emperor and, in the latter case, which of the Antonini is meant, is matter of controversy.

Only when St. Ephrem composed hymns in the same pentasyllabic metre and had them sung to the same tunes as the psalms of Bardaisan, did the latter gradually lose favour.

Some sources refer to his high birth and wealth; according to Michael the Syrian, Bardaisan's parents had fled Persia and Sextus Julius Africanus reports that he was of Parthian origin.

Though he was urged by a friend of Caracalla to apostatize, Bardaisan stood firm, saying that he feared not death, as he would in any event have to undergo it, even though he should now submit to the emperor.

Moses of Chorene states that Bardaisan, "having taken refuge in the fortress of Ani, read there the temple records in which also the deeds of kings were chronicled; to these he added the events of his own time.

However, 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.

A certain Marinus, a follower of Bardaisan and a dualist, who is refuted in the "Dialogue of Adamantius", held the doctrine of a twofold primeval being; for the devil, according to him is not created by God.

This famous dialogue, the oldest remnant not only of Bardaisanite learning, but even of Syriac literature, if we except the version of Holy Writ, is not by Bardaisan himself, but by a certain Philip, his disciple.

The extraordinary veneration of his own countrymen, the very reserved and half-respectful allusion to him in the early Fathers, and above all the "Book of the Laws of the Countries" suggest a milder view of Bardaisan's aberrations.

Their beliefs seem to have been eclectic, with elements of Judaism, Christianity, paganism, astrology and Gnosticism, and they were listed by Epharaim of Syria along with Valentinians, followers of Bardaisan, and Manichaeans as local heresies.

While the Acts of Saint Thomas written by Jewish poet Bardaisan mentions clearly that Saint Thomas was martyred at Indus Valley or in the adjoining areas of Persia, the legends created during the Portuguese era state that he was martyred at Mylapore.

The followers of Bardaisan of Mesopotamia, a sect of the 2nd century deemed heretical by the Catholic Church, drew upon Chaldean astrology, to which Bardaisan's son Harmonius, educated in Athens, added Greek ideas including a sort of metempsychosis.