"Die Geheimnisse der Vorvater": Edition, Ubersetzung und Kommentierung einer esoterischen mandaischen Handschrift aus der Bodleian Library Oxford.

• Author: Haberl, Charles G.
• Position: Book review

"Die Geheimnisse der Vorvater": Edition, Ubersetzung und Kommentierung einer esoterischen mandaischen Handschrift aus der Bodleian Library Oxford. By BOGDAN BURTEA. Mandaistische For-schungen, vol. 5. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2015. Pp. 153, illus. [euro]49.

The Mandaeans of Iran and Iraq are the custodians of a vast library of religious literature in their own idiom, a form of Aramaic similar in many respects to the language of the Babylonian Talmud, albeit recorded in its own distinct script. While the canonical works of Mandaean literature, edited and translated into various scholarly languages, have been the subject of much scholarly discussion, a substantive corpus of esoteric priestly texts has received much less scholarly attention. Bogdan Burtea, our chief translator and interpreter of this corpus, identifies within it two sub-genres, sarh or "commentary" texts and diwan "scroll" or tafsir "explanation" texts, such as the 1012 Questions, the Greater First World, the Lesser First World, the Scroll of Exalted Kingship, and Zehrun, the Hidden Mystery, in which lightworld beings listen to questions from mortals and pose answers. His most recent contribution to the study of this corpus, accessioned as MS Asiat. Misc. C 13 (R) at the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, belongs to the latter sub-genre. This manuscript, entitled Diwan w-Tafsir d-Razi d-Abahata "Scroll and Explanation of the Secrets of the Ancestors," is an illustrated roll roughly 32 cm wide and 257 cm long. The text divides into 378 lines.

The copyist, Rabbay ("my lord," henceforth R.) Yahya Ram Zehrun, son of R. Mhattam, of the Sabur clan (not R. Yahya Ram Zehrun's son, pace Burtea), is known to us from at least three other manuscripts that he copied between 1815 and 1823. In the colophon to this manuscript, he notes that he completed it in Sustar, Iran, in the house of his father-in-law, Salem, son of Mosa'ed, of the Dorraji clan, on Thursday, the second day of the middle month of summer (messay Gayta), Aylul/ Sombelta (Virgo), in the year of Pisces, which is a "Wednesday year," corresponding to AH 1238. Mandaean years are reckoned by the day of the week in which the new year falls, and the "Wednesday year" corresponding to AH 1238 began on Wednesday, September 4, 1822. 2 Aylul/ Sombelta fell 211 days later, on Thursday, April 3, 1823, this being the date on which he finished copying this manuscript.

Among other historical trivia, R. Yahya Ram Zehrun notes that the Mandaean community of Maqdam (jama'a d-sersa Maqdam, hardly "der Woche der Sonne ungefahr"), a village in the vicinity of Huwayza which is well attested in other colophons, comprises sixty households, who are subject to three rulers: Hammad, Sheikh of the Muntafiq tribal confederation; Dawud BaSa, the last Mamluk ruler of Iraq; and Kazem Aga, the governor of Basra.

R. Yahya Ram Zehrun informs us that he copied the manuscript from one of R. Yahya Yuhana, son of Ram, who copied it from R. Mhattam, son of Yahya Bayan, who copied it from "an old scroll that had no beginning and no end." This is rather unusual for these priestly texts, which are among the most frequently copied Mandaic manuscripts and often have long colophons detailing the history of their transmission. Both copyists are known from the transmission history of the Diwdn Harran Gawayta (DC 9 and 36), of which they are the earliest copyists of record, and they appear to belong to the seventeenth century (Buckley 2010: 291). It is perhaps significant that they are associated with...