The Living Gospel (also Great Gospel, Gospel of the Living and variants) was a 3rd-century gnostic gospel written by the Manichaean prophet Mani. It was originally written in Syriac and called the Evangelion (Classical Syriac: ܐܘܢܓܠܝܘܢ), from the Greek εὐαγγέλιον ("good news") and was one of the seven original scriptures of Manichaeism. A number of fragments are preserved in the Cologne Mani-Codex (discovered 1969) and on manuscript fragments found in Turfan beginning in 1904. Some Coptic manuscript fragments recovered at Fayyum appear to contain a sort of commentary or homily on the gospel.
The Iranian scholar Al-Biruni (973–after 1050), who still had access to the full text at his time of writing, commented that it was a "gospel of a special kind", unlike any of the gospels of the Christians, and that the Manichaeans insisted that theirs was the only true gospel, and that the various gospels of the Christians misrepresented the truth about the Messiah.
