BARDESANES, bar-cV-sisna, Syrian poet and theologian, who lived in the latter half of the 2d century, in Edessa, and is memorable for the peculiarity of his doctrines, which were taught through 150 hymns ascribed to him and in use in the Church till the 4th century. He considered the evil in the world only an acci dental reaction of matter, and all life as the offspring of male and female "Eons. From God, the inscrutable Principle of all substances, and from the consort of this first Principle, proceeded Christ, the Son of the Living, and a female Holy Ghost; from these, the spirits or created powers of the four elernents; this forming the holy eight, or the godlike fullness, whose visible copies he found in the sun, moon and stars, and therefore attributed to these all the changes of nature and of human destiny. The fenaale Holy Ghost, impregnated by the Son of the Living, was, according to him, the Creator of the world. The human soul, origi nally of the nature of the lEons, was confined in the material body only as a punishment to its fall, but not subjected to the dominion of the stars. He considered Jesus, the 2Eon, des
tined for the salvation of souls, only a feigned man, and his death only a feigned death, but his doctrine the sure means to fill the souls of men with ardent desires for their celestial home, and to lead them back to God, to whom they go immediately after death, and without a resurrection of the earthly body. Bardesanes propagated this. doctrine in Syrian hymns, and is the first writer of hymns in this language. The Bardesanists did not formally separate themselves from the orthodox Christian Church, and they maintained themselves until the 5th century. A fragment of the work of Bardesanes upon destiny is preserved in the Greek language, by Eusebius, (Prxpar. Evangel. lib. vi, cap. 103.) He led an irreproachable life. Consult Helgenfeld, (Bardesanes) (1864).