Bardesanes and Tatian. Bardesanes[1] was born at Edessa in 154, and was educated together with King Abgar VIII (176–213). He became a Christian and afterwards[2] turned heretic, so that he is known as one of the great ante-Nicene heretics, and the leader of a sect. What was his heresy? He was clearly some kind of Gnostic; but "Gnostic" covers many things. The common and apparently correct tradition is that he was a disciple of Valentinus. Michael the Great, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch from 1166 to 1199,[3] gives an account of his ideas which, allowing for the cloudiness of all Gnostic metaphysics, agrees well enough with this.[4] He died in 222, and left a school.[5] Tatian (Tatianus Assyrus) made his name famous by his Diatessaron. He says of himself that he was "born in the land of the Assyrians" (i.e. East Syria), and had been a pagan.[6] He came to Rome, and was converted about the year 150; here he wrote in Greek an Apology "πρὸς Ἕλληνας".[7] Then he went back to his own land (about 172) and settled at Edessa. Here he wrote his Diatessaron. Diatessaron (διὰ τεσσάρων) means "harmony." It is the first example of an attempt to unite the four Gospels in one continuous narrative. He probably wrote it in Syriac. Either before or after this he broke with the Church. He became a Gnostic of the Valentinian type, and founded, or at least greatly promoted, the special sect of Enkratites (Ἐγκρατῖται), who declared marriage, wine and flesh-meat sinful.[8] The date of his death is not known. His sect existed for some time after him, and was
- ↑ Bar-Daiṣân, "Son of the Daiṣân," which is the river at Edessa.
- ↑ So Epiphanius: Adv. hær. lvi. 1 (P.G. xli. 990–991); Eusebius makes him first a Valentinian heretic, later more or less orthodox (Hist. Eccl. iv. 30; P.G. xx. 404).
- ↑ Duval: Littérature syriaque, p. 207. See below, pp. 329–330.
- ↑ Quoted by Burkitt: op. cit. pp. 159–160.
- ↑ Hilgenfeld: Bardesanes der letzte Gnostiker (Leipzig, 1864).
- ↑ Tatian: Or. adv. Græc. 42 (P.G. vi. 888).
- ↑ P.G. vi. 803–888.
- ↑ These are Bardenhewer's conclusions (Gesch. der altkirchlichen Litteratur, Freiburg, 1902; i. 242–245). Harnack at one time maintained that Tatian was a Greek (Texte u. Unters., Leipzig, 1882; i. 1–2); but afterwards admitted that he had been mistaken (Gesch. der altchristl. Litt., Leipzig, 1897; ii. i. p. 284, note 1). There are other theories about Tatian's career, and the dates (e.g. Funk: Zur Chronologie Tatians, in his Kirchengesch. Abhandl. u. Untersuch., Paderborn, 1899, ii. 142–152).
