Bardesanes

BARDESANES. - Gnostic, born, according to the Chronicle of Edessa, in 1754 and died, according to the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, in 222 (cf. F. Nau, Patrologia Syriaca, II, 1, Paris 1907, pp. 510, 523). Having fled, following a revolt against the Persian king Sâhrub, his parents are said to have come to Edessa. Their previous dwelling is said to have been Arbela in Adiabene (cf. Theodore bar Kônaj, ibid., p. 517). B., or rather his family, would therefore have lived in the traditions of Parthian culture, and this is confirmed by Sextus Julius Africanus, who in the Kestoi, ch. 29, described the life of B. at the court of Abgar IX of Edessa, where he excelled in the art of archery, proper to the Parthian nobility. But the transfer to Edessa necessarily led to a rapprochement with the Roman empire and with Western culture. B. seeks to unite in himself the cultural traditions of the West and those of the East.

Porphyry knows of a book by B. on India, but it appears that his knowledge of this country was not direct, but founded on literary traditions, the ultimate source of which was Megasthenes, as is proved by the coincidence of Porphyry, De abst., IV, 18 with Flavius Josephus, Bellum Iud., VII, 352-356 (v. Morel, in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie [1926], p. 111 ff.). But also the fragment of B. (in Stobaeus, Eclog., I, p. 66 ff.) on the water of the Styx with the description of an Indian custom, has a notable correspondence in a text of the novelist Achilles Tatius, VIII, 12, as was demonstrated by Boll in Philologus, 66 (1907), p. 11 ff. This, it seems, leads to the conclusion that B. was not an original spirit, but an Oriental who, like Sextus Julius Africanus, sought to appropriate the most different subjects of human curiosity. From this point of view, even B.'s part in the composition of a dialogue on fate cannot be as personal as has been thought. There has been much discussion as to whether the Syriac text of a dialogue entitled: The Laws of the Countries (of which the best edition is that of F. Nau in Patrol. Syr., II, p. 492 ff.), or the Greek fragments (in Eusebius) and Latin ones (in Ps. Clem., Recognitiones) represent the original work of B. The lack of agreement among scholars on this point is perhaps explained by the fact that the original source of this work is confused with the recension or reworking made by B. The development of thought in the dialogue reveals, moreover, the tradition of Greek philosophy (cf. D. Amand, Fatalisme et liberté dans l'antiquité grecque, Louvain-Paris 1945, p. 228 ff.).

For the Fathers of the Church in Syria, first and foremost for St. Ephrem, B. is not a Greek philosopher, but an Oriental Gnostic, even when he is reproached for the use of the word "Hyle" (matter) in the story of creation. Mention is made of his doctrine of seven "essences" (aeons), his astrology (zodiac), his anthropology, according to which the body would be the work of Darkness, while the soul would be the work of the "Seven." It is clear that his Christ did not have a true body and that B. denied the resurrection of bodies. Certain phrases of B. are cited that are almost incomprehensible to us. It appears that he spoke of a "Father of life" (in the form of the sun) and of a "Mother" (in the form of the moon) who would have generated the "Son of life." His doctrine on the Spirit and on Sophia does not become clear to us from the few hints. Something is sensed of two daughters of rūḥā qūdīā (Holy Spirit), but the ultimate meaning of this speculation is not understood. On the other hand, it is said that the Spirit (and not the Son) created the world with God. Theodore bar Kōnēj (v. also MOSĒ BAR KĒPĀ; IWANNĪS OF DĀRĀ) cites verses from a cosmogonic hymn (v. H. Schaeder, in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 51 [1932], p. 46 ff.), which in its details is not well comprehensible, but it is seen that it is a matter of a mixture in creation, the effect of an attempt by the darkness to mingle with the five essences. The attempt failed through the word of God (Christ), who arranged the five essences anew in their primitive places (four essences according to the four cardinal points), according to the mystery of the cross. This world, created from the mixture, is purified following conception and childbirth up to perfection. The light that is on high, while the darkness is below, is a living being and stands also in the heart of the believer. The relationship between this cosmogony and the eschatology of B. is not clear. It is known that B. was a follower of the astrological doctrine of six millennia. Interesting is the optimistic tendency of this doctrine. Marriage serves for the purification of the world. Those to whom the father of Mani was to go, because they rejected marriage, could not therefore have been followers of B. as has been asserted (I. Pedersen, in Oriental Studies presented to E. Browne, Cambridge 1922, p. 385) and for the same reason the assertion of St. Ephrem that the Bardesanites would have been the authors of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles is not admissible, but it may be that their speculation had an influence on the text of these Acts. The influence of B. on Mani, who knew and cited B., has not yet been clarified (hypothesis of F. C. Burkitt in the Journal of Theol. Studies, 35 [1934], p. 358). The Bardesanites were still known to Arab polemicists. For the Syriac Church the hymns of B. and of his son Harmonios were a grave danger. According to Schaeder, B. was not yet influenced by Greek metrics (loc. cit., p. 57), unlike his son. The hymns of Ephrem were therefore in rivalry with those of Harmonios.

Erik Peterson