Abstract

Much progress has been made in the understanding of Manichaeism as a major religion in Late Antiquity, the recovery of its texts and practices, and tracking the remarkable spread of the community from its origins in early Sasanian Iran both westward into the Mediterranean world of the Late Roman Empire and east through Central Asia to its final demise in southern China. The religion had a unique record in terms of the extent of its distribution and its interaction with the governments, cultures, and faiths of the ancient and medieval worlds. Nevertheless, questions have remained about the unity of the tradition over such a large area and time period. This study proposes to recover the authentic text of the Manichaean daily prayers from a combination of previously available and recently discovered or edited sources. These sources derive from three very diverse cultural contexts: fourth-century Roman Egypt (in Greek), the tenth-century Abbasid empire (in Arabic), and early medieval Central Asia (in Middle Iranian). It will be shown that the text of the prayers remained remarkably constant as a fundamental pillar of the religious practice of this community deriving from Mani himself and an Aramaic original. This study of the Manichaean prayers provides insights both into our reading of Mani’s own religious identity and into our knowledge of the ritual life of a community where the teachings have been much better understood than the practices. It also suggests provocative questions about the impact of this tradition on the broader history and development of religions, especially as a precursor of Islam, which more famously came to dominate the heartland and trade routes of Eurasia in succession to it.

pdf

Share