Manichaeism
Manichaeism still has a living trace at the temple of Cao'an in Jinjiang, in China's Fujian province. Villagers near the temple continue to worship Mani, the Persian prophet who founded the religion in the third century. They draw little line between Mani and the Buddha.
Mani's faith began in the Sasanian Empire, far from Fujian. At its height it was one of the most widespread religions in the world, with churches and scriptures stretching from Roman Iberia in the west to China in the east. Before the rise of Islam, it was briefly the main rival of early Christianity.
Who was the man behind it, and what did he teach his followers to believe and to do each day? Why did Roman emperors, Chinese emperors and Abbasid caliphs each try to stamp it out? And how did a religion whose own scriptures were mostly lost come to be known at all?
Mani was born in 216 in or near Ctesiphon, a city of the Parthian Empire that lies in modern Iraq. The Cologne Mani-Codex says his parents belonged to the Elcesaites, a Jewish Christian Gnostic sect. Manichaean writings place a first revelation at the age of 12 and a second at 24. Across those years he grew dissatisfied with the sect of his childhood.
The biographies preserved by ibn al-Nadim and the Persian polymath al-Biruni describe a spirit who visited Mani as a youth. Mani came to call this spirit his Twin. The Cologne Mani-Codex uses the Greek word Syzygos, and other names include the Double, the Protective Angel and the Divine Self. The Twin taught him wisdom, which he later shaped into a religion.
Mani also stood out in person. He wore colorful clothing at a time when that was unusual, and some Romans thought he looked like a stereotypical Persian magus or warlord. That impression earned him hostility in the Greco-Roman world.
He wrote seven works. Six were in Syriac, the Aramaic dialect of his own community. The seventh, the Shabuhragan, was in Middle Persian, and Mani presented it in person to the Sasanian emperor Shapur I. The scholar Michel Tardieu argues that Mani also invented the Manichaean alphabet, a distinctive form of the Syriac script. Tradition adds an illustrated book of pictures. Iranians remembered it as the Ardahang, and its paintings earned Mani the title The Painter.
Shapur I never became a follower, as far as the evidence shows, but he let the faith spread and did not persecute it. According to the Denkard, Shapur was known for seeking knowledge of every kind. Mani told him that his religion should be read as a reform of Zoroaster's teachings. That suited a king who dreamed of an empire holding many peoples and creeds. Manichaeism flourished across the Sasanian Empire for thirty years.
The mood changed after Shapur died. His son Hormizd I still permitted the faith, but he trusted the Zoroastrian priest Kartir. Hormizd's reign was short, and his brother Bahram I, who also held Kartir in high esteem, took the throne. Zoroastrianism grew stronger under Kartir's influence, and Mani's movement grew weaker. Mani had failed to win the favor of the new royal generation, and the Zoroastrian clergy disapproved of him. Bahram sent him to prison, where he died awaiting execution in the 270s.
The killing did not stop with Mani. In 291, Emperor Bahram II ordered the murder of Mar Sisin, Mani's first successor, and many Manichaeans were slaughtered.
Two realms existed at the start, according to Mani, and they had nothing to do with each other. The World of Light was ruled by the Father of Greatness together with his five Shekhinas, which are divine attributes of light. The World of Darkness was ruled by the King of Darkness. In the distant past, the Kingdom of Darkness noticed the light, coveted it and attacked.
The Father of Greatness answered with the first of three calls. He called the Mother of Life, who sent her son, the Original Man, to fight the attackers, among them the Demon of Greed. The Original Man carried five shields of light. He lost them, and the loss was a trick, a kind of bait. The forces of Darkness greedily swallowed as much light as they could. When the Original Man awoke, he was trapped among them.
The Second Creation began when the Father of Greatness called on the Living Spirit. The Mother of Life, the Living Spirit and his five sons then built the universe from the bodies of the dark beings and the light those beings had swallowed. Ten heavens and eight earths came out of this work, each a mixture of evil matter and captured light. The sun, moon and stars were made from light that had been recovered. The waxing and waning of the moon was described as the moon filling with light. That light passes to the sun, then through the Milky Way, and finally back to the World of Light.
In the Third Creation, great demons called archons were hung over the heavens. The Father of Greatness set out to win back the remaining light by arousing the greed of these demons with beautiful images. The Third Messenger and the Virgins of Light played this part. In the account of Augustine of Hippo, the Virgins took the forms of "beardless boys" and "beautiful virgins" to draw light from female and male archons. Al-Biruni and Ephrem the Syrian describe a single Maiden of Light of changing or androgynous gender. Other versions have sexless shining warriors.
Light expelled from the demons fell to earth, sometimes in the form of abortions, and these became the fallen angels of the myth. The evil beings kept swallowing whatever light they could. After swallowing vast quantities, they copulated and produced Adam and Eve. The Father of Greatness sent Jesus the Splendour to wake Adam and show him where the light in his body came from. Adam and Eve, however, copulated in turn and produced more humans, so light stayed trapped in bodies throughout history.
Mani's two opposed divine powers were his answer to the problem of evil. He denied that God was all-powerful and so placed the origin of evil outside God's creation. Neither the earth nor the flesh was evil in itself, since each held both light and dark, and even rain was read as a physical sign of the struggle. Mani's own coming was one more attempt by the World of Light to tell people where the light trapped inside them really came from.
Mani held that the founders of earlier faiths had each grasped only "partial truths". His list of predecessors ran from Mesopotamian and Greek traditions to Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Buddhism and several Jewish and Christian currents. Zoroaster, the Buddha and Jesus were prophets before him, in his view, and later figures such as Devadatta and Judas Iscariot had corrupted their teachings. Mani called his own message a "religion of light".
Mani claimed to be the Paraclete of the Truth that Jesus promised in John 14:16. Augustine of Hippo noted that Mani declared himself an "apostle of Jesus Christ". Manichaean tradition also held that he was a reincarnation of earlier figures, including the Buddha, Zoroaster and Jesus. The ibn al-Nadim account gives him the claim to be the Seal of the Prophets. Scholars argue that for Mani the phrase meant a seal for his own followers, not finality in a line of prophets as in Islam.
The Book of Giants shows the borrowing most clearly. Mani quoted the Aramaic Book of Giants directly and expanded it, and his Manichaean version became one of his six Syriac writings. No original edition of that version could be consulted until the 20th century. Fragments of the Aramaic original, analyzed and published by Józef Milik in 1976, came to light with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Fragments of the Manichaean version, analyzed by Walter Bruno Henning in 1943, came from Turpan.
The Enochic literature also supplied a figure for Mani's heavens. It describes a king on a throne in the highest heaven. In Manichaean myth this being became the Great King of Honor, who guards the entrance to the World of Light at the seventh of ten heavens. Theodore bar Konai preserves the Syriac title malkā rabbā d-iqārā.
Henning noticed something surprising about what Mani left out. Mani was raised in a province of the Persian empire, and his mother came from a famous Parthian family. Yet his original Syriac writings made no use of Iranian mythology.
Buddhist and Jain echoes are easier to find. Richard Foltz points to Mani's travels in the Kushan Empire, where several religious paintings at Bamyan are attributed to him. He argues that the Manichaean community, split between monks and nuns called the elect and lay supporters called hearers, resembles the Buddhist sangha. Iain Gardner finds Jain influence likely because of the strict asceticism of Mahāvīra's community. In 1996 Richard C. C. Fynes argued that Jain ideas about plant souls reached Mesopotamia and entered Manichaean belief.
Translation then changed the gods themselves. In Middle Persian texts, the highest deity, the Father of Greatness, could be rendered literally or replaced by the Zoroastrian god Zurwān. The Original Man became Ohrmazd Bay, after the Zoroastrian god Ohrmazd. Jesus, Adam and Eve received the names Xradesahr, Gehmurd and Murdiyanag, so Zoroastrians did not find the faith wholly foreign. In Chinese scriptures, the Call from the World of Light was identified with Guanyin, the bodhisattva of Compassion.
One Buddhist figure never made the crossing. Chinese Manichaean texts borrow heavily from Pure Land scriptures, even using the phrase "pure land". Yet Amitābha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, does not appear, and another deity seems to have taken his place.
Mani forbade his most devout followers, the Elect, from harvesting crops, because he counted harvesting as a form of murder against plants. The Elect also gave up meat and alcohol and could not prepare food. The Hearers, who had not taken these vows but still belonged to the church, therefore prepared and supplied the meals. That made the Hearers guilty of a sin, and the Elect prayed for them and cleansed them of it. The most central rite was the daily ritual meal of the Elect.
The afterlife followed the same logic. The soul of a righteous person returned to Paradise at death. A person who indulged in fornication, procreation, accumulating possessions, cultivating land, harvesting, eating meat or drinking wine faced condemnation and rebirth in a cycle of different bodies.
At the top of the church sat a Leader, Mani's designated successor, who held the seat of Patriarch and was based first in Ctesiphon. Below him came 12 apostles, 72 bishops and 360 presbyters. Mani's original apostles included Mār Pattī, who was Mani's father, along with Akouas and Mar Ammo. Mār Addā is named as one of the original disciples who held the rank of bishop.
Prayer filled the day. Hearers prayed four times daily and the Elect seven, though sources disagree on the hours. Al-Nadim's Fihrist lists afternoon, mid-afternoon, just after sunset and nightfall. Al-Biruni lists dawn, sunrise, noon and dusk, and his account may preserve an older tradition untouched by Islam.
Every prayer began with an ablution, using water or, if none was available, another substance. The worshipper then prostrated twelve times, rising again after each. By day Manichaeans faced the Sun and at night the Moon, or the north if the Moon was hidden. Faustus of Mileve explained that the heavenly bodies were not worshipped. They were ships carrying particles of light toward the supreme god.
Augustine of Hippo describes ten prayers, the first addressed to the Father of Greatness and the later ones to lesser deities, spirits, angels and finally the Elect. The worshipper asked to be freed from rebirth and pain and to reach peace in the realm of light. Confession and the singing of hymns shaped the community's shared life.
The very words Elect and Hearers were already common in the days of early Christianity, but there they carried a different meaning.
The apostle Psattiq brought Manichaeism to Rome in 280, after visits to Egypt in 244 and 251. By 290 the religion was flourishing in the Faiyum. Then in 302 the first official Roman reaction came under Diocletian, in an edict titled De Maleficiis et Manichaeis, addressed to the proconsul of Africa.
The edict described the Manichaeans as having sprung up "like new and unexpected monstrosities among the race of the Persians". It also called Persia a nation still hostile to Rome. Diocletian ordered the authors and leaders of the sect burned together with their writings. Followers who refused to give up the faith faced death and the loss of their goods. Officials and persons of rank would lose their estates and be sent to the quarry at Phaeno or the mines at Proconnesus.
The order did not end the movement at once. Manichaean monasteries existed in Rome in 312, during the reign of Pope Miltiades. By 354 Hilary of Poitiers was writing that the faith was a significant force in Roman Gaul. Legislation returned in 372 under Valentinian I and Valens.
In 381 Christians asked Theodosius I to strip Manichaeans of their civil rights. From 382 he issued a series of edicts against the faith, including one ordering the execution of all Manichaean monks. In 391 he would establish Christianity as the state religion. Under this pressure Manichaeism nearly vanished from western Europe in the fifth century and from the eastern part of the empire in the sixth.
Augustine of Hippo, who lived from 354 to 430, left the faith in 387. By his own account in the Confessions, he had spent nine or ten years among the Hearers. He later argued in writing against a Manichaean opponent, Faustus of Mileve. Augustine came to see the belief that knowledge itself saves as too passive to change a life.
He described the comfort of the old doctrine with painful honesty: "It flattered my pride to think that I incurred no guilt and, when I did wrong, not to confess it." He blamed an unknown thing within him that was not part of him. Looking back, he saw that it was all his own self. Some modern scholars suggest Manichaean habits of thought still marked his ideas about good and evil, hell, the sorting of people into elect, hearers and sinners, and his dualistic theology.
Manichaean pamphlets in Greek were still circulating in ninth-century Constantinople. The patriarch Photios summarized and discussed one by Agapius in his Bibliotheca.
Mani never traveled to Bactria himself, but he sent a disciple named Mar Ammo, who knew the Parthian language and script. According to a Persian text told from Mar Ammo's own viewpoint, a spirit of the eastern border appeared at the watch post in the shape of a girl and refused him: "Return from where you have come." Mani's spirit then appeared and told Mar Ammo to persevere and read the chapter "The Collecting of the Gates" from The Treasure of the Living. After he did, the border spirit returned transformed, named herself Bag Ard, and promised that the gate of the whole East would open before him. Scholars think she reflects Ardoksho, a local goddess of Bactria.
In the Muslim world, the fortunes of the faith turned back and forth. Under the early caliphates Manichaeism attracted many followers, especially among elites. In 780 the third Abbasid caliph, al-Mahdi, launched an inquisition against suspected dualists, whom Arabic called zindīq. He appointed a "master of the heretics" to hunt them, and those who refused to recant were executed. Harun al-Rashid finally abolished the campaign. Under the later caliph al-Muqtadir, about 500 Manichaeans gathered in Samarkand after fleeing Mesopotamia, and the city became the faith's new patriarchate.
The Uyghur khagan Bögü Qaghan, who ruled from 759 to 780, converted in 763 after a three-day discussion with Manichaean preachers. Clerics of high rank came from the Babylonian headquarters. He banned shamanistic rituals, and the announcement was met with enthusiasm in the capital, Ordu-Baliq. A manuscript calls him zahag-i Mani, or "Emanation of Mani". Old habits lingered, though. In 765, during a campaign in China, Uyghur troops called on magicians for rituals, and the Uyghurs kept a sacred forest at Otuken in great respect.
The conversion set off an explosion of manuscript production in the Tarim Basin and Gansu that lasted into the early 11th century. The Uyghur Khaganate collapsed in 840 under attack from the Yenisei Kyrgyz, and a new Uyghur state arose at Qocho. Al-Jahiz blamed the peaceful lifestyle of Manichaeism for the Uyghurs' later military decline. In Turfan the faith rivalled Buddhism for influence until the 13th century, when the Mongols delivered the final blow. In the Uybat valley of South Siberia, excavations uncovered a Manichaean center with six temples and five sanctuaries of the elements.
In China, the religion followed trade routes to Chang'an, capital of the Tang. Recent archaeology shows it was known there already in the second half of the 6th century. In 732 Emperor Xuanzong banned Chinese people from converting, calling it a heresy that confused people by claiming to be Buddhism. Foreigners could still practice without punishment.
After 840, all Manichaean temples in China closed except those in the two capitals and Taiyuan, because they were seen as symbols of foreign arrogance. In 843 Emperor Wuzong ordered all Manichaean clerics killed as part of the Huichang persecution of Buddhism, and over half died. Officials shaved their heads and dressed them as Buddhist monks before killing them.
Song-dynasty Chinese mocked Manichaeans as Chīcài shìmó, meaning that they abstain from meat and worship demons. Between 1258 and 1269, the Buddhist history Fozu Tongji recorded that they worshipped a "White Buddha", that their leader wore violet headgear, and that their followers dressed in white. Many Manichaeans joined rebellions against the Song, and sects such as the Red Turbans carried on part of their legacy. In 1370 the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming dynasty, who personally disliked the religion, banned it by edict.
In the early 1900s, German scholars led by Albert Grünwedel and then Albert von Le Coq began digging at Gaochang near Turpan, the ancient site of the Manichaean Uyghur kingdom. Most of what they found was in poor condition, but hundreds of pages of scripture survived. They were written in Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian and Old Uyghur. The pages went to Berlin, where Le Coq, Friedrich W. K. Müller and Walter Bruno Henning analyzed and published them.
The Manichaean script is a form of Syriac. The German editors printed most texts in Hebrew letters instead, perhaps for lack of suitable type. The most comprehensive publication was Manichaeische Dogmatik aus chinesischen und iranischen Texten, by Ernst Waldschmidt and Wolfgang Lentz in Berlin in 1933. After the Nazi Party came to power, publication continued in the 1930s, but editors switched to Latin letters.
In 1930, researchers in Egypt found a large body of Manichaean works in Coptic. Hundreds of pages survived complete. A Coptic Manichaean Psalm Book, edited by Charles Allberry, appeared in 1938-39.
Until these discoveries, scholars worked only from the writings of opponents, which often quoted Manichaean scripture directly. In the 18th century Isaac de Beausobre built a thorough study on those hostile sources alone. Yet some of them were wildly wrong. The Acta Archelai, a Greek work written before 348, told how a man named Scythianus invented the system in Egypt, and how his book passed to Terebinthus, then to an old woman, then to her slave Corbicius. Corbicius renamed himself Manes. In the story, a Persian king had Manes flayed. The scholar A. A. Bevan remarked that it had no claim to be considered historical, and Beausobre had refuted it.
Mani's own seven books survive only as fragments and quotations. The Syriac names of the six Syriac works are preserved, but the texts themselves are lost. Ibn al-Nadim quoted the first chapter of the Gospel of Mani in his 938 catalog, the Fihrist, written in a Baghdad where Manichaeans still lived. The Middle Persian sections of the Shabuhragan found at Turpan mention Zoroastrian divinities such as Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu and Āz. Most Manichaean texts survive only in Coptic and medieval Chinese translations. Even the Manichaean Chinese Hymnscroll is a translation of earlier hymns.
The Manichaeans also preserved books that others lost. They kept portions of the Book of Enoch literature and works about the apostle Thomas, such as the Acts of Thomas. The legend of Barlaam and Josaphat passed from an Indian story about the Buddha through a Manichaean version before becoming the tale of a Christian saint in the west.
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church labeled several movements "Manichaean" and persecuted them as heresies through the Inquisition, established in 1184. They included the Cathars of Western Europe, the Paulicians of Armenia, and the Bogomils of Bulgaria and Serbia. Historians dispute the link, because these groups show no Manichaean mythology or church terminology in their writings. The Cathars apparently adopted Manichaean principles of church organization.
In 2018, rituals were held in the three villages of Baiyang, Shangwan and Tahou, in Baiyang Township, Xiapu County, Fujian, for Lin Deng. He lived from 1003 to 1059 as a Manichaean leader under the Song dynasty, and villagers still honored him nearly a thousand years later.
Updated
Common questions
Who founded Manichaeism and when?
Manichaeism was founded in the third century AD by the Parthian Iranian prophet Mani, who was born in 216 in or near Ctesiphon. It arose in the Sasanian Empire.
What are the main beliefs of Manichaeism?
Manichaeism teaches a struggle between a spiritual world of light and a material world of darkness. Light trapped in human bodies is gradually freed and returned to the divine.
What is the difference between the Elect and the Hearers in Manichaeism?
The Elect took the vows of the religion and avoided meat, alcohol, harvesting and preparing food. The Hearers, who had not taken the vows, supplied their meals, and the Elect prayed for them in return.
Why was Manichaeism persecuted by the Roman Empire?
Diocletian's 302 edict called the Manichaeans new and unexpected monstrosities among the race of the Persians. Later, Theodosius I issued edicts from 382 against the faith, including an order to execute Manichaean monks.
Why did Augustine of Hippo leave Manichaeism?
Augustine left the faith in 387 after nine or ten years as a Hearer. He saw the belief that knowledge is salvific as too passive to change a life.
How did Manichaeism reach China?
Manichaeism spread along trade routes to Chang'an, the Tang capital, and archaeology shows it was known there by the second half of the 6th century. The Uyghur Khaganate made it the state religion in 763, and the Ming dynasty banned it in 1370.
Where can Manichaean sites still be seen today?
The Cao'an temple in Jinjiang, Fujian is the best-known and best-preserved Manichaean building. Sites also survive in Xinjiang and Zhejiang, and the Xuanzhen Temple is noted for its stele.
All sources
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- 91BookMedieval HeresiesChristine Caldwell Ames — Cambridge University Press — 2015
- 92Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the fourth century, 1984, p. 425.
- 93BookGnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic texts from Central AsiaHans-Joachim Klimkeit — HarperSanFrancisco — 1993
- 94JournalManichaeism in Bactria: Political Patterns & East-West ParadigmsDavid Scott — 2007
- 95BookMerriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World ReligionsDavid Carrasco et al. — Merriam-Webster — 1999
- 96BookManichaeism and its LegacyJ.K. Coyle — Brill — 2009
- 97BookFaiths Across Time: 5000 years of Religious HistoryJ. Gordon Melton — ABC-CLIO — 2014
- 98BookMerriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World ReligionsWendy Doniger — Merriam-Webster — 1999
- 99BookThe Silk Road and Cultural Exchanges between East and WestXinjian Rong — Brill — 24 October 2022
- 100BookSilk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600–1200, Parts 600–1200Xinru Liu — Oxford University Press — 1997
- 101BookManichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China: A Historical SurveySamuel N. C. Lieu — Manchester University Press — 1985
- 102BookThe White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious HistoryB. J. ter Haar — University of Hawaii Press — 1999
- 103BookPapers in Honor of Professor Mary BoyceJacques Duchesne-Guillemin et al. — Brill Publishers — 1985
- 104Stroumsa, Gedaliahu G., "Anti-Cathar Polemics and the Liber de duobus principiis", in B. Lewis and F. Niewöhner, eds., Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter (Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien, 4; Wiesbad
- 106Dondaine, Antoine. O. P. Un traite neo-manicheen du XIIIe siecle: Le Liber de duobus principiis, suivi d'un fragment de rituel Cathare (Rome: Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1939)
- 108Runciman, Steven, The Medieval Manichee: a study of the Christian dualist heresy. Cambridge University Press, 1947.
- 109http://www.jnsy.com.cn/old/show.asp?id=15025 August 2013
- 110Cxsz.cixi.gov.cn8 October 2012
- 112JournalCao'an in the Ancestral World: Contemporary Manichaeism-Related Belief and Familial Ethics in Southeastern ChinaYanbin Wang — MDPI — February 1, 2024
- 113BookMani and the Foundation of Manichaeism: Great Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religion HistoryRamin Hajianfard — CA, ABC-CLIO — 2016
- 114BookDer östliche Manichäismus im Spiegel seiner Buch- und Schriftkultur - Gesamter BandZekine Özertural et al. — Göttingen Academy of Sciences — 2024
- 115Bevan, A. A. (1930). "Manichaeism". Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Volume VIII Ed. James Hastings. London
- 116Original Syriac in: Theodorus bar Konai, Liber Scholiorum, II, ed. A. Scher, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium scrip. syri, 1912, pp. 311–8, ; English translation in: A.V.W. Jackson, Researc
- 117BookThe Gnostic Religion: the message of the alien God and the beginnings of ChristianityHans Jonas — Beacon Press — 1958
- 119BookWomen in Western and Eastern ManichaeismMadeleine Scopello — BRILL — 2022-07-14
- 120BookProlegomena to a History of Islamicate ManichaeismJohn C. Reeves — Equinox Publishing — 2011-11-01
- 121BookConstructions of gender in late antique Manichaean cosmological narrativeSusanna Towers — Brepols — 2019
- 122BookThe Secret Books of the Egyptian GnosticsJean Doresse — MJF Books — 1986
- 123Chart from: E. Waldschmidt and W. Lenz, Die Stellung Jesu im Manichäismus, Berlin, 1926, p 42.
- 126G. Haloun and W. B. Henning, The Compendium of the Doctrines and Styles of the Teaching of Mani, the Buddha of Light, Asia Major, 1952, pp. 184–212, p. 195.
- 127J. van (Johannes) Oort, Jacob Albert van den Berg In Search of Truth. Augustine, Manichaeism and Other Gnosticism: Studies for Johannes Van Oort at Sixty BRILL, 2011 p. 258
- 128Jason BeDuhn New Light on Manichaeism: Papers from the Sixth International Congress on Manichaeism, Organized by the International Association of Manichaean Studies BRILL, 2009 p. 77
- 129Johannes van Oort Augustine and Manichaean Christianity: Selected Papers from the First South African Conference on Augustine of Hippo, University of Pretoria, 24–26 April 2012 BRILL, 01.08.2013 p. 74
- 130Charles George Herbermann The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, Band 9 Universal Knowledge Founda
- 131New Light on Manichaeism: Papers from the Sixth International Congress o p. 78
- 132Johannes van Oort Augustine and Manichaean Christianity: Selected Papers from the First South African Conference on Augustine of Hippo, University of Pretoria, 24–26 April 2012 BRILL, 01.08.2013 p. 75
- 133MANICHEISM i. GENERAL SURVEYWerner Sundermann — Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation — 2009-07-20
- 134CHINESE TURKESTAN vii. Manicheism in Chinese Turkestan and ChinaSamuel Lieu — Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation — 2011-10-17
- 135W. B. Henning, Sogdica, 1940, p. 11.
- 136"Let none read the gospel according to Thomas, for it is the work, not of one of the twelve apostles, but of one of Mani's three wicked disciples."—Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis V (4th century)
- 137BookThe Manichaean hymn-cycles in ParthianMary Boyce — Oxford University Press — 1954
- 138"The Traité is, despite its title (Moni jiao cao jing, lit. "fragmentary Mathews, no. 6689 Manichean scripture"), a long text in an excellent state of preservation, with only a few lines missing at th
- 139BookHistoire critique de Manichée et du manichéismeIsaac de Beausobre — J. Frederic Bernard — 1734
- 140BookHistoire critique de Manichée et du manichéismeIsaac de Beausobre et al. — J. Frederic Bernard — 1739
- 141Eusebius. The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius Pamphilus, Bishop of Caesarea, Translated from the originals by Christian Frederick Cruse.1939. Ch. XXXI.
- 142Bevan, A. A. (1930). "Manichaeism". Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Volume VIII. Ed. James Hastings. London.
- 143Classical Texts: Acta Archelai of ManiIranian Studies at Harvard University
- 145Waldschmidt, E., and Lentz, W., Manichäische Dogmatik aus chinesischen und iranischen Texten (SPAW 1933, No. 13)
- 146Hans Jakob Polotsky and Karl Schmidt, Ein Mani-Fund in Ägypten, Original-Schriften des Mani und seiner Schüler. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften 1933.
- 147BookEmerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean SourcesPaul Allan Mirecki et al. — Brill — 31 December 1996
- 148BookChinesische ManichaeicaHelwig Schmidt-Glintzer — 1987
- 149COLOGNE MANI CODEXWerner Sundermann — Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation — 2011-10-26
- 150Manichaean
- 151Ode to a Philistine: Howard Jacobson's PussyDouglas Kennedy — 2017-04-26
- 152Paul NitzeFred Kaplan — 21 October 2004
- 153NewsThe decline of US power?Nick Bryant — BBC News — 10 July 2015
- 154Frantz FanonUniversity of Tennessee at Martin
- 155BookMy Secret HistoryPaul Theroux — G. P. Putnam's Sons — 1989
- 156BookEncyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy)Greenwood Press — 2000
- 157BookIroquoian women: the GantowisasBarbara Alice Mann — Lang — 2004
- 158JournalFree to be Kanien'kehaka: A Case Study of Educational Self-determination at the Akwesasne Freedom SchoolWhite Louellyn — 2009
- 159BookConfessionsAugustine — Oxford University Press — 1991
- 160BookHistoire critique de Manichée et du ManichéismeIsaac Beausobre, de — Garland Pub. — 1734–1739
- 161BookThe Manichaean Body: In Discipline and RitualJason David BeDuhn — Johns Hopkins University Press — 2002
- 162BookMeditationes philosophicaeIsrael Gottlieb Canz — 1750
- 164BookReligions of the Silk RoadRichard Foltz — Palgrave Macmillan — 2010
- 165BookManichaean Texts from the Roman EmpireIain Gardner et al. — Cambridge University Press — 2004
- 166BookThe Samaritans: Their History, Doctrines and LiteratureMoses Gaster — Oxford University Press — 1925
- 167BookA Discourse about the Charge of Novelty Upon the Reformed Church of EnglandGregory Hascard — 1685
- 169JournalOn the Xiapu Ritual Manual Mani the Buddha of LightXiaohe Ma et al. — 2018
- 170BookThe Medieval Manichee: a study of the Christian dualist heresySteven Runciman — Cambridge University Press — 1982
- 171Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (from B. C. 146 to A. D. 1100)Evangelinos Apostolides Sophocles — Charles Scribner's Sons — 1900
- 172BookMani, the Angel and the Column of GloryAndrew Welburn — Floris — 1998
- 173BookMani and ManichaeismGeo Widengren — Weidenfeld & Nicolson — 1965