[1066]. This Mother of Life is one of the most prominent, though not one of the most active figures in the Manichaean pantheon. Her identification with the Spirit of the Right Hand or first Power created by the Supreme God of Light has been mentioned above (note 1, p. [293] supra). She doubtless has her immediate origin in the great mother goddess worshipped throughout Western Asia, whose most familiar name is Cybele, but whom we have seen (Chap. II supra) identified with Isis, Demeter, and all the goddesses of the Hellenistic pantheon. See as to this, Bousset, Hauptprobleme, pp. 58 sqq., although he, too, falls into the error of identifying with her the Virgin of Light of the Pistis Sophia. That the name “Mother of Life” at least passed to all these goddesses is certain; but it also found its way into Egyptian Christianity; for in the Coptic spell or amulet known as the Prayer of the Virgin in Bartos (i.e. Parthia), studied by Mr W. E. Crum (P.S.B.A. vol. XIX. 1897, p. 216), the Virgin Mary is represented as saying “I am Mariham (Μαριάμ), I am Maria, I am the Mother of the Life of the whole World!”, and the popularity of the “Prayer” is shown by its frequent appearance in Ethiopic and Arabic versions (op. cit. p. 211). So, too, in the evidently Christian Trattato Gnostico of F. Rossi (Memorie della Reale Accademia di Torino, ser. II. t. xliii. p. 16) the magician says “I entreat thee, O God, by the great revered Virgin (παρθένος) in whom the Father was concealed from the beginning before He had created anything.” Bar Khôni, again (Pognon, pp. 209-211), speaks of the Kukeans, who seem to have been a semi-Christian sect, and who taught that the coming of Jesus to earth had for its object the redemption of His bride, the Mother of Life, who was detained here below, like the Helena of Simon Magus. Mother of Life is mentioned in all the Mahommedan and Christian writers who have treated of Manichaeism (for the references, see Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère partie, p. 511, n. 1), in the Pahlavi MS. discovered by the Germans at Turfan (F. W. K. Muller, Handschriften-Reste in Estrangelo-Schrift, pp. 47, 55), and in the Chinese treatise from Tun-huang (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. p. 511 et al.). In this last, she is called Chan-mou, which is translated “the Excellent Mother,” and En Nadîm in one passage (Kessler, op. cit. p. 399; Flügel, op. cit. p. 100) calls her Nahnaha, which Flügel would translate “The Aversion of the Evil Ones.” It should be noticed, however, that her part in the cosmogony is small, and that she acts upon the world, like all these supercelestial powers, only through her descendants or “sons.” These are treated of later (see p. [323] and n. 1, p. [302] infra). Titus of Bostra as quoted by Flügel, op. cit. p. 210, speaks of her as δύναμις τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ οὐκέτι φῶς αἰσθητὸν ἀλλ’ ὡς ἂν φαίη προβολὴ τοῦ θεοῦ. “[The] Power of the Good One, no longer a perceptible light, but as if one should say, an emanation of God.” Some years ago, we could hardly have looked for her prototype or first appearance in the history of religions in any other direction than Babylonia, where the worship of Ishtar, her Babylonian counterpart, goes back as far as we can trace Babylonian religion. Now, however, it is plain that other races than the Babylonians may have been concerned in the spread of the worship of the Great Mother throughout Western Asia. In the Zoroastrian faith, she seems to appear as Spenta Armaiti, the one certainly female power among the seven Amshaspands, who in the Pahlavi texts is set over the earth, as Vohu Mano is made protector of the beasts, Asha Vahishta of the fire, and Khshathra Vairya is set over metals. But besides this, she is identified in the Gâthâs with the Wisdom of God (for references see pp. 136-137 of M. Carnoy’s article in the Muséon mentioned below), an identification which Plutarch (de Is. et Os. c. XLVII.) admits by translating her name as σοφία, and like the Sophia of the Gnostics is given as a spouse to her creator Ahura Mazda, to whom she bears the First Man Gayômort (Darmesteter, Le Zend-Avesta, t. I. pp. 128-129). Yet we now know that this figure may have come into the Zoroastrian pantheon neither from Semitic sources nor, as Darmesteter thought, from Plato. M. A. Carnoy in a study called Armaiti-Ârmatay (Muséon, n.s. vol. XIII. (1912), pp. 127-146) shows the identity of the Persian Amshaspand with the Vedic goddess Aramati. We have already seen that the Vedic gods Varuna and Mitra were worshipped by Hittites in Asia Minor before the XIIth century B.C., and Prof. Garstang believes that the Earth-Mother was the great goddess of the Hittites, and was the one worshipped in Roman times at Hierapolis or Mabug as the Dea Syria or Atargatis, a name that he equates with Derceto, the mother of Semiramis in classic legend, and declares to be compounded of Ishtar or Astarte and the Aramaic “Athar or Athe.” See Strong and Garstang, The Syrian Goddess, pp. 1-8, and notes 24, 25, and 30, on pp. 52, 53 and 30 op. cit. Zoroaster and Manes may therefore have taken their mother goddess from an Aryan rather than from a Semitic original.
[1067]. This Living Spirit is the most active agent of the Light in the Manichaean system, and seems to have held his place unaltered through all the changes of Manichaean teaching. Alexander of Lycopolis (contra Manich. c. III.) speaks of him as the Δημιουργός or Architect of the Universe. The earliest part of the Acta (Hegemonius, c. VII. p. 10, Beeson) says that he was put forth from the Father (or Supreme God of Light) in consequence of the prayers of the First Man after his defeat, that he delivered this last, crucified or bound the Archons in the firmament (as Jeû is said to have done in the Pistis Sophia), made the Sun and Moon and appointed their courses, and further made the eight earths. St Augustine, contra Faustum, Bk XX. c. 1, makes the Manichaean Faustus call him the “Third Majesty whom we acknowledge to have his seat and his lodging-place in the whole circle of the atmosphere. From whose powers and spiritual inpouring also, the earth conceived and brought forth the suffering Jesus who is the life and salvation of men and is hanging on every tree.” St Augustine further speaks (op. cit. Bk XX. c. 9) of “your mighty (potentem for viventem) Spirit, who constructs the world from the captive bodies of the race of darkness or rather from the members of your God held in subjection and bondage.” St Augustine (see contra Faustum, Bk XV. c. 6) also knows that the Living Spirit has, like the First Man, five sons, to whom we shall return later. The Mahommedan writers have much less to say on the subject. En Nadîm (Kessler, op. cit. p. 390; Flügel, op. cit. p. 88) says abruptly that “Joy [i.e. the Mother of Life] and the Spirit of Life went to the frontier, looked into the abyss of hell and saw there the First Man and his angels,” whereupon the Spirit of Life called the First Man with a voice of thunder and the latter “became a god.” This story is so without connection with the context that Kessler is probably right in attributing it to another source from that from which the Fihrist has drawn up to this point. The source in question was probably a late one; for Bar Khôni (op. cit. pp. 186-188) supplies many more details which will be given in the text. Bar Khôni also amplifies the story in the Fihrist into a description of how the Living Spirit, on seeing the First Man in the Darkness, spoke “a word which took the appearance of a pointed sword” (cf. Revelation i. 16), and how this word caused to appear the image of the First Man. A dialogue then ensues between apparently the sword and the image, which appear to be here identified with the Appellant and Respondent of later Manichaeism, and the pair are drawn up out of hell. See Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 24, and note 5. Al Bîrûnî, Chronology, p. 190, also knows of the Spirit of Life and says that Manes “preached” of him. In the Turfan texts there is occasional mention of the “Spirit” together with the Father and the Son (Müller, Handschriften-Reste, pp. 26, 28), and also of the “commands” of the Holy Spirit to the Hearers, which are plainly allusions to the Living Spirit or Ζῶν Πνεῦμα of the Christian Fathers. In the Tun-huang treatise (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. pp. 510, 556) he is repeatedly mentioned, and although nothing is said of his demiurgic or world-creating powers, the part which he and the Mother of Life play in the rescue of the First Man after his defeat is recognized, and he is spoken of as forming the third person of a Trinity of which the two other members are the Father or highest God of Light and the “Son of the Light.” Finally (op. cit. p. 557), he is said to be “a white dove,” whereby his likeness to the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity already noted by Faustus is emphasized (see Augustine, ubi cit. supra and Bk XX. c. 6).
[1068]. This conception of Jesus as a warrior has already been seen in the Pistis Sophia, see p. [156] supra. So we read of “Jesus the victorious” in the Tun-huang treatise, p. 566, n. 3.
[1069]. En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. pp. 393 sqq.; Flügel, op. cit. pp. 90 sqq. Theodore bar Khôni (Pognon, op. cit. pp. 189 sqq.), gives a much more elaborate account of the creation of man and the other animals, for which and for its explanation the reader must be referred to the elaborate analysis of M. Cumont (Cosmog. Manich. pp. 34-49, and App. II., “La Séduction des Archontes”). It should be noted, however, that some part of this story was known to St Augustine. See especially contra Faustum, Bk VI. c. 8.
[1070]. So Rochat, op. cit. pp. 157, 158.
[1071]. Kessler, op. cit. pp. 72, 80; Brandt, Mandäische Religion, p. 178.
[1072]. Rochat, op. cit. pp. 156-178, has carefully examined the resemblances between the system of Manes and that of the Mandaites and declares that it is at present impossible to say which of them has borrowed from the other.
[1073]. Hegemonius, Acta, c. XII., pp. 19, 20, Beeson.
[1074]. Op. cit. c. VIII., p. 12, Beeson.
[1075]. Chavannes et Pelliot (op. cit. p. 517, n. 3) make this the work of the Living Spirit, but they are clearly wrong. The text of the Acta referred to in the last note leaves no doubt that it is that of the “Son.”