Either way, he was a Romaniote Jew who was born in the small settlement of Besanduk, near Eleutheropolis (modern-day Beit Guvrin in Israel), and lived as a monk in Egypt, where he was educated and came into contact with Valentinian groups.

He returned to Roman Palestine around 333, when he was still a young man, and he founded a monastery at Ad near Eleutheropolis,[4] which is often mentioned in the polemics of Jerome with Rufinus and John, Bishop of Jerusalem.

He was ordained a priest, and lived and studied as superior of the monastery in Ad that he founded for thirty years and gained much skill and knowledge in that position.

In that position he gained the ability to speak in several languages, including Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin, and was called by Jerome on that account Pentaglossos ("Five-tongued").

[7] Epiphanius' reputation for learning prompted his nomination and consecration as Bishop of Salamis, Cyprus,[8] in 365 or 367, a post which he held until his death.

In 399, the dispute took on another dimension, when the Bishop of Alexandria, Theophilus, who had initially supported John, changed his views and started persecuting Origenist monks in Egypt.

As a result of this persecution, four of these monks, the so-called Tall Brothers, fled to Palestine, and then travelled to Constantinople, seeking support and spreading the controversy.

Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria saw his chance to use this event to bring down his enemy Chrysostom: in 402 he summoned a council in Constantinople, and invited those supportive of his anti-Origenist views.

Seeing this, and being loth that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ’s church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a winding sheet for some poor person.

A man of your uprightness should be careful to remove an occasion of offence unworthy alike of the Church of Christ and of those Christians who are committed to your charge.

Beware of Palladius of Galatia—a man once dear to me, but who now sorely needs God's pity—for he preaches and teaches the heresy of Origen; and see to it that he does not seduce any of those who are intrusted to your keeping into the perverse ways of his erroneous doctrine.

Aside from the polemics by which he is known, Epiphanius wrote a work of biblical antiquarianism, called, for one of its sections, On Weights and Measures (περὶ μέτρων καὶ στάθμων).

It was composed in Constantinople for a Persian priest, in 392,[18] and survives in Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian translations (this last is found in Shatberd ms 1141 along with Physiologus and De Gemmis).

The texts appear not to have been given a polish but consist of rough notes and sketches, as Allen A. Shaw, a modern commentator, concluded; nevertheless Epiphanius' work on metrology was important in the history of measurement.