Haran Gawaita

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Haran Gawaita I (I.' ' STUD1 E TEST1 I_ 176 THE HARAN- GAWAITA AND \ THE BAPTISM OF HIBIL-ZIWA THE MANDAIC TEXT REPRODUCED TOGETHER WITH TRANSLATION, NOTES AND COMMENTARY , BY E. S. DROWER CITTA BJBLIOTECA TRANSLATOR’S NOTE ~ The Haran Gawaita, on account of its fragmentary charadfer, has suffered more than any other Mandaean text at the hands of late copyists who emended and edited parts which were faulty or misunderstood. Their grammatical solecisms and misspellings have ,I added to the difEculty of translating an already obscure text. The most sanguine of translators could hardly claim with a clear con- E Ciiitate Vaticana, die 11 dewmbrisql963. science that the more dif8cult and involved passages had been ade- 1)[0 il /I quately rendered into English. The present translator is‘aware that Fr. I PE&ms~Cb~s~rrsi~ Viu. Gem Oiv. Tat. some renderings are too free and others too literal, and can only r indulgence on such counts. he Haran Gawaita is perhaps t most dimcult of all the Mand- aean books, the Kabbalistic portions of the AZf l’risar 8wialia exbepted. It abounds in ambiguous woras and phrartes and its pre- dktions concerning the future are often veiled by a dark vagueness of language a& to that employed by Nostradarnus and others who have peered into the future. The prophecy concerning the return of the Messiah, although it calls Jesus a “ false ” messiah, paints B picture unexpectedly fair of His reign on earth. One is inclined to wonder if a Christian text has been inserted or whether a pamage recounting His downfall has disappeared from the original. 1 The colophon attached to D. C. 9 is more than usually illiterate and I have not translated it. INTRODUCTION Pr in Lower (Iraq and in Ehuzi have often assured me tbt their ancestors migrated from the north. ‘ ABBREVTATIOHS Of this very definite tradition I#gave some account in my book The dlandaeans of Iraq ad Iran1, in which.1 incorporated some corroborative legends taken down verbatim from some of the older u Drower Collection n ) MandGan manmmipts in+%he Bodleian men. In these stories, a ‘ Tura a Madaia ’ occurred too often to be Library ana in. the possession of the author of this’book. a pure invention. The ‘ Jebel Haran ’ was mentioned once. ?, 8 r G. grosse Bwh der Man TbHaran Qawaita2, the text here trarislated, is considered .I_ , erkZ&+t, von Mark LidzBarski (Giittingen: Vandenhoeck &i Ru- by Mmdmans to be the true history of their race. Yet, in the Gnza Rba there is only one reference to “ Haran ”, “ cedars from Haran y7, *. altholugh there are two references to a, place called Hhuraran to Y. B. Das Johannesb which the Drda d Pahia refers once. To quote from these books (translations of them may be found in Lidzbarski’s Der &nxa [G. 33. J. R. A. 8. The Jorcrna pp. $02 and 5931, and hie Das Johannisbuch der Hanndaer [J. B. p. 2323: ,, *‘ Speak to them of the pure Hauraran ”. ‘‘ He lifted him up and showed him Hauraran in wbich souls become perfect ” (G. R.). ‘I This l i h g water has come from the great Eauramn ” (J. B.). aura4 and Hauraran appear in a personified f nii, a volume of liturgical prayers, sometimes as a bidgle genius I or heavenly power; and a being called Hauraran-Earkawan-Ziwa is invoked. i’ Lidzbarski rooked for the original home of the Mandamns in the West. In his Introduction to G. R. he says: ’ ‘‘ Ich suchte ihren Sit2 auch enger zu lokalisieren: im !hnsjordan. 1 geljliete angesichts des Hauriin-Gebirges ... Von Genins Haman vermutete ichi dass in iha das vergottete Hauran-Gebirge erhalten sei... ” (p. vi). d in his Mandaische Liturgien, p. xix: “In den Gebeten begegnen wir offer dem Genienpaar {MllNn und ]N%’I’INn ... Der zweite Name ist eine Erweiterung des ersten durch I I (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1937). ‘ t The two words are pronourioed Ha-rang-awaitha: the ‘’ rang ” as 8ome- thing between the English words “ rang ” and “ rung ”: the ‘I th ” &B th in I. “ thought ”. Note that Harm is not pronounoed How-rzn. t VI Introduction Introduction m Wiederholung eines Konsonanten ... Der Name INllNtI ist also der pri- Healerr I was for her, for Miriai, and I gave her complbte health. I was mke. Ich identifiziere ihn mit dem geographiachen Namen 171”. Es called a Healer of Km3b that cureth and taketh no fee. I took Miria,i konnte an sich die Hauran-Ebene wi0 das Hauran-Gebirge sein. Aber down info fhe Jordan and baptised her and signed. her with the pure fiir die Vergottung‘von Bergen haben wir viele Beispiele aus der sign. And from Miriai, the perfect one, Yaqif and Bnia-Amin went forth. semititwhen Welt. Daas nun der Hauran unter ihren hoheren Wesen er- From Yaqif and Bnia-m three hundred and sixty-five disciples (OT acheint, mtzt voraus, dass er in ihrem Gesichtskreise gestanden hat. .. “ priesta ”) went forth. Theyawentiforth, and Jerusalem, home of the Daher ist nicht anzunehmen dass jene Urgemeinschaft ihren Sitz in den JewF, waxed wroth and dew the disciples who pronounce the Name of 6den Gebieten Gstlich vom Haurtin-Gebirge hatte. Hingegen kommt die Life ” 1. ‘, im Weaten Jiegende fruchtbare Haurtin-Ebene, in deren ostlichem Hori- mnt && Gebirgs eich erhebt, gut in Betmht ”. When Anuli-‘Uthm appeals to Heaven, Jerusalem i&oompletely destroyed, as in the Haran Bawaita. Ildiriai’s conversion is also the J. B. he contended that Mandaism only have‘ origi- In xvi can, theme of a song in the ‘Niamia 2. nated in Jewish circles: So much for published texts. I will now select a few relevant ‘ Ihre Terminologie in Lehre passages from some of the legends which I collected, condensing ament und das Hebrgische beeidusst, wie man es sonat, auseerhalb them as far as possible. des Judentums nicht findet ” (J. B, xvi). a) MMII pp. 268-9. The narrator said that wood to build the Ark was Her t~oteselsewhere that, although a bitter ha collected on the “ Jebel Harran ” (The story was told in Arabic). C0;nstxmtly ‘ahown in Mandamn litemttwe, the Mand&cins them- b) MNII pp. 261-3. Moses wana against the Mandaeans and had quar- selves refer $0 a aoup of followers led by John the Baptist (Ydkiia- relled with them in Egypt. King Ardban (Artabanua) of the Mandae- Yuhana) in Serusalem. He recognises, however, and scholars have an8 had a viaion and heard a voice coming out of the House of Life recently accentuated this fact, that Mandawn rites and r e e o n saying “ Rise ”... (etc.). He rose and led them out of Egypt by way cjf a sea which divided (The crossing of the ‘Yama d Suf’ [Red are strongly tinctured by Persian ideas, eschatology and - rituals; Seal] follows). The legend continues with- the settlement of sixty words, and details: of, culb are often purely Persian. thousand Mandaeans led by Ardban (Artabanus) in the ‘ Tura d Ma- While John the Baptist is in no sense the founder of theirSfa3jh dai ’ (Median hill-country?). The story of Yahia-Yuhana follows: an in Mandaean ayes, he is mentioned in the prayer which asks for the embroidery on the story related in the &ah d Pahia. of remission sins for the dead, a prayer which names spirits of light, c) MMII pp. 266 ff. “ Abraham was of our people - we called him Bah- patriarchs, and holy men of past times as well as the recently dead. ram ”. The narrator continued by relating the story of his circum- o petitions for: ci6ion as a result of disease (c.f. the account given by the Egypt- ee hundred and sixty-five priests who came fo ian Manetho). Al-Birani (tenth century) repeated the story, more phe of Jerusalem the city; forgiving of. sins be there for or less in the ‘Mandamn form, beginning “The remnant of these Fabians are living in Haman, their name (al-@wriiniya) being derived The story of LLM.iriai77,her conversion to the Mandaean faith from their place ”. and her flight from an already partially ruined Jerumlem ta the d) MMII pp. 273-282. In this Iegend a darwish named Bahram (or Bih- Euphrates is refbrred fa several times in the Drda 41 lhPahia,especi - ram) was described as being a Mandaean, and member of a celibate ‘ ally in the Wai fragment (see J, B. pp. 123 ff.)+ and in the GLirtxa community “in the north”. It describes making images of the Rba there is a reference to Wai which resembles the story in the planets, in a manner which wag apparently not inconsistent with Haram Bawaita. Anul-TJthra says: the faith. “At one time the Mandaiia (Mandaeans) were the masters of the north ahd of this country also. Their origin was of the mount- e a bodily form and w ace Jerusalem; ains, and they always loved the mountains better than the plains, I spoke with my voice and preached, I became a Healer to Miriai. A for ‘in the hills’theke are springs in which to bathe, in winter warm, and in summer cold. For our people have always loved bathing and 91 Professor F. C, Burkitt (Uhurch and’ 430 university press 1932, pp. 110-112) suggested that the Mandaean Anush-uthra was “the Mar- ? For the German translation see G. R. 341. ff. cionite JMUB”. , s I , , , See M. L. pp. 209 ff. VEtI lntroduction In t roduc tim IX washing ”. The story ends with the baptism of John by ‘Manda conside’ring this question Reitmenstein 1, and recently BeVera1 Eiia almost as told in the Rba (G.
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