"Once Again He Speaks": Performance and the Anthological Habit in the Manichaean Kephalaia

Abstract:This article presents one way to understand the peculiar internal structure of kephalaia as found in the early fifth-century Manichaean codex known as the Kephalaia of the Teacher. It uses the concept of the "anthological habit" developed among scholars of rabbinic literature as a prism to understand the interface between literary structure and pedagogical performance of kephalaia. Through a close analysis of three kephalaia, it argues that kephalaia are the products of circumscribed practices of textual anthologization. As such, kephalaia do not draw attention to its the textual surface but instead function as a rough guideline for a Manichaean teacher to perform before his disciples. This article further suggests that there was a certain virtuosity to the teacher's performance since the kephalaia's practice of anthologization makes an implicit claim that every discrete element within the cosmos is actually a contiguous part of a coherent whole, thereby gesturing towards the totalizing horizons of "Mani's" revelation through the performance of the kephalaia themselves.