nothing of founder or origins. In spite of its hatred of the Judaism of Jerusalem and its definite preference for the Persian idea of redemption, the Mandæan religion seems to have stood very close to the popular beliefs of Syrian Jewry. One after another, pieces of its wonderful documents are becoming available, and they consistently show us a "Him," a Son of Man, a Redeemer who is sent down into the depths, who himself must be redeemed and is the goal of man's expectations. In the Book of John, the Father high upraised in the House of Fulfilment, bathed in light, says to his only begotten Son: "My Son, be to me an ambassador; go into the world of darkness, where no ray of light is." And the Son calls up to him: "Father, in what have I sinned that thou hast sent me into the darkness?" And finally: "Without sin did I ascend and there was no sin and defect in me."[1]
All the characters of the great prophetic religions and of the whole store of profound glimpses and visions later collected into apocalypses are seen here as foundations. Of Classical thought and feeling not a breath reached this Magian underworld. No doubt the beginnings of the new religion are lost irrevocably. But one historical figure of Mandæanism stands forth with startling distinctness, as tragic in his purpose and his downfall as Jesus himself — John the Baptist.[2] He, almost emancipated from Judaism, and filled with the as mighty a hatred of the Jerusalem spirit as that of primitive Russia for Petersburg, preached the end of the world and the coming of the Barnasha, the Son of Man, who is no longer the longed-for national Messiah of the Jews, but the bringer of the world-conflagration.[3] To him came Jesus and was his disciple.[4] He was thirty years old when the awakening came over him. Thenceforth the apocalyptic, and in particular the Mandæan, thought-world filled his whole being. The other world of historical actuality lying round him was to him as something sham, alien, void of significance. That "He" would now come and make an end
- ↑ Lidzbarski, Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer, Ch. LXVI. Also W. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis (1907) and Reitzenstein, Das Mandäische Buch der Herrn der Grösse (1919), an apocalypse approximately contemporary with the oldest Gospels. On the Messiah texts, the Descent-into-Hell texts, and the Songs of the Dead see Lidzbarski, Mandäische Liturgien (1920); also the Book of the Dead (especially the second and third books of the left Genza) in Reitzenstein's Das iranische Erlösungsmysterium (especially pp. 43, et seq.). [The Mandæan religion survives to-day in the region of the Shatt-el-Arab and the Karun valley or Khuzistan. — Tr.]
- ↑ See Reitzenstein, pp. 124, et seq., and references there quoted.
- ↑ In the New Testament, of which the final redaction lies entirely in the sphere of Western-Classical thought, the Mandæan religion and the sects belonging thereto are no longer understood, and indeed everything Oriental seems to have dropped out. Acts xviii-xix, however, discloses a perceptible hostility between the then widespread John-communities and the Primitive Christians (see Dibelius Die Urchristliche Überlieferungen von Johannes dem Täufer). The Mandæans later rejected Christianity as flatly as they had rejected Judaism. Jesus was for them a false Messiah. In their Apocalypse of the Lord of Greatness the apparition of Enosh was also announced.
- ↑ According to Reitzenstein (Das Buch von Herrn der Grösse) Jesus was condemned at Jerusalem as a John-disciple. According to Lidzbarski (Mand. Lit., 1920, XVI and Zimmern (Ztschr. d. D. Morg. Gesellschaft, 1920, p. 429), the expression "Jesus the Nazarene" or "Nasorene," which was later by the Christian communities referred to Nazareth (Matthew ii, 23, with a doubtful citation), really indicates the membership in a Mandæan Order.
