Note 1119 — Chapter XIII · MANES AND THE MANICHAEANS

Pognon, op. cit. p. 184. Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. pp. 9, 10, would substitute Reason for Knowledge and Will for Feeling. The Greek names as given in the Acta (Hegemonius, op. cit. c. X. p. 15, Beeson) are νοῦς, ἔννοια, φρόνησις, ἐνθύμησις, λογισμός which the Latin translator makes into mens, sensus, prudentia, intellectus, cogitatio. The first of these may pass as correct, since Nous appears as the first emanation of the Highest God in all the systems which preceded that of Manes and from which he is likely to have copied. Of the rest, it can only be said that they are the translations by scribes of Syriac or Mandaite words which were ill calculated to express metaphysical abstractions, and that their copyists were seldom well acquainted with the etymology of any of the three languages. Hence they generally made use of what they thought were the corresponding expressions in the works of great heresiologists like Irenaeus and Hippolytus without troubling themselves much as to their appropriateness. In the passage from the Acta above quoted, the five qualities named are said to be the “names of the soul,” which is explained by what is said later (op. cit. c. X. p. 17, Beeson) that “the air (ἀήρ) is the soul of men and beasts and birds and fish and creeping things.” En Nadîm (Kessler, op. cit. p. 387; Flügel, p. 86), as has been said on p. 291 supra, gives the “members of the air” as Gentleness, Knowledge, Intelligence, Discretion and Discernment, which are the same as those which he has just attributed to the King of the Paradise of Light. St Augustine (c. Faust. Bk XX. c. 15) says in like manner that the Manichaeans thought their souls “members of God,” which seems to refer to the same belief. Bar Khôni (Pognon, op. cit. p. 186), as has been said, not only assigns the five dwellings of Intelligence, Knowledge, Thought, Reflexion and Feeling to the Living Spirit, but makes him draw his five sons from them, and M. Cumont (Cosmog. Manich. p. 10, n. 3) quotes the Acta Thomae as saying that the Third Legate or Srôsh is “the Legate of the five members, Nous, Ennoia, Phronesis, Enthymesis and Logismos.” From all which we may gather that the Supreme God of Light and his “Second” and “Third” creations were each alike thought to have the same five dwellings or hypostases consisting of abstract qualities, although the exact significance of the names given to them for the present escapes us.