5988 Aram 16 02 Buckley

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 traditions, 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 several 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 existence. 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 literary 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 hostility 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.

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