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The Religion of Light: Mani and Manichaeism
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10373 |
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Section : |
Modern Thought
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| Issue
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12 / 1986 |
5,722 Words |
| Author
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David J.Levy
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Editor's Indtroduction
Manichaeism, one of the most powerful but least understood religious forces in the history of Western civilization, has been a topic of considerable research during the last thirty years. The British scholar, Samuel Lieu, has recently published a comprehensive work that aims at incorporating findings on this ancient Near Eastern sect, whose rise paralleled and overlapped with that of Christianity. Manichaeism has usually been known through its influence on other religions, particularly Christianity and the widespread medieval Christian heresy of Albigensianism. It has also been linked by scholars to other Near Eastern dualistic belief systems, specifically Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism.
Daniel J. Levy takes a different approach. Drawing on relevant scholarship, he tries to examine Manichaeism as distinct from other mythically related religions. Focusing on the magnetic and ascetic personality of Mani, the father of the movement, he shows how Manichaeism appealed to those hopes and needs that institutionalized Zoroastrianism could no longer satisfy. Levy is aware of the obvious point that Manichaeans and Zoroastrians were both dualists waiting for the end of the world in the form of the final triumph of divine Good over divine Evil. He suggests, however, that an equally significant point is that Manichaeans made inroads among Zoroastrians by combining an established mythology with the ideal of ascetic purity.
It may be equally noteworthy that Manichaeism entered medieval Europe with the Cathar (later called Albigensian) heresy as an alternative to institutionalized Christianity. In Europe, the dietary restrictions and sexual prohibitions originally attributed to the prophet Mani were taken up by French peasants and townspeople under the anxious eyes of some churchmen and of the landed nobility. Levy attempts to show why Manichaeism became such a compelling and persistent force in periods of religious crisis.
--PG
The Prophet
Mani, the self-proclaimed "living Paraclete," prophet of the religion of Light, was born within the Parthian Empire at Seleucia Ctesiphon in Babylonia, in A.D. 216 on April 14. His father, Patek, may well have been a kinsman of the Parthian royal house and his mother, Mariam, though bearing a Jewish-Christian name, also belonged to a Parthian princely family. In the year Mani was born, King Artabanus V had been on the throne for four years. He was the last Parthian king and, ten years after Mani's birth, his empire was overthrown by the Persian Ardashir I, the founder of the Sassanian Empire, which was to endure from 226 until the Muslim conquest in 652. The period of Mani's ministry falls almost entirely within the reign of Shapur I, Ardashir's successor, who ruled Persia between 242 and 273 and who seems to have been sympathetic to the prophet's teachings. These thirty years were the years of Mani's great missionary journeys. They saw the composition of the seven books of the Manichaean canon and the founding of the Manichaean church which was, in places, to survive the martyrdom of its founder by more than one thousand years.
On the death of Shapur I, his son Hormizd became king. He lived for scarcely a year and was succeeded by his brother Bahram I. King Bahram was
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