528 MANDAEAN LITERATURE
contraction of Adam Kasya, "hidden Adam"), is brought into his inert body
from the world of light. In another version of the myth, Ptahil first creates
Adam and then, "according to the likeness of Adam," he creates Eve (in
Mandaic, Hawwa, whose heavenly counterpart is Anana dNhura or "cloud of
light"). Both figures are immobile until Ptahil obtains a spirit (mana) from his
father, Abathur, and places it into the couple. After this incarnation, the savior
figure Manda dHayye ("knowledge of life") comes to Adam and Eve, instruct-
ing them in the knowledge (manda, similar to gnosis) of their true home in
the world of light and the ritual means of returning there.
Mandaeans, whose very name means "knowers" or "gnostics," view Adam
and Eve as their ancestors in two ways. First, they serve as the archetypal Man-
daeans insofar as they are mired in ignorance until a messenger from the
world of light reveals their true, divine nature—a more straightforward ver-
sion of the gnostic allegory of the pearl in the mud. Second, the Mandaeans
consider themselves to be the physical descendents of Adam and Eve.
In addition to shedding light on the Mandaeans' self-conception, these an-
thropogonic traditions illumine other important aspects of the religion. First,
Mandaeans share with other gnostics a complex and ambivalent attitude to-
ward the Hebrew Bible. On the one hand, they reject the canonical character
of the Bible and substitute their own sacred texts. On the other hand, as in the
above example, they liberally incorporate biblical stories into their own
mythological narratives. In many cases, Mandaeans employ what scholars of
gnosticism have called inverse exegesis, namely, offering interpretations that
directly contradict the standard Jewish or Christian interpretations of the
same biblical texts.
Second, these anthropogonic myths reveal the Mandaean affinity for what
may be called "doubling": the view that heavenly beings and realities have
counterparts in the physical world. Hence both Adam and Eve are images of
heavenly prototypes. Related to this tendency is the Mandaean belief that
Adam's body is a microcosm of the universe. Finally, the Mandaean version of
the primal or cosmic Adam myth also hints at the great importance of rituals
in returning the exiled soul to the world of light. Like Adam and Eve, the Man-
daeans' own salvation depends not only on revelations from heavenly light
messengers such as Manda dHayye but also on their own correct performance
of rituals, most notably baptism (masbuta) in living waters (mia hiyya).
Another important set of Mandaean myths reflects the highly ambivalent
relationship of Mandaeism to Judaism. In oral traditions, the Mandaeans
imply that they were present in Egypt with the Israelites and at the biblical