Sheshbazzar

None of the Manichaean documents have ever been in the possession of, or been 'preserved' by The Catholic Churches?
None of our 'information' regarding Mani or Manichaeism comes to us via Catholic writings?

Toto

Some information comes from Catholic writers, but that is not the point of this thread. Pete is charging that Manichaean texts were revised or forged to Christianize them.

Sheshbazzar

And as I just expressed, there is presently no way of determining whether it was Mani's own disciples who were the ones that 'Christianized' their cult figure.
"Sans any writing that can be proven to be a genuine autograph directly from Mani's hand, anything more than '-possibly-' remains an unsupportable assumption. "
There is no reason to conclude anything beyond what actual evidence will support.

Toto

What difference does this make? Do you think that the Roman Empire could micromanage all of the religions within its borders?

From one of your references:

Frontiers of faith: the Christian encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus By Jason BeDuhn, Paul Allan Mirecki, p. 9

Hegemonius makes the telling blunder of having Archelaus refer to "more than three hundred years between Christ and Mani..."

I see no reference in that source to anachronisms.

The thread is such a mess that I am not sure which other sources you cited.

It would help if you listed these, and quote exactly what they say about anachronisms, and explain why this provides any support for your thesis.

Transient

OK so it would appear, at face value, that the RCC would not have been able to change the details of what Mani originally taught so it comes down to:
It would have to have been the followers of Mani in later years introducing christian ideas and then writing stuff to give the impression that Mani himself taught it.
I guess it is not even needed to try to think why they might do so because it seems to be a bit of a hybrid religion anyway.
How long after the death of Mani do we have original writings of the followers of Mani showing christian teachings, paraclete stuff or whatever?
If it is very soon after his death then it is unlikely that they would change things so quickly.

stephan huller

Small announcement to make. I wasn't sure if my interpretation of Mani as a diminutive of Menachem is correct. So I sent ALL the evidence I had assembled from all the people who had argued for and against that position to one of my best friends in the academic world Dr. Ruairidh Boid, Professor, School of Historical Studies, Faculty of Arts at Monash University, Monash University, Victoria. He confirmed that it is Mani is an dimunitive of Menachem (in Aramaic). I think this ends the discussion again.

1. Jews continue to call people named Menachem 'Mani' to this day following a habit of their Aramaic speaking ancestors in Babylonia and Palestine since the fourth century.

2. Mani lived in this same region in the third century and was also Aramaic speaking.

3. Mani is recorded by all ancient sources as claiming to be the 'Comforter' of Jesus.

4. Menachem means 'comforter' (Gk παράκλητος)

As such the name 'Mani' proves once and for all that the association with the Paraclete was made during Mani's lifetime.

The only thing that I added to the discussion in previous generation is the fact that Mani was used as a diminutive of Menachem by Jews in the near contemporary period.

So the issue is settled once and for all. The more interesting question is that the habit of Manichaeans for using the diminutive form with respect to 'Mani' finds an uncanny parallel in the Marcionite community's use of the dimunitive (the Acts of Archelaus were written in Latin so the Latin diminutive is used = Marcellus).

Hilgenfield's original suspicion that 'Marcion' was a diminutive of Mark seems to be confirmed. The question now is why did Manichaeans and Marcionites address their leaders in the dimuntive? The Samaritans - as Florentin notes - seem to address their great men of the past with Latin names in the genitive (Marqe = Marcus, Tite = Titus).

Why the diminutive in the Marcionite and Manichaean communities?

The obvious answer is that the diminutive was generally used for 'beloved' people. Still there is a lot more to think about here. I'm going to read up on the formal use of dimunitives in Aramaic.

stephan huller

Working on the ritual context to explain why the diminutive form was always used (i.e. Gk Marcion; Aram Mani) in the Semitic Christian tradition. Then it occurred to me - the earliest ritualized example is the word "Abba" is the diminutive form used by small children in addressing their Father. Were Marcion and Mani conidered to be the living Fathers of their respective communities?

Since Marcion as a diminutive goes back to the name Mark we know that the word 'Pope' (which means father or perhaps grandfather i.e. the father of fathers) were said to have started with St. Mark. St. Mark was the father of all the subsequent Popes (cf. Passio Petri Sancti)

Here the idea manifests itself in the Liturgy of St. Mark:

Be kind to him, O Lord, for the sake of Thy Holy and Apostolic Church, and all Thy Christ-loving people, that we too in his peaceful reign may live a calm and tranquil life, in all reverence and godliness.

O Lord our God, give peace to the souls of our fathers and brethren who have fallen asleep in Jesus, remembering our forefathers of old, our fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, bishops, and the souls of all the holy and just men who have died in the Lord.

Especially remember those whose memory we this day celebrate, and our holy father Mark, the apostle and evangelist, who has shown us the way of salvation

stephan huller

Another thought. If Mani was only a diminutive of Menachem it helps explain why there are so many references to 'Marcion' and no underlying (or explicit) connection back to the name Mark. The ritual context of 'Mani' being 'the menachem' only made sense in Aramaic. The European sources simply identified the head of the Manichaeans as 'Mani' (without referencing the form 'menachem') in the very way they allude to 'Marcion' but never EXPLICITLY say it comes from Mark (even though it is certainly implied in a number of places).

The Marcionite faithful must have been saying prayers to 'beloved Mark' in the same way as the Manichaeans did for their 'beloved menachem.' The Church Father's just report the phenomenon without necessarily fully explaining it.

stephan huller

A Wikipedia article on diminutives for those who don't know what diminutive's are (i.e. Marky, Johnny etc).

mountainman

Follow the footnote at that point.
See below.

NOTES

Frontiers of faith: the Christian encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus
By Jason BeDuhn, Paul Allan Mirecki.

NB: "AA" hereunder refers to "Acts of Achelaus"

Page 9

"The AA can be dated to the first half of the fourth century
since some of its content is made us of by Cyril of Jerusalem
(Catecheses 6.20-35) writing around 350 CE. It was not known
to Eusebius two decades earlier, although that does not rule
out an earlier composition. [13] Hegemonius makes a telling
blunder of having Archelaus refer to "MORE THAN 300 YEARS"
between Christ and Mani (AA 31.7) inadvertently placing his
characters in his own temorale locale in the second quarter
of the fourth century. [14]. We have no othe information on
who Hegemonius was, or when or where he lived.


[13] The argument that the appearance of "homoousios" in AA 36.8-9
marks the text as post-Nicaean (Lieu 1994) is unsound. The term
was not invented at Nicaea ...

[14] Curiously the same anachronistic dating of Mani is repeated
in Ephrem Syrus, Against Mani: "MANI, WHO THEY SAY IS THE
PARACLETE THAT COMES AFTER 300 YEARS." Ephrem otherwise shows
no knowledge of the AA.




Page 14

Scholarly consensus now solidly takes the position
that the events as described in the AA are fictitious.



Page 22

"While caution should be observed in assuming distinct sources
behind every change of direction within an ancient text, it remains
true that many ancient texts were composed by a process comparable
to building a new automobile out of parts scavenged from older models.
The "Acts of Archelaus" (AA) bears the weld-marks of such a process.

Hegemonius has pieced together an odd assortment of parts - at times
skillfully, at time haphazardly - to yield an apparently effective
polemical tool. By doing so, he attempted to sieze control of an
historical encounter between two faiths, and rewrite it to the decisive
advantage of his own. His work has been preserved as an indicator of
the ultimate success of his venture, which at the same time has largely
swept away the voice of his opponents. For much of subsequent history,
the Manichaeans have only been able to speak as Hegemonius and other
Christian polemicists like him have determined they are to be heard.

Hence the identication of two anachronisms is in the footnote [14]

Curiously the same anachronistic dating of Mani is repeated
in Ephrem Syrus, Against Mani: "MANI, WHO THEY SAY IS THE
PARACLETE THAT COMES AFTER 300 YEARS." Ephrem otherwise shows
no knowledge of the AA.

If it was common knowledge in the 4th century when these two authors were writing that Mani in the 3rd century had claimed to be the paraclete of Jesus then they would have written that this claim was made two hundred years after Jesus. However both independent authors appear to have no knowledge of any other claim other than the current claims that they were combating in the 4th century, which appeared after Nicaea, three hundred years after Jesus.

The existence of these anachronisms provides support for the position that it was the post-Nicaean Manichaeans who, in a desperate effort to try and legitimitize the "Holy Canon of Mani", inserted such claims, and asserted such claims, three hundred years after Jesus was supposed to be around. IMO to dismiss these two anachronism as "coincidental mistakes" defies the odds of probability. The logical position is that both authors were simply completely at home with the idea that the claim that Mani was the parclete of Jesus was a fourth century claim, and they are horrified by it.