Hello and welcome to Literature and History, Episode 84, Maniquism.

In this program we will discuss Maniquism, an ancient religion that began in modern-day

Iraq and Iran in the early 200 CE, spread westward throughout the Roman Empire and eastward

deep into Central Asia and beyond.

The Maniquians, like their contemporaries the Nostics, worshipped Jesus and an unseen

realm of manifold angels, believing that the material world was a corrupted and false

shadow of a celestial world above.

But the Maniquians, having their roots in ancient Persian territories, also incorporated

Zoroastrian and Buddhist doctrines into their theology.

From Zoroastrianism, the Maniquians brought the idea of a dark God who had existed from

the beginning of time, just as the light God had, the nemesis of an otherwise-beneficent

creator, and of all of the cosmos locked into a general battle between the forces of

good and the forces of evil.

From Buddhism, Maniquians may have absorbed key doctrines about reincarnation and mindful

living on Earth.

And while Maniquism is certainly a syncretic ideology, a pie chart made of Christianity,

Nosticism and Greek philosophy, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, it wasn't something that just

came together organically.

Zoroastrianism was invented and promoted by the prophet Mani, a figure who rose to

prominence during the first decades of the Sasanian Persian Empire, the architect and

chief evangelist of his own religion, whom his followers regarded as the final and true

prophet of God.

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