Resumen
Resumen de Manichaean Homilies
Para quién es
For readers curious about early Christianity, Gnosticism and the religions of the ancient Near East, and anyone who wants to explore Manichaeism through its believers’ sermons on light, darkness and spiritual warfare.
De qué trata este libro
Manichaean Homilies is a book of sermons from the church founded by the prophet Mani, who lived in the third century in the Persian empire. It survives in a single Coptic manuscript found in Egypt in the early twentieth century. Despite what the title may suggest, the sermons were not written by Mani himself. They were composed by his followers, who preached about his life, his teaching and his death. Scholars think the Coptic text was translated from a Syriac or Aramaic original.
The manuscript is damaged, and many pages are broken or missing. What remains still gives a rare view of Manichaeism from the inside. For centuries, people knew this faith mostly through the writings of its enemies. Here the believers speak for themselves, in the voice of the pulpit. You will hear how they saw the struggle between light and darkness, how they remembered their founder, and how they told the story of their church. The first key point is the manuscript itself, and how it came to light.
En este resumen
- 1A codex rescued from Egyptian sandFree
- 2Mani, a prophet raised in Babylonia
- 3Two natures and three moments of time
- 4What the sermons say about war and death
- 5A church of the Elect and the Hearers
- 6Why the Homilies stand outside the Bibles
Idea clave 1 de 6
A codex rescued from Egyptian sand
The Homilies come from a cache of Manichaean books found in 1929 near Medinet Madi, a site in the Fayum region of Egypt. The books were written in Coptic, the last stage of the Egyptian language, which Christians in Egypt used for their own scriptures. Scholars date the manuscripts to roughly the fourth century, though the original sermons are older. The Homilies codex is one of several books in the find, and it was edited by the scholar Hans Jakob Polotsky in the 1930s.
The Coptic is in a dialect from the area of Lycopolis, which is modern Asyut in Upper Egypt. That detail matters. It shows that Manichaeism had put down roots in the Nile valley, far from Mani's homeland in Babylonia. The language of the original was probably Syriac, a form of Aramaic, which was the tongue of Mani and his first followers.
The condition of the book is poor. Damp and age have eaten the edges of pages, and whole sections are lost. Editors have had to work from broken lines and have marked gaps where the text cannot be recovered. Any reading of the Homilies has to accept that we hold only part of the original.
Even so, the find changed the study of Manichaeism. Before 1929, scholars relied on hostile Christian, Muslim and Zoroastrian writers, along with a few fragments from Central Asia. Now there was a body of texts in the believers' own words. The Homilies are among the most valuable, because they show how the faith was preached to its members.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Manichaean Homilies
What are the Manichaean Homilies?
They are a collection of sermons from the church of Mani, preserved in a Coptic manuscript found in Egypt in 1929. They deal with Mani's life and death, the early church and the struggle between light and darkness.
Did Mani write the Manichaean Homilies?
No. Scholars understand the sermons as the work of his followers, who preached about him after his death. The Coptic text is probably translated from an earlier Syriac or Aramaic original.
Who was Mani?
Mani was a prophet born in Babylonia in the third century. He taught that he was the last of a line of messengers that included Buddha, Zoroaster and Jesus. He died in Persian custody in the 270s.
What is Manichaean dualism?
It is the belief that light and darkness are two separate, opposed natures, and that the world we know is a mixture of both. Salvation means freeing the light that is trapped in matter.
Is the Manichaean Homilies text complete?
No. The manuscript is badly damaged, with missing pages and broken lines. Editors have restored what they could, but many passages remain uncertain, so the book is read as a fragmentary witness.