"To this day, Mandaeism remains a kind of blank canvas upon which we project our own interests, even as we struggle to determine whether they are relevant to the questions we ask of them. In keeping with the truism that we seldom see things as they are but rather as we are. we are seldom disappointed in this regard. Assyriologists often perceive them as survivals of the ancient Mesopotamian cults, Iranists frequently characterize them as an Iranian religion in Semitic dress, and Jews, Christians, Muslims, and their scholars generally discover aspects of themselves within them. If Mandaeans have one superpower, it is their remarkable capacity to reflect the subjectivity of their scholarly interlocutors back upon us. Thus, the copious literature on Mandaeans can simultaneously reflect their status as ancient Mesopotamian pagans, Johannine Baptists, pre-, proto-, and post-Manichaeans, Jewish-Christian Nazoreans, post-Islamic Sabians, and of course Gnostics, however we may define them."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Charles G. Häberl, in pp. 29-30, "Introduction."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mandaeism
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Mandaeism
9 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Mandaeism →
Related Quotes
"The Mandaean is uniquely set apart from ‘the believer’ through Gnosis — the direct knowledge of the ethereal world. H…"
"The sheer variety of genres of Mandaean literature is astonishing for a Gnostic religion, and the Nag Hammadi Library…"
"When the parson, later Professor of Theology, who once prepared me and others for confirmation, suggested that I shou…"
"Mandaic literature, as it reaches us today, therefore, may represent a range of closely related local movements that …"
"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…"
"From the start, these preconceptions and expectations have set in motion a perennial cycle of fascination and disappo…"
"Mandaeism, of course, is not merely a scholarly construct, cobbled together from a few spare texts discovered in an a…"
"Indeed, modern methods, modern ways, nationalistic education, cinemas, cars, and all that make up the new Iraq, threa…"
"When I was about 7 years old, I remember Lady Drower’s visit to our village (Liṭlaṭa) in Kalaatsalah in the south of …"