'chapters, headings') is a genre of Manichaean literature represented mainly by two large papyrus codices containing Coptic translations from 5th-century Roman Egypt.
[2] Although the Kephalaia likely originated, like hadiths, as accounts of the life and actions of Mani, the utility of the genre was such that it came to incorporate a wide variety of literary styles subjected artificially to the constraints of the format: instruction, exegesis, narrative, dialogue, parable, miracle-story, and even epic traditions.
[1] Despite the apocryphal and heavily reworked nature of the available text, most prominently from Coptic translation, it is an authentic representation of traditions first held and developed by the Manichaean communities in the early Sasanian period within the empire.
As such, this is a unique source for literature, religion and society from a known context that substantially pre-dates most other available resources concerning the reigns of Shapur II and his successors.
[4] In the Kephalaia, Jesus is an emanation of the Father of Greatness and identical with the "Third Envoy" and the "living word," brought forth to restore the damage done by the rebellion of the Archons.