Page 57 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

44 EDESSA UNDER THE KINGS
Valentinus, devised complex schemes of cosmogony and philosophy, and
the ground was being prepared for the Manichaean doctrines based upon
dualistic conceptions of the forces of creation. The syncretistic temper of the
times is well illustrated by the strange sect of the Elkesaites. The doctrines of
the Elkesaites were an intermixture of Judaism, Christianity, and paganism:
the acknowledgement of a single god, the rejection of earlier prophets, the
veneration of water as the source of life, belief in the male and female prin-
ciple of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and belief in reincarnation—for Jesus was
reincarnated, the sect held, in their prophet-founder Elkesai. The latter was
alleged to have come from a city, 'Serai', in Parthia. Parthia, it should be
recalled, comprises also the area of Harran and Edessa, and the name Serai
(from the Chinese term for silk) may allude to the silk trade which brought
prosperity to the inhabitants of those cities.
At Harran, the so-called 'Sabians' (according to texts written at a late date
but describing the practices of an earlier period) directed their prayers to
spiritual beings which acted as intermediaries between men and a Supreme
Deity; these beings inhabit and guide the planets, that stand to them in the
relation of the body to the spirit. The activity of these spiritual beings
produces movement in space, and this creates material things, plants and
animals and men. But matter is bad by nature, and human beings have
prejudices and passions: only through the influence of the spiritual beings
are they endowed with love and amity, knowledge and feeling. The Sabians
therefore rejected the teaching that a human prophet can mediate between
man and the Supreme Deity. They did not believe in resurrection in the
conventional sense, but every 36,425 years, they maintained, a new order of
men, animals, and plants is created afresh.
That Gnosticism, born of Oriental theism and Hellenistic philosophy, was
familiar to Edessans is evident from a memorial inscription which has already
been cited.1 There are undoubtedly Gnostic elements, too, in the Acts of
Thomas, composed probably at this period, in part possibly at Edessa itself.
In the writings of Bardaisan also, scholars have discovered Gnostic philo-
sophy and there is some basis for their assertion. A hymn attributed to
Bardaisan maintains that first there existed five basic elements: wind, fire,
light, water, and darkness or matter. From these warring elements the Logos
arranged the universe; Bardaisan here follows the theories of Hermogenes.2
In the Book of the Laws of Countries, members of the school of Bardaisan are
seen to wrestle with the problems of good and evil, free will and fate. The
workings of human nature and man's outer circumstances, it is affirmed,
depend on fate, but his moral decisions are free, and faith is all important:
. . . Those who have not faith . . . are not competent to speak and to instruct, and they
do not easily incline themselves to hear. For they . . . have no confidence upon which
1 See p. 34 above. 2 Cf. p. 37 above.

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