The Founder of Manichaeism

The Founder of Manichaeism

Mani, a third-century preacher, healer and public sage from Sasanian Mesopotamia, lived at a pivotal time and place in the development of the major religions. He frequented the courts of the Persian Empire, debating with rivals from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, philosophers and gnostics, Zoroastrians from Iran and Buddhists from India. The community he founded spread from north Africa to south China and lasted for over a thousand years. Yet the genuine biography of its founder, his life and thought, was in good part lost until a series of spectacular discoveries have begun to transform our knowledge of Mani's crucial role in the spread of religious ideas and practices along the trade-routes of Eurasia. This book utilises the latest historical and textual research to examine how Mani was remembered by his followers, caricatured by his opponents, and has been invented and re-invented according to the vagaries of scholarly fashion.

1. Introduction to the many lives of Mani - inter-religious polemic and scholarly controversy; 2. Mani's background and early life - who was he and What did he think he was doing?; 3. Mani's career as the 'Apostle of Jesus Christ' - his missions and the community he founded; 4. Mani's death - inter-religious conflict in early Sasanian Iran and the memory of the Apostle.

A new critical look at Mani's life to establish a proper historical foundation for the study of this fascinating thinker.