What is Manichaeism?

i'm sure that some of you have heard the word manichaean before it is often a word used for something that is strongly dualistic or lacks nuance but some of you may also know that it was an ancient religion that flourished in the middle east and in the central asian region particularly in fact manichaeism was once one of the most widespread and popular religions in the world and has been called by scholars the first world religion but not many people know too much about this faith tradition so let's change that [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] our information about the religion of manichaeism is pretty sparse prior to the 20th century all the information we had basically came from secondary sources you may have heard about manichaeism for example from the writings of augustine one of the most famous early christian theologians who actually was a manichaean before he converted to christianity there is also writings by later muslim writers like alberoni but none of these texts are very reliable because of their very polemical nature because all of these texts especially those by christian writers are highly critical of manichaeism and is political in the way that they are trying to discredit the religion in favor of christianity as they understood it but by the 20th century archaeologists started to discover sites and documents that have helped us enormously in understanding this religion in a more direct way excavations in central asia in the oasis of turfan or in madinat madi or kellis in egypt have uncovered texts or places of worship and other very valuable material what emerges from these finds is a religion that is complex and unique and yet is strongly connected to other movements in these regions at the time okay so let's get to it what is or was manichaeism let's start at the beginning the beginning of this story centers around the religion's main figure and prophet mani he was most likely born in 216 of the common era in a city close to the tigris rivers it was close to modern-day baghdad this region was part of the larger sassanian persian empire at the time and was an incredibly multicultural and vibrant environment in terms of religion it was a melting pot of different both old and new emerging traditions zoroastrianism was of course very strong as it was the kind of official religion state religion of the sasanian empire and of course had a huge influence but we also find different jewish groups mandaeans and new movements that had formed around the figure of jesus of nazareth what we today know as christianity the christians was not a unified group at this point but consisted of many different individual movements some of which were still very strongly connected to judaism while others were starting to increasingly separate from it there was also a strong presence of buddhism at this time especially in these central asian regions so you can see there were many different religious movements it was a very vibrant time so mani grew up in this kind of environment this incredibly multi-religious multicultural environment and this would of course have a strong influence on his later religious teachings he has sometimes been portrayed as a persian prophet and thus being foreign to the judeo-christian or abrahamic framework but this is actually highly inaccurate in fact for the first two decades of his life following in his father's footsteps mani belonged to a jewish christian group called the elkicites this group apparently put a large emphasis on purification rituals perhaps similar to the mandaeans as well as many other jewish and christian groups at this time but mani was destined for other things as he started receiving revelations at the age of 12 and then at 24 resulting in him leaving the elkicites and instead starting his own religious movement after this he would spend the rest of his life doing very heavy missionary work in all across the persian empire as well as the roman empire for a while he also traveled to india and became quite popular there even according to some reports being called buddha by some people one very significant thing about mani which sets him apart from a lot of the other founders or main figures of different religions is that he actually wrote down a lot of texts this was apparently a conscious effort to avoid making that same mistake as others had done like the buddha or jesus who didn't write themselves and so he wanted to write many different books in order that there would be no misunderstandings by later followers now of course you could argue that it's impossible for understandings to appear anyway but it is also said that mani was a great artist or painter and indeed visual art would come to play an important part in the maniki and religion as we will see now somewhere around the year 242 mani while back in persia successfully preached his message and actually received the support of the sitting sasanian king shah puri the first this allowed mani and his followers to spread even further and wider as an endorsement from the king made things significantly easier of course and what manny preached was a unique and universal religion he saw himself as the heir to great prophets like jesus zarathustra and the buddha and his new religion as the pure or true versions the most pure form of these religions that is christianity zoroastrianism and buddhism but above all mani describes himself as an apostle of jesus and his connection to jesus was particularly strong and significant connected to this is also the fact that mani was identified as the so-called paraclete which is mentioned in the new testament in the gospel of john also sometimes called the helper the paraclete is according to many christian readings associated or identified with the holy spirit but it should not be understood that manny saw himself or was identified with the holy spirit in the sense of being part of the trinity the doctrine of the trinity was not firmly established in christianity at this time and the manikins did not adhere to this doctrine but seeing himself as the heir to these great prophets and preaching a religion that was supposedly the pure version of these other major religions mandy would often present his religion in a way that was very approachable and and easy to understand for the local population so he could speak to the local population and and claim that their local tradition was often in harmony with his own which was of course a very effective way of missionary work of spreading his faith so in the teachings of manichaeism we find many aspects of different religions that were popular in this region at the time there are very strong influences from biblical and abrahamic sources of course but also very clear references to ideas in zoroastrianism as well as in buddhism it also appears that the form that manichaeism took in different regions depended somewhat on the sort of major religious traditions in that particular region so manichaeism like all other religions is of course or was constantly changing and evolving depending on new times and places new cultural contexts and so we can see that uh manichaeism in the more western parts of its spread in the sort of roman empire the western middle east and north africa take on a much more sort of judeo-christian or jewish christian form while in the central asian region the zoroastrian and buddhist influences are a lot more pronounced but mani's support by the sasanian king was temporary as soon as shapoor died and after the short reign of his successor hormuz the first the king bharam took the throne and things started to change significantly the zoroastrian clergy had been strongly critical of mani and his movement and called for very harsh measures against them the new king ended official support for manichaeism and a great persecution started here manny himself was actually arrested and put in prison in the year either 276 or 277 and some sources claim that after only 26 days he succumbed to the terrible conditions in prison and died this marked the end of the life of the prophet mani but by no means was this the end of the religion that he started he had been very successful he and his followers at spreading the religion into different parts of the world and this only continued after he died it spread across the middle east to north africa and even spain it's paired to georgia central asia india and all the way to china by the year 400 a bit more than a hundred years after mani's death there were many keen communities in syria palestine egypt arabia armenia rome and spain just to mention a few in a very short amount of time the religion had managed to spread to basically every corner of the known world a feat that no other religion had managed before now this is why some scholars have referred to manichaeism as the first world religion in history you can see why this may be the case but manichaeism for most of its history remained under very strong persecution in persia and central asia they were strongly oppressed by the zoroastrian clergy and by the persian kings the religion was basically forbidden and in the west the developing christianity became also increasingly critical of the manikins and once they were in power they would of course strongly persecute them as well to the christian polemical writers the manikins were either seen as a foreign persian religion that had invaded the christian lands or it was seen as a heretical movement within christianity itself neither of which was very good news interestingly evidence from kellis in egypt one of the archaeological sites shows that there have been time periods when the manichaeans and christians these are mainstream christians lived side by side and that the manikins if given the question would have most likely identified themselves as christian this shows us that things are a lot more complex than what is often assumed the religious identity of the manichaeans is a complicated question that can't be explained in very simple terms we shouldn't as many have done simply say that manichaeism is a form of christian gnosticism because not only is gnosticism itself an arbitrary term that wasn't necessarily a unified community at all but manichaeism was also very different in significant ways to the theology expressed in those texts we often refer to as gnostic even if there are many interesting similarities of course too the great persecution that the manikins faced in basically every part of the world that it existed is one of the reasons that the religion is basically extinct today things got a little easier after the arab conquest and under the early islamic caliphates but there were periods of persecution here as well so even though the religion had appeared and spread in a very rapid pace and spread to large parts of the world in just a few centuries it had all but disappeared by the 11th century the religion had more or less died out in the middle east in persia and north africa it did however survive in southern china for a few more centuries some say until around the 17th century but since then it's been pretty quiet it is very possible that there have been small communities surviving there is for example a group on the website reddit where people interested in manichaeism gather and it appears that there are some still practicing it today to some degree so there may very well be people who still identify as manichaeans but there are so few of them that we can still basically call the religion extinct and even if the religion itself isn't necessarily around anymore it probably has had a great impact on other religions other cultures being such a widely spread and popular religion in the late ancient period it must have in some way influenced the other currents that were happening at the time including of course christianity islam also developed in a region and time when manichaeism was very much present and so we can speculate also as to how much manichaism may have influenced that religion too it's interesting that mani is said to have called himself the seal of the prophets much like what the quran calls the prophet muhammad but this comes from later muslim writers so we should probably take this with a grain of salt but this leads us to that central question that most of you have probably been asking yourself since the start of this video what did the manikins believe and how did they practice their religion as i've already mentioned mani saw himself as a universal prophet he was the heir to zarathustra to the buddha and above all to jesus so when we look at the beliefs of manikiasin we find traces of all of these different religions one of the main characteristic features of the manichaean theology and cosmology is a very strong dualism the religion is so strongly associated with dualism that the word manikin has become a kind of shorthand word for anything that is strongly dualistic even outside of the sphere of religion but what this means on a religious level is that manny and his followers saw the world as consisting of two essential forces that of light or good and that of darkness or evil this is of course similar to some forms of christianity like what we call gnosticism but in particular there are strong similarities here with zoroastrianism and just like in zoroastrianism the manichaeans divide world history into three stages in the first stage light and darkness are completely separated spheres god or the father of greatness rules over the sphere of light which consists of his attributes like purity light strength wisdom and the five elements of light water fire air and wind the sphere of darkness is ruled by the king of darkness and his five offspring here we also find five elements smoke darkness fire water and wind the second phase or era of creation is when the dark and light spheres come into contact the darkness wants to infiltrate the light but the father of greatness creates the mother of life so called who in turn sends original man which is a kind of spiritual form of man to infiltrate the sphere of darkness and destroy it from the inside like a trojan horse if you will once the king of darkness and his offspring are defeated original man together with the mother of life create the universe from the bodies of these dark beings and the light that original man had sneakily placed within them so as a result the universe that we know consists both of the stuff of darkness that is the bodies of these dark beings which is mainly the material aspect of the world and also the stuff of light things like the human soul or the planets and stars in the sky for the rest of the second phase and into the third phase which is the current one the purpose of this whole existence is to separate the light from its dark material in order to hopefully reach a complete separation of the two once again this has been the purpose of all the previous prophets jesus buddha zarathustra and now finally mani to remind humanity of the true source of the light in order that they may neglect their material body and all other aspects of life cons that is connected to the forces of darkness okay are you with me so far this is obviously a very complicated cosmology even i have trouble uh keeping it all together sometimes but this is the basic idea behind the dualism of the manichaeans the world is like a cleaning factory to separate the particles of light from the darkness and in the practices of this religion we find traces of this scheme in the microcosm of the human being the same struggle takes place as in the macrocosm of the cosmos so this means that we as human beings must also struggle to separate the light particles from the darkness within ourselves since manichaeism has a rather negative attitude towards the human the body and the material world in general as they are seen as being made from the stuff of darkness the rules and and practices of the manichaeans may seem to be very strict mani instructed people to live very ascetic lives to not lie never kill any living being and to practice pacifism not to eat any meat not to drink alcohol and to live in complete celibacy abstaining from all sexual and reproductive activity now as strict as this may sound it must be pointed out that not all manikins were required to follow these rules instead the community was divided into two general groups the elect and the hearers the elect were those who had taken the manikin vows and followed all the above rules very strictly as well as praying and fasting very intensely their entire lives were dedicated to separating the light from darkness through their ascetical practice now the hearers on the other hand were kind of lay people they weren't required to follow these rules to the letter they could eat meat as long as they had not killed the animal themselves they could for example also have sex within the context of a marriage and therefore also have children but even though the rules weren't as strict for these hearers they were still encouraged to follow them as much as they could having children for example was technically allowed but it was considered ideal to not have them as having children would continue the cycle of the material darkness aside from these rules all mannequins were also required to pray on a daily basis a number of prayers is very hard to tell but it seems that it may have been three prayers a day maybe four prayers a day the times of day when the prayers took place is also basically impossible to know for sure but it seems that the manikins may have adopted to the mainstream practice or the the most prominent practice in a certain region so for example in later periods when the manikins lived under muslim rule the prayer times may have been sort of adjusted to to sync up with the prayer times of the muslims the swedish scholar of religion jurgen magnusson has written an article on the food practices of the manikins which serves as an interesting example of how the relationship between the elect and the hearers functioned and also gives us a look into some of the practices of the community in general since the elect were to live strictly pure lives they were forbidden from using any kind of violence even violence against plants or vegetation this made it basically impossible for them to provide themselves with any food so instead during their daily meal the hearers would provide them with the vegetarian food in a kind of ritual the elect would then pray and bless the food and the person bringing it which cleared the hearer from the charge of having used violence to get them the food and then through their meal and their congestion system the elect within because they lived such holy and pure lives released the light particles of the food from the dark and thus serve the cause of the world of light through this ritual meal so this meal or table was a kind of exchange the hearers brought food to the elect and was forgiven for their sins as a result and the elect themselves used the food and meal as a way to help separate the light from the darkness this is just a short summary and a few examples of the practices of the manichaeans of course research and scholarship is giving us more information as time goes by another somewhat characteristic aspect of manichaeism is their prominent art visual art there are plenty of surviving manichaean depictions of various scenes and cosmological schemes that are quite beautiful and dramatic the manikins used both the written word and visual art to convey its religious message which is probably why we find so many examples like this if you remember it is also said that manny himself was a great an accomplished painter and artist so there may be a connection here as well sadly as i've said manichaeism is basically extinct today but it survives through the discoveries and information that archaeologists and scholars are bringing to light as well as through the influence that manichaeism may have had on religious traditions that survived to this day it is a religion that can teach us a lot about the ancient middle east and a religious context that was incredibly vibrant and influential if you want me to make more videos about manichaeism and explore in detail some of its more particular aspects please let me know in the comments because this is a fascinating subject to research i would love to do some further work on it page and time i would like to thank some of our new additions to the patreon community neural allen and luke burns thank you both so much your support is of course highly helpful if you want to become a patron of this channel i will leave a link to the patreon page in the description you can check out the different tiers and and options and and make a decision for yourself i hope this video was a good and interesting introduction to manichaeism as i said if you want more then let me know in a comment and if you want to support this channel you can as i mentioned you can become a patron or you can simply like the video or subscribe to the channel and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 297,468

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Id: 8vjzr9ONXi4

Length: 22min 59sec (1379 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 30 2020