The picture of Manichaeism from its detractors (and many modern interpreters) envisioned a rigidly hierarchical sect wherein the higher teachings and texts circulated only among the Elect, to the exclusion of the rank and file; whose practices and doctrines were entirely distinct from those of nearby Christians; whose religious life was close-knit and insular; and whose identity as Manichaean was absolute and uncompromising. But as with all generalizations about religion based on heresiography and primary texts, things fall apart when the scholar is able to examine local worlds. As the village of Montaillou offered such a context for medieval Catharism in Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's famous study (Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error [New York: Braziller, 1978]), so the finely excavated late antique village of Kellis in Egypt's Dakhleh Oasis offers a first-hand look at “lived” Manichaeism. In brief, as Mattias Brand shows in this rich and innovative study, the letters, codices, and even burials of Manichaeans living among many others with different devotional frameworks demonstrate that, in most aspects of life, the Religion of Light developed by the prophet Mani in the third century had much less relevance than neighborhood customs.
We know there were Manicheans in Kellis because the site has produced some of the most important Manichaean texts – in Greek, Coptic, and Syriac – and because many of the personal letters discovered there use Manichaean phrases. But in what contexts? This is Brand's interest: how much of a person's life was directed by religious ideology as historians imagine it? In many ways Brand carries forward a question that Éric Rebillard posed for second-century North African Christians (Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012]). Brand, augments Rebillard's model of alternating identities with a range of helpful social models (Brubaker, Sewell, Swidler, et al.) to deconstruct how ideologies of “groupness” impact individuals in everyday life, in what conditions religious collectivity is experienced, what strategies can be called upon to guide individuals’ everyday living, and where we might see religious “groupness” in individual action. By these questions Brand is able to leave aside the vague category “identity” and achieve greater precision in the study of social influence on the individual.
After a thought-provoking methodological Introduction, Brand devotes the first chapter to the primary evidence for Manichaeism in Kellis – letters, codices – and their find-spots in different houses (which were associated with particular families). The letters especially allow us to study a number of different individuals in town and their varying uses of Manichaean style or formula.
In the second chapter Brand examines what it means to feel Manichaean in Kellis. There is no evidence in the letters for persecution or religious tension in the oasis even while there were at least ten church buildings (implying a strong Christian presence). Thus “groupness” would not have been forced upon them, as many historians assume with certain ancient religions. Relations with Roman administration seem to have been civil, and there is evidence for a prominent local patron of Manichaean life in the village. Manichaeans shared with other Egyptians (including Christians) an interest in divination and in apotropaic protection, as we see in the considerable number of divination texts and amulets found in Kellite houses. Thus, the religion was hardly insular and sectarian.
But then how did they imagine themselves? Was there a sense of religious groupness beyond the primary village identity? Chapter 3 looks at self-designations – how Manichaeans perceived themselves in relation to others, especially in the language of fictive kinship: “daughters of the Light Mind”; “Child of Righteousness”; even “Father.” The language of self-designation is always performative, Brand astutely points out, insofar as it declares participation and the idea of a broader institution. Insider language also arises with metaphors of belonging, religious titles (“Teacher,” “presbyter”), and even uses of (what we imagine as) Christian terminology like “holy church.” But in no case, Brand argues, does this language of groupness imply a sectarianism, an insularity, or an elitism or antagonism toward outsiders. Rather, it reflected a heightened sense of relationships within a local social network.
The following chapters examine more concrete practices that might have created religious “group-ness”: gift-giving (Chapter 4), which seems to have integrated the Elect into a broad domestic network; communal religious practices (Chapter 5) like prayer, fasts, Pascha, and especially singing, strong evidence for which comes from the many fragments of Manichaean psalms at Kellis; and death rituals (mourning and burial: Chapter 6). Interestingly, grief and mourning are broached in the letters in visibly familial and collective terms even though Manichaean texts often look askance at such sentiments. Again, Brand reveals a genuinely local character to Manichaeism in Kellis, which extends also to burial practices in the area (contra: those archaeologists who have argued for a distinctively Christian burial practice arising in the third century).
Chapter 7 addresses scribality itself: the material and social character of the textual findings. Who got to read the “canonical” Manichaean texts like Kephalaia, Epistles, and Prayers – only the Elect or also catachumens? The letters suggest that catechumens were also copying these texts – that copying itself in the name of Mani had become itself a ritualized act in this town. Why so many Syriac texts – evidence of missionaries from Mesopotamia? Or, in a fascinating proposal of Brand's, could Syriac have become the sacred language of the founder Mani himself, which various adherents sought to learn for both personal and liturgical edification?
The Conclusion is as interesting and theoretically broad as the Introduction. It summarizes central conclusions about the local nature of Manichaeism in Kellis, the fluid relationships with neighbors, and the main social practices that would have involved Manichaean ideology to some degree. Manichaism was more than simply the late antique local religion of temples, festivals, and patronage networks, for it involved a prophetic tradition, core texts, and notable moments of religious participation that transcended locale. And yet, in Kellis at least, Manichaeism did not dictate every aspect or moment of life, and its boundaries against neighbors were minimal.
Religion and the Everyday Life of Manichaeans in Kellis began life as a Leiden dissertation, and the book does have the dissertation's sprawling, exhaustive character. Yet there are some real jewels within the book, like Brand's discussions of the social value of liturgy and song, his critique of archaeologies of “Christian burial” in Egypt, and his proposal about the sacred value of Syriac. But the real importance of the book is Brand's effort to rethink for late antiquity what makes a “religion” socially effective and how broad religious ideologies can enjoin individuals to change or maintain various practices. In this respect Brand's contribution should be taken especially seriously by scholars attempting to generalize the impact of Christianization itself in the centuries after Rebillard showed the intermittency of Christian identity. More critical of the term “identity” than was Rebillard, Brand is interested in how – in what social and performative contexts – a religion might influence a person living in a culturally local, family-based environment. And that is as relevant for late antique Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as it is for Manichaeism.
