Variazioni dualistiche su Giovanni Battista presso il fiume Giordano: tra frammenti manichei, omissioni marcionite e testi gnostici radicali

In 1984 Edmondo Lupieri dedicated an important contribution to the Judeo-Christian and Gnostic interpretations of the traditions relating to John the Baptist, a figure who in the Gnostic texts is placed at the intersection between the demiurgic and the salvific economy. In this contribution, starting from heresiological sources and from texts in Middle-Persian, we try to reconstruct the Manichean portrait of John the Baptist, in order to study its sources. Such sources cannot be found in Marcionism, which is criticized by the hymn in Middle-Persian, but must be sought in those forms of late and radical Gnosticism in which the baptism of water and the character of John are demonized, such as the Testimony of Truth and the Paraphrase of Sēem.