INTRODUCTION
NATHANIEL DEUTSCHT
JLn the marshes of southern Iraq and Iran, in the cities of Baghdad and
Basra, and increasingly in locales like suburban New Jersey, live the Man-
daeans, the only surviving gnostic community from antiquity. These fasci-
nating and tenacious people have maintained their traditions for nearly two
thousand years, long after their better known gnostic "cousins" fell into ob-
scurity. Although they have always been a relatively small community, the
Mandaeans have produced an extremely rich body of rituals and texts writ-
ten in Mandaic, an eastern dialect of Aramaic. Many of these traditions are
unique, while others have parallels in gnosticism, Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam, as well as in ancient Mesopotamian religions. Because of their geo-
graphical isolation, their traditional wariness toward outsiders, and the lin-
guistic and interpretive challenges posed by their literature, the Mandaeans
have remained a mystery to all but a few scholars of religion. In recent years
the Mandaean community has begun to remove its veils of seclusion. At the
same time, a small but growing number of dedicated researchers has initiated
a renaissance of interest in Mandaean studies.
ORIGINS AND HISTORY
The origins of Mandaeism, like other branches of gnosticism, have long been
debated. Mandaean literature and oral traditions preserve a number of in-
triguing references to the roots of the community. These combine mytholog-
ical, biblical, and historical elements. Like all gnostics, the Mandaeans trace
their ultimate ancestry to the world of light (in Mandaic, alma dnhura, an
analogue to the pleroma). The Mandaean anthropogony echoes both rabbinic
and gnostic accounts. Ptahil, the demiurge, creates the earthly Adam, who re-
mains inanimate until the soul of his heavenly prototype, called Adakas (a