Abstract
As the editors of the volume note in their introductory remarks, while much attention has been lavished on the Dead Sea Scrolls and also to a lesser extent on the Nag Hammadi Codices, the Coptic Manichaean Codices of the Medinet Madi Library remain relatively unknown. These codices first appeared on the antiquities market in 1929, and the conference held at the Chester Beatty Library in October 2019 not only marked that ninetieth anniversary, but the published papers presents a progress report on the work towards the publication of these codices.
The five chapters that form the first part of the volume, ‘Reports on Editorial Work on the Medinet Madi Library,’ offer readers an overview of the editorial work in publishing the editio princeps of several of the key texts in this ancient collection of Coptic writings. The editors observe the consensus that these texts were first composed in Syriac prior to being brought to Egypt where they were translated into Coptic. Furthermore, they argue that these texts, ‘must all be dated to the time of Mani himself or that of the first generations of disciples and believers who had flourished in Sasanian Mesopotamia’ (p. 2). The first two chapters focus upon the Synaxeis codex. Here Wolf-Peter Funk discussed his work that resulted in the first English translation of the Synaxeis, based on a careful examination of the codicological ordering of the surviving leaves. In the following chapter, Paul Mirecki suggests that the Synaxeis codex may have contained two texts. This possibility is argued on the basis of the removal of various damaged leaves from the codex. Moreover, Mirecki notes that the placement of several titles in the work reflect different formulae, which in turn suggests the presence of two separate texts (pp. 15-23). Chapter 3, by Paul Dilley, updates readers on the progress towards publication of the Chester Beatty Kephalaia codex. This is ‘a large papyrus codex, likely consisting originally of 496 pages in 31 quires, which holds a great deal of new and fascinating information for the history of religions in the Late Antique Mediterranean and Iranian regions’ (p. 24). Chapter four discusses the remains Epistles codex (P.Berol. Inv. 15998). Here Iain Gardner recounts how much of the extensive codex was lost and presumed destroyed toward the end of the Second World War. He outlines the extant material and discusses the insights contained in these remaining epistolary texts. In the final chapter of this section, Siegfried G. Richter discusses, ‘The publication of Psalm Book Part 1, Plates 1 to 128’ (pp. 50-59). Together, these five chapters on the work in progress towards the publication of the Manichaean Codices of the Medinet Madi Library offer a rich insight into current and continuing research in relation to these fascinating literary texts.
The second part of the volume comprises ten chapters that draw various religious, sociological, historical, and textual insights concerning Manichaean studies on the basis of the Medinet Madi Library. These studies are wide-ranging in nature and consequently reflect the rich range of fresh understandings that can be derived from this hitherto understudied corpus of ancient Manichaean texts. No doubt, as the publication of these codices progresses and as the editio princeps become available to wider scholarship further new insights will emerge. In the meantime, on the basis of what is outlined in this fascinating volume it is already possible to appreciate several of the important insights that will emerge. This is a highly significant collection of essays, which marks significant progress towards a fuller understanding of the Manichean religion in a specific social context.