Against Nasaraeans [Νασαραίων], sect five from Judaism but eighteen of the series.
1.1 Next I shall undertake the describe the sect after the Hemerobaptists [Ἡμεροβαπτιστάς], called the sect of the Nasaraeans [Νασαραίων]. They are Jews by nationality, from Gileaditis, Bashanitis, and the Transjordan [ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλααδίτιδος καὶ Βασανίτιδος καὶ τῶν ἐπέκεινα τοῦ Ἰορδάνου ὁρμώμενοι], as I have been told, but descendants of Israel himself. This sect practices Judaism in all respects and has scarcely any beliefs beyond the ones that I have mentioned. 2 It too had been given circumcision, and it kept the same Sabbath and observed the same festivals, and certainly did not inculcate fate or astrology [οὐ μὴν εἱμαρμένην παρεισῆγεν οὔτε ἀστρονομίαν]. 3 It also recognized as fathers the persons in the Pentateuch from Adam to Moses who were illustrious for the excellence of their piety — I mean Adam, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi and Aaron, Moses, and Joshua the son of Nun. However, it would not accept the Pentateuch itself. It acknowledged Moses and believed that he had received legislation — not this legislation though, they said, but some other. 4 And so, though they were Jews who kept all the Jewish observances, they would not offer sacrifice or eat meat; in their eyes it was unlawful to eat meat or make sacrifices with it. They claimed that these books are forgeries and that none of these customs were instituted by the fathers. 5 This was the difference between the Nasaraeans [Νασαραίων] and the others; and their refutation is to be seen not in one place but in many.
Frank Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius, volume 1, page 46, footnote 27: 27 This group has some traits in common with the Mandaeans, whose usual name for themselves is “Nazoraeans,” and who reject the Pentateuch.
Frank Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius, volume 1, page 47, footnote 30: 30 Lidzbarski translates the term with which Mandaeans reject the Torah as a Buch des Frevels (= Book of Iniquities).
The Nasaraeans, according to Williams, share traits with the Mandaeans. Most immediately it is the very name of the sect, Nasaraeans, which arrests the attention, since possibly the earliest term which the Mandaeans ever used of themselves is Nasoraeans:
The rejection of Jewish scripture, while still holding certain Patriarchs in high regard, is apparently both Mandaean and Nasaraean. The Haran Gawaitha, for example, mentions Adam, and Abel, Seth, and Enosh all find a cosmic place in the religion:
The Nasaraean eschewing of (certain kinds of) astrology looks to me like it may also be a Mandaean thing, at least so far as the Mandaean relationship to Judaism is concerned, since, according to the legend of origins, the Mandaeans themselves are former Jews who once adored Adonai (= Yahweh) but no longer do, having abandoned the "sign of the seven" and the "house of the seven" at the birth of a false messiah figure (= Jesus):
....
8 Then Ruha scattered the Jews... who is called ‘of the House of the Seven’, and then Adonai sent a staff....
I have seen it supposed that "the seven" in this context are the seven planets (or wandering stars) known to antiquity (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), particularly since the Ginza Rba sets itself against the seven planets, regarding them as demonic. But how would the Jews be associated with the seven planets? I believe the following may be the answer to that question:
Jeremiah 8.1-3: “At that time,” declares Yahweh, “they will bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of its princes, and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from their graves. 2 They will spread them out to the sun, the moon and to all the host of heaven, which they have loved and which they have served, and which they have gone after and which they have sought, and which they have worshiped. They will not be gathered or buried; they will be as dung on the face of the ground. 3 And death will be chosen rather than life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family, that remains in all the places to which I have driven them,” declares Yahweh of hosts.
Jeremiah 19.10-13: 10 “Then you are to break the jar in the sight of the men who accompany you 11 and say to them, ‘Thus says Yahweh of hosts, “Just so will I break this people and this city, even as one breaks a potter’s vessel, which cannot again be repaired; and they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place for burial. 12 This is how I will treat this place and its inhabitants,” declares the Lord, “so as to make this city like Topheth. 13 The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like the place Topheth, because of all the houses on whose rooftops they burned sacrifices to all the heavenly host and poured out drink offerings to other gods.”’”
Ezekiel 8.16-18: 16 Then He brought me into the inner court of Yahweh’s house. And behold, at the entrance to the temple of Yahweh, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of Yahweh and their faces toward the east; and they were prostrating themselves eastward toward the sun. 17 He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they have committed here, that they have filled the land with violence and provoked Me repeatedly? For behold, they are putting the twig to their nose. 18 Therefore, I indeed will deal in wrath. My eye will have no pity nor will I spare; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, yet I will not listen to them.”
Josephus, Wars 5.5.4 §212-214: 212 But before these doors there was a veil of equal largeness with the doors. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue, and fine linen, and scarlet, and purple, and of a contexture that was truly wonderful. Nor was this mixture of colors without its mystical interpretation, but was a kind of image of the universe; 213 for by the scarlet there seemed to be enigmatically signified fire, by the fine flax the earth, by the blue the air, and by the purple the sea; two of them having their colors the foundation of this resemblance; but the fine flax and the purple have their own origin for that foundation, the earth producing the one, and the sea the other. 214 This curtain had also embroidered upon it the entire heavenly spectacle [ἅπασαν τὴν οὐράνιον θεωρίαν, all that was mystical in the heavens (Whiston), a panorama of the heavens (Loeb)], excepting that of the signs, representing living creatures.
There seems to have been a strain of Judaism, practiced in the Temple, which revered the seven planets, the heavens, and other astronomical entities. Memory of this strain has been repressed in the Jewish scriptures, relegated to descriptions of heretical moments in Israelite history. Yet it must have been mainstream enough both to register with an outside observer like Theophrastus and to call forth prophetic condemnations by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. And I bet, regardless of how the veil described by Josephus may have been interpreted in later times, that worshipers of the heavenly host would have had their own view of it.
Another similarity is that, while Epiphanius locates his Nasaraeans in the area just east of the Jordan, the Mandaeans themselves bear some kind of connection to the Jordan River:
Erik Langkjer, “From 1 Enoch to Mandaean Religion,” page 11: By scrutinizing the Mandaean rituals Eric Segelberg has been able to draw the same conclusion as R. Macuch and K. Rudolph: that they migrated from the Jordan valley.
Yet another is that the Mandaeans trace their history back to well before the destruction of the Temple, while Epiphanius states that his Nasaraeans predated Christianity.
Now, there are also differences between the Mandaeans and the group which Epiphanius calls Nasaraeans. If I understand correctly, for example, Mandaeans do not circumcise their male children. If their religion is partly a reaction against Judaism, however, then perhaps many Jewish customs were changed deliberately in the process of moving eastward, both geographically and ideologically.
There is a particular brand of Judaism for which Mandaeism seems to bear some ancient affinities, and that brand is Enochic. For example, the archangel Uriel rails against the seven stars in a way very reminiscent of what we find in the Mandaic scriptures:
Furthermore, the relationship between the Enochic literature and the Mosaic Law is uneasy at best:
George W. E. Nickelsburg, “Enochic Wisdom and Its Relationship to the Mosaic Torah,” in Gabriele Boccaccini & John J. Collins, The Early Enoch Literature, pages 81-83:
81-83 I shall summarize, principally, the theses of my three previous discussions of the topic. ....
1. The various authors of 1 Enoch are acquainted with the Pentateuch (as well as much of the rest of the Hebrew Bible). ....
2. This use of material from the Pentateuch (and the Hebrew Bible more generally) notwithstanding, to judge from what the Enochic authors have written, and not written, the Sinaitic covenant and the Mosaic Torah were not of central importance to them. The only explicit reference to this covenant or Torah is in the Apocalypse of Weeks, which states that God made there “a covenant (or law) for all generations and a tabernacle” (93:6). The final redactor of the Book of the Watchers also seems to allude to this covenant and Torah in 1:4, which stipulates Sinai as the location of God’s descent for the final judgment. However, God’s judgment of “all flesh” ( Jews and Gentiles) suggests that the Mosaic Torah is not the only benchmark for this judgment. The reference to “the eternal covenant” in 99:2 may be one other rare reference to the Mosaic Torah. This striking lack of attention to the Sinaitic covenant and the Mosaic Torah is further emphasized in the Animal Apocalypse, which recounts the events at Sinai, including the theophany and Israel’s idolatry, but makes no reference to the establishment of the covenant or the giving of the Torah (89:29–35). God had opened the eyes of the sheep (i.e., given them revelation) already at Marah (89:28), where according to Exod 15:25–26 God had made a statute and ordinance with Israel and promised not to punish them if they “listened to his commandments and observed his statutes.” It is noteworthy that this author should take notice of these two obscure biblical verses but ignore the extensive legal and covenantal material in Exodus 20–24. In short, if usage is an indicator, the category of covenant and the word itself were not important for these authors.
And, obviously, Enoch himself is precisely one of those Patriarchs whom Epiphanius lists as respected by his Nasaraean sect.
The Qumranites apparently shared a respect for the Enochic literature, much of it having been found amongst the scrolls, which brings up the following possible connection:
1QapGen (1QGenesis Apocryphon), column 2, lines 3-7: 3 Then I, Lamech, was frightened and turned to Bitenosh, my wife, [and said,] 4 [“Behold,] I adjure you by the Most High, by the Lord of Greatness [במרה רבותא], by the King of all A[ges, ...] 5 [...] the sons of heaven, that you tell me in truth everything, whether [...] 6 [....] Tell me without lies whether this ... [...] 7 by the King of all Ages that you are speaking to me frankly and without lies [....”]
And there are other possible parallels between Mandaeism and Enochic Judaism:
Samuel Zinner, Vines of Joy: Comparative Studies in Mandaean History and Theology, page 74: 74 Incidentally, another commonality shared between the Ethiopic Book of Enoch and Mandaeaism is the common Mandaic term “elect righteous,” bhir zidqa (plural bhiria zidqa), paralleled in the Ethiopic term ḥeruy sadeq. While occurring predominantly throughout the Parables of Enoch, the configuration is found already in the very first verse of 1 Enoch.
Samuel Zinner, Vines of Joy: Comparative Studies in Mandaean History and Theology, page 76: 76 Lastly, the divine title “Lord of spirits,” ʾegzi’a manafest, found throughout the Parables of Enoch, may be paralleled in the Mandaean phrase maraihun d kulhun nishmata, “Lord of all souls,” found in Ginza Rba 2,2,20.
It is striking that a phrase which so often pops up in 1 Enoch, "righteous elect," also pops up in the Mandaic texts.
There are, of course, quite a few Mandaic parallels with Christianity, as well, including an intense focus on baptism, and even upon running water, as in a river, as the proper venue for baptism:
Didache 7.1-4: 1 But with respect to baptism, baptize as follows. Having said all these things in advance, baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (= Matthew 28.19), in living water [ἐν ὕδατι ζῶντι]. 2 But, if you do not have running water, baptize in some other water. And if you cannot baptize in cold water, use warm. 3 But if you have neither, pour water on the head three times in the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. 4 But both the one baptizing and the one being baptized should fast before the baptism, along with some others if they can. But command the one being baptized to fast one or two days in advance.
There also seems to be a mild similarity between Mandaean and early Christian rites on behalf of the dead:
1 Corinthians 15.29: 29 Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?
But such rites for the dead may have been widespread. The Mandaean view that the soul is divorced from the body only on the third day after death, incidentally, certainly sounds familiar:
Hosea 6.2: 2 “He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, that we may live before Him.”
Midrash, Genesis Rabbah 100.7: Bar Kappara taught, “Until three days [after death] the soul keeps on returning to the grave, thinking that it will go back; but when it sees that the facial features have become disfigured, it departs and abandons it. Thus it says, ‘But his flesh grieves for him, and his soul mourns over him’ (= Job 14.22).”
Midrash, Leviticus Rabbah 18.1: For three days [after death] the soul hovers over the body, intending to reenter it, but as soon as it sees its appearance change, it departs, as it is written, “When his flesh that is on him is distorted, his soul will mourn over him” (= Job 14.22).
There may be a similarity between the way the Mandaeans appropriated early Jewish Christian motifs (Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Mary, Jesus) and the way Greek Christians appropriated early Jewish motifs (Nicodemus, perhaps, for example). Both religious groups, the Mandaeans in Iran and the Christians around the Mediterranean, traced their origins to Palestine, and thus were interested in filling in that back story using Palestinian traditions.
What I find to be especially intriguing is that, not only are there Mandaean parallels with Enochic Judaism, but there are elements of Christianity itself, especially in its Petrine and Gnostic forms, which are Enochic. I have already drawn attention to several connections between Petrine Christianity and Enochic Judaism elsewhere on this forum. As for Gnostic Christianity, just as both the Mandaeans and the Nasaraeans respected certain Patriarchs while not caring a fig about the Mosaic Law, so too the Nag Hammadi texts seem to like some of the figures from the primeval history — Adam, Seth, and Shem — while either ignoring or eschewing the Law. The Gnostic Christians essentially continued the trend of adding new revelation to the implicit canon. Entire hierarchies of archontic beings are spun out of revelatory discourses in the Nag Hammadi texts in ways similar to how various angelic beings are named and ranked in the Enochic texts. Gnostic Christianity added more modern figures to the ancient lists of figures to draw upon: Jesus, John the Baptist, Peter, Judas, and others now fill roles similar to those played by Adam, Seth, and so on. Most vividly, Gnostic Christianity tended either to demote or even to reject outright the Jewish deity, Yahweh; and so do the Mandaeans:
Adonai = Yahweh, who stands rejected as a false god. The impression I get is that the Mandaeans are sort of an eastern version of the western Gnostics. The former drew upon the Zoroastrian, Babylonian, and other cultural influences they encountered as they moved eastward, while the latter drew upon the Egyptian, Hellenistic, and Roman influences they encountered as they moved westward, as it were. And both groups rejected the god of the people to whom they trace their religious heritage.
This post is kind of a mishmash; there is a very real danger of forcing everything together in an unnatural way in order to make sense of a rather complicated picture. Relevant comments and corrections welcome. I am not in any way a scholar of Mandaeism.
Ben.