Note 1053 — Chapter XIII · MANES AND THE MANICHAEANS

Both the Christian and the Mahommedan traditions agree as to this result of the fight, which is paralleled not only by the more or leas successful attempt of Jaldabaoth and his powers to eat the light of Pistis Sophia, but also by a similar case in orthodox Zoroastrianism. For all these see Cumont, Cosmog. Manich. p. 18, n. 4. Bar Khôni (Pognon, p. 186), goes further and describes the surrender of the First Man as a tactical effort on his part, “as a man who having an enemy puts poison in a cake and gives it to him.” Alexander of Lycopolis (adv. Manich. c. III.), on the other hand declares that God could not avenge himself upon matter (as he calls Darkness) as he wished, because he had no evil at hand to help him, “since evil does not exist in the house and abode of God”; that he therefore sent the soul into matter which will eventually permeate it and be the death of it; but that in the meantime the soul is changed for the worse and participates in the evil of matter, “as in a dirty vessel the contents suffer change.” These, however, are more likely to be the ideas of the Christian accusers than the defences of the Manichaean teachers.