Abstract
In this book, Mattias Brand uses documentary papyri from the second half of the 4th century from Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakleh Oasis in Egypt to explore ‘ordinary Manichaean individuals and families, which offer an unprecedented perspective on the Manichaean religion in everyday life’ (3). As the title suggests, this takes us beyond the classical notions of Manichaean theology and hierarchy, exploring instead expressions or manifestations of what Brand calls ‘everyday groupness’ (26–27) to explain and understand the lives and interactions of Manichaeans in ancient Kellis.
Building on a rich reservoir of recent theoretical developments in religious studies, which he ties together in his proposed term ‘everyday groupness’, Brand sets out to do two things. First, he takes inspiration from work on lived religion and identity formation to examine how Manichaeans, both as a community and as individuals, were simultaneously part of both local and translocal networks that connected them with other individuals, communities, geographic regions, literature, ideas, and so on. Second, he uses these observations to engage with and challenge established ideas about Manichaeism and, by extension, processes of religious change in the late Roman Empire. In his words, the project shows how the Kellis papyri challenge one prevailing model of religious change in Late Antiquity. It questions the characterization of Manichaeism as a ‘total religion’ with sectarian characteristics, and instead focuses on the flexibility of local religious practice and the haphazard visibility of religious identities in daily life. (12)
Brand thus challenges older classificatory frameworks operating with set and sometimes evolutionary categories – for instance, building on a binary between so-called local and global religions (12–13). Referring to, among others, Peter Brown and Jonathan Z Smith, Brand shows how there has been, and to an extent still is, an understanding of the Manichaeans as a clearly defined and well-organized church, and this is something he sets out to address and deconstruct through the new sources and theoretical approaches that he combines in this study (15–19).
The key here is the rich papyrological finds from Ismant el-Kharab. Brand notes how much knowledge of Manichaean religion, as is indeed the case for most religions in Late Antiquity, has typically relied on the descriptions and perspectives of elites (26). The dominant position of elites has long been criticized in studies of religion and, with the Kellis papyri, Brand and other scholars of Manichaeism can finally access source material that can be said to come from and describe precisely everyday life, beyond the reality of religious elites.
Brand uses the papyri, along with archaeological information and his theoretical framework, to expand on, nuance, and sometimes contradict earlier studies and established knowledge of Manichaeism. He demonstrates how identities, transactions, and performance that can be read as Manichaean both intermix with and often show further depths that include aspects deriving from other areas or arenas of village life, be it family, finances or readership. For instance, [t]he distribution of Classical, Christian, and Manichaean texts over various houses also suggests a more flexible situation than groupism models of late antique religious conflict and competition tend to allow for. Horoscopes and amulets associated with Pamour and his family attest to local religious practices beyond what is typically labeled Manichaeism. (123)
One could argue that this strong theoretical framing allows Brand to discover exactly what he is looking for. However, he is first of all meticulously transparent, allowing readers to follow and assess the argument for themselves. Second, he demonstrates how these theoretical perspectives are necessary to challenge and break away from extant, often implicit narratives and interpretative models, which have produced the prevailing pictures of Manichaean sectarianism or exceptionalism. Hence, I find the strong theoretical framing warranted.
Moreover, Brand demonstrates extensive knowledge and provides a solid foundation for his work in both his theoretical deliberations and his discussion and critique of earlier scholarship on Manichaeism. The introductory chapters offer a sound presentation of recent developments in sociology of religion, as well as the latest updates from Manichaean studies and the study of religion in Late Antiquity. Without reading like name- or theory-dropping, all of the contributions are tied in with and made relevant for the topic at hand.
Brand organizes his analysis in five chapters that deal with, respectively, self-designation, gift-giving, communal gatherings, death rituals and book writing. ‘These themes logically follow from the current state of Manichaean Studies and can be informed by the new documents from Kellis’ (38), and Brand also throws in recent sociological studies on social action and groupness for good measure (33). The discussions that follow in these chapters – of the various papyri, their archaeological situation, the family networks that can be traced, local and translocal connections, and so on – are thorough and systematic, and paint a picture of individuals and families who engage with not only Manichaean cosmology and hierarchy, but also Greek culture, Roman authorities, Christian neighbours and traditional institutions.
I only hesitate somewhat in chapter 5, which concerns communal gatherings. Here, Brand notes and frequently repeats that there are very few traces of communal gatherings in the Kellis papyri (198), yet he proceeds to explore Manichaean gatherings from literary sources like Augustine, the Kephalaia and other inferences. For instance, he writes that ‘[a]lmost none of the Kellis letters refer to a weekly service, but it stands to reason that Piene was learning Latin and public reading for such events, as the Teacher “made him read in every church”’ (206). Such an inference is not unreasonable, but it contrasts with the stricter and more minimalist analysis and assessment of the sources that Brand maintains in the other chapters. It is perhaps also the richness of the available source material from Kellis that makes me react to a conjecture that in most other studies on late antique religion would be unproblematic.
Another feature of the book that I found myself returning to is its use of the term ‘Manichaean’. At the very beginning of the book, Brand problematizes the modern, anachronistic and likely external ascription of ‘Manichaean’ to these people and letters from the Dakleh Oasis (3), but then he proceeds to discuss them as precisely part of a Manichaean world, defined by the theological criteria that his problematization problematizes (4). If Manichaean is an anachronistic, hostile identification, why and how does Brand identify ‘ordinary Manichaeans’ (4)?
Brand offers a thorough discussion of the term ‘Manichaean’, its history, the situation of Manichaean texts and tradition vis-à-vis Christianity, finding a definition of the term that is ‘substantive and pragmatic: I believe that we should treat Manichaeism as a religion, and that it should be distinguished (but not separated) from ancient Christianity’ (17). As I read on, I still wonder if his continued use of the term reifies the very thing he sets out to deconstruct, with observations like: ‘The letters sometimes employ Manichaean phrases and terminology that directly correspond to well-known Manichaean liturgical texts’ (38). Finally, however, I see that Brand’s use of ‘everyday groupness’ and other observations from sociology and identity theory allows him to do precisely this – to keep an understanding that some ideas, terms and notions are indeed Manichaean, without this excluding other ideas, terms and notions from the daily lives of Pamour, Piene and others living in Kellis in the 4th century.