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Between MIDRASH and the KEPHALAIA: Overlapping Practices of Ordering Knowledge among Rabbis and Manichaeans

Tue, December 18, 2:30 to 4:00pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Harborview 1 Ballroom

Abstract

The KEPHALAIA OF THE TEACHER (5th CE; Coptic) is an anthology of individual chapters that purport to be the teachings of Mani as they were transmitted orally to his disciples. These individual chapters emerged in specific missionary contexts as the Manichaean movement spread from Mesopotamia through Syria and into Egypt, where it was either translated from Aramaic or written down in Coptic for the first time. Though scholars of Manichaeism have mentioned the similarities between the KEPHALAIA and MIDRASHIM in passing, there has been no systematic study of these two genres, despite their overlap in time and space. Likewise, Manichaean sources remain an untapped resource for the study of ancient Judaism, in both the Roman Near East and Sasanian Persia. This presentation contextualizes these shared practices of anthologization as a shared mode of ordering knowledge among emerging Roman Near Eastern communities. It argues that the “anthological habit” shared by both communities, as expressed most pointedly by their preference for aural-oral transmission, the lack of internal doctrinal consistency, and the stereotypical means of opening narratives, e.g. ⲡⲁⲗⲓⲛ in Coptic and דבר אחר in Hebrew, emerged as a result of shared pedagogical practices and cultural milieu. It points forward to possible ways that such comparative work might further shed light on long-standing questions in these individual sub-fields, e.g., the emergence of the “Oral Torah” as an ideology among the Amoraim.

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