A number of hitherto unpublished Syriac fragments in Manichaean script have formed the nucleus of a joint project with J.M. Larsen. The fragments are the last remnants of what must once have been an important section of the early Syriac literature. The fragments will be presented with photos of them, and with the story about how they were traced in forgotten boxes at museums and private owners.
The main part of the lecture will be a discussion of their contents. – Among Mani’s scriptures was the Book of the Giants, partly preserved in Middle Persian and Old Turkish. It dealt with the fate of the giant sons who were the offspring of the union between the watchers and daughters of man that was a central issue in “Enochic” Jewish interpretations of Genesis 6,2-4. In the 1970s Jozef Milik showed that Mani’s book must have been based on a Qumran parabiblical text, thus raising the interesting questions of the transmission of Jewish traditions to Manichaeism and the “history of dualisms”. The largest group of “new” Syriac fragments may in fact stem from the Syriac original of the Book of the Giants thus providing us with the link between the Aramaic Qumran text and the Central Asian versions of Mani’s writing.

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