The publication contains a translation of one of the largest in volume and most important among the written monuments of the Manichaean religion that have come down to us, which is a most interesting and not yet fully studied phenomenon in the religious and cultural life of antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The translation is accompanied by research, commentary, glossary and index. This book contains a translation of the published text of the Berlin manuscript [Keph I; Keph II], text comments, glossary and index. The German edition of "Kefalaya" is simply a translation, without an index and practically without comments, only with a brief introduction and links to quoted passages of Holy Scripture. In I. Gardner's edition, for all its undoubted merits, there are also no comments as such. Thus, the commentary and glossary offered here is the first attempt at such research. The so-called “Dublin Cephalaya” (a facsimile manuscript from the Chester Beatty collection) is very poorly preserved; Correctly reading, restoring and translating such a text is a huge job. In addition, some differences (for example, in page titles, etc.) suggest that the Berlin and Dublin manuscripts of Kephalaya represent two different treatises [Sundermann, 1992]. For these reasons, as well as due to the large volume of texts, it was not possible to include in this work a translation of the “Dublin “Kefalaya””, which is not possible. Thus, the reader is offered the first translation into Russian of the “Berlin “Kefalaya”” - a large Manichaean text. CONTENTS: Introduction 9Sources on Manichaeism. Coptic texts and the history of their discovery 9 Biography of Mani 16 History of the Manichaean church after the death of Mani. Manichaeism in Egypt 30Community structure, hierarchy, ritual 33Manichaean books and doctrine 35The nature of Manichaean syncretism 43Treatise “Chapters”: origin, features of the genre, language 45Kefalaya (“Chapters”) 51Commentary 285Glossary 361Appendices 476Index 476Literature 500B bibliographic abbreviations 511Summary 512