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  • 11 - Christianity and Manichaeism

  • from Part II - Christianity Contested
  • Edited by Augustine Casiday, University of Wales, Lampeter, Frederick W. Norris
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Christianity
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    30 August 2007, pp 279-295

  • Summary

    The religion of Mani arose from a Judaeo-Christian milieu in southern Mesopotamia in the third century, which was a time of both cultural and religious syncretism. Central to Mani's self identity as the leader of a universal religion was his self-declared title of 'Apostle of Jesus Christ' and in Western Manichaean sources he was sometimes identified as the personification of the Paraclete. Mani was a prodigious author who was anxious that his teaching should survive him, and the sect came to revere a canon of his writings. The titles of most of the canonical works were known to the fathers, with the result that citations from them have survived in polemical as well as Manichaean texts. One of the earliest notices of the missionary endeavours of Manichaeism in the Roman East is a pastoral letter from a Christian leader warning the faithful against followers of the madness (a pun on Mani's name in Greek) of Mani.