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Mandaean Polemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

E.S. Drower
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Extract

T he Mandaean, or Nasoraean religion is a system with no definite theology. It is, and apparently was from the first, an elaborate system of symbolical rites, meticulously preserved and performed by an hereditary priesthood. These priests, to judge by scrolls reserved for priests only, appear to have concealed gnosticconceptions in symbolical myths, personifying abstract conceptions and so veiling, even in priestly texts, high and metaphysical truths which only the especially endued could perceive if fitted to understand.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , October 1962 , pp. 438 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1962

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References

1 The following abbreviations are used in this article: ATŠ E. S.Drower: The thousand and twelve questions (Alf trisar šuialia). [With facsimile text, translation, and commentary.] (Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Institut für Orientforschung, Veröffentlichung Nr. 32.) Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1960.

CP Drower, E. S.: The canonical prayerbook of the Mandaeans. [Facs. text and translation.] Leiden, Brill, 1959Google Scholar.

DC Drower Collection: Bodleian Library, Oxford.

GR Lidzbarski, M.: Ginzā, übersetzt und erklärt. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1925Google Scholar.

HG Drower, E. S.: The Haran Gawaita. [Facs. text and trs.] (Studi e Testi, 176.) Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1953Google Scholar.

MII Drower, E. S.: The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran: their cults, customs, magic, legends, and folklore. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1937Google Scholar. (Brill is shortly bringing out a new edition.)

Pet. H. Petermann: Thesaurus sive Liber magnus vulgo ‘Liber Adami’. [Mandaic text in two volumes.] Leipzig, P. 0. Weigel, 1867. (rt. = right part of text, 1. = left part.)

SA Drower, E. S.: The Secret Adam. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1960Google Scholar.

TL Theologische Literaturzeitung.

1 In HG. See also SA, 112.

2 CP, p. 152. A priest in modern times is called a tarmida.

3 Mandaean authors are forced to find adjectives which mean ‘holy’, ‘sacred’ which derive from innocuous roots such as ‘honoured’, ‘revered’, ‘precious’, etc. Yqr provides yaqra, and the marriage rite ia called a kušta yaqra (a ‘solemn’ or ‘precious’ pact), and kušta rhima ‘the beloved pact’. Kušta-Yaqra is personified, deified. ‘Kušta-Yaqra, the Great Light before whom no being existed’ (ATŠ, I, no. 100) and again he is called ‘ the Great Radiance, the brilliance of whom exceedeth the brightness of all worlds’ (Ibid., no. 99). He is spoken of sometimes as a Mana. To such a being, a personification of ideal truth, pact, and sincerity, yaqra more or less replaces the unwelcome qduša, qadiš, and other derivatives, which are only used derisively.

1 J. Levy, Chaldäisches WÖrterbuch: ‘ mit der Hand liber etwas fahren streichen, bes. mit Oel bestreichen’. For instance in Mandaic we get mša (see above), ‘protect (with the hand), touch, and to measure (by length of hand and arm, etc.)’. Cloth-sellers in Arab markets still measure from elbow to finger-tip although this ancient custom is gradually being replaced by a measure stick. Mšš ‘to grope, feel, estimate by touch’, and mšh itself is used for ‘to measure, survey’. Similar roots occur in Syriac and in Hebrew.

2 The miša used in baptism is sesame oil; that used in the mašiqta is of sesame oil mixed with date-juice.

1 See SA, p. 93, n. 1. The first letter of the Mandaic alphabet is often interchangeable with ‘ain ( = on, above, the above).

2 See Dr. Macuch's, R., interesting article ‘ Alter und Heimat des Mandäismus nach neuerschlossenen Quellen’, TL, LXXXII, 6, 1957, cols. 401–8Google Scholar.

3 cf. the story of Naaman, 2 Kings v.

4 GR, 1., 304:11 (Pet.).

5 GR, 1., 135:18 (Pet.).

1 This cannot be the result of reading the NT in translation or Syriac, for neither Peter nor Thomas (apostle to the Middle East) are mentioned. It is probably hearsay from chance references by Nestorians.

2 Prudqa, a writing which gives the credentials of a traveller.

3 The use of qdš here with Ruha d-Qudša is polemical. She is an evil spirit, mother of the seven (planets).

4 The Nestorian sacramental bread is so called. I suspect that kahnuta which follows as the substitute from the Mandaean burzinqa (turban) was originally krakta (the Nestorian mitre or turban).

5 In this dialogue ‘A-‘U cites various periods at which the entire population of the earth has been wiped out by global disasters, except for a single couple (e.g. Noah and his wife, and others named in GR) which paired in order that the human race might populate the world.

1 ‘Mandaean hostility to Eshu-Mšiha is hostility to the fully-developed post-Nicene Church’ (Burkitt, , Church and Gnosis, Cambridge, 1932)Google Scholar.

2 Who is called by them Miriam, Mariam. Miriai is mentioned with the mother of Yahia (John) in JB as weeping together (JB, trs., p. 85), again with other Jews (Yaqif and Beni-Amin), and two sections of JB are devoted to Miriai, (a) telling of her declaration in ruined Jerusalem that she has been converted to Manda-d-Hiia (gnosis of life) and cursing orthodox Jewish priests, and (6) dealing with Miriai by the Euphrates, where a throne was set up for her. We are evidently dealing here with a legend about a woman who was probably at one time an historical figure.

1 JB, p. 85:13. Other JB references to her are 87 ff., 123 ff., and p. 192:11 (again with Yaqif and Beni-Amin (Bnia-amin)).

1 But after exile to Babylonia, as the sesame oil is called ‘son of Euphrates-bank’.

2 Evidently these are Iranian heretics, Zurvanites ? Zurvan was Infinite Time (see Zaehner, R. C., Zurvān, a Zoroastrian dilemma, Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar. Kiwan is the Mandaean Saturn, the planet of old age, Time.

3 Another Zoroastrian sect ? That these were already diverse and numerous is pointed out by Zaehner, in The dawn and twilight of Zoroastrianism, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961, 185Google Scholar ff.

4 Idumaeans—a sect situated in Edom, a Transjordan sect which practised self-castration ? Origen, A.D. 185 (?)–254 (?), castrated himself. He is considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church.

5 Or ‘Death’.

6 Zandiqs, see Zaehner The dawn and twilight of Zoroastrianism, 184 f., on Zoroastrian sects under Shahpur I. ‘The list of sects persecuted [i.e. after Shahpur's death] shows how justified the early Sasanian kings were in seeking a unifying force that would weld their Empire together, for not only do we find Jews, Christians, Manichees, and Mandaeans (Nāsōrayē) mentioned, but also Buddhists and Brahmans.’ Zaehner says of ‘Zandiks’ that they were ‘probably Zurvanite materialists’ (op. cit., 186). We should not be far out, it may be, in dating the composition of CP, no. 357, to the third century A.D., perhaps during the era of Artabanus V, by which time there was a considerable colony of Nasoraeans in Tib and Khuzistan.

1 Mandaeans wear a sacred girdle (himiana), woven of sixty strands of white male lamb's wool.

1 This suggests the date of the whole composition.

2 Bar-Khuni quotes a similar passage in his Scholion (A.D. 792). See Pognon, H., Inscriptions mandaites, Paris, 1848, p. 241Google Scholar.

3 The end of the text is a kind of recapitulation, not, as it would seem on first reading, another age of degeneration before the end of the world.

1 Baptism with crowning and anointing is repeated constantly during life, and dying rites also include immersion, anointing, and crowning.