Bardaisan (11 July 154 – 222 AD; Syriac: ܒܪ ܕܝܨܢ, Bar Dayṣān; also Bardaiṣan), known in Arabic as ibn Dayṣān (Arabic: ابن ديصان) and in Latin as Bardesanes, was a Syriac-speaking Christian writer and teacher with a Gnostic 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 Valentinian Gnosticism and also wrote against Marcionism.
Bardaisan (Syriac: ܒܪ ܕܝܨܢ bar Daiṣān "son of the Daysan") was a Syriac author born on 11 July 154 in Edessa, Osroene, which, in those days, was alternately under the influence of both the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire. To indicate the city of his birth, his parents called him "Son of the Daysan", the river on which Edessa was situated. He is sometimes also referred to as "the Babylonian" (by Porphyrius); and, on account of his later important activity in Arsacid Armenia, "the Armenian", (by Hippolytus of Rome), while Ephrem the Syrian calls him "philosopher of the Arameans" (Syriac: ܦܝܠܘܣܘܦܐ ܕܐܖ̈ܡܝܐ, romanized: Filosofā d-Arāmāyē). 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 the Parthian nobility. His parents, Nuhama and Nahshiram, must have been people of rank, for their son was educated with a prince of Osroene, possibly the later Abgar VIII. 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.
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 named 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 Bardaisan 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 VIII ascended the throne (179), Bardaisan took his place at court. While a sincere Christian, he was clearly no ascetic, but dressed in finery "with berylls and caftan", according to Ephrem, one of his critics.
Bardaisan had an important share in Christianizing the city and possibly converted Abgar VIII to Christianity (probably after 202, i.e. after his visit and honourable reception at Rome). Both king and philosopher laboured to create the first Christian state. He showed great literary activity against Valentinus (of whom Eusebius of Caesarea says Bardaisan was once a follower) and Marcion.
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 Syrian 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 polemics 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 Ephrem the Syrian who mentioned him in his hymns:
And if he thinks he has said the last thing
Whose mind is liquid like his name!
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 ousiai (ουσιαι) or ʿitye (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 ʿitye, 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.
Encounter with religious men from India
Porphyry states that on one occasion at Edessa, Bardaisan interviewed an Indian deputation of holy men (Ancient Greek: Σαρμαναίοι "śramaṇas") who had been sent to the Roman emperor Elagabalus or another Severan emperor, and questioned them as to the nature of Indian religion. The encounter is described in Porphyry De abstin., iv, 17 and Stobaeus (Eccles., iii, 56, 141):
For the polity of the Indians being distributed into many parts, there is one tribe among them of men divinely wise, whom the Greeks are accustomed to call Gymnosophists. But of these there are two sects, one of which the Bramins preside over, the Samanaeans the other. The race of the Bramins, however, receive divine wisdom of this kind by succession, in the same manner as the priesthood. But the Samanaeans are elected, and consist of those who wish to possess divine knowledge. And the particulars respecting them are the following, as the Babylonian Bardaisan narrates, who lived in the times of our fathers, and was familiar with those Indians who, together with Damadamis, were sent to Caesar. All the Bramins originate from one stock; for all of them are derived from one father and one mother. But the Samanaeans are not the offspring of one family, being, as we have said, collected from every nation of Indians.
Eventually, after 353 years of existence, the Osrhoenic kingdom came to an end by the Romans under Caracalla. Taking advantage of the anti-Christian faction in Edessa, the Romans captured Abgar IX and sent him in chains to Rome. 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. At the age of sixty-three he was forced to take refuge in the fortress of Ani in Armenia and tried to preach there, but with little success. He also composed a history of the Armenian kings. He died at the age of sixty-eight, either at Ani or at Edessa. According to Michael the Syrian, Bardaisan had besides Harmonius two other sons, called Abgarun and Hasdu.
The followers of Bardaisan (the Bardaisanites) continued his teachings in a sect of the 2nd century deemed heretical by later Christians. Bardaisan's son, Harmonius, is considered to have strayed farther from the path of orthodoxy. Educated at Athens, he added to the Babylonian astrology of his father Greek ideas concerning the soul, the birth and destruction of bodies and a sort of metempsychosis.