This comprehensive study offers a critical, comparative analysis of the sources available on Bardaisan and a reinterpretation of his thought. In this connection, special attention is paid to many parallels with Origen, to the possible relationship between Origen, Bardaisan, and their schools, and to the implications of the valuable fragments preserved by Porphyry.

The theory of apokatastasis (restoration), most famously defended by the Alexandrian exegete, philosopher and theologian Origen, has its roots in both Greek philosophy and Jewish-Christian Scriptures and literature, and became a major theologico-soteriological doctrine in patristics. This monograph--the first comprehensive, systematic scholarly study of the history of the Christian apokatastasis doctrine--argues its presence and Christological and Biblical foundation in numerous Christian thinkers, including Syriac, and analyses its origins, meaning, and development over eight...

Were slavery and social injustice leading to dire poverty in antiquity and late antiquity only regarded as normal, "natural" (Aristotle), or at best something morally "indifferent" (the Stoics), or, in the Christian milieu, a sad but inevitable consequence of the Fall, or even an expression of God's unquestionable will? Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery shows that there were also definitive condemnations of slavery and social injustice as iniquitous and even impious, and that these came especially from ascetics, both in Judaism and in Christianity, and occasionally also in...