Page:EB1911 - Volume 17.djvu/573

 like the mysterious  or senex tertius of Mani, whose becoming visible will betoken the end of the world. Abāthūr sits on the farthest verge of the world of light that lies towards the lower regions, and weighs in his balance the deeds of the departed spirits who ascend to him. Beneath him was originally nothing but a huge void with muddy black water at the bottom, in which his image was reflected, becoming ultimately solidified into P’tāhīl, his son, who now partakes of the nature of matter. The demiurge of the Mandaeans, and corresponding to the Ialdabaoth of the Ophites, he at the instance of his father frames the earth and men—according to some passages in conjunction with the seven bad planetary spirits. He created Adam and Eve, but was unable to make them stand upright, whereupon Hibil, Shithil and Anōsh were sent by the First Life to infuse into their forms spirit from Mānā rabbā himself. Hibil, at the instance of the supreme God, also taught men about the world of light and the aeons, and especially gave them to know that not P’tāhīl but another was their creator and supreme God, who as “the great king of light, without number, without limit,” stands far above him. At the same time he enjoined the pair to marry and people the world. P’tāhīl had now lost his power over men, and was driven by his father out of the world of light into a place beneath it, whence he shall at the day of judgment be raised, and after receiving baptism be made king of the ‛Uthrē with divine honours.

The underworld is made up of four vestibules and three hells properly so called. The vestibules have each two rulers, Zartay and Zartanay, Hag and Mag, Gaf and Gafan, Anatan and Kin. In the highest hell rules alone the grisly king Sh’dūm, “the warrior”; in the storey immediately beneath is Giv, “the great”; and in the lowest is Krūn or Karkūm, the oldest and most powerful of all, commonly called “the great mountain of flesh” (Tūrā rabbā d’besrā), but also “the first-born of darkness.” In the vestibules dirty water is still to be met with, but the hells are full of scorching consuming fire, except Krūn’s domain, where is nought but dust, ashes and vacancy. Into these regions descended Hibil the brilliant, in the power of Mānā rabbā, just as in the Manichaean mythology the “primal man,” armed with the elements of the king of light, descends to a contest with the primal devil. Hibil lingers, gradually unfolding his power, in each of the vestibules, and finally passing from hell to hell reaches Karkūm. Hibil allows himself to be half swallowed by the monster, but is unhurt, and compels his antagonist to recognize the superiority of Mānā rabbā, the God of light, and to divulge his profoundest secret, the hidden name of darkness. Armed with this he returns through the successive hells, compelling the disclosure of every secret, depriving the rulers of their power, and barring the doors of the several regions. From the fourth vestibule he brought the female devil Rūhā, daughter of Kin, and set her over the whole four. This Rūhā, the mother of falsehood and lies, of poisoning and fornication is an anti-Christian parody of the Rūhā d’Qudshā (Holy Spirit) of the Syriac Church. She is the mother of Ur, the personified fire of hell, who in anger and pride made a violent onset on the world of light (compare the similar occurrence in the Manichaean mythology), but was mastered by Hibil and thrown in chains down to the “black water,” and imprisoned within seven iron and seven golden walls. By Ur, Rūhā, while P’tāhīl was engaged in his work of creation, became mother of three sets of seven, twelve and five sons respectively; all were translated by P’tāhīl to the heavenly firmament (like the Archons of Mani), the first group forming the planets and the next the signs of the zodiac, while the third is as yet undetermined. Of the names of the planets Estera (Ishtar Venus, also called Rūhā d’Qudshā, “holy spirit”), Enba (Nebo, Mercury), Sīn (moon), Kēwān (Saturn), Bīl (Jupiter), and Nirīg (Nirgal, Mars) reveal their Babylonian origin; Il or Il Il, the sun, is also known as Ḳādūsh and Adūnay (the Adonai of the Old Testament); as lord of the planetary spirits his place is in the midst of them; they are the source of all temptation and evil amongst men. The houses of the planets, as well as the earth and a second world immediately to the north of it, rest upon anvils laid by Hibil on the belly of Ur.

In the Mandaean representation the sky is an ocean of water, pure and clear, but of more than adamantine solidity, upon which the stars and planets sail. Its transparency allows us to see even to the pole star, who is the central sun around whom all the heavenly bodies move. Wearing a jewelled crown, he stands before Abāthūr’s door at the gate of the world of light; the Mandaeans accordingly invariably pray with their faces turned northward. The earth is conceived of as a round disk, slightly sloping towards the south, surrounded on three sides by the sea, but on the north by a high mountain of turquoises; behind this is the abode of the blest, a sort of inferior paradise, inhabited by the Egyptians who were saved from drowning with Pharaoh in the Red Sea, and whom the Mandaeans look upon as their ancestors, Pharaoh himself having been their first high priest and king. The total duration of the earth they fix at four hundred and eighty thousand years, divided into seven epochs, in each of which one of the planets rules. The Sidrā Rabbā knows of three total destructions of the human race by fire and water, pestilence and sword, a single pair alone surviving in each case. In the Mandaean view the Old Testament saints are false prophets; such as Abraham, who arose six thousand years after Nū (Noah) during the reign of the sun, Mīshā (Moses), in whose time the true religion was professed by the Egyptians, and Shlīmūn (Solomon) bar Davith, the lord of the demons. Another false prophet and magician was Yishu M’shīhā, who was in fact a manifestation of the planet Mercury. Forty-two years before his day, under King Pontius Pilate, there had appeared the true prophet Yahyā or John son of Zechariah, an incarnation of Hibil, of whose birth and childhood fantastic stories are told. Yahyā by a mistake gave baptism to the false Messiah, who had feigned humility; on the completion of his mission, after undergoing a seeming execution, he returned clothed with light into the kingdom of light. As a contemporary of Yahyā and the false Messiah Hibil’s younger brother Anōsh ‛Uthrā came down from heaven, caused himself to be baptized by Yahyā, wrought miracles of healing and of raising the dead, and brought about the crucifixion of the false Messiah. He preached the true religion, destroyed Jerusalem (“Urashlam,” i.e. “the devil finished it”), which had been built by Adūnay, dispersed over the world the Jews who had put Yahyā to death, and previous to his return into the worlds of light sent forth three hundred and sixty prophets for the diffusion of the true religion. All this speaks of intense hatred alike of Jews and Christians; the fasts, celibacy and monastic and anchoret life of the latter are peculiarly objectionable to the Mandaeans. Two hundred and forty years after the appearing of the false Messiah there came to the world sixty thousand saints out of Pharaoh’s world to take the place of the Mandaeans, who had been completely extirpated; their high priest had his residence in Damascus. The last false prophet was M’hammad or Ahmat bar Bisbat (Mahomet), but Anōsh, who remained close beside him and his immediate successors, prevented hostilities against the true believers, who claim to have had in Babylonia, under the Abbasids, four hundred places of worship. Subsequent persecutions compelled their withdrawal to ‛Ammāra in the neighbourhood of Wāsit, and ultimately to Khūzistān. At the end of the world the devil Ur will swallow up the earth and the other intermediate higher worlds, and thereupon will burst and fall into the abyss of darkness where, along with all the worlds and powers of darkness, he will ultimately cease to be, so that thenceforward the universe will consist of but one everlasting world of light.

The chief depositaries of these Mandaean mysteries are the priests, who enjoy a high degree of power and social regard. The priesthood has three grades: (1) the Sh’kandā or deacon is generally chosen from episcopal or priestly families, and must be without bodily blemish. The candidate for orders must be at least nineteen years old and have undergone twelve years’ preparation; he is then qualified to assist the priesthood in the ceremonies of religion. (2) The Tarmīdā (i.e. “Talmīdā,” “initiated”) or priest is ordained by a bishop and two priests or by four priests after a long and extremely painful period of preparation. (3) The Ganzivrā (“treasurer”) or bishop, the highest dignitary, is chosen from the whole body of the Tarmīdās after a variety of tests, and