"Mandaeism, of course, is not merely a scholarly construct, cobbled together from a few spare texts discovered in an archive somewhere, but the body of practices and the belief system of some tens of thousands of souls across Iraq, Iran, and a global diaspora, a living faith community—with all that that entails in its fractal complexity. Therefore, Mandaeans and Mandaean texts alike often tax our abilities to discuss them in a nuanced manner that does justice to this complexity, particularly in light of the fact that nearly all of us who address their textual production do so solely in relation to the works of these other adjacent communities, at wildly different times and in different places, from the first millennium BCE to the early centuries of the Islamic era, and from Palestine to Iran."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 30, "Introduction"
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_G._H%C3%A4berl
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Charles G. Häberl
5 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Charles G. Häberl →
Related Quotes
"In conclusion, we must acknowledge that the texts before us are the product of a living and evolving tradition, compo…"
"It would not be much of an exaggeration to claim that scholars of Late Antiquity in the Eastern Mediterranean and the…"
"To this day, Mandaeism remains a kind of blank canvas upon which we project our own interests, even as we struggle to…"
"From the start, these preconceptions and expectations have set in motion a perennial cycle of fascination and disappo…"
"Scientific education is catholic; it embraces the whole field of human learning. No student can master all knowledge …"
"Honest investigation is but the application of common sense to the solution of the unknown. Science does not wait on …"
"Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libat…"
"The verb is relatively of much greater importance in an Indian tongue than in a civilized language."
"Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a v…"
"The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, cons…"