The Christian hagiographic painting "Barlaam and Ioasaph," that is notion to were made by St. John Damascene, tells the tale of Prince Ioasaph non secular adventure as he seeks salvation and awareness. The story, that's primarily based on a Christianized version of the Buddha's life, is set Ioasaph search for religious truth in an international complete of lies and distractions. When Ioasaph, the younger prince of India, meets Barlaam, a Christian monk, he teaches him about Christianity. Barlaam leads Ioasaph via a series of hard situations and trials that help him withstand the temptations of the sector and examine greater approximately religion. There are many allegories in the tale, which show how Ioasaph ride become similar to the Christian idea of salvation. The tale is complete of ideas about area, being unique, and combating in opposition to worldly dreams. As Ioasaph becomes a Christian, he offers up his princely reputation and fabric assets in favor of a lifestyles of prayer and mirrored image. "Barlaam and Ioasaph" is usually credited to St. John Damascene, a well-known Christian theologian from the Middle Ages, but its authentic records are extra confusing. The story may additionally have come from the East and changed into later translated and modified to match one-of-a-kind cultures.
One of the Fathers of the Eastern Orthodox Church, St. John Damascene is best known for what he did to protect icons. Because he wrote so much about the Assumption of Mary, the Catholic Church calls him a Doctor of the Church. He is also known as the Doctor of the Assumption. He was also a well-known proponent of the idea of perichoresis. He used it as an academic term to explain how the divine and human natures of Christ overlap and how the hypostases of the Trinity relate to each other. John's writing comes at the end of the Patristic time of dogmatic development. He doesn't add anything new to theology, but rather summarizes what had happened in the hundreds of years before him. He is called the "last of the Greek Fathers" in Catholic doctrine because of this. John was born in Damascus in 675 or 676 to a well-known Christian Arab family from Damascus. His dad, Sarjun ibn Mansur, was a worker for the early Umayyad Caliphate. In the time of Emperor Heraclius, his grandfather Mansur ibn Sarjun was a well-known Byzantine official in Damascus. He was in charge of the region's taxes and also worked for Emperor Maurice.
