MANDA DʾHIIA

MANDA DʾHIIA ("knowledge of life") is the primary savior, messenger, and instructor in Mandaeism, a still-surviving gnostic religion in Iraq and Iran. Dispatched from the world above, the Lightworld, to the lower realms, Manda d'Hiia brings saving knowledge, warnings, and consolation to human beings and to deficient Lightworld beings stranded between the earth and the Lightworld. His descents and ascents parallel the route of the soul, which, having come from the Lightworld, returns to its home at the body's death. The "life" of which Manda d'Hiia is "knowledge" is the upper, ultimate Lightworld principle, in some texts called the King of Light and other names. The names Manda d'Hiia and Life are pronounced over Mandaeans at baptism, and Manda d'Hiia's name occurs frequently in prayer formulas.

The savior appears most often in the two main collections of Mandaean mythological speculation, Ginza, separated into Right Ginza and Left Ginza, and the Mandaean Book of John. The Right Ginza, the larger part of Ginza, contains cosmologies and mythologies dealing mainly with the earthly world, while the smaller Left Ginza centers primarily on the ascent of the soul toward the Lightworld. In Right Ginza 3, Manda d'Hiia descends to the underworld, vanquishing the evil powers there. His devastating effect on the evil ones on earth is described in Right Ginza 5.2. This tractate makes use of the Old Testament's Psalm 114 in portraying the frenzied reaction of mountains and ocean to the savior's appearance. In Right Ginza 11, as in 15.17, Manda d'Hiia battles with Ruha, the personified female spirit, and with the planets, the wicked world-rulers who ensnare human beings.

According to Left Ginza 1.3, Manda d'Hiia released Hawwa, Adam's wife, from the world, and warned against mourning for the dead, a behavior repudiated by Mandaeism. Right Ginza 5.4 tells of the death of John the Baptist, the Mandaean prophet. Manda d'Hiia appears to John in the guise of a small boy who wishes to be baptized. When John takes the boy to the river, it floods, owing to the presence of the savior. John nearly drowns, but Manda d'Hiia makes the water recede. As birds and fishes praise Manda d'Hiia, John realizes that his baptism candidate is the very Lightbeing in whose name John performs his baptisms. This baptism turns out to be John's last: Manda d'Hiia has come to take him away from the world. The baptist's body is left on the riverbank, the savior covering it with sand, and the two ascend together to the Lightworld.

Occasionally, Manda d'Hiia is portrayed unflatteringly. The Book of John 2 informs us that the savior has caused strife in the Lightworld by revealing the secrets of salvation to Ruha, his adversary. In the eighth tractate of the same book, a messenger pleads for Yushamin, a rebellious, jailed Lightbeing. The King of Light is favorably inclined toward Yushamin, but Manda d'Hiia thinks that Yushamin deserves no forgiveness. To this the King of Light responds that Manda d'Hiia harbors a long-standing jealousy toward Yushamin: Manda d'Hiia hates Yushamin because the latter once refused him a wife.

In general, though, Manda d'Hiia is a positive figure. He was the guardian of Adam's epoch, the first of the four ages of the world. Today we live in the fourth age, an evil age, which will end when no Mandaeans are left on earth.

See Also

Ginza; Mandaean Religion.

Bibliography

The two main Mandaean sources that present Manda d'Hiia have been published in German under the editorship of Mark Lidzbarski as Ginza: Der Schatz; oder, Das grosse Buch der Mandäer (Göttingen, 1925) and Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer (1915; reprint, Berlin, 1966). Excerpts from myths found in these texts appear in Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, vol. 2, Coptic and Mandean Sources (Oxford, 1974), edited by Werner Foerster. Kurt Rudolph's Theogonie, Kosmogonie und Anthropogonie in den mandäischen Schriften (Göttingen, 1965) devotes considerable space to myths in which Manda d'Hiia appears.

New Sources

Lupieri, Edmondo. I Mandei. Gli ultimi gnostici. Brescia, 1993. English translation as The Mandaeans: The Last Gnostics. Grand Rapids, Mich., 2002.

Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley (1987)

Revised Bibliography