Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/115

 MANIOHJSANS 107 a man of much learning, wealth, and travel, conceived the idea of a dualism, the doctrine of good and bad principles. His disciple Tere- binthus composed for him four books, entitled Mvarvpia, Ke^a/lam, Evayy&iov, and Qr]Gavp6i. Scythianus was intending to go to Judea, in the time of the apostles, and teach his doc- trines there (as he did, according to Epipha- nius), when he suddenly died. Terebinthus fled to Persia, took the name of Budda, and taught the doctrine of Scythianus. Seeing that he was not gaining disciples, he attempted to deceive by magic arts, and while in the act fell from a roof and died. The books of Scythianus be- came the property of an old woman in whose house he had been lodging, and whose slave, Oubricus, called also Manes, inherited them at her death. Manes studied the doctrine and undertook to teach it, but with little success. Attempting to cure a sick child of the king of Persia with some of the remedies given in his books, and failing, he was thrown into prison. Shortly before this occurrence Manes had sent his disciples Thomas, Hernias, and Addas or Adda to Jerusalem to study the Christian reli- gion. Upon their return they gave him the Christian books which they had bought, and he studied them in his prison, and embodied many Christian doctrines, changed and falsi- fied, in his own system. Shortly after he suc- ceeded in making his escape. He challenged Marcellus, a pious Christian of Cascar (Kas- kar) in Babylonia, to a religious disputation, and was defeated. He then went to a place designated as Diodori Vicus, where he disputed with the bishop Archelaus and the presbyter Trypton, and was again discomfited. He was finally taken prisoner and sent back to Persia, where he was flayed alive, and his skin, stuffed with straw, was publicly exhibited as a warn- ing. Several reasons, as pointed out by Baur (Das Manichdische Religionssystem, 1831), tend to show that the strange particulars of Epi- phanius's narrative are far from being all his- torical. The Fihrist el-ulum ("List of Sci- ences"), the oldest known literary history of the Arabs, written about 987 by Abulf araj Mo- hammed ben Ishak en-Nedim, a book which still made use of the works of Manes and his disciples, no longer extant, has statements in re- gard to Manes which are at variance with those of Epiphanius. According to this, Manes was born in Ctesiphon, the son of Futtak Babek or Fatek, of Hamadan, and of a woman probably of Babylonian origin. When 12 years old Manes became the subject of a divine inspiration, and at the age of 24 he was asked to act as a pro- phet. De Sacy, in his Memoires sur diverses antiquites de la Perse, adduces several oriental books which state that Manes, after hiding him- self in a cave for a year, pretended to have come from heaven, where he bad received a painted slate, thereafter known as the Erteng-i-Mdni, It is further stated that Manes alleged that he had received his doctrine from the king of para- dise through the mediation of an angel. He j himself was the Paraclete of whom Christ had spoken. His tenets were derived partly from Christianity and partly from the Magi. His writings were six in number, one in Persian and five in Syriac, besides a multitude of epis- tles. The graphic system employed by him- self and his disciples is said to have been pecu- liar, resembling both Persian and Syrian char- acters. Most of the oriental writers agree that Manes came to a violent death, and that he was brought before a tribunal of priests, charged with heresy, and condemned. Spiegel, in his Erdnische AlterthumsTcunde (vol. ii., 1873), is inclined to consider historical the statements that Manes entered the career of a prophet when he was 24 years old, and that he addressed himself both to the Zoroastrians and Christians of Mesopotamia. The Mani- chaean system is a mixture of Parseeism, Chris- tianity, Babylonian mythology, and Buddhism. It contains a dualism different from that of the Magi, and shows the same easy transition from the concrete to the abstract characteristic of the Iranian religion. It assumes that there are two kingdoms existing from all eternity, those of light and of darkness, coexisting with and bordering on each other ; the former under the dominion of God, the latter under the dominion of the demon or Hyle (matter). (See GNOSTICISM.) An inroad was made by the kingdom of darkness, the barriers were broken through, the primitive man, God's first-born son, was for a time imprisoned, and the mate- rials of light and darkness were intermixed. God now caused the world to be made out of this mixed material. It was made by the " living spirit," in order that the unmixed and imprisoned material of light, which is called by the Latin writers Jesus patibilis, might be separated by degrees, and the old boundaries restored. This recapturing of the material of light was effected by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who inhabit respectively the sun and moon and the air, while the demon and evil spirits are fettered to the stars. Adam, the progenitor of the human race, was created after the image of the primitive man. Every man has two souls, one of light, the other of darkness; and it is his mission to subject the latter to the former, uniting with his soul of light some of the material of light imprisoned in certain plants, and so fitting it for return to the kingdom of light. The demon long led men astray by the false religions of Judaism and heathenism ; but at length Christ descended from the sun, assumed a bodily appearance, and taught true worship. He was not fully under- stood even by his apostles; still less by their successors, whom Manes contemptuously calls Galileans. Hence Christ promised the Para- clete, who appeared in Manes. The Manichae- ans therefore rejected wholly the Old Testa- ment, and partially the New. They appealed to apocryphal writings, and especially to the writings of Manes, which alone they acknowl- edged as authoritative. The spirit of their