"Manichaeism (/ˌmænɪˈkiːɪzəm/; in New Persian آیین مانی Āyīn Mānī; Chinese: 摩尼教; pinyin: Móní Jiào) was a major religion founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian prophet Mani (c. 216–274 AD), in the Sasanian Empire.
Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian religious movements and Gnosticism. It revered Mani as the final prophet after Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha, and Jesus.
Manichaeism was quickly successful and spread far through the Aramaic-speaking regions. It thrived between the third and seventh centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world. Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. It was briefly the main rival to Christianity before the spread of Islam in the competition to replace classical paganism. Beginning with the pagan emperor Diocletian, Manichaeism was persecuted by the Roman state and was eventually stamped out of the Roman Empire. Manichaeism survived longer in the east than in the west, and it appears to have finally faded away after the 14th century in south China, contemporary to the decline of the Church of the East in Ming China. Even still, there is a growing corpus of evidence that some form of Manichaeism may persist in some areas of China, though these reports are often contradictory and more research is needed before definitively stating that Manichaeism is extant to the modern day. While most of Manichaeism's original writings have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived.
An adherent of Manichaeism was called a Manichaean or Manichean, or Manichee, especially in older sources."
(from Wikipedia)
Information about the author of the note "The Religion of the Manichees", available below, is provided here. This may help readers to better evaluate the contents of the book.
"Francis Crawford Burkitt FBA (3 September 1864 – 11 May 1935) was an English theologian. As Norris Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge from 1905 until shortly before his death, Burkitt was a sturdy critic of the notion of a distinct "Caesarean Text" of the New Testament put forward by B. H. Streeter and others.
Burkitt was educated at Harrow School. He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1886: he was the 28th Wrangler that year. He then undertook the theological tripos and gained first-class honours in 1888. He received his Master of Arts (MA) in 1890. He was awarded both Bachelor of Divinity (BD) and Doctor of Divinity (DD) degrees in 1915.
From 1903 to 1905, he was a lecturer in palaeography at the University of Cambridge. He was Norrisian Professor of Divinity from 1905 to 1934, and then Norris–Hulse Professor of Divinity from 1934 until his death in 1935. In 1926, he was additionally elected a professorial fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Burkitt accompanied Robert Bensly, James Rendel Harris, and sisters Agnes and Margaret Smith on the 1893 expedition to Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt to examine a Syriac palimpsest of the Gospels discovered there the previous year by the sisters. Burkitt played an important role in deciphering the text and in subsequent publication of the team's findings.
Burkitt was a noted figure at Cambridge in 1912–1935 for his chairmanship of the Cambridge New Testament Seminar, attended by other prominent theologians, including Robert Newton Flew, who left an account of it in an obituary for Burkitt in the Proceedings of the British Academy. He was also president of the Cambridge Philological Society from 1904 to 1905."
(from Wikipedia)
Information about the author of the book "Researches in Manichaeism", available below, is provided here. This may help readers to better evaluate the contents of the book.
"Abraham Valentine Williams Jackson, L.H.D., Ph.D., LL.D. (February 9, 1862 – August 8, 1937) was an American specialist on Indo-European languages.
He was born in New York City on February 9, 1862. He graduated from Columbia University in 1883. He was a fellow in letters there from 1883 to 1886, and an instructor in Anglo-Saxon and the Iranian languages from 1887 to 1890. After study at the University of Halle from 1887 to 1889 he became an adjunct professor of English language and literature. In 1895, he was appointed public lecturer and also appointed to the newly founded professorship of Indo-Iranian languages at Columbia University, where he remained until 1935.
He was well known as a lecturer on English literature and the Orient. In 1901, during a visit to India and Ceylon, he received special attention from the Parsees, who presented to Columbia a valuable collection of Zoroastrian manuscripts in recognition of the instruction there given by him in their ancient texts. In 1903 he made a second journey to the Orient, this time visiting Iran. He also visited Central Asia sometime before 1918.
Jackson's grammar of Avestan, the language used in the Zoroastrian scriptures, is still considered to be the seminal work on the topic. Jackson was one of the directors of the American Oriental Society.
He died on August 8, 1937."
(from Wikipedia)