Prophet
Mani suffered more than Jesus.
He was flayed alive!
His
religion was once the biggest religion in the world.
He
was flayed alive!
The
founder of Manichaeism, Mani, is believed to have been the son of
Parthian
royalty,
born in the year 216 in a village near Ctesiphon, by the Tigris
River. As a young boy, Mani might have been taken by his father into
a cult called the "Practitioners of Ablutions" – a cult
that believed in washing
away
sins in baptisms. Or the group may have been the Elkesaites, a
Jewish-Christian sect that arose the year 100, a group believed to
have celebrated the Sabbath, practiced vegetarianism and believed in
circumcision, a group that condemned the
apostle
Paul and criticized what it called falsehoods in Christian scripture
and Mosaic law – a sect that would die out around the year 400.
In
the year 228, four years after Ardashir took power, when Mani was
about thirteen years-old, a Parthian prince from the former Seleucid
capital, Seleucia (a few miles from Ctesiphon), rose up against
Ardashir but was cut down. It was said that just after this, Mani had
a revelation from God, a command to leave the religious community to
which he belonged. God, it was said, told him that he did not belong
in that community and told him to keep aloof from impurity and
because of his youth that he should avoid proclaiming his revelation
publicly.
Beliefs
from
the
variety of religious cults appeared in a new creed that Mani
developed.
By
the time Mani grew into adulthood he saw commonality in various
religions. He was trying to put the various ideas into a
comprehensive whole, and he saw himself as having a universal
message. When he was around twenty-five,
he
claimed that he was obeying an order from heaven to abandon passions
and spread the truth. He consciously imitated the apostle Paul and
began traveling about in Ardashir's empire. He claimed that he
was
the successor to prophets such as Zarathustra and Jesus, and he
claimed that he was the helper promised by Jesus – as
described in John 14:16. He claimed
that
he was the final prophet and that other religions were limited in
their effectiveness because they were local and taught in one
language to one people. Mani hoped that his message would be heard in
all languages and in all countries.
Mani
traveled to Parthia – a part of Ardashir's empire – to become a
stronghold of his faith and a base for missionary expeditions into
Central Asia. He went to northwestern India, where Ardashir's son was
leading an army and extending Ardashir's rule. And while there,
Mani strengthened the Buddhist element in his faith. He learned
Buddhist organization and propaganda techniques and proclaimed that
he was successor to the Buddha.
Mani
sent disciples to Egypt, and he traveled as far west as the border of
the Roman Empire to strongholds of Mithra worship, where he tried to
associate himself with Mithraism. Mithraism – believed to have
originated among the Hindus – had been popular among the Parthians
and had grown in Mesopotamia, Armenia and northwestern Persia during
the first centuries BCE and CE. Mani had heated discussions with
Mithraic priests, and he strengthened the Mithraism in his doctrine.
Mani
argued also with Zoroastrians, and he compared his beliefs with
theirs. In Media, where Zurvanite Zoroastrians were strongest, Mani
attempted to reform their movement.
Manichaean Doctrine and Organization
Mani
believed that his views were the most advanced and the sum and
perfection
of
all religious wisdom. With worldly knowledge having become a greater
part
of
religious thought, this included positions on the origins of the
universe, anthropology, history, botany, zoology and geography. Like
the Zoroastrians and Zurvanites his movement had an encyclopedia. He
proclaimed belief in the
Buddha
and acknowledged the god of the Zoroastrians. He proclaimed belief in
Jesus Christ and that he had taken the best of the New Testament and
cleansed
it
of accretions and falsifications. And, like the Christian Marcion, he
rejected Judaism's Old Testament.
Mani
saw himself in agreement with the Zoroastrian belief that the
universe
was
in a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. But
where Zoroastrians saw their god Mazda as stronger than the force of
evil, Mani held
that
the forces of evil dominated the world and that redemption – the
triumph
of
good – would come only with a determined struggle by a select group
of devotees.
Mani
saw the eating of flesh as the first great sin of Adam and Eve
(Gehmurd
and
Murdiyanag).
And he believed that redemption for humanity would come by
abstaining from eating meat and by fasting. He taught that someday a
final
purification would occur, that the earth would be destroyed, that the
damned would collect into a cosmic clod of dirty matter and that the
kingdom
of
goodness and light would separate from the kingdom of evil and
darkness.
This,
he claimed, would come as the result of people rejecting evil.
Mani
organized his followers into three groups. The first group was called
The Elect. The Elect lived ascetically and devoted themselves to
redemption:
to
separating the kingdoms of light and darkness by living as purely as
possible,
living
ascetically, and by fasting on Sundays and Mondays. They ate mainly
fruit and drank fruit juice, believing that fruit contained many
light particles,
that
water was not heavenly like fruit juice because it was simply matter.
In the pursuit of redemption the Elect was forbidden to eat or to
uproot plants,
to
cut down any tree or kill any animal, and, like Buddhist monks, the
Elect was obliged to follow complete sexual abstinence and marriage.
Mani's
second group was a compromise or accommodation with worldly
realities. This
group
was called the Hearers. They followed Mani's teachings but they
also
did what was forbidden for the Elect: they worked in the making
of
food, and they had sex and created children. They furnished the elect
with
food
and drink, led a normal life, even eating meat, but they were obliged
to
fast
on Sunday, and like the Elect they observed an entire month of
fasting prior to the principal feast of the year: the Bema festival.
The
third group of Mani's followers was necessary in making Manichaeism a
popular
religion. They were not obliged to adhere to any religious
practices.
They merely had to believe.
Shapur
had doubts about his creed, however, and Mani was unable to address
Shapur's remarks concerning the faith of Zoroaster. The enraged king
had Mani flayed and his skin stuffed with straw so that no one would
be tempted to follow his teachings.
