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Frontiers of Faith
Through a systematic analysis of the sources, compositional structure, and apologetic and polemical strategies of the early fourth century Acts of Archelaus (Acta Archelai), this volume explores inter-religious contact, conflict, and comprehension in the encounter between Christianity and Manichaeism.
eBook
Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire
Founded by Mani (c. AD 216–276), a Syrian visionary of Judaeo-Christian background who lived in Persian Mesopotamia, Manichaeism spread rapidly into the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries AD and became one of the most persecuted heresies under Christian Roman emperors. The religion established missionary cells in Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Rome and has in Augustine of Hippo the most famous of its converts. The study of the religion in the Roman Empire has benefited from discoveries of genuine Manichaean texts from Medinet Madi and from the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt, as well as successful decipherment of the Cologne Mani-Codex which gives an autobiography of the founder in Greek. This 2004 book is a single-volume collection of sources for this religion, and draws from material mostly unknown to English-speaking scholars and students, offers in translation genuine Manichaean texts from Greek, Latin and Coptic.
eBook
Spiritual Hunger and the Search for God in Augustine’s Confessions: A New ‘Sensory’ Approach to the Text-Audience Interaction
This article investigates the role of sensory metaphors of food and hunger in the communicative project of the Confessions. Under the broad framework of cognitive poetics, which focuses on the interaction between text and audience, I analyse how sensory language contributes to an appeal to the readers’ sensory imaginations and emotions that they might be responsive to the viewpoint put forward by the text. I find that Augustine stimulates and reorientates especially his Manichaean readers’ intuitive but also cultural and familiar conceptions of the sensible world in relation to God, of their religious food and dietary rituals and, by extension, of their experience of God. This, I argue, seems to be a persuasive device to encourage new interpretation of the senses as signs which point towards immaterial reality, and new understanding of man’s relationship to God as utterly transcendent and unchangeable.
Journal Article
Studying Manichaeism in Augustine’s Sermones ad populum: Crypto-Manichaeism and the Audience’s Theology
This article proposes a methodology for the study of Manichaeism in the Sermones ad populum. Sermons provide a unique perspective on Augustine’s thought: they offered him the opportunity to share theological and ethical concerns with a responsive audience. Because his sermons have only recently been (re-)discovered as loci of Augustine’s ideas, and because they constitute a specific genre within his oeuvre, the development of a method for studying them is in order. To illustrate the proposed method, the present contribution examines anti-Manichaean content in the Sermones ad populum by means of two key concepts. The first concept is that of crypto-Manichaeism. Although they do not refute Manichaeism in its totality, the sermons are regularly concerned with specific aspects of Manichaeism, such as those that were relevant to the sermon’s liturgical occasion or those Augustine feared were attractive to his flock. Crypto-Manichaeism refers, on the one hand, to the tendency of Manichaeans to refrain from openly identifying themselves as such. After all, they considered themselves true Christians. Nor was Manichaeism the only movement in late antique Christianity that espoused dualistic beliefs, rejected bodily desires and material wealth, and criticized the Old Testament. Anti-Manichaean argument was therefore more broadly applicable than refutation of Manichaeism stricto sensu. Our attention to crypto-Manichaeism therefore does justice to the pastoral and exhortative function of Augustine’s sermons. A second key concept is the perspective of the audience. The setting of each sermon is unique, the composition of audiences varied, and attendance no doubt fluctuated. Each sermon ought to be considered as its own literary and theological whole, hermeneutically influenced by its concrete Sitz im Leben (i.e., composition of the audience, time and place, liturgical setting, etc.). The audience’s theology can be reconstructed in a bottom-up fashion, with each sermon supplying complementary and cumulative theological information that the audience could have gathered by participating in the liturgy. In this article we apply the proposed methodology to a group of four early anti-Manichaean sermons.
Journal Article
Cao’an in the Ancestral World: Contemporary Manichaeism-Related Belief and Familial Ethics in Southeastern China
The Cao’an (草庵), situated in the Fujian Province of China, stands as a rare Manichean relic that has long attracted scholarly interest. In the Sunei (苏内) village where the Cao’an is located, there are numerous texts, narratives, and religious practices related to Manichaeism which are often cited as evidence of local Manichaean activities since the Song and Yuan Dynasties. However, drawing from anthropological fieldwork, this paper points out that the local villagers have a more complex and seemingly contradictory attitude towards Manichaeism. On the one hand, they are enthusiastic about worshipping “Moni guangfo” (Mani the Buddha of Light, 摩尼光佛) and collecting narratives of their Manichaean ancestors. On the other hand, they resist the local government’s attempts to strengthen the “Manichaean” characteristics of Cao’an and related village temples. Their familial ethics provides a critical and coherent perspective. The villagers have gradually accumulated a wealth of Manichaean-related texts and narratives to demonstrate the moral virtues of their ancestors. Their beliefs and rituals concerning Mani the Buddha of Light are also grounded in traditional familial ethics. This helps us grasp the reality of Manichaeism-related culture in contemporary China.
Journal Article
Paul's Comparison of Himself with \the Abortion\ (1 Cor 15:8): A Missing Link between the Qumran Book of Giants and the Manichaean Book of Giants
Abstract
When Paul states in 1 Cor 15:8, \"Last of all, as to the abortion, he [Christ] appeared also to me\" (ἔσχατον δὲ πάντων ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώµατι ὤφθη κἀµοί), the article τῷ indicates that Paul is referring to the well-known \"abortion\"/giant, ʾOhyah, the one giant-uniquely in all of extant early Jewish literature-to whom God appeared in a dream-vision signifying theophanic judgment. This casts Paul in the role of a violent giant who, on trial before Christ, acknowledged his past crimes and pled for forgiveness. This understanding of 1 Cor 15:8 has important implications not only for the interpretation of Paul and his letters, but also for understanding the relationship between the Qumran Book of Giants and the Manichaean Book of Giants.
Journal Article