Mandaeism or Mandaeanism (Arabic: مندائية Mandāʼīyah) is a gnostic religion[1]:4 with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist. The Aramaic manda means "knowledge," as does Greek gnosis.[2][3]
According to most scholars, Mandaeaism originated sometime in the first three centuries AD,[4] in Mesopotamia.[citation needed] They are Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. There is a theory that they may be related to the Nabateans who were pre-Islamic pagan Arabs[5] whose territory extended into southern Iraq.[6]
The religion has been practised primarily around the lower Karun, Euphrates and Tigris and the rivers that surround the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, part of southern Iraq and Khuzestan Province in Iran. There are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide.[7] Until the 2003 Iraq war, almost all of them lived in Iraq.[8] Many Mandaean Iraqis have since fled their country (as have many other Iraqis) because of the turmoil created by the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation by U.S. armed forces, and the related rise in sectarian violence by Muslim extremists.[9] By 2007, the population of Mandaeans in Iraq had fallen to approximately 5,000.[8]
The Mandaeans have remained separate and intensely private. Reports of them and of their religion have come primarily from outsiders: particularly from Julius Heinrich Petermann, a scholar in Iranian studies,[citation needed] as well as from Nicolas Siouffi, a Syrian Christian who was the French vice-consul in Mosul in 1887,[10][11] and British cultural anthropologist Lady E. S. Drower.
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The Ginza Rba or Ginza Rabba (Modern Mandaic: ࡂࡉࡍࡆࡀ ࡓࡁࡀ Ginzā Rabbā; literally "The Great Treasury") or Siddra Rabba, "The Great Book" ("rabba", meaning great), and formerly, the Codex Nazaraeus, is the longest of the many holy scriptures of the Mandaean religion. It is also occasionally referred to as The Book of Adam.
Language, dating and authorship
The language used is classical Mandaic, a dialect of Eastern Aramaic written in Mandaic script (Parthian chancellory script), similar to Syriac script. The authorship is unknown, and dating is a matter of debate. Some scholars place it in the 2nd-3rd centuries AD,[1] while others such as S. F. Dunlap place it in the 1st century.[2]
Structure
The Ginza Rba is divided into two parts - the Right Ginza, containing 18 books, and the Left Ginza, containing 3 books.
The book, still mainly hand written, traditionally contains the Right Ginza on one side, and, when turned upside-down and back to front, contains the Left Ginza, this latter also called "The Book of the Dead." The Right Ginza part of the Ginza Rba contains sections dealing with theology, creation, ethics, historical, and mythical narratives; its six colophons reveal that it was last redacted in the early Islamic Era. The Left Ginza section of Ginza Rba deals with man's soul in the afterlife; its colophon reveals that it was redacted for the last time hundreds of years before the Islamic Era.
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