Mara bar Serapion
Ancient Syrian author / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Mara bar Serapion (Classical Syriac: ܡܪܐ ܒܪ ܣܪܦܝܘܢ), or "Mara son of Serapion", was a Syriac Stoic philosopher in the Roman province of Syria. He is only known from a letter he wrote in Syriac to his son, who was named Serapion,[1][2] which refers to the execution of "the wise king of the Jews" and may be an early non-Christian reference to Jesus of Nazareth.
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Mara_Bar_Serapion.jpg)
The letter indicates that Mara's homeland was Samosata, i.e. modern-day Samsat, Turkey (on the west bank of the Euphrates), but his captivity appears to have been in Seleucia, in modern-day Iraq (on the west bank of the Tigris River).[3]
Mara's captivity took place after the AD 72 annexation of Samosata by the Romans, but before the third century.[4] Most scholars date it to shortly after AD 73 during the first century.[5]