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5988 Aram 16 09 Lieu ARAM, 16 (2004) 129-140 S.N.C. LIEU 129 MANICHAEAN TERMS IN SYRIAC: SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THEIR TRANSMISSION AND TRANSFORMATION SAMUEL N. C. LIEU (Macquarie University – Sydney) INTRODUCTION Mani, according to Epiphanius, the heresiologist from Salamis in Cyprus was a child-slave of a merchant who traded in strange ideas as well as exotica by the name of Scythianus. Upon the death of his master, he was manumitted by his widow and he inherited from her a number of books which once be- longed to his master with the following titles: (1) The Book of the Mysteries, (2) The Book of Summaries (kephalaia), (3) The Gospel, (4) The Treasures.1 Later on, interestingly, Epiphanius mentions a “lesser Treasures” which might have been a summary of the larger work.2 Moreover, Epiphanius also tells us that one of the books is composed of <twenty-two> sections to match the twenty-two letters of the Syriac alphabet, as most Persians used the Syriac let- ters as well as the Persian, and that the Syrians were proud of the antiquity of their letters especially among the Palmyrenes.3 This information, surprisingly, is commonly ignored by Manichaean scholars, even more so in view of our knowledge of genuine Manichaean texts from Central Asia many of which are written in an Estrangela script which exhibits some resemblance with the Palmyrene cursive, though not with the better known monumental version of the Palmyrene script. According to the Fihrist of al-Nadim, still our most im- portant single source on Manichaeism in Arabic: Mani wrote seven books, one in Farsi (i.e. Persian) and six in Syriac, the language of Syria. Among them are (1) The Book of Secrets (i.e. The Book of Mysteries), which contains [a number of] chapters, [including] ‘An account of the Daysaniyya (i.e. the followers of BardaiÒan of Edessa)', ‘The testimony of Yastasif on the Beloved', ‘The testimony of… about himself given to Ya‘qub', ‘The son of the widow' (who according to Mani was the anointed and crucified one, crucified by the Jews), ‘The testimony of Jesus about himself as given in Judea', ‘The commencement of the testimony of al-Yamin as given after his vic- tory', ‘The seven spirits', ‘The discourse on the four transient spirits', ‘Laughter', ‘The testimony of Adam regarding Jesus', ‘The fall from religion', ‘The discourse of the DayÒaniyya on the soul and the body', ‘Refutation of the DayÒanites on the soul of life', ‘The three trenches', ‘The preservation of the World', ‘The three 1 Epiphanius, Panarion LXVI,2,9, p. 18,12-13, ed. Holl, GCS. 2 Ibid. LXVI,13,6, p. 35,10. 3 Ibid. LXVI,13,4-5, p. 35,2-6. 130 MANICHAEAN TERMS IN SYRIAC days', ‘The prophets', [and] ‘The resurrection'. This is what is contained in The Book of Secrets. [Then there are] (2) The Book of Giants, containing…; (3) The Duties of the Hearers, [with] the chapter ‘The duties of the Elect'; (4) The Book of al-Saburaqan, containing the chapters ‘The dissolution of the Hearers', ‘The dissolution of the Elect', and ‘The dissolution of life'; (5) The Book of Living (= Thesaurus), containing…; and (6) The Book of Pragmatea, containing…(7)… The Epistles of Mani, and also of his immediate successors… {this is followed by a list of titles of the epistles themselves}4 Subsequent discoveries of Manichaean texts have shown that the Sabuh- ragan which was written in Middle Persian, was not part of the canon but an extra-canonical work though it enjoyed the highest status in the Manichaean communities in the East. The entire canon therefore was probably first written in Syriac. Given the acknowledged importance of Syriac as Mani’s native lan- guage and one in which the canon is composed, it is extraordinary that so little of genuine Manichaean texts in Syriac has survived. In terms of directly trans- mitted Manichaean texts in Syriac and in the Manichaean Palmyrene script, we possess only a frew fragments from Oxyrhynchus5 and a small number of bi- lingual (Syriac-Coptic) word-lists from Kellis6 plus the famous cachet of Mani and two of his disciples now in the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.7 It is fortunate for Manichaean scholarship that before the end of the ninteenth century, another important textual discovery was made by the Se- mitic scholar Pognon of the anti-heretical catalogue of Theodore bar Konai (hereafter referred to in references as TbK.), Nestorian Bishop of Kashkar (near al-WaÒit) in Iraq, which also cites extensively from a Manichaean source in Syriac – a language akin to Mani’s own dialect of Aramaic – on cosmo- gony.8 The material from Theodore’s mimra on Manichaean cosmogony was cited in extenso with extensive annotation by Cumont and Kugener. The latter also made available, for the first time, citations from another Manichaean text on cosmogony preserved in the Syriac translation of one of the homilies of Severus, the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch (c. A.D. 465-538).9 Both these sources are much cited and studied by modern scholars. However, because 4 Kitab al-Fihrist, edd. G. Flügel and I. Roediger (Leipzig, 1871) 336; trans. M. Laffan (unpubl.). See also trans. B. Dodge, The Fihrist of an-Nadim (New York, 1970) ii, 797-99. 5 Cf. D. S. Margoliouth, ‘Notes on Syriac papyrus fragments from Oxyrhynchus’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 2 (1915) 214-16 and W. E. Crum, ‘A “Manichaean” Fragment from Egypt’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1919) 207-8. See improved edition in F. C. Burkitt, The Religion of the Manichees (Cambridge, 1925) 111-19. 6 T. Kell. Syriac/Coptic 1 and 2. See revised edition and translation by Majella Franzmann ap. Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis, Vol. 1, ed. I. M. F. Gardner, Anthony Alcock and Wolf-Peter Funk, Dakhleh Oasis Project: Monograph 9 (Oxford, 1999) 344-64. 7 P. de Menasce and A. Guillou, ‘Un cachet manichéen de la Bibliothèque Nationale’ Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 131 (1946) 81-84. 8 H. Pognon, Inscriptions mandaïtes des coupes de Khouabir, II (Paris, 1899) tr. 184-93. 9 F. Cumont and M. Kugener, Recherches sur le Manichéisme, II (Bruxelles, 1912) 89-150. S.N.C. LIEU 131 Severus was translated from Greek, the Syriac could not be used for the study of Manichaean terms in Syiac. On the other hand an invaluable source of cita- tions from genuine Manichaean works is the Prose Refutations of Ephrem against Mani, Marcion and BardaiÒan and the Manichaean citation from this important work has now been collected together by Professor John Reeves.10 As the majority of Manichaean technici termini could be traced back to their Syriac roots, any serious terminological study of Manichaeism must begin with the Syriac version(s) of the terms even though our sources are, as we have seen, very insubstantial in comparison to those in Middle Iranian and in Coptic or even Chinese. Nevertheless the citations from both Theodor bar Konai and from Ephrem are mainly on cosmogony and the former in particular are rich in technici termini. It will be impossible in the course of a lecture to survey the names of the entire Manichaean pantheon in Syriac but some do stand out as terms of particular interest, especially in the manner in which they are understood and transmitted in Manichaean texts of other languages. I will follow as far as possible the order in which the names of the deities and technici termini appear in the excerpts from Theodor bar Konai. For the pur- pose of this paper, I will limit myself only to a selection of the most significant names and terms from the first emanation and from the descriptions of the Kingdom of Light and of the Kingdom of Darkness. THE KINGDOM OF LIGHT THE FATHER OF GREATNESS Syriac: “Father of Greatness” TbK., p. 313.15. The term is translated directly into Coptic piwt nte tMNtnaù “The Father of Great- ness”, Keph., p. 34,21, Ps.-Bk, p. 191,13.11 The form is found also in Greek polemical texts: ö pat®r toÕ megéqouv (Capita VII c. Manich. CCSG 1 (1977) 3.60, see also later and better known version known as the Long Abju- ration Formula PG 1.1461C.14 = Adam, Texte, Doc. 64.12, p. 97). The term is found translated into Middle Iranian: Pe. pyd ¨y wzrgyÌ “Father of Great- ness”,12 Pth. pydr wzrgyf† “Father of Greatness” (M33 R II (h 80-81), MM iii, p. 877, Rd. §bd.1, p. 111).13 The form of the term in the polemical Acta 10 J. Reeves, ‘Manichaean Citations from the Prose Refutations of Ephrem’, in P. Mirecki and J. BeDuhn (edd.), Emerging from Darkness, Studies in the Recovery of Manichaean Sources (Leiden, 1997) 217-88. 11 Cf. P. van Lindt, The Names of Manichaean Mythological Figures: A Comparative Study on Terminology in the Coptic Sources, Studies in Oriental Religions, 26 (Wiesbaden, 1992) 2/1, pp. 1-16 [hereafter Figures]. 12 Cf. W. Sundermann, ‘Namen von Göttern und Menschen in iranischen Versionen des manichäischen Mythos’, Altorientalische Forschungen VI (Berlin, 1979) 2/1, p. 99 [hereafter ‘Namen’]. 13 Cf. ‘Namen’ 2/1, p. 99. 132 MANICHAEAN TERMS IN SYRIAC Archelai (Greek: ö âgaqòv patßr “The Good Father” [Hegem.], Arch. Gr. 7,3, p. 10.4 = Epiph., Panarion, LXVI,25,5, p. 54.9; Latin: bonus pater “The Good Father”, Arch. Lat., 7,3, p. 10,19, also benignus pater “The Kindly Fa- ther”, 8,2, p. p. 11,24) curiously comes close to the Sogdian term prytˆtcn ˆptr- “Loving Father” found in the newly published letters from Bezeklik.14 In Mid- dle Iranian texts he also took the Zoroastrian name of (God) Zurvan (Pe.
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