Sheshbazzar

If you had been listening to previous posts within this thread you might have some small grasp of 'whom' it is proposed that did write them.

Too bad that you are blinded to the existence of that information by the glare from your own glory.

stephan huller

Yes, I got the gist of that which is why I cited the whole translation so everyone could see that you were casting me as the victorious general who is far from God. That line of reasoning will work wonders with all the atheists here.

stephan huller

So now we can all hold hands and agree that Mani did indeed write the material ascribed to him and the claim that he was the Paraclete of Christ:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7ww...page&q&f=false

That's the amazing thing about searching for truth instead of being content with just rolling out imaginative conjecture. You stumble upon something irrefutable. Now we can dispense with Pete's theory and move on.

Unless of course you guys want a photograph of Mani actually putting the pen to paper writing the material ...

Sheshbazzar

Yeah, sure, but I didn't ask you for that did I?
I asked you to translate exactly what I wrote.
You did not, and you still have not.
You have not indicated that your 'translation' abilities would warrant even 5 cents an hour.

so you assert.
Yes, you probably would be. And if you had Joseph Smith's documents dated to within 25 years of his martyrdom, would you BE A BELIEVER in them?
You wish.
You don't seem to realise, that even my local Pentecostals are able to syncretize, and come up with new 'testimonies' every week, some of that crap gets written down, but that sure as hell does not make it truthful, trustworthy, or historical.

Toto

To avoid problems with deep links into google books, Stephan is citing

Manichaean texts from the Roman Empire (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Iain Gardner, Samuel N. C. Lieu

Toto

Er, if it were dated to 300 CE it would be 25 years after the death of Mani and 25 years before Nicea. But it is dated to "about 400 CE" with an unknown margin of error, and claims to be a translation of Syriac documents going back to Mani or the first generation of the church.

But can we all calm down a bit? Please? So I don't have to act the heavy and start slapping people around?

stephan huller

My error. I was getting distracted by the hyperbole. I obvious forgot how to add and subtract.

stephan huller

Here are some other arguments that we have the remains of late third century and early fourth century Manichaean texts:

Birger Pearson on the Kephalaia of the Teacher (Ancient Gnosticism p. 299) "It originally consisted of over 500 pages consisting of teachings of Mani recorded by disciples of the first generation (end of the third century). Most of the second half of the codex is lost."

Gardiner here argues that a Christian letter of recommendation which dates itself to the 'early fourth century' by another study was actually Manichaean.

http://books.google.com/books?id=MjH...chaean&f=false

Toto

Emerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichaen Sources (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies) (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Paul Allan Mirecki, Jason BeDuhn, eds

avi

You can slap me around a little bit, I probably deserve it...

Mani, Mani... wherefore art thou?

Here's an extract from Toto's link, above:

There exist at least three huge problems, from my vantage point with this "scholarly" treatise.

First, most importantly, there are no citations, no references, no footnotes. This is journalism, not scholarship. The only slight reference to a manuscript is the CMC, presumably referring to the manuscript in Cologne, which, as I understand it, was created in the fifth century, and written in Greek, ergo, most probably not authored by Mani, himself.

Second: The text here is completely illogical: There is no way that the Elchasaists would have had gospels of John, Luke, Mark, Acts, and Paul available for Mani to read, as a young man.

Open your eyes!!! Look at how the Amish live. Do they subscribe to various "subversive" periodicals, for example, Discover magazine, or Scientific American? Do you somehow imagine that an even more reclusive, even more whacked out sect like the Elchasaists would be somehow more tolerant of books considered EVIL and Blasphemous? Of course not.

Third: The second author, a Chinese guy (who misspells his name, Lieu, instead of the proper Liu, because he does not recognize the Romanization reforms of 1950, preferring instead to use the mid 19th century USA colonial regime Wade Giles' method, forced upon the Chinese at gunpoint), with his own research, quoting from ancient sources, (but nota bene, these sources although not identified, COULD NOT HAVE been extant, before the fourth century, i.e. well after the death of Mani, and would have, in any event, NOT BEEN WRITTEN by Mani, himself, since no one claims that he was literate with HanZi. All Chinese sources of Manichaeism are suspect, in my eyes. I certainly do not accept as credible, HanZi, written in an unknown century, under unknown duress, in the middle of the Taklan desert in XinJiang.

In brief, then, the question of Mani's supposed anything is unanswerable. There are no documents. There are only rumors and gossip.

avi