In an article in SJT , Paul Rhodes Eddy summarizes the results of recent scholarship on the origins of Manicheanism. Since the publiscation of the Cologne Mani Codex in the 1970s, the standard views of the origins of the movement have “been decisively overturned.”

The new evidence, Eddy argues, “It appears to contain Mani’s own autobiographical comments amidst later redactional elements. It reveals that Mani grew up in a Jewish-Christian Elchasaite baptist sect. While Mani certainly reacts against certain aspects of his religious upbringing, he also retains much of its general orientation. Thus, it appears that the generative matrix of Mani’s new religion is to be identified as a complex amalgam of apocalyptic Jewish-Christian asceticism with Gnostic-dualist and esoteric elements.”

As I argued in my 1 John commentary, this makes all kinds of sense. In a variety of ways, gnosticism reproduces the structures of antique religion - the secrets hidden behind the veil and the distinction between the initiated priestly caste and everyone else. It looks like a kind of Judaizing. Neither Judaizers nor gnostics can believe that God has come from behind the veil to dwell among us.