Manichaeism And The Cosmogony

Roughly 1600 years before the inception of Manichaeism, the prophet Zarathustra began professing his holy words that would later lay the ground for the establishment of Zoroastrianism. Zarathustra’s concept of duality, which is the existence of two ultimate forces, an ultimate good and an ultimate evil, would later influence Manichaeism. The central figure of Manichaeism is Mani, a Syrian who preached of a dual deistical system of faith similar to Zoroastrianism. However, Manichaeism, and Mani himself, tied together Judeo-Christian ideologies along with dualistic Zoroastrian ideologies . The religion’s dogmatic practices, philosophical perspectives, and poetic mythologies exemplify the complexity of the culture encompassed by Manichaeism. The professions of Mani, some of which could be considered heretical by several of the very religions Mani draws from, speak of conflicted ideals, a strict spiritual detachment from the “material” world, a
The cosmogony correlates intimately with the Christian cosmogony. The description of how certain aspects of earth came to be are described differently, but maintain similar occurrences, such as the creation of vegetation and fauna, bodies of water, and light. This may show the agriculture differences between the cultures of each script. At the time the Christian cosmogony, which is also the same text for the Judaic religion, was written, less was known about the physical world. Mani, who existed and wrote The Shabuhragan years later, had a different concept of the surrounding physical world, and therefore might have described and placed the order of events with an agricultural and scientific subjective state of mind. The following quotations illustrate Mani’s hypothesized subjectivity. The scientific knowledge is quite evident in the