On the Matter

Studies on Manichaeism and Church History Presented to Nils Arne Pedersen at Sixty-Five

Lasse Løvlund Toft, Mattias Sommer Bostrup, René Falkenberg (eds)

Pages: xvi + 518 p.
Size:210 x 297 mm
Illustrations:2 b/w, 21 col., 10 tables b/w.

Language(s):English, German, French
Publication Year:2025

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ISBN: 978-2-503-61711-4
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Of interest to all scholars of Manichaeism and Late Antique and Medieval Eastern Christianity, and to scholars working on the phenomenon of heresiology and doctrinal polemics within the churches at large.

Subject(s)

BIO

Lasse Løvlund Toft (born 1990) is a scholar of Church History during the Eastern Roman Empire and the Caliphate. He received his PhD at Aarhus University with a dissertation on the Syriac texts and cults of the Ḥimyarite Martyrs in South Arabia. He is currently a Postdoc at the University of Oslo researching Coptic, Arabic and Ethiopic apocryphal texts.

Dr. Mattias Sommer Bostrup (born 1989) is a scholar of early modern and modern Church History in Northern Europe. An Assistant Professor of church history at Aarhus University, Sommer Bostrup’s research focuses on the Reformation in Denmark, interreligious encounters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Schleswig-Holstein, and the linkages between history and memory in ecclesiastical historiography.

René Falkenberg (born 1970) is Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Aarhus University. He wrote his PhD dissertation on the Nag Hammadi text Eugnostos the Blessed. His current interests concern Apocryphal literature, Manichaeism, Paul the Apostle, and early Greek and Coptic manuscript culture in light of Material Philology.

Summary

The anthology consists of twenty-nine studies on Manichaean texts in Coptic, Syriac, Chinese, and Iranian languages, as well as on broader Church History including texts from the Nag Hammadi Codices, Coptic and Syriac heresiology and Early Modern religious polemics. Of interest to all scholars of Manichaeism and Late Antique and Medieval Eastern Christianity, and to scholars working on the phenomenon of heresiology and doctrinal polemics within the churches at large. The anthology is a Festschrift for Nils Arne Pedersen at Aarhus University.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword
Tabula Gratulatoria

Manichaean Texts, Imagery, and Terminology

Jean-Daniel Dubois, About the Use of the Term Pistos in Coptic Manichaean Writings
Iain Gardner, Who Was Salmaios and What Was His Lament?
Jason BeDuhn, Rethinking Manichaean Asceticism
Samuel N.C. Lieu, Database of Manichaean Texts – Past, Present, and Future
Claudia Leurini, Secret Messages: Traces of Cryptography in the Middle Persian Manichaean Hymns to the Church
Iris Colditz, Eine Parabel in einer Homilie Manis in parthischer Sprache
Yutaka Yoshida, Middle Iranian Fragments in Sogdian Script from the St. Petersburg Collection – The Fourth Section of the Manichaean Daily Prayers in Parthian and Some Other Middle Iranian Texts
Nicholas Sims-Williams, On the Sources of the Manichaean Sogdian Religious Terminology
Enrico Morano, A Manichaean Middle Persian Text on the Descent of the Holy Spirit and the Beginning of Mani’s Church (M788)
Gunner Mikkelsen, Pearl Imagery in a Chinese Manichaean Hymn
John Møller Larsen, Ligatures in the Syriac Manichaean Texts from Kellis
Erica C.D. Hunter, Hunting Manichaean Syriac Incantation Bowls
Sebastian P. Brock, Imagery Shared and Imagery Avoided: The Manichaean Psalms and Syriac Religious Poetry

Nag Hammadi, the Bible, and Early Heterodoxy

Einar Thomassen, Manichaeans and Gnostics on the Creation of Humanity
Hugo Lundhaug, A Luminous Soul in the Likeness of God: Dispensing with the Psychic God in Paul’s Prayer for Revelation in Nag Hammadi Codex I
Anders Klostergaard Petersen, The Gospel of Truth as Fully-Fledged Christ Religion
Peter Nagel (†), Das Gleichnis vom viererlei Acker in den synoptischen Evangelien und im Thomasevangelium (Logion 9)
Mogens Müller, Traces of Marcion in the New Testament?

Eastern Orthodoxies in Formation

Jan Dochhorn, Acherusischer See und Paradies im Zauberpapyrus London, Brit. Libr. Or. 5987, l. 13–24
Lasse Løvlund Toft, Virgin Mary as a Heavenly Power in Egypt: Doctrinal Polemics and Theological Diversity in Coptic and Copto-Arabic Homiletic Apocrypha on the God-bearer
David G.K. Taylor, Eschatological Rivers of Fire and Purgatorial Purification in Sixth-Century Syriac Texts
Flavia Ruani, Le catalogue d’hérésies de Jacques bar Šakko (XIIIe s.) : Livre des trésors II. De l’Incarnation du Verbe, ch. 1
Paul-Hubert Poirier (†), Une traduction latine inédite du Contra Manichaeos de Titus de Bostra
Henning Lehmann, Eusebius of Emesa Interpreting Exod. 3:14f: Some Remarks on Recent Eusebius Studies

Churches, and Theologies in Early Modern and Modern Northern Europe

Per Ingesman, ‘In Principio Erat Error, Et Error Erat Apud Lutherum’: Paulus Helie on Luther and His Adherents in the Danish Reformation
Rasmus H.C. Dreyer, Between Danish and German: A First-Generation Danish Reformer as Lutheran Superintendent (1541–1561)
Carsten Bach-Nielsen, Theme and Variations: Lazarus and the Rich Man. Iconography of a New Testament narrative in an age of Reform, c. 1500–1640
Kim Arne Pedersen, Grundtvig, the Greeks, and Heresy
Mattias Sommer Bostrup, The Life and Afterlives of Bishop Fredrik Nielsen (1846–1907): Social Functions of Church History at the Fin de Siècle