NEWBOLD— THE SYRIAC DIALOGUE " SOCRATES." 101 



ence during his life and that the Christian Church which he founded 

 endured for five or six centuries after his death, but, until recently, 

 little has been known of his ideas. The discovery and publication 

 of Theodore bar-Koni's* account of his system and of some hitherto 

 unknown works of Ephraim's'^ have thrown a flood of new light 

 upon him and Mr. Mitchell promises that his second volume, which 

 will appear in the course of a few months, will contain still more 

 valuable information. With the aid of this new material one may 

 recognize in the Syriac " Socrates " a work certainly of the school 

 of Bardaisan. Whether it is from his own hand or not is another 

 question. 



The accounts of Bardaisan's philosophy which we possess are so 

 inconsistent that it is necessary to determine which are and which 

 are not trustworthy. The most exended are those of Ephraim, 

 Theodore bar-Koni, Moses bar-Cepha, Moses the Syrian, the Fihrist, 

 and Shahrastani. Of these the first two are the oldest, are in sub- 

 stantial agreement and probably are derived from the same docu- 

 ment. That of Moses bar-Cepha is akin to Theodore's but contains 

 Manichaean elements not found in him ; in the later documents these 

 elements become still more pronounced. I think it quite certain that 

 these later versions represent the teaching of the Bardaisanian 

 Church after it had been for centviries in contact with the closely 

 related system of Mani. It is quite possible that the system known 

 to Ephraim and Theodore had also been more or less contaminated 

 by the same influences, having been exposed to them for more than 

 a hundred years. The " Book of the Laws," which is the oldest 

 authentic Bardaisanian document, unfortunately gives no definite in- 

 formation upon the points of interest. Ephraim and Theodore 

 therefore must be regarded as the only trustworthy authorities. 



The " Socrates " represents bodies as composed of four " ele- 

 ments " or " powers" — earth, wind, fire and water. Bardaisan 

 posited five " powers " or " existents," ithye, out of which bodies are 



* Pognon, " Les Coupes Mandaites," 1898; Addai Scher, "Corpus Script- 

 orum Christianiorum Orientalium," Vols. 65-66, 1912. 



5 " St. Ephraim's Prose Refutations of Marcion, Mani and Bardaisan," 

 edited from a palimpsest MS. of the British Museum by C. W. Mitchell, Vol. 

 I., 1912. 



PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, VOL. LVII. H, JUNE 14, I918. 



