Bardaisan and the Bible

The longest and best preserved work of the Bardesanite school, the Book of the Laws if the Countries, offers only three clear Biblical references, one of which connects the dialogue to a more deterministic prehistory (Mt 13), while the other two, on the contrary, open Bardaisanite ideology toward a dialogue with the ideas (in particular free will) current in the Great Church (Gen 1,27 / 9,6; Gen 6,2). The author of this writing prefers to keep a language with a philosophical connotation, avoiding the sacred languages and symbols of his time. On the contrary, the Bible emerges more vividly in the fragments drawn from theological writings by Ephrem and later heresiologists, even in the nodal points of their argument. Gen 1 is obviously at the heart of cosmogony of the different branches of Bardaisan’s school. The Gospel of John, joined to Pauline ideas, as well as the Synoptic Gospels, seem to have intrigued the historical Bardaisan, providing him with the language and the images useful to elaborate a psychology and a soteriology.