Abstract
It was during the first five centuries of the Common Era that the major religions of West Asia defined themselves and began to take the shape in which we recognize them today. To a large extent this was a process resulting from mutual antagonisms: in the Eastern Roman world between Christians and Jews and among proponents of diverse interpretations of Christianity, and in the Iranian sphere, between the caretakers of traditional Ahura Mazda-based worship and the emergent threat of Manichaeism.
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Notes
Quoted in S.N.C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China, 2nd ed., Tübingen: Mohr, 1992, p. 98.
Chabot, Synodicon Orientale, p. 302, quoted in Samuel H. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 1, San Francisco: Harper, 1992, p. 197.
Alphonse Mingana, The Early Spread of Christianity in Central Asia and the Far East: A New Document, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925, pp. 7–8.
See, for example, Jacob Neusner, Aphrahat and Judaism: The Christian-Jewish Argument in Fourth-Century Iran, Leiden: Brill, 1971,
and A.V. Williams, “Zoroastrians and Christians in Sasanian Iran,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78/3 (1996), pp. 37–53.
Emile Benveniste, “Le Vocabulaire chrétien dans les langues d’Asie centrale,” L’Oriente Cristiano nella Storia della Civiltà, Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1964, pp. 85–91.
Nicholas Sims-Williams, “Syro-Sogdica I: An Anonymous Homily on the Three Periods of Solitary Life,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 47 (1981), p. 441.
J.A. Boyle, “Turkish and Mongol Shamanism in the Middle Ages,” Folklore 83 (1972), pp. 184–193.
See Edward Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962.
Martin Palmer, The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity, New York: Ballantine, 2001, p. 236. The fact that the latter two are lumped into one category suggests that Christianity was still identified with Iran.
Ibn Nadim, Fihrist of al-Nadim: A Tenth Century Survey of Muslim Culture (Fihrist al-’ulūm), tr. Bayard Dodge, 2 vols., New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, pp. 836–837.
W.B. Henning, “Mani’s Last Journey,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 10 (1939–1942), pp. 941–953.
Jacob Neusner, “Rabbi and Magus in Third-century Sasanian Babylonia,” History of Religions 6 (1966), p. 173.
Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road, San Francisco: Harper, 1993, p. 314. This story is similar to one in the apocryphal Acts of John, and reappears in Islamic guise in a tenth-century work by Ibn Babai.
See, for example, the sixteenth-century treatise by Qazi Ahmad Qumi, Gulistān-i hunar, tr. V. Minorsky, Calligraphers and Painters, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1959, pp. 177–180.
Samuel N.C. Lieu, Manichaeism in Central Asia and China, Leiden: Brill, 1998, p. 138.
Jason David BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body: In Discipline and Ritual, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
E. Chavannes and P. Pelliot, Un traité Manichéen retrouvé en Chine, Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1913, p. 154.
Colin Mackerras, “The Uighurs,” in Denis Sinor, ed., Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 331.
Xijuan Zhou, “The Transformations of Manichaeism under the Khocho Uyghurs,” Journal of Central Asian Studies 5/2 (2001), pp. 2–15.
Xijuan Zhou, “Manichaean Monasteries under the Khocho Uyghurs,” International Journal of Central Asian Studies 8/1 (2003), pp. 129–146. Zhou points out that in engaging in such economic activity, not to mention possessing livestock, horses, and servants, the Manichaeans of Qocho “seem to have broken almost all the rules” for monks laid down in Mani’s Compendium (p. 143).
Mary Boyce, A Reader in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian, Leiden: Brill, 1975, p. 139; cf. Lotus Sutra, Chapter 24.
Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, “Christians, Buddhists and Manichaeans in Medieval Central Asia,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 1 (1981), p. 49.
Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, “Jesus’ Entry into Parinirvana: Manichaean Identity in Buddhist Central Asia,” Numen 33 (1986), p. 225.
Larry Clark, “The Manichaean Turkic Pothi-Book,” Altorientalische Forschungen 9 (1982), pp. 189–190; cf. Lieu, Manichaeism in Central Asia and China, pp. 46–47.
D.M. Lang, “St. Euthymius the Georgian and the Barlaam and Ioasaph Romance,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 17 (1977), pp. 306–325; Widengren, “Mani,” p. 91.
P.Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, 2nd ed., Tokyo: Academy of Oriental Culture, 1951, p. 26.
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© 2010 Richard Foltz
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Foltz, R. (2010). A Refuge of Heretics: Nestorians and Manichaeans on the Silk Road. In: Religions of the Silk Road. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230109100_4
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