The Gnostic John the Baptizer: Selections from the Mandaean John-Book

6. And he did nothing else to them save that he plunged them into the stream of the Jordan and dismissed them, instructing them that they should cease from evil works, and [promising] that there would [then] be given them a ruler who would set them free and subject to them all that is not in submission; but no one of whom we speak (?),’ would himself be subjected. 7. Some reviled, but others got faith. 8. And when he had been brought to Archelaus and the doctors of the Law had assembled, they asked him who he is and where he has been until then. 9. And to this he made answer and spake: “I am pure; [for] the Spirit of God hath led me on, and [I live on] cane and roots and tree-food.” 10. But when they threatened to put him to torture if he would not cease from those words and deeds, he nevertheless said: “It is meet for you [rather] to cease from your heinous works and cleave unto the Lord your God.”

11. And there rose up in anger Simon, an Esszean by extraction, a scribe, and he spake: “We read every day the divine books. 12. But thou, only now come from the forest like a wild animal,—thouw darest in sooth to teach us and to mislead the people with thy reprobate words.” 138. And he rushed forward to do him bodily violence. 14. But he, rebuking them, spake: “I will not disclose to you the mystery which dwelleth in you, for ye have not desired it. 15. Thereby an untold calamity is come upon you, and because of yourselves.” 16. And when he had thus spoken, he went forth to the other ? Ger. Holzspdne, ‘ chips,’ ‘shavings,’—a quite impossible meaning. It occurs again at the end of § III.

side of the Jordan; and while no one durst rebuke him, that one did what [he had done] also heretofore. II. His INTERPRETATION oF PuHturp’s DREAM. (Follows on B. J. II. ix. 1.) 1. While Philip was [still] in possession of his dominion, he saw a dream,—how an eagle tore out both his eyes. 2. And he summoned all his wise men. 38. But when each interpreted the dream differently, there came to him suddenly, without being summoned, that man of whom we have previously written, that he went about in skins of animals and cleansed the people in the waters of the Jordan. 4. Andhespake: “Give ear to the word of the Lord,—the dream which thou hast seen. 5. The eagle—that is thy venality; because that bird is violent and _ rapacious. 6. And that sin will take away thy eyes—which are thy dominion and thy wife.” 7 And when he had thus spoken, Philip died before evening and his dominion was given to Agrippa.

His PERSISTENT REBUKING OF AGRIPPA AND HIS EXECUTION. 1. And Herod, his brother, took his wife Herodias. 2. And because of her all the doctors of the Law abhorred him, but durst not accuse him before his face. 8. But only that one whom they called a wild man, came to him in anger and spake: “ Why hast thou taken the wife of thy brother? 4. As thy brother hath died a death void of pity, thou too wilt be reaped off by the heavenly sickle. 5. God’s decree will not be silenced, but will destroy thee through evil affliction in foreign lands. 6. For thou dost not raise up seed for thy brother, but gratifiest thy fleshly lust and committest adultery, seeing that four children of him are alive.”

7. Now when Herod heard [this], he was filled with wrath and commanded that they should beat him and drive him away. 8. But he accused Herod incessantly wherever he found him, and right up to the time when he (H.) put him under arrest and gave orders to slay him. 9. Now his disposition (or character) was extraordinary and his mode of life not that of a man; indeed just like a bodiless spirit, thus did this one too continue. 10. His lips knew no bread; not even at Easter [? orig. Passover] did he taste unleavened bread, saying that, in remembrance of God who had freed the people from slavery, it was given for eating in the flight, for the way was in haste. To wine and intoxicating drink he let himself not even draw near. And every animal he abhorred [as food], and every wrong he rebuked, and tree-produce served him for use.

IV. THE MInistry, TRIAL AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. (Follows on B. J. II. ix. 8.) 1. At that time also a man came forward,—if even it is fitting to call him a man [simply]. 2. His nature as well as his form were a man’s; but his showing forth was more than [that] of aman. 38. His works, that is to say, were godly, and he wrought wonder-deeds amazing and full of power. 4. Therefore it is not possible for me to call hima man [simply]. 5. But again, looking at the existence he shared with all, I would also not call him an angel. 6. And all that he wrought through some kind of invisible power, he wrought by word and command.

7. Some said of him, that our first Lawgiver has risen from the dead and shows forth many cures and arts. 8. But others supposed [less definitely] that he is sent by God. 9. Now he opposed himself in much to the Law and did not observe the Sabbath according to ancestral custom. 10. Yet, on the other hand, he did nothing reprehensible nor any crime; but by word solely he effected everything. 11. And many from the folk followed him and received his teachings. 12. And many souls became wavering, supposing that thereby the Jewish tribes would set themselves free from the Roman hands. 13. Now it was his custom often to stop on the Mount of Olives facing the city. 14. And there also he avouched his cures

to the people. 15. And there gathered themselves to him of servants (Knechten) a hundred and fifty, but of the folk a multitude. 16. But when they saw his power, that he accomplished everything that he would by word, they urged him that he should enter the city and cut down the Roman soldiers and Pilate and rule over us. 17. But that one scorned it. 18. And thereafter, when knowledge of it came to the Jewish leaders, they gathered together with the High-priest and spake: ““We are powerless and weak to withstand the Romans. 19. But as withal the bow is bent, we will go and tell Pilate what we have heard, and we will be without distress, lest if he hear it from others, we be robbed of our substance and ourselves be put to the sword and our children ruined.” 20. And they went and told it to Pilate. |

21. And he sent and had many of the people cut down. 22. And he had that wonder-doer brought up. And when he had instituted a trial concerning him, he perceived that he is a doer of good, but not an evil-doer, nor a revolutionary, nor one who aimed at power, and set him free. 23. He had, you should know, healed his dying wife. 24. And he went to his accustomed place and wrought his accustomed works. 25. And as again more folk gathered themselves together round him, then did he win glory through his works more than all. 26. The teachers of the Law were [therefore] envenomed with envy and gave thirty talents to Pilate, in order that he should put him to death. 27. And he, after he had taken [the money], gave them consent that they should themselves carry out their purpose.

28. And they took him and crucified him according to the ancestral law. (Follows on B. J. II. xi. 6, after the notice on the death of Agrippa.) 1. Again Claudius sent his authorities to those states— Cuspius Fadus and Tiberius Alexander, both of whom kept the people in peace, not allowing them to depart in anything from the pure laws. 2. But if anyone diverged from the word of the Law, plaint was brought before the teachers of the Law. 38. Often they expelled him and sent him to the Emperor’s presence. 4, And at the time of these two many had been discovered as servants of the previously described wonder-doer; and as they spake to the people about their teacher,—that he is living, although he is dead, and that he will free you from your servitude, —many from the folk gave ear to the above-named and took upon themselves their precept,—5. not because of their reputation; they were indeed of the humbler sort some just cobblers, others sandal-makers, others artisans.

6. And [yet] as marvellous signs they accomplished in truth what they would. 7. But when those noble governors saw the misleading of the people, they deliberated with the scribes to seize and put them to death, for fear lest the little be not little if it have ended in the great. 8. But they shrank back and were alarmed over the signs, saying: ‘‘ In the plain course such wonders do not occur. 9. But if they do not issue from the counsel of God, they will quickly be convicted.” 10. And they gave them [the Christians] authority to act as they would. 11. But afterwards, becoming pestered by them, they had them sent away, some to the Emperor, but others to Antioch, others again to distant lands,—for the testing of the matter.

12. But Claudius removed the two governors, [and] sent Cumanus.

At it (the barrier of the Temple) were columns .. . and on these inscriptions in Greek and Roman and Jewish characters, publishing the law of purity and [proclaiming] that no foreigner should enter the inner [court]; for they called it the Holy [Place] to which one had to ascend by fourteen steps, and whose upper part was built in a square. And over these tablets with inscriptions hung a fourth tablet with inscription in these [three] characters, to the effect: Jesus has not reigned as king; he has been crucified by the Jews, because he proclaimed the destruction of the city and the laying waste of the temple. PORTENTS AT THE DkEaTH OF JESUS AND RuMOURS OF HIS RESURRECTION.

(Follows on B. J. V. v. 4, at the end of the description of the Temple-curtain.) 1. This curtain (katapetasma) was prior to this generation entire, because the people were pious; but now it was lamentable to lookat. 2. It had, you should know, been suddenly rent from the top to the ground, when they delivered over to death through bribery the doer of good, the man—yea, him who through his doing was no man. 3. And of many other signs they tell which came to pass at that time. 4, And it was said that after he was put to death, yea after burial in the grave, he was not found. 5. Some then assert that he is risen; but others, that he

has been stolen by his friends. 6. I, however, do not know which speak more correctly. 7. For a dead man cannot rise of himself—though possibly with the help of another righteous man; unless it (lit. he) will be an angel or another of the heavenly authorities, or God himself appears as a man and accomplishes what he will,—both walks with men and falls, and lies down and rises up, as it is according to his will. 8. But others said that it was not possible to steal him, because they had put guards all round his grave,—thirty Romans, but a thousand Jews. 9. Such fis narrated] as to that curtain (katapetasma). Moreover [as to] the cause of its tearing there are [? various statements].

(In B. J. VI. v. 4, where in our texts the prophecy of the world-ruler is referred to Vespasian solely.) Some indeed by this understood Herod, but others the crucified wonder-doer Jesus, others again Vespasian. In conclusion a few very general remarks may be added calling attention to the most salient points. In the John-pieces (I.-III.) there is nothing sufficiently distinctive to show any literary dependence on the New Testament accounts. On the contrary, there are entire novelties and wide divergences. In the first place the strong political colouring given by the writer to the proclamation of the prophet is quite out of keeping with anything to be found in the Christian presentation. But the most striking difference is the protracted period assigned to John’s activity. ‘At that time’ means during the ethnarchy of Archelaus. Now Herod the Great died in 4 B.c., and Archelaus, who succeeded him, was deposed in 6 A.D. It is quite inconceivable that any Christian writer who had the gospel-story before him, could have made what would be so astounding a statement to Christian ears,—one that would at once appear to the most moderately instructed as an egregious blunder. Surely the last thing an intelligent forger would desire to do would be to give occasion to his readers to call the canonical narrative into question concerning so prominent a feature as John’s almost equal age with Jesus, and so practically invite them to dismiss all the graphic details of the birth-stories as fictitious ?—unless

it be that he wrote before these stories were in circulation. No one short of a lunatic would concoct ‘evidence’ against his own side. The writer must therefore have moved in circles who would see no difficulty in assigning to John a public activity of at least 30 years; for he tells us that John survived the death of Philip, which took place somewhere between 35 and 36 A.D. The cross-examination of John by the authorities and the incident of Simon the Essene are also arresting novelties; but there is nothing improbable in them. The introduction of the name Essene does not in any way depend on Christian tradition; for the surprising fact is that, though there are close parallels between some of the doctrines of the Essenes and gospel-ethics, and between some of their practices and the regulations, for instance, laid down for the mission of the apostles and the communal observances of the earliest Christian communities, the New Testament writers never mention the name. The wording of the refusal of John at the end of his rebuke to disclose a certain mystery to his official opponents has led some to the supposition that this is a cryptic reference to Jesus,— meaning ‘the mystery dwelling among you.’ That of course would be impossible at so early a date as prior to A.D. 6. But surely, quite apart from this, a Christian apologist would have been at pains to bring out clearly so essential a feature as John’s acknowledgment of the Messiahship of Jesus, and not go out of his way to disguise it? It is a curious and thought-provoking phrase. It may refer to the ‘kingdom,’ to the indwelling rule and law of God, that is brought to consciousness in the hearts of the repentant; or it may possibly be that John had

some inner mystical doctrine to reveal, for we have to remember that the Mandan or Gnostic Johntradition, which has come down to our own days, has ever laid the greatest stress on the mystical element in the teaching of the Baptizer. The interpretation of the dream of Philip, lke the stress laid upon John’s strange appearance and dress and his extraordinary mode of life, is just such a detail as would strike the imagination and linger in the memory of the people. What more likely and in keeping with precedent than that a prophet should interpret the dream of the king? But here we have, not only a novelty for readers of the gospel-account, but also a contradiction with Josephus himself. The unfavourable character given to Philip, the stress laid on his ‘venality,’ is in complete contrast with the reputation given him by Josephus in his Antiquities (XVIII. iv. 6), where he is praised for the mild and peaceable disposition he displayed in his government, and for the personal interest he took in the administration of justice. Now the Antiquities was completed in 93/94 a‘D. Had then our writer known it, he would not presumably have made Josephus contradict himself so egregiously. This raises the question as to the possibility of his having written before the Antiquities got into wide circulation.

Piece III. in some respects agrees with and in others differs from the synoptic account of the marriage of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, with the wife (Slav. Jos. widow) of his brother Philip. But Josephus himself in his Antiquitics (XVIII. v. 1 and 4) tells the story quite differently from both. There we read that Herodias was married first of all to Herod Boéthus, and that the wife of Philip was Salome, the daughter of this union; so that Philip was son-in-law of Herodias. Herod Antipas, says Josephus, was the second husband of Herodias, and the marriage took place while the first husband, Boéthus, was still alive. Josephus, moreover, says that Philip died childless; while our author avers that he left four children surviving him. Moreover Josephus in the famous passage concerning John in the Antiquities (XVIII. v. 2) knows nothing of John’s execution being due to so personal a cause as is depicted both by the gospels and our author, though very differently; it is in the Antiquities ascribed solely to Antipas’ apprehension of the political consequences of the John-movement. Our author is then clearly ignorant of both the Antiquities-account and also of the most characteristic feature of the gospel-narrative, the graphic story of the dancing of the daughter of Herodias. Everything therefore goes to show that he is drawing on some other traditional source.

Finally, as tbe climax to John’s extraordinary scruples about food, it is asserted that he would not touch unleavened bread even at Passover-time,—an absolutely obligatory observance in Jewry. Moreover he is made to give an exegetical justification for his abstention. This is the distinctive touch of a Jewish hand; it is exceedingly unlikely that it would ever have occurred to a late Christian. As to the John-pieces then we seem to be moving in a thoroughly Jewish atmosphere, and there is nothing characteristically Christian about them. The Jesus-pieces (IV. and VI. to VIII.) are naturally the most arresting and form the main crux of the whole matter. It seems to be generally held that all the eight pieces are by the same hand. They

may be said to have in general the same terms of expression, to breathe the same spirit and present similar characteristics. In the main Jesus-pieces the author makes a show of trying to get at a reasonable point of view; but he hesitates in his judgment and frankly confesses his inability to make up his mind. He is convinced that the more generally credible events themselves are historic; but as to the sheerly miraculous elements he is content to set them forth as rumours giving rise to absolutely contradictory opinions. So non-committal and rationalistic a proceeding is quite foreign to the mentality of a convinced Christian. This attitude of reserve and the very striking divergences of the writer from the gospelaccounts are in the sharpest possible distinction to the perspective and procedure of the compilers of such apocryphal documents as the Acts of Pilate and The Gospel of Peter. In the latter the literary dependence on the gospels is manifest on all hands; what is added is in no way contradictory, but adduced solely to exalt the greatness of Jesus and heighten the impression of the miraculous element.

If piece IV. is carefully and critically compared with the famous spurious passage concerning Jesus in our text of the Antiquities (XVIII. iii. 3), it will at once be seen that if there is any possible question of dependence between them, it is not on the side of our author. Even among the opinions he cites, there is no hint of Messiahship. When he says that some ‘supposed that he had been sent by God,” it means no more than what he makes John assert of himself,—namely, that he was a prophet. It seems to me moreover highly improbable that any late Christian could have referred to his Lord, the one and only Son of God, as ‘that wonder-doer’ or the ‘ crucified wonderdoer Jesus.’

The divergences from the gospel-account of the Jesus-story are so striking that they need not be dwelt on. To every instructed Christian the gospel-narratives are presumably so familiar in all their details, that the contradictions with our author’s account will present themselves automatically. Nevertheless the more one meditates on the account in piece IV. of the typical external acts of the ministry and the intrigues of the Jewish authorities to compass the death of Jesus, the more does it seem within its own measures not to be inconsistent; in fact it hangs very well together from an outside point of view. That view is in no way due to a manipulation of gospel-information ; it is based on very different data, and has all the appearance of an honest attempt to piece together and interpret floating traditions and conjectures reflected from days contemporaneous perchance with the attempts of the ‘many’ to set forth the events, as the introduction to the Lukan gospel informs us.

The phrase ‘servants’ as applied to the disciples, it may be noted, is a thoroughly Jewish conception ; it was used by the Rabbis to emphasize the relationship between pupils and teacher. The precise figure 150 may be a round number; otherwise it depends on a tradition for which the 12 and the 70 were of no importance. The final sentence, which avers, not only that the Jewish authorities themselves crucified Jesus, but that this was in accordance with the Law, is so astonishing in the latter respect that it has been set down to a gross blunder of the Slavonic translator from the Greek original, which may have read ‘contrary to the -Law’—«ara with the genitive and not the accusative. This seems a reasonable supposition ; though we must remember that Jewish rulers in Maccabsean days did crucify their political opponents.

The trilingual inscription statement (VI.) is a wild piece of fanciful combination. The writer has heard of an inscription connected with the execution of Jesus; indeed it was required by law that the formal charge should be placarded in all cases of capital punishment. Moreover he has heard that this particular notice was set forth in three languages; and he also has heard that there were trilingual inscriptions outside the inner court of the Temple. In combining the two he departs so far from his general sobriety that we might almost think the passage was by another hand; but this is otherwise not probable. The first charge against Jesus was that he had excited the people to revolt; of this he was acquitted by Pilate. The authorities had then to give some other excuse: Jesus was executed not because of any Messianistic agitation, but because he prophesied disaster to the temple and the holy city. Some excuse had to be found that would placate the people.

In piece VII. the rending of the veil and the reference to many other portents seem to depend on characteristically Christian tradition ; but it need not be supposed that this tradition was in the fixed gospelform in which we now have it. The phrase ‘prior to this generation ’ is intended to mean some 30/40 years before Josephus wrote his History (75-79 a.p.). It is interesting to note that at that time similar portents were in the air; for Jewish tradition (the Talmuds and Josephus himself, B.J. VI. v. 3) makes mention of a mysterious spontaneous opening of the heavy iron temple-doors 40 years before the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Gospel of the Hebrews refers to a similarly mysterious breach in the iron threshold of the same doors. There were widespread legends of portents current in the folk-memory. Our author then goes on to treat of the rumours and contradictory statements about the resurrection; and here, as before, he ruminates on possibilities, giving the conjectural pros and cons, but declining to commit himself on the side of the most vital belief of Christendom.

Piece V., concerning the early Christians, is equally as far from literary dependence on the canonical Acts as are the Jesus-pieces on the Gospels. There are wide divergences; and the whole produces an impression of utter ignorance of the detailed, methodical setting-forth of the thirty years of history contained in the Acts. Isolated facts, such as Paul’s being sent to Cesar at Rome, are absurdly generalized on the one hand, and on the other the events of decades are crammed into the narrow time-frame of some four years, the period of office of the two governors mentioned (44-48 a.p.). The phrase “ But if they do not issue from the counsel of God, they will quickly be convicted” is thought by some to indicate literary dependence on a similar saying in the Acts. But the latter famous utterance, ascribed to Gamaliel (prior to 7 A.D.), is worded so very differently that, if any connection between them can be supposed, it may well be ascribed in both cases to the uncertain echoing in the popular mind of a well-known Rabbinical pronouncement.

In conclusion, then, it may be said that the hope of extracting anything of value out of these astonishing and puzzling interpolations depends on establishing the reasonableness of the hypothesis, that they are based on echoes of popular traditions still floating about in the Jewish environment of Christianity in, say, the last third of the first century. There is, I think, much that goes to show the likelihood of this supposal, or at least to deter us from summarily dismissing it. But even if we are persuaded to this extent, we are confronted with the still more difficult task of imagining a satisfactory conjecture as to the status and motive of the writer. If we hold him to have been a Jew, as the above analysis seems to require, what plausible motive can we ascribe to him for interpolating the matter into the text of Josephus? Was he a disinterested lover of history who thought that Josephus had fallen short of historical impartiality by neglecting to mention two such remarkable personages as John and Jesus and two such important movements as those associated with their names, and desired to amend the historian in this respect in days when copyright had not yet been dreamed of? Or may we assume that a pupil of Josephus would think himself entitled to amend the narrative ?

If, on the contrary, he was a Christian, the interest in filling the gaps would be easily understandable, had he based himself on canonical tradition. But the divergences from and flat contradictions of that tradition are so extraordinary, that one is all the time kept asking in astonishment: What sort of a Christian could this man ever have been ? To have succeeded in producing such an impression designedly argues the procedure of a mind of such extraordinary subtlety and psychological dexterity that it is too uncanny forcredence. Any deliberate attempt of this kind would surely have betrayed itself in some way; but as a matter of fact there is no indication of subtle manipulation of gospel-data anywhere. It is not only very difficult but entirely out of the question to think that any late Christian forger could have thus deliberately challenged the firmly established canonical tradition on so many points. Therefore if the writer were a Christian, he must have been a first-century man; that is to say he wrote before the Greek canonical gospels were in general circulation or at any rate before they had penetrated to his environment.

There remains only one other possible conjecture —from which everybody has so far instinctively shrunk: Can the writer after all have been Josephus himself? But if so, why does he contradict himself so flatly,— to say nothing of the difficulty of conjecturing his motive for cutting out the passages ? It thus appears that, whatever hypothesis of authorship we make—whether Christian, Jew or Josephus, we are left floundering in a welter of inconsistencies; all that can be said is that the Jew alternative is the least improbable. And there we must leave this baffling problem, in the hope that our readers will at any rate be interested in having it brought to their notice; for in any case these passages must be considered striking curiosities, even perhaps the greatest to be found, in the ancient literature that is generally classed under the caption— ‘Christian forgeries.’

AFTER I had for some time been making a close study of Lidzbarski’s translations of the Mandwan JohnBook and Liturgies, I had occasion in another connection to refer to the Greek text (Westcott & Hort) of the prologue to the fourth gospel. As I read, I found that a number of Mandezan associations came welling up from the preconscious, especially with regard to Life and Light, the use of the term Man and the way the sentences about John the Baptist linked on to these concepts. I found I was almost automatically construing parts of this familiar text from a new angle or at any rate envisaging them in a new perspective. I had already for long been convinced that the historical references broke awkwardly into the doctrinal proem proper, and that this contained what may be called some characteristic general gnostic notions. Moreover I had long been of the opinion that the proem was based on a ‘source’; but thought that this ‘source’ was most probably already in Greek when it was made such deft use of by the inspired writer of the ‘pneumatic’ gospel. I now asked myself, could it possibly have been originally in Aramaic, for there are indubitably some strained constructions in it, that might be explicable as literal renderings of Semitic idioms. Translation into Greek would doubtless make the original appear to be more hellenistically coloured than was actually the case and so ‘philosophize’ it

somewhat. The main difficulty seemed to lie in deter- mining what could have been the Semitic original of the leading term rendered by Logos? Was it Word or Wisdom or some other Divine Power or Potency ? On this I could form no conclusion. But further, whatever it was, could it have been translated by any other Greek term than Logos? For the student of comparative Hellenistic theology is not confined to seeking for parallels or associations with the idea behind this term in Stoicism and Philo simply; he has to take into consideration a far wider field of research. In the Trismegistic literature, for instance, in which the Heavenly Man doctrine is prominent, the parallel notion is rendered by Nozs, Mind, and in the Hellenistic poem so beloved by the Later Platonists and generally known as the ‘Chaldzan Oracles,’ the Mind of the Father stands at the summit; while in allied Gnostic tradition connected with the ‘ Chaldean Mysteries’ or even said to be based on the ‘ Chaldzean Books,’ where again the Divine Man doctrine is prominent, the term preferred is Mind. Mind, moreover, in the Valentinian system stands at the head of the Plérdma. This is solely with regard to translation into Greek in the general Hellenistic theological language of the time, and says nothing about the Semitic or Chaldean original terms, which may have been numerous, apart from the very general (notably Egyptian) Oriental magical notion of creation by the word. Certainly the Man-doctrine was wide-spread and where personifications were the order of the day, Man and Mind would go better together than Man and Word or Reason or even Wisdom. It is, however, with all hesitation that I have ventured to use the term Mind in my transla-

! See my ‘Echoes from the. Gnosis’ series, vols. viii. and ix., The Chaldean Oracles, London, 1908. tion, and more to call attention to the problem than anything else. With these ideas—namely the supposal of a probable Aramaic original of the proem-source and the consequent ‘ philosophizing’ by translation into Hellenistic Greek of some terms that in the original were more concretely presented, I attempted the following version. This I did before I had read Prof. C. F. Burney’s recent (1922) arresting study, entitled The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford, The Clarendon Press). The contention of the Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford, who is so great an authority on the O.T., is that not only for the proem but for much, if not the whole, of the gospel there is an Aramaic background. Whatever may be ultimately decided on this novel and far-reaching hypothesis, it should inaugurate a fruitful line of N.T. research. My own venture is far more modest in every way; I deal with a single ‘source’ only, and have not the competence to treat even that technically from the Semitic side. The only remark I would venture to make on Prof. Burney’s labours is in respect to the Johannine Greek quotations from the O.T. The problem whether the few of them which differ from the LXX. Greek Targum or Translation,—the Authorised Version of the time so to say,—were made freshly from the Hebrew, does not seem to me necessarily to help to prove the author’s contention. They are far more likely to have been taken from what is said to have been probably the earliest Christian Greek document, —a collection of proof-texts to establish the claims of Christian Messianism from O.T. prophecy, at times not without accommodation. They sometimes agree with and sometimes diverge from the Septuagint rendering

All this has been most thoroughly worked out by Proff. Rendel Harris and Vacher Burch in their indispensable work (Pt. I., 1916, Pt. II., 1920) on the now famous Testimony Book (Testimonia contra Judéos). I also conjectured, presumably owing to the rhythms of the Mandsan books running in my head, that the ‘ source’ might have been in verse; and found that the Greek broke up easily into some sort of rhythmic lines. But of course this was pure guesswork on my part. Professor Burney, however, with his wide knowledge of Hebrew and Palestinian Aramaic, has come most definitely to this conclusion as to the proem. If the rest of the gospel cannot be so treated, this seems to me to be an additional indication that in the prologue we are dealing with a ‘source.’ Though my tentative translation from the Greek differs both in analysis and phrasing from Prof. Burney’s, I so far see no compelling reason to alter the phrasing by his, and let the breaking up of the lines stand to indicate rhythm rather than the measured lines he has so ingeniously endeavoured to reconstruct into Aramaic.

' In the original this was probably the usual cosmological formula ‘in the beginning.’ The Greek may suggest a more metaphysical meaning and the Vulgate Latin seems to continue the process, for principrwm might carry the meaning of ‘ primality’; cp. Cicero, T'wsc. i. 23, 54: “ There is no origin of primality (principit); for it is out of primality that all things originate”; Tertullian, Adv. Hermog. 19: ‘In Greek the term primality, namely dpx7, takes the primacy (princtpatum), not only in the category of order (ordinativuwm), but also in that of potency (potestivwm).” 2 If there is any Mandzan term with which to seek a parallel it might perhaps be Mana, which seems generally to mean Mind. Prof. Rendel Harris, in his illuminating study of the Proem, would make the original of Logos ‘Wisdom’ (Hokhmah), and brings forward some striking quotations from the O.T. sapiential literature and Patristic commentaries in justification. This Hebrew (O.T.) and Greek (Apocryphal) Wisdom-literature is clearly influenced Hellenistically, and the equation Logos=Sophia in the Gk. version of the 4th gospel is of great interest. In addition to R. H.’s Origin of the Prologue to St. John's Gospel, see his interesting paper ‘ Athena,

And Mind was with Gop.’ 2. So? Mind was God. This? was in Beginning with Gop. 38. All kept coming into existence* through’ it? ; And apart from it came into existence not a single [thing]. 4. What has come into existence in it’ was Life ;* And Lire? was the Light of the [true] Men.” 5. And the Light shineth in the Darkness ; Sophia and the Logos,’ pp. 56-72 of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, July, 1922. It may be objected that ‘Word’ is to be preferred, seeing that in the Targums Memrah=the Creative Word, Logos; but my contention is that the Greek Nots is nearer to the Deity than the Greek Logos. 1 The Gk. phrase zpds roy Gedv is a grammatical puzzle; this is, however, probably solved by the hypothesis of a literal translation from a Semitic original. The Gnostic Heracleon (2nd cent.), the first known commentator on the fourth gospel, who was apparently ignorant of Semitics, conjectured that jvepevos (‘at-one-with,’ ‘in-co-adunition-with’) should be supplied; others think the phrase is Hellenistic (Koiné) for rapa 7 Oew—+.e., ‘along with,’ ‘ by the side of,’ or simply ‘with’ God. In the Greek text 6 eds is distinguished (and I think deliberately), by the prefixing of the definite article, from the following simple 6eds, But ‘The God’ is clumsy in English, and so I resort to the type-trick of capitalization to mark the distinction.

2The Gk. xat renders probably a Semitic particle that serves several other purposes than that of a purely copulative function. ®° The Old Syriac versions (e.g. C.) read ‘in’ and not ‘through’; see F.C. Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe: The Curetonian Version of the Four Gospels, with the Readings of the Sinai Palimpsest and the Early Syriac Patristic Evidence (Cambridge, 1904), i. 423. The Old (i.e. prePeshitta) Syriac versions should be a great help in determining the Aram. original, as the two dialects are closely related. ° Or ‘The Life ’—the same distinction as with the terms for ‘ God.’ 10 The article cannot be neglected; it signifies those who are really Men, 2.e. conscious members of the celestial or angelic humanity or true Race. All this connects with the Anthrépos-doctrine of the Gnosis. Man (the Aram. idiom ‘ Son of Man,’ if translated literally, is misleading in Gk.) is the Celestial or Primal Man, Adam Qadmon. As Thrice-greatest Hermes says, the vast majority of mortals are not worthy to be called ‘Men’; all men have Reason, but few as yet have Mind (ze. are spiritual). The true Men who have the Light of Life are the Prophets and Perfect.

Suppress,’ ‘ hold back,’ ‘detain.’ Burney has ‘ obscured it not.’ (‘There was a Man sent by God,—his name Yoanes This [Man] came for bearing witness, that he might bear witness about the Light, in order that all [men] might have faith through it. That [Man] was not the Light, but [came] in order that he might bear witness about the Light.) Which enlighteneth every Man’ Who cometh into the world.® 7. It was in the world; And the world kept coming into existence through it*; 8. It came unto its own ;° And its own did not receive it. 9. But as many as received it, To them it gave power’ To become Children of God,’— 10. To those who have faith in his name,’—

® This world (Gk. xécpos, Heb. tebel, Mand. tibil); there were other worlds according to the Manda or Gnosis. ‘This world’ in the sense of the earth ; the world in the wider meaning would be the Heb. ‘olam. ® That is who have faith in the still higher Power (the mystic ‘Name’ or Soul, or Mind, or Primality) of Great Life—Gon. Not out of [the blending of] bloods,’ 11. Nor of urge’ of flesh, But out of God. 12. So* Mind became flesh* And tabernacled’ in us,°— 13. And we beheld its glory, Glory as of [? an] only-begotten’ from Father,— Full’ of Delight? and Truth. (°Ydanés beareth witness about him,” and hath cried aloud, saying—he it was who said—: He who

7 Mono-genés,—this in preand post-Christian Gnostic tradition is the general technical term for ‘born,’ ‘emanated’ or ‘created’ from a ‘single’ source (ovo-), t-.e. one-and-only parent, and is used of spiritual beings who are superior to the conditions of sex-generation. Cp. the perikopé on Melchi Sedek (King of Peace, Prince of Righteousness) in Heb. vii. 1-21. He is there said to be ‘father-less, mother-less, [earthly] genealogy-less, without beginning of days or end of life, but made-in-the-likeness of Gop’s Son.” In common speech monogenés is usually found as meaning the only one of a kind; if only one daughter has been born to a man, she would be characterized as monogenés. But the vulgar tongue is not the language of mysticism. In the above-referred to article (p. 123) Prof. Rendel Harris thinks - that the meaning of monogenés as ‘child of one parent only,’ as applied

to Athena born from the head of Zeus, which he suggests, but rejects, is a ‘quite new’ idea ; but I have been insisting on it for a score of years at least. He would render it as ‘ darling,’ but this is really too bowrgeois. "The Greek translator unquestionably understood this as referring to Yesht‘ Messiah. But the puzzling phrasing of the quotation from the Baptist logoi-tradition—‘ my First ’—seems to require ‘it’ instead of ‘ him,’ viz., the Mind-Life-Light of the ‘ source,’ as in the first interpolation. cometh behind me hath been before me,’ for he was my First.*) 14. For of its Fulness’® we all received, And Delight over against Delight.’ In that the Law (Torah) was given by Moses, Delight and Truth kept coming into the word through Yeshu‘ Messiah.°®

An only-begotten <god>, who is in’ the bosom: of the Father,—he dictated.) therefore regarded as behind us, whereas the past is known and therefore before our eyes.” ° The third interpolation or overworking of the ‘ source.’ 7 Cp. the Jewish Gnostic commentator of the Naassene Document, quoting from a prior ‘scripture,’ or an oral ‘logos’ (‘what was spoken’): ‘* His voice we heard, but his form we have not seen.” (See my analysis of this very important Gnostic Document in Thrice-greatest Hermes, London, 1906, in Prolegomena, § ‘The Myth of Man in the Mysteries’; the quotation is to be found ini. 169.) Compare with this Jn. v. 87: “ Ye have never at any time heard his voice, nor have ye seen his form,” addressed to the Jews in general; whereas the Naassene quotation refers to the Perfect. This is very important, for if my analysis of the NN. document, which Hippolytus copied, is correct, the Jewish mystic, who commented on the Hellenistic source, was in all probability contemporary with Philo (c. 80 B.c. —45 A.D.), and therefore we have here an indication of another ‘source’ of the fourth gospel (of which there may have been a number).

° The Gk. 6 dv eis tov KdArov (‘ into the bosom’) is grammatically impos- sible: it must rest on a Semitic idiom. The Old Syriac (C.) has‘ Son from the bosom of the Father. ® Cp. the Commentary of Ephraim Syrus, which runs: ‘* The Word of the Father came from His bosom, and clothed itself with a body in another bosom ; from bosom to bosom it went forth, and pure bosoms have been filled from it: blessed is He who dwelleth in us!” (Burkitt, op. cvt., ii. 140).

THE legend-like Mandzean tradition concerning the person of John and the distinctive gnostic type of doctrine which it associates with him could by no means have been deduced from, or expanded out of, the bare external historical facts reported by the classical Josephus; it differs moreover in many ways-from the more detailed story of the Gospels and their perspective of his doctrinal and prophetical activity. As to the graphic picture of the Gospels, which suggests the sudden arising of a solitary wild figure unconnected with any community or order, a feature so strongly stressed also by the Slavonic Josephus,—the Mandzan handing-on is completely silent. It gives no hint of any peculiarity of this nature in John’s dress, much less of any uncouthness in his appearance; indeed, though it makes no statement, it would lead us to infer that John was clad in white, and in all other respects presented little of the wild features of a desert-bred, skin-clad eremite. The classical Josephus is also silent on this popular trait. That John was a prophet, all these accounts are agreed ; that he baptized, all are agreed. That he suffered a martyr’s death, Josephus and the Gospels are agreed; but strange to say, the Mandean tradition has not a word on so important and tragical an event. It is difficult to believe that the Mandzean Nazoreeans could have been ignorant of the way in which their great prophet met his end; for

had they believed he was not executed by Antipas, they would in all probability have contradicted in their own fashion the report of the Jews and Christians in this respect. This omission of all reference to the death of John would be incomprehensible, did we not reflect in the first place that no attempt is made in the existing Mandan documents to give anything that could be called a‘ Life’ of John, and conjecture in the second that in all probability nothing of doctrinal importance was attached to the way of his ending as it was in the case of Jesus. It is of course supposable that there may have been at one time documents of greater detail and more historical value relating to John, which have since fallen into oblivion owing to the focussing of interest on the more plastic material of psychical legend and mystical reverie; but conjecture cannot restore them.

Though in the present restricted exposition no attempt is made to treat the comparative side of the subject, owing to the regrettable fact that we are still without the scientific translation of the main and oldest deposit of the Mandan scriptures, it may be noted that there are fragmentary traditions on other lines that would make both Dositheus and Simon the Magian disciples of John. Now Dositheus (Dousis or Dosthai) was the precursor of Simon; and the latter was held by the heresiological Church Fathers to be the fons et origo of gnosticism, which he certainly was not, but only one of many of the time with already a long heredity behind them. It is to be further noted that the distinctive Simonian school or tradition, which was in no sense Christian, continued at least well on into the third century, and that the Dositheans, who were equally non-Christians, are known of as

being numerous even in the sixth century.’ By the rumour that these Gnostic teachers were ‘ disciples of John’ we must understand in general, I believe, that there was simply in some respects similarity of doctrine betwen them. These Dosthai-Simon legends and reports are associated with early Ebionite controversies (underlying the Pseudo-Clementine romances), and the doctrines involved in them link up with similar notions found in the wide-spread pre-Christian syncretisms, and even universalizing attempts, of many kinds of saving-cults of both a popular and restricted apocalyptic and gnostical character, common to such plainly distinguishable types as the Persian, Chaldean, and Aramean religious complexes of the early Hellenistic period. The mass of detailed research work which has been done chiefly in the last generation on Babylonian, Iranian, Syrian, Aramean, Egyptian and Hast Mediterranean religious endeavours, whether Hellenistically tinged or otherwise, which flourished so luxuriously during the three centuries before our era and continued to do so in their various ways for the following three centuries and some of them far later, is beginning to make an impression outside the ranks of the specialists, and compelling the attention of the general historian. It is coming to be seen that the unprejudiced evaluation of these many endeavours and movements and the getting of them into a proper perspective constitute an indispensable task for those who would trace the religious features, phases and fortunes of ‘ world history’ in the main moments of its development, and especially those of them which most strongly influenced Western culture in its later formative periods.

We have recently had presented to us an arresting, if provocative, attempt of this kind in Oswald Spengler’s Downfall of the West. Its two stout volumes of some 1,200 pages have been very widely read in Germany and by knowers of German, and the work has been much discussed and criticized. For naturally specialists and authorities cannot easily brook the incursions into their distinctive territories of a free lance with a knack of, or even genius for, recognizing underlying similar tendencies where previously for the most part the more superficial distinctions have been stressed into fundamental differences. It is true that where so wide a field is surveyed, it is not difficult to catch up such an historical innovator on numerous points of detail, but on the other hand his method certainly does at times enable the reader to fix his attention on the wood rather than on the trees and on the great rivers rather than on the streamlets. We do not, perhaps naturally enough, see eye to eye with Spengler throughout, but here we are not considering his work as a whole. He is referred to because he is the first general historian and philosopher of history who has brought the Mandeans into the picture; and in this he seems, in our judgment, to have got them into a tolerably proper perspective. It may be mentioned also that it was only after the whole of the preceding matter had been written that I read‘Spengler’s work, and that for many years | have been regarding the phenomena of pre-Christian Gnosticism and allied movements from more or less the same angle. It may then be of interest _ to reproduce Spengler’s boldly sketched picture of the conditions in which the heredity of the pre-Christian Gnosis is to be sought and of the apocalyptic eschato-

logical expectations and hopes of salvation that preceded the birth of Christianity.’ ‘What lay in the prophetical religions (Persian, Chaldzan, Jewish) as a presage or presentiment, what at the time of Alexander the Great emerged in metaphysical outlines, was now brought to completion. And this completion ‘aroused in tremendous strength the primitive feeling of nervous dread. It pertains to the last mysteries of humanity and of free-moving life in general that the birth of the I and the birth of world-dread are one and the same; that a macrocosm is spread out before a microcosm,—vast, overwhelming, an abyss of foreign, light-shot being and activity that makes the tiny, solitary self shrink back timorously into itself. Such fear of their own consciousness as from time to time suddenly overwhelms children, is experienced again by no grown-up even in the darkest hours of his life. This deadly fear, however, oppressed the dawning of the new culture. In this morn of the ‘magic’ world-consciousness, that was faint-hearted, uncertain, obscure about itself, a new glance was taken at the near end ofthe world. This is the first thought with which up to now every culture has come to consciousness of itself. A downpour of revelations, wonders and peerings into the primordial ground of things swamped every deeper mind. They thought, they lived, only in apocalypticimages. Reality became appearance. Strange and awesome sights were recounted from one to another, read out of confused and obscure scriptures and at once seized on with imme-

diate inner certainty. From one community to another, from village to village, wandered such writings, of which it is impossible to say that they belonged to any one single religion. They are Persian, Chaldean, Jewish in colouring; but they have all taken up what was at that time circulating in men’s minds. The canonical books are national; the apocalyptic are international and literally so. They come into existence without any appearing to be their authors. Their contents mingle and melt together; they read to-day one way and to-morrow another. But they are anything but poésy, fiction (Dichtung). They are like the fearsome figures round the doors of the Romance cathedrals in France, which also are no ‘Art,’ but Dread turned into stone. Every man knew these angels and demons, these heaven-ascending and helldescending numinous beings,—the Primal Man or Second Adam, the Messenger of God, the Saviour of the Last Day, the Son of Man, the Eternal City and the Final Judgment. In the foreign cities and in the high-seats of the powerful Persian and Jewish priesthood there had to be a conceptual fixation of distinctive doctrines; but here down among the folk there was hardly any particular religion, but rather a general ‘magic’ religiosity which filled all souls and fastened upon sights and shapes of every conceivable origin. The Last Day had drawn nigh. They expected it. They knew that ‘he’ must now be manifested, ‘he’ of whom all revelations spake. Prophets arose. People banded together into ever new associations and circles in the conviction of having now come to better knowledge of their native religion or of having found the true one. In this period of tremendous and yearly increasing tension, in the years hard by the birth of

Jesus, alongside numerous other communities and sects arose the Mandean religion of salvation. Of its founder or origin we are in ignorance. In spite of its detestation of the Judaism of Jerusalem and its marked predilection for Persian settings of the notion of salvation, it nevertheless seems to have stood very near the popular belief of Syrian Jewry. Of its marvel-filled scriptures one piece after another now comes to light. ‘He’ is everywhere,—the Son of Man,’ the Saviour sent into the deep, who must himself be saved, the goal of the expectation. In the John-Book the Father raised on high in the House of Perfection, surrounded with Light, speaks to his Only-begotten Son: My Son, be for me an Envoy—go unto the world of the Darkness, in which is no Light-ray. The Son cries on high: Father of Greatness, what sin have I done that thou hast sent me into the deep? And at the end: Without faults I ascended, and fault and defect were not in me. |

“All the traits of the great prophetical religions and the whole treasury of the deepest insights and figures which have since been assembled in apocalyptic, lie here at the bottom in common. But of ‘antique’ (?=Hellenic) thinking and feeling not a breath has penetrated into this underworld of the ‘magic.’ The beginnings of the new religion are, it may well be, for ever lost to memory. But one historical figure of Mandaism comes on to the stage with arresting clearness, tragical in its striving and ending, like Jesus himself: it is John the Baptizer. Scarce still belonging to Jewry, and filled with strong detestation . . . of the spirit of Jerusalem, he proclaims the End of the The Mandzeans do not_use this idiom; it is ever simply the Man.— G.R.S. M.

World and the Coming of the Barnasha, the Son of Man, who is no longer the promised national Messiah of the Jews, but the Bringer of the World-conflagration. To him went Jesus and became one of his disciples. Jesus was thirty years old when the awakening came upon him. The apocalyptic and in particular the Mandan thought-world from now on filled his whole consciousness. The other world of historic reality lay round him as in seeming only, strange and unmeaning. That ‘he’ will now come and put an end to this so unreal reality, was Jesus’ great certainty, and for this certainty he came forward as announcer like John, his teacher. The oldest gospel-accounts taken into the New Testament still let some glimmer of this period shine through in which he was in his consciousness no more than a prophet.” It was later that the conviction came upon him: Thou art thyself ‘ he.’

This is a boldly sketched outline bringing into special prominence the dominant eschatological feature of the picture, but with no indications of the particular Mandzan colouring or shading that must be used in the completed canvas. For this, however, we cannot reproach Spengler, seeing that we find ourselves compelled to refrain from any such attempt. And the reason for this abstention is quite simple. Lidzbarski’s substantive and scientific translation of the JohnBook and Liturgies enables the student at first-hand to become so exhaustively acquainted with this part of the material, that much in it reads differently, and the whole atmosphere savours differently from the general impression produced even by the most attentive perusal of Brandt’s praiseworthy and painstaking pioneer labours. It seems therefore naturally to follow that, when we get the full translation of the remaining

and earliest deposit, the Genzd, from Lidzbarski, and can then survey the whole of its matter in detail, and so review in their native settings and contexts the selected features of it sketched by Brandt and in reliance on him utilized by Bousset and Reitzenstein, for instance, we shall be enabled to appreciate the whole tradition more understandably and analyze it more accurately. We shall then be in a position to trace, for instance, the development of the meaning attached to the figure of the victor and of the formula ‘the Man who has come hither,’ and also the modifications of eschatological notions within the Mandeean scheme of reference and much else. Meantime it is already evident that the Mandan Nazoreean tradition preserves traces of doctrine and endeavour and other features of very great value for recovering long-lost indications of one of the most important backgrounds of Christian origins and of a subsequent parallel development of religious faith. In any case the study of the Mandwan documents cannot fail to come to the front as an indispensable task in the elucidation of the characteristic Gnosis as an integral and widely-diffused factor in the general history of religion in the critical centuries in the Near Kast and Mediterranean West before and after the beginnings of the present era. And this study, were it necessary where so much similar recent research has already made it certain on all hands, gives the final death-blow to the old misleading view that Gnosticism was of interest solely as a Christian heresy, and was to be evaluated as such and comfortably disposed of in the good old cavalier Patristic fashion.

It is pleasant to think that new light will be thrown, directly or indirectly, on our subject by a number of important studies which are in hand or which have been already made public in lecture-form. Among them may be mentioned the Lectures on Manicheism by Prof. F. Crawford Burkitt and the long-expected work on the same religion by the veteran Tranist Prof. J. Wiliams Jackson, and also the arresting Schweich Lectures of this year on the Samaritans by Dr. Moses Gaster, whose researches into their littleknown literature, based on his unique and famous collection of MSS. that has just been acquired by the British Museum, open up quite new vistas of O.T. study and also supply indications of a new and hitherto unsuspected background that may be brought into line with Mandzwanism and hence with general Christian origins.