In Book V, Chapter XI of the Confessions, Augustine describes his pre-conversion days among the heterodox
Manicheans. He notes, in particular, that “the things they censured in thy
Scriptures I thought impossible to be defended.”
He makes reference to a Christian named Elpidus in Carthage who
effectively used Scripture to refute the Manicheans:
For already the words of one Elpidus,
who spoke and disputed face to face against these same Manicheans, had begun to
impress me, even when I was at Carthage; because he brought things out of the
Scriptures that were not easily withstood, to which their answers appeared to
me feeble.
This man apparently sowed Scriptural seeds of doubt in
Augustine’s mind about the Manichean system.
Augustine also notes how the Manicheans privately claimed
that the Christian Scriptures had been corrupted:
One of their answers they did not give forth
publicly, but only to us in private—when they said the writings of the New
Testament had been tampered with by unknown persons [cum dicerent scripturas
novi testamenti falsatas fuisse a nescio quibus] who desired to ingraft the
Jewish law into the Christian faith. But they themselves never brought forward
any uncorrupted copies [atque ipsi incorrupta exemplaria nulla
proferrent].
His
comments show that the text of Scripture was an apologetic flashpoint in
Augustine’s day and that heterodox sects, like the Manichaeans, claimed not
only that the orthodox text was corrupted but also that they had preserved or
could reconstruct the “pure text” but, alas, they were never able to present
these “uncorrupted copies [incorrupta exemplaria]” to him.
JTR
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