Christianity
The Mandaeans, Followers of John the Baptist
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, 07 April 2003, Friday, 03 October 2003
Mandæans
An interesting sect, quite neglected, is that called by some the S John’s Christians because they regard Jesus as a false messiah but revere John the Baptist. They call themselves Mandæans and are an old religious sect. The Mandæan tradition preserves traces of the earliest forms of a pre-Christian gnosis. Importantly, they look back to a still more ancient tradition which is claimed to be purer and wiser than that of the Jews. It is that of the Essenes who can be seen to have had a remarkable influence on the world far exceeding their numbers.
The Mandæan tradition’s rejection of the Christian messianic claim is that Jesus was the Deceiver Messiah, and they say this derives from John himself. The baptism of Jesus by John is acknowledged, but given a mystic explanation. Jesus is not shown as unknowing, answering test questions from John with deep moral insight. Surprisingly, Mandæan tradition preserves nothing to show any belief in Jewish messianism at all. Its soteriology is peculiar, repudiating the Torah, Jewish prophecy and apocalyptic emphatically. Even so, its origins are certainly in Jerusalem in Judæa, and suggests John had a deep knowledge of the inner meaning of the Law.
The Mandæans survive, if indeed they still do after the avoidable misfortunes of that country, with only a few thousand adherents towards the mouth of the Euphrates on the borders of Iraq and Iran. For Mandæans, Allah (Alaha) is the False God, the True God being Mana, but the Mandæans seem to be the Sabians, the Baptizers, of the Quran.
They perform elaborate baptismal ceremonies on all religious occasions and daily before sunrise. Their attachment to these lustrations gave them the name Subba or Sabians meaning baptisers. The Essenes too were said to have welcomed the rise of the sun with ceremony and prayer. Note that Epiphanius identified Nazarenes with the “Daily Baptists” (Hemerobaptists).
These baptisms were believed to purify, confer physical health and ultimately confer immortality. John the Baptist was himself baptised, while yet a boy, by God in His aspect of Manda d’Hayye and he then performed miracles of healing through baptism. In an account in the holy book, the Ginza, John baptised Manda d’Hayye.
Mandæan lustrations had to be in running water, yardna, (a word with the same consonants as Jordan), not still water (like the Christians) which they disdained. Furthermore they were repeated immersions not just a single one by way of initiation as it is in Christianity. Again this is common ground with the Essenes, the difference arising because Jesus had decided there was no time for his converts to be fully initiated into Essene practises, so the initial baptism had to suffice provided that repentance was sincere. The Day of God’s Vengeance was too close.
The beginnings of Mandaism are unknown but there are clues in Mandæan books and their rituals and beliefs. Mandæan (Mandayya) means “to have knowledge”, from the Aramaic word for knowledge, Manda, the same as Gnosis, suggesting Mandaism is a survival of Gnosticism, and much in Mandæan cosmology seems to hark back to gnostic ideas. However, it is of interest to us because there is a possibility that the sect really does derive from John the Baptist, so offers a different view of the foundation of Christianity. With typical Christian arrogance and lack of scholarship, the Mandæan traditions about John are described by them as “confused”.
Nazarenes?
The sect certainly has features in common with Judaism, such as the Jewish scriptures and ethical concerns akin to those of Judaism, but it also has Persian features, such as its emphasis on angels and demons. Since Essenism has just these features, Mandaism looks promising as a link with with the Nazarenes. Sure enough, Mandæan tradition in the only history of the Mandæans, Haran Gawaita, says they left Palestine about the time of the Jewish War, and went north into Syria to the Euphrates which they followed south into Mesopotamia. Mandæans specifically call their priestly caste Nasurai—Nasoraeans, (Nazarenes)—those wise in religion—to distinguish the priests from the laity.
More broadly, Nasurai is also the doctrine of the Mandæans, the true words which come from the “Place of Light”, and it is their own name for themselves. In the the Haran Gawaita, “Mandæans” is used only once, the word used otherwise being “Nasoraeans”. Mandæans claim the meaning of the word is those who “watch over”, “guard”, “take care of”, or “protect”. Moreover they are “keepers” and “observers” of the sacred and therefore secret knowledge. E S Drower writes:
Nasoraeans of the Mandæan type “keep and observe” ritual law with zealous fidelity and “keep back”—even from their own laity—mysteries considered deep and easily misunderstood by the uninitiated.
All of this sounds remarkably like the classical descriptions of the Essenes, and the testimony of the Dead Sea Scrolls. That is the view of Robert Eisenman. Mandæan astrological and Persian influences are like those of the Dead Sea writings and, while once these were thought to have shown an eclectic growth, there seems little to doubt that their origins were Essene. The “Children of the Dawn” in the Scrolls were perhaps “Daily Bathers”. The Mandæan Book of John the Baptist has common features with the Genesis Apocryphon of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The story of the flight of the Nasoraeans curiously parallels that in the Dead Sea Scrolls, when the persecuted Essenes with their teacher flee to Damascus, but is now considered by many to be true history. Perhaps the persecuted Mandæans took their cue from Essene tradition. The Mandæans apparently migrated from Judaea to escape persecution, first to Northern Palestine, then Harran (Carrhae) and then to Mesopotamia. They must have been contemporary in Judaea with the first Christians, but an inscription of the Sassanians about 250 AD mentions the Nazarenes and Christians as separate sects.
Epiphanius writes that the disciples of Jesus were advised to flee Jerusalem and go to Pella, after the death of James, just before the Jewish War. Lucian of Samosata, in the second century, writes of “Daily Bathers”, the Hemerobaptists and Masbuthaeans, who rose at dawn to baptize themselves in the Euphrates River in Northern Syria, wearing linen garments. All these groups had in common that they all wore “bathing garments”. These “Daily Bathers” sound similar in customs to the Mandæans, “masbuta” being their word for the baptismal rite. That the modern Mandæans also differ in some ways from the descriptions of the Nazarenes is simply a result of 2000 years of historical evolution and influence.
Kurt Rudolph says, while Mandæan writings have something in common with the gospel John, the Jewish origins of the Mandæans cannot be denied. Moreover, Mandæans believe they were co-religious with the Egyptians in Egypt where Moses had learned some of their sacred knowledge. Mandæans eat meat rarely, usually chicken, and are opposed to sacrifices, like Christians and Essenes. Nor did the Mandæans believe that Moses wrote the Torah, but that it had been written to satisfy the Jews. The Mandæans and the Nasoraeans described by Epiphanius were the same, or closely similar, baptizing sects.
Elchasaite and Mandæan baptism are similar enough to have had a common origin, though the Elchasaites seemed more Jewish, and so could have been more original. Elchasaites were a Jewish form of Mandaeism. Hippolytus (c 150-235 AD) said a cunning and desperate man, Alcibiades from Apamea in Syria, came to Rome with a book, about 220 AD during the reign of Callistus. The book was supposedly revealed to “Elchasai” in about 100 AD by a male angel. “Elchasai” had the book in Serae, a Parthian town, and gave it to someone called “Sobiai”. The Elchasaites were the sect of believers in the book. Ibn ‘al-Nadim (d 995 AD) said Elchasai was Al-Hasih, so the word is from Hasid—holy one. The spiritual Adam of the Mandæans is Adam Kasia, the Holy Man. Serae reminds us of Zara, Elchasai is “holy one of God”, and “Sobaia” sounds like a distortion of Sabaean.
D Chwolson, who studied the Sabians, said the Mandæans were Elchasaites who came from North Parthia at the end of the first century. The revelation by the angel to the holy man sounds much like the original revelation of Zoroaster, so perhaps the town of Serae is a memory of this, and the tale is a rehash of Zoroaster's revelation. So the background story is simply that an angel (96 miles tall!) gave a holy man the revelation just like Zoroaster, and he passed it to a baptist sect, thence it came to Rome. Al-Nadim says the Sabians of the marshes took Al-Hasih as their founder.
Sabians
We Know that “Poor Men” or Ebionites escaped into the desert seeking refuge in Arabia from the Romans. Mohammed was influenced by them and adopted their ritual lustrations. His own followers were called Sabians by the worshippers of the idols at Mecca for this very reason. Ibn Zayd (d 798 AD) thinks Mohammed was called Sabi in the Quran because of his monotheism, and was being compared with the Sabians, or described as one, because the Sabians said “there is no God but God”. Sabians are mentioned three times in the Quran alongside Jews and Christians, suggesting that they might have been the remnants of the Essenes. The Holy Quran says that those who believe in God and the Last Day and does good—the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabeans—shall have their reward from their Lord, and need not fear or grieve. Later it adds the Magians, meaning Zoroastrians, to the list. Only the meaning of the Sabaeans is today not clear. They were then called Elchesaites and, though not Mandæans, they were obviously similar. As they had written books of revelation, they were not considered heathen by Mohammed.
The word “sabaean” is not Arabic. A Syriac (Aramaean) verb “sb” means to baptize, and is the favourite of the proposed meanings, associating it with the Mandæans. The word was certainly in used before Mohammed. Eusebius recounts the sects that once existed among the Jews, among them being the Masbuthaei, or “Daily Bathers”. The Mandæan word “Masbuta”, from the same root, is used for baptism. The Sampsaeans were another sect mentioned by Epiphanius. Eisenman thinks it is a corruption of Sabaeans.
Various early Islamic writers have expressed their views on who or what the Sabians are. They were thought to have been:
- a sect of Christianity
- between Judaism and Magianism
- like the Magians and worshipped angels
- are not like Magians, Christians, or Jews
- believe there is no God but God, and have no canonical law
- worshipped angels, read zabur, prayed five ritual prayers, and pray to the sun
- are from Kutha, believe in prophets, fast 30 days in a year, and pray five times daily towards Yaman
- believe they belong to the prophet Noah, read zabur, their religion looks like Christianity, and they worship angels.
Later though, descriptions of the Sabaeans changed. Until 830 AD, the Sabaeans were seen as baptizers who lived in Iraq with a monotheistic faith that resembled Magianism, Judaism and Christianity and lived in Iraq around Kutha. They had prophets and scriptures. Mohammed included them as acceptable in the Quran, so, Sabians existed before Mohammed, and Mohammed was said to have been Sabian. Until the ninth century AD, Harranians were called Chaldeans or simply Harranians, and sometimes Nabataeans. After 830 AD the meaning of Sabian for Moslem writers changed:
- Harran is the City of the Sabians and there are 17 holy places there. Sabians pray on a hill dedicated to the prophet Abraham
- The Sabians of Harran and the kimariyyun are different and the latter opposes the religion of the Harrians
- Today their descendants live in the cities of Harran and Ruha (modern Urfa). They gave up the name Chaldaeans from the time of the Caliph al-Mamun and adopted the name Sabian
- Sabians live in Harran and Iraq. They adopted the name Sabian at the time of the Caliph al-Mamun. The real Sabians are Christians.
Caliph Mamun, in 830 AD, met a deputation from Harran. They wore long hair like the Nazarites. Not understanding their views on religion, Mamun told them to adopt Islam or an accepted creed, or be murdered. Having consulted some Moslem lawyers, the Harranians declared themselves to Mamun to be Sabians, and thus they escaped persecution. Harran was a noted Pagan centre, long before, a center for the worship of the moon god, Sin, since time immemorial, so what were these citizens of Harran seeking recognition from the Moslem conquerors?
Sin was the senior god of the Semitic pantheon in ancient times. From about 2000 BC to the Assyrian conquests, he was one of the gods whose name was appended to treaties to witness and guarantee the word of kings involved. Sin is also called Nanna (or Nanna-Sien). Sin is represented by either a bull or as a old man with a lapis lazuli beard with a cap on which there are bull’s horns. Sin was conceived when his father Enil, god of the air, rapes Ninlil (Ningal).
Shalmaneser of Assyria restored the temple at Harran, called E-khul-khul, in the ninth century BC, and it was again restored by Ashurbanipal. About 550 BC, Nabonidus the last king of Babylon, who came from Harran, heard the god in a dream tell him to restore the worship of Sin. His mother was high priestess at Harran and his daughter at Ur. In the inscriptions of Nabonidus at Harran, the children of Sin, Ishtar (Inanna), goddess of love and war, and Shamash (Utu), god of the Sun, were worshipped with Sin as a trinity, along with other lesser deities. The trinity appears as a crescent with two stars.
The Sabians of Harran have been denigrated as astrologers and idolators, but Moslems accepted them. The Moslems were not stupid, so they must have had a good reason to believe that the Harranians really were “of the Book”, whatever other views they might have adopted. Christians hold to the monotheism of the Jewish scriptures, but have no problem in splitting the Jewish One True God into three. Allah has the Arabian moon god, Sin, at his core, so doubtless there was some affinity. Meanwhile the bathing Sabaeans continued to be mentioned as a minority—now the Mandæans.
Mandæan gnosticism has been explained by the influences of Harran, but the Harranians might have derived from the Essenes, perhaps practising a form of Qaraism mixed with some Neoplatonic elements. In short, they might not have been totally different from the Christians themselves. All the more reason for Christians to denigrate them as Pagans and magicians. Christians tell us, with no proof, that Harranians offered human sacrifices to the planets. This was always the way Christians characterised other religions or beliefs and do so until today. The Jews first, then the Communists, supposedly ate boiled Christian infants.
The influence of Essenism and the Book of Jubilees seems to show in the Mandæan year which is solar like the calendar of the Essenes. It consists of twelve months of thirty days each, followed by four or five intercalated days. In contrast, the Harranian calendar was luni-solar. Whatever the Harranians’ religious beliefs, they produced brilliant scholars who gave to the Arabs the fruits of ancient Babylonian and Greek civilisation, and therefore helped to preserve until today what enlightened Christians spent more than half a millennium destroying.
Maimonides on the Sabians
Moses Maimonides, a Jewish commentator and philosopher (1135-1204 AD), described the Harranians in detail, calling them Sabians. In the Guide of the Perplexed, the Sabians were his example of typical Pagans, in particular astrologers. He argues that these Sabaeans, who were Persian or Zoroastrian, were the source of the Mosaic Laws, telling us 900 years ago what historians are just beginning to realise, after all these centuries of Jewish and Christian lies and obfuscation. Maimonides refers to Sabian customs continuing to “our time” in the twelfth century, but he considers they are “the remnants of the Magians”. Other observers agree the Sabaeans of Maimonides were magi.
Maimonides writes that the Sabians believed in Adam, but the god of Adam was Sin:
Adam was in their belief a human being born from male and female, like the rest of mankind—he was only distinguished from his fellow men by being a prophet sent by the moon. He accordingly called men to worship of the moon and he wrote several works on agriculture… The Sabeans contend that Seth differed from his father Adam, as regard the worship of the moon… Adam they said left the torrid zone near India and entered the region of Babylon bringing leaves and branches…Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed
Maimonides wrote that the idolaters pray to the morning sun in the east. Zoroastrians, Essenes and Mandæans rose before dawn to began daily prayers. Maimonides wrote that that the Sabaeans held great respect for all animal life in particular the bull.
The idolaters also held cattle in esteem on account of their use in agriculture and went even as far as to say that it is not allowed to slay them because they combine in themselves strength and willingness to do the work of a man in tilling the ground.Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed
But the Harranians sacrificed bulls supposedly to Hermes, the god, but a tradition going back to the moon god, Sin. Sir Leonard Woolley, describing the stele of Ur-Nammu found at Ur, the southern center of Sin adoration in Mesopotamia, noted a scene of sacrifice with a priest cutting open the bull to read the omens on its liver. After the conquests of Alexander, Harran became a center of a religious tradition based on Hermes Trismegistus, the Thrice Great Hermes. In legend, Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian priest who wrote the Hermetic literature. Al-Tayyib (d 899 AD) said Harranians used a book about Hermes and the Unity of God that Hermes had written for his son. Hermes was the same god as Mercury, the messenger of the gods, and had the same role as Nebo or Nabu in the Babylonian pantheon.
This differs from Mandæan practice. The Mandæans seem unequivocal that blood is unclean, according to E S Drower (The Mandæans of Iraq and Iran), and they would not kill any sacrifice “even according to the rites of slaughter”. Even when an animal is killed for food, care is taken with the blood and the subsequent purification of those who killed the animal. Drower says the Mandæans consider it a sin to slay oxen or buffalo, in particular the bull, sacred to life and to the sun. Hiwel Ziwa created these animals for ploughing, for draught, for the production of milk and for food. This sounds remarkably like Zoroastrian belief. Though blood was often unclean to Zoroastrians and the peoples they influenced afterwards, like the Jews, even the Magi sacrificed animals, despite what seemed to be a proscription of it by Zoroaster.
Maimonides wrote (The Guide for the Perplexed) that blood was unclean in the eyes of the Sabeans, yet they would consume it for its spiritual value, and particularly the idea that it made them clairvoyant. A sacred animal can be considered too sacred to kill under any circumstances, but more commonly, it is killed when ritual not only allows it but prescribes it. The Persians had a practical approach to their cattle, like that given by Drower above, but they still sacrificed a bull, it seems on particular occasions, presumably representing the death of the primeval bull, which permitted all life to begin. That would have been a special ceremony indeed.
Maimonides writes that Abraham was a Sabian brought up in Kutha. He enraged the king by declaring that the sun was not the supreme god, and the king banished him from the kingdom into Syria, after taking away his goods. In this tale, Abraham comes from Kutha not Ur. Kutha was a place settled by Mandæans. It was originally a center of the worship of Nergal, and was, according to the bible (2 Kg 17:24, 30), the place whence Shalmanezer deported people into Samaria. Another tale explains that Abraham had leprosy on his foreskin, and was obliged to leave, but he cured it by circumcision, and introduced this practice as the mark of his successors. Later, Abraham was sacrificing his son to the god Saturn in repentance. Seeing that his repentance was sincere, Saturn allowed Abraham to sacrifice a ram instead. No sign of Yehouah there!
The Sabaeans of the Jewish Scriptures
In the Jewish scriptures are a few references to people called Sabeans:
And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.Job 1:15
Thus saith Yehouah, The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in chains they shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, there is no God.Isa 45:14
And a voice of a multitude being at ease was with her: and with the men of the common sort were brought Sabeans from the wilderness, which put bracelets upon their hands, and beautiful crowns upon their heads.Ezek 23:42
And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the LORD hath spoken it.Joel 3:8
The queen of Sheba also visited Solomon. Sheba is said to have been Saba, the home of the Sabaeans. Sabaeans were a Semitic people who entered Southern Arabia, what now is Yemen, from the north sometime about the eighth century BC. The Queen of Sheba cannot therefore have been the queen of the state in Yemen, where the Sabaeans became rich, though she could have been queen of the desert tribe of Sabaeans in the north, before they migrated south. Since she is portrayed as being the equal of Solomon in wealth, the story is anachronistic.
Sabaeans had a refined and literate civilization, based on irrigation. They were brilliant masons, and built a famous dam, 550 m long, the great Marib Dam, with sluice gates to control the flow of water. It irrigated over 1,600 hectares (4000 acres), and eventually fell into disuse and collapsed about 530 AD. Sabaean rulers are mentioned in Assyrian annals of the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC, but Sabaean inscriptions only appear in the sixth century BC.
The Sabaeans were successful traders. Among the luxury goods supplied by Sabaean merchants were spices, perfumes, ebony, eastern textiles, rare woods, feathers, animal skins, and East African gold. For centuries, they controlled the straits leading from the Red Sea into the Indian ocean, and so restricted the opportunities of Egyptian and Roman merchants to trade from India without paying high duties. They set up colonies on the African shores, and perhaps ruled Ethiopia for some time, though at another time the tables were turned.
They have nothing obvious to do with the Sabians who were bathers. In the heyday of the dam, the Sabaeans could have taken to bathing, and perhaps becopme noted for it so that bathing became associated with their name, but this is merely speculation, the only evidence for which is that a Moslem commentator observed that Sabians prayed towards Yemen—possibly his own rationalisation.
Mandæan Beliefs
Mandæan sacred books are written in a strange Aramaic dialect, which uses some of the Hebrew consonants as vowels. They include the Ginza (Book of Adam), written from both ends, the Book of John, a later account of the activities and message of John the Baptist, the Book of the Zodiac, a collection of magical and astrological texts and the Baptism of Abel the Brilliant describing the purification of the heavenly saviour of the Mandæans. The earliest, the Ginza, the oldest Mandæan book dates from the end of the seventh century AD as we know because the Arab empire is described as only 71 years old.
Mandæan cosmology does sound Gnostic. God is the King of Light who dwells in the uppermost world. The lower worlds including the earth is the home of an evil female spirit called Ruha who gave birth to countless spiritual beings, some good and some evil, but notably the Twelve, identified with the Zodiac, and the Seven, identified with the seven planets. So, between God and this world there are gradations of aeons called Utras, the most elevated of which is Abel the Brilliant. The Ginza explains that an emanation of God, Abathur, gave birth to Ptahil the creator of the world. The earth is a dark place, created out of Ruha’s black waters but the waters would not solidify until they were mixed with a little light provided by Abel the Brilliant, who therefore existed at the creation. Abel also supplied Adam’s soul from the Treasury of Life.
Ruha is easily seen as Ruach, the breath of God in Genesis and the basis of the Holy Spirit. In Aramaic it means “wind” but the Mandæans cannot use it in that sense because they have attributed to it a profound quality of evil. It is a feminine noun, so can easily have been seen as a feminine principle, and logically, its place in the Catholic Trinity is the place for a Goddess (Father, Mother, Son).
The evil rulers, the Archons, of the earthly realm and the lower heavens, obstruct the ascent of the soul through the heavenly spheres to reunion with the supreme God. The body is a tomb (soma sema) and the material world is a prison. All of the visible world is corrupt and will ultimately be destroyed. Only the Righteous can save their souls by always being moral, practising the prescribed ritual observances and acquiring revealed knowledge.
Abel the Brilliant, the Mandæan Saviour, son of Manda d’Hayye (who is one of the great emanations of the Godhead), once dwelled on earth, where he triumphed over the Archons who try to keep the soul imprisoned. He can thus assist the soul in its ascent through the heavenly spheres toward its final reunion with the Supreme God.
Manda d’Hayye is not merely knowledge but is “Knowledge of Salvation”, a phrase which occurs in the song of Zacharias in Luke (Lk 1:77), which we have surmised is Essene. Essene thought has the same concept or gets close to it, the scrolls speaking of the “Knowledge of God” and “His Salvation”.
The Manda d’Hayye and the light-giving powers seek to direct men and women to good actions. The planets and the spirit of physical life incite them to error through Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other “false religions”. Those who lead a good life pass after death to a world of light, others undergo torture, but even the most evil will be purified in a great baptism at the end of the world—the equivalent of the Persian and Essene baptism with fire on the Day of God’s Vengeance.
The Mandæans have a form of Eucharist. Most religious occasions were marked with the partaking of a “bit of bread” (pehta, the same word as pitta) and a draught of consecrated water. This will have been the original Christian tradition, the “New Wine” of the Essenes most often being water. Punctilious ritual was observed at birth, marriage and particularly death, when the dying were consoled and ritual had to be exact if the soul was to ascend successfully. Their ranks of clergy also closely match that of the Essenes and early Christians. They have ranks of treasurer (bishop), deacon and disciple.
They repudiate idolatry, but circumcision and celibacy are also forbidden, significant changes from Essenism, but we have no more reason to think that the Mandæans inevitably preserved the traditions of their originators any more than Christians did. They regard marriage and procreation as important moral obligations, strong beliefs of traditional Judaism, and abhor sexual license, matching Judaism and particularly Essenism. Divorce is not recognised, matching Essenism, but a man may have as many wives as he desires, an obvious adaptation from Islam. Nevertheless, women are permitted to own property. They practise a moral code of charity and goodwill.
Experts considered that the hostility of the Mandæans to Jesus simply reflected a hostility to the Eastern Church because Jesus is sometimes called “the Byzantine” in Mandæan books. This might be so, but we have to ask whether it actually goes right back to the origins of gentile Christianity and Paul.
Gentile Christianity was founded before Paul among the Hellenised Jews of Palestine who were dispersed at the very start of the story by Hebraic Jews—Jews who rejected the ways and manners of the Greeks and regarded Hellenisation as apostasy. Paul naturally favoured this faction and, though the Hellenised Jews did not try to convert gentiles, Paul did. The Hebraic Christians and the Hebraic followers of John (both called Nazarenes or Nasoraeans) would have regarded this as quite unacceptable. The gospels tell us that the Jerusalem Church rejected Paul’s innovations, and the Mandæan works seem to say that the followers of John also rejected them.
Enosh Uthra, the Good Man
Mandæans consider the Jesus of the Christians as a false messiah but they accepted that there was a true messiah whom they called Enosh-Uthra. The word Uthra which literally means “wealth” seems here to mean “good” or “divine” because Enosh Uthra is the “divine” man or the “good man”. He came into the world in the days of Pilate, the king of the world, healed the sick and gave sight to the blind, and raised the dead. In this tradition, John does the same miracles as Jesus, contrary to the fourth gospel (Jn 10:41) that tells us “John did no miracle”. In Christian tradition, miracles are reserved for Jesus, in Mandæan tradition, for John. He taught a dualistic philosophy of truth and error, light and darkness, and life and death by burning fire which consumes all wrong—the very teaching of the Essene brotherhood. He ordained 365 prophets to teach, and sent them out from Jerusalem. Eventually, he ascended to the Abode of Truth and will return at the End. Like the Essenes and the Persians, the Mandæans were particular about Truth.
Before Enosh-Uthra ascended to the Abode of Truth, he unmasked the Greek Christ who confessed that he was one of the Seven, the deceiving planets—he was Mercury! Having confessed, he was seized by the Jews and crucified. It seems the Mandæans partly, at least, identify the Christian Jesus with Paul, the apostle. Paul was declared to be Mercury in Acts of the Apostles. Thus for the Mandæans, Enosh-Uthra, John the Baptist, apparently an incarnation of Abel the Brilliant, looks rather like the Jesus of the gospels but the Byzantine Christ looks like Paul. It makes sense. If John and Jesus were successive Nasis out trying to heal the Simple of Ephraim, Jewish apostates, they will have had similar general characteristics, and their individual details might have been confused to some degree. Christians, for example, have tried to pretend that Jesus did not baptise when he plainly did. Confirming it is the fact that Mandæans do not have a clear distinction between Jews and Christians, a fact which harks back to the very earliest days of Christianity when the followers of Jesus were still Jews.
In the Mandæan John-Book we meet the priest Zachariah and his aged wife Elizabeth except that her name has been corrupted to Enishbai (to reflect Enosh?). No Christian will believe that this is not taken from the first chapter of Luke, but if Luke was merely reflecting a small part of Essene history, the identity is due to their common origin. After John had spent 42 years baptising in the Jordan, the Christian Jesus (called here Nbou—Nabu, Nebo, Mercury, Hermes) sought baptism from him, but the spirit Enosh-Uthra did not require baptism (in fact, he will have been baptised by Zachariah who was his predecessor). Again, Mandæan tradition might support the idea that Jesus succeeded John as the Nasi, because John had no choice but to baptise Jesus—a voice from heaven ordered him. Why should God have ordered John to baptise an evil spirit? It is an ineffectual way of explaining the plain fact that John did baptise Jesus, but that in the Mandæan view Jesus turned out to be a wrong un.
Though John, like Jesus, was not really a miracle worker, like Jesus he performed healings—metaphorical ones in bringing apostate Jews back to God—and his own disciples, like Jesus’s, became convinced he was the Messiah after his death. The fourth century Clementine Recognitions 1:60 state that John’s disciples claimed that their master had been greater than Jesus and that John was the true messiah. Rivalry between John’s followers and those of Jesus was apparent even in the New Testament. Luke 3:15 confirms that John was thought a messiah:
The people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not.
Mandæan tradition has it that John arrived in Jerusalem and exposed Jesus as an imposter, an incident that might be reflected in the New Testament when John in prison no longer believes that Jesus is the Messiah and sends a message asking whether he is the one or whether another is to be expected. This must have reflected John’s disappointment in Jesus Barabbas’s preparations for an uprising. Later Jesus failed and was crucified thus becoming a false prophet. John’s disciples will then have accused Jesus of being an imposter and claimed that John had exposed him.
John the Baptist was known by the Mandæans as “Enosh”, the reborn grandson of Adam. Enosh in Hebrew means “Man”, as does Adam, so we have the curiosity that John the Baptist was the Man and Jesus was the Son of Man! This might have been a Jewish joke. If John the Baptist played the role of the priest at Jesus’s baptism as seems likely then it would have been his voice announcing his “beloved son” as the coronation liturgy required. Thus we have the irreverent titles: the “Man” and the “Son” of “Man” or, in Aramaic pronunciation, “nash” and “bar nash”.
Did John the Baptist live longer than Jesus? The latest year of Jesus’s death is 33 AD. The Tetrarch Philip died in 34 AD on the day that John interpreted a dream for him. Herod Antipas killed John and later was defeated in battle in 36 AD by Aretas, king of the Petraean (Nabataean) Arabians, an event considered to have been retribution for John’s murder. John must therefore have been killed within a year of 35 AD, the very year that Simon Magus, a disciple of John, led a rebellion on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. Antipas was probably more absorbed by John’s potential for inflaming rebellion than he was by Salome’s dance or John’s criticism of his marital arrangements.
Astronomical Connexions
In Greek, John’s name is Ioannes, the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Johanan. Curiously, Ioannes resembles the Greek for the Pagan god, Ea (Iah), the God of the House of Water—sweet refreshing water, not briny sea water—which is Oannes. More curiously, Oannes pronounced in Aramaic would come out close to Enosh!
Now Oannes was a saviour god of the Babylonians—the god who saved mankind from the flood by warning the Babylonian Noah about it, allowing him to build an ark. Either the early Christians have given the Baptist an appropriate name of the gods with whom educated Greeks were familiar, or the Jews had already made these associations.
Johanan is always given as meaning “the Grace of God” but it is a name which appears only in scriptural books written after the “return” from Babylonian “exile”, notably Chronicles. It seems that the name “Johanan” actually was a popular name among the Persian colonists. Johanan therefore is Oannes in Hebrew and the meaning “Grace of God” was devised for it later. Thus John the Baptist was given the name Johanan precisely because his duty was that of the god, Oannes. He had to save mankind by warning of the coming judgement to allow the righteous to repent and survive into God’s Kingdom.
The god, Oannes, is remembered in the constellation Capricorn. The constellation depicts a creature with the body of a fish and the foreparts of a goat. That is precisely how Oannes was depicted when he was not shown as a man with water running from his shoulders. John the Baptist was associated with 6 January when the sun was in the midst of the constellation of Capricorn, and this became the traditional date of the baptism of Jesus—his ritual rebirth as a son of God. Later, when the ritual rebirth had been forgotten in favour of a miraculous real birth, the epiphany (the occasion when a god shows himself) or actual birth of Jesus was allocated this date. Later still it was changed again to the traditional date of the winter solstice.
The Pagans thought of Capricorn as when the sun god emerged reborn from the waters of Oannes. Since the Essenes revered the sun as the majesty of God, lived by a solar calendar, and were interested in astrology, it is likely that their rituals involved the enactment of astrological myths. Thus their baptisms of important princes and priests might have been arranged on days of appropriate astrological significance. The baptism of Jesus by John possibly really occurred on this date in Capricorn—and so did the earlier baptism of John by Zechariah.
Cathars
The Mandæans had a status in their religion, just as the Cathars did, called “the Perfect”. It is rarely observed upon, that the beliefs of the Cathars were remarkably similar to those of the Mandæans—and they were regarded as a Christian heresy. Both had the same origins and one grew in the east and the other in the west, thus developing differences. But the eastern variety spread to the west around the ninth century, causing the corrupt western Church at Rome to have hysterics and begins a long period of persecution of opponents.
Mrs Drower was told about the “shalmono” and the rite of making of a “Perfect”, whereby the Sabaean may reach a state of holiness akin to that of the dweller in the Mandæan Abode of the Blessed. It requires the applicant to renounce worldly desires and the delights of the flesh, while living among men, and amongst his family, without being able to partake of the joys of family life. The Mandæans frown on celibacy but this shalmono has to forgo any further sexual relationship with his wife. There is first a ceremony of renunciation. The applicant goes to the bishop, who questions him closely about how seriousness he is, and impresses upon him that the step is irreversible. If the applicant is still firm, after seven days' preparation with the bishop, he spends seven days and seven nights separated. Every day the bishop and priests come to him, and daily he is sustained with only three small sacramental pittas, and a little dove meat. The bishop then invites the “shalmono” to a feast, at the end of which, all bar a last mouthful of food, the priests present all arise and solemnly recite the funereal Prayer for the Dead as if for a dead man. The committed Mandæan is already a spirit, the ceremony the practical equivalent of the Cathar consolamentum. It ends with the consumption of the last mouthful of food.
Thereafter, the shalomo continues his trade but otherwise renounces life, living in deprivation and self-mortification. He will not give an order or express a wish. He does everything for himself or does without. He refuses to indulge himself with cigarettes, wine, coffee, tea, any drug, or sex. As noted, he is thereafter celibate. Whatever happened, however personally tragic, he must show emotion, yet must always seem happy. “If a fire were to burn his house, destroy his goods and suffocate his wife and children he must show or feel no trace of emotion”. The shalmono is plainly the equivalent of the Cathar “Perfect”, separated from the mass of the faithful. The Mandæans are a people distinct from their neighbours, making no converts keeping themselves to themselves.
Further Reading
- More on John the Baptist
- More on John and Jesus
- More on the Nazarenes, and the Galileans
- More on Christian heresy
