Meet the Mandaeans, the Disciples of John the Baptist
The Mandaeans are new to the West, but how much do we really know about their greatest profit, John the Baptist?
One of the newest religious denominations in Australia is the Mandaean community. The Mandaeans migrated to Australia from Iran and Iraq, where, as a non–Islamic religious minority, they faced violence, persecution and forced conversion after the Iranian Revolution and the American invasion of Iraq. As a pacifist, ethnoreligious and endogamous community, the Mandaeans are an endangered people and it is estimated that there are only 50,000 Mandaeans remaining worldwide, 80% of whom live outside the Middle East.
Mandaeans began arriving in Australia in 1981 and were incorporated as a formal religious denomination in 2008. There are more than 10,000 Mandaeans in Australia, most of whom live in Greater Western Sydney, and they form one of the largest Mandaean communities in the diaspora. They are currently building a new place of worship, called a ‘mandi’, on the banks of the Nepean River. (See Meet the Mandaeans: Australian followers of John the Baptist and The Sabian Mandaean Association in Australia)
The Mandaeans consider themselves to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world and trace their faith back to Adam and Noah, whose sons, Seth and Shem, are named as their earliest prophets. Their final and greatest prophet is John the Baptist whom they call Yuhana Maṣbana, or John the Baptizer, and Yahia-Yuhana. (Yahia is a title given to Mandaean priests.)
According to the Mandaepedia:
John was a great teacher, a Nazorean [an enlightened one] and renewer of the faith. John was a messenger of Light (nhura) and Truth (kushta) who possessed the power of healing and full Gnosis (manda). Mandaean texts make it abundantly clear that early Mandaeans were extremely loyal to John and viewed him as a prophetic reformer of the ancient Mandaean tradition.
Mandaeans also believe that John’s parents were Zakria (Zechariah) and Enišbai (Elizabeth), and that he had a wife called Anhar and children. Mandaeans do not record that John was executed, but rather that, after he baptised the human manifestation of the Knower of Life, his soul was taken up into The World of Light while his body became one with the River Jordan.
John’s teachings remain the Mandaeans’ fundamental beliefs. As Brikha Nasoraia, the leader of the Australian Mandaean community, puts it:
The Mandaeans see themselves as healers of the ‘Worlds and Generations’ (Almia u–Daria), and practitioners of the religion of Mind (Mana), Light (Nhura), Truth (Kushta), Love (Rahma/Ruhma) and Enlightenment or Knowledge (Manda)
They recognise one God, whom they call The Great Living (God), whose symbol is Living Water. They believe in the immortality of the soul which will face reward and punishment in the next life, but not eternal punishment, as God is merciful. They also believe in angels called ‘uthras’ as well as demiurges and evil spirits.
The Mandaeans’ principal religious practice is weekly full-immersion baptism which takes place on a Sunday in a freshwater river. Unlike Christianity, where baptism is a one-off sacrament, Mandaeans practise regular baptism, not for the forgiveness of sin, but as an act of purification and a physical manifestation of a commitment to ongoing right living and good works.
The Mandaeans originated in the Jordan Valley, which their ancestors fled about 2,000 years ago, and ultimately settled along the lower reaches of the Tigris, Euphrates and Karun Rivers in what is now Iraq and Iran. While some western scholars have doubted this history, it is evidenced by the fact that the Mandaeans’ extensive sacred literature, which frequently references Jerusalem, is written in Classic Mandaic, a southeastern Aramaic dialect, closely related to Syriac and Babylonian Aramaic. They also call any river in which they perform baptism ‘Yordana’. Nevertheless, even Mandaean scholars acknowledge that their beliefs have also been influenced by Zoroastrianism.
The Historical John the Baptist
While the Mandaeans might be a small and endangered community, they do have one advantage over Christians. They have historical evidence that their prophet, John the Baptist, actually existed. Unlike Jesus and his disciples, John the Baptist gets a genuine mention by the ancient Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, in his book, Jewish Antiquities. (See Christ Mythicism: a theology for a rational world) John is not the only religious leader Josephus wrote about, but while he characterised many would-be Messiahs as troublemakers and charlatans, he had a particularly favourable opinion of John.
In his book, Jewish Antiquities, Josephus described John the Baptist as:
…a good man [who] urged the Jews to exert themselves to virtue, both as to justice toward one another and reverence towards God, and having done so, join together in washing. For immersion in water, it was clear to him, could not be used for the forgiveness of sins, but as a sanctification of the body, and only if the soul was already thoroughly purified by right actions.
He goes on to give an account of the circumstances of John’s death at the hands of Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee, which is very different to that found in the gospels. [Jewish Antiquities 18.5.2 116–119] (For more see Envoy or Rival? The Christian Appropriation of John the Baptist)
In distinguishing John’s teachings on baptism as that it was not for the forgiveness of sins, Josephus must have been aware of religious preachers who taught that it was. These other preachers may have been Christians or had similar beliefs to theirs. However, apart from making this comparison, Josephus makes no mention of Christianity and does not associate John with Christians in any way.
The First Baptists, the Last Gnostics
Dr James McGrath, a scholar of Mandaeism, who has translated its sacred book, The Book (or Teachings) of John (see more below), calls the Mandaeans ‘the first Baptists, and the last Gnostics’ as Mandaeism is the one remaining, living Gnostic religion. In fact, its name derives from the Aramaic word manda meaning ‘knowledge’, which is the same etymological origin of the word ‘gnostic’, which derives from the Greek word for ‘knowledge’, gnosis.
Gnosticism is not a religion as such, but rather — like monotheism and polytheism — a theological construct which may have grown out of Platonism and Hellenistic Mysticism, and was shared by a range of religions — both Christian and non-Christian — in ancient and medieval times. Gnosticism is a response to the conundrum all monotheists must face. If God is all goodness and love, how could He have created a world where there is such suffering and evil? The gnostic answer is that He didn’t.
In the gnostic paradigm, God is a transcendent being of light and goodness. It was His evil nemesis, the Demiurge, that created the material world, including our human bodies. However, the human soul is a product of the light, and the goal of the Gnostic is to liberate the human soul to return to the light, not only through good works, but through knowledge of the true nature of God.
Some Gnostics, including Mandaeans, in contact with the Jewish world identified the Hebrew creator god with the Demiurge. In fact, one name Mandaeans give to the Demiurge is ‘Adonai’, one of the names of God in the Hebrew Bible. Thus, Mandaeans reject the faith of the Jewish patriarchs such as Abraham and Moses and consider Jesus an apostate and false prophet.
The Book of John
The most important texts of the Mandaeans’ vast sacred literature are the Ginza Rabba, a compilation of prayers and teachings on a wide range of subjects, the Qolasta, an extensive collection of prayers, The Thousand and Twelve Questions, a text for Mandaean priests, and The Book of John, which includes an account of the birth and teachings of John the Baptist. Much of this literature can be dated back to the 3rd century CE and most of it was conveyed orally before being written down. These texts have been translated into Arabic, Latin, German and/or English. (See Mandaepedia.)
American scholars, Dr James McGrath and Dr Charles Häberl, have recently translated The Book (or Teachings) of John into English and it is available online in full. Dr McGrath believes that the text was probably written in the mid-7th century but possibly begun in the 5th or 6th century. Where this translation differs from earlier renditions is that it retains the original’s verse format. Its rhythmic language and frequent repetitions reflect its beginnings as sung or spoken poetry which must have been transmitted orally for generations before being written down. This oral transmission would not only have preserved the text but also have allowed for its evolution over time and the development of variations.
This text is too long and profound for me to examine in detail in this essay, so I will focus on two points where it intersects with the canonical gospels and compare those sections with the parallel gospel stories. As we know, John the Baptist is an important figure in the gospels where he acts as a precursor to Jesus. Meanwhile, although the Mandaeans reject Jesus, he does appear in The Book of John. However, where the gospels demonstrate a certain reverence for John, The Book of John is rather critical of Jesus. This hostility is not unique to Mandaean texts. The Babylonian Talmud, an important Rabbinical Jewish text written at about the same time and in the same area, also makes disparaging references to Jesus. One gets the impression that the Christian missionaries who preached in Mesopotamia must have been particularly antagonistic towards their rival faiths for them to engender such lasting enmity.
In the second part of this study, Envoy or Rival? The Christian Appropriation of John the Baptist, I will take a deeper look at the portrayal of John the Baptist in the gospels.
The Book of John vs the Gospels
While both John and Jesus appear in both The Book of John and the canonical gospels, given the differences between Mandaeism and Christianity, we can expect that their portrayals will differ greatly between the two texts. When comparing where the two overlap, we have to keep in mind, not only differing beliefs about the two founding figures, but also the disparity in time and distance between when and where the texts were written. While The Book of John was not written down before the 5th century at the earliest, the gospels were most likely written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries and while The Book of John was written in Mesopotamia, the gospels were written within the Roman Empire.
For John to appear so prominently in the gospels, even well after his death, his disciples must have been active and proselytising within the Roman Empire at the time the gospels were written. While some of John’s doctrines may have been secret, his disciples must have had teachings they could preach publicly, such as stories about John’s life. Meanwhile, the ancestors of the Mandaeans might still have been in Palestine when Christianity began or, more likely, they learnt of Jesus from early Christian missionaries who travelled to Mesopotamia. All the while, their stories about and understanding of John and his teachings were evolving, and perhaps in part, reacting to Christian teachings which, no doubt, they considered mistaken if not totally heretical.
Therefore, it is possible that while the authors of The Book of John may have had access to a Christian gospel, either written or through Christian preachers, the evangelists did not have access to The Book of John. On the other hand, the gospel writers may have had access to earlier, oral traditions about John the Baptist. So, while it is possible that some sections of The Book of John may be based on the gospels, other sections where the two overlap are most likely derived from shared origins.
The Birth of John the Baptist
The birth of John the Baptist is told in Chapters 18 and 32 of The Book of John. The account begins with a statement that succinctly summarises the whole story:
A child was transplanted from on high,
a secret was revealed in Jerusalem. [18:1]
The coming events are foreshadowed in the visionary dream of the priests of the Temple in Jerusalem:
‘I saw in my night visions…
that a star came to Elizabeth,
a fire rose, burning over elder father Zechariah…
A fire hung about the Synagogue,
and smoke wreathed the Temple,
A sound rumbled on the chariot,
the earth shook from its place.
A shooting star burst over Judea,
a shooting star burst over Jerusalem.
The sun appeared at night,
and the moon shone forth during the day’…[18:7–15]
However, rather than bringing joy, this birth is a threat to the Jewish religious establishment.
‘Woe to you, priests,
Elizabeth is giving birth to a child!
Woe to you, rabbis,
a child is being born in Jerusalem!
Woe to you, primary teachers,
Elizabeth is giving birth to a child!
Woe to you, Mistress Torah,
Johannes is born in Jerusalem!
Johannes will take the Jordan,
and will be called a prophet of Jerusalem.’ [18:55–59]
Neither is Zechariah overjoyed when he is told he will be a father.
‘It has been fully twenty-two years,
since I last saw my wife;
nevertheless, neither I nor any of you,
have made Elizabeth pregnant!’ [18:91–92]
Zechariah is eventually resigned to this birth which, he has to admit, must be divinely conceived. [‘The Jordan’s reservoir’ most likely refers to the heavenly realm where it is believed the Jordan River originates.]
The elder father opened his mouth,
and said to all the priests,
‘If the child comes from the upper heights,
then what will you do in Jerusalem?
They brought him from the Jordan’s reservoir,
and placed him in Elizabeth’s womb.’ [18:147–149]
When the child is born, the community wants to know what the boy’s destiny will be.
Jews gathered, and came to elder father Zechariah,
They say to him, ‘Elder father Zechariah,
it is necessary that you have a son.
Tell us what name shall we give him?
If we give him “Wise Joseph”,
then will he teach the book in Jerusalem?
If we give him “Zatan the Pillar”,
then will the Jews trust him and not accuse him of deceit?’
When Elizabeth heard, she spoke up,
she cried out, saying,
‘From all these names that you have said,
I do not desire to give him a single one.
No, I only want to give him the name
Johannes which Life gave to him.’
When the Jews heard,
they were filled with a wicked fury against her.
They say, ‘What harm shall we do him and his mother,
so he might be slain by our own hands?’
Hearing this, Excellent Ennosh took him,
and brought him to Parwan, the white mountain,
On Mount Parwan, where infants and children,
are raised on spring water,
until I became twenty-two years [old].
I learned all of my wisdom,
and perfected all of my words. [32:15–31]
While this version of the birth of John the Baptist is much more poetic than the description of John’s conception and birth in the Gospel of Luke (see A Tale of Two Nativities — Part One: The Birth Narratives of Matthew and Luke), the two share some common factors. As in Luke, in this text, John’s parents are Elizabeth and Zechariah and both are elderly. In fact, John says:
…‘My father was 99 years old,
and my mother was 88 years old.’ [32:4]
It is unclear whether Zechariah is a priest. However, he is closely associated with the Temple and its priests seem to defer to him. It is also unclear whether the ‘elder father’ is an honorific or whether it refers to his impending fatherhood.
In this text we can also see, as in Luke’s gospel, that, against opposition from her community, Elizabeth insists her son will be called John. In fact, this text sheds some light on why John’s name is such an issue, a point which is unclear in Luke. In giving him the name John, Elizabeth is signalling that her son will not be serving the God of the Temple, but the Living God.
Furthermore, just as in the gospels, where John lives off the land in the wilderness until he begins his preaching career, in this text John is spirited away to live on a holy mountain where he is raised on spring water until he reaches adulthood. Mount Parwan would seem to be a mythological wilderness and, of course, the spring water is a symbol of the Living God.
We can also see in this narrative, parallels between the birth of John and that of Jesus. Just as in Matthew’s Nativity, we have the star that appears in the sky to announce his birth. We have the threat to his life from which he is spirited away to safety by a benign male figure. As in Luke’s Nativity we have a son born by divine conception. However, before we consider who has copied whom, we should note that these tropes are among features shared by a wide range of mythical ‘divine king’ narratives of the ancient world, known as the ‘Rank-Raglan hero-type’. Those shared by John and Jesus are:
· The hero’s mother is a virgin. (Or as good as, since Elizabeth has not been with her husband for 22 years.)
· The circumstances of his conception are unusual.
· He is reputed to be the son of a god. (Or, in John’s case, conceived by divine intervention.)
· An attempt is made to kill him as a baby.
· To escape which he is spirited away from those trying to kill him.
· He is reared in a foreign country by one or more foster parents. (As well as being a mythological wilderness, Mount Parwan can also be seen as a foreign country and Ennosh would be John’s foster parent there.)
· We are told nothing about his childhood.
· On reaching manhood he returns to his future kingdom. (Or in this case, the country where he will carry out his ministry.)
As well as these parallels, Luke has added a reversal of an important element of the story of John. While John’s birth is a threat to and a rejection of the God of the Temple, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is taken to the Temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated to its God, ‘as is written in the Law of the Lord’, and while he is there, Simeon and Anna declare that Jesus has been sent by God to be the Saviour of Israel. Thus, Luke is emphasising that, in contrast to John, Jesus serves the Jewish God of the Temple.
It is hard to say which narrative copies which, given the ‘divine king’ hero-type. I would suggest that they developed in tandem, elements being added to each over time to counter and outdo the other.
The Baptism of Jesus
As in the gospels, in The Book of John there is only one occasion when Jesus and John the Baptist meet, in Chapter 30 when Jesus goes to the Jordan to be baptised by John. However, the description of this event differs markedly from the gospels.
Jesus Christ, Mary’s son…
… came to Jordan’s bank and told him [John],
‘Perform your baptism over me,
and pronounce over me the name you pronounce! …’ [30:1– 3]
However, John is reluctant and a long and fraught dialogue ensues between John and Jesus in which John levels a series of accusations against Jesus, which Jesus denies, for example:
John spoke, saying
to Jesus Christ in Jerusalem,
‘You have lied to Jews,
and you have deceived men, the priests.
You cut seed off from men,
and labour and pregnancy from women.
You loosened the Sabbath
that Moses ordained in Jerusalem.
You lied to them with a horn
and played different things with a trumpet.’
Jesus Christ spoke, saying
to John in Jerusalem,
‘If I have lied to Jews,
then may a burning fire consume me.
If I have deceived the men, the priests.
then may I die two deaths instead of one.’ [30:6–13]
Jesus attempts to persuade John to baptise him, saying:
‘If I become your disciple,
then I shall mention you in my epistle,
If I do not become your disciple,
Then erase my name from the scrolls!
You will be responsible for your sin,
and I shall be responsible for mine.’
When Jesus Christ said this,
a letter came from Abator’s house,
‘John baptise the deceiver in the Jordan!
Bring him down to the Jordan and baptise him,
bring him up to the bank to confirm him!’
Spirit took the form of a dove,
and made a cross in the Jordan…[30:57–64]
The Spirit then goes onto to claim to have created central features of Christianity such as the priesthood and the Eucharist, but then reviles the ‘Romans’ for worshipping the crucifix, ending with:
‘Beware for me, my brothers,
the god framed by a carpenter!
If a carpenter framed a god,
then who framed a carpenter!’ [30:57–76]
As we can see, in this version of the story, far from John venerating Jesus and claiming to be unworthy to baptise him as in the gospels, here John and Jesus are portrayed as antagonists, with John claiming that Jesus is unworthy of baptism because of his false teachings and deceit. It is only when Jesus clears John of any responsibility for Jesus’ activities that John receives divine permission to baptise him.
The spirit which takes the form of a dove may resemble the Holy Spirit, but in the Mandaean pantheon, Spirit, or Ruha, is a malevolent female figure. Therefore, her claim to have created the accoutrements of Christianity is not sanctifying them, but, on the contrary, maligning them. Her final statement seems a little ambiguous, but she may be questioning how a god can take the form of a carpenter who is only a human being, after all.
Despite the poetic language and the serious allegations levelled against Jesus, this telling of Jesus’ baptism reads almost like a parody of the gospel version, on which it is most likely based. Jesus comes to John and demands to be baptised but is rebuffed. Jesus seems to be trying to wheedle John into baptising him, in fact even offering him what seems like a bribe, ‘Baptise me and I’ll mention you in my book.’ It would seem that Abator (one of the major Uthras, or angels) finally gives John permission to baptise Jesus more out of exasperation than approval and delivers it, almost comically, in the form of a letter dropped from on high.
I believe we can see here once again, how offensive Mandeans found the teachings of Christianity, be it because of the very nature of those teachings, or because of how they recast John the Baptist as Jesus’ inferior and devotee.
Conclusion
The minimalist theory of an historical Jesus is that he was just an ordinary man, but an inspiring teacher around whom various legends have accreted. However, even this modest proposition is not supported by a shred of historical evidence. (See Christ Mythicism: a theology for a rational world) On the other hand, while this same model might be legitimately applied to John the Baptist, we have sufficient evidence to accept that, in contrast, he actually existed.
Given the survival of a sect that has continued to venerate him through all their tribulations over two millennia, it is evident that John had the charisma to attract a strong and cohesive following that was able to sustain itself long after he had gone. Indeed, John’s very presence in the gospels demonstrates that he was too important a figure to be ignored by the nascent Christian church. Meanwhile, John’s followers found Christianity to be the antithesis to their own beliefs, which is reflected in the portrayal of Jesus in their sacred literature.
Given John the Baptist’s presence in the gospels, I find it unlikely that the ancestors of the Mandaeans were his only followers. Like many of the inhabitants of Palestine, during the Roman Jewish Wars, most of his disciples would have had to escape the Jordan valley, fleeing in all directions in search of refuge. The ancestors of the Mandaeans may have been the only ones who moved beyond the Roman Empire and therefore escaped the fate of their fellows who were most likely suppressed by, or absorbed into, the Christian Church.
The Mandaeans thrived, and possibly attracted converts, in Mesopotamia despite sporadic persecution by Zoroastrians. After the Muslim conquest, they had to adapt to a regime that considered conversion from Islam apostacy and punishable by death. In such circumstances, it was an inevitable survival mechanism for the Mandaeans to prohibit conversion into their sect, thus avoiding punishment for facilitating apostacy, and forbidding marriage out, which would have forced the Mandaean spouse to convert to Islam and therefore be lost to the community together with their children.
In the diaspora, Mandaeans have had to continue to adapt, such as in Sweden, where they have to perform baptism in indoor pools during the winter when the rivers are frozen over. Perhaps, living in countries where they have total religious freedom, over time, they can relax some of their prohibitions and allow marriage outside the sect and, given the benign nature of their teachings, attract and accept new converts.
© Pauline Montagna 2025
Read more reflections on Christ Mythicism
References
Wikipedia — Mandaeans and Mandaeism
The Mandaean Book of John, translated by Charles G. Häberl and James F. McGrath (2019) Internet Archive
The Mandaean Book of John — Drs. James F. McGrath & Charles G. Häberl (2024) History Valley (YouTube Channel)
Encyclopædia Iranica Mandaeans: History
Dr Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press (2014)
