The Founder of Manichaeism: Rethinking the Life of Mani

by Iain Gardner

Jason BeDuhn (Foreword)

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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.
  • ISBN13 9781108614962
  • Publish Date 16 January 2020
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Cambridge University Press
  • Imprint Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing)
  • Format eBook
  • Language English