Order of Nazorean Essenes

Mani - founder of Manichaeaism
Naz site - Site dedicated to Nazoreans
Forum- Nazorean Forum

‘Books for Burning and for Hiding:
Manichaean Scriptures in the Roman Empire and Central Asia’

Professor Samuel LIEU, Professor of Ancient History, Macquarie University

"Professor Lieu graduated from Cambridge University, and gained his doctorate at Oxford University, where he was a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College. After a number of years at Warwick University, where he became both Reader in and Professor of Ancient History, he was appointed to the chair at Macquarie, where he is also Co-Director of the Ancient History Documentary Research Centre. He is also Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, Co-Director of the Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum Project (sponsored by UNESCO), and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

His published books include Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China: a Historical Survey (Manchester University Press, 1985; new edn 1992), Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East (Leiden: Brill, 1994; repr. 1998), and Manichaeism in Central Asia and China (Leiden: Brill, 1998).He has collaborated with Michael Dodgeon in The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, AD 226-363: a Documentary History (London & New York, NY: Routledge, 1991; revised edns 1994 and 1996) and with Dominic Montserrat in From Constantine to Julian: Pagan and Byzantine Views (London & New York, NY: Routledge, 1996), and has edited (again with Dominic Montserrat) Constantine: History, Historiography, and Legend (London & New York, NY: Routledge, 1998). See also Samuel Lieu, S. Clackson, E. D. C. Hunter, and M. Vermes, Dictionary of Manichaean Texts, 1: Texts from the Roman Empire, Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, Series Subsidia, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998) and Samuel Lieu and Mark Vermes, Hegemonius, Acta Archelai, a translation and commentary, Manichaean Studies, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001)."

Abstract

"The religion of the Manichaeans was a religion of the book par excellence.Mani, the founder of the religion, who flourished in Mesopotamia in the 3rd century AD, was an indefatigable preacher, author and correspondent.The core of his teaching on cosmogony and ethics is preserved in a canon of seven scriptures: (1) the Living Gospel, (2) the Treasure of Life, (3) the Pragmateia, (4) the Book of Mysteries, (5) the Book of the Giants, (6) the Letters, (7) Psalms and Prayers.These were originally composed in Syriac, Mani's own dialect and the lingua franca of much of the Near East in the period of Romano-Sassanian confrontation.He also wrote a summary of his teaching in Middle Persian, which he dedicated to his imperial patron, Shapur I.This work, the Shabuhragan, was so important that it enjoyed canonical status, particularly in the eastern parts of the Sassanian Empire; and in one list of the canon in Arabic we find it listed as one of the seven works, replacing Psalms and Prayers.Early Manichaean missionaries were accompanied by professional scribes and the quality of their book production was grudgingly admired by the sect’s opponents—e.g. the remark of Ephraim of Nisibis in his refutation in prose of Mani's writings:"

So also Mani painted in colours on a scroll—as some of his disciples say—the likeness of the wickedness which he created out of his mind, placing on hideous (pictures) the name of the Sons of the Darkness that it might declare to his disciples the ugliness of the Darkness that they might abhor it, and placing on beautiful things the name of the Sons of the Light.‘In order that its beauty may in itself indicate to them that they should desire it’, as he said, ‘I have written them in books and pictured them in colours.Let him who hears them in words also see them in an image, and let him who is unable to learn them from (words) learn them from pictures’ (C. haer. ad Hypat., I, p. 127, 7-11; trans. Mitchell, 1912, p. xciii)

The diffusion of the writings of Mani and his followers played a major role in the spread of the religion in both the Roman and the Sassanian Empires and the missionary with the books of Mani was very much a hallmark of the sect. Great attention was paid to the artistic production of the books. In his famous rescript against the sect in 302, the Emperor Diocletian decreed that the leaders (i.e. the Elect members) of the sect should be burnt together with their books. (Collatio Mosaicarum XV,3, FIRA II, pp. 580-81) A century later, a Manichaean doctor by the name of Felix challenged Augustine of Hippo to a public debate in his attempt to win back a set of Manichaean works consisting of five auctores which had been confiscated by the imperial authorities and offered himself to be burnt with his books if he were unable to prove to Augustine the truth contained in them. He failed in his attempt but his life was saved through recantation but his books were presumably were consigned to the flames. (Aug., c. Fel., passim) The same fate awaited most Manichaean scriptures in the Roman Empire. The stringent anti-heretical laws and their efficient application by secular and ecclesiastical authorities saw to the near complete destruction of Manichaean texts in the Roman Empire. Till the middle of last century, all that remained of the once enormous literary output of the sect could only be sampled in the handful of quotations from genuine Manichaean texts.

However, since the beginning of the twentieth century., thanks to a series of expeditions to the Turfan region in Chinese Central Asia, thousands of text-fragments of Manichaean codices, many beautifully illuminated, have been recovered and painstakingly restored in Berlin. These consist of collections of hymns, historical texts, confessionals as well portions of canonical works like the Book of the Giants and the semi-canonical Shabuhragan. We even have some of the binding material of these books. The lecture will look at the artistic skills of the Manichaean book-illuminators and calligraphers as well as the problems concerning the alignment of the illustrations—an issue now well researched on by Associate Professor Zsuzsanna Gulácsi of Sophia University in Japan. This part of the lecture will be illustrated by slides.

Equally important is the discovery in 1929 of a small library of Manichaean codices in Coptic from Medinet Madi in Egypt. The codicological problems concerning these texts are considerable and the intervention of the Second World War seriously disrupted their program of conservation in Berlin. The lecture will focus on the missionary aspects of the use of codices by the Manichaean sect in the Roman Empire and the techniques of translation—augmented by the newly discovered Manichaean texts on papyri and wooden boards from Kellis in the Dakhleh Oasis.

Finally, the Manichaeans were responsible for producing the smallest parchment codex from the ancient world. This unique work—the Cologne Mani-Codex—measures only 38 mm x 45 mm. with a single column of an average of 23 lines per page. In size it approximates to Christian amulets like P. Ant. ii 54 (26 mm x 40 mm. Pater Noster) or, P. Oxy. xvii 2065 (Ps. 90) but with nearly 200 pages it had the largest number of quires (eight as against one). The lecture will give some insight into how such miniature writing was executed in the Ancient World and will raise questions on the date and purpose of this important work, which contains a biography in Greek of Mani—the founder of the religion."