Antipater of Bostra

(In Arabia) in the fifth century, one of the foremost Greek prelates of the Roman Orient; flourished about 460. He was a pronounced opponent of 0rigen. Little is known of his life, save that he was held in high esteem by his contemporaries, civil and ecclesiastical. He is rated among the authoritative ecclesiastical writers by the Fathers of the Seventh General Council (787). There have reached us, in the acts of this council, only a few fragments of his lengthy refutation of the "Apology for Origen" put together (c. 309) by Pamphilus and Eusebius of Caesarea. The work of Antipater was looked on as a masterly composition, and, as late as 540 was ordered to be read in the churches of the East as an antidote to the spread of the Origenistic heresies (Cotelier, Monument. Eccl. Graec., III, 362). He also wrote a treatise against the Apollinarists, known only in brief fragments, and several homilies, two of which have reached us in their entirety. His memory is kept on 13 June.

The literary relics of Antipater are found in P.G., LXXXV, 1763-96; see also: Vailhé, in Dict. de théol. cath,., I, 1440; Acta SS., 13 June; Venables in Dict. Christ. Biog., I, 122; Bardenhewer, Patrologie (2d ed. 1901), 469.

F.M. RUDGE