Bardesanes, Founder of a Heresy

Bardesanes of Mesopotamia is counted among the distinguished men. He was at first a follower of Valentinus, and afterward his opponent, and he himself founded a new heresy. Among the Syrians he has the reputation of a brilliant mind and a forceful debater. He wrote a great many works against almost all the heresies that had arisen in his time. Among these, the most remarkable and powerful is the one he addressed to Marcus Antoninus On Fate, together with many other volumes On Persecution, which his followers translated from the Syriac language into Greek. If so much force and brilliance shows even in the translation, how great it must have been in the original! [a]