Frontiers of Faith: The Christian Encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies)

190 Pages·2007·0.86 MB·English

by  Jason BeDuhn

Frontiers of Faith
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Nag Hammadi and
Manichaean Studies
Editors
Stephen Emmel & Johannes van Oort
Editorial Board
H. W. Attridge – R. Cameron – W.-P. Funk
I. Gardner – C. W. Hedrick – S. N. C. Lieu
P. Nagel – D. M. Parrott – B. A. Pearson
S. G. Richter – J. M. Robinson – K. Rudolph
M. Scopello – W. Sundermann – G. Wurst
VOLUME 61
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Frontiers of Faith
The Christian Encounter with
Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus
Edited by
Jason BeDuhn & Paul Mirecki
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2007
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISSN 0929-2470
ISBN 978 90 04 16180 1
Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishers,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
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Fees are subject to change.
printed in the netherlands
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CONTENTS
Preface ......................................................................................... vii
1. Placing the Acts of Archelaus ................................................. 1
Jason BeDuhn and Paul Mirecki
2. Hesitant and Ignorant: The Portrayal of Mani in the Acts
of Archelaus ............................................................................ 23
J. Kevin Coyle
3. Mani’s Letter to Marcellus: Fact and Fiction in the
Acta Archelai Revisited ........................................................... 33
Iain Gardner
4. Narrative Options in Manichaean Eschatology ................. 49
Tudor Andrei Sala
5. A Clash of Portraits: Contrasts between Archelaus and
Mani in the Acta Archelai ...................................................... 67
J. Kevin Coyle
6. A War of Words: Intertextuality and the Struggle over the
Legacy of Christ in the Acta Archelai ................................... 77
Jason BeDuhn
7. The Light and the Darkness: The Two Natures, Free Will,
and the Scriptural Evidence in the Acta Archelai ................. 103
Kevin Kaatz
8. “Et sicut rex . . .”: Competing Ideas of Kingship in the
Anti-Manichaean Acta Archelai ............................................. 119
Timothy Pettipiece
9. Biblical Antitheses, Adda, and the Acts of Archelaus ............ 131
Jason BeDuhn
10. Acta Archelai 63.5–6 and PGM I. 42–195: A Rooftop Ritual
for Acquiring an Aerial Spirit Assistant .............................. 149
Paul Mirecki
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vi contents
11. Basilides’ ‘Barbarian Cosmogony’: Its Nature and
Function within the Acta Archelai ......................................... 157
Byard Bennett
Bibliography ................................................................................ 167
Table of Biblical References ...................................................... 173
General Index ............................................................................. 175
Index of Modern Authors .......................................................... 177
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PREFACE
This volume contains the results of (cid:2) ve years of closely coordinated work
of eight scholars within the Society of Biblical Literature’s Manichaean
Studies Seminar. The seminar’s earlier incarnation as the Manichaean
Studies Group contributed two previous volumes to the Brill NHMS
series: Emerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean Sources
(NHMS 43, 1997) and The Light and the Darkness: Studies in Manichaeism
and its World (NHMS 50, 2001). Both of these volumes were edited by
the same editorial team that is responsible for the present volume, and
we are grateful to Brill Publishers and the editors of the renowned
NHMS series for their continued support of our scholarly enterprise.
In particular, we would like to thank Johannes van Oort for his diligent
and patient oversight of the present volume.
The new seminar’s commitment to closer collaboration on a single
project has yielded a more integrated volume in comparison to its pre-
decessors. Taking as their common subject the key early Christian anti-
Manichaean work, the Acts of Archelaus (Acta Archelai), the contributors
offered their initial analyses and tentative conclusions at the seminar’s
meetings, and revised their papers in light of the ideas and criticisms
as well as the other contributions of the members of the seminar. The
result of this work is a carefully interwoven exploration of what the AA
has to tell us about inter-religious contact, con(cid:3) ict, and comprehen-
sion at a crucial moment in religious history. The contributors to this
volume have produced what amounts to a detailed commentary on the
text, ordered in accordance with the sequence of the underlying text
of the Acts that supplies the chief focus of each chapter. With various
approaches and concerns, each chapter analyzes the AA’s structure and
strategy, identi(cid:2) es its possible sources, and situates it geographically and
temporally at the point of encounter between the Christian West and the
Manichaean East in the early fourth century ce.
The impetus for this project came from the publication of a new
English translation by Mark Vermes with commentary and notes
by Samuel Lieu with the assistance of Kevin Kaatz in the Brepols
Manichaean Studies series in 2001, and we are grateful to those scholars
for the stimulus of their accomplishment. Yet to date no book-length
study of the AA has ever appeared, and Frontiers of Faith was conceived in
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viii preface
the immediate aftermath of the translation’s publication as a concerted
effort to (cid:2) ll that gap. The research it contains not only identi(cid:2) es hitherto
unsuspected authentic Manichaean materials incorporated into the AA,
but also sheds new light on the dynamics of Manichaean penetration
into the Christian West and the polemical strategies unleashed in an
attempt to defend against it. In the process, Frontiers of Faith calls atten-
tion to and challenges the degree to which modern interpretations of the
Christian-Manichaean encounter largely buy into the AA’s construction
of this historical moment; it investigates the potential of the sources
buried within the AA to overturn that construct and to reveal the level
(cid:2) eld of competition on which the two religions met and contested the
claim to be the true Christian faith.
Jason BeDuhn and Paul Mirecki
Flagstaff, January 2007
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CHAPTER ONE
PLACING THE ACTS OF ARCHELAUS
Jason BeDuhn and Paul Mirecki
Both Christianity and Manichaeism emerged from ethnically, socially,
and politically marginalized populations of West Asia. The Semitic
peoples of the region, with their long history of substantial cultural
unity despite mostly ephemeral political divisions, found themselves
subjugated by successive waves of Indo-European conquerors emanat-
ing from the East and West. The mutual in(cid:2) uence of these originally
distinct cultural realms was profound, as each side of this interchange
adopted and accommodated to whatever seemed advantageous and
superior in the other. At (cid:3) rst, the northern Semitic (Aramaic) region
was incorporated substantially intact within the successive Indo-
European hegemonies. But with the expulsion of Seleucid presence
from Babylonia by the Parthians in the second century bce, the Semitic
world found itself politically bifurcated for the (cid:3) rst time in history.
The brunt of the battle over West Asia that ensued for the next seven
hundred years was borne by the local Semitic populations, even as
their respective political masters systematically penetrated the region
with a colonial presence intended to shore up their rival claims to
power. In this way, West Asia became a convergence zone of linguis-
tic, cultural, social, and civic traditions—a rich breeding ground of
innovation.
The Christian movement initially erupted at the edge of the west-
ern, Roman side of the frontier. Penetrating into the cosmopolitan
environment of the empire’s cities, Christianity entered into a Hel-
lenistic milieu that played a large role in de(cid:3) ning its modes of expres-
sion, that is, its context of meaning, its terminology, and its forms
of practice. Birger Pearson has captured these circumstances well in
stating that, “In its expansion throughout the Mediterranean world,
the Christian religion takes on the shape of other ‘diaspora’ religions
of the Greco-Roman period, religions in which native elements are
either lost or reinterpreted . . . and Greek elements taken on. In other
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