Das mandaische Fest der Schalttage: Edition, Ubersetzung and Kommentierung der Handscrift DC 24 Sarh d-paruanaiia.

• Author: Haberl, Charles G.

Das mandaische Fest der Schalttage: Edition, Ubersetzung and Kommentierung der Handscrift DC 24 Sarh d-paruanaiia. By BOGDAN BURTEA. Mandaistiche Forschungen, vol. 2. Wiesbaden: HARRAS-SOWITZ VERLAG. 2005. Pp. ix + 246, CD-ROM. [euro]68.

Recognizing the recent revival of interest in the Mandaeans, the Harrassowitz Verlag has initiated a new Mandaeological series, entitled Mandaistiche Forschungen, under the editorial auspices of Rainer Voigt of the Freie Universitat Berlin. The present work is a text edition of the manuscript DC 24 from the Drower Collection at the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. In any case, this important development will be welcomed by Semitists everywhere.

Although relatively new to the field, the author of this edition has already distinguished himself with his scholarship on Semitics and the history of religions, spanning a vast area ranging from the Carpathian Mountains of his native Romania to the Ethiopian plateau. His most recent publication is a slightly revised version of his doctoral thesis, which was completed under the direction of Rainer Voigt and secondarily appraised by Kurt Rudolph. At the moment, Voigt and Burtea are collaborating on text editions of two more manuscripts from the Drower Collection, DC 27, zihrun raza kasia "Zihrun, the Great Secret," and DC 44, zrazta d-hibil ziua, "The Amulet of Hibel Ziwa," to appear in future volumes of this series. The two scholars should be commended not only for editing these important texts but also for this exciting new venue for Mandaean studies.

The copyist of the present manuscript, the Mandaean priest Yahia Bihram, son of Adam Yuhana, of the Kamisia clan, completed it in the Iranian city of Khorramshahr (then known as Muhammerah) in the year 1832. (1) Its title, sarh d-paruanaiia, immediately identifies it as a member of a specific genre of Mandaic literature, the priestly or ritual commentary. Although the term sarh from which the name of the genre is derived is Arabic in origin, meaning a kind of commentary or explanation, the Mandaean genre differs from the Arabic in several important regards. Arabic suruh generally take the form of running commentaries, accompanying the text which is the subject of the commentary, whereas Mandaean analogues generally dispense with the prayers that are their subject, save for short quotations which generally only reproduce the beginning and the end of each prayer. Furthermore, unlike their Arabic analogues, most...