Religion and the Everyday Life of Manichaeans in Kellis

Beyond Light and Darkness
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-90-04-50822-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 102, 412 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 834 g

Reihe: Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies

Published in Open Access with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Winner of the Manfred Lautenschläger Award!

Religion is never simply there. In Religion and the Everyday Life of Manichaeans in Kellis, Mattias Brand shows where and when ordinary individuals and families in Egypt practiced a Manichaean way of life. Rather than portraying this ancient religion as a well-structured, totalizing community, the fourth-century papyri sketch a dynamic image of lived religious practice, with all the contradictions, fuzzy boundaries, and limitations of everyday life. Following these microhistorical insights, this book demonstrates how family life, gift-giving, death rituals, communal gatherings, and book writing are connected to our larger academic debates about religious change in late antiquity.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brand, Mattias

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte Religion des alten Ägyptens

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

List of Figures and Tables

Abbreviations and Translations

Introduction Religion and Everyday Groupness

Introduction

Introducing Manichaeism

Manichaeans and the Transformation of Religion in Late Antiquity

Theoretical Framework: Everyday Groupness

Sources and the Structure of the Book

1 Makarios’s Family: Manichaeans at Home in the Oasis

Kellis in the Dakhleh Oasis

Locating Makarios and Pamour: The Archaeological Context

Makarios and Maria

Pamour and His Brothers

Other Clusters of Letters

Indications of Manichaeanness

Conclusions

Documents Associated with the Various Family Clusters

2 Pamour’s Connections: Religion beyond a Conflict Model

Egyptian Temple Religion

Classical Traditions from the Greek and Roman World

Celestial Power and Amulets

Christian Institutions and Repertoire

Manichaeans and the Roman Administration

Conclusions

3 Orion’s Language: Manichaean Self-Designation in the Kellis Papyri

Performing Personal Letters

Self-Designation in Documentary Papyri

Excursus: Coptic as a Community-Specific Language?

Conclusions

Appendix: List of Self-Designators in the Personal Letters

4 Tehat’s Gifts: Everyday Community Boundaries

The Manichaean Ideology of Giving

Five Types of Giving in the Kellis Letters

The Agape, a Manichaean Ritual Meal?

Conclusions

5 The Deacon’s Practice: Manichaean Gatherings with Prayer and Psalm Singing

Manichaean Communal Gatherings

Did Makarios Go to Church? On the Location of Manichaean Gatherings

A Manichaean Monastery in the Oasis?

Evoking Groupness: Teaching and Emotional Arousal through Song

Conclusions

6 Matthaios’s Grief: Manichaean Death Rituals

Death and the Deceased in Documentary Papyri

Songs and Prayers for the Deceased

Christian and Manichaean Funerary Meals

Burial Practices and Material Culture

Conclusions

7 Ision’s Books: Scribal Culture and Access to Manichaean Texts

Copying and Circulating Books

The Syriac Connection

Materiality: The Ude of the Codex and Wooden Tablets

Identifying Manichaean Scribes

Conclusions

Conclusion: Untidy History: Manichaeanness in Everyday Life

Introduction

When Did Manichaeism Matter?

Modeling Late Antique Religion

Abandoning Kellis

Appendix 1: Outline of Published Documents from Kellis

Appendix 2: Prosopography of Makarios’s and Pamour’s Relatives

Bibliography

Index of Sources

Index of Names

Subject Index

Über Autor(innen)

Mattias Brand, Ph.D. (2019), Leiden University, is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zürich. He has published on Manichaeism, ancient Christianity, and the study of religion. Currently, he is researching the transformation of religious practices within ancient and contemporary houses.