other · 277 · Gundeshapur
Mani was born in Mesopotamia under Persian rule and preached from about 240 a system deliberately assembled to supersede what came before: Zoroaster, the Buddha and Jesus were true apostles whose followers had corrupted them, and he was the last and the seal. The frame is a strict dualism — two eternal principles, light and dark, and a material world that is a mixture to be sorted out; the Elect abstain from meat, wine, property and sex, and the Hearers support them and are reborn. He wrote his own scriptures rather than leaving it to disciples, precisely so it could not be corrupted, and he illustrated them. It spread extraordinarily far, west into Roman Africa and Spain, east along the trade roads to become the state religion of the Uighurs and to survive in China into the seventeenth century. Bahram I had him arrested and he died in prison at Gundeshapur about 277. For this dataset his importance is one man: Augustine was a Manichaean Hearer for nine years, argued his way out, and spent much of his life writing against them — so a great deal of what the western church says about evil, free will and the goodness of matter was worked out with Mani in view.
What happens when someone tries to build the final religion on purpose?
It works for a while, on three continents, and it takes nine years of Augustine.