Scholars approach Manichaean belief as one might approach a shattered but still evocative icon, patiently gathering and aligning fragments from many lands and languages. Central to this work is the translation and analysis of primary texts: Coptic codices from Egypt, Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian fragments from Central Asia, Chinese materials from Dunhuang and related sites, and Greek papyri that preserve elements of Mani’s life and teaching. These internal sources, though incomplete, allow a picture of the dualistic cosmology, the drama of Light and Darkness, and the ethical division between Elect and Hearers to emerge with some clarity. By setting these texts side by side, scholars discern recurring patterns of myth, ritual, and community structure that suggest a common doctrinal core beneath regional adaptations.

Alongside these internal witnesses stand the voices of opponents—Christian, Zoroastrian, and Islamic authors who wrote against Manichaeism yet inadvertently preserved much of its teaching. Their accounts are treated with great caution: each claim is weighed against surviving Manichaean writings and against parallel reports from other critics. Where hostile sources converge with internal texts, or where they quote Manichaean works directly, scholars find firmer ground for reconstructing doctrine. In this way, even polemical literature becomes a kind of negative mirror, reflecting genuine beliefs through the distortions of controversy.

The reconstruction is further refined through philological and linguistic work that traces technical terms and concepts across Syriac, Middle Persian, Sogdian, Coptic, Chinese, and other languages. By following how key expressions are translated and adapted, researchers can move back toward earlier formulations and gain insight into how teachings were transmitted and reshaped. Comparative textual analysis across these traditions reveals both a stable mythic framework and the ways in which local religious vocabularies—whether Iranian, Christian, or Buddhist—were used to clothe Manichaean ideas. This careful attention to language helps prevent hasty assumptions and keeps the emerging portrait grounded in what the texts themselves will bear.

Material culture adds a final, important dimension. Manuscripts, religious objects, and artwork from sites such as Turfan are read in tandem with the written sources, so that images of Mani, depictions of cosmic beings, and traces of ritual life can confirm and nuance what the texts suggest. Archaeological remains of communities and their devotional spaces illuminate how cosmology and soteriology were lived out in practice, not merely articulated in doctrine. Through this convergence of textual, philological, polemical, and archaeological evidence, a coherent—though always provisional—vision of Manichaean faith and practice has been patiently assembled from what once seemed only scattered remnants.