Kerdir and the Nazoraeans
Rebecca Stengel
Universität Göttingen
Seminar für Iranistik, 2010
Introduction
This paper attempts a look at the various theories surrounding the identities of two faiths, of seven, that were supposed to have suffered religious persecution at the hand of the Zoroastrian High Priest Kerdir in the third-century Sasanian Empire. The source of this information are four Middle Persian inscriptions from the Zoroastrian priest Kerdir that were first deciphered and translated beginning in the late nineteenth century, though the fourth (KZZ) was first discovered by archaeologists in 1924 (MacKenzie 1989, 219). The aim of this paper is not to enter the debate of the historicity of such persecution (at the instigation of Kerdir or within the Sasanian Empire), nor is it an attempt to present a new theory regarding the supposed victims; but rather to summarize the ‘solutions’ that have already been proposed, and to attempt a closer evaluation of one new theory in particular.
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Problem- Introduction of n’sl’y and mktky
As a first-person, contemporary source, Kerdir’s statements regarding the persecution of the various religions were long been taken by scholars at face value, and therefore, as proof that such persecutions took place and thereby coloring the Sasanian Empire and Kerdir as rather fanatical and intolerant in the Zoroastrian faith. Though it is not the aim of this brief paper to support or discredit this theory, it is well known that the Sasanian Empire’s relationship to the Christian community was determined to a large extent by the tumultuous state of political affairs with Rome, in particular after Constantine’s conversion in 325, and tales of Christian martyrdom during the on-again-off-again state of war between the Romans and the Sasanians exist. However, it is worth mentioning that this assumption which has broadly shaped the image of the Sasanian Empire is in the process of being reconsidered. de Jong reduced the historical accuracy of these statements to the level of ‘royal propaganda’, stating that with the exception of the Manichaeans, referred to by Kerdir as zandīk (zndyky), and whose leader and prophet Kerdir had killed, no record of persecutions in any of the the various religious traditions exist (2000: 51)5.
That said, the question has not just been whether or not Kerdir’s statements of persecution are true, but what these faiths actually were. They appear in the inscriptions as follows:
W yhwdy W šmny W blmny W n’sl’y W klstyd’n W mktky W zndyky
The identities of five of these is clear:
yhwdy (yahud) are the Jews,
šmny (šaman) are Buddhists,
blmny (braman) are Hindus,
klstyd’n (kristiyān) are Christians, and
zndyky (zandīk) are Manichaeans
It is regarding the remaining two that questions arise. First, although on the one hand n’ṣl’y (in KKZ and KSM) and (n)’s(l’)[y] (in KNRm)--two Persian variations of the Aramaic ‘nāṣrāy’7 --have been consistently understood to refer to Nazoraeans, the question of who the Nazoraeans were and what their relationship was to the kristiyān of the same inscription has been subject to debate. Thus, while some have sought to see a Christian sect in the Nazoraeans and the kristiyān as ‘orthodox’, the suggestion has also been made that the Nazoraeans were in fact the orthodox Christians and the kristiyān were Marcionites 8. A more
recent theory from G. Widengren 9 that was followed by Mackenzie, was that the Nazoraeans should be understood to be Mandaeans (MacKenzie 1999: 261).
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https://www.academia.edu/2235172/Kerdir ... Nazoraeans
Additional information:
Inscriptional Pahlavi, used in the inscriptions of Sassanid kings and officials from the 3rd–4th centuries CE. The 22 letters are written separately and still relatively well distinguished compared to later versions: the only formal coincidences of original Aramaic signs are the pair m and q and the triplet w, ʿ and r.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Persian
IMPORTANT QUESTION:
Does the Middle Persian inscription permit a unique disambiguation between Chrestian and Christian?
