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Conversion and Other Viiith Century Community Issues CONVERSION AND OTHER VIIITH CENTURY COMMUNITY ISSUES CONVERSION AND OTHER VIIITH CENTURY COMMUNITY ISSUES IN MANDAEISM For Stanley Insler Understandably enough, questions on the Mandaean religion tend to begin with the topics of the religion’s origins and earliest history. Much less attention is given to Mandaeism in the early Islamic period. But parts of Mandaean literature do offer evidence in this regard. This study brings out a few segments of the neglected historical information. But first, it may be useful to say some words on the problematic term “Peo- ple of the Book,” a category to which the Mandaeans belong. G. Vajda’s article on “ahl al-kitab” (“The People of the Book”) makes a reference to the Koranic “baptismal imprint” in the Koran’s surah 2 (138)1. The text says, “We take on Allah’s own dye. And who has a better dye than Allah’s?” In this particular section, surah 2 is deal- ing extensively with polemics against other religions. In this regard, scholars have long debated the term “Sabians” (“dyers,” “dippers,” “baptists,” “converters”), and no consensus seem to be forthcoming, despite several recent works dealing with the so-called “Sabians”2. The term “Sabians” may have been used for Jews, Christians, Manichaeans, Elchasaites, Zoroastrians, and/or the Harranian Sabians/ Sabeans/ Sabaeans. If the term has anything to do with baptists, Mandaeans would seem a reasonable choice. F.C. de Blois3 doubts that Muhammad and his companions would have known about the baptists, but he also states that early Koranic commentators identified the Sabians of Kufa and Basra as Mandaeans. To complicate the picture, the Elchasaites seem to have re- sided in those areas in the early Islamic era, too4. My own research in Mandaean colophons shows that around the 8th century we find a surprisingly vital Mandaeism, with well-known lumi- 1 G. VAJDA, art. ahl-al-kitab, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, H.A.R. GIBB et al (ed.), vol. I, Leiden – London, 1960, p. 264-267, p. 266. 2 S. GÜNDUZ, The Knowledge of Life: The Origins and Early History of the Man- daeans and their Relations to the Sabians of the Qur¨an and to the Harranians (Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement, 3), Oxford, 1994, and T. GREEN, The City of the Moon God. Religious Traditions of Harran, Leiden, 1992. 3 F.C. DE BLOIS, art. ∑abi¨, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. VIII, Fasc. 141-142, C. E. BOSWORTH et al. (ed.), Leiden, 1980, p. 672-675, p. 672. See also F.C. DE BLOIS, The ‘Sabians’ (∑abi¨un) in Pre-Islamic Arabia, in Acta Orientalia, 56 (1995), p. 39-61 (= DE BLOIS, The Sabians). 4 For a thorough discussion, see DE BLOIS, The Sabians. Le Muséon 121 (3-4), 285-296. doi: 10.2143/MUS.121.3.2034322 - Tous droits réservés. © Le Muséon, 2008. 1650-08_Mus08/3-4_03_Buckley 285 01-08-2009, 15:46 286 J.J. BUCKLEY naries among the local community leaders in the south of Iraq. But I shall wait with the colophonic evidence, and first deal with materials from the Ginza,5 the main “sacred book” of the Mandaeans. Specifics in the often overlooked historical information in Right Ginza (= GR) 1 and 2 turn out to offer a portrait of how Mandaeans dealt with issues pertain- ing to community membership and boundaries. Using a few sources from the Dead Sea Scrolls, I compare specific community issues in the Qumran group with the Mandaean material in GR. In a third section, I use information from selected Mandaean colophons – all colophons con- tain firm historical source materials – as evidence for a thriving Mandaeism in the south of Iraq in the Umayyad period. Conversion, Intermarriage and Apostasy That conversion to Mandaeism is prohibited has been taken for granted among present-day Mandaeans and in scholarship on Mandaean traditions. In fact, many discussions among Mandaeans nowadays re- volve around this issue. In terms of the steadily increasing exilic popula- tion, and the resulting intermarriages, conversion constitutes a difficult, urgent topic, especially because the Mandaeans fear their own extinc- tion. The orthodox view states that one must be born into the religion in order to be a Mandaean. Still, a puzzling passage in GR states something different. I was made aware of this fact, again, by one of the leaders of the Mandaean Society of America, Dr. Suhaib Nashi. In his living room in Morristown, New Jersey, in June 2004, we went straight to our avail- able sources. Subsequently, I have also controlled the text against the Mandaic-font Ginza published in Australia6. The larger context of the investigated passage, GR 1, 1, is one of moral instructions: how to deal properly with people, in business and in society. The topic of conversion is treated in the following words (my translation), “Keep yourself far away from anyone who worships the evil ones, idols and images. Do not be his friend. But if you have a longing for him and love him, let him hear the scriptures and speeches and adorations that your Lord has given you. If he listens, becomes a believer and is convinced of the elevated King of Light – the God who was created 5 M. LIDZBARSKI, Ginza. Der Schatz oder das grosse Buch der Mandäer, Göttingen, 1925. The book is separated into Right Ginza and Left Ginza (= LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, GR and GL [GR and GL in the text]). 6 M.F. MUBARAKI – H.M. SAEED – B. MUBARAKI, Ginza Rba, Sydney – New South Wales, 1996. 1650-08_Mus08/3-4_03_Buckley 286 01-08-2009, 15:46 CONVERSION AND OTHER VIIITH CENTURY COMMUNITY ISSUES 287 from himself – then love him, approach him and prove to him the ben- efits of everything that you have. If he does not listen, does not become a witness, and not a believer, he will be held accountable for his own sins”7. After Dr. Nashi and I had read this, he said, “So, yes, here it says that conversion is possible. But our present-day priests tend to deny its rel- evance for the modern time, saying that such was the case in the old days, not now.” Still, the fact remains: the stance of the Mandaean holy text on this issue cannot be doubted. A reader immediately notes that the Ginza’s statement on conversion is not set in an aggressive proselytizing context. The text advises a careful approach, based on sincere friendship and trust. Moreover, the close personal interest is underscored, for the potential convert listens to the Mandaean scriptures, preachings, and praising (ktabia umimria utusbihta). Importantly: the texts are read to him. But by whom? A priest? Were laypeople literate in the early Is- lamic period? We do not know. Furthermore, it is worth stressing that the Ginza passage pronounces no direct judgment on a listener who refuses to accept what he hears. The person is simply dismissed, left alone in or- der to be held accountable for his sins in his own religious fold. Together with GR 2.1, GR 1 has been characterized as a “moral codex.” The list-format demonstrates a certain associative mindset. Lidzbarski considers that one source underlies the versions of the texts found in GR 1 and GR 2,1. This source dates to several centuries before Islam, says Lidzbarski, and the text as we have it was not authored in Islamic times8, despite the reference to “Ahmat, son of the sorcerer Bizbat” (i.e. Muhammad) in section 203. There are no references to Arabic influence in the GR 1 text itself, though GR 1 and GR 2.1 were edited in their final forms in the VIIIth century. Lidzbarski’s calculation finds support in the colophon belonging to this part of the Ginza, for the earliest copyist of the text, Ram ∑ilai, lived in the early Islamic era, in the VIIIth century. This is a time of intense Mandaean text copying and scribal activity, as we shall see9. In a subsequent context, that of anti-Christian polemics, in GR 110, the Mandaean messenger Anus-¨utra arrives in Jerusalem as the real savior, Jesus being an impostor. The text warns against loyalty to Jesus, who 7 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, GR, 1,1, p. 17, section 102. 8 Ibid., GR, p. 4. 9 See especially chapters 2 and 3 in J.J. BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls: Recon- structing Mandaean History, Piscataway (New Jersey), 2005 (= BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls). 10 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, GR 1, p. 29-30, sections 200-201. 1650-08_Mus08/3-4_03_Buckley 287 01-08-2009, 15:46 288 J.J. BUCKLEY falsely claims to be another Mandaean Light-world personage, viz. Hibil Ziwa. But Hibil Ziwa does not appear in that world-era (Mandaeism counts four such eras), according to GR, so Jesus is untrustworthy. The important piece of information here is that the miracle-performing Anus- ¨utra converts Jews to the name of the King of Light. However mytho- logical, this passage shows Mandaeism as a convert-seeking religion. But this is hardly borne out elsewhere in Mandaean texts, and especially not with respect to Jewish converts11. If there is any historical kernel in the Anus-¨utra story in GR 1, one finds no concern for preserving an al- ready consolidated ethnic or national Mandaean identity. Regarding intermarriage, the practice is condemned in GR 1, in a complaint against those who take foreign women as wives12. We hear nothing of these foreign women’s religious identities. Present-day Mandaeans tend to assume that marriage to those of other religions is a relatively new practice, but this is not borne out by my colophon re- search.
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