A few articles came out over the past few years about early Manichaeism. One concerns how this sect approached the Old Testament - through "antitheses", between what the OT taught (selectively chosen) and what Christ taught. As for what they knew about Christ, that was had from the Diatesseron.
Through the aeons to our time, one text brought is the Kephalaia, "Chapters" in our Romance. The first of these, ll. 12.21–13.11, summarises Christ's life - which is harmonised. The argument is that the Gospel has been preharmonised, in parallel with witnesses to the Diatesseron, therefore that this summary is likewise Diatesseronic. (Notable here is the abrogation perhaps even ignorance of Mark.)
The other text is Augustine. This one is refuting an Adeimantos - "Fearless", likely equivalent to Adda a disciple of Mani; and Faustus.
Mani the Parthian seems not to have privileged the Jewish canon, having access - in early Sasanian Babylonia - to other Jewish work (famously the Enochian "Giants"), and to Buddhist work and others. It fell to successors to explain to Jews and to Christians, and indeed to pagans like Alexander of Lycopolis (a "White City", of Egypt I think), why on Earth Mani pretended to venerate a Christ whose Chrism makes sense only in relation to the ... Jewish canon. The Manichees were on their way to becoming a literally international laughing-stock.
Luckily for the Manichaeans, the same questions had been laid upon Marcion. So they delivered the same genre of answer. They could not follow Marcion's extremism for Luke, because if nothing else the Johannine theology appealed more to this gnostic sect. Also, living in an increasingly Christian Iraq and seeking recruits in the Rhomania, they wanted to appeal to as many Christians as possible. The Diatesseron at least in outline would do.
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