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Let us imagine that the Catholic Church was led by twelve holy “teachers”.

They would preside over the "elect" (electi), who are characterized by the fact that they abstain from marriage, sex, and the consumption of meat and wine.

In order to make life possible for this high circle at all, there would be an abundance of "listeners" (auditores) around them.

Their primary duty is to provide the elect with their alms.

While the electi would have a good chance of escaping into the world of light after a penitent life between "blood, bile, winds, feces and the impurity of the body", their listeners should comfort themselves with the certainty that they have followed their lower destiny.

That vision almost came true.

It was designed by a Persian named Mani, who around 240 AD saw himself called as the “Apostle of Light” and founded a religion that not only challenged the Christian Church of the Roman Empire, but also the priesthood of his greatest opponent, the Persian empire of the Sassanids.

There they followed the teachings of the famous sage Zoroaster (Zarathustra).

No less a person than the great church father Augustine was an auditor of the Mani religion for several years.

If he had not broken with it, but had put all his strength into spreading it, perhaps the Manichaeans would be the largest religious community on the planet today.

Church father Augustine was Bishop of Hippo (354-430)

Source: picture alliance / CPA Media Co.

When Mani was born in Ctesiphon on the Tigris, probably on April 14, 216, 1,800 years ago, the world was facing a turning point.

Shortly afterwards, Rome was to be shaken to its foundations by the usurpations of various generals, and the Parthian Empire in Mesopotamia and Iran became a victim of the rising Sassanids.

Riots, war, hunger and violence unsettled people.

Religions that offered them redemption from the earthly madhouse found great popularity.

One of them was Christianity, the other the teaching of Mani.

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Mani was a child of both worlds.

In Ctesiphon, where the great kings of the Parthians and later the Sassanids resided, he grew up in a Jewish Christian Anabaptist sect.

At the same time he was strongly influenced by Zoroaster's dualistic worldview.

After that, the earth was created by an almighty God, who then turned away from it.

Instead, two personified principles, the good Ahura Mazda and the bad Ahriman, vied for the souls of men.

Ancient competitors of Christianity

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Only with the judgment of the Roman Pontius Pilate does the divine plan of salvation take its course - painting by Benedetto Caliari (1538-1598).

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images /

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Or as Mel Gibson portrayed it in his 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ".

Source: picture-alliance / KPA fee & / KPA

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Only with passion and death does Jesus bear witness to his message and thus establish Christianity.

It was to become a world religion within a few centuries.

Source: picture-alliance / dpa / dpaweb / dpa

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What if Pilate had decided differently?

The ancient gods of the Greeks could have continued to rule.

Source: picture-alliance / maxppp / picture-alliance / © Bianchetti / L

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The educated, on the other hand, clung to the ideas of many philosophers who had long seen the divine as a force.

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

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In the succession of Hellenistic kings like Antiochus IV, who called himself Epiphanes (the appearing god) ...

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images /

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... Rome's emperors had introduced a nationwide cult of their person.

Diocletian and his tetrarchs were venerated as Jupiter and Hercules.

Source: picture-alliance / Herve Champol / akg

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Helios, the sun god, was also followed by a growing community.

Some emperors declared his worship to be an imperial cult.

Source: picture-alliance / dpa / dpa

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Mithras from the Middle East was particularly popular with the legionaries.

Source: picture alliance / Arco Images G / Arco Images GmbH

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The mystery cults - here a representation from Pompeii - found numerous followers.

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images // akg

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Rome's rival, the world empire of the Persian Sassanids, followed the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra).

Source: picture-alliance / Mary Evans Pi / Mary Evans Picture Library

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The Prophet Mani (here a symbol of his teaching from Nepal) was also of Persian origin, whose dualistic beliefs fascinated many people.

Source: picture alliance / © Bruce Colem / © Bruce Coleman / Photoshot.

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And then there was Judaism.

The photo shows the liberal, picture-rich synagogue of Dura Europos.

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images /

At the age of twelve - not by roughly the same age at which Jesus is said to have discussed the meaning of God's words with the scribes - Mani wanted to have had his first vision: His “heavenly twin” brought him the message of his role as revealer prepare.

Twelve years later he separated from the Christian "sectarians", as he called them, and began to "call out a call to the world", as the Cologne Mani Codex says, in which a biography of the founder of the religion has been preserved .

Mani, who also mastered the world language Aramaic in addition to Persian, wrote seven books in which he expanded his teaching.

He proceeded differently from Jesus or Zoroaster.

The Berlin theologian and Gnosis expert Christoph Markschies explains the fascination that his teaching exercised on intellectuals like Augustine.

The religious founder Mani (216–176) on a fresco in the western Chinese city of Kocho

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

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Mani was very consciously interested in using elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, which had been carried by monks and missionaries from India to Central Asia, “the truth of knowledge that belongs to the Father, in the midst of religions and To make peoples visible ... in order to take what is his from everything ”.

This synthetic design challenged the followers of Jesus and Zoroaster to an unusual degree.

Because with his mission in the Orient, Mani always followed the established teachings in order to bring them into harmony with his mythical cosmos.

So he imagined the Christians as "apostles of Jesus Christ", which he however reduced to a messenger of God like Adam, Buddha or Zoroaster.

But only through him, he made it clear, will man be saved from the darkness of the world.

Because the world was by no means redeemed by Jesus' death.

Rather, the kingdom of darkness has declared war on the "father of light", which has led to a mixture of good and bad, preached Mani.

The goal of history is to dissolve this unholy connection that characterizes the world of the present and to restore the original state in which light and shadow were separated.

And each and every one of them.

The way there is knowledge (gnosis), combined with repentance and renunciation of the elements in which evil has unfolded: flesh, sex, drugs.

History of Gnosis

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The musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" - here Carl Anderson as Judas in the film version from 1973 - asks the central question: ...

Source: picture-alliance / Mary Evans Pi / Ronald Grant Archive / Mary Evan

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... what role does Judas play when Jesus is almighty?

Source: picture-alliance / Mary Evans Pi / Ronald Grant Archive / Mary Evan

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The musical thus takes up a theme that has preoccupied Christians since the death of the founder of their religion - presentation in Ste Chapelle, Paris.

Source: picture-alliance / Herve Champol / akg

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Early Christian theologians placed their faith in the school of thought founded by the Greek philosopher Plato (around 428-347).

Then there are ideas of the divine, which must be understood ... on the path to knowledge (gnosis).

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

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The Coptic "Gospel of Judas", which became known in 2006, is one of the numerous Gnostic versions to systematize this teaching.

Source: picture-alliance / dpa / dpaweb / National_geographic

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In the Orient, the gnosis was combined with the teachings of the ancient Persian founder of the religion Zoroaster (Zarathustra) - here a winged symbol of Ahura Mazda.

Source: picture alliance / united archiv / united archives / WHA

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According to Zoroaster, the good god Ahura Mazda is at odds with the evil Ahriman, who in the Judeo-Christian tradition became the devil - "Lucifer" according to Franz von Stuck.

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

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The Gnostics adopted this dualism and added a creator god, the demiurge.

In contrast to the Christian creator, as the medieval representation shows, this is by no means infallible and good.

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images / akg

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The Persian Mani finally created a Gnostic world religion in the 3rd century by trying to combine Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism.

In China s ... I received symbols from the Manichaeans, who even founded a kingdom there.

Source: picture alliance / Lonely Planet / Lonely Planet Images

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Even the church father Augustine (354-430) was temporarily part of Manichaeism.

Source: picture alliance / akg images

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The Scientology movement of today also has Gnostic traits.

Source: picture alliance / dpa / dpa-Zentralbild

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However, their stages of knowledge have nothing in common with Christianity.

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images // akg

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Mani's mission fell on extremely fertile ground.

Not only that numerous Christians, especially in Egypt and North Africa, turned to him.

Shapur I, the founder of the Sassanid Empire, called him to his court around 242 and granted him and his followers great privileges.

Mani thanked him with a book that was entirely dedicated to the great king.

But the success of the new religion soon attracted enemies.

In the Sassanid Empire, the Zoroastrian priestly elite opposed Mani.

A new great king, Bahram I, withdrew his favor.

Around the year 277 the "Apostle of Light" was thrown into prison, where he also died.

His followers stylized death as an execution on the cross, which once again points to the close ties to Christianity.

Around 400 Augustine formulated his criticism in the book "Contra Faustum manichaeum"

Source: picture-alliance / Herve Champol

In the west, the Manichaeans came into the focus of the emperor Diocletian, who had mastered the crisis of the empire with brutal means.

This also included a reform of the imperial cult, which presented the rulers as incarnations of the gods Jupiter and Hercules.

People of different faiths were persecuted as treason;

In addition to the Christians, it also affected Mani's followers.

Only in Central Asia, on the old routes of the Silk Road, were larger communities able to survive.

In 762, Mani's message even became a court religion in the Uighur Empire.

In the Christian world, a former disciple became the worst enemy.

After turning to Christianity, Augustine, as Bishop of Hippo, fought the Manicheans with all his might.

His arguments lasted well into the Middle Ages, when supposed heretics were quickly denigrated with the accusation that they were Manichaeans.

It is possible that the strict hierarchy and its ascetic contempt for the world would soon have set limits for the religion of Mani, even without massive persecution.

Today only scattered churches are left of it.

But the dream of saving the historical religions through “a kind of universal religion” (Christoph Markschies) is forever associated with the name Manis.

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This article was first published in 2016.