PAGANS AND GNOSTICSat Mada'in in 612.7^9 Nestorians accused Marcionites of sorcery and
of using idols to drive out demons, which may mean only that they
used images in an apotropaic way in their own form of holy magic. 80
Bardai~an of Edessa was a Christian dualist with Mazdaean affin-
ities. He is said to have taught that the universe was composed of five
elements that had existed in primeval harmony: Fire in the east, Wind
in the west, Water in the north, and Light in the South, with God in
the height above and Darkness, their enemy and the fifth element, in
the depth below. On one occasion, Darkness had noticed the other
elements and tried to capture them, but God sent his Word to separate
the Darkness from the other elements. The Word cast Darkness back
into the depths, returned the other elements to their places, and made
the world out of the remaining mixture of elements. The human soul
was the divine or semidivine Light caught in this mixture. It would
rejoin the element of Light at death if it followed orders. Bardai~an
opposed asceticism so that more souls could be embodied through
birth to rejoin the Light and return the universe to its original harmony.
Bardai~an and his disciples also taught that the stars determined ma-
terial existence, but that the soul was unaffected by fate and decided
its own spiritual destiny. They studied geography and foreign customs,
especially Indian customs, in order to disprove astral fatalism by show-
ing that people in the same clime might have different characteristics.^81
These ideas were only partly gnostic. Bardai~an and his followers
believed that the world was not made by a demiurge but by a Re-
deemer. They were opposed to asceticism and moral fatalism and were
not necessarily elitist. The only really gnostic idea was the redemption
of Light from a world mixed with Darkness. Their belief in the eternity
of the elements made them materialists, and their denial of moral
fatalism was shared with the Mazdaeans.
There is no trace of a Dai~anite organization. His disciples and
followers preserved, spread, and developed his ideas more as an in-
tellectual tradition than as a sect. White-robed Dai~anites, carrying a
"Chabot, Synodicon, pp. 567,568; Scher, "Histoire nestorienne," 1I(2), 489, 495;
Trimingham, Christianity, p. 54.
80 Budge, Rabban H6rmizd, I, 81-82; 11, 121-22. A Sasanian personal seal with the
Syriac inscription mrqywn qiqi (Marcion, priest) but without any Christian symbols
on it may be that of a Marcionite priest. See P. Gignoux, "Sceaux chretiens d'Epoque
sasanide," Iranica Antiqua 15 (1980), 306, 309.
81 O. Braun, Das Buch der Synodos (Stuttgart and Vienna, 1900), pp. 136-37; H.J.W.
Drijvers, Bardai~an of Edessa (Assen, 1966), pp. 17, 173; Runciman, Manichee, pp.
11-12.