Paul Dilley
Associate Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions in the departments of Classics and Religious Studies, as well as the Center for the Book
University of Iowa
Dr. Paul Dilley is Associate Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions in the departments of Classics and Religious Studies, as well as the Center for the Book, at the University of Iowa. He specializes in the Religions of Late Antiquity, especially early Christianity, with an approach that integrates book studies, digital humanities, philology, and anthropology/cultural history. He is the author of Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity: Cognition and Discipline (2017, Romanian translation 2021), numerous edited volumes, articles, and chapters, and is a co-editor of several works from the Medinet Madi Library of Coptic Manichean codices. Dilley has been a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the American Research Center in Egypt, among others; a member of the Institute for Advanced Study; and is a senior fellow of the Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography.
Paper Title: Early Manichaean Texts as World Literature
Abstract: Manichaeism played a vital role in the development of Christianity, yet it remains vastly understudied in the fields of New Testament and Early Christianity, as well as Late Antiquity more generally. Indeed, it is possibly the biggest lacuna in the contemporary understanding of the history and culture of early Christian communities. Mani and his first disciples were Aramaic and Persian speakers living in the Sasanian (Iranian) Empire, introducing an element of unfamiliarity for those with primary expertise in the Graeco-Roman world; this is exacerbated by the survival of numerous Manichaean texts solely in Iranian, Turkish, and Chinese languages. Within Manichaeism Studies, the emphasis has necessarily been on the recovery, edition, and initial explication of these “new” primary sources, with comparatively little attention given to their cultural and historical contexts.
In this talk, I propose to situate Manichaeism more fully and responsibly into the study of early Christianity and Late Antiquity, by carefully considering its various modes of production and circulation within and between the two empires of Rome and Iran. Because Manichaeism was primarily a movement of the Syro-Mesopotamian borderlands, early Manichaean texts developed within three primary contexts: the Aramaic/Syriac heritage of Mani, as expressed in the language of his own writings, most of which are lost; the greater Sasanian empire in which Mani was active, interacting with Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and other South Asian sages, teachings, and writings; and the Graeco-Roman world, in which Manichaeans encountered robust and diverse Christian (and non-Christian) communities, both before and after Constantine. For any given Manichaean text, as it survives in a particular language, script, and manuscript, these three contexts and their interaction should be considered. I will provide several examples to illustrate this method, bringing it into conversation with contemporary debates about the nature of “world literature,” with reference to the theories of Damrosch, Apter, Beecroft, and Doyle.
