Primary source · Greek; surviving whole in Syriac

Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichaeans

Name: Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichaeans
Author: Titus of Bostra

Titus of Bostra · c. AD 363–378

What this text is

The era's fullest anti-Manichaean case: evil is not a substance but a choice. Books I–II and part of III survive in Greek; the whole survives in Syriac — in London, BL Add. 12150, written at Edessa in NOVEMBER 411: the oldest dated Christian manuscript in existence, and this archive's most precisely datable witness.

Profile of Titus of Bostra →

Public-domain translations

Working translation (from the Greek and Syriac)

[Evil, he argues, has no root in being: God made natures, and wills make evils — the Manichaean 'substance of darkness' dissolves under the analysis.]

Manuscript witnesses

London, British Library Add. 12150

dated November AD 411 (Edessa)

The Syriac codex carrying the complete four books; its colophon gives day, month, and year.

EARLIEST WITNESS — THE OLDEST DATED CHRISTIAN BOOK

Medieval Greek tradition (books I–III part)

11th c. onward

The original language survives only in part.

GREEK WITNESSES

CCSG 82 (Roman, Poirier et al.)

2013

Greek and Syriac in parallel.

CRITICAL EDITION

Provenance

Bostra in Arabia; four books against Mani's dualism

Editions & scholarship

Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.

Titi Bostrensis Contra Manichaeos libri IV (CCSG 82)
A. Roman, P.-H. Poirier et al. (eds.), 2013
The critical edition.
Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China
Samuel N. C. Lieu, 1992
Secular-critical frame for the polemic's target.

Figures named in this text (1)

Titus of Bostra