As far back as Christian antiquity the Manichaean attacks on the sacredness of marriage as those of Jovinian and Vigilantius, which sought to undermine the reverence for virginity, were refuted by the Church Fathers St. Augustine and St. Jerome.
In 1904, German expeditions to Central Asia (Turpan in present northwest China) brought back many fragments of Manichaean holy texts, some of which were identified as belonging to The Book of Giants.