ARAM, 16 (2004) 13-23 J.J. BUCKLEY 13

A RE-INVESTIGATION OF THE BOOK OF JOHN

JORUNN JACOBSEN BUCKLEY (Bowdoin College – USA)

In 1915, when Lidzbarski publishes The Book of John (hereafter JB), he says in his Introduction that this collection of Mandaean texts was probably intended as a supplement to the Ginza. Also known as Drasia ∂-Malkia (The Teachings of the Kings) the book may have been re-named to honor John the Baptist in order to impress Muslims, who, according to their tra- ditions, have a great reverence for him (vi). The Ginza, too, has an alter- native name: The Book of Adam, which, likewise, might make a positive impression on Muslims. Most scholars have generally assigned JB in its entirety – but not the Ginza – to a post-Islamic stage. Even though JB offers no new information about the topic of Mandaean origins and history (xvi), there is no reason to view JB as a whole as stemming from a particularly late literary stage. Much of the material in this conglomerate is old, and is sup- ported by Ginza texts, especially the moral teachings and the mythologies. (Mandaean rituals are not treated in JB, but their existence is assumed in sev- eral tractates). In all likelihood, only some segments belong to the 7th century or later. The main issue I wish to raise – or rather re-investigate – here is a particular theory about JB ’s possible contributions to the origins-and-history question, focusing on Mandaeism’s potential links with early Christianity. Elsewhere, I have investigated the figure of Miriai (in Christianity known as Jesus’ mother, Mary) (Novum Testamentum XXXV, 2, 1993; now a chapter in my book The Mandaeans), but here I will place the Mandaean traditions about her and about John the Baptist mainly in the context of JB. At times, I interweave my own comments into the presentation. In 1940, during the Second World War, in occupied Denmark, a Danish doctoral dissertation appeared: Bidrag til en Analyse af de mandaeiske Skrifter (Contributions to an Analysis of the Mandaean Texts), by Viggo Schou- Pedersen. It was more or less ignored by fellow-scholars. Granted, the book was never translated into another language and probably found a very limited readership. I want to re-view Schou-Pedersen’s arguments, the chief among them being that Mandaeism had an early, brief Christian stage. Some of the same ideas – but unacknowledged as such – have now been revived, sixty-two years later, in Edmondo Lupieri’s book The Mandaeans (Eerdmanns, 2002). In dealing with Lupieri, especially, I also comment on his views of the historical 14 A RE-INVESTIGATION OF THE BOOK OF JOHN value of the Mandaean text Haran Gawaita. Schou-Pedersen did not know this text, except for Drower’s statements about it in her The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran. I conclude with a bit of information about scribal traditions in JB (detailed information on the JB colophons will appear in my book on Mandaean colophons). I am not interested in arriving at a firm conclusion re- garding the origins question or the possible “religious home” of John the Bap- tist. My main intent is to argue for a renewed attention to Schou-Pedersen’s views as far as these are relevant to JB and to place his theory in a more mod- ern framework of Mandaean research since 1940.

I. JB: CONTENTS AND IMPORTANCE FOR SCHOU-PEDERSEN’S HYPOTHESIS

Not many scholars study JB seriously; the book enjoys much more esteem among the Mandaeans themselves. In 1973, in Ahwaz, Iran, I saw and handled Sh. Abdullah Khaffagi’s lead copy of the book, probably the only one in exist- ence. No English translation exists. Lidzbarski’s calligraphy is a work of im- pressive art–the German edition’s “facsimile” section (if one may call it so) is not a copy of a JB text by a Mandaean scribe, but Lidzbarski’s own. Siouffi’s Études sur la religion des Soubbas ou Sabéens (Paris, 1880) contains Mandaic alphabetic type created for the specific occasion of that book, but Lidzbarski handwrote the Mandaic in JB. JB is always a codex, a book, never in scroll format. Lidzbarski divided the text into thirty-seven tractates, and, confusingly, seventy-six chapters. He gave titles to the tractates, titles that do not exist in the original manuscripts. The long tractate 6 focuses on John the Baptist, and chapters 19 through 33 begin with the mysterious formula “Yahia preached in the nights; Yuhana in the dusk of the night,” which retains the separation of the Aramaic and the Arabic form of the prophet’s name. (One may rightly wonder why John’s preaching is limited to the evenings and the nights. In contrast, the Mandaean baptism, maÒbuta, is always performed in the daytime). As noted above, much of the materials in JB are related to myths and moral teachings in the Ginza, and there is a special focus on Lightworld beings, such as Hibil Ziwa, Anus, and other related figures. Many of them are portrayed as suffering beings, lending these parts of JB a particularly tragic–and typically Gnostic–tone (see, for instance, my article on JB’s tractate “Hibil’s Lament,” in Le Muséon 110, 3-4, 1997). Miriai appears in tractate 7, immediately after the long tractate 6, on John (she also shows up elsewhere). Polemics against other religions turn up in several tractates of JB. While Mandaean rituals are assumed, they are never treated as specific topics, and, as noted, JB contains neither liturgies nor ritual commentaries. Much of the literature is of a high lit- erary value, with beautiful phrases and poetic expressions. J.J. BUCKLEY 15

Let me turn to Schou-Pedersen’s hypothesis. His main argument is that Mandaeism was, for a brief perod, a Christian phenomenon. Therefore, most (but not all) Christian materials in Mandaeism form part of Mandaeism’s most ancient traditions, its earliest history. As Mandaeans made use of Christian legends and texts, John the Baptist is “imported” from Christianity. His mi- raculous birth, a story that begins in JB 18 and continues in 32, shows no hos- tility towards Christianity and is, in fact, intelligible as elaborations of stories about Jesus. That the Mandaeans knew literary traditions such as the Gospel of Luke, the Protevangelium of James, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Naassene and Ebionite sources, and so on, has been accepted for decades (see my Miriai article/chapter for details). An uncontested lack of hostility marks the Mandaean uses of these traditions. There are no polemics. In contrast, anti-Christian sentiments appear strongly in JB 30, for example, where John at first refuses to baptize Jesus (Schou-Pedersen, 29). Schou- Pedersen assigns this tradition, which shows Mandaeism as victor over Chris- tianity, to a later stage, after Mandaeism has clashed with Byzantine Christian- ity. But the positive John the Baptist traditions demonstrate that Mandaeism knew the Baptist from the very beginning, from Christianity. Mandaeans also adopted legends in which John breaks with his ancestral traditions, i.e. Judaism. In these stories, John becomes a Mandaean. So, a pattern appears: any persecuted Christian (or persecuted person held in regard by Christians) translates into a Mandaean treated in the same way (213). The Jews are the persecutors in both cases. Schou-Pedersen sees no historical evidence that Mandaeans really suffered harm from the Jews. Nor have the Mandaeans ever had anything to do with Jerusalem (ibid.), because for Mandaeans, Jerusalem was always “Jerusalem of the East” i. e. Babylon. GR (Right Ginza) V, 4, contains another John the Baptist source lacking in polemics, according to Schou-Pedersen, who compares this text to JB 18 and 32. None of these are late, but give proof of early John traditions. Even though these may have been edited in early Islamic times, the material itself is old. Schou-Pedersen stresses repeatedly the importance of making this distinction between old material and newer redaction. In this and other burning questions about Mandaean literature, Schou-Pedersen’s main opponents are Brandt, Lietzmann, Loisy, and to some extent Bultmann, scholars active on the Euro- pean scene during the peak of the so-called “Mandaean fever” in the 1920s and 1930’s. For Schou-Pedersen, it is important to note what John the Baptist is, in the Mandaean tradition, and what he is not: a human being, not a spirit from the Lightworld; not a miracle-maker (with one textual exception, in HG!), but a preacher; not a founder of Mandaeism, but a renewer, a reformer. I would add that some of the same characterizations might apply to Jesus in certain Chris- tian Gnostic circles, in Marcionism and Jewish-Christianity, and in Islam. In 16 A RE-INVESTIGATION OF THE BOOK OF JOHN

GR 1, Schou-Pedersen notes, Anus-¨utra replaces Jesus, as he does in JB 76, when Anus performs miracles in Jerusalem, deeds that Christianity of course assigns to Jesus. It is not John who takes this role. In part, I think, Mandaeism wishes to keep John away from a miracle-worker role, for that activity belongs to Lightworld spirits, ¨utras, not to human prophets. However, in HG John (Yahia Yuhana) does perform miracles (recall that Schou-Pedersen did not know HG first hand, and we cannot know how he would have handled this evidence); see HG, p. 5-7, on John. As far as Schou- Pedersen’s thesis is concerned, John is not adopted into Mandaeism early on in order to fuel the fire of anti-Christian feelings. Only later Mandaean texts seem to be interested in mocking Christianity. However, I think that when John does work miracles, we may be seeing early traditions, before the mixing of Anus and John traditions. This may well have happened before the Islamic influence, with its strong division between the human-prophetic and the di- vine. I have already mentioned the puzzling formula in JB 19-33, “Yahia preached in the nights; Yuhana in the evenings of the night.” Schou-Pedersen offers nothing on it. But virtually every commentator naturally notes the pres- ence of the Aramaic as well as the Arabic form of John’s name. Scholars take this as an indication of the late age of the section. I see no reason for this deci- sion, and I refer, again, to Schou-Pedersen’s repeated argument regarding the division between old material and its redaction. K. Rudolph, in “Antike Baptisten” (p. 8-9) refers to the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, II, 23 with re- spect to this text’s view of John as a “hemero-baptist,” in the sense of a “daily baptiser.” One should note that the JB formula does not state anything about baptising activity, but about preaching. Perhaps John divided his tasks: preaching at night, baptising during the day. It would be desirable to return to Pseudo-Clement and the Recognitions to trace the negative views of John the Baptist in those texts in order to re-assess the following possibility: Mandaeans may very well have been part of the multi-Christian picture, as John-adherents opposed to Jewish Christianity’s negative view of him. In terms of Schou-Pedersen’s theories, one might say that if the Mandaeans were Christians early on, they would certainly have been part of an internal Christian debate. And, at some crucial point, they decided to emphasize John over against Jesus. Schou-Pedersen considers it significant that in JB, the Miriai-chapter fol- lows directly on the long, non-polemical John the Baptist tractate. To Schou- Pedersen, these traditions are connected (Büchsel, ZNW, 1927, disagrees). In chapters 34-35, Miriai breaks with Judaism after hearing John’s preaching in Jerusalem. The story is rooted in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 1, 1, as Schou-Pedersen is certainly not the first one to have noted. In the Miriai story, the Jews interpret Miriai’s treason to be caused by her seducer, Manda ∂-Hiia, J.J. BUCKLEY 17 who deserves to be hung from the gallows, according to the enraged Jews. As I have noted elsewhere, the spurned religion often sees conversion to a com- peting religion to be a result of a more or less overt sexual seduction. The story about Miriai follows the pattern referred to already: Jewish persecution of Christianity becomes transferred to Mandaeism, which becomes the religion inhabiting the victim role. Anti-Jewish and anti-Christian attitudes in Man- daeism are understood by Schou-Pedersen as younger views, not ancient ones (60). So, in polemical terms, Judaism and Christianity become virtually equated in the later segments of Mandaean literature. This is Schou-Pedersen’s view, and it may be too facile. But I leave the question aside for now. The presence of John the Baptist in liturgical parts of Mandaean literature has not been sufficiently considered. In The Canonical Prayerbook (CP) 106, “Asiet Malkia” (“The Healing of Kings”) John is mentioned, as he is in CP 170, “Abahatan,” the long commemoration prayer for the dead (I will treat this prayer as a separate chapter in my colophon book). Both of these prayers have colophons that go back to the Mandaean scribe Zazai of Gawazta, ca. 270 A. C. E. I see no reason to assume that John’s name has been added to these prayers in later times. “John the son of Zakria” appears twice in The Thousand and Twelve Ques- tions (ATS), Book I, i, 120 (29) and in Book I, ii, 171 (236). In the first in- stance, John is said to have instructed 360 priests “from that place.” (Drower here suggests – with a question mark – that “that place” means “Jerusalem,” a conjecture with no basis in this particular text). In the second ATS instance, Yahia is listed with his wife Anhar, as one pair among others, in a mystical teaching about companionship. ATS, Book I, i, has a colophon going back to Zazai (here identified as a son of Manda ∂-Hiia – clearly a mythologizing) and the second instance of John’s presence belongs in a section with a colophon that ends in early Islamic times. The designation of John as son of Zakria may tie him with the early John traditions that are not hostile to Christianity, ac- cording to Schou-Pedersen’s thesis. GR 7 contains a long list of “wisdom sayings” attributed to John the Bap- tist. He is called “Yahia, son of Zakria.” Lidzbarski, noting the Arabic form of the name, still considers it possible that the sayings go back to pre-Islamic times (213). GR 2, i tells of John’s miraculous birth and his baptism by Manda ∂-Hiia (section 151-54). This is a highly polemical piece. Conversely, GR 5, iv lacks anti-Christian attitudes and focuses on Manda ∂-Hiia and John, and it includes a description of John’s death. In both GR texts, his name is given in the Aramaic form only. GR 16, i, a long piece of poetry describing the schemes of the planets, mentions Nba†, son of Yuhana (383, line 25) and later on in the same section, when Ruha has been vanquished by the Lightworld forces, a skina is said to have been erected “by my father Yuhana” (386, line 11). But Lidzbarski, unsure about his translation, suggests in his footnote 18 A RE-INVESTIGATION OF THE BOOK OF JOHN

(ibid., 1) that it might better read “for my father Yuhana.” This would, indeed, be more suitable, according to the division I have mentioned before: Yuhana never appears in the upper Lightworld regions as a savior or messenger figure. Founding Lightworld habitations is not part of his job description, so to speak. But that he would be given such a habitation after his death, is quite normal, according to Mandaean mythological thought. None of the Ginza attestations of John’s name can be connected with an- cient colophons. Only the Left Ginza (GL), where John does not appear, car- ries a colophon that goes back to a period even before Zazai of Gawazta, that is, several generations before the year 270.

II. SCHOU-PEDERSEN AND LUPIERI

Again, let me stress that I am making no claims about the historical connec- tions between John the Baptist and the Mandaeans. But I am suggesting that Schou-Pedersen’s analysis of the Mandaean texts and the religion’s possible historical “home” is a thesis that should be taken seriously. What does Lupieri bring to an imagined conversation with Schou-Pedersen? As noted, there is no mention of Schou-Pedersen in Lupieri’s book, and yet, the two scholars have remarkably similar ideas. Of course Lupieri has a tre- mendous advantage, given the intervening decades of Mandaean research since 1940. Not until p. 126 does Lupieri begin to ponder questions relevant to the topic of John the Baptist. Here, he wonders why the Jewish historian Josephus is completely silent on the topic of Mandaeism. Many scholars have been puzzled by this neglect, long before Lupieri. Somehow, Josephus is re- vered as an all-knowing oracle who must have been aware of everything hap- pening in the arena of 1st century Judaism, however heretical. I do not know why scholars worship Josephus so intensely. But I do wish to mention a testimony by another 1st century Jew: Philo of Alexandria. His description, in De Vita Contemplativa, of the Jewish sectarian religious service of the Therapeutae has an odd echo in JB. In JB ’s story of Miriai, when she is still Jewish, she heads for the Jewish temple but instead, unaccountably, finds herself drawn to the Mandaean sanctuary. She describes men and women, in chorus arrangement, singing sex-segregated antiphons, just as Philo says of the Therapeutae. Could these forms of liturgies be con- nected historically? I know of no scholarly treatment of this, and neither Schou-Pedersen nor Lupieri mentions the liturgical clue. For the former, his “Mandaeans as early Christians” thesis would suffer in this comparison. But Lupieri, for whom the Mandaeans are heretical Jews originating in “the East,” the Philo and JB connection might be “gefundenes Fressen,” indeed. Lupieri’s second question– why the Mandaeans have no independent John traditions (126) –Schou-Pedersen would of course have tackled with ease right J.J. BUCKLEY 19 away: because these traditions are Christian, as were the Mandaeans them- selves. Like Schou-Pedersen did long ago, Lupieri sees the John and Miriai stories as intimately linked (153). That John, in Islamic times, appears as a counter-figure to Muhammed (163) would be echoed with appreciation by Schou-Pedersen. But Lupieri does not sort out the John traditions sufficiently, neglecting to note what Schou-Pedersen found so crucial: that John is not an ¨utra. For reasons of his own, Lupieri sets the origins of the Mandaeans not in the West, but in the East, more specifically in Mesene and Characene. Neither Schou-Pedersen nor Lupieri take Lidzbarski’s linguistic pro-West arguments into consideration. Nor does Lupieri ever deal with K. Rudolph’s or R. Macuch’s views. For Schou-Pedersen, the Mandaeans live in the East (Baby- lonia) because they already are present there, somehow, as heretical Chris- tians, “representing the outer limit of Jewish Christianity,” (224) without his- torical connections to any Palestinian Jerusalem. According to Lupieri, the Mandaeans, as heretical Jews with Babylonian roots, accommodate themselves to the Hyspaosine dynasty in Characene (see p. 163-65). Lupieri’s argument here is new, but it rests on evidence that is too flimsy, in my view. Schou-Pedersen would have been delighted to know that Lupieri supports his thesis that John belongs to the earliest Mandaean traditions (165), but Lupieri sees the Mandaeans as a syncretistic Jewish and Christian product (but apparently not Jewish-Christian, in the technical sense, as Schou-Pedersen maintains). Early on, Mandaeans adopted the Christian legends about Biblical patriarchs. If Mandaeism had a Christian stage, Lupieri would put it in the East, not the West. And Lupieri is counting on the Jewish connection, not the Christian one. Schou-Pedersen wrote off any Mandaean connection to the “real” Jerusalem, but Lupieri is a bit less categorical and states that it is very difficult to know which “Jerusalem” is meant in Mandaean literature (169). The John legends, among the Christians, were under formation when Man- daeism arose, and the Mandaeans took advantage of this, evidently tossing themselves into the theological fray (Lupieri, 165). Schou-Pedersen would ob- viously agree with this. Lidzbarski held that heterodox Judaism only arises in “the West.” He con- siders Mandaeism as having developed in heterodox Jewish circles in the West (i.e. Jordan/Palestine), although he admits that Mandaeism could be traced to Babylonian Judaism. But why would Jewish heterodoxies be more apt to emerge in the West than in Babylonia? Lidzbarski never substantiates his statement (JB, xvii). Schou-Pedersen might agree with the Western origins, but he sees the Mandaeans as Christian heretics “of the East.” In Lupieri’s thesis. we find another twist on the “East-West origins ” debate, though Lupieri sides with an Eastern, Jewish origin. Some may recall the fierce objec- tion by Macuch to E. Yamauchi’s idea of Mandaeans as an Eastern, Babylo- 20 A RE-INVESTIGATION OF THE BOOK OF JOHN nian remnant (Macuch “Gnostische Ethik,” 1973; regarding Yamauchi’s Gnos- tic Ethics and Mandaean Origins, 1970). What do we make of the Mandaeans, and why is it so important to ascertain where they arose? And belonging to what religious ancestry? Lupieri digs into HG like no one, to my knowledge, has done before. Macuch nonchalantly as- cribed 5 % historicity to HG, focusing on what he considers as firm evidence for a Mandaean eastward exodus out of Palestine/Jordan under king Ardban III in the 1st century (“Gnost. Ethik,” 258, 263-64; “Anfänge der Mandäer,” 117). Without any reference to Macuch, nor to the debate between Macuch and Rudolph on the origins-and-history issue, Lupieri considers HG’s Ardban material as entirely unhistorical, on a par with the Pharaoh mythology. In con- trast, one might recall that Cyrus Gordon, in his review of HG and MHZ (=The Baptism of Hibil Ziwa), considered it obvious that the Mandaeans had lived in Egypt and in other Middle Eastern countries (JRAS, 1956). Lupieri (and most other present-day scholars) dismiss such a wide-sweeping view. Trying to sort out the John traditions in HG, Lupieri finds that they be- long to different strata, depending on different traditions. According to HG, sixty years after John, the Jews persecute Mandaeans in Jerusalem and leave no one alive. So, Lupieri concludes, no Mandaeans emigrated to the east, since none were left. The remnant originated in the east, in the mountains of Madai, and these Mandaeans were descendants of one of Ardban’s sons (157). (How- ever, as noted, Lupieri seems to dismiss the Ardban legend). Regarding Lupieri’s main argument about the Mandaeans in Characene dur- ing the end of the Hyspaosine dynasty (second century), HG’s interweaving of the John and the Bihram legend seem utterly confused. It is difficult to accept Lupieri’s argument about Bihram’s role in Mandaeism, and Lupieri neglects to acknowledge Drower’s relevant comments on Bihram (HG, p. 6-7, with note 9). In any case, HG describes John being wrestled from an evil female spirit while he was an infant, protected on a pure mountain as a little child, nursed by a Mother-substitute tree, and then baptized and appearing in public. This seems too close to the Christian legends of Jesus to be accidental. Here is a good argument in favor of Schou-Pedersen’s view, in fact, and had he known HG, he might happily have embraced this material. HG contains both Christi- anity-hostile material about John, and sources that are not polemical against Christianity.

III. CONCLUDING REMARKS

I have long suspected that Drower has a limited understanding of the HG text. She admits that this is a very difficult document, and it is. Perhaps the beginning of it is not broken, and all the double circles in it may not indicate interruptions. The beginning of the text seems to me to reflect a poetic, short- J.J. BUCKLEY 21 hand style. HG needs to be retranslated. There are historical nuggets in HG, and they must be sorted out, but Lupieri’s solution is not sufficient. Just as there are John traditions in HG that are positive to Christianity, so we should recall that in JB, the Miriai stories about her relationship with John’s mother ¨Nisbai must be placed in a non-hostile attitude to Christianity. Unlike Miriai, John the Baptist is never a convert. But the Mandaeans were Jewish, revering Adonai, says HG (p. 31) until Miriai, Jesus’ mother, became pregnant by mysterious means. Only then, perhaps, did the Mandaeans give up on Adonai and began to move eastwards. The Mandaeans have very conflict- ing traditions about Miriai, John and Jesus, stemming from different time peri- ods. Here I tend to agree with Schou-Pedersen. It is high time to re-assess the John strata in Mandaeism with a study of Jewish-Christian traditions such as Ps.-Clement and Recognitions, to mention just the most obvious. Also, some- one ought to take up the task of investigating the Mandaeans’ knowledge of the Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible. These are long overdue projects. Now, to conclude with just a few comments on JB, a book that – as previ- ously observed – scholars (wrongly) assess as having a lower value than the Ginza. One must remember that of the seven Ginza colophons, only one, at the end of GL, goes back to pre-Islamic times. Still, the Ginza is considered to contain much ancient material, and it does. The same argument can be made for JB, but this idea practically never sees the light of day, because scholars habitually state that JB is young, datable to Islamic times. This does not mat- ter, as it is the editing of ancient material that counts, according to Schou- Pedersen. The colophons in the seven different codices of JB that I have investigated show that six of them correlate, to a remarkable degree. Of the four MSS. used by Lidzbarski, three came from Paris, one from the Bodleian Libraby in Ox- ford (the latter is Hunt. 71). All were copied in the 17th century, between 1617 and 1690; two came from Basra, two from Persia. The 18th century DC 30 (in the Bodleian) and the JB belonging to Mr. Nasser Sobbi in New York (this dates to 1910) are the next two MSS. that I have investigated. After a certain point, all of these cohere in their colophons to such a degree that I thought there must have been a relatively small circle of Mandaean scribes who were even interested in copying JB. Perhaps the book’s status was dubious, even among Mandaeans, I wondered. The colophons all end with the same person, Sku (or: ‘Ska”) Hiia (“he be- holds the Life”), sometimes identified as the son of ¨Idai. Sku Hiia is datable to the 7th century, a contemporary of the ubiquitous scribe ¨Qaiam, son of Zindana. Sku Hiia is a scribe unknown outside of JB. However, a pupil of his, named Haiasum, appears in three Ginza MSS. The claim so often appended to the name of the 3rd century luminary Zazai of Gawazta, to the effect that Zazai obtained the book from the Lightworld authority itself (echoing Near Eastern 22 A RE-INVESTIGATION OF THE BOOK OF JOHN

“heavenly book” traditions), never appears in connection with Sku Hiia. Also, JB is commonly referred to as a kurasa, a loose-leaf manuscript, and so its consistency may seem suspect. Therefore, one might wonder whether it can be considered canonical. Most significant, to me, was the lack of several outstandingly famous Mandaean scribes as copyists of JB (and I am reasonably familiar with hun- dreds of scribes’ names now, after studying Mandaean colophons since 1987). Then, I worked on the colophon in a JB belonging to the Mandaean poet Lamea Abbas Amara, a book copied by her maternal uncle, Sh. Dakhil, in Nasoriyah in 1922. Here, it turns out, is quite a different lineage of scribes, in- cluding many luminaries known from CP and from the Ginza. The list ends, not with Sku Hiia, but with his contemporary ¨Qaiam, son of Zindana. Now, JB’s firm identity did not appear as doubtful anymore. It would be important to gain access to other copies of JB, in order to see whether they too, show certain patterns in their lineages.1 That the book, in its known form, goes back to early Islamic times is not an argument against its value. The central task is to sort out its traditions, without stereotypical ideas about its age. Of primary concern are the traditions about John the Baptist, Miriai, and other sources pointing back to Jewish Christianity. In short, Schou- Pedersen’s theory needs re-assessment. One might be able to advance a spe- cific hypothesis by tracing a line of development of the Mandaean evaluation of the Christian materials. Such an exercise would place the Mandaean evi- dence in the context of Jewish Christian texts, as suggested above.

CONSULTED WORKS

Buckley, J.J., “The Mandaean Appropriation of Jesus’ Mother, Miriai,” Novum Testamentum 35,2, 1993 (181-96); now chapter 5 in my The Mandaeans. Ancient Texts and Modern People (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). ——, “Professional Fatigue: “Hibil’s Lament in the Mandaean Book of John,” Le Muséon, Tome 110, fascicle 3-4, 1997 (367-81). Büchsel, F., “Mandäer und Johannesjünger,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 26, 1927 (219-31). Cartlidge, D.R. and D.L. Dugan, Documents for the Study of the Gospels (Philadel- phia: Fortress Press), 1980 (98-103). Drower, Lady E.S., The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Leiden: Brill, 1937, reprint 1962, and reprint 2002 by Gorgias Press). ——, Haran Gawaita and the Baptism of Hibil Ziwa (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), Studi e testi 176, 1953. ——, The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans (Leiden: Brill, 1959). ——, The Thousand and Twelve Questions (Alf Trisar Suialia), A Mandaean Text (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1960). 1 Since I wrote this essay, I have seen one other JB manuscript, a photocopy of an Iranian original. J.J. BUCKLEY 23

Gordon, C., Review of the Haran Gawaita and The Baptism of Hibil Ziwa, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1956, (101-102). Hennecke, E. and W. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, I-II (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963-64): vol. I: Protevangelium of James (transl. by O. Cullmann) (370-88); Extracts from The Gospel of Ps. Matthew (transl. by O. Cullmann) (410-14); vol. II: The Pseudo-Clementines (transl. by J. Irmscher) (532-70). Lidzbarski, M., Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer (Giessen: Töpelmann), 1915, (reprint 1966). ——, Ginza. Der Schatz oder das grosse Buch der Mandäer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht), 1925 (reprint 1978). Lupieri, E. The Mandaeans. The last Gnostics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans), 2002. Macuch, R. “Anfänge der Mandäer,” in, Die Araber in der alten Welt, vol. 2, eds. F. Altheim and R. Stiehl (Berlin: de Gruyter), 1965 (76-190). ——, “Gnostische Ethik und die Anfänge der Mandäer,” in, Christentum am Roten Meer, vol. 2, eds. F. Altheim and R. Stiehl (Berlin: de Gruyter), 1973 (254-73). Philo, Philo. De Vita Contemplativa, Loeb’s Classical Library, vol. IX, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 1971. Rudolph, K. “Antike Baptisten: Zu den Überlieferungen über frühjüdische und-christ- liche Taufsekten,” in, Siztungsberichte der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissen- schaften zu Leipzig, phil.-hist. Klasse, vol 121, no. 4 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), 1981 (1-37). Schou-Pedersen, V., Bidrag til en Analyse af de mandaeiske Skrifter (Aarhus: Univer- sitetsforlaget), 1940. Siouffi, N., Études sur la religion des Soubbas ou Sabéens (Paris: Imprimerie natio- nale), 1880. Yamauchi, E., Gnostic Ethics and Mandaean Origins, Harvard Theological Studies 26 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 1970.