Mandaeism

Not to be confused with Mazdaism or Manichaeism.

Mandaeism
ࡌࡀࡍࡃࡀࡉࡉࡀ‎
المندائيّة (Arabic)
A copy of the Ginza Rabba in Arabic translation
TypeEthnic religion[1][page needed]
ClassificationGnosticism[1][page needed]
ScriptureGinza Rabba, Qulasta, Mandaean Book of John (see more)
TheologyMonotheism
RishamaSattar Jabbar Hilow[2]
RegionIraq, Iran and diaspora communities
LanguageMandaic[3]
Origin1st century CE
Judaea, Roman Empire[4][5]
Separated fromSecond Temple Judaism[6][7]
Number of followersc. 60,000–100,000[8][9]
Other name(s)Nasoraeanism, Sabianism[a]
<?>
You may need rendering support to display the uncommon Unicode characters in this article correctly.
Part of a series on
Mandaeism
Prophets
Names for adherents
Scriptures
Priests
Individual leaders
Rituals
Ritual food and drink
Practices
Objects and symbols
Cosmology
Festivals
Places
Prayers
Religion portal
Mandaic incantation bowl from Southern Mesopotamia c. 200–600 CE – Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada
 
Part of a series on
Gnosticism
Gnostic concepts
Gnostic sects and founders
Proto-Gnosticism
Judean / Israelite
Christian Gnosticism
Syrian-Egyptian
Alexandrian
Roman
Persian Gnosticism
Chinese Gnosticism
Islamic Gnosticism
Modern
Scriptures
Texts
Codices
Influenced by
Influence on

Mandaeism (Classical Mandaic: ࡌࡀࡍࡃࡀࡉࡉࡀ‎ mandaiia; Arabic: المندائيّة, romanized: al-Mandāʾiyya), sometimes also known as Nasoraeanism or Sabianism,[a] is a Gnostic, monotheistic and ethnic religion with Greek, Iranian, and Jewish influences.[10][11][12]: 1  Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist. Mandaeans consider Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem and John the Baptist prophets, with Adam being the founder of the religion and John being the greatest and final prophet.[13]: 45 [14]

The Mandaeans speak an Eastern Aramaic language known as Mandaic. The name 'Mandaean' comes from the Aramaic manda, meaning knowledge.[15][16] Within the Middle East, but outside their community, the Mandaeans are more commonly known as the صُبَّة Ṣubba (singular: Ṣubbī), or as Sabians (الصابئة, al-Ṣābiʾa). The term Ṣubba is derived from an Aramaic root related to baptism.[17] The term Sabians derives from the mysterious religious group mentioned three times in the Quran. The name of this unidentified group, which is implied in the Quran to belong to the 'People of the Book' (ahl al-kitāb), was historically claimed by the Mandaeans as well as by several other religious groups in order to gain legal protection (dhimma) as offered by Islamic law.[18] Occasionally, Mandaeans are also called "Christians of Saint John", in the belief that they were a direct survival of the Baptist's disciples. Further research, however, indicates this to be a misnomer, as Mandaeans consider Jesus to be a false prophet.[19][20]

The core doctrine of the faith is known as Nāṣerutā (also spelled Nașirutha and meaning Nasoraean gnosis or divine wisdom)[21][13]: 31  (Nasoraeanism or Nazorenism) with the adherents called nāṣorāyi (Nasoraeans or Nazorenes). These Nasoraeans are divided into tarmidutā (priesthood) and mandāyutā (laity), the latter derived from their term for knowledge manda.[22]: ix [23] Knowledge (manda) is also the source for the term Mandaeism which encompasses their entire culture, rituals, beliefs and faith associated with the doctrine of Nāṣerutā. Followers of Mandaeism are called Mandaeans, but can also be called Nasoraeans (Nazorenes), Gnostics (utilizing the Greek word gnosis for knowledge) or Sabians.[22]: ix [23]

The religion has primarily been practiced around the lower Karun, Euphrates and Tigris, and the rivers that surround the Shatt al-Arab waterway, part of southern Iraq and Khuzestan province in Iran. Worldwide, there are believed to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans.[8] Until the Iraq War, almost all of them lived in Iraq.[24] Many Mandaean Iraqis have since fled their country because of the turmoil created by the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation by U.S. armed forces, and the related rise in sectarian violence by extremists.[25] By 2007, the population of Mandaeans in Iraq had fallen to approximately 5,000.[24]

The Mandaeans have remained separate and intensely private. Reports of them and of their religion have come primarily from outsiders: particularly from Julius Heinrich Petermann, an Orientalist;[26] as well as from Nicolas Siouffi, a Syrian Christian who was the French vice-consul in Mosul in 1887,[27][28] and British cultural anthropologist Lady E. S. Drower. There is an early if highly prejudiced account by the French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier[29] from the 1650s.

  1. ^ a b Buckley 2002.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference imams was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ E. S. Drower, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Leiden: Brill, 1937; reprint 1962); Kurt Rudolph, Die Mandäer II. Der Kult (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Göttingen, 1961; Kurt Rudolph, Mandaeans (Leiden: Brill, 1967); Christa Müller-Kessler, "Sacred Meals and Rituals of the Mandaeans", in David Hellholm, Dieter Sänger (eds.), Sacred Meal, Communal Meal, Table Fellowship, and the Eucharist: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity, Vol. 3 (Tübingen: Mohr, 2017), pp. 1715–1726, pls.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Buckley2021 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference auto was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ King, Karen L. (2005). What is Gnosticism?. p. 140. And sixty thousand Nasoraeans abandoned the Sign of the Seven and entered the Median Hills, a place where we were free from domination by all other races.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference BuckleyOrigins was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ a b Thaler, Kai (9 March 2007). "Iraqi minority group needs U.S. attention". Yale Daily News. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  9. ^ "The Mandaeans – Who are the Mandaeans?". The Worlds of Mandaean Priests. Retrieved 5 November 2021.
  10. ^ Rudolph, Kurt; Duling, Dennis C.; Modschiedler, John (1969). "Problems of a History of the Development of the Mandaean Religion". History of Religions. 8 (3): 210–235. doi:10.1086/462585. ISSN 0018-2710. JSTOR 1061760. S2CID 162362180. [Wilhelm] Brandt maintains that the oldest layer of Mandaean tradition is pre-Christian. He designates it "polytheistic material,'" which is nourished above all from "semitic nature religion" (to which he also accords baptismal and water rites) and "Chaldaean philosophy." Gnostic, Greek, Persian, and Jewish conceptions were added and assimilated to it. [...] A newer trend of Mandaean theology was first capable of bringing about a reformation by attaching itself to Persian models; this is the school of the so-called "teaching of the king of light" (Lichtkonigslehre), as Brandt has named it. [...] Both of the central principles of Mandeism, Light and Life, attached themselves to Iranian and Semitic conceptions.
  11. ^ Buckley 2002, p. 4.
  12. ^ Al-Saadi, Qais; Al-Saadi, Hamed (2019). Ginza Rabba (2nd ed.). Germany: Drabsha.
  13. ^ a b Nasoraia, Brikhah S. (2012). "Sacred Text and Esoteric Praxis in Sabian Mandaean Religion" (PDF).
  14. ^ mandaean الصابئة المندايين (21 November 2019). "تعرف على دين المندايي في ثلاث دقائق". YouTube. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
  15. ^ Rudolph 1977, p. 15.
  16. ^ Fontaine, Petrus Franciscus Maria (January 1990). Dualism in ancient Iran, India and China. The Light and the Dark. Vol. 5. Brill. ISBN 9789050630511.
  17. ^ Häberl 2009, p. 1
  18. ^ De Blois 1960–2007; van Bladel 2017, p. 5.
  19. ^ Edmondo, Lupieri (2004). "Friar of Ignatius of Jesus (Carlo Leonelli) and the First "Scholarly" Book on Mandaeaism (1652)". ARAM Periodical. 16 (Mandaeans and Manichaeans): 25–46. ISSN 0959-4213.
  20. ^ Burkitt, F. C. (1928). "The Mandaeans". The Journal of Theological Studies. 29 (115): 225–235. doi:10.1093/jts/os-XXIX.115.225. ISSN 0022-5185. JSTOR 23950943. When they were first discovered by Europeans in the 17th century, and it was found that they were neither Catholics nor Protestants but that they made much of baptism and honoured John the Baptist, they were called Christians of St John, in the belief that they were a direct survival of the Baptist's disciples. Further research, however, made it quite clear that they were not Christians or Jews at all, in any ordinary sense of the word. They regard 'Jesus Messiah' as a false prophet, and 'the Holy Spirit' as a female demon, and they denounce the Jews and all their ways.
  21. ^ Drower 1960b, p. xvi.
  22. ^ a b Häberl & McGrath 2019
  23. ^ a b Drower 1960b.
  24. ^ a b Deutsch, Nathaniel (6 October 2007). "Save the Gnostics". The New York Times.
  25. ^ Crawford, Angus (4 March 2007). "Iraq's Mandaeans 'face extinction'". BBC News. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  26. ^ Foerster, Werner (1974). Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic texts. Vol. 2. Oxford University Press. p. 126. ISBN 9780198264347.
  27. ^ Lupieri 2001, p. 12.
  28. ^ Häberl 2009, p. 18: "In 1873, the French vice-consul in Mosul, a Syrian Christian by the name of Nicholas Siouffi, sought Mandaean informants in Baghdad without success."
  29. ^ Tavernier, J.-B. (1678). The Six Voyages of John Baptista Tavernier. Translated by Phillips, J. pp. 90–93.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).