He is sometimes also referred to as "the Babylonian" (by Porphyrius); and, on account of his later important activity in Parthian 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.
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.
[7] Bardaisan has often been described as a gnostic who denied the resurrection of the body and the works of Ephrem the Syriac 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.
[10] Bardaisan and his movement were subjected to critical polemics[8] that claimed, probably falsely, that he became a Valentinian Gnostic out of disappointed ambitions in the Christian church.
The encounter is described in Porphyry De abstin., iv, 17[16] 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.
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.
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.
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.
[7] A certain Marinus, a follower of Bardaisan and a dualist, who is addressed in the "Dialogue of Adamantius", held the doctrine of a twofold primeval being; for the devil, according to him is not created by God.
Its existence in the seventh century is attested by Jacob of Edessa; in the eighth by George, Bishop of the Arabs; in the tenth by the historian al-Masudi; and even in the twelfth by al-Shahrastani.
The extraordinary veneration of his own countrymen, the very reserved and half-respectful allusion to him in the early Fathers, and above all the "Book of the Laws of the Countries" suggest a milder view of Bardaisan's aberrations.
God endowed man with freedom of will to work out his salvation and allowed the world to be a mixture of good and evil, light and darkness.
They believe that light is a living thing, possessing knowledge, might, perception and understanding; and from it movement and life take their source; but that darkness is dead, ignorant, feeble, rigid and soulless, without activity and discrimination; and they hold that the evil within them is the outcome of their nature and is done without their co-operation".
[7] Bardaisan also thought the sun, moon and planets were living beings, to whom, under God, the government of this world was largely entrusted; and though man was free, he was strongly influenced for good or for evil by the constellations.
The world began with the four pure and uncreated elements of light, wind, fire, water, respectively located in East, West, South, North (and are each able to move throughout their own, individual regions).
Patristics scholar Ilaria Ramelli has argued that Bardaisan may have been one of the first Christian supporters of apokatastasis (universal restoration),[20] citing especially the following passage in Bardaisan's Book of the Laws of Countries as evidence for his belief in this doctrine:There will come a time when even this capacity for harm that remains in [mankind] will be brought to an end by the instruction that will obtain in a different arrangement of things.