Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran PDF Download

Author: Lady Ethel Stefana Drower
Publisher: Brill Archive
ISBN:
Category : Mandaeans
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Author: Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190288442
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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The Mandaeans are a Gnostic sect that arose in the middle east around the same time as Christianity. What little study of the religion there has been has focused on the ancient Mandaeans and their relation to early Christianity. Buckley examines the lives and religion of contemporary Mandaeans, who live mainly in Iran and Iraq but also in New York and San Diego. She provides a comprehensive introduction to the religion and shows how its ancient texts inform the living religion, and vice versa.

Author: Gerard Russell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471114724
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Despite its reputation for religious intolerance, the Middle East has long sheltered many distinctive and strange faiths: one regards the Greek prophets as incarnations of God, another reveres Lucifer in the form of a peacock, and yet another believes that their followers are reincarnated beings who have existed in various forms for thousands of years. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilizations in ancient history: Persia, Babylon, Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. Their followers have learned how to survive foreign attacks and the perils of assimilation. But today, with the Middle East in turmoil, they face greater challenges than ever before. In Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms, former diplomat Gerard Russell ventures to the distant, nearly impassable regions where these mysterious religions still cling to survival. He lives alongside the Mandaeans and Ezidis of Iraq, the Zoroastrians of Iran, the Copts of Egypt, and others. He learns their histories, participates in their rituals, and comes to understand the threats to their communities. Historically a tolerant faith, Islam has, since the early 20th century, witnessed the rise of militant, extremist sects. This development, along with the rippling effects of Western invasion, now pose existential threats to these minority faiths. And as more and more of their youth flee to the West in search of greater freedoms and job prospects, these religions face the dire possibility of extinction. Drawing on his extensive travels and archival research, Russell provides an essential record of the past, present, and perilous future of these remarkable religions.

Author: E.S. Drower
Publisher: Dalcassian Publishing Company
ISBN: 107875912X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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The Haran Gawaita (Mandaic "Inner Haran" or "Inner Hauran") is a Mandaean text which purports to tell the history of the Mandaeans and their arrival in Media as "Nasoraeans" from Jerusalem

Author: Charles G. Häberl
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110487861
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.

Author: Kevin T. Van Bladel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004339469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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This historical study argues that the Mandaean religion originated under Sasanid rule in the fifth century, not earlier as has been widely accepted. It analyzes primary sources in Syriac, Mandaic, and Arabic to clarify the early history of Mandaeism. This religion, along with several other, shorter-lived new faiths, such as Kentaeism, began in a period of state-sponsored persecution of Babylonian paganism. The Mandaeans would survive to become one of many groups known as Ṣābians by their Muslim neighbors. Rather than seeking to elucidate the history of Mandaeism in terms of other religions to which it can be related, this study approaches the religion through the history of its social contexts.

Author: Karen Baker
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498246206
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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The secrets of a complex belief system that have sustained the Mandaeans in their centuries-old native lands in Iraq and Iran have been collapsing before their eyes. This little-known Gnostic sect has been hidden from global awareness until now. With a passion for the obscure, Karen Baker has delved into this secret sect, exploring the effects of the turmoil they have faced in their homeland, and are now facing in Diaspora. The Iraqi and Iranian Mandaeans have fled their homes with nothing more than the clothing on their backs, being thrust into the status of refugees, watching their traditions and cultures crumble as they encounter new lands and new cultures. This book discusses the potential receptivity of Mandaeans to Christianity through several perspectives including an evaluation of their relationship to the Gnosticism of the first through third centuries CE as well as its syncretic adaptations to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It will be of interest to those interested in little-known cultures from a historical and religious perspective; those involved with refugees and immigrants; and those who desire to understand the foundational beliefs of Mandaeism.

Author: Eliot Weinberger
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811223701
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Internationally acclaimed as one of the most innovative writers today, Eliot Weinberger has taken the essay into unexplored territories on the borders of poetry and narrative where the only rule, according to the author, is that all the information must be verifiable. With An Elemental Thing, Weinberger turns from his celebrated political chronicles to the timelessness of the subjects of his literary essays. With the wisdom of a literary archaeologist-astronomer-anthropologist-zookeeper, he leads us through histories, fables, and meditations about the ten thousand things in the universe: the wind and the rhinoceros, Catholic saints and people named Chang, the Mandaeans on the Iran-Iraq border and the Kaluli in the mountains of New Guinea. Among the thirty-five essays included are a poetic biography of the prophet Muhammad, which was praised by the London Times for its "great beauty and grace," and "The Stars," a reverie on what's up there that has already been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, and Maori.

Author: Edmondo F. Lupieri
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802833500
Category : Mandaeans
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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"The book is made even more valuable by the inclusion of an extensive anthology of translated Mandaean texts, complete with notes. This collection of writings presents the spiritual world of Mandaeanism with fragments of mythical-theological texts and pages of ethical and historical meditations."--BOOK JACKET.

Author: E. S. Drower
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532697635
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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