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Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns

Shokri-Foumeshi, Mohammad (ed.). 2025. Mani’s Living Gospel and the Ewangelyōnīg Hymns. Edition, Reconstruction and Commentary with a Codicological and Textual Approach Based on Manichaean Turfan Fragments in the Berlin Collection (Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum. Series Iranica 3). Turnhout: Brepols.

This work deals with the manuscript fragments of Maniʼs Living Gospel and the Ewangeliōnīg Hymns of his followers in the eastern Manichaean churches. The author identifies new fragments and improves the previous reconstructions. In this context, he analyzes all the Manichaean and non-Manichaean documents.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
 
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Aim, Plan, and Strategy
1.2 Material and Content of the Living Gospel and Ewangelyōnīg Hymns
1.3 Outline of This Study
1.4 History of Prior Research
 
CHAPTER TWO MANI AND HIS GOSPEL
2.1 The Living Gospel and Manichaeism
2.2 Names and Epithets
2.3 Composition Date
2.4 Chapter Order of the Living Gospel 
 
CHAPTER THREE THE LIVING GOSPEL AND ITS DOUBTFUL FRAGMENTS: AN APPROACH TO THE GNOSTIC-CHRISTIAN HERITAGE IN THE MANICHAEAN LIETERATURE
3.1 Mani and the New Testament
3.2 Sayings of Jesus in Tatian’s Διà τεσσάρων and the Nag Hammadi Codices
3.3 Double-edged Sword: Similarities and Differences
3.4 Possible Quotations of the Living Gospel in other Sources: An Overview
3.5 The Paraclete as a Main Point of Issue in the Living Gospel
3.6 Not Near but not Far: Jesus’ Sayings and Acts
3.7 Citations of the Living Gospel: Some Tentative Suggestions
 
CHAPTER FOUR MANICHAEAN TURFAN TEXTS OF THE LIVING GOSPEL
4.1 Overview and General Concepts
4.2 Fragments of the Living Gospel: Critical Middle Persian Text and its Alternating Sogdian Version
4.2.1 Text I: M17
4.2.2 Text II: M172/I/
4.2.3 Text III: M644
4.2.4 Text IV: A Newly Recognized Small Fragment †M5439 [= T II D 67]
4.2.5 Text V: An as yet Unpublished Manuscript Page in Sogdian Script
4.2.6 Return to the Verso Side of M644
4.2.7 Unified Middle Persian Text of the Living Gospel
4.2.8 Commentary
4.2.9 Content of the Living Gospel according to an unpublished Parthian manuscript page
 
CHAPTER FIVE THE LIVING GOSPEL BASED ON THE NON-IRANIAN MANICHAEAN CODICES: STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
5.1 Greek Version
5.1.1 Introduction
5.1.2 First Fragment: CMC 65, 23-68, 5
5.1.3 Two Suggested Related Texts Which Might Belong to Mani’s Gospel
5.1.4 A Textological Commentary
5.2 Coptic Synaxeis
5.2.1 Introduction
5.2.2 Chapter Titles
5.2.3 Plain Text
5.2.4 Some Phrases in Comparison with the MP Version
 
CHAPTER SIX THE LIVING GOSPEL IN THE NON-MANICHAEAN HERITAGE
6.1 Accounts of the Greek Anti-Manichaean Writings
6.2 Arabic and New Persian Testimonia
 
CHAPTER SEVEN THE EWANGELYŌNĪG HYMNS
7.1 Introduction and General Observations
7.2 Texts
7.2.1 Text I: M92 = M898 ~ M88/II/ + M91/I(?)
7.2.2 Text II: M441 + M507
7.2.3 Text III: M888a + M533
7.2.4 Text IV: M8820 ~ M8821 ~ M8828 + M8829 ~ M8830
 
CHAPTER EIGHT MISCELLANEOUS SCRAPS OF THE LIVING GOSPEL AND THE EWANGELYŌNĪG HYMNS
8.1 Frg. I: M558/II/r/5 ff./ Unpubl. Pth.
8.2 Frg. II: M1313/r/1-5/ Unpubl. Pth.
8.3 Frg. III: M5831 (= T II D 139) Pth.
8.4 Frg. IV: Ch/U7277/v/ [= T I D 1039/v/] MPS
8.5 Frg. V: M532 Pth.
8.6 Frg. VI: M6941 Unpubl. WMIr. – Sogd.
 
CHAPTER NINE THE CONTENT OF THE LIVING GOSPEL AND THE EWANGELYŌNĪG HYMNS: AN OVERVIEW
9.1 Living Gospel
9.1.1 Manichaean Documents
9.1.2 Non-Manichaean Writings
9.1.2.1 Greek Anti-Manichaean Accounts
9.1.2.2 Islamic Writings
9.2 Ewangelyōnīg Hymns
9.2.1 Text I: Divine Hope Against the Demons of the Wrath
9.2.2 Text II: Prince of Darkness in Five Pits of Destruction
9.2.3 Text III: Days and Nights and Paradise
9.2.4 Text IV: Pysws and bgrwšn
9.3 Living Gospel in Context of the ‘Hymns of the Gospel’
 
CHAPTER TEN CONCLUSION AND LAST WORDS 
GLOSSARY
 
 Index Siglorum and Codicological Abbreviations
 General Abbreviations
 Bibliographical Abbreviations and Abbreviated Works
 Bibliography
 Indices

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Books

Elite Mortuary Culture at Susa

Wicks, Yasmina. 2024. Elite Mortuary Culture at Susa: An Analysis of Early Middle Bronze Age Clay Coffin Burials. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

A crucial task of archaeological research today is to comprehend and critically interpret the rich legacy data from early excavations of ancient Near Eastern settlement sites. Yasmina Wicks targets the problematic and rarely consulted early 20th century records of excavations by French delegations at the UNESCO World Heritage-listed site of Susa in today’s southwest Iran. By scrutinizing published and unpublished documentation, she generates a new dataset of over 250 never-before-studied clay coffin burials to reveal a mortuary practice that began to flourish in the city at around 2000 BCE. These coffins were not used as upright-set containers but were instead overturned to provide a covering for the body, a distinctive method attested also at contemporary settlements in neighboring southern Mesopotamia.

The study begins with a discussion of the possibilities and constraints of using the legacy data, and then proceeds to an analysis of the typology, chronology, site distribution, and frequency of the coffins. Next it examines their rich and varied grave good assemblages, and the mortuary rites and demographic profile associated with their use. Finally, it reflects on the broader significance of the overturned clay coffin practice, concluding that it can be seen as a key signature of Susa’s bicultural society, offering a new perspective on Elamite and Mesopotamian cultural connectivity when the city left the political embrace of Mesopotamia’s Ur III dynasts at the end of the Early Bronze Age and became the lowland seat of the Elamite rulers from the Zagros Mountains. The mortuary behavior associated with the coffins, initially characterized by an unprecedented consumption of wealth, emerges as a response to new socio-political and socio-economic conditions both locally and across the Near East in the pivotal early years of the Middle Bronze Age.

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Zoroastrianism in India and Iran

Buhler, Alexandra. Zoroastrianism in India and Iran: Persians, Parsis and the flowering of political identity. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

This book examines the Zoroastrian community in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi period beyond the borders of Iran to trace this Parsi-Persian relationship. A major theme is the increase in philanthropy directed to the Zoroastrians of Iran by the Parsis and the involvement of the British in encouraging Parsi feelings of patriotism towards Iran. The book shows that not only were Parsis affected by events taking place in Iran, they also contributed to the broader change in attitudes towards Zoroastrians in that country.

Description

Buhler’s book will be launched at an event in SOAS. For more information, see this link.

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The King’s Road

On the occasion of the book’s paperback edition, which has just been published:

Wen, Xin. 2023. The king’s road: Diplomacy and the remaking of the Silk Road. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

The King’s Road offers a new interpretation of the history of the Silk Road, emphasizing its importance as a diplomatic route, rather than a commercial one. Tracing the arduous journeys of diplomatic envoys, Xin Wen presents a rich social history of long-distance travel that played out in deserts, post stations, palaces, and polo fields. The book tells the story of the everyday lives of diplomatic travelers on the Silk Road—what they ate and drank, the gifts they carried, and the animals that accompanied them—and how they navigated a complex web of geographic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. It also describes the risks and dangers envoys faced along the way—from financial catastrophe to robbery and murder.

Overview
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The Bundahišn

Malandra, William W. 2024. The Bundahišn. Translated with Commentary (Monograph Series 68). Leesburg VA: The Journal of Indo-European Studies.

The Bundahišn was a sort of final clearinghouse for Iranian religion and cosmogony, completed shortly before the Arabian conquest of Iran and the extinguishing of most forms of Indo-Iranian religion from the world (the Parsees being the sole relicts of that faith now). It has been mined extensively by scholars – especially Georges Dumézil – for the many traces of the Indo-European past it contains. With his encyclopedic knowledge of IE linguistics and Sanskrit and classical literature, Professor Malandra has accompanied his translation with notes which not only illuminate the more confusing elements of the text, but also ground it in the world of Indo-European and Indo-Aryan literature. Readers will surely appreciate the author’s clear and engaging writing as he guides them through this intriguing text.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • List of Abbreviations
  • Introduction
  • Translation of The Bundahišn, chapters I-XXXVI with extensive notes
  • Appendix A – Translation of the Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram text with notes;
  • Appendix B – Calendar & Reckoning;
  • Appendix C – Planets & Stars;
  • References;
  • Extensive Index.
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The Six Corners of the World

Casari, Mario. 2023. Šeš taraf-e donyā «Les six côtés du monde»: Anthropologie de la narration dans la littérature persane classique (Cahier de Studia Iranica 65). Leuven: Peeters.

This volume contains the text of the five Ehsan and Latifeh Yarshater Distinguished Lectures on Iranian Studies, organized by the Unité Mixte de Recherche 7528 “Mondes iranien et indien”, and delivered in 2018 at the Collègue de France in Paris.

It presents a reflection on the nature of narration in classical Persian literature, its role as a central cultural reference system, and the connection that narrative production may maintain with the different fields of knowledge that govern the human experience of the world. Taking a tale of the Alexander legend as a case study, the volume is structured in five chapters, with five main themes: first, the main tools and values of Persian narration; the link of story-telling with Persian moral reflection; the absorption of scientific notions into the fabric of tales; their gradual assumption of symbolic and mystical values; and finally the circulation of tales in popular literary domains alongside various forms of folk knowledge.

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Two Memoirs

Iranian Studies, the subject matter of this bibliographic blog, is not an easily defined field. It seems to me that we often mean the study of Zoroastrianism or ancient Iran, when we post about Iranian Studies. But even if we limit the scope of our work to what we might intellectually call the study of pre-Islamic Iran—due to the historical break in the transmission of Iranian religions—a workable definition still eludes us, as a vast number of pre-Islamic Iranian texts and concepts are only known to us through their Islamic garb. It becomes even more complex to define the field of our activities when we include neighbouring fields. I am painfully aware that it becomes still more complicated, if we consider publications that fall slightly outside of the academic genre. However, my approach was from the start a pragmatic one, as I wanted to be able to continue our work for as long as we could and without too much pressure. I know that we often miss publications by our colleagues from neighbouring disciplines; so, here I want to address one shortcoming that is close to my own interests and heart: two memoirs by eminent scholars of the other late antiquity (bold and provocative claim). One by the well-known Peter Brown (Princeton University), whom I have not had the pleasure to meet, and one by the equally well-known and wonderful Averil Cameron (University of Oxford), whom I have.

Arash Zeini

Brown, Peter. 2023. Journeys of the mind: A life in history. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the “neglected half-millennium” now known as late antiquity was in fact crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age. As he and other scholars opened up the history of the classical world in its last centuries to the wider world of Eurasia and northern Africa, they discovered previously overlooked areas of religious and cultural creativity as well as foundational institution-building. A respect for diversity and outreach to the non-European world, relatively recent concerns in other fields, have been a matter of course for decades among the leading scholars of late antiquity.

Overview

Cameron, Averil. 2024. Transitions: A historian’s memoir (Studi e Testi Tardoantichi 25). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

The transitions of the title are those in the life and intellectual development of one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. Averil Cameron recounts her working-class origins in North Staffordshire and how she came to read Classics at Oxford and start her research at Glasgow University before moving to London and teaching at King’s College London. Later she was the head of Keble College Oxford at a time of change in the University and its colleges. She played a leading role in projects and organisations even as the flow of books and articles continued, in an array of publications that have been fundamental in shaping the disciplines of late antiquity and Byzantine studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Summary
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Yahwism under the Achaemenid Empire

Barnea, Gad & Reinhard G. Kratz (eds.). 2024. Yahwism under the Achaemenid Empire: Professor Shaul Shaked in memoriam (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 548). Berlin: De Gruyter.

The Achaemenid period (550–330 BCE) is rightly seen as one of the most formative periods in Judaism. It is the period in which large portions of the Bible were edited and redacted and others were authored—yet no dedicated interdisciplinary study has been undertaken to present a consistent picture of this decisive time period.
This book is dedicated to the study of the touchpoints between Yahwistic communities throughout the Achaemenid empire and the Iranian attributes of the empire that ruled over them for about two centuries. Its approach is fundamentally interdisciplinary. It brings together scholars of Achaemenid history, literature and religion, Iranian linguistics, historians of the Ancient Near East, archeologists, biblical scholars and Semiticists. The goal is to better understand the interchange of ideas, expressions and concepts as well as the experience of historical events between Yahwists and the empire that ruled over them for over two centuries. The book will open up a holisitic perspective on this important era to scholars of a wide variety of fields in the study of Judaism in the Ancient Near East.

About this book
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Deciphering the Illegible

Macuch, Maria & Arash Zeini (eds.). 2024. Deciphering the illegible: Festschrift in honour of Dieter Weber (Iranica 33). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

The commemorative publication Deciphering the Illegible is dedicated to Dieter Weber, one of the most important scholars in the field of Iranian Studies, who is best known for his work on deciphering original documents in the extremely ambiguous Pahlavi cursive script, which was long considered ‘illegible’. In addition to an appreciation of his research and a bibliography of his publications, the volume contains twenty-eight contributions by renowned experts, reflecting the broad spectrum of the dedicatee’s academic interests and research work. The articles cover a wide range of topics and offer many new insights and original perspectives on religious, linguistic and historical problems, including several editions of previously unpublished texts.

Abstract

Table of Contents

  • Dieter Weber — A Scholarly Profile
  • Publications of Dieter Weber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  • Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo: Three Zoroastrian Manuscripts in Armenia
  • Thomas Benfey: Windādag’s Orders: Ten Unpublished Middle Persian Ostracafrom Chāl Ṭarkhān-ʿEshqābād
  • Adam Benkato: A Manichaean Remedy for Headaches
  • Alberto Cantera: The Passive Suffix -ī̆h̆– in Middle Persian
  • Carlo G. Cereti: From the Zamyād Yašt to the Seventh Book of the Dēnkard, Some Notes on Sistan and Zoroastrian Eschatology
  • Iris Colditz: How to Make Clarified Butter in Sogdian
  • Touraj Daryaee: The Owl in the Zoroastrian Tradition: Contribution to Iranian Bestiary I
  • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: Hübschmann and the Middle Iranian Part on Armenian Loanwords
  • Shervin Farridnejad and Arash Zeini: “Who Will Protect the Cattle”? On Dogs and the Sin of Meat Consumption in Zoroastrianism
  • Ela Filippone: A Contribution to Pahlavi Lexicography: The Case of ⟨twk(‘)⟩ and ⟨twp(‘)⟩ in the Pahlavi Corpus and their Possible Cognates in Modern Iranian Languages
  • Philippe Gignoux †: Sur l’argenterie sassanide, relectures et nouveautés
  • Rika Gyselen: Le y final et le trait final en moyen-perse: le cas des sceaux des administrations territoriales
  • Almut Hintze: The Pahlavi Psalter in its Historical Context
  • Philip Huyse: Klimawandel und die spätantike Pest im sasanidischen Reich
  • Götz König: Notizen zur Überlieferung und zum Gebrauch der Yašts
  • Pavel B. Lurje and Boris Zheleznyakov: “Let Buyruq Sangun Live Long and be Divinely Blessed” Another Sogdian Dedicatory Inscription
  • Maria Macuch: Trading with Infidels: A Balancing Act in Zoroastrian Legal Reasoning
  • Mauro Maggi: Blowing out saṃsāra in Khotan.
  • Jaime Martínez Porro: A Brief Note on an Avestan Quotation in the Wizī̆rgerd ī̆ Dēnī̆g
  • Enrico Morano: Fragments from a Sogdian Cosmogonical Manuscript in Manichaean Script.
  • Antonio Panaino: The ‘starred’ Frawahr and the ‘Katasterization’ of Humanity
  • Anna-Grethe Rischel: Studies of ‘Watermarks of Technology’ from the Turfan Collection in Berlin
  • Adriano V. Rossi: Minima Iranica for Dieter
  • Nikolaus Schindel: Zur Bronzeprägung des Ohrmazd IV.
  • Martin Schwartz: Mnemonica Iranica
  • Nicholas Sims-Williams: Further Notes on Sogdians in Khotan
  • Yutaka Yoshida: Training of Scribes along the Silk Road: A Case from Manichaean Sogdian
  • Arash Zeini: The Covenant that Binds: Ownership of Life in Late Antique Zoroastrianism
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Navigating the Worlds of History

Ruffing, Kai, Brigitte Truschnegg, Andreas Rudigier, Julian Degen, Sebastian Fink & Kordula Schnegg (eds.). 2024. Navigating the worlds of history. Studies in honor of Robert Rollinger on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

These studies in honor of Robert Rollinger, a scholar who dedicated and dedicates himself to the study of the Ancient Worlds and their Afro-Eurasian entanglements, are published on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Accordingly, the three volumes bring together contributions from friends, colleagues, and students of Robert Rollinger. The themes of these some 80 articles are in line with Rollinger’s research foci. Therefore, there are articles dealing with themes from the field of classical studies and thus the ancient Mediterranean world, the Ancient Near East and Persia as well as Iran. In addition – also in line with Robert Rollinger’s academic activities and his own research interests – there are essays on the history of Austria, in particular on that of Vorarlberg, the honoree’s homeland. Old America is also given thematic consideration. Moreover, the reception of the Ancient Worlds is also addressed.

The work consists of three volumes and is divided into five sections. The first deals with the classical world and its entanglement with the Ancient Near East; the second section focusses on the Ancient Near East. The third section is dedicated to the Iranian world in its imperial longue durée, while the fourth section looks at the global as well as the local history taking into account the perspective of Global and Universal History. Finally, the fifth and last section is dedicated to the dialogue between the ancient world and the present.