Justificación

As we saw in Chapter 3, Mani set out the details of the myth in a number of his writings. Judging from the evidence offered by sources like The Chapters, all of Mani’s works mentioned in the Western formulation of the Manichaean scriptural canon were understood in some way to make reference to the myth, which Manichaeans, possibly following the lead of Mani himself, referred as the

‘three lessons’ or the ‘three times’ as a way of denoting the periodisation of the mythological narrative’s beginning, middle and end (see below), the elements of the Manichaean ‘fable’ criticised by Augustine and other anti-Manichaean writers.³⁴ The periods formed an essential element in the soteriological narrative

30 E.g., The Chapters 38.92.27–31; trans. I. Gardner 1995, 97. See Henning 1943, 53; also Stroumsa 1984, 153–4.

31 Stroumsa 1984, 153.

32 Trans. J.C. Reeves 1997, 227.

33 See Coyle 2009b, 51–64.

34 The Chapters 5.21–33; trans. I. Gardner 1995, 145.

of Manichaeism, reflecting the extent of the engagement between the two natures, from the point of their isolation from each other, to their ‘mixing’ – which implied the appropriation of light by the darkness, and concluding with the reestablishment of their separate spheres of influence. Geo Widengren offers the following terse description of the three times:

The First Epoch embraced the state of the universe prior to the blending of light and darkness; the Second Epoch was concerned with the period of that blending; the Third Epoch signified the sundering of the blended elements. This doctrine of the Three Epochs is together with the Two Principles Manichaeism’s main dogma.³⁵

The Šābuhragān, once thought of as a work concerned wholly with Mani’s ideas about the end of days, is now understood to have offered a systematic treatment of the beginnings and operation of the universe. Furthermore, whilst the legendary content of Mani’s Pragmateia is not fully assured, it was almost certainly concerned with cosmogonic/cosmological material. Befitting his authorial personality as a writer of letters, Mani also sought to clear up the confusions which arose with the cultural translation of his myth as undertaken by his followers who were spread far and wide in the world. Patticius (Patig), one of Mani’s closest disciples and his father’s namesake, was active in the Roman empire,³⁶ specifically in Egypt towards the latter half of the third century, when he received a letter (The Foundation) in which Mani provided a compact account of his myth demonstrating an especial concern to expand on the seemingly salacious details of the generation of Adam and Eve.³⁷

Mani’s Book of Giants also clearly related details of a cosmological nature, as did the Living Gospel and the Treasury. However, the nature and purpose of each individual work necessarily determined the reason for the inclusion of the myth, the details given, and the way in which the myth was imparted. It appears rare for Mani to narrate the myth simply for the sake of ‘telling the story’. Indeed, it was more usual for the myth to be applied to other areas of Manichaean thought, in the sense of offering the basic data for meditations on anthropogony (the origins of humankind), ontology (the nature of existence), and anthropology.

On occasions, the myth also seems to have been employed in order to provide a cosmic ‘mytho-historical’ identity for his community – thereby indicating the antiquity of his teachings – by fixing it centrally within the soteriological scheme of the universe, as in the case of the eschatological scenes from the Šābuhragān (see Chapter 1), along with reinforcing specific cultic and ritualised roles for members of his church.

35 Widengren 1965, 68. See also Heuser 1998, 18–24.

36 See I. Gardner and S.N.C. Lieu 2004, 111.

37 Portions of The Foundation are preserved in a number of Latin Patristic writings, including substantially in Augustine’s response to the letter; see Stein 2002 for a recent edition of The Foundation’s fragments; an English translation of the fragments has been assembled by I. Gardner and S.N.C. Lieu 2004, 168–72 (see frg. 4a in Gardner and Lieu for references to Adam and Eve). For a study of the work see esp. Scopello 2001.

Manichaean Theology II: The Universe, its Rituals and its Community

Works composed by Manichaeans, likely patterned on the teachings and writings of Mani, also include references to the myth, including the valuable insights regarding the doctrinal adaptation of Mani’s mythology by his followers offered throughout The Chapters,³⁸ together with liturgical and devotional renderings of Mani’s theogony and mythology in the Psalm-Book and the Homilies (some of which have been collected and translated in Gardner and Lieu 2004, 176–230). Along with the fragments which are now assigned to the Šābuhragān, many Middle Persian and Parthian fragments from Turfan also contain material of a mythological orientation.³⁹ The myth was therefore suscep-tible to extrapolation, reformulation, expansion and contraction, depending on the demands of the cultural environment and audience for which it was being recounted: indeed, this adaptability appears to have been one of its main ‘selling points’. It is, therefore, important to take on board the following observation made by Jason BeDuhn concerning the manner of narrative representations of the Manichaean myth across this diverse range of literature:

That which is presented as an orderly, synthetic cosmogonic narrative in most twentieth-century scholarship on Manichaeism stands in the various [Manichaean and anti-Manichaean] sources as a tangled collection of conflicting accounts, in need of careful literary-historical analysis.⁴⁰

Precisely because the myth presented such great opportunities for opponents of Manichaeism to deride so fantastic an account of the universe, attacks on the myth became the stock-in-trade for writers hostile to the religion. Notable anti-Manichaean sources from Late Antiquity that provide tendentious, although still valuable, accounts of the myth include: the Critique of Alexander of Lycopolis;

the Acts of Archelaus (esp. 7.1–13.4, trans. M. Vermes 2001, 44-58, with a superb set of notes by S. Lieu); Augustine’s Answer to the Letter of Mani known as the Foundation, and his Answer to Faustus (esp. 15.5–6 and 20.2); Ephraim’s Prose Refutations (conveniently collected by J.C. Reeves with a commentary 1997, 224–8); the 123rd homily of Severus of Antioch (trans. J.C. Reeves 1992, 167–70); and the summary of Mani’s ‘abominable teaching’ in the Scholia of Theodore bar Koni (trans. J.C. Reeves 1992, 189–93).

Of all of these accounts, Theodore bar Koni’s so-called résumé of the myth is considered by many commentators to be the most prized: dating from the eighth century, Theodore wrote his work in Syriac, for which reason it is believed that he preserved ‘terminology traceable to Mani himself’.⁴¹ It is likely that Theodore was working from copies of Mani’s own writings, which he excerpted directly and introduced with the words ‘He (i.e., Mani) says’ as a way of reporting direct speech.⁴² However, whilst acknowledging the evident value of Theodore’s résumé, it is also important to recognise the artificial nature of it, being the

38 On this, see esp. Pettipiece 2009, passim.

39 See Sundermann 1993.

40 BeDuhn 2002, 75–6.

41 Reeves 1992, 188–9.

42 See Burkitt 1925, 14–15; cf. Tardieu 2008, 75–6.

work of a heresiologist, whose ambition was to highlight what he considered to be the absurd details of Mani’s teachings, which he achieved first and foremost by decontextualising the myth from whichever work(s) he had taken it from,⁴³ decontextualisation and reductionism being the principal weapons in the armoury of the heresy-hunter.

Of the Islamic sources, the Fihrist’s detailed account of the myth from the tenth century (Dodge 1970, II.777–88) remains of great value, having been scrutinised by Carsten Colpe in 1954,⁴⁴ and more recently by François de Blois (2005).