Die mand

• Author: Hutter, Manfred

Die mandäische Religion und der aramäische Hintergrund des Manichäismus: Forschungsgeschichte, Textvergleiche, historisch-geographische Verortung. By IONUT DANIAL BANCILA. Mandäistische Forschungen, vol. 6. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2018. Pp. x + 301. [euro]74.

Among the religions of the Hellenistic era up to late antiquity, Mandaeism often gets less attention from researchers compared to other religious traditions that flourished in those periods. In recent years, mainly due to the efforts of Rainer Voigt (Berlin), some studies on aspects of this religion have been published in his book series "Mandäistische Forschungen." The reviewed book, the latest volume of this series, is the updated version of the PhD thesis of the author submitted to the Faculty of Theology at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

In the introduction (pp. 1-23) the author defines his position: He postulates that there existed a common background of thought concerning cosmology and salvation in the Syrian-Iranian cultural area in the early centuries of the common era. This milieu is not only relevant for the reconstruction of early Manichaeism, but also of Mandaeism. In my opinion, this main result can be widely accepted--perhaps with two restrictions: Most of his results are based on Mani's biography in the Cologne Mani Codex (CMC), which is a relatively late text. And the author widely ignores Middle Persian sources of Manichaeism that refer to Mani's activities in the early Sasanian empire. Thus the possible Iranian tenets are a bit underestimated. As Manichaean sources are the oldest, one should always have in mind that "reconstructing" Aramaic-Syrian milieus as a background also for Manichaeism from these Mandaean texts must remain hypothetical. These critical remarks do not question the author's essential results, but remind the reader of his necessarily hypothetical approach.

The main points mentioned in the introduction are the following: The author avoids seeing the Elkasaites as the group of baptists among whom Mani spent his youth. Another option of the author which is already visible in the introduction is that he suggests a relatively "late" date for the Mandaeans: they only become clearly defined in the fifth century at the earliest, and the first source describing the Mandaeans as a group goes back to Theodor bar Konai (end of eighth century). The oldest existing Mandaean manuscripts date only to the sixteenth century, so it is difficult to...