Acts of Archelaus (Acta Archelai)

The history of Manes was first printed in Pfaff, pp. 182—184 of his edition of the Epitome of Lactantius (Paris, 1712); later in Fabricius, p. 196 of his edition of Hippolytus (Hamburg, 1718), whose text Gallandius, Migne, and Routh included in their editions; Fleck published the piece without having knowledge of the works of Pfaff and Fabricius (Wissenschaftliche Reise Scientific Journey, II, 3, p. 202, with illustration, plate 2, Leipzig, 1837); finally, Reifferscheid published it in the work cited above, independently of his predecessors. I am having the piece printed once again based on photographs that I owe to Professor Traube.

A certain Scythianus was from the race of the Saracens, from whom the heresy of the Manichaeans arose, who wrote four books against the true and upright faith; he called one Mysterium Mystery, the second Capitulorum of Chapters, the third Evangelium Gospel, and the fourth he called the book of Thesaurus Treasure. And he had a disciple named Terebinthus, who, after Scythianus died, taking the aforementioned four books as well as not a little money, since Scythianus was very wealthy, he arrived in Persia, as we shall record, and was taken in by a certain solitary widow, who alone was able to know his sect. He, swollen with pride, said that he was born of a virgin and reared by an angel in the mountains. He even changed his name, calling himself Baiddam original: "baiddam" instead of Terebinthus. But when he was ascending to the roof one day, he was cast down from there by an unclean spirit and immediately gave up his spirit. Then the widow who had taken him in, rejoicing in the greed for money after his death, bought a boy for herself for the comfort of her old age, named Corbicius, whom she also educated in no mean letters. After her death, he took not only the books that Terebinthus had left behind but also the money of Corbicius. He acquired three disciples for himself, of whom one was Thomas, another Abda, the third was Hermas. He sent these to preach the books that Scythianus had written, by which very many provinces were ensnared in the aforementioned sect. Yet even Corbicius himself, after the death of the widow, changed his name and called himself Manes instead of Corbicius; he was once captured by the King of the Persians and condemned by such a sentence that his skin, flayed in the manner of goats corrected from "more", would hang at the gate, while his flesh would be offered to the birds of the sky as food. Those wishing to know better how these things are should read Archelaus.

The first line is in uncial, the remaining are written in a very beautiful half-uncial. The abbreviations are: q. (line 2), spu and spm with a stroke above them (lines 11 and 12). The m-stroke occurs only at the end of the line (lines 2, 3, 20, 21). The dot serves as punctuation; however, words are usually not separated. a always, b and g once have the uncial form; I longa long I occurs only after t and r; the only ligatures are -ret (lines 11, 22) and -rtem (lines 15, 19, 21).

1) The reading is not certain; perhaps ai is corrected to u.