The Medinet Madi Library of Manichaean Codices at 90: Papers from the Symposium at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, 18-19 October 2019 (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, 104)

The Medinet Madi Library comes of age in this landmark volume as one of the 20th century’s major finds of religious manuscripts. Discovered in Egypt’s Fayum region in 1929, these Coptic codices contain a cross-section of the sacred literature of the Manichaean religion. Early work on the collection in the 1930s was cut short by the ravages of the second world war. Recent decades have brought multiple new editorial projects, on which this volume offers a comprehensive set of status reports, as well as individual studies on aspects of the Manichaean religion informed by the library’s contents.

Jason BeDuhn is Professor of the Comparative Study of Religions at Northern Arizona University and President of the International Association of Manichaean Studies. His major publications include The Manichaean Body: In Discipline and Ritual (Johns Hopkins, 2000), Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma (Pennsylvania, 2010 & 2013), and The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon (Polebridge, 2012).

Paul Dilley is Associate Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions at the University of Iowa, and a Senior Fellow of the Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography. In addition to his publications on Manichaeism, he is the author of Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity: Cognition and Discipline (Cambridge, 2017) and co-editor of Linked Open Data for the Ancient World: Structures, Practices, Prospects (ISAW Papers, 2021), among other volumes.

Iain Gardner is Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Sydney, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. His recent publications include The Founder of Manichaeism (Cambridge University Press 2020) and Mani’s Epistles (Kohlhammer 2022).