345; Syriac: ܐܦܪܗܛ, Ap̄rahaṭ, Persian: فرهاد, Arabic: أفراهاط الحكيم, Ancient Greek: Ἀφραάτης, and Latin Aphraates), venerated as Saint Aphrahat the Persian, was a third-century Syriac Christian author of Iranian descent from the Sasanian Empire, who composed a series of twenty-three expositions or homilies on points of Christian doctrine and practice.

Called the Persian Sage (Syriac: ܚܟܝܡܐ ܦܪܣܝܐ, Ḥakkimā Pārsāyā), Aphrahat witnessed to the concerns of the early church beyond the eastern boundaries of the Roman Empire.

Aphrahat was born near the border of Roman Syria and Neo-Persian Iran around 280, during the rule of Sasanian Emperor Shapur II.

Hence he was already confused with Jacob of Nisibis,[7] by the time of Gennadius of Massilia (before 496), and the ancient Armenian version of nineteen of The Demonstrations has been published under this latter name.

[3] Furthermore, Jacob of Nisibis, who attended the First Council of Nicaea, died in 338, and from the internal evidence of Aphrahat's works he must have witnessed the beginning of the persecution of Christians in the early 340s by Shapur II.

Shapur perhaps grew anxious that the largely Syriac and Armenian Christians within his Empire might secretly support Rome.

There are elements in Aphrahat's writing that show great pastoral concern for his harried flock, caught in the midst of all this turmoil.

[8] George, bishop of the Arabs, writing in 714 to a friend who had sent him a series of questions about the "Persian sage", confesses ignorance of his name, home and rank, but gathers from his works that he was a monk, and of high esteem in the clergy.

[3] Aphrahat's works are collectively called the Demonstrations, from the identical first word in each of their titles (Syriac: ܬܚܘܝܬܐ, taḥwîṯâ).

The twenty-third Demonstration falls outside of the alphabetic system of the early works, and appears to be slightly later, perhaps near the end of Aphrahat's life.

His position within the church is indicated in Demonstration 14, in which Aphrahat appears to be writing a letter on behalf of his synod to the clergy of Persian capital, Ctesiphon-Seleucia on the Tigris.