Manichaeism

In the formative years of early Christianity, different systems of belief competed with one another to represent how Christians should best think of all the details of God’s plan for the world. The result was much debate and even turmoil, but by the Middle Ages different Christian communities attained stability by adhering to a single set of beliefs. For most Egyptian Christians this set of beliefs was Monophysitism (see above). The history of theology profoundly affects the history of Coptic literature, which is mostly religious in nature.

Another facet of the early years of Christianity was its rise from being a small sect of Judaism in the first century to becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. Therefore, Christianity in its earlier years had to compete with other religions. Two religious movements that drew many followers were Manichae-ism and Gnosticism. Gnosticism was mainly native to Egypt, as far as the sources allow us to see, whereas Manichaeism was foreign-born. Both ultimately suffered extinction with the rise of Christianity. Gnosticism was such an elite system that it could hardly ever have posed a serious challenge to Christianity (see more below). By contrast, Manichaeism had much potential to become a world religion and aspired to be (Lieu 2006). Manichees were known as aggressive, even if civil, proselytizers. Therefore, Manichaeism was viciously persecuted by Christianity. Saint Augustine, whom many consider the most inspiring and celebrated ancient church father, was originally a Manichee but later converted to Christianity, and his invectives against Manichaeism are among the most valuable sources of information about this religion.

Some characteristics of Manichaeism are as follows (see Polotsky 1935). The core principle of Manichaeism is dualism. Gnosticism is also dualistic but less so. Dualism tries to reconcile the fact that there is so much evil in the world with the belief that God is the creator. How could God have created evil? The origin of dualism is a refusal to associate God with evil in any way. Dualism insists that there is not one but two fundamental principles, variously described as good and evil, divine and material, and light and dark. Good and evil are separated from one another as two distinct principles. Gnosticism and Manichaeism present different but also in many ways similar accounts of the relation between the two principles. At the center of both accounts stands a very detailed and elaborate myth that portrays the history of the world from the beginning. This myth is in large part concrete and material as opposed to abstract and spiritual, to a much greater degree in Manichaeism than in Gnosticism; in fact, almost every facet of Manichaean thought can be imagined as having a bodily presence. In Manichaeism good and evil are fully separated from the start, and only the good is called God. What is evil is so equal in status to what is good that Manichaeism has been interpreted by some as a duotheism, a religion with two gods.

All episodes in the myth of Manichaeism are described in great detail. In one crucial episode, an epic struggle takes place early in the history of the world. The realm of darkness seeks to invade the realm of light, and the latter surrenders some light particles to appease the forces of darkness. The result is a mixture of light and dark in which the light particles forget where they came from. God therefore dispatches ‘‘mind’’ (Greek nous) to mankind to allow them to regain knowledge of their origin and engage in types of behavior that will allow them to reunite with the realm of light. Owing to the key role played by knowledge, Manichaeism is called a gnostic religion, from Greek gnosis ‘‘knowledge.’’

Manichaeism is almost entirely the creation of the person after whom it is named. Mani (ad 215/16-276) was of Iranian descent and related to the Parthian royal house. He lived in south Babylonia and spoke an eastern Aramaic dialect. Unlike most founders of religions, including Jesus and Mohammed, Mani read much and wrote much. He also borrowed a great deal from other religions and adapted without hesitation anything that he thought good and useful in other faiths. He also styled himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ, and, in the end, according to some sources, Mani died for his beliefs, as Jesus did.

There is an interesting potential link between Manichaeism and Pharaonic Egypt. A tradition preserved in the Acta Archelai, a Manichaean work whose Greek original survives in citations, traces the earliest roots of Manichaeism to an Egyptian called Scythianus, who is said to have learned all the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians and whose beliefs traveled from Egypt to Mesopotomia. That may explain a possible reference to a Hieroglyphic wisdom text in a Syriac Manichaean text discovered in Egypt (Depuydt 1993b).

Why does Manichaeism deserve a prominent place in an essay on Coptic literature? The reason is that one of the two principal troves of original Manichaean sources consists of texts in Coptic. These texts were originally part of a Manichaean library located near modern Medinet Madi in the western Fayum. They are now kept in Berlin, Dublin, and Vienna. The other trove is from Turfan in western China and contains texts in Iranian and Turkic dialects as well as in Chinese. The edition of all Mani-chaean works written in Coptic is a collaborative effort that has not yet been completed, but an international society devoted to Manichaeism founded some years ago promotes the academic study of this ancient religion. Among other original evidence of Manichaeism, Egypt has also yielded the Cologne Mani Codex in Greek and the archeological and textual remains found at ancient Kellis in the Dakhla Oasis.

A distinction applies in the corpus of Manichaean texts, which include letters, sermons, sayings, and teachings, between (1) works written by Mani himself in Syriac, Aramaic, and Persian, (2) translations of his works, (3) works written by his followers, and (4) translations of works written by his followers. The Manichaean Coptic texts presumably mostly fall into the fourth category and were mostly composed in the first generation after Mani. The manuscript copies from Medinet Madi are probably not much younger, if at all. The original language of the Coptic translations may have been Syriac.