Who is mani

De Blois, too, admits that the testimonies in Syriac, Arabic, and New Persian are contradictory and partly in need of interpretation. His arguments will be given in the Arabic section of the Dictionary of Manichaean Texts and will not be anticipated here.

Three etymologies of the name Mani are worth mentioning. Another option is to start with the extended Greek form Manichaios , etc.

This is what Schaeder did , p. Adam , p. Blass, A. Debrunner, and F. Rehkopf, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, 16th ed.

The name was explained by Puech , p. In Middle Iranian Manichean texts it is used as a common epithet of Mani. A weighty argument against these considerations, however, is the fact that Mani as a proper name need not have been an uncommon one.

The two classical biographies are part of H. Although both works were written before the progress in Manichean studies made since the s, their main results remain the underlying ground of further research work. Another long biography of Mani is L. A Religio-Historical Description of his Personality, published in , i. This misfortune is not the only reason for the almost complete oblivion the work has suffered.

The biographies that take into consideration the results of research work since the discovery of the Cologne Mani Codex are to be found in K. Der iranisch-gnostische Synkretismus einer Weltreligion , pp. Mani e il Manicheismo, ed. Legendary elements. They are more often exalting stylizations of historical events.

That could already be observed in the brief report given in the Fehrest ed. It is elaborated in the Cologne Mani Codex. The Twin Spirit reveals to him the secrets of his divine message and finally commissions him to teach the world. The child is provided with the gift of clairvoyance and the ability to listen to the voices of suffering plants, and he behaves like an elect member of his future church. In the later 8th century Compendium of the Doctrines and Styles of the Teaching of Mani, the Buddha of Light , it led to an assimilation to the Buddha legend e.

Regularly, the miraculous conversions achieved by Mani and, in particular, the conversions of high-ranking dignitaries or the gaining of their support are hagiographically stylized. This is a fact. Mani himself, as the legends of his youth best show, lived in a world of continuous, supernatural, protective interventions and visions, of exceptional clairvoyance and enlightening instructions.

Andreas and Henning, , pp. Mani was given visions revealing the fate of deceased persons Sundermann, a, p. His canonical works were, with the exception of the Letters , inspired by several deities Kephalaia I, fasc.

Funk, pp. On these sources see Sundermann, a, p. The question whether both revelations are already presupposed in the Cologne Mani Codex is disputed pro: Merkelbach, Tardieu, now also Henrichs and Koenen; contra: Sundermann; see Sundermann, c, pp. Sundermann, , p. Childhood and youth see Ries, , pp. There is no reason to doubt the date. The Fehrest ed. A plausible solution of the problem is suggested by Tubach. CE Haloun and Henning, , pp.

The evidently wrong year was corrected by Henning to Haloun and Henning, , pp. The Chinese Compendium, which makes the father a local king, maintains that his mother was from the house Jinsajian, explained by Henning as the Armenian Arsacid family of Kamsarakan Henning, , p.

Is that fact, or fiction, or both? Scheftelowitz, , pp. In any case, it is characteristic that Mani took pride in his origin from time-honored Babel, but never claimed affiliation to the Iranian upper class. Henning, , p. In the Fehrest ed. According to another variant of the story, however, he must have already been a follower of the baptists for quite some time, because he took his child to where his relatives qrby and fellow-believers were living Fehrest , ed.

We owe the main information of historical character to the largely legendary Cologne Mani Codex, i. Not much about the beliefs and rules of this particular Elkhasaite sect is known to us, and part of what the Cologne Mani Codex ascribes to Elkhasaios and his followers may have been biased by the Manichean tendency to approximate the image of Elkhasaios as much as possible to that of Mani Henrichs and Koenen, , pp.

The importance of this piece of information for the understanding of the genesis of the Manichean system cannot be overestimated.

Unfortunately, what neither the Cologne Mani Codex nor any other source discloses is how Mani acquired his early knowledge of the other religions and confessions of his world, of the theology of Saint Paul, the doctrines of the Gnostic systems, and the contemporary teachings of the Zoroastrians. Instead, the Cologne Mani Codex tells us that Mani received his wisdom through the revelations of his Twin Spirit, but that for good reasons he was hesitant to communicate it to the baptists and to refute their errors.

Once he did, he had to suffer the suppressive measures of those whom he could not convince. He and his father were taken to task, and Mani had to vindicate himself before a synod of the presbyters CMC, pp. Since Mani did not give in, the outcome was his maltreatment at the hands of the baptists CMC , pp. The founding of the Manichean Church. Mani accepted his expulsion from the community as a chance for a new start. He felt commissioned by his Twin Spirit to part from the community in which he had grown up his so-called second revelation, CMC, pp, , 11—, 14; ed.

CMC, p. Fehrest, ed. Was it first meant to be a reform of the Elkhasaite community and its rules or second to be the inauguration of a new religion? Koenen, , pp. When Mani broke with the Elkhasaite community of his childhood and began to propagate his own gospel, on the one hand he had obviously thought out a completely developed, complicated theological and cosmological doctrine, the rules of a system of distinct morals for the perfect and the lay people respectively, clear ideas about the organization of his followers in a hierarchically structured church, and a concept of how to missionize mankind in an effective way.

Unfortunately he frequently failed to notice that the details he produced on the spur of the moment did not square with his teachings of the day before.

His picture of the world is a case in point. Minute circumstances are absurdly elaborated, but the whole is utter confusion. Much more than a logically trained, systematic thinker, Mani was a fanciful artist hounded by ever-new ideas and inspirations. That was so because Mani regarded his religion as the real, unadulterated essence of what, for their time and for their land, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus Christ, and also the prophets of the Old Testament before Abraham had once preached, and what had later been misunderstood or misrepresented by their disciples Polotsky, , pp.

The important consequence for the missionary work was that the Manichean propaganda could outwardly adapt itself to the terms and concepts of other religions to the point of sheer mimicry. Mani himself was the first to introduce this practice. Mani devoted more than thirty years of his life, from to or , to the propagation of his new religion and the establishment and consolidation of his church. CMC, pp. A trustworthy Parthian hagiographic fragment makes it clear that Mani did not succeed in converting the king.

But he did win his favor to such a degree that he was authorized to propagate the new faith in the Iranian empire Sundermann, a, p. Sundermann, , pp. In what capacity? She produces a distillate of it and takes it to the king Sundermann, , pp. Villey, , p. In any case it illustrates the Roman image of Mani as the enemy from Persia on which see van der Lof, , pp. As a courtier Mani had to reduce his service to the community, which evidently aroused the discontent of his disciples.

A telling example is the 76th Coptic Kephalaion , which says that Mani, within a short interval, was called to court three times. Gardner, , p. The solution to the dilemma came when Mani was given permission to leave the komitaton and continue his missionary work.

Polotsky, , p. Allberry, , p. That is unanimously attested in the Manichean literature for references see Sundermann, a, p. This gave Mani and his church a last period of peaceful development—a short one, since Ohrmazd died in An achievement of Mani that left its traces in the literary tradition is his activity as a prolific writer and a much admired painter. Being convinced that only the conservation in written form of the true divine revelation could save it from being misunderstood or falsified by future generations, and having acquired the qualities of a unique, subtle prophet propheta doctus , he set about having his message written down.

That Mani began to compose his first literary works even before his separation from the Elkhasaite community is possible but not provable Sundermann, , pp. Tardieu, , p. Of these works. Henning has decoded the report of the th Kephalaion publ.

Funk, , p. His last composition, the Letter of the Seal, was written in prison. Mani produced a picture book meant to illustrate the complicated dogmatic statements of his lore, the Gk. In any case the arts were for Mani no end in themselves. They were meant to elucidate and embellish the divine message of gnosis. It is impossible to know how many practical problems relating to the transmission and dissemination of his gospel had to be solved by Mani.

An ingenious, indeed a revolutionary, innovation which could only have been introduced on the authority of the prophet himself was the practice of writing Middle Persian in the variant of the court dialect, and subsequently other Iranian languages, with the Palmyrene form of the Aramaic alphabets Lidzbarski, , pp. The new alphabet proved to be much more suitable for writing the Iranian languages as spoken in the 3rd century CE than the indigenous Pahlavi script was, with its historical spellings and heterographic oddities, so much so that its general introduction would have been a great relief for writers and readers, if only it were not the invention of a notorious heretic cf.

Another innovation of great consequence for the church, one that proved its deep insight into a foreign religion, was the identification of deities and demons of the Manichean doctrine with matching Zoroastrian counterparts Sundermann, , pp.

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Did you know Edit. User reviews Be the first to review. Details Edit. Release date August 31, United States. United States. Official Facebook Page. Technical specs Edit. Color Color. Related news. It offered a straightforward answer to the puzzle of why God lets evil flourish, namely that He can do little about it because He is not quite the all-powerful being He is usually taken to be.

The Manichees believed "the lower half of the body" as the disgusting work of the devil and "condemned meat-eating, and all sex, even in marriage". He much more preferred the New Testament but rejected orthodox Christianity for being too exclusive and negative towards other religious myths and forms of worship.

He understood Jesus as a symbol of the plight of all humanity rather than as a historical person. The "crucifixion was no kind of actuality but a mere symbol of the suffering which is the universal human condition. The religion of Mani's followers, included disgust at the physical world and especially at the human reproductive system. Manichees had a vegetarian diet, and forbade wine. Melons and cucumbers were deemed to contain a particularly large ingredient of divinity.

There were two classes, Elect who were strictly obliged to be celibate, and Hearers allowed wives or concubines as long as they avoided procreating children, whether by contraceptives or by confining intercourse to the 'safe' period of the monthly cycle Manichee propaganda was combative against the orthodox Catholic Church, which granted married Christians.

The central question for Mani was the origin of evil. He explained evil as resulting from a primeval and still continuing cosmic conflict between Light and Dark. However, he gradually had doubts about the intellectual basis of the religion.

Was Mani right when he asserted that the supremely good Light-power was weak and impotent in conflict with Dark? How could one properly worship a diety so powerless and humiliated? Mani also explained eclipses, by claiming that the sun and the moon were using special veils to shut out the distressing sight of cosmic battles.

Augustine was aware that astronomers rejected this theory. Augustine also became disillusioned with the religion when he discovered that the moral life of the Elect, who argued for sinless perfection, turned out to be less celibate than they claimed. Mani traveled to India and made converts. On his return in , he joined the court of Shapur , the king of the Sasanian Empire , to whom he dedicated his only work written in Persian, known as the Shabuhragan.

Shapur's successor Hormizd appears to have continued to patronize Mani, but his successor Bahram , a follower of the Zoroastrian reformer Kartir , began to persecute the Manichaeans.

Mani told his disciples he was going to heaven, and would not return for a year. In Mani was arrested and he was flayed alive and his skin stuffed with straw, was nailed to a cross and suspended over the main gate of the city of Gundeshapur as a warning to those who followed his teachings.

Mani, a Persian sage who regarded himself as an apostle of God, lived in southern Babylonia around the middle of the third century AD.