Beyond The Obvious

Mandaean Texts

The interest and importance of the Mandaean religion and its source books are due not to the roughtly three to four thousand faithful of the Mandaean religion living in Lower Babylon today nor to the topical significance of this gnostic sect, but rather to the historical problem of the religious situation in Mesopotamia in early Christian times and the development of Manichaeism, and especially the theological problem of the relation of the Mandaeans to the beginnings of Christianity and certain parts of the New Testament.

The motive which impelled the Mandaeans to collect their writings was the need to possess clearly defined sacred books of their own. Islam made an important distinction between the "people of the book" (ahl alkitab), that is, the owners of sacred books, and believers in religions which lacked written sources; it was this that caused the Mandaean community to prepare their sacred books in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. Already existing writings, which contain no direct information about their origin and which were probably compiled over considerable periods of time, had probably already been collected. They were now assembled in considerable corpora of texts which made it possible for the Mandaeans to describe themselves as "owners of sacred books." The oldest available manuscripts of these texts date from the 16th century. Mainly through the mediation of missionaries working in Mesopotamia, such manuscripts have been coming into European hands since the 17th century. They are to be found in the libraries of Paris, London and Oxford; there are fragments in Leiden and Munich.

The lanuage in which the texts were written has died out as a vernacular; the Mandaeans of today speak Arabic and, to some extent, Persian. The language of the sacred books, which has been thoroughly investigated and described by Theodor Noldeke, is called "Mandaean." This denotes one of the two Aramaic dialects of Babylonia. It differs from the second, which is found in the Gemaric sections of the Babylonian Talmud, in not having been influenced by Hebrew. Unlike Syriac, it was not influenced either by Greek syntax. It was written in an alphabet of its own, derived from Old Aramaic and consisting, like the dialect, of 22 characters.

The most important sacred books of the Mandaeans have been translated definitively by Mark Lidzbarski and he has also published a partial edition of the original text. The most extensive text is the Ginza or "Treasure" (the reading Genza is also possible), which is also known as the Sidra Rabba ("the great book"). The oldest manuscript of this work, which is preserved in Paris, dates from the year 1560. The Ginza consists of two main parts. The larger part, which comprises 18 books, some of them subdivided into tractates, deals mainly with life; the smaller part of the work deals with death: this consists of three books.

The "Book of John" (Sidra d'Jahja) probably owes its name in the first place to the fact that the stories of John the Baptist constitute its most important elements; the Mandaeans regarded John the Baptist as their sole human teacher; in the second place, they gave it this name in order to please the Mohammedans, who recognise John the Baptist as one of their prophets.

The Mandaean liturgies contain liturgical pieces of which the "Quintessence" (Quolasta) is the most important. It includes liturgies for the baptismal festival and the service for the dead. It is scarcely possible to give a systematic account of the contents of the individual items of Mandaean literature. Apart from the liturgies, it is impossible to discern any plan behind the construction of the books. The items are arranged in a motley sequence with no attempt at logical order. Stylistically, too, they are completely lacking in uniformity. Prose and poetry alternate. Prayers, liturgical formulas, myths, meditations on the beginning and end of the world, follow one another according to no set plan.

This Mandaean literature represents the confluence of materials from the most desperate sources: a collective literature from which the historian can obtain important information about the religious movements of the early Christian centuries. Babylonian and Persian conceptions, the Old Testament and Jewish Christianity have all left their mark on it.

The language is that of myth. The terminology which we find in these writings has, however, not yet been studied anything like thoroughly enough.

In spite of the confusion of the material and its arrangement it is possible to discern the basic concerns of the Mandaeans from their literature. Their religion was gnostic in character; the name Mandaean(mandaje) comes in fact from the Mandaean word for gnosis (manda, "knowledge"). As in other gnostic systems, the cosmic process is conceived as a struggle between light and the world of light on the one hand, and the power of darkness and matter (Hyle) on the other. The purpose of the religious life is the return of the soul from the bonds of darkness to the heavenly world of light. This is brought about, with the help of God, by the sending down of an instrument of revelation who is usually called the "Gnosis of Life" (Manda deHayye).

As a sample of Mandaean literature here is, first of all, the description (from the Ginza) of the world of darkness and its king as opposed to the world of light:

In the Name of the great life. I call you, I teach you and I say to you true and faithful men, you seers and separated ones: Separate yourselves from the world of need, which is full of unrest and error. First of all I taught you about the King of Light, who is praised to all eternity. I spoke to you about the celebrated worlds of light which are immortal. Now I want to speak to you about the worlds of darkness and their content, which are ugly and terribly and whose form is improper.

Outside the earth of light, down below, outside the earth Tibur and to the South, lies the earth of darkness. The form of this earth is different from that of the earth of light, for they diviate from one another in every way. Darkness exists in its own evil nature, howling darkness, barren darkness, it knows neither beginning nor end.

But the king of light knows and understands the first and last things, past and future. He knew and saw that the Evil One exists. The worlds of darkness are extended and endless. It was said: "Wide and deep is the dwelling of the Evil One, whose peoples showed no loyalty in the place where their sojourn is eternal. Their earth is black water, their height is black darkness."

The king of darkness was formed from the black water by his own evil nature and came forth. He became great, powerful and mighty, he summoned and spread thousands upon thousands of evil generations without end and tenthousand upon tenthousand ugly creatures without number. Darkness became great because of the demons, dews, genii, spirits, hmurhas, liliths, temple and chapel spirits, idols, Marchonts, angels, vampyrs, fauns, mischief-makers, demons of apoplexy, fiends, snaring and enticing spirits, satans, all the ugly creatures of the darkness of every sort and kind. The king of darkness assumed all the forms of the childrren of the world. He knows all the languages of the world, but he is stupid, confused, his thoughts are impeded and he knows neither first nor last things.

He hid himself and saw the worlds of light in the distance, on the borders of the darkness and the light; like a fire on the summit of high mountains, like stars which sparkle in the sky, like the radiance of the sun when it rises and comes from the East, like the moon in its brightness. He saw the glimmer of that earth of light like burning lamps, which ... shine into the darkness ...

Then a voice went forth from the lofty king of light and he spoke to the worlds of light ... "Remain calm ... fear not the anger of the gloomy, hollow and evil demon, who has succumbed to anger. He must be held fast in his own container, all his plans must be frustrated. His plans are to be frustrated and his works all come to nothing."

A second short quotation in the Mandaean religion, its veneration fro the "Jordan," by which the Mandaeans mean any flowing water suitable for the baptismal rite; scholars have traced this use of the name "Jordan" to an original root meaning "that which flows"; alternatively, it has been suggested that it contains a reminder of the Palestinian origins of their sect. The quotation contains one of many references to the "Jordan" in Mandaean literature:

Everyone who remains over in that final age and journeys to the Jordan with the call, the power and the message, will be met with flags, flags of radiance, from the place of light.

Sacred Writings

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