stephan huller

Like everything Christian, they date to the time of Constantine.

Transient

Why?

Sheshbazzar

snarky

avi

Thank you Toto, I appreciate your effort. I apologize, sincerely, for having made life difficult for you.

I wasn't trying to be obnoxious, though, it may have appeared that way, to some members of the forum.

The question I endeavored to address was simple:
Who is this guy Mani?

On the one hand, he is supposed to have organized the single largest religious movement of the third century CE.

On the other hand, he is reputed to have been either a Christian, or a lapsed Christian, or, an heretical Christian, or, .....

BUT,
at the same time,
Mani is supposed to have been a Babylonian, raised in a peculiar, docetic, sectarian cult derived from Ebionism (which viewed as heretical the writings of Paul, John, and Luke, and which explicitly rejected the divinity of JC,) who traveled all the way to India to learn about Buddhism, and who was bilingual, writing with facility both in middle Persian, and Syriac, two languages from completely different linguistic families.

Now Pete comes along, and asks, harmlessly enough, well, what about the possibility that Mani's supposed Christianity, represents in fact a post-mortem interpolation, added to Mani's text, either by Christian authorities, or by leaders of Mani's own congregation, in an effort to stave off elimination, because of Roman Empire persecution, post Nicea.

In that context, it is crucial, in my opinion, to acknowledge that evidence exists of interpolation in other, somewhat similar circumstances, post-Nicea.

Then, the question arises:

A. are these Coptic fragments authentic translations of Mani's original Syriac script, OR,

B. are these Coptic fragments authentic translations of a Greek translation of Syriac, both of the latter of unknown authenticity, themselves, OR,

C. are these Coptic fragments inauthentic translations of whichever source was used, i.e. were the scribes instructed to modify the "original" source, whatever it may have been, written in whichever language, to conform to the political realities of Alexandria in the fourth century?

Now, we get to the meat of the matter:

Why should this topic be worthwhile to discuss?

Answer: It is not about the Coptic fragments, in the end. It is really about ALL sources of knowledge that we possess, for both Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. How do we ascertain the validity of whichever documents or fragments we are investigating.

(Islam, will be, in my opinion, extraordinarily significant, when, later this year, or early next year, someone, (one hopes, someone with significantly more neurons functioning, than I currently possess,) commences a thread about the DunHuang fragments of Mani's texts.)

So, in conclusion, my question regarding Professor Gardner's use of a GREEK word, written using GREEK, not a Coptic word, written in Coptic symbols, embedded in the text of his description of his findings of a Coptic fragment, attributed to Mani, is not trivial, as some on this forum have endeavored to posit.

In my opinion, it is improper for anyone to attempt to explain, in English, (or Japanese, or Russian, or whichever language,) the contents of these Coptic fragments, by inserting an alien word, NOT part of the Coptic language, NOT part of the Syriac language, and NOT part of Middle Persian, the latter two, being the languages of Mani.

GREEK was never on the menu. Why is it being served?

Why did Professor Gardner insert it, AS THOUGH IT WERE PRESENT??

Surely, any scholar recognizes that this question of interpretation of the Coptic text, is not going to disregard, the existence of a GREEK, or a Sanskrit, or an Algonquin word, embedded in the text. Holy Cow. Come on. This is fundamental, abc's of scholarship, as opposed to marketing hype. This is not business 101, where someone is seeking to obtain grant money to conduct research, by padding the findings with enough gloss to attract investors.

Already one is dealing with fragments of unknown date of origin, with an unknown history, and now, someone comes along and inserts an alien word, NOT part of the fragment, while explaining the contents of the fragment????

nonsense.

Let me write it again, since Toto, at least, doesn't appear, judging from the quote above, to completely understand this point:

The DunHuang fragments will be written in HanZi. Chinese Characters. If some chap or gal, comes along, claiming to want to help us understand the contents of those fragments, (now online!!!,) and in doing so, inserts, into the English text describing the meaning of the HanZi, a Sanskrit word, (because, Sanskrit is the language of Buddhism,) then I am going to scream bloody murder. No way, Jose.

Nor, can they insert a few choice Arabic words, nor Greek words, nor any other ALIEN words.

Can you not understand this FUNDAMENTAL aspect of scholarship?

Here's some Latin, maybe it will assist in understanding this point, since my English seems apparently so inadequate:

Primum non nocere. (First, DO NO HARM)

Think about it. How does it help us to understand the meaning of the Coptic fragments by inserting a word, any word, which is not part of the fragment, while concurrently describing the alien word as an essential component of the fragment?

avi

Toto

This appears to be your fundamental error.

Coptic and Greek are part of the Mediterranean world. The hard division between North Africa and southern Europe was invented by later northern Europeans. Alexander the Great did not respect this division.

The Coptic language 1) adopted the Greek alphabet 2) adopted many Greek loan words and 3) was spoken in an area that was part of several empires where Greek was the administrative language.

English speaking Coptic scholars appear to refer to Coptic words using the Greek version. One can only tell that the word is in Greek because the font is slightly different, and classical Greek accents are used.

This is just a scholarly convention. Perhaps Professor Gardner will explain it to you. Perhaps it will remain a mystery.

The connection between HanZi and Sanscrit is nowhere nearly as intimate. Your analogy makes no sense.

This is all I am going to write on this.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

mountainman

Let's return to the OP shall we? As you all know by now I am an extremely impatient person, and the OP has been continually stuck on just the very first question of the trinity.

Thankfully avi has just recently summarised the first question,
namely, .....

"Was Mani "Christianized"

It is important to note that the evidence being used to answer this question is all derived from two very different categories of sources - the traditional sources (accepted by earlier scholarship as The History and Philosophy of Mani the Heretic) authored by the orthodox heresiologists and the recent sources. These recent sources of evidence are from Manichaean communities of the 4th, 5th and subsequent centuries. recent archaeological discoveries and subsequent manuscript translations and analyses.

(a) The traditional heresiological sources

These appear as fictional fabrications in which Mani has been the subject of a Christian smear campaign. If interested parties were to read through The Reconstruction of Mani's Epistles from three Coptic Codices - (Ismant El-Kharab and Medinet Madi) by Iain Gardner, in an addendum the author questions the authenticity of Augustine's citation that the "Fundamantal Epistle" of Mani (which Agustine, the ex-Manichaean reader contraverts) was ever part of Mani's canon of Epistles.


(b)The recent discoveries - Manichaean communities

Did the Manichaeans themselves "Christianise" their own literature as a result of a religious revolution in the ROman Empire c.325 CE? This is the second part of the first question "Was Mani "Christianised"? Do we have any evidence of the original writing of Mani held within his original canon of books?

From the above source:

These 4th century epistles are then discussed and presented.

Jesus Chrestos in the 4th CE Manichaean fragments

Notably it is Jesus "Chrestos" who appears in these epistles, and it appears that where "Jesus Christ" appears, the appelation of "Good" or "Good Saviour" is adjacent.

The above author writes:
The question becomes whether "Jesus Chrestos" was inserted at some point after Nicaea by the Manichaeans themselves as a named authority with great power, or whether the Buddhist-like Mani had a special relationship with the historical jesus, and made special mention of the name above all names in his 3rd century "Canon of Books and Epistles".

To return to avi's (and Sheshbazzar's and others') questions about original languages, I am sorry to say things appear to get even more complicated. As far as I am aware although Mani originally wrote using the Persian and/or Syriac languages, but actually invented his own script. This script has been deciphered and is known as the Manichaean script.

... Image sourced from here




.

stephan huller

I don't see what relevance any of this has for your theory.

Do you know how al-Nadim was? Have you ever read the Fihrist? The author wrote near 1000 CE. Are we now arguing that Manichaeanism was invented by Islam?

And then your citation from Gardner's book:

But unlike your usual twisting of original sources, we happened to have already heard from Gardner where he feels 'certain' that the letters of Mani prove that Mani claimed he was the apostle and paraclete of Jesus. Again, I am unfamiliar with the minutae involved in Manichaeanism but I am sure that there were authentic and less than authentic epistles attributed to Mani no less than there are Pauline and deutero-Pauline writings. Again who cares? We have Gardner's confidence that there is enough there that is authentic to prove that Mani thought he was a Christian.

You always seem to seize upon any appearance of the word 'parody.' We happen to have access to Gardner here. Do you really think that these 'parodies' having any bearing on whether or not the Manichaeans believed or Mani claimed that he was the paraclete and apostle of Jesus? No certainly not.

The presence of parodies in no way signifies that the religion 'knew' or thought that everything was bullshit.

How does this help your theory? The Nicene conspiracy DELIBERATELY avoided using the name Christos? Why?

The reality is that Χρηστὸς is the Marcionite title for Jesus. Like many things Manichean it derives from contact with the Marcionites. Please tell me how this proves that Mani didn't consider himself the apostle and paraclete of Christ when the Marcionites are established as having the same beliefs.

Oh, and al-Nadim makes clear that the Marcionites also developed their own peculiar script. Once again the Manicheans borrowing from - what is according to you - a fictitious Christian tradition.

mountainman

The OP is not about any of my existing hypotheses and/or theories,
but concerns three simple questions about the historical figure,
author, by all appearanced Buddhist, Persian sage Mani.

Yes I can read stephan, but I do not have to immediately agree with the professor's email assessment, especially as he himself says that his research is in progress - and thus conclusions are provisional.

Iain Gardner himself emphasises the facts, repeating them plainly

Yes, he has before him fragments of the Epistles. And on the basis of their references to "Jesus Chrestos" it is logical to draw the inference that these "Epistles" may in fact represent faithful translations of Mani's original Canonical Epistles. He holds manuscripts from this side of the boundary event called the Council of Nicaea.

Gardner's confidence is expressly provisional on the basis of the recent evidence in which he is personally involved in the translating, analysing, reporting upon, annotating, preparing for publishing, and probably a hundred other things. Based on that evidence, in Gardner's position, I would be making the same hypothesis. That is, a conjecture which is beyond the available evidence. He is working perhaps one of the most recent Manichaean manuscript projects, perhaps the oldest (early to mid 4th century ??) and he is completely entitled to back a horse in the race with the bookmakers and other like-minded academics, as to the precise relationship between Mani and Jesus (or vice verse,).

Its cool.



In this case Gardners reference to 'parody' was being applied to the orthodox heresiological literature, not the Manichaean literature.

See above.

Jesus Chrestos in my book is at least one step removed from Jesus Christos. Does that answer your question?

There is no Nicaean conspiracy in the Manichaean fragments stephan. Until further evidence establishes the idea as untenable, it is still reasonable to conjecture that the 4th century Manichaeans, whose evidence Gardner has before him, inserted a "Jesus Chrestos" into their literature, as a token of conformity with the Roman Empire's Brand New Super Duper State Religion soon after the year 325 CE. See the Draconian laws implemented according to the Theodosian Codex at that exact time, for the sake of Jesus Chrestos. This argument is totally independent of the authenticity of that Christianity which Constantine introduced. For the sake of the argument, let's just leave the origins of the NT out of the thread about the origins of Mani's Gospel and Canon, and his history.

But the fact remains that the books of the 4th century Manichaeans and the books of the non canonical Gnostic authors, whoever TF they were, were "illegal", were prohibited, were searched out, were destroyed, were burnt en masse and were in all senses of the word obliterated from history by the 4th and 5th century Roman Empire christian heresiological orthodoxy. We are very lucky to have anyone studying their fragmentary 4th century manuscripts in the 21st century.

stephan huller

But the Marcionites denied that Jesus was the messiah of Israel. They called him Chrestos for a very specific reason. It would seem that because the Manichaeans always end up borrowing ideas and concepts from the Marcionites that:

1. there is a real historical basis in the Manichaean association with Christianity THROUGH Marcionitism
2. this would more reasonably explain the Manichaean use of Jesus Chrestos better than assuming that someone just happened to adopt the term in the fourth century.
3. it would also confirm the general context of Mani's visit to Osrhoene as an appeal to the Marcionite orthodoxy there which had exclusive 'rights' to the name 'Christian' and 'Christianity' according to Bauer.

To argue that Mani wasn't a Christian implies that Manicheans adopted Marcionite terminology, theology and texts and embraced Marcion and Marcionitism INDEPENDENTLY of the parallel claims of the Acts of Archelaus.

What are the chances that the Marcionites and Manichaeans would BOTH claim that Mani made a historical appeal to 'Marcion' (Lat. Marcellus) or his earthly representatives (bishop Archelaus) etc.?

Why does the explanation that someone AFTER Mani within Manichaeanism corrupting the tradition from within make more sense than following the general agreement between Manichaean and Marcionite sources about Mani's historical appeal in Osrhoene?

And all this stuff about Manichaeanism being an illegal religion in Oshroene doesn't apply. It seems to have been a very tolerant environment for religions.

avi

source?

How's this one:

a. Marcion is thought to have died half a century before Mani was born; Perhaps Lieu intended to write: Marcion's writings (which are no longer extant) had a profound influence on Mani's writings (which we also do not possess.)

b. If Mani has not "acknowledged" Marcion's supposed influence, then how do we know this influence exists? Did Mani write something in opposition to, or support for, Marcion's writings? Ooops. We don't have Mani's writings..., nor Marcion's either for that matter.

c. Marcion, if I understand correctly, was one who accepted Paul's writings, and rejected Matthew, if I am not wrong. Mani, contrarily, was exposed for a quarter century to a sect that regarded Paul's writings as heresy, and considered ONLY Mathew (minus the first section) as being accurate, reliable, i.e. holy scripture. Where does this supposed influence exist? Where is the evidence of an influence of Marcion, or Paul on the Gnostic, Babylonian, Zoroastric believer in Buddhism?

avi