Note 1054 — Chapter XIII · MANES AND THE MANICHAEANS

En Nadîm in Kessler, op. cit. pp. 389, 390; Flügel, op. cit. p. 87. As Kessler points out, En Nadîm gives two accounts doubtless taken from different Manichaean sources. In one, he says simply that the King of the Paradise of Light followed with other gods and delivered the First Man, the actual victor over Darkness being called “the Friend” of the Lights (like Mithras). He then goes on to say 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 the First Man and his powers were held enlaced by Satan, “the Presumptuous Oppressor and the Life of Darkness”; then she called him in a loud and clear voice, and he became a god, after which he returned and “cut the roots of the Dark Powers.” For Bar Khôni’s amplification of this story see p. 302, n. 1, and p. 324 infra. The whole of this, together with the cutting of the roots, is strongly reminiscent of the Pistis Sophia.