We Put the FBI Man Into the Medicine Lodge: Yes, and Buddha was some form of Hindu before becoming the Buddha, does that mean Buddhism is a form of Hinduism? Is Christianity a form of Judaism? Is *Islam* a form of Judaism? Is Manicheanism a form of Judaism, for that matter?

Did you ever hear of the Manichean Painting of the Buddha Jesus? I thought not. It’s not a story the Vatican would tell you. It’s a Chinese legend.

One of the greatest lost opportunities of globalization is that we’ll never get to see what wild and wonky syncretic versions of Christianity might have emerged from isolated Christian sects in Korea/Philippines/China etc

And by a Chinese legend I mean its an icon of Jesus painted by a Manichean sect in southern China, that was then brought to Japan and used as a Christian icon by Arima Harunobu, and now it’s in a Buddhist temple and venerated as an image of Ākāśagarbha

This is my favorite weird fact I learned on my wiki deep dive on Manicheanism

Are the manicheans Christian? They’re CLOSE

Most archeological, anthropological, and comparative religious research says "no". They're one of the early religions Christianity was competing with, which did borrow elements from Christianity but only because they borrowed from everything on the Silk Road.

I mean, kind of? But Mani was a member of the Elcesaites sect before founding his own religion

Yes, and Buddha was some form of Hindu before becoming the Buddha, does that mean Buddhism is a form of Hinduism? Is Christianity a form of Judaism? Is *Islam* a form of Judaism? Is Manicheanism a form of Judaism, for that matter?

You can't really classify religions in a pure-genetic way like that.

I think Augustine not counting it as a conversion is important there, plus the ways they talk about themselves. Meanwhile Mormons call themselves Christians so they are

The Manicheans are less funny than the Jesus is a hologram people though

Not trying to suggest you can, just saying that there was likely a strong Christian influence from there, but given it was an early Gnostic sect it may be very different from anything that would be recognized as Christian today

"Gnosticism" isn't really a useful term in these discussions, given that it's an exonymic concept that encompasses a wide variety of beliefs derived from a wide variety of sources.

Christianity is an appropriation of Judaism.

I mean I do think Christianity *was* a form of Judaism in the beginning. even in the Bible you can see some stuff that's indicative of an evolution from "we are a weird type of Jewish" to "we are our own separate thing".

I get what you're saying about the difficulty of classifying, but I think that cuts both ways. Are Catholicism and Protestantism the same religion? Are the Snake Handlers Christians? Are the Mormons? Are the Moonies?

I think there is a meaningful discussion about the difference between proto-Christianity, some forms of which are recognizable as a universalization of Second Temple Judaic practices, and Christianity post-Nicea, but at a certain point you need to stop playing maybe-technically games.

Yes, I can torture definitions and twist dogmas to the point where I can say Islam is Judaism, but is that categorization in any way useful beyond annoying people?

I think it's useful to ask how distinct these things were from each other at the time. Sure, they're not *modern* Christians, but most of the people at the time we'd all agree are Christians aren't either.

The Manicheans didn't consider themselves Christians, most Christian sects didn't consider them Christian even at the time, they do not have even the minimal dogma of "Believing Jesus the Nazarene to have been a prophet with special powers."

How are they Christians beyond you really wanting to win this argument?

That's fair. I got over my skis, and I will defer to your expertise here.

Though of interest here is that Manichaeans as a sect formed before the First Council of Nicaea

Being of interest in terms of “this is when they were all still in a primordial soup stage”, and I’m including to some extent Judaism in that as it was still the various Second Temple forms and not the modern Rabbinical forms

They also considered themselves to be the One True Religion and that Christianity and Buddhism were just false distortions of their doctrine, they called Mani Messiah the Buddha.

They did not have more than passing similarities in doctrinal beliefs with either, more importantly. Just because Hong Xi Quan said he was Jesus's brother-in-law doesn't mean that his religion was Christian instead of just a novel formulation of Confucian and Legalist thought!

Yeah, there’s likely a cut point when it went from “Jewish sect with proto-Christian characteristics” to “proto-Christian sect with Jewish characteristics” though that line may have been somewhat invisible to the people at the time (or not)

Though I think that was also some of the arguments regarding Pauline vs Petrine approaches in the early Church as well

the way I've heard it described is there was basically this whole cluster of beliefs from "traditionalist Judaism" out to "Christian", which was not seen as firmly divided (and certainly not on the binary we'd use now). but I am absolutely not an expert.

You probably could define Buddhism as a derivative of Hindu practice honestly, if only because so many core ideas are clearly in conversation with Hindu concepts

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