EXEGETICAL CULTURES 2 | 189teachings be adulterated.^115 Mani, Marcion, and the Qurʾān were all focusing
on a problem inherent in scriptural religion, namely the gap between the
prophetic and scriptural phases. Mani set out to innovate, by inventing a
total religion from scratch. For the first time, the prophet-founder presented
his own doctrine in both textual and visual form:
This (immeasurable) wisdom I have written in the holy books, in the
great Gospel and the other writings; so that it will not be changed after
me. Also, the way that I have written it in the books: (this) also is how
I have commanded it to be depicted... in the Picture(- Book).^116Mani also demanded of his followers that they record the many oral tradi-
tions they had from him, which he himself had not written down.^117 He as-
pired to be remembered as prophet, evangelist, and exegete all in one. Such
was his self- assurance that he convinced some modern scholars that Mani-
cheism—despite its complexity, and regional variations in the canon—hardly
went through an exegetical phase at all.^118 This is now beginning to seem
doubtful, as evidence accumulates for his disciples’ evolution away from
Mani’s Jesus- centered “moral instruction rather than elaborate schemati sa-
t i o n s .”^119 Nevertheless, his polemics against orality may have provoked the
rabbis to write their teachings down, and the Mazdeans to at last turn the
Avesta into a book.^120 And for a time Manicheism did succeed stupendously,
propagating itself, with essential consistency^121 despite local divergences,
from the Atlantic to the China Sea. If Mani had given his followers more to
puzzle and argue about, it might have lasted until today.
Thanks to the Qurʾān’s elliptic style, original lack of consonants, obscuri-
ties of vocabulary, and self- contradictions, Islam had no such problems,
though its notions of scripturality and apostolicity may owe more to Mani-
cheism than has been recognized. The Arabic scripture seeded the last of the
great exegetical communities of the First Millennium (or since), in addition
to itself being partly founded on exegesis of episodes from the Jewish and
115 Kephalaia [ed. and tr. (German) H. J. Polotsky and A. Böhlig (Berlin 1940–66); tr. I. Gardner,
The Kephalaia of the teacher (Leiden 1995)] 7–8; cf. also M. Tardieu, “Le prologue des “Kephalaia” de
Berlin,” in Dubois and Roussel (eds), Entrer en matière [5:27] 65–77. On Mani’s life see W. Sundermann,
“Mani,” EIr, http://www.iranicaonline.org.
116 Kephalaia [ed. W.- P. Funk (Stuttgart 1999–)—texts not in the Polotsky- Böhlig edition] 371
[tr. I. Gardner and S. N. C. Lieu, Manichaean texts from the Roman Empire (Cambridge 2004) 266].
117 Kephalaia [6:115] 6–7.
118 Gardner and Lieu, Manichaean texts [6:116] 9–11, 151–52.
119 I. Gardner, “Towards an understanding of Mani’s religious development,” in C. M. Cusack and
C. Hartney (eds), Religion and retributive logic (Leiden 2010) 148–58, arguing mainly from the Kepha-
laia (quotation at 153); id., ““With a pure heart and a truthful tongue”: The recovery of the text of the
Manichaean daily prayers,” JLA 4 (2011) 98–99.
120 y. Elman, “Middle Persian culture and Babylonian sages,” in Fonrobert and Jaffee (eds), Ta l-
mud and rabbinic literature [6:58] 167, 176–79.
121 Gardner, JLA 4 (2011) [6:119] 79–99.