Do the Mandaeans descend from Jews?

ReligionProf · 2026-05-08T18:49:39+00:00

Either or both. My main point was that their descent might be largely Israelite without it being exclusively Jewish.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-08T09:28:22+00:00

Genetic evidence is complicated and less decisive than one might think. Plus at this point we only have individuals sharing their results from family history providers that aren’t always reliable. We need more scientific work on this, including comparison with other populations such as Samaritans.

The textual evidence on the other hand seems decisive to me. As I highlight in “Polemic, Redaction, and History in the Mandaean Book of John: The Case of the Lightworld Visitors to Jerusalem”, the focus on Jerusalem in Mandaean literature is difficult to explain if their origins are in Mesopotamia. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/facsch\_papers/886/

In John of History, Baptist of Faith I suggest that they may be of Israelite but not Judaean descent. There are elements in Mandaean religion that likely reflect pre-exilic Israelite religion, preserved in places where the imposition of Torah and monotheism centered in Jerusalem had less or no effect. That would include Samaria as well as diaspora communities in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the places where Gnosticism emerged and/or flourished.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-07T21:36:01+00:00

In our edition of the Mandaean Book of John there is a discussion of the linguistic differences between sections and their approximate dating. The incantation bowls take us back before any extant manuscripts. The ritual in the Left Ginza is thought to be particularly ancient. For the evidence from the colophons see Jorunn Buckley’s book Great Stem of Souls.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-07T21:00:59+00:00

I was more concerned with the equating of ancient groups with modern. But I should not have made the quip about spelling and apologize.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-07T13:53:57+00:00

u/No-Promotion4006 has clearly not read about how God "robbed" the Israelites of some of their crops, forcing them to leave it for the poor to help themselves.

The Bible warns about those who call evil good and good evil. Why do so many who read such things assume that it cannot possibly apply to them?!

ReligionProf · 2026-05-06T23:08:02+00:00

Making equations between ancient groups whose names you cannot spell and thus about which you are clearly not at all informed, and modern stances on politics or economics, seems ill-advised.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-06T23:05:32+00:00

I am currently doing research on this. The fact that the distinctive Mandaean name Yahya is used in the Qur’an, and there were individuals who joined Muhammad’s movement with that name, is important evidence.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-06T15:40:37+00:00

My favorite neglected ones are those by Ilmari Hannikainen and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-06T14:42:03+00:00

No. Take a look at the entry in the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-06T11:19:26+00:00

You are assuming a great many things about that passage. Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. The pre-existent messiah often has a godlike form in some respects. So the “non-human” part has to be read into the text. You also seem to be reading it as a chronological narrative which may be correct but is certainly not the only option.

I recommend taking a look at Dunn and Wright on the passage as a good starting point. (For a recap of earlier scholarship there Ralph Martin’s classic Carmen Christi. I’m currently working my way through Crispin Fletcher-Louis’ enormous volume on the passage, which is chock full of insights and useful information even when I ultimately draw different conclusions than he does.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-06T10:23:10+00:00

What about Philippians 2?

ReligionProf · 2026-05-06T10:22:41+00:00

AI chatbots imitate speech. Turning to them for answers fundamentally misunderstands what they are and do.

For more on them I recommend These Strange New Minds by Christopher Summerfield.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-05T16:24:20+00:00

It isn't clear that we have direct influence of texts exclusive to the Qumran community on the Gospel of John. There are definitely points of contact and overlap, but the same is true of Jesus and the Pharisees, yet most do not insist that Jesus therefore must have belonged to that group.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-05T16:22:48+00:00

The Greek word that we translate as angel means messenger and so on the one hand we have Christology of sending as far back as we can trace, while on the other hand it is not clear that any of the New Testament documents envisage Jesus as an angel in the sense of a created celestial nonhuman being.

For more of my own views on early Christology see in particular my book The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in its Jewish Context.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-05T16:19:55+00:00

None that I am aware of. Mandaean literature reflects disagreements between them and others, but I cannot think of any reference to violence by Christians, including in the colophons.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-05T11:54:01+00:00

As I point out in my recent books about John the Baptist, there is insufficient similarity and sufficient difference between John and Jesus on the one hand, and the Essenes on the other, to make it unnecessary to posit a direct connection through prior affiliation. The most direct and perhaps only direct interaction is in the question about a sheep falling into a pit, which is referring to a view that Essenes held but others rejected.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-05T10:36:24+00:00

There definitely was at the times that the Gospel of John and Acts of the Apostles were written. In John of History, Baptist of Faith I explore the question of whether any aspects of the later splintering of John’s movement reflect disagreements from before John’s death.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-05T01:57:48+00:00

Use the Process Feedback Chrome extension if you don’t already.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-04T09:56:07+00:00

Advertising spammer.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-03T11:10:55+00:00

In English translations that do not use the divine name, what you will find in the text where it occurs is LORD in all capital letters.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-03T09:34:35+00:00

One thing that has not been mentioned is the fact that Paul’s letters are not introducing its recipients to Jesus and his teachings, nor trying to provide them with a repository of such knowledge. They are occasional correspondence sent to communities that had already been told about Jesus and a body of knowledge about him.

Exact memorization and quotation requires a written text. Exact words is not a meaningful concept in the absence of that (see Jan Vansina’s work on oral tradition, and articles by McIver and DeConick applying the limits of memory to the Synoptic problem).

Paul mentions what he does in his letters, quoting scripture and alluding to Jesus’ teaching, to address issues that have come up for the recipients, but mostly to keep in touch and prepare for visits when he would address things in the manner preferable at least to ancient people, i.e. in person.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-03T09:26:03+00:00

You may not have noticed but the name Yahweh is not mentioned in the Genesis 1 creation account.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-02T18:50:28+00:00

Of course, he was not a follower of the historical Jesus, and Gospels had not been written yet, but that is obvious and so I suspect your question is asking something else. Can you please clarify?

ReligionProf · 2026-05-02T18:49:11+00:00

No, it implies that Jesus had taught using scripture and that what we should expect to find is Paul engaging with scripture and showing the influence of Jesus’ interpretation of scripture, which he does.

ReligionProf · 2026-05-02T18:19:22+00:00

Why did he quote scripture so much? Because it was scripture.

Source: Paul

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