The Acta Archelai was a source of materials for almost all the Christian historians and theologians who engaged in polemics against the Manicheans, whether they wrote in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, or Arabic. They found in it quotations of sayings of Mani, sketches of his career, and rebuttals of Manichean counter interpretations of the New Testament. The popularity of the Acta Archelai in the west as well as the east of the Christian world, appears to have been due to its grotesquely derisive portrayal of Mani as both a heretic and an Iranian, as a religious adversary linked to the traditional political enemy.