DeConick A.D

312
PLEASANTVILLE RELIGIONS
a trendy new religious movement. He was a successful founder of a new
religious movement because he was a convincing visionary who presented
himself as the final manifestation of the Holy Spirit, the first and last word.
He was the authority on all things. The buck stopped here.
The followers of Mani were earnest about Mani’s gift of knowledge
and his absolute authority in all things, as their literature and worship patterns
indicate. After rehearsing the mysteries of the cosmos, their Psalm
223 ends with the congregation’s pledge (Medinet Madi Psalmbook 223
11.26–31, my translation):
This is the knowledge of Mani.
Let us worship him and bless him.
Blessed is he, everyone who believes in him . . .
Glory and victory to our Lord Mani, the Spirit of Truth
that comes from the Father, who has unveiled for us
the beginning, the middle, and the end . . .
Mani’s Gnostic religion was a product of revelation that emerged
within a very specific religious buffer. It was a great spiritual awakening,
comparable to the emergence of Mormonism out of Joseph Smith’s
religious revelations when he lived in New York’s burned-over district.
Smith’s great awakening also included an angelic instructor, new scriptures,
unique institutional structures, all blended with a novel story about
Jesus and biblical history. The bottom line is that Mani and Smith were
not alternative Christians or Christian reformers but founders of new religious
movements built to expose the real religion discerned by them
through revelation.
Ships of Light
Mani was well read and well traveled, a true Renaissance man of his time.
He had disciplined himself in astrology and was a keen observer of the
night skies. He was a brilliant exegete, having thorough knowledge of
Christian scriptures and Jewish apocalyptic writings that told about the
heavenly journeys of heroes like Adam and Enoch. He was acquainted
with Valentinian and Sethian Gnostic literature, too. He was creative and
artsy, both a talented poet and a gifted painter.