Dayṣāniyya (Syriac, Ḍayṣānāyē), a religious group that was formed around the teachings of the Syrian Christian philosopher, theologian, musician and poet Bar Dayṣān (Dīṣān) (d. 222 CE), known as Bardaiṣan in modern scholarship, Bardesanes (Latin) or Ibn Dayṣān (Arabic). Bar Dayṣān’s thought seems, like his contemporaries Origen and Clement, to have been one of the first syntheses of Christian teaching and Greek philosophy (Ramelli, Bardaisan, 10).

Little is known about Bar Dayṣān’s biography, as our m…