The Kephalaia of the Teacher: The Edited Coptic Manichaean Texts in Translation with Commentary - Paperback

by Iain Gardner (Author)

The Kephalaia of the Teacher is the most detailed account available to modern scholarship of the teachings of Mani, and of the universal religion that he founded as the final successor to Buddha, Zarathushtra and Jesus. This volume provides the first complete English translation of the Coptic text (c. 400 CE), together with introduction, commentaries and indices.
Topics include the apostleship of Mani, the practices of the Manichaean community, accounts of the heavenly and demonic beings and worlds, as well as discussions of astrology and religious psychology.
In Manichaeism many of the gnostic and dualistic themes of early Christianity achieved the status of a world religion, and the subject is the heir to contemporary interest in heterodoxy and the deconstruction of received histories (see the Nag Hammadi codices).

Author Biography

Iain Gardner, Ph.D. (University of Manchester 1983), is Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. He is currently editing the newly-found Coptic and Manichaean texts from Kellis, on behalf of the Dakhleh Oasis Project.