
Mandaeism - mr_golyadkin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism
======
danharaj
Oh hey, I was raised Mandaean. Neither of my parents spoke the language and
were some of the first immigrants to America so I didn't really participate in
the community much. A priest visited the area in my youth and I was baptized.

Later in life I came into possession of a translated copy of the Ginza Rba.
It's a pretty cool holy book, lots of interesting symbolism and mystery. Light
and darkness intermingle in interesting ways in these texts. Since most of the
significance of these religious elements is taught priest-to-priest and
through oral traditions I did not take part of, it's difficult to examine it
more deeply.

Although I don't practice religion these days, on occasion I'll reflexively
mutter a prayer under my breath. In a more secular light, being a Mandaean
strongly informed my material circumstances due to geopolitics and I'm always
struck by the weirdness of being part of a dwindling ethnic group swept up by
the tides of history.

~~~
3adawi
I'm mandaean as well if anyone is interested in asking anything

~~~
schoen
The Wikipedia article suggests that Mandaeans haven't liked to discuss their
religious beliefs and traditions with outsiders, but then sort of goes on to
reflect a lot of variation in this.

Do you have a sense of how this impulse toward secrecy has worked over time,
what's motivated it, and how Mandaeans might understand it today? Are there
other Mandaeans you know of who might be unhappy that you're happy to talk
about the tradition with strangers on an Internet forum?

How unified do you think different Mandaean communities have been in their
beliefs and practices?

~~~
3adawi
I think there are 2 reasons (for me at least) for why Mandaeans don't like to
discuss their religion.

1\. The lack of need for evangelicalism, unlike most religions, you can't
become a Mandaean unless you're born with it, other religions want to spread
their message to expand. 2\. In Iraq (when I was living there at least)
Mandaeans were very much prosecuted for being Mandaeans, a lot of them didn't
identify as Mandaean in public for fear of being ostracised or prosecuted. Eg.
a lot of my relatives that had restaurants/cafes would have to lie about their
religion to be able to sell, Muslims wouldn't buy from us otherwise.

I'm not sure how unified Mandaeans are right now, there are different
communities in every country, where I live (UK) there's a small number of
Mandaeans (around 1000) where there is almost no community, this is the case
in most countries, we're pretty much spread out all over the world where's
there's a 1000 people in Norway, 1000 in the States, it's really to create a
sense of community when the people are so sparsed out. The internet (Facebook
especially where there are pages/groups that have tens of thousands of
Mandaeans together) is the only thing that brings us together, for example
when sending Eid (similar to Christmas) greetings and so on.

------
jdtang13
Wow, surprised I get to see this on the front page of Hacker News. Gnostic
sects are quite interesting. I've seen a good handful jaded ex-religious
people who turned to Gnostic beliefs because of their dissatisfaction with
modern religion, since they believe that Gnosticism is more "philosophical".

The Gnostics were hated during their times by the Neoplatonists for their
over-emphasis on theurgy (religious rituals focused on awakening), and they
were rejected by mainstream Christians after the first Ecumenical Council for
being heretics (Gnostics believe that matter is intrinsically evil; orthodox
Nicene Christians, in contrast, believe that matter is a "lesser good").

It seems that, from this article, Mandaeism also has some dualistic tendencies
(believing that the world is a prison for the soul; and that the world was
created by a god of Darkness). It's also quite radical to me that they
consider Jesus, Abraham, and Moses to be false prophets, and that the Holy
Spirit is an evil creature.

If you are interested in Gnosticism, you may be even more interested in simply
reading the Neoplatonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus; or you might be
interested in the early Christian theurgical writings of Pseudo-Dionysius and
Maximus the Confessor. I think that these traditions are more internally
consistent than Gnosticism.

~~~
empath75
Gnosticism is mostly just Greek Neoplatonism filtered through older near
eastern religions.

Really multiple waves of Greek philosophy swept through the near and Middle
East after Alexander, leaving new religions in its wake — including mainstream
Christianity.

------
adrianratnapala
I wonder why a religion that seems to have always been from around-about
southern Iraq is so concerned with the prophets out of Jewish history.

It makes sense if the religion appeared fairly late, so that Roman Christians
could make that history a big thing that others pay attention too. But it is
more puzzling if the Mandaens are pre-Christian as they seem to claim.

Other possibilities are (a) Judaism itself is was bigger deal among non-Jews
than I imagined or (b) it's a selection effect under Islam: people who
happened to revere Jewish prophets could make a strong claim to being "People
of the Book" and were thus allowed to keep their religion.

~~~
cdoxsey
The Jewish people were dispersed when Israel was conquered, first by Assyria
and then by Babylon (modern day Iraq). This led to the exile (diaspora).

In addition to the people the ideas were dispersed. A good example of this are
the magi who come to visit the young Jesus following an astrological sign - an
odd mix of Jewish and Persian syncretism.

During Roman times Jews could be found all over the Roman Empire. In
particular Alexandria, which was a center for scholastic thought (see philo)

So it doesn't seem a stretch that religions may have been influenced by
Judaism fairly early.

------
jpatokal
Mandaeans are heavily persecuted in Iran and much of the rest of the Middle
East. Here's the story of a colleague of mine:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gb5SoJdEnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gb5SoJdEnA)
(13 min, but well worth it)

[https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/when-he-came-to-
australia-h...](https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/when-he-came-to-australia-he-
hadnt-heard-of-the-internet-now-this-former-refugee-works-for-
google-20150927-gjvt4k.html)

------
xevb3k
I’m interested in these, older, yet still active lesser known religions.

Aside from this I’m aware of the Ahmadiyya and Baha’is (offshoots of Islam,
but with distinct founders claiming to bring a revelation). They’re in the 5
to 10 million range. And Jainism of course, but that seems to be a little
better known.

Then there’s Zoroastrianism and Yazdânism with under 1 million.

Does anyone have a complete list of these smaller religions?

~~~
schoen
For the Near Eastern landscape, you might also be interested in

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaite_Judaism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaite_Judaism)

I first found out about the Karaites when I asked a theologian why there was
no Jewish equivalent to the Protestant notion of "sola scriptura". It turns
out that there is. :-)

There are also some parts of Eastern Christianity that aren't very familiar to
many westerners, like Syriac Christians.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_Christianity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_Christianity)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodoxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodoxy)

~~~
acjohnson55
Don't forget the Yazidis

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidis)

~~~
schoen
The other commenter already mentioned "Yazdânism", which Wikipedia considers
to include Yazidism. :-)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazd%C3%A2nism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazd%C3%A2nism)

------
mr_golyadkin
I also found this article about the Mandaeans in Massachusetts:

[https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-10-06/these-iraqi-
immigrant...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-10-06/these-iraqi-immigrants-
worship-john-baptist-theyre-not-christians)

~~~
jonathanyc
> The religion does not allow for conversion to the faith. If a Mandaean man
> or woman marries someone who is not part of the religion, the couple’s
> children are not considered to be Mandaeans.

That’s interesting. Seems like the religion is “doomed” to forever remain that
of a small and shrinking minority.

~~~
drb91
This is also true of some ultra orthodox sects of judaism that are thriving.

~~~
verbify
Can you name the sect? I was raised as an Ultra-Orthodox Jew and this is not
normative.

~~~
imbokodo
The Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, New York are near-impossible to convert into. I
don't see it as inconceivable some other sect banned it altogether.

~~~
verbify
They do marry other Jews or descendants of converts from other courts, they
just don't marry converts or convert using their own courts. Therefore they
are not a real endogamous population.

Also, the edict is only since 1937, they were accepting converts earlier than
that. So fundamentally they aren't a success story - they haven't been doing
this very long.

~~~
imbokodo
> They do marry other Jews

Other Jews can marry in, but even this is limited. The majority of self-
identifying Jews in the US would not have the qualifications to marry in. Any
how, they are an insular community.

------
teachrdan
From TFW:

"Mandaeism or Mandaeanism (Arabic: مندائية‎ Mandāʼīyah) is a gnostic
religion[1]:4 with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the
Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially
John the Baptist. The Aramaic manda means "knowledge", as does Greek
gnosis.[2][3]

"According to most scholars, Mandaeaism originated sometime in the first three
centuries AD,[4] in Mesopotamia.[citation needed] They are Semites and speak a
dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. There is a theory that they may
be related to the Nabateans who were pre-Islamic pagan Arabs[5] whose
territory extended into southern Iraq.[6]

"The religion has been practised primarily around the lower Karun, Euphrates
and Tigris and the rivers that surround the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, part of
southern Iraq and Khuzestan Province in Iran. There are thought to be between
60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide.[7] Until the 2003 Iraq war, almost all
of them lived in Iraq.[8] Many Mandaean Iraqis have since fled their country
because of the turmoil created by the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent
occupation by U.S. armed forces, and the related rise in sectarian violence by
Muslim extremists.[9] By 2007, the population of Mandaeans in Iraq had fallen
to approximately 5,000.[8]

"The Mandaeans have remained separate and intensely private. Reports of them
and of their religion have come primarily from outsiders: particularly from
Julius Heinrich Petermann, a scholar in Iranian studies,[citation needed] as
well as from Nicolas Siouffi, a Syrian Christian who was the French vice-
consul in Mosul in 1887,[10][11] and British cultural anthropologist Lady E.
S. Drower."

~~~
monkpit
Why did you copy and paste the article?

~~~
teachrdan
Because, in practice, a lot of people commenting don't actually read the
article. As a convenience I've copied the opening paragraphs from the
Wikipedia article. Is that against HN rules / norms?

~~~
mikestew
_Because, in practice, a lot of people commenting don 't actually read the
article._

Someone else made a habit of doing this a few months ago, with an almost word-
for-word excuse as yours. They were asked to quit doing it. At best, based on
empirical evidence, you'll just invite a flurry of downvotes.

------
tomelders
Wait but what? Why is a religon being posted to HN?

~~~
dang
The test of a good HN submission is intellectual interest, and there's plenty
of that here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
asdsa5325
Why is just a wikipedia page posted?

~~~
dang
Many interesting Wikipedia pages have been posted over the years.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wikipedia.org%20points%3E10&so...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wikipedia.org%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

