MANICHAEAN LITERATURE 575
may indicate that the earliest form of Christianity to enter the Oasis was in
fact Manichaeism portraying itself as a type of Christianity.
MANICHAEAN TEACHINGS
Mani's teaching embraced a highly complex historical drama of supracosmic
proportions in which humanity's past origin, present predicament, and future
possibilities are described. The drama centers its theological concern on the
existential question of the origin of evil in human experience. Mani employed
a typical apocalyptic scheme in which cosmic history was divided into three
time periods: past, present, and future.
In the past time there existed two eternal principles, one all good and the
other all evil. The good principle exists exclusively within the kingdom of light
and finds its focus in the father of greatness, whose fourfold majesty embraces
divinity, light, power, and goodness. His throne is surrounded by at least 156
peace-loving entities: twelve aeons (or eternal realms, in three groups of four
each) and 144 aeons of aeons. The kingdom of light is constructed of five ele-
ments or stoicheia (air, wind, light, water, and fire) and contains five peaceful
"dwellings" (intelligence, knowledge, reason, thought, and deliberation). (In
Manichaeism many things are given in five, even the five trees of paradise rem-
iniscent of Gospel of Thomas 19.) The evil principle and the kingdom of dark-
ness are the complete antitheses of the good principle and the kingdom of
light. The many monstrous and agitated inhabitants of the kingdom of dark-
ness are ruled by five evil archons (demon, lion, eagle, fish, and dragon), who
are in constant opposition to each other and who, collectively, make up the
hellish prince of darkness. They are sexually preoccupied and controlled by
their passions, and they dwell in an ominous netherworld of smoke, fire,
wind, water, and darkness. The two kingdoms are completely distinct yet eter-
nally coexistent.
The "present time" begins when the evil inhabitants of the kingdom of
darkness drive a wedge into the kingdom of light in a lustful desire to mingle
with the light. The kingdom of darkness is thoroughly aroused, and its terri-
fyingly vicious inhabitants enter the light in a full-scale invasion. The father of
greatness responds by evoking a series of entities who may need to be sacri-
ficed to the invaders so as to satisfy them and stop the assault. The first evoca-
tion is the mother of life, who then evokes the primal man, who fights the
incoming forces of darkness but loses his battle. The five evil archons (who
constitute the prince of darkness) then consume some of the light elements of