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The Mandaic Book of John

June 10, 2011, 12:49 pm
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As an update on the Mandaean Book of John translation project, let me share the news that a blog has been created for the purpose of posting completed drafts of both the typed Mandaic text and English translation of the Mandaean Book of John. It can be visited at http://rogueleaf.com/book-of-john/

Please keep in mind that, for the time being at least, what is posted there are drafts and not final, polished, corrected and edited versions of either the text or the translation, unless otherwise specified.

Since the texts I will be talking about in my conference paper at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in London in July, “The Reception of Lukan Infancy Traditions in the Mandaean Book of John,” would be rather much for a “handout,” hopefully it will be not only adequate but better to provide the Mandaic text and English translation online. Here are direct links to the relevant sections:

Chapter 18 Mandaic

Chapter 18 English

Chapter 32 English

I will also make a copy of my paper available in due course.

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SBL Aramaic Studies Sessions for San Francisco

July 21, 2011, 8:32 am
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Digital Analysis of Mandaic Manuscripts

February 1, 2012, 4:11 pm
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Matthew Morgenstern reviews Charles Häberl’s The Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr

March 20, 2012, 6:23 am
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Here’s the conclusion from a review of the book The Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr by my co-worker on the Mandaean Book of John translation project, Charles Häberl:

In summary, we have before us an outstanding contribution to the study of one of the rarest Semitic languages spoken today. Häberl is to be thanked for having brought all the tools of modern field linguistics and his wide understanding of general linguistics to clarify many of the basic issues in the phonology, morphology and syntax of this precious survival of Southern Babylonian Aramaic.

The review is by Matthew Morgenstern and it just appeared in the Journal of Semitic Studies. Click through to read the rest!

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Melammu, the Mandaeans and other Mesopotamians

March 25, 2012, 7:22 pm
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Miriai is a Vine, a Tree that Stands at the Mouth of the Euphrates

June 27, 2012, 3:09 pm
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I’ve just posted on the project blog a draft of my translation of chapter 35 of the Mandaean Book of John, the second and longer of the two chapters focused on the story of Miriai. While chapter 34 was relatively mundane by comparison (but still incredibly interesting, in my opinion!), chapter 35 is full of symbolism and metaphor. It continues with the same tone of anti-Jewish polemic as in the previous chapter. Those familiar with the academic study of the Gospel of John, which has comparable features, will understand better than anyone why a previous generation of scholars drew connections between that Christian text and Mandaean literature. Although the way the connections were made was extremely problematic, the possibility of connections are not themselves excluded by the errors and shortcomings of previous work on this subject.

If you read the translation draft, your input and feedback is appreciated. I have tried to render the unemended text (apart from minor corrections) into English in a manner that does justice to both what is clear and what is ambiguous, rather than allow the English to be clearer than, and smooth over difficulties and confusing details in, the underlying Mandaic text.

This is a section which had previously been translated into English by G. R. S. Mead.

The chapter requires detailed commentary, as does the entire work. One point I will mention is that I rendered as “disciples” a Mandaic term which normally means “Mandaic priest.” The term tarmida (plural tarmidia) is related to the Aramaic word for “disciple,” talmida, and presumably it at one point carried that connotation before becoming a technical term, much as “disciples” and “apostles” did within Christianity. It really makes no sense for the Eagle to kill Mandaean priests as punishment for the Jews’ treatment of Miriai, and so a meaning like “disciples” (i.e. disciples of the Jewish priests/leaders) seems called for. One cannot but wonder whether this linguistic archaism provides any indication of the antiquity of the tradition. Or is it possible to make sense of the word in its context with its more typical sense in later Mandaic? Such questions have barely begun to be asked, much less answered, but hopefully the upsurge in the translation and academic study of Mandaic texts that we have witnessed in our time will continue.

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Anush-Uthra vs. Jesus: Smackdown in Jerusalem

July 9, 2012, 7:40 am
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I just posted another draft of a chapter from the Mandaean Book of John. In this chapter, chapter 76, there are a few places where the meaning of the text is not entirely clear (do I need to mention this when it is true of pretty much every section of every Mandaic text?). But the gist is that Anush-Uthra did works in Jerusalem that Christians claim Jesus did. This is blatantly polemical, and so it would obviously be a mistake to view this as in any sense pre-Christian, as opposed to being a late response to Christian claims.

I used “Christ” in my English translation because the Aramaic/Mandaic word mšiha in the text seems to be used as a way of designating Jesus, almost as a name, rather than in its more general meaning of “anointed one.”

An “Uthra” is a spirit being – an Aeon or angel – but because both those terms are loaded from other traditions, it seemed best not to render the term using either of those words. We may change our minds about that, and some of you may remember me blogging about this very translation issue before. Anush corresponds to the name Enosh or perhaps Enoch. Whether and to what extent the Mandaeans were interacting with other strands of thought about Enoch in other literature will require a detailed study of its own by someone at some point. There is so much work to be done on the Mandaean literature, and its relationship to the literature of other religious traditions to which theirs is related and with which the Mandaeans interacted.

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The Life and Teaching of John the Baptist according to the Mandaean Book of John

July 26, 2012, 9:32 am
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Now that I have finished at least a still provisional but nevertheless complete translation of the chapters in the “Drasha d-Yahia” (which itself might be better rendered The Teaching of John rather than The Book of John) about the life and teaching of John the Baptist, I wanted to share links to them here.

18. Portents of the Birth of John the Baptist
19. A Garment from the First Life
20. John Discusses Halos with the Sun
21. No One Compares to John
22. A Proclamation of War in the World
23. The Pitfall of Impure Women
24. More on the Pitfall of Impure Women
25. Sleeping in the Day of Judgment
26. Seeking a Garment of Eight
27. John’s Teaching Rocks the Temple
28. John Teaches about Punishments
29. John Teaches on the Importance of Charity
30. Jesus Comes to John to be Baptized
31. John Marries Anhar
32. John’s Parents Continued

Of related interest, I happened across the English translation of an Introduction to the New Testament by Johann David Michaelis on Google Books. As you will see if you click through, already in the late 18th century, there were those who were not only taking an interest in Mandaean sources, but who saw a relationship between them and the Gospel of John.

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NEH Award Funds Commentary on the Mandaean Book of John

July 30, 2012, 6:14 pm
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The NEH has issued a press release, and so presumably it is OK to announce publicly that the NEH has awarded a grant for the second stage of our project on the Mandaean Book of John, to add a commentary to the translation and Mandaic text that resulted from our past two years of work.

Charles Haberl of Rutgers University is taking over as project director. April DeConick is also part of our team, as is Steve Caruso. Between us we will be seeking to clarify the text and its relationship to Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and also other Gnostic sources such as those from Nag Hammadi.

 You can see what has been posted so far from our translation efforts, on the blog we set up for that purpose. Once we have an organized site featuring the entire text in both English and Mandaic, you can be sure you will hear about it here. We will be looking forward to the online text and translation becoming a hub around with discussions can take place about this fascinating piece of Mandaean literature, in the interest of helping not only us as we work on the commentary and seek to refine the translation still further, but also others, understand and appreciate this important work.

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Eyes Encyclopedia of Knowledge: Mandaic and Arabic Editions of Mandaean Texts Online

September 3, 2012, 12:51 pm
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The Mandaean Book of John – Hacked!

September 10, 2012, 1:26 pm
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As Steve Caruso and Jim West have mentioned on their blogs, a hacker has brought down GoDaddy sites, including RogueLeaf which is where we have been posting chapters of our English translation of the Mandaean Book of John as we completed them. The plan has always been to move them elsewhere once everything was ready, and organize them, but since that hasn’t happened yet, and the current site is not there at present, the best one can do is peruse the cached Google mirror of the site.

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#sblaar Mandaean Running

November 20, 2012, 7:48 am
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Yesterday morning was the first bit of genuinely free time I have had at the conference, and so I spent some time in the book exhibit and elsewhere, talking with friends. This rest was helpful in preparing for what lay in store that afternoon…

First there was a session on mysticism, esotericism, and Gnosticism, in which April DeConick presented a fascinating argument that the category of “Gnostic” should not be set aside, and genuinely reflects a new current in religiosity/spirituality in the first century CE; and in which John Turner discussed Sethian baptismal rites and their symbolism. (Turner read the late Marvin Meyer's paper on additional parts of Codex Tchacos in the same session in which I presented on the Mandaean Book of John and the New Testament).

Then, in another building, Jennifer Hart gave a paper on the Islamic context of the codification of Mandaean texts,

Then, back in the first building, Jo Ann Scurlock read a paper on the Mandaic Book of the Zodiac.

I was glad to have a short break before Charles Haberl's paper. It looked at the indications in the text on Mandaic incantation bowls that Mandaean scriptures, which we now have only in post-Islamic redactions, existed centuries earlier. Charles made a useful comparison with the Hebrew Scriptures, pointing out that, prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, incantation bowls were among our earliest evidence for the existence of those texts.

Those of us who work in New Testament can be spoiled into a false sense of what it is realistic to expect with regard to the gulf between composition and the earliest manuscript of the work in question.

This morning I attended two papers also somewhat related to the Mandaeans – thankfully both in the same session! The first was by Risto Uro and is about the relation between the John the Baptist and Jesus movements from a ritual perspective. The second was by Gerhard van der Heever and addressed the question of whether John and Jesus were part of a wider phenomenon of ancient Jewish baptizing groups.

I don't think there has ever been a year – at least, not for a very long time – when the Mandaeans have been mentioned so often at AAR or SBL!

 

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John the Baptist and the Gnostics

January 1, 2013, 11:24 am
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Miguel Conner has an article in The Examiner highlighting the various mentions of and views about John the Baptist in Gnostic sources. In it, he links to one of the chapters I translated from the Mandaean Book of John!

There is a need for a detailed scholarly treatment of this topic. When G. R. S. Mead wrote The Gnostic John the Baptizer (which can be read online for free, since it was published in 1924), that was before we had the Nag Hammadi texts. Working as an outsider to the relevant fields, he managed to render just a few excerpts into English.

I do not intend my reference to Mead’s status as an “outsider” to relevant linguistic and other training as a slight. Lady Drower (a volume of whose scholarly correspondence Jorunn Buckley recently published) was also an autodidact. Yet her contribution to Mandaean studies remains unequalled. As a New Testament scholar by training myself, I too can be considered something of an outsider, or at least a latecomer. Mandaean studies has throughout its history been the purview of those willing to plunge into a challenging language and subject matter, whoever they happened to be. They were often simply people who realized just how important and interesting these texts are, and did what they could with them.

I will say again something I say more and more often of late. If the Mandaean sources were discovered for the first time today, they would make international headlines. First there would be an attempt to decipher their unique alphabet. Then it would be realized that they are in a dialect of Aramaic. Then it would come to light that they mention John the Baptist and Jesus and other familiar figures from the New Testament, but in very different ways. There would be incredible excitement, and lots of scholarly attention. The relative scholarly neglect of Mandaean sources is thus baffling.

I’m working primarily on one Mandaean source at present, the Mandaean Book of John. But there is also a need for a broad academic study of John the Baptist from the perspective of Gnostics, and in some sources, as himself a Gnostic. One that covers the ground in Conner’s article, but with the detail of a scholarly monograph. Perhaps one day I will write it, but if others get there first, that is fine. It is one of the refreshing things about Mandaean studies that it is not a field in which one has to worry about others getting to a subject before you do. It is rather one in which we hope that someone, somewhere, will actually work on any of the dozens if not hundreds of important questions that are deserving of scholarly attention, and which have yet to be the focus of anyone’s research.

Thanks to Jim Davila for directing attention to the article. I hope it helps to generate not only public but also scholarly interest in these matters.

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CFP: ARAM Society Conference on Mandaeism

January 17, 2013, 10:13 am
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I received this from the ARAM Society and wanted to share it:

Mandaeism, 08-10 July 2013 (University of Oxford)

ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies is organizing its Thirty Sixth International Conference on the theme of Mandaeism, to be held at the Oriental Institute, the University of Oxford, 08-10 July, 2013.

The conference aims to study Mandaeism and its relationship to Near Eastern religions and Gnostic movements. The conference will start on Monday 08th July finishing on Wednesday 10th July at 6pm. Each speaker’s paper is limited to 35 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for discussion. All papers given at the conference will be considered for publication in a future edition of the ARAM Periodical, subject to editorial review. If you wish to participate in the conference, please contact our Oxford address:

ARAM, the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, Pusey Lane, Oxford OX1 2LE, England.

Tel.  01865-514041 Fax. 01865-516824. Email: aram@orinst.ox.ac.uk

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Around the Blogosphere and Beyond

January 28, 2013, 9:23 am
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Several items have come to my attention that are worth sharing, and hopefully no one will mind my lumping them together.

Evolution Sunday is coming up soon, February 8-10. Among the helpful resources online is a personal testimony from an Episcopal perspective.

The NCSE has asked for input on its new science standards. See also PBS’ ten examples of other things taught in creationist textbooks and Michael Zimmerman’s recent article in the Huffington Post.

Wolfson College in Oxford has a research opportunity focused on neglected languages and scripts of the ancient world. If you are interested in the Mandaeans and their language, this is your chance to do something about it!

Eric Macdonald concludes his discussion of liberal Christianity and theism. After looking at instances of immanentist and even non-theistic versions of Christianity, he concludes, “these liberal outliers of the various religious traditions…are indeed outliers, and could not, even if they wished, form the foundation for a wholly new, immanent expression of the religious spirit.” If Macdonald is right, I wonder why. If he is right, is it perhaps because human beings in general prefer a more conservative approach? If he is right, then is there any more hope for his own non-religious vision to catch on, than for a liberal religious one to catch on? Read the piece and share your thoughts!

 

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The Mandaean Good Shepherd

January 28, 2013, 11:48 am
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Charles Häberl mentioned on his blog that he has posted his translation of chapters 11 and 12 of the Mandaean Book of John (or as it might also be called, the Doctrine of John or Teaching of John). Here are links to the relevant chapters on our project blog:

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

The title he has given the section (following Lidzbarski) is “The Good Shepherd.” Do you think the title is apt, and how do you think the contents relate to those found in the Gospel of John in the New Testament?

Be sure to see Charles’ own blog post about chapter 12, which explores the identity of the other religious groups that are after the sheep, and how they correlate with the seven planets. See too his previous update on chapter 11 and other posts related to the passage.

And if you are interested in the Mandaeans and their language and texts, don’t miss the research opportunity I mentioned in my previous post!

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What Does Transcribing a Manuscript Look Like?

March 22, 2013, 8:31 am
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No Wait, I Can Fix This…

April 27, 2013, 8:37 am
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Steve Caruso shared an image related to his work on the Mandaean Book of John project – this image illustrating a scribe’s “indecisiveness” about what to write, as it unfolded in an era before erasers:

Click through to read more about it, and to see Steve’s color-coded explanation of the letters.

It is a good reminder that scribes were human. Is there anyone who has never ended up with a mushed mess like this as they tried to write a word, then fix it without erasing or crossing it out?

To find out whether the scribe simply left this mess or tried again, you’ll just have to click through!

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Mandaean Resources Online

May 31, 2013, 6:59 pm
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In one of those interesting internet convergences, two blogs I subscribe to offered links to web resources related to the Mandaeans in the past couple of days.

First, Hieroi Logoi highlighted several online resources, in particular the Mandaean Book of John project that I am involved in. And then shortly after, Ancient World Online shared the Mandaic.org website created by my project collaborator Charles Häberl, as well as some related links.

Many thanks to Paul Dilley and Charles Jones for providing these!

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Wadham College, Oxford

July 7, 2013, 11:38 pm
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Today the ARAM conference on the Mandaeans will be starting at the Oriental Institute here in Oxford, England. Oxford is such a great city, and I am staying at bed & breakfast accommodations at Wadham College. The rooms are very nice ones in a modern building, but that building is situated within a very historic outer wall and college complex, making this the most historic premises I recall staying on.

I was delighted to have a chance to meet up with my friends Robert and Sharon Heaney, currently in Oxford. Both are academics, and Robert was recently appointed the new director of the Center for Anglican Communion Studies at Virginia Theological Seminary.

Then for dinner, I had the chance to meet up with Charles Häberl and Matthew Morgenstern, both of whom as linguists specializing in Mandaic, who are here for the conference. We had dinner at the King's Arms just nearby – fish and chips seemed an appropriate choice!

 

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