Aaron Overby - Christian Polemics in Edessa: Was the Doctrine of Addai targeted against the Manicheans?

The Doctrine of Addai has raised the imaginations—and the suspicions—of many of its readers as the legendary account of the foundation of the Christian church in Edessa. Among several theories of its origin and purpose which dominate the scholarship is the proposal that it originated as an anti-Manichean polemic, taking some of the details that were known about Mani and his disciple Addai and crafting them into a competing account of Edessa’s first Christians. This explanation has been accepted by many notable scholars and adopted into their own discussion of the text, while others have found it to be at least an intriguing possibility. This paper will review the discussion offered in the scholarship on this text and look at the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence that has been presented. It will argue that the theory of the DocAdd being anti-Manichean polemic is too limited an explanation. While it offers a suggestive interpretation of the early narrative elements of the text—from which almost all the pieces of evidence for the theory are taken —it remains unconvincing as a portrayal of the text as a whole. It does not reflect the message contained in the extensive addresses of Addai, nor the definition given in the text to the scriptural canon. By way of conclusion, it will be shown that the latter question of canon offers an even stronger argument in the text against Manichaeism, but only as one of several religious groups that were rejected as heretical by the community of the DocAdd.