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Manichaean
from
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iranian/Manicheism/
Prods Oktor Skjærvø
An Introduction to Manicheism
Early Iranian Civilizations 103 = DivSchool 3580, 2006 Fall term
HISTORY OF MANICHEAN STUDIES IN THE WEST
In the second half of the 16th century after the religious reformation initiated
by Martin Luther, whose the 95 theses were posted on the church entrance in
Witttenberg 10/31/1517, defenders of the Catholic church reached back to the
arch heresy of all times in their efforts to discredit the new heresy,
explaining many of the new aberrations of Luther as a resurgence of those of
Mani. These attacks did not remain unanswered. In 1578 the first historical
study of Manicheism saw the light of day. Its author, Cyriacus Spangenberg,
strongly rebutted the accusations leveled against Luther that he was propagating
the errors of Mani. Using the writings of St. Augustine he endeavored to show
that, rather than following in the tracks of Mani, Luther and the Protestants
were the last defenders of the Church against such heresies, and, in fact,
Luther’s doctrine had nothing in common with that of Mani, the author said.
The controversy continued for some time and is of interest
because it led to the collection and publication of thewidely scattered notices
on Mani and Manicheism in the various early Latin and Greek writings. This work
was pursued throughout the 17th and well into the 18th century. The principal
sources for Manicheism available at the beginning of the 17th century were
three: Augustine (a Manichean 373-82), Pope Leo I (440-61), and an anti-
Manichean treatise by a former North-African Manichean from the 4th century,
Fabius Marius Victorinus. The works of the rest of the church fathers were still
awaiting editing. Augustine, who had been a Manichean, described their customs
and teachings from first-hand experience, although he had not graduated to the
highest ranks and was therefore ignorant of some of the “mysteries.” Among the
writings Augustine and others cited from was the so-called Epistula fundamenti,
a book composed and used by the North-African Manicheans.1
Then, in 1668, an ancient document concerning Manicheism was discovered by Henri
de Valois in a manuscript in the Ambrosian library in Milan. This was a fragment
of the Acta Archelai of Hegemonius, the existence of which was known because it
had been quoted by several church fathers from the 4th century: Cyril of
Jerusalem (fl. 348), St. Epiphanius (b. 313), and St. Jerome (345-419). The Acta
Archelai purported to be the acts of a discussion between Bishop Archelaus of
Kaskhar (al-Wâsit) and Mani himself that took place in 277 at Kaskhar and
Diodorida? in Mesopotamia. If genuine, the Acta would therefore be an
extraordinary document indeed. According to the Acta, Archelaus worsted Mani
both times and charged Hegemonius to edit the minutes of the two sessions. The
original was thought to have been in Syriac, from which Greek and Latin
translations were made. After this, a search was made for the complete text of
the Acta, several manuscripts were found, and a critical edition by L. A.
Zacagni, prefect of the Vatican library, was published in 1698. The first known
work written expressly to refute Manichean doctrines is that of Alexander of
Lycopolis (ca. 300) in Egypt, a follower of Mani who became a Christian. In this
work, which dates from not long after the Acta, he refutes Mani in 26 chapters.
The work was published by François Combéfis in 1672. Several other original
works as well as studies were published over the next years. Among these was the
Against the Manicheans by Titus of Bostra in Arabia (d. 371), who had himself
read one of Mani’s books: the Book of Mysteries.
Another group of sources is the relatively large number of abjuration formulas
found scattered throughout a variety of manuscripts. The oldest known is one
quoted by St. Augustine, a list of ten anathemata against Mani. Among the
various texts that were discovered and published in this period, note one
written by a certain Timothy of Constantinople (6th cent.), in which two
Manichean books are mentioned, the Kephalaia and the euchology (book of prayers
and liturgies) of the sect.
By the mid-17th century, what had started out as polemics in the wake of the
reformation, had become a scholarly pursuit and desire to know more about the
personality of Mani and his doctrine. Since Mani had come from the Orient, the
scholars now began to look to the Orient for source material. The first of these
sources were published in 1651. 2
Then, in 1700, Thomas Hyde published his Veterum Persarum et Parthorum et
Medorum religionis historia, the first comprehensive study of Iranian religion.
In it he makes the observation that Mani was above all the enemy of the Persian
religion. From the beginning of the 18th century we also have the publication of
a series of Syriac works containing references to Manicheism, among these the
works of St. Ephrem the Syrian. On the whole, however, the Oriental sources were
not edited until the 19th century.
Beausobre and his successors
The first really important comprehensive study of Manicheism and its sources
was published in 1734-39: Isaac de Beausobre’s Histoire critique de Manichée et
du manichéisme. The most important conclusion he reached in his critical
assessment of the sources was that the Acta could not possibly be original; it
was probably composed, not just written down, by Hegemonius in 340, that is,
over sixty years after the event it records. As all the Greek church fathers
used the Acta as their primary source on Mani and Manicheism, this entire
tradition could not be considered original, and one therefore had to concentrate
on the Oriental sources. At this time, however, these were not substantial
enough to provide a complete, or even approximately complete, picture of Mani
and his religion. Nevertheless, the picture drawn by Beausobre 3 corresponds
very closely to what we have learned since. The various writers who reacted to
Beausobre’s work did not add much of great significance, and Manichean studies
advanced but little until l’Abbé Foucher,4 in an appendix published in Kleuker’s
German translation (1776) of Anquetil-Duperron’s translation of the Zoroastrian
scriptures (1771), produced a study in which he compared Manicheism with
Christianity and the Magian religion. His conclusions,5 based upon the Arab and
Persian writers, were even closer to the truth than those of Beausobre. In the
second quarter of the 19th century several studies appeared, in which the
authors endeavored to explain the diverse elements of Mani’s teaching by
assuming that he had originally belonged to the religion of the Magians and used
their doctrine as the basis for his own, but with added, and adapted, elements
from Christianity. As we now know, exactly the opposite took place, but this
early view has persisted and is still widely held today. More importantly, the
wider study of Oriental religions permitted scholars to see the spread of
Manicheism throughout Asia and, although mistakenly, its influence upon the
religions of Tibet and India.
12 September 22, 2006
Baur
Finally, in 1831, there appeared the first work in which Manicheism was being
studied, not as a heresy or a bastardized Magian religion, but as a new religion
in its own right. This was F. C. Baur’s small book Das manichäische
Religionssystem, nach den Quellen neu untersucht und entwickelt (Goettingen; The
Manichean religious system, reexamined and reexplained on the basis of the
sources). Different from the works of his predecessors, Baur concentrated on the
Western sources, which, he pointed out, were contemporary with the early
Manichean communities. Analyzing the doctrine, Baur concluded that, although its
terminology was clearly
2 J. H. Hottinger, Historia Orientalis and a work on Bar
Hebraeus by E. Pococke. 3 Ries, pp. 38-39. 4 “a prolific scholar who published
in the Mémoires de l’Académie a great number of papers” (J. Duchesne-Guillemin,
The Western Response to Zoroaster, Oxford, 1958, p. 13. 5 Ries, p. 47.
HISTORY OF MANICHEAN STUDIES IN THE WEST
Christian, its contents originated from Indian religion, more specifically the
religion of the Jainas.
Arabic sources
Then, just before the middle of the 19th century, editions of the Arabic authors
began to appear: in 1842 W. Cureton published his edition of Muhammad al-Shahrastani’s
(b. 1086) Kitâb al-milal wa’l-nihal (“The book of religious sects and
philosophical schools”), and in 1862 G. Flügel published a monograph containing
an edition of the section on Manicheism contained in Ibn al-Nadim’s Fihrist al-‘ul
m (compl. 987; “Catalogue of sciences’). From his study of the Arabic sources,
Flügel concluded that Manicheism was an Asian religion based on Zoroastrianism,
the Sabeism of the Mughtasila (a Baptist sect), and a biblical strain based on
Christian teachings. Finally, in 1878, E. Sachau published the Chronology of Abu
Rayhân al-Biruni (973-1048; Ā th r al-b qiya ‘an qur n al-kh liya). Later he
also published Biruni’s book on India (Kit b f ta q q ma li’l-Hind). Biruni,
too, claims to have his information from the Book of Mysteries, which he says he
unearthed, after a long search, in the library of Choresmia. On the basis of
this new material the Iranist Fr. Spiegel concluded that Mani had started out
with the Iranian concept of dualism, but had then assimilated elements from
Christianity and Buddhism, but most of all the old Babylonian cosmology. This
approach to Manicheism was then pursued to its fullest extent by Konrad Kessler,
whose Mani, vol. 1, appeared in 1889. Kessler concluded that Mani continued the
old Babylonian and Chaldean religions (where, according to the common opinion of
those days Zoroaster also obtained his ideas!). He retained some of the Iranian
religious structures, added some Buddhist moral teachings that he found on his
journey to India, and finally clothed the whole in Christian terminological garb
for the benefit of the Mesopotamian Christian community. After this, the debate
continued for a while, swaying back and forth, but producing no lasting results.
More importantly, progress was being made in the study of the Acta and the
editing of Syriac sources. After important new manuscript finds it was finally
determined that the original Acta had been written in Greek by Hegemonius and
that the Latin version had been made later, between 392 and 450, at a time when
the Catholic church of Africa was confronting the Manichean community there. A
complete edition of the Acta by C. H. Beeson appeared in 1905 (Leipzig). A new
translation by M. Vermes appeared in 2001. The provenance and attribution of
several other Greek texts were determined around this time as well, notably the
so-called abjuration formulas.
Syriac sources
Two important Syriac sources were edited at this time, also after important new
manuscript finds: the anti- Manichean writings of St. Ephrem were discovered and
eventually published by C. W. Mitchell in 1912. His remarks on Mani and
Manicheism were collected and edited by E. Beck in 1978. Extracts from the Book
of scholies by Theodore bar Konai (6th cent.) were published by H. Pognon in
1898, and the complete extant text by A. Scher in 1910. Before then, the
Manichean cosmogony according to Theodore had been studied by F. Cumont (1908).
THE 20TH CENTURY 1. CENTRAL ASIA
From the beginning of the 20th century the situation of Manichean studies was
totally changed. Through a series of discoveries of comprehensive original texts
scholars were able to recover a much more complete and accurate picture both of
the early beginnings of the religion and its later developments. The new texts
also supplied a much needed control for the western and eastern sources known
until then, so that the information they contained could be used with much
greater confidence. The first of the several discoveries that were to send
western explorers and scholars into frenzies of activity was that of a
birch-bark manuscript found by the British cavalry officer Hamilton Bower. This
turned out to be one of the very earliest preserved books in the whole world,
dating from the 5th century C.E. The manuscript contained a medical text, which
was edited by the great indologist Rudolf Hoernle and published in 1893. Several
famous explorers followed in Bower’s footsteps, but as they are of greater
importance for Buddhist than Manichean studies I will mention them briefly: the
Swede Sven Hedin traveled through Xinjiang for the first time in 1893-97. The
English orientalist and linguist Mark Aurel Stein traveled to Khotan for the
first time in 1890, excavated at Niya in 1901, and returned to England with his
treasures in the same year. In 1902 the Japanese count Otani traveled to Kashgar
and Tashkurgan. In 1906 the French orientalist and sinologist Paul Pelliot led
an expedition through Turfan to Dunhuang, where he was able to acquire enormous
quantities of manuscripts in different languages. At the same time Aurel Stein
had returned to Xinjiang, traveling through Khotan onward to Dunhuang, where he
too acquired numerous manuscripts. The Russians, as well, had been very active
from about 1905. In 1910 an expedition led by the Indologist Sergei Oldenburg
returned to St. Petersburg laden with treasures. In 1913-14 Aurel Stein
conducted his third and longest expedition.
Turfan
Also in 1902, the German Albert Grünwedel from the Museum für Völkerkunde in
Berlin traveled to Turfan, where they discovered numerous manuscripts, among
them a large number of Manichean ones. A second expedition (1904-05) was
financed by the steel magnate Krupp, as well as the emperor himself (Wilhelm
II), and led by Albert von Le Coq. In the third expedition (1905-07) Grünwedel
joined Le Coq at Kashgar and took them through Kucha, Karashahr, Turfan, and
Hami. The fourth expedition (1913-14) was also led by Le Coq. All four
expeditions were enormously successful. Publication of the new material began
immediately. In 1904 the German F. W. K. Müller published two articles
containing manuscript remains from Turfan, Chinese Turkestan. In the second
article he published a short text in “dialect,” that is, Sogdian, on the
creation of the heavens, which he compared with a parallel passage from the
Fihrist text published by Flügel. Müller’s understanding of this text at such an
early stage is astonishing.
In 1904 Carl Salemann started publishing a series of Manichean texts in
Hebrew alphabet and with glossaries from the St. Petersburg collection, in all,
four articles (Manichaeica I-IV, 1907-12), and at the same time he republished
Müller’s texts, but in the Hebrew alphabet and with a complete glossary. The
first Manichean Turkish text was published by Le Coq in 1908. We may note as a
curiosity that the text contains a fragment of the Zarathustra legend as it was
known in the 3rd century to Mani and the other Manichean authors. In 1910 he
published an important confession text, the Khwâstwânift, and from 1911 on a
series of articles containing Turkish Manichean texts from Turfan. A Chinese
Manichean text was published by E. Chavannes and P. Pelliot in 1911, the famous
Traité manichéen. Two important studies of Chinese Manicheism by Paul Pelliot
appeared in 1923 on the Manichean traditions in Fujian and 1925 on two Manichean
manuscripts from Dunhuang. Also in 1923 the first of a series of studies by the
American Iranist A. V. William Jackson appeared. Most of these were collected
and reprinted in his Researches on Manicheism from 1932.
Synthetic studies of Manicheism based on the new finds began appearing. J.
Scheftelowitz’s book on the origin of Manicheism and the mystery of salvation
appeared, followed by an article in 1924 discussing the possible Iranian origin
of Manicheism, and a series of other articles. In 1924-25 H. H. Schaeder gave a
series of lectures on the original form and development of Manicheism (published
1927), and in 1926 a study by O. G. von Wesendonk on the origin of Manicheism
was published. In 1926 the first studies of Chinese Manichean texts compared
with other new and old texts were published by Ernst Waldschmitt and Wolfgang
Lentz, who also published a study on Jesus in Manicheism and a number of Chinese
and Iranian texts on Manichean doctrine.
The publication of the Iranian texts from Turfan was delayed by the war and
the personality of the scholar to whom they had been entrusted, F. C. Andreas.
Incapable of finishing a work and publishing it, it was not till after his death
that the texts he had worked on were published by his student W. B. Henning in
three articles (Mitteliranische Manichaica i-iii, 1932-34). At the same time
Henning began publishing articles containing texts and studies that were of
paramount importance, for instance, on a Manichean cosmogonical hymn (1932), the
birth and mission of the First Man (1933), a Manichean Enoch book (1934), a
Manichean prayer and confession book (1936, contained important Sogdian texts).
His study of the Middle Persian verb and his remarks on the new sources for the
study of Manicheism (both 1933) and on central Asian Manicheism (1934) were
fundamental. The first comprehensive Forschungsbericht of Manicheism appeared in
1935: H. S. Nyberg’s Researches in Manicheism. In the same year H. J. Polotsky’s
article on Manicheism for Paulys Real-Enzyklopädie appeared.
Publications of Central Asian texts after the war
During and after the war publication of the Iranian texts proceeded slowly at
first. As a matter of fact, publication was fairly monopolized by Henning and
his student Mary Boyce. Among the most important articles by Henning containing
text publications are his “Mani’s Last Journey,” “The Book of Giants,” “The
Murder of the Magi,” “The Manichean Fasts,” “Sogdian Tales, “Two Manichean
Magical Texts,” and “A Sogdian Fragment of the Manichaean Cosmogony.” In
addition he quoted unpublished texts in most of his articles. Mary Boyce
published important texts in two articles, “Sadw s and P and “Some Parthian
Abecedarian Hymns,” and then, in 1954, her outstanding The Manichean Hymn Cycles
in Parthian. In the same year appeared I. Gershevitch’s A Grammar of Manichean
Sogdian, in which unpublished Manichean Sogdian texts were extensively quoted.
Six years later there appeared M. Boyce’s invaluable Catalogue (1960). A
promised edition of Mir. Man. iv by Henning-Boyce never has materialized, but
the material collected for this book is now being published by others. In 1970
de Menasce made known a couple of Manichean fragments in the Pelliot collection
in Paris, which turned out to belong together with other fragments from Berlin.
In 1975 Boyce published a large number of the then known Manichean Persian and
Parthian texts in transliteration in her Reader accompanied by a glossary.
16 By then the East-German scholar Werner Sundermann had started work on the
East Berlin collection of Manichean manuscripts. After a couple of articles
containing editions of Manichean texts based on the Christian gospels and others
he published his first major and exemplary edition of Manichean texts arranged
by subject. The first contained all the Persian and Parthian cosmological texts
and all the parable texts (1973), the second all the
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THE 20TH CENTURY 1. CENTRAL ASIA
Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian texts relating to the history of the Manichean
church (1981), the third contained a Sogdian parable book (1985). In between he
has published numerous smaller fragments of considerable interest, as have his
students Ch. Reck and I. Colditz. A new edition of the eschatological part of
the Shabuhragân by D. N. MacKenzie appeared in two issues of the BSOAS in
1979-80. In 1980 a new collection of Sogdian texts was published by A. N. Ragoza,
which also contained Manichean texts. One of these was reedited by N.
Sims-Williams, a text from the cycle of Ohrmezd the Brave (1990). German
translations of all the hymnic texts in Iranian and Turkish by H.-J. Klimkeit
was published in 1989, and a revised English translation appeared in (1993). A
facsimile and partial edition of the Manichean hymn cycles by Sundermann was
published in the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum in 1990; a collection of later
texts in 2000. A new edition of the cosmological texts from the Shabuhragân with
facsimiles by M. Hutter appeared in 1992. A facsimile edition of all the Iranian
Manichean texts published between 1904 and 1934 was published in the Corpus
Inscriptionum Iranicarum in 1996. In two recent publications Sundermann has
edited the fragments of two Central Asian Manichean texts: the Sermon on the
Light Nous (1992) and the Sermon on the Soul (1997). The famous Manichean
polemical hymns in M 28 were published by Skjærvø in 1997.
A collection of Manichean Turkish texts was published by P. Zieme (1975), and
further Turkish texts by Geng Shimin and H.-J. Klimkeit, one on the destruction
of Manichean monasteries (1985) and another text from the cycle of Ohrmezd the
Brave (1987).
A new edition of all the Chinese Manichean texts by H. Schmidt-Glinzer was
published in 1987.
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