INTRODUCTION
PAUL MIRECKIanichaeism was one of the major world religions and the only such
religion to align itself closely with late antiquity's Near Eastern gnostic tradi-
tion. Previously considered by Western scholars to be a Christian heresy,
Manichaeism is now properly understood in the context of third-century
Mesopotamian religions. The religion was founded by the Iranian prophet
Mani (216-77 CE), who deliberately created a universal and propagandistic
religion that incorporated Christian, Zoroastrian, and Buddhist concepts.
Whether Manichaeism is properly designated as gnostic, as Hans Jonas and
others have suggested, is being debated by scholars. The religion moved east
toward India and west into the Roman Empire already in Mani's lifetime,
reaching as far west as Algiers and southern Europe and as far east as Central
Asia and southeast coastal China, where traces of the religion datable to the
early seventeenth century can be identified. The focus of this introduction is
on western Manichaeism.
LIFE OF MANIMani was born on April 14, 216, near the Mesopotamian city of Ctesiphon,
Parthia. His parents were of Iranian descent. His mother, Maryam, was re-
lated to the ruling Arsacid dynasty, and his father, Patik, was a devotee in an
Elkesaite Mughtasilist community, a Jewish-Christian baptismal sect with
gnostic and ascetic features that derived from the popular religious move-
ment founded by the obscure figure Elkesai. Mani entered the baptismal
group at the age of four, but the most striking incident of his early life was a
revelation he received at the age of twelve, when an angel he called "the twin"
appeared and ordered him to leave the baptismal group at an unspecified
later date. The crucial second revelation came at the age of twenty-four, when