Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russell Read Free Book Online Page A

of Eden? Why would he ask Abraham to kill his own son? So they believed that the God described there was in fact an inferior deity, unworthy of worship. The material world this inferior deity had created was something to escape from. That included the human body and its urges: elite Marcionites were unmarried and had no children. The Marcionites’ scriptures included only the Gospel of Luke and the Epistles of Paul, and even those were changed somewhat. The name of Abraham, for example, was removed almost everywhere it appeared, because Abraham not only was willing to kill his son but also slept with his maid and allowed Pharaoh to sleep with his own wife.
    It was in such an environment—where Jews were numerous, Christian groups proliferated, and the old religions were giving way to new ideologies—that a man called Patik prepared to offer a sacrifice to one of the old gods at a temple in a city south of where Baghdad stands today. It would have been a bloody affair, the slaughter of a goat or a sheep perhaps, after which he might receive a portion of the flesh to eat. But he suddenly heard a supernatural voice telling him never to eat meat again. Nor to have sex. Nor to drink alcohol. The year was around AD 215.
    Asceticism was a common theme of the new religions of the Middle East. This may have been in part a reflection of Indian influence or a reaction to the self-indulgence of the older religions (Syria, where pagan temples once housed sacred prostitutes, was also the country where a Christian saint lived on top of a pillar for thirty years without once coming down). There was a philosophy behind the self-denial as well. Society was technologically advanced: in the second century AD Ptolemy drew a map of the world that would be used for more than a thousand years, and Galen wrote a medical textbook that would be used until the nineteenth century. Yet cesspits had to be cleaned out by hand, diseases such as typhoid were common, and wounds might easily develop gangrene. The body’s weakness and foulness were in strange contrast to the intellect’s amazing achievements. Since at this time it was not generally understood that the intellect had any connection with the brain (Galen realized that it did, but Aristotle had thought the brain existed just to release heat from the body), it was easy to suppose that the mind, or soul, could survive without the messiness of the body.
    Religions that instructed their followers to punish or subordinate the body so that the mind could be made free are often called “Gnostic,” and there were several such at this time. Patik discovered that a number of austere communities had recently been established in the Iraqi Marshes. The Mandaeans were one of these, but their rules perhaps were not strict enough for Patik. (Although the Mandaeans may have been vegetarian at some point in their history, they never favored celibacy.) A nearby community fitted better with the instructions that the voice had given him. Not only did they never eat meat, have sex, or drink alcohol, but they also avoided art and music. Otherwise they tried to strictly follow both Jewish law and the Christian gospels. Each family seems to have had a plot of land where they grew vegetables and fruit to eat. Later writers called them the Mughtasila, which in Arabic means “the washers,” because of their practice of baptism in the rivers of the marshes. It was the Mughtasila that Patik and his already pregnant wife joined, and shortly afterward their only child was born. They named him Mani.
    As Mani grew up, he went through a period of rebellion. It did not involve sex or alcohol. Instead, he chafed at the restrictions on art. He was a talented artist and longed to express his ideas visually as well as with musical hymns. The Mandaeans, living nearby in the marshes, were an inspiration: although they rejected Jesus, whom Mani admired, he appreciated their music and borrowed one of their hymns. In other ways,