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Mani’s Metivta: Manichaean Pedagogy in its Late Antique Mesopotamian Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2021
Abstract
This article investigates the nature of Manichaean pedagogy as expressed through the late antique codices known as the Kephalaia of the Teacher and the Kephalaia of the Wisdom of my Lord Mani. By paying attention to a range of contextual cues that frame each moment of instruction, it first argues that much like their rabbinic and Christian neighbors, Mesopotamian Manichaeans did not study in academic institutions. Rather, instruction took place on an ad-hoc, individual basis, often based on happenstance events; there is no mention of a building dedicated to learning, a standard curriculum, or a semester schedule. This article then contextualizes this form of non-institutionalized Manichaean instruction by comparing three formulae found in the Kephalaia codices that have parallels in the Babylonian Talmud: the formula of Mani “sitting among” his disciples (or of his disciples “sitting before” Mani), of Mani’s disciples “standing before” Mani, and of various people “coming before” Mani. In so doing, this article ultimately argues that the Babylonian Rabbis and Syro-Mesopotamian Manichaeans shared a common pedagogical habitus, one expressed through bodily comportment and hierarchy rather than through the imposition of institutional norms.
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References
1 For a nuanced discussion on the comparing rabbinic sources and Syriac sources, especially as it relates to pedagogy, see Adam H. Becker, “The Comparative Study of ‘Scholasticism’ in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Rabbis and East Syrians,” AJSR 34 (2010) 91–113. Although this article focuses primarily on the Mesopotamian contexts, Palestinian rabbis also taught in non-institutionalized settings. See especially, Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (TSAJ 66; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997) 195–214.
2 David M. Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia (SJLA 9; Leiden: Brill, 1975); idem, “New Developments in the Study of Babylonian Yeshivot,” Zion (1981) 14–38. In response, see Isaiah Gafni, “Yeshiva and Metivta,” Zion (1978) 12–37; idem, “Concerning D. Goodblatt’s Article,” Zion (1981) 52–56. Jeffrey Rubenstein applies stammaitic analysis to resolve Goodblatt’s and Gafni’s disagreement in “The Rise of the Babylonian Rabbinic Academy: A Reexamination of the Talmudic Evidence,” Jewish Studies Internet Journal 1 (2002) 55–68; idem, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003) 35–38. For an overview of the debate and the state of the question, see David Goodblatt, “The History of the Babylonian Academies,” in The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period (ed. Steven Katz; vol. 4 of The Cambridge History of Judaism; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 821–39. For further comparison between rabbinic and Syriac Christian scholasticism, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Patriarchs and Scholarchs,” PAAJR 48 (1981) 57–86, at 80; Mira Balberg and Moulie Vidas, “Impure Scholasticism: The Study of Purity Laws and Rabbinic Self-Criticism in the Babylonian Talmud,” Prooftexts 32 (2012) 312–56, at 341–44.
3 Adam H. Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Divinations; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006) 69–76.
4 For a recent comparative approach between Manichaeans and rabbis, see now Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, “Visual Catechism in Third-Century Mesopotamia: Reassessing the Pictorial Program of the Dura-Europos Synagogue in Light of Mani’s Book of Pictures,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 9 (2018) 201–29. From the side of rabbinics, see Geoffrey Herman, “The Talmud in its Babylonian Context: Rava and Bar-Sheshakh, Mani and Mihrshah,” in Between Babylon and the Land of Israel: Festschrift for Isaiah Gafni (ed. Meir ben Shahar, Geoffrey Herman, and Aharon Oppenheimer; Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2016) 79–96 (Hebrew), especially 89 nn. 46–47. Herman emphasizes the local and synchronic parameters of comparison in his analysis of these stories. For further theorizations on contextualizing the Babylonian Talmud, see Shai Secunda, “ ‘This, but also That’: Historical, Methodological, and Theoretical Reflections on Irano-Talmudica,” JQR 106 (2016) 233–41, and Simcha Gross, “Irano-Talmudica and Beyond: Next Steps in the Contextualization of the Babylonian Talmud,” JQR 106 (2016) 248–55. Also, see Jae Hee Han and Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Introduction: Reorienting Ancient Judaism; Syrian, Mesopotamian, and Persian Perspectives,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 9 (2018) 144–54.
5 This is not to discount the number of kephalaia-like texts beyond the two major codices. For more, see Iain Gardner, “KEPHALAIA,” Encyclopædia Iranica, http://www.iranicaonline.org/ articles/kephalaia.
6 This article aims to reproduce the Coptic (including diaereses and supralinear strokes) of 1 Ke as it is presented in the following editions: Kephalaia (I): 1. Hälfte [Lieferung 1–10] (ed. H. J. Polotsky and A. Böhlig; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1940); Kephalaia (I):2. Hälfte [Lieferung 11–12: Seite 244–291] (ed. A. Böhlig; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966); Kephalaia (I): 2. Hälfte [Lieferung 15–16] (ed. Wolf-Peter Funk; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2000); Kephalaia (I): 2. Hälfte [Lieferung 17–18] (ed. Wolf-Peter Funk; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2018). For an English translation up to K122 (1 Ke 295.8), see Iain Gardner, The Kephalaia of the Teacher: The Edited Coptic Manichaean Texts in Translation with Commentary (NHMS 37; Leiden: Brill, 1995). English translations in this paper are based on Gardner’s translations. For the edited text of 2 Ke (K321–347), see The Chapters of the Wisdom of my Lord Mani: Part III, Pages 343–442 (Chapters 321–347) (ed. Iain Gardner, Jason BeDuhn, and Paul C. Dilley; NHMS 92; Leiden: Brill, 2018). See also Mani at the Court of the Persian Kings: Studies on the Chester Beatty Kephalaia Codex (ed. Iain Gardner, Jason BeDuhn, and Paul Dilley; NHMS 87; Leiden: Brill, 2015).
7 For comments on the redaction of the Kephalaia, see Timothy Pettipiece, Pentadic Redaction in the Manichaean Kephalaia (NHMS 66; Leiden: Brill, 2009) 7–13, 79–91. Also, Wolf-Peter Funk, “The Reconstruction of the Manichaean Kephalaia,” in Emerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean Sources (ed. Paul Mirecki and Jason BeDuhn; NHMS 43; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 143–59. My reading of the Kephalaia is indebted to critical developments in the study of the Babylonian Talmud.
8 The formulae of “sitting among,” “standing before,” and “coming before” are almost always found in the beginning of a chapter. They introduce and frame the content of Mani’s words. In other words, Mani never says “When I was sitting in the congregation of my disciples.” I take the global presence of these formulae at the beginning of most chapters as evidence for heavy-handed top-down redaction.
9 The introduction to 1 Ke (1 Ke 1.1–9.10) already assumes that Mani is gone since it states that disciples should collect the wisdom that they had heard from Mani throughout their travels with him. For a broader argument about the Kephalaia as a scholastic tradition that postdates the death of Mani, see Pettipiece, Pentadic Redaction.
10 Jason BeDuhn and Greg Hodgins, “The Date of the Manichaean Codices from Medinet Madi, and its Significance,” in Manichaeism East and West (ed. Samuel N. C. Lieu; Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, Analecta Manichaica 1; Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) 10–28.
11 If we assume that the Cologne Mani Codex (CMC) accurately reflects pedagogical practices among third-century Mesopotamian Baptists, then we might be able to discern continuity between the CMC and the Kephalaia. For example, in CMC 79.15, Mani says that “he had enough debating with each one in that law, standing up and questioning them (ἀναίσσοντός μου καὶ ἀνακρίνοντος αὐτοὺς) concerning the way of God . . .” As we will see, “standing and questioning” is how the Kephalaia introduces a disciple who is about to ask Mani a question. For the full text of the CMC, with German translation and commentary, see Der Kölner Mani-Kodex: Über das Werden seines Leibes; Kritische Edition (ed. and trans. Ludwig Koenen and Cornelia Römer; Abhandlungen der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sonderreihe Papyrologica Coloniensia 14; Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1988).
12 The following chapters from 1 Ke refer to Mani “sitting” among his disciples: K2, 3, 7, 8, 15, 27, 65, 67, 69, 70, 72, 76, 81, 83, 87, 94, 95, 98, 115, 121, 132, 143, 176, 186. Consider the formulaic nature of these openings: “Once again, it happened one time, when the Apostle is sitting among the congregation” (K3, 81, 83, 94, 115, 121); “Once again, at one of the times, the Apostle is sitting among the church in the midst of the congregation” (K70); “Once again, the Apostle is sitting down one time among the congregation of his church” (K98).
13 A comparison with rabbinic arguments against minim might prove useful for further contextualization. See now Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Jewish-Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretic Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). On rabbinic “heresy” itself, see David Grossberg, Heresy and the Formation of the Rabbinic Community (TSAJ 168; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017) 50–91.
14 Manichaean literature frequently depicts Mani’s mingling with the rich and the powerful; indeed, as the recent publication of 2 Ke demonstrates, it seems to have formed a particularly rich narrative cycle.
15 Surprisingly, Mani sits on a designated seat [bēma: 
; or perhaps simply a raised platform]. We cannot extrapolate from this example that Mani always sat on a bēma. Its appearance here is rhetorical: the bēma heightens the affective aspects of this scene by drawing attention to Mani’s superiority and contrasting it with the physical ugliness and wanton abandon of the ugly Elect. The aristocrats’ snooty attitude and rejection of the ugly Elect puts Mani’s humility and acceptance of that man in sharp relief. Having been properly chastened by Mani, the aristocrats sit back down, and the disciples take this moment as an opportunity to stand up to ask Mani a question. For more on the bēma festival, see Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire (ed. Iain Gardner and Samuel N. C. Lieu; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 237–38.
16 See especially K1, where the disciples admit that Mani wrote about his Apostleship “in full” in his writings yet thank him for teaching about this topic orally “in an abbreviated form.” If the disciples already had access to the writings “in full,” why put his teachings “in an abbreviated form” at all? This question cannot be answered without paying attention to the ideological self- presentation of the Kephalaia as the oral wisdom of Mani, distinct from, yet no less authoritative in substance than, Mani’s written texts.
17 See Michel Tardieu, “La diffusion du bouddhisme dans L’Empire Kouchan, L’Iran et La Chine, d’après un Kephalaion manichéen inédit,” Studia Iranica 17 (1988) 153–83. Paul Dilley confirms these aspects of 2 Ke, albeit only to the latter parts, in “Mani’s Wisdom at the Court of the Persian Kings,” in Mani at the Court (ed. Gardner, BeDuhn, and Dilley) 15–51, at 16.
18 Manichaean Homilies, with a Number of Hitherto Unpublished Fragments (ed. Nils Arne Pedersen; Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, Series Coptica 2; Turnhout: Brepols, 2006).
19 Homilies 18.6. See Nils Arne Pedersen, Studies in the Sermon on the Great War: Investigations of a Manichaean-Coptic Text from the Fourth Century (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1996).
20 The importance of texts for the Manichaeans is on full display in the Homilies. For example, the author of the Sermon of the Great War writes, “Thousands of books will be saved by the believing catechumens” (Homilies 24.13–14). Later, the Manichaeans will “come and find the writings being written and they will find the books being adorned” (Homilies 28.10–11). These passages idealize the labor involved in the actual production of texts and fix them within a broader pedagogic performance of the Manichaean scriptures. For the continuation of this trope into the Islamicate era, see especially the sources collected in John C. Reeves, Prolegomena to a History of Islamicate Manichaeism (Comparative Islamic Studies; Sheffield: Equinox, 2011) 85–131.
21 It should be noted, however, that this is not the standard Coptic word used when disciples “stand before” Mani.
22 This is the sense that one gets from what remains of K347–49.
23 For an extensive treatment, see Jason BeDuhn, “Parallels between Coptic and Iranian Kephalaia: Goundesh and the King of Touran,” in Mani at the Court (ed. Gardner, BeDuhn, and Dilley) 52–74, at 56–66.
24 The following open with the formula of a disciple standing before Mani: K69, 81, 84, 88, 90, 92, 109, 115, 138, 164. There are no examples from the currently edited sections of 2 Ke. Nevertheless, Pabakos “is silent and sits down” in 2 Ke 432.5–6, suggesting that he was standing up.
25 See the conclusions to K123, 153, 157.
26 See K81, 90, 91.
27 See K69, 109, 112, 115. There are instances when a disciple who is not introduced with the formula for standing recounts a tradition that he had heard from Mani, as in chapters 12, 14, 38, 85.
28 K83, 89, 120 (?), 121, 329, 333, 336, 338, 340, 341, 342, 343. This formula should be distinguished from the formula of “walking to” [
] someone, as found in K61, 322, 323, 326, 327, 337. This formula of “walking to” is strongly associated with the act of greeting (
).
29 Paul Dilley, “Also Schrieb Zarathustra? Mani as Interpreter of the ‘Law of Zarades,’” in Mani at the Court (ed. Gardner, BeDuhn, and Dilley) 101–132, at 116. K349 also features Pabakos.
30 I will follow the wording of MS Munich 95 and only note changes in the wording across the available texts when they significantly alter the meaning of the passage.
31 Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction, 199–259.
32 While the Aramaic root y-t-b often denotes some aspect of instruction in both rabbinic and occasionally in Syriac literature, it is less so in Coptic literature. For a discussion of the root in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, see note 2 for references to the exchange between David Goodblatt and Isaiah Gafni. See especially Gafni, “Yeshiva and Metivta”; Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002) 546. For Palestinian Aramaic, see examples in Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (2nd ed.; Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002) 247, 336; for Syriac, see Becker, “Comparative Study,” 95, 101; A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (ed. J. Payne Smith; Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1999) 260. I have not been able to find parallel examples from Samaritan Aramaic (Abraham Tal) or Mandaic dictionaries (E.S. Drower and Macuch). While a deep study of the intersection between “sitting” and study in Coptic literature remains far beyond the boundaries of this study, a preliminary search through the Coptic Dictionary Online, operated through copticscriptorium.org, does not yield any significant correlation between the verb “to sit” and words relating to pedagogy. See W. E. Crum, A Coptic Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939) 679–81. Accessed through Coptic Dictionary Online (ed. Koptische/Coptic Electronic Language and Literature International Alliance [KELLIA]), https://coptic–dictionary.org/. I thank Prof. Caroline Schroeder for her guidance.
33 For a helpful introduction to these concepts, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (ed. Randal Johnson; New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) 1–25.
34 See especially Catherine Hezser, Rabbinic Body Language: Non-Verbal Communication in Palestinian Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity (JSJSup 179; Leiden: Brill, 2017); Barry Wimpfheimer, Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories (Divinations; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Both scholars provide a thick description of the social and cultural aspects by considering rabbinic texts as literary representations of social events and encoded hierarchies of power. In Wimpfheimer’s words, they “work to articulate a picture of mundane rabbinic power in its locally negotiated sense” (Narrating, 166). For a similar line of reasoning as it relates to the School of Nisibis, see Becker, “Comparative Study,” 107.
35 Becker, “Comparative Study,” 95 n. 18. Also, Isaiah Gafni, “Nestorian Literature as a Source for the History of the Babylonian Yeshivot,” Tarbiz (1982) 567–76, at 571.
36 Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction, 237.
37 On the idea of the body of a king as the locus of ritual attention, see Matthew P. Canepa, The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran (Transformation of the Classical Heritage 45; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009) 188–223.
38 Wimpfheimer, Narrating, 122–46.
39 Only MS Vilna adds “when studying Oral Traditions” (אתעמש יסרג). Rashi adds that Mar Uqba was a “prince” (אישנ).
40 b. Ketub. 56a. MS Munich 95 reads: (יאני 'רד הימק ארק אנינח 'ר ביתי). See also b. Yebam. 40a; b. Ber. 30b. A similar phrase (ארבל ינת קופ) is found occasionally in the Talmud without explicit reference to a rabbi sitting before another rabbi, e.g., b. Šabb. 106a; b. B. Qam. 34b; b. Sanh. 62a; b. Yebam. 77b; b. ʿErub. 9a; b. Yoma 43b.
41 Hezser, Rabbinic Body, 69–146.
42 Elsewhere, the Kephalaia describes Mani as physically beautiful. 2 Ke 402.4–10 [cf. 2 Ke 405.24] describes Mani as “splendid in appearance” and his face as “beautiful and different.” The effect is to match Mani’s physical beauty with his identity as the Apostle.
43 Rubenstein, Culture of the Babylonian Talmud.
44 Julia Watts Belser, “Reading Talmudic Narratives: Disability, Narrative, and the Gaze in Rabbinic Judaism,” in Disability in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Sacred Texts, Historical Traditions, and Social Analysis (ed. Darla Schumm and Michael Stoltzfus: New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) 5–27, at 20.
45 In Coptic, 
. Perhaps the Elect was hunched over since the text seems to contrast his physical disability in his midriff with his “Uprightness [
] in Righteousness.”
46 b. Beṣah 28b; b. ʿErub. 102b; b. Šabb. 112a [MS Munich 95 has Abaye “sitting” before Rav Yosef rather than standing]; b. Ber. 49a–b [Only the Vilna has “standing before” rather than “sitting”].
47 Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction, 208.
48 On these passages, see especially: Rachel Neis, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 239–44.
49 See also K120, 121.
50 K83.
51 K329, 333, 340 (?), 341, 342, 343.
52 For example, K203 about the Manichaean leader who wants to be released from his duties. See also K86, 88.
53 This formula must be distinguished from a similar formula אתא יכ, which James Redfield has analyzed. See James Adam Redfield, “Redacting Culture: Ethnographic Authority in the Talmudic Arrival Scene,” Jewish Social Studies 22 (2016) 29–80. I borrow the term “adjudicatory narratives” from Lynn Kaye in “Protesting Women: A Literary Analysis of Bavli Adjudicatory Narratives,” Nashim 32 (2018) 131–57. See also Wimpfheimer, Narrating, 112–21. Catherine Hezser has analyzed these formulae in the Palestinian rabbinic texts in Form, Function, and Historical Significance of the Rabbinic Story in Yerushalmi Neziqin (TSAJ 37; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993) 297–98; eadem, Rabbinic Body, 135–40.
54 b. Yoma 87a [formula only in printed MSS Vilna and Venice 1520]; b. Ned. 55a; b. Qidd. 31b; b. Soṭah 47a; b. Sanh. 107b.
55 b. B. Bat. 75a.
56 b. Moʿed Qaṭ. 17a.
57 b. B. Bat. 167a.
58 b. B. Qam. 99b [some MSS have only “she came and spoke” instead of the full formula].
59 b. Ḥag. 15b [MS Munich 95 has ינפל instead of הימקל].
60 b. Giṭ. 45a, 46b–47a.
61 b. Šabb. 140a.
62 b. MenaḤ. 29b.
63 b. PesaḤ. 62b [MS Munich 95 does not have this page, but the formula is well attested in other manuscripts].
64 b. Taʿan. 25a [Weakly attested. Not in MS Munich 95, but MSS Vilna and Göttingen 3].
65 See especially Dilley, “Also Schrieb Zarathustra?” It may be significant that, like the rabbis, the Manichaeans conceptualized their forms of practice as both revelation and law in K341–342.
66 As Susan Ashbrook Harvey writes, “ritual process of liturgy contributed to ethical formation, no less than expository presentation. Hymns and homilies were vehicles for basic Christian instruction. . . . Holy instruction was reinforced by the bodily disciplines of liturgical participation” (eadem, “Liturgy and Ethics in Ancient Syriac Christianity: Two Paradigms,” Studies in Christian Ethics 26 [2013] 300–16, at 301).
67 I thank the anonymous reviewer for this helpful point.
68 Becker, “Comparative Study.”
69 Such questions have already proven useful in the case of rabbinic literature and may prove useful for the study of Manichaean literature as well.
70 David Stern, The Anthology in Jewish Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 3–12.
71 As recognized by Dilley in “Mani’s Wisdom,” 17 n. 12.
72 Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE – 400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).