mountainman

Shabuhragan


Both the Turpan fragments and Biruni are dated after the Council of Nicaea, and it is likely that the Turpan fragments have a manuscript tradition which commences in the Roman Empire as at the 5th century, when the Nestorian Controversy brough the Nestorian heretics and the Manichaean heretics together, and they left the empire for the east, fleeing for their lives from the myopic power-mongering clutches of the imperially tenured orthodox Christian state church and its seething masses of heresiologists and pyromaniac book-burners.

stephan huller

This manuscript is unassailable. It was discovered and not preserved through official church channels. The dating makes it impossible to argue against.

mountainman

I am aware of that, and that "P.Rylands 469" tells us nothing about what Mani himself originally wrote in his "Canon of Holy Books", and more specifically, whether or not he, and not his 4th century followers, made the explicit association to "Jesus".


It was dated by its editor, Colin Roberts, by some means, to the reign of Diocletian. Do you happen to know the means by which it was so dated?

avi

I am unaware of a single document, written before Nicea, in which Mani makes that claim.

As to why I would ignore any number of post-Nicean documents, Arabic/muslim documents, and Chinese/Uighur documents, I don't consider these hostile texts to represent reality, so yes, I ignore them.

Earlier in this thread, I asked a question about the supposed "new" evidence, derived from Nag Hammadi. I am still waiting for someone to address those inquiries.

We know that Emperor Diocletian, about roughly, 300 CE, initiated a large persecution of both Christians and those professing faith in Mani's teachings. Does anyone know whether Diocletian investigated the Mani group's activities, in Rome, for example, and what led to their persecution, since, at that time, the Christians themselves denied that Mani's followers were Christian. Analogy today, would be Catholics denying that Mormons were Christian.

I have the impression that unlike the Christians of 300CE, the followers of Mani were (in Rome)
a. more numerous;
b. less confrontational;
c. more threatening to the Roman state, because of the "Persian" influence.

Is there any evidence from the official state papers of that regime, regarding the rationale for persecuting the followers of Mani?

I would doubt, very seriously, the probability that Diocletian attacked them, because of Mani's supposed claim to have represented the "Paraclete". For one thing, Mani had been dead, long before Diocletian's round up and execution of all his followers in Rome. It would seem genuinely irrelevant what he had claimed, while alive, since his followers did not possess any real power, and no method to curtail Diocletian's army, i.e. no way to halt the slaughter.

So, then, if not for that reason, why would Diocletian have persecuted them, so vigorously? I think it is perhaps because of their origin with the traditional enemy of Rome: Persia. Look at how the USA government rounded up all the citizens of japanese origin, and put them in concentration camps, immediately after Pearl Harbor. Those people posed no thread, whatsoever, but the government assembled them, curtailed their activities, restricted their movements, and limited their contact with other citizens, fearing that they could function as spies.

Maybe that was the same logic employed by Diocletian, worrying about the Persian army's threat? Is it possible then, that the Christians, fifteen years after Diocletian, in a similar quest to eliminate anyone not practicing orthodox trinitarianism, then commenced a smear campaign against Mani's followers, claiming that they employed female menstrual blood in ceremonies, and other follies--Paraclete comes to mind....

avi

Toto

It appears that, as with most persecutions and witch hunts, it all started with a leader facing some real life problem that could not be solved by a traditional religious ritual. The leader then looks around for the source of the spiritual polution or profanity that has prevented him from gaining the favor of the gods. It has little or nothing to do with the actual danger from the persecuted group or their real beliefs, and much to do with an attempt to control fate by appeasing the gods.

Diocletian PersecutionNow you can probably object that this is all based on Christian sources, but it does tend to ring true.

Sheshbazzar

Seems to read that according to Diocletian, the Manicheans, an already established religious group (and to be so, they would need have held and taught some distinctively identifiable doctrines).. "set up new and hitherto unheard of sects..."
Could well be referring to the earlier 'traditional' Manicheism, revising, changing, transitioning, adopting, and adapting, syncretizing into becoming a 'new' form of a Christian (perhaps Chrestian) sect.

Looking at the few actual surviving early evidences of the Manichean form of religion, they seem to portray a much closer similarity and affinity to the cosmic/spiritual ideas Zorosterism and Buddhism, than to any resemblance to the texts and archaeological remnants from other proto-Christian sects.
The surviving fragments are quite enigmatic, consisting of principally of Buddhist style paintings, and very little if any actual written texts that can be translated and shown to have held any connection to any Christian or proto-Christian thought or beliefs.

At their earliest date, they were certainly 'something else' from what they are presented to be in our latter Christian polemic writings.
Kind of a religious 'pomegranate', with a thin skin or veneer of latter 'Jesus Christianity' overlaying and hiding what it was like inside.
We look back on it and observe the outside skin of some strange 'form' of Christianity (and that being colored by our collective inherited Christian cultural hegemony)
But if one can peel away a little of that tough but thin rind of Christian skin, and look at the evident cosmic/theology, it is found to have little to nothing to do with the common beliefs of the rest of nascent 1st-2nd century Christianity.
Perhaps further archaeological discoveries will give us a better understanding of what really transpired back then.
But as for right now, the Christian anti-Manichean polemical documents, and the scholarship involved in the of examining those texts, under the long shade of Christian hegemony, and making dogmatic statements and jumping to conclusions regarding their degree of accuracy, is hardly a field of inquiry for any skeptic to be taking a stand, or hanging his hat upon.
We know that the Christian religion has attempted to revise and to conceal the true facts of history, there is no reason for any true Skeptic to accept the Christian version of the past.
We may not yet know all the facts, and perhaps never will, but by now (by their fruits you shall know them) we should certainly know enought to know better.


Sheshbazzar

mountainman

It seems to me that Constantine inherited this "religious problem of the Manichaeans" and other Gnostic religious groups in the eastern empire around the city of Alexandria, from which Diocletian issued these rescripts. As to what he found of the Manichaeans and the other Gnostics in Rome is anyone's guess, since it appears there was a Manichaean monastery there in 312 CE (perhaps because only the eastern empire, particularly Alexandria, was targetted for these Stalin-like anti-religious persecutions).

But it is precisely this very recent widespread persecution of the Manichaeans, and the burning of the "Canon and Gospel of Mani" that Constantine and Eusebius must have been aware of in the year 312 CE when Rome fell to Constantine's Chistians, and when Eusebius took up his pen to write his research thesis concerning the history of the nation of the Christians.

At any rate, this does bring us to the final two questions of the OP which I cant see have been addressed in any depth yet, and that is ....

(2) Was Mani crucified? and

(3) Had Eusebius read Mani's "Gospel"?




The anti-Manichaean persecutions of the late 3rd and early 4th centuries ring true because of a relative abundance of corroborating evidence.

mountainman

Definitely.


The same Christian hegemony, basically founded on the polemical attestations of various orthodox "heresiologists", is to be found in the examination of the "Gnostic Gospels and Acts" (eg: gJudas 2006?) and the Nag Hammadi Codices (1960's 0n). The Christian hegemony which assumed early "Church" ownership in the discovery of the DSS, and persists in seeking claims to this day, has slowly been liberated from its delusion.


Well said Shesh. At the end of the day it is the evidence, or its lack, which is to be highly regarded by those who are skeptical of received tradition. And new evidence is being identified daily. Interesting times - and pleasant to share them with open minds.

stephan huller

Still five days into this. No plausible explanation. No citation of supportive testimony to claim that Mani was NOT a Christian but only made one later AND most importantly not even an attempt to explain why the dating of P.Rylands 469 is wrong.

The text makes explicit reference to the Pauline writings and the misapplication of that material by Manichaeans.

Come on guys, this is postively becoming cult-like. The evidence is in, the idea that Christianity was manufactured by a fourth century conspiracy from scratch is dead in the water.

Finally.

Pete all you have to do is modify your theory to A PROGRESSIVE manipulation of the original material dating at least to the third century (I'd say late second century). But your just making up stuff about Mani that doesn't have any reality.

(a) he was identified by his folllowers as the Paraclete of Jesus
(b) his name is an Aramaic diminutive form of menachem
(c) P.Rylands 469 connects Manichaeans to Paul AND proves that there were Christians in Egypt long before you want to believe.

This is over.

avi

Thank you Toto, Shesh, and Pete, for your comments, re Diocletian persecution of followers of Mani in Alexandria and Rome, after his death in 276 CE.

I am still trying to find a reference to his supposed orientation towards John and the 'Paraclete'. Instead, all the sources seem to emphasize, logically, that he sought to combine Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and those elements of Matthew consistent with Mani's apparent belief in dualistic docetism:

Ryland's Papyrus, P469, a fragment of a letter from THEONAS of Alexandria (282-300), has been suggested as an original source of information on the question of Mani's ideology. It is not.

The fundamental "source" for Mani's philosophy, is the CMC:

emphasis by avi

avi