Though I know that when we had left off, I had promised to continue the line of thought we had been following with a turn to economic considerations. Have no fear, we will get there eventually, but we have come a long way and faced some difficult truths on our journey, so this seems a reasonable place to reward ourselves by climbing out of the dreary trenches of political contemplation to more sublime matters more pleasing to the intellect. Besides, theological matters have been at the forefront of my mind as of late. 

The following essay is adapted from a sermon I gave at my daughter’s baptism last year (Truth be told, when I told my wife I wanted to give the sermon I promised to keep it short and sweet. I then proceeded to write nearly 40 pages, so I ended up having to cut out quite a bit to fit the ten minute limit she then told me I had). In this essay, I explore the origins of baptism, in particular its link to John the Baptist and the Gnostic Mandaean faith in which John is revered as a central prophet. Let there be no secrets about it, I harbor great sympathies for the Gnostic strains of the Christian faith. Gnosticism has been much maligned from the earliest days of the Church and it continues to be even today, as new information reveals that Gnostics most likely weren’t the depraved heretics Church tradition would like us to think they were. This is not to say either that Nicene Christianity is completely wrong, nor that Gnostics are and have always been right. The reason for Gnosticism’s precarious position can, in large part, be attributed to the context in which it arose. Gnostics are often accused of claiming to have “secret” doctrines, but this seems to overly dramatize the case. It is not so much that the doctrines Gnostics passed down were secret as it is that they were advanced. It should come as no surprise that any school of thought should have teachings intended for beginners as well as teachings reserved for more advanced students. The canonical Gospels only give us a very limited glimpse into Jesus’ ministry. Surely there were countless more lessons taught than were recorded there, and we must imagine that Jesus elaborated on his teachings in much greater detail in his private conversations with the Apostles than he ever could have done in his preaching to the public. Moreover, it isn’t hard to imagine that those elaborated teachings might not have been evenly distributed amongst the Apostles or that lapses in memory might have, over time, led to disagreements about the precise details of those teachings. Thus it is no surprise that, almost immediately upon Christ’s death, the Christian community splintered into various sects and interpretations. It is a mistake to think that those interpretations that were ultimately favored by historical accident must necessarily by the correct interpretations just as much as it would be a mistake to assume that every suppressed doctrine was wrongly suppressed. Some Gnostic teachers most likely preserved some of these more advanced teachings for several centuries. It is also likely the case that some of these doctrines were, at times, passed down to less than adequate students who contributed to their misunderstanding and corruption. It is The only resource we have for resolving these issues, in addition to the source material, is our God-given reason. This is what I take to be the central element of Gnosticism; that we ought to always use our God-given reason in weighing the truth or falsity of any proposition in order to achieve a point of view that is as close to the truth as we can possibly get and it is why I consider a Gnostic theology to be absolutely vital to the future of Christianity. Without it, Christians must continue to walk aimlessly and divided without the guiding light of Truth. 

For further reading, a number of Mandaean texts can be found here. Additionally, the works of Lady E.S. Drower are absolutely essential to any modern study of Mandaeism. Two excellent examples of her work can be accessed online here and here. Additionally, James F. McGrath’s Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist provides some valuable insights. He also has a new book titled John of History, Baptist of Faith: The Quest for the Historical Baptizer which I have not had a chance to get my hands on, but which I have high hopes for. 

Now, without further ado, my Sermon on Baptism:

I know that this is not exactly your typical baptism. We are not in a church. There are no priests. Instead we find ourselves surrounded by nature and I, a layman, will be responsible for carrying out this most sacred of rituals at the heart of the Christian tradition. Unorthodox as our approach today may be in the eyes of the prevailing tradition, I will happily contend that the approach we are to take here today is perfectly appropriate and just as worthy as that of any established church. Whatever we might lack in formality or professional training, I hope that we might make up for in our understanding of the significance of the ritual of baptism, for understanding is the beginning of true faith, much more so than mere outward conformity to any set of ritual prescriptions, no matter how strict or detailed. I believe we may come to a better understanding of the meaning and significance of baptism by examining the history of the ritual and understanding how it came to play such an important role in the Christian tradition. I hope also to highlight the vital importance of interfaith dialogue, guided by philosophy, to our own spiritual progress.

The question of the origin of baptism strikes us almost immediately with the first Biblical depiction of the rite, for, remarkably, the first baptism recorded in the Bible is that of none other than Jesus Christ himself. This event takes place at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. As we read in the first chapter of Mark, 

And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism for repentance and the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: ‘After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’ 

At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased. 

Thus, if the first baptism recorded in scripture is that of Jesus, and this is the event that marks the beginning of his ministry, it would seem that baptism is a rite that predates Christianity. But if that is the case, where did baptism come from? Perhaps by answering this question we might be led to a deeper understanding of the symbolism and significance of baptism. 

It is well known that Christianity emerged as an offshoot of the religion of the Ancient Israelites, so it would stand to reason that we should begin our search for the origins of baptism with the Jewish faith. Oddly enough, however, we find no reference to baptism as such in the Old Testament. To be sure, we do find a potential precursor to the Christian practice of baptism in several Jewish practices meant to achieve ritual purity through washing with water, the most important being that of tevilah, the ritual purificatory immersion of the whole body in water, but most certainly not baptism proper. Tevilah is practiced in a ritual bath called a mikveh, which traditionally is fed by a running body of water. Tevilah, however, unlike Christian baptism which is typically only performed once, may be practiced many times, for many reasons, over the course of one’s life. For instance, immersion in a mikveh might be practiced to mark significant transitions in one’s life; it is expected of converts to Judaism, a body might be immersed in a mikveh in preparation for burial, and it is common for Jewish men to practice tevilah in preparation for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Tevilah is most commonly practiced, however, not to mark periods of transition, but as a means of achieving ritual purification. For instance, women might practice tevilah to purify themselves after menstruation, while men might do the same after seminal discharge. Indeed, this use of tevilah can be traced all the way back to Leviticus and its practice is known to have increased considerably in the Second Temple period. Given the transitional and purificatory functions of tevilah it is at the very least possible that Christian baptism might have been influenced by it to some degree. 

Though we may attest to the great antiquity of tevilah and its vital place in Jewish ritual, and we may even draw some connections to Christian baptism, we must not overstate this connection. Tevilah is principally an instrumental rite. Its good lies in the fact that it serves to purify the devotee so that he might participate in rituals and the Jewish community more generally without the threat of polluting the community or debasing some element of worship. It is not, typically, a rite practiced for its intrinsic worth as is baptism. In particular, while tevilah might be practiced for the sake of purification, it is not, like baptism, practiced for the sake of forgiveness of sin, as impurity is not necessarily the result of sin. Tevilah only establishes ritual purity so that one might take part in other rituals which do forgive one their sins, the most important of which in the ancient era being sacrifice in the Temple. That being said, there is at least some reason to think that one sect, the Essenes, may have begun to use ritual immersion as a substitute for sacrifice in the Temple. 

The Essenes were a Jewish sect that emerged during the Second Temple era. Their thought is commonly opposed to that of the Sadducees, a group largely consisting of the ancient Israeli elite who rejected the Oral Law, and the Pharisees, the sect that came to win the hearts of the masses and which would eventually develop into the tradition of Rabinnic Judaism. We need not concern ourselves in any great detail with the doctrinal differences that separated these groups, but it will suffice to say that the Sadducees and Pharisees came to dominate the political and religious affairs of Second Temple Israel. At any rate, there was little room for the Essenes to influence affairs in Jerusalem which caused them to become increasingly dismayed with the state of affairs under Sadducee and Pharisee domination. Eventually their despair grew to such a level that they would abandon the city of Jerusalem, give up their hopes of controlling affairs in the Temple, and turn their faith inward. The Essenes spread out, settling in cities across the Holy Land. The writings of Philo of Alexandria seem to suggest that Essenes had made it at least as far as Egypt. Spread out as they were, the Essenes were not a monolithic group, but there are indications that a number of competing sects and schools of thought began to emerge within Essenism. While some Essenes were content to continue living in towns and cities alongside Sadducees and Pharisees, other groups became increasingly convinced that, as the last true remnant of Israel, in order to protect their purity, it would be necessary to remove themselves from the pollution of the outside world. As a result, many Essenes fled into the wilderness, some coming together to form small communities. The most famous of settlements attributed to the Essenes is that discovered at Qumran on the banks of the Dead Sea. Here, at the lowest point on Earth, resided a close-knit community of Essenes who had fled the chaos of Second Temple Israel. Qumran’s greatest claim to fame is, no doubt, the collection of scrolls first found in nearby caves in 1946, nearly two millennia after they had been hidden there by the ancient residents of Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls provide us with an invaluable window into the life and thought of this great lost sect of Judaism. In these texts we see that, having been cut off from worship in the Temple, the Essenes began to develop new rituals and customs to honor their God. From their writings, it is apparent that amongst their chief concerns was to guard themselves against the pollution of the outside world and to purify themselves from it. For this reason we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls strict and extensive rules which the residents of Qumran were expected to follow. Those who failed to follow these rules faced strict punishment, worst of all being the threat of being cut off from the community entirely. These rules display an acute concern for maintaining the purity of the community and guarding against all sources of pollution. This agrees with the descriptions we have of the Essenes in other ancient sources, such as Josephus, who tells us that the Essenes went so far as to avoid defecating on the Sabbath so as not to defile themselves. In this never ending battle against pollution, ritual washing with water was to become the Essenes most potent of weapons. Such washing was to become far more frequent and of more central importance in the hands of the Essenes than it had been previously or would be in the future amongst more mainstream Jewish sects. Full immersion in water was to become a daily occurrence for the residents of Qumran. Indeed, ten mikveh have been discovered at the Qumran site. 

Though there can be little doubt that the Essenes played a vital role in increasing the importance of purificatory rites involving water, with them, we still do not yet have baptism proper, but merely an amplification of the importance of tevilah motivated by a near neurotic fear of pollution. If Essene immersion was meant to forgive the devotee of his sins, this function was surely only intended to last until the Essenes had succeeded in gaining control of the Temple, a hope that seems to be ever at the heart of Essenism.

 But if searching for the origins of baptism within Judaism might be a futile effort, perhaps we will have better luck if we focus our attention on the man who the Gospels tell us performed Jesus’ baptism, John the Baptist. John the Baptist is a profoundly interesting character. We read in Luke that John was born amidst miraculous circumstances that might be seen to parallel the circumstances of Christ’s birth. John’s father, Zechariah, was serving as a priest in the Temple when the angel Gabriel appeared to him prophesying that he and his wife, both of advanced years, would be blessed with a son. Moreover, the angel proclaims, 

He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. 

Thus, in the Christian tradition, the Baptist is a divine messenger, sent by God so that he might clear the way for Christ’s ministry.

Some have speculated that John the Baptist may have had some connection to the Essenes, perhaps even to the community at Qumran, given the centrality of water in both John’s Baptism and Essene rituals. While we ought not rule out entirely the possibility that John was involved with the Essenes to some extent, this connection almost certainly ended rather early when he turned to another faith wherein baptism proper was already present. Here we must point out that Christianity is not the only religion that recognizes John the Baptist as a central figure. It should not be particularly surprising to learn that he is honored in later faiths that were influenced by Christianity and which also accept Christ as a central figure, such as in Islam, as well as the Druze and Baha’i faiths. But it is, perhaps, surprising to learn that there is another faith which predates Christianity and does not recognize Jesus as a figure of any great significance, which, indeed, at times, outright rejects Christ as a false prophet, which at the same time accepts John the Baptist as, not only a prophet, but the most important of all prophets. Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that this faith continues to exist to this day. The faith I speak of is known as Mandaeism. 

Mandaeism is a truly fascinating religion. It is a relatively small faith, with estimates placing the number of adherents at somewhere between sixty and one hundred thousand people. These estimates, however, are subject to a degree of uncertainty, as a history of religious persecution and forced conversion to Islam has caused some Mandaeans to deny or conceal their faith. Though traditionally native to the Middle East, with the marshlands of Iraq and Iran historically boasting the largest population of Mandaeans, the turmoil brought on by the Iraq war has driven many Mandaeans away from their ancestral homelands. Today there are diaspora populations across the globe, including several thousand in the U.S., with the second largest population outside the Middle East being found in nearby Worcester. Mandaeans face an additional challenge to maintaining their numbers in that the Mandaean religion does not recognize conversion and marriage to non-Mandaeans is discouraged. 

Though we may point to Iraq as the heartland of Mandaeism in the recent past, the initial origins of the faith are much murkier and remain a matter for research and debate. One thing that is abundantly clear, however, is that we must not make the mistake of thinking of Mandaeism simply as some sect or offshoot of Second Temple Judaism, in the same sense as the Essene movement or Christianity. Proper understanding of Mandaeism’s relation to these other traditions requires far more nuance. For one, the Mandaeans themselves assert that their faith is far older than either Christianity or Judaism. They do not read the Torah nor any other book of the Old Testament as a part of their scripture and they reject Moses as a prophet. More than that, unlike Chrisitanity and Judaism, which may be counted as Abrahamic faiths, Mandaeism is positively not an Abrahamic faith for the Mandaeans also reject Abraham as a prophet. Mandaeans do, however, agree with Jews and Christians on the Prophethood of the Antediluvian Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, as well as Noah’s son Shem. But here the Mandaeans diverge from the Abrahamic faiths who follow the line of Shem’s son Arpachshad to Abraham, instead tracing their ancestry through the line of Shem’s other son Aram, the father of the Arameans of what is now Syria, from whom the Aramaic languages take their name. Thus, if we are to take these accounts of the origins of Mandaeism seriously, it would seem that we would have to point to the Arameans on the northeastern limits of the Holy Land as the ancestors of the modern day Mandaeans. In this respect, the Mandaeans serve to remind us that the Israelites were not the first people to recognize the existence of but a single God and that even according to the Biblical account, monotheism predates Abraham by a substantial amount of time.

That being said, while the Mandaeans presently do not accept converts, this almost assuredly has not always been the case, for the most important of all the Mandaean prophets was none other than John the Baptist, and as Jewish, Christian, and Mandaean sources agree, he was born into a Jewish family, therefore he must have been afforded the opportunity to become a Mandaean sometime after birth. And John was not alone in his conversion. Ancient sources refer to John as a leading figure amongst a group known as Nasoreans, a sect composed of Jews who fled Jerusalem prior to the destruction of the Second Temple and came to reside alongside the Arameans. In modern Mandaic, the term Nasorean is used to refer to Mandaeans with advanced religious knowledge. Nasoreans are often, but not always, priests. One will note that Jesus is often referred to as the Nazarene. While most assume that this title is nothing more than a reference to Christ’s hometown of Nazareth, in the current light, this title takes on new meaning as a reference to Christ’s association with John and the Mandaean religion. It would seem then that this injection of Jewish converts represent a second stratum in the ancestry of modern day Mandaeans, and one with a particularly strong influence on the development of the religion. Indeed, modern day Mandaeans contend that they are the direct descendents of John the Baptist, countering the Christian tradition of his arrest and execution with their own tradition in which John survived, married, and had children. By the Muslim era, however, the possibility of further conversions seems to have been eliminated, perhaps so as not to appear as a threat in the eyes of the new and rapidly growing Muslim faith. 

The connections between Mandaeism and Christianity are unmistakable. A prominent symbol of Mandaeism, known as the Drabsha, is strikingly reminiscent of a Christian Cross. It consists of a cross, representing the four corners of the world, draped with a white cloth, representing the Light of God, and adorned with seven branches of myrtle, representing the seven days of creation. The Drabsha, however, has absolutely nothing to do with Christ or crucifixion. Instead, the Drabsha points the way to another connection with Christianity, as the Drabsha is the post on which Mandaeans hang their shawls during baptismal rites, and baptism, called masbuta in Mandaic, is the central rite of the Mandaean religion. In Mandaeism, while there are lesser baptismal rites that a practitioner might observe on their own, full baptism must be performed by a priest in a flowing natural body of water, called Living Water. Due to the central importance of Living Water, Mandaean houses of worship, called mandi, are always built along the banks of rivers. All suitable bodies of water are referred to as jordan, or yardna, after the River Jordan and all such bodies of water are considered manifestations of their Heavenly counterpart the Great Jordan, Yardna Rabba or Piriawis, which is said to flow directly from God. Thus, like the Christian rite, Mandaean baptism might be understood as serving to open up the recipient so that they might begin to perceive the Divine Light and become immersed in it. However, unlike Christian baptism, Mandaean baptism is typically received many more times than once over the course of one’s lifetime. Indeed, baptisms are carried out weekly at worship services, which, also as in the Christian tradition, are held on Sundays. Moreover, baptism is typically accompanied by a ritual communal meal of bread, called pihta, which is likely a prefiguration of the Christian rite of the eucharist. In place of wine in the Christian sacrament, the Mandaeans consume a sort of grape juice, called hamra, made from macerating raisins in water, which is meant to represent blood! 

More than this, Mandaean scripture agrees with Christian scripture by attesting to Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan. For this reason, Jesus’ baptism stands as one of the few events of Jesus’ life that many modern scholars are willing to conclude, with a high degree of confidence, almost certainly occurred. Nevertheless, there are some important differences in the Mandaean account of Jesus’ baptism and the accounts we find in the Christian Gospels. By comparing and contrasting the Christian and Mandaean accounts of Jesus’ baptism, and analyzing the reasons for Christianity’s breaking away from Mandaeism, we may hope to better understand the spiritual impulses that inspired Christ’s ministry, thus leading us to a deeper and more pure understanding of the Christian faith. Understanding Christianity in its Mandaean context is absolutely crucial to a proper understanding of Christianity itself. Indeed, more than Peter, more than Paul, more than any other Christian, the key to understanding the original spirituality and mission of Christ lies in understanding Mandaeism and Christ’s involvement in it. More than that, a proper understanding of Christ’s connection to Mandaeism, will serve to illuminate the path which Christianity must tread in the future. We will return to the differing accounts of Christ’s baptism in a moment, but first we must direct our attention to some important features of Mandaean theology that will be crucial in analyzing the accounts of Christ’s baptism. 

To begin with, we should understand that Mandaeism is typically considered a Gnostic faith. The term Gnosticism encompasses a large and diverse group of religious movements that first clearly emerged throughout the Near East around the turn of the current era. Within Gnosticism we may identify Jewish sects, Christian sects, and, as evidenced by the Mandaeans, sects that are neither Christian nor Jewish. Above all, the defining feature of Gnosticism, which serves to unite all of these diverse groups under a single label, is the view that true faith is dependent on gnosis, or direct, often ecstatic, experience of the Divine. Indeed, the term Mandaeism comes from the Mandaic word manda, which can be translated as “knowledge” or “gnosis” and Mandaeans tend to refer to themselves as Kustania, or the “People of Truth.” Another distinctive feature of Gnosticism is the tendency to distinguish between the god responsible for the creation of the material world, the Demiurge, and the True God, which is often held to be hidden and remote from the material world. Gnostics tend to regard the Demiurge as, at best, ignorant and limited in power, and, at worst, evil and cruel. Humans are seen as prisoners of the Demiurge in the material world, held captive from their true Heavenly forms. As a result of this distinction between the Demiurge and the True God, many Gnostics developed a dualistic system of thought in which a good God and evil god are thought to be locked in a constant struggle for domination of the world. Such dualistic tendencies are on particularly prominent display in Mandaean cosmology, according to which the human realm, called Tibil in Mandaic, is a sort of middle point between a World of Light ruled by a King of Light above, and a World of Darkness ruled by a King of Darkness below. 

Let us now consider some of the distinctive features of Mandaean Gnosticism. The Mandaeans refer to God as Hayyi Rabbi, or the Great Life. Hayyi Rabbi, while in some sense remote and hidden from the world, is, at the same time, the source of all in existence whose essence permeates all things. All Light and Life in the world flows out from Hayyi Rabbi and back into Hayyi Rabbi once more. Indeed, more than this, Hayyi Rabbi quite literally is the Light and Life itself. In this we may begin to understand why water plays such an important role in the Mandaean religion. Because God is Light Itself and water is capable of reflecting Light, water is understood as, in some sense, a direct extension of God’s Being. For the Mandaean, Light, Life, and Water all ultimately share the same source, and that source is God. 

According to Mandaean tradition, while Hayyi Rabbi is absolutely necessary for the realization of all of Creation, Hayyi Rabbi is only directly responsible for the creation of a single being, Yushamin. As the emanation of the First, Great Life, Yushamin is therefore referred to as the Second Life. Yushamin is an ‘uthra, an inhabit the World of Light, which might be likened to an angel in more familiar Judeo-Christian cosmologies. At times Yushamin seems to be the highest of the ‘uthras, but in other places this is less clear. From Yushamin emanate further ‘uthras, most importantly Abator, the Third Life. Yet more ‘uthras emanate from Abator, the most important of these being Ptahil, the Fourth Life, who stands in roughly the position of the Demiurge in other Gnostic systems, playing a critical role in the creation of the material world. Mandaean scripture tells us that the ‘uthras rebelled against Hayyi Rabbi by daring to create a world on their own, without their Creator’s permission. In this, Ptahil was to be the ‘uthra directly responsible for the creation of the World of Darkness, as well as Tibil, the Earthly realm inhabited by man, which stands in between the Worlds of Light and Darkness. 

But the picture we have painted thus far is still incomplete, for the role of the ‘uthras in creation is but half of the story. Mandaean scripture speaks of another class of entities, called shkintas, which also have a substantial role to play in the unfolding of the world. For instance, we read in the second chapter of the chief Mandaean scripture, the Ginza Rba,

Illumined and illuminating is Zihrun, the great Mystery of radiance, light and glory, from whom Manda-d-Hiia emanated and was divulged, and from whose very Self noble sons of the mighty and sublime Life proceeded. He created ‘uthras at his right and his left and installed them in their own shkintas. And they gave out light and were effulgent in their own raiment and gloried in the knowledge that their Father had transplanted them from the House of Life. And it is incumbent on a pupil to honour his Master like his parents, (so) the ‘uthras rose on (their?) thrones of radiance, light and glory and took off the crowns on their head and placed them on the thrones of radiance, light and glory, saying, ‘A teacher is superior to parents! Rise, our Father, in praise, and lay on me Thy hand of truth and Thy great right hand of healings!’ And Life be praised. 

In this passage the shkintas appear as thrones established by the Great Life for each of the ‘uthras to sit upon. Alternatively, they might be envisioned as the palaces in which the ‘uthras dwell. But all such descriptions of the shkintas as mere spaces or vessels that the ‘uthras occupy are misleading and serve to conceal the shkintas’ true natures. For the Shkintas are much more than the heavenly palaces in which the ‘uthras reside, but, in fact, the female counterparts of each of the ‘uthras, and these play just as central a role in the creation of the world as do the ‘uthras. If the shkintas are to be understood as forms, the ‘uthras may be regarded as the active principle which brings the forms to life and makes them actual. If the ‘uthras are the divine water which overflows from the Great Jordan, then the shkintas are the riverbeds in which the water flows and is shaped. It would be a mistake to think that either of these elements preexists the other or that one is more essential than the other. On the contrary, just as each male ‘uthra has its counterpart in a female shkinta, so too does the masculine aspect in Hayyi Rabbi have an equal and coeternal feminine aspect. But the equality and coeternity of the masculine and feminine aspects within Hayyi Rabbi is of a far greater degree than that which obtains between the ‘uthras and shkintas, for in Hayyi Rabbi the masculine and feminine natures are entirely undifferentiated and mixed together into a state of perfect unity, the masculine aspect corresponding to the Primordial Will and the feminine corresponding to the Primordial Intellect. In the words of Lady E.S. Drower, a pioneering figure in the study of Mandaeism, the Mandaean, 

… ‘Author of Being’… is Existence in excelsis. It is absolutely without sex or human attribute and in speaking of It the pronoun ‘They’ is used, for Hiia, ‘Life’, is an abstract plural. Creation is delegated to emanations, and appeals are addressed to It by the two great creative forces which are the first manifestation of Itself, namely Mind – the instrument of evocation – and a personification of active Light, Ziwa, or Yawar-Ziwa (Awaking, or Dazzling, Radiance). 

Thus, feminine and masculine are coeternal and equal aspects of the Divine which both play an absolutely vital role in Creation. This elevation of the feminine element in Creation is reflected in the vital role women play in Mandaean society. Indeed, Drower notes that, while rare, especially today, it is even possible for Mandaean women to become priests.

The importance of the feminine element is especially evident in the Mandaean myths concerning the origins of the material world. The ruler of the World of Darkness is a female entity named Ruha. Ruha is initially married to her brother, Gaf, with whom she produces a son Ur, who is to rule as the King of Darkness.  With Ur, Ruha then begets the constellations and stars, including the Sun, who is known to the Mandaeans as Shamish, or Adonai. Those familiar with Jewish traditions should readily recognize this latter name, Adonai, as a common name for God amongst Jews (It is, perhaps, also worth considering whether the name Ur has any connection to the name of Abraham’s traditional birthplace). This is no accident, as the Mandaeans believe that Adonai and Ruha came to rule the material world together, deceiving humanity into the belief that Adonai was the highest of all the Gods. From here, Ruha turned her attention to the creation of humanity, but found that she could not complete the task on her own. She thus enticed the Fourth Life Ptahil to come to her aid. In service to Ruha, Ptahil steals a soul, or nishimta, from the World of Light and casts it into Adam and Eve’s bodies. It is thus to become the task of man to overcome the Darkness and free this spark of Divine Light from the prison that is the material world. In this task, however, Ruha and Adonai act as a constant source of opposition. They are said to pervert the meaning of symbols in order to mislead man and to seduce him to commit sin. As an aside, for those interested in pursuing the topic further, it is worth exploring the connections between the notion of shkintas with the closely etymologically and conceptually related notion of the Shekinah from Jewish Kabbalism as well as the Indian Shakti, a goddess, wife of Shiva, and feminine force that pervades all things and plays a vital role in Creation. The concept of Shekinah would not be fully and explicitly developed within Judaism until much later with the appearance of Kabbalistic writings in the Middle Ages. 

At this point it will do us well to take a moment to consider the role that the figures of Adam and Eve play in the Mandaean religion a bit closer. Mandaeans hold the Antediluvian prophets in high regard, and among them, Abel, Seth, and, even more so, their father Adam, are especially revered. But matters are not quite as simple as they might appear at first glance as we must recognize that in Mandaeism there is more than one Adam. The Adam who Ruha creates may more properly be referred to as Adam Pagra, which translates literally to “Bodily,” or “Physical Adam.” In creating this Adam, Ruha was hardly being original, but merely making a crude copy of a perfect model that already existed in the World of Light, known to the Mandaeans as Adam Kasia, which translates to “Hidden”, or “Secret”, Adam. Eve too is said to have a heavenly counterpart in Hawa Kasia or Hawa Ziwa, Hidden, or Radiant, Eve. Whereas the Bodily Adam is fallen and corrupted, the Secret Adam remains perfect and incorruptible and stands as an Ideal toward which all men must strive. He is the first man to worship God and he does so eternally. For this reason he is regarded as the first priest, in which capacity he is known as the Great Shishlam. Like the doctrine of the shkintas, the doctrine of the Hidden Adam finds a parallel in Judaism that would not be fully developed until the writings of the Medieval Kabbalists. In Kabbalah, the cosmic Adam is known as Adam Qadmon, and the manner of his development within Kabbalism, might help to shed further light on the nature of Adam Kasia. At times Adam Qadmon is portrayed as but one among God’s many creations, albeit a very special one. At other times, however, the distinctions between God and Adam become blurred and the two become identified with one another, or more properly, Adam comes to be taken as the image of God Himself. In this capacity, as image of God, Adam is sometimes known as the Ancient of Days. 

With this distinction between the earthly and physical Adam established we are finally in a position to understand the deeper meaning concealed in the rituals that constitute the rite of baptism. In addition to its purificatory function, baptism may also be understood as an initiatory rite which serves to mark one’s entry into a religious community. As the philosopher of religion Mircea Eliade has argued, all initiatory rites attempt to put the initiate back into the primordial timelessness that obtained at the beginning of Creation, while also simulating the death and rebirth of the initiate. With this general understanding of the nature of initiatory rites in mind, the significance of baptismal immersion becomes perfectly clear. Recall that the Mandeans believe water to be the ultimate procreative fluid. Water is Life itself. It flows directly from God and it contains the seeds from which all created things spring forth. Thus, the initial plunge into the baptismal water may be taken to signify the death of the initiate, while baptismal immersion is clearly intended to replicate the condition of the fetus immersed in embryonic fluid within the womb, and, finally, emergence from the water signifies the initiate’s rebirth and conquest of death. But more than this, because the World of Light is said to be permeated with Living Water, baptism also serves to connect the initiate with the primordial condition of Adam Kasia, immersed in the Waters of Light. It is in this return of man to his primordial condition, both individually and collectively, that baptism acquires its power of forgiveness, for in such return man is reconnected with his original, sinless nature and afforded another opportunity to avoid falling into sin. This is why one who has received baptism is often said to be born again. 

While there are many more aspects of the Mandaean faith which we cannot get into here, the aspects of Mandaeism we have outlined so far will be sufficient to further our understanding of the Christian faith. Let us begin by trying to understand Mandaeism’s relationship to the Abrahamic faiths more generally. It should go without saying that the most crucial key to understanding this relationship is to be found in the principal factor differentiating the Mandaeans from the Abrahamic faiths, namely their rejection of the prophecies of Abraham. We must try to understand what reasons motivated this rejection. As we have said already, there is a long list of prophets which the Mandaeans and the Abrahamic faiths hold in common reverence. Indeed, it is only with Abraham that any division begins to appear between the two groups. But what set Abraham’s prophecy apart from that of earlier prophets so much that the Mandaeans could not but reject it? One reason that is often given for the Mandaeans’ rejection of Abraham’s prophecy is his institution of the rite of circumcision, which is at odds with the Mandaean view that the human body was created perfect and that, therefore, dismemberment of any kind is unacceptable. But this almost certainly is not the only answer. Another answer seems to come in Genesis 17:5, where we read, “Your name will no longer be Abram, but your name will be Abraham, because I have made you the father of many nations.” This prophecy is truly unique compared to those of all of the prophets who had come before him. Abraham was not the first to proclaim a single God; there were many generations of prophets who made such proclamations before him. Nor was Abraham the first to father a nation, but never had a nation devoted to the One True God been founded before. Now comes Abraham, proclaiming that he has been called by God to found not one, but many nations, in His Holy Name. This is a truly radical development, and one that could not have sat well with other lineages who remained faithful to God, including the Mandaean descendants of Aram, for up to this point, nationhood had been entirely a matter for the pagans and their gods. And there were very good reasons for the faithful around Abraham to be suspicious of his call to found a nation devoted to God. In the first place, Abraham’s claim that he and his descendants had been chosen to represent God upon the world stage and that their special form of worship would be the one to spread across the world and become synonymous with righteousness, must have been seen as the height of arrogance in the eyes of groups like the Mandaeans. But more than this, there can be little doubt that some would have seen Abraham’s notion of a nation dedicated to God as a contradiction in terms. For God demands men develop a pure and righteous spirit, but the affairs of nations are anything but, for all nations are founded and maintained upon threats of violent coercion. The pagans had formed nations in order to glorify their gods. They justified their claims to lands and the wealth of the people who resided there on the premise that, in claiming lands and wealth, they were glorifying their gods. They built great and extravagant temples to prove their devotion, and they defended and expanded their territories with blood in order to prove that their gods were superior to those of their neighbours. Now, Abraham and his children appeared set to honor the One True God in the same manner. To those who clung to the faith of Shem, Noah, and their forefathers, committing such deeds in the Name of the One True God must have appeared to hopelessly debase and pervert His Name. It is not surprising that some among them would have concluded that Abraham and his children had in fact fallen away from the True God, honoring Him in Name only. 

On the one hand, the attitudes of groups like the Mandaeans toward the developments Abraham brought forth are quite understandable. The Antediluvian Fathers had already established perfectly adequate modes of worshiping God, and their descendants were perfectly content in adhering to those modes of worship. It did not matter to them whether or not others recognized the existence of their God or worshiped in the proper way. They were secure in their faith and they understood that the spiritual failures of others were no impediment to them or their God. Thus there was no need for these people to form a nation dedicated to their God. But Abraham saw matters in another light. He observed the pagans around him dedicating themselves to their gods through the cult of nationhood. Why should these inferior gods receive such honors while Abraham’s God did not? Surely this was an impermissible slight against that God than which no other could possibly be greater. If these lesser gods should possess lands and the people residing there, should not also the God of gods have a land and a people willing to build up a nation to stand as a grand monument to their God and to defend it with their sweat and blood? But there is also a practical component to Abraham’s founding of a nation devoted to God, for in founding a nation with the One True God at its head, he cleared the way for God to participate on the stage of world history in the same manner as the pagan gods, as He had never done before. By consecrating the One True God within the cult of nationhood, Abraham sought to ensure that God’s people would not be overrun by the onslaught of the pagan nations and that the One True God might remain on the world stage down through the ages. There can be little doubt that Abraham was, to some extent, justified. Today the representatives of the older style of faith are few and far between, with the Mandaeans standing as, perhaps, the last remaining representatives of such faiths. Meanwhile those who have come to worship the One True God within the confines of the cult of nations have spread across the globe.

Nevertheless, we must not simply scoff at those who rejected Abraham, but instead, admit that their concerns are well founded, for there truly is great danger inherent in the impulse to honor the One True God in the same manner as the pagans honor their lesser gods. Nowhere is this more evident than in that most infamous story of the Book of Genesis in which Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to God. This is a story that has long troubled all those who read it. How could God, in His infinite benevolence, command Abraham, his most faithful servant to sacrifice his own beloved son? How could Abraham, the just and loving father, obey such a command? This story begins to make more sense, however, if we are to understand it in the context of Abraham’s impulse to give to God the same honors afforded to the pagan gods, for it is well attested that amongst the nations of the ancient Near East were those who sacrificed their children to honor their gods. It should come as no surprise then if Abraham might have concluded that such sacrifice was a necessary extension of his call to worship God in the same way as the nations worshiped theirs. “Surely,” Abraham must have thought, “to be willing to sacrifice that which is more precious than any other thing, one’s own child, is a display of the highest devotion to one’s god. Thus if the pagans are willing to show such a high level of devotion to their God is it not only appropriate that I, Abraham, should show the same level of devotion to my God, who is greater than any other god that could be imagined?” In this light, we might understand Isaac’s binding as a sign meant to demonstrate that Abraham loved his God as deeply as the pagans loved theirs, even if it meant being willing to kill his own son, who was more precious to him than any other thing in this world. But God, in his perfect Goodness, was horrified by what Abraham had resolved to undertake in His name. He could not accept so corrupt an offering. Therefore God stayed Abraham’s hand at the last moment before he plunged his blade into Isaac’s chest. Thus, this dreadful tale serves not only to prove Abraham’s absolute faith in his God, but also to demonstrate the danger that is to be found in the impulse to honor the One True God in the manner of the pagans. It now became clear that if the One True God was to enter the stage of history and contend with the pagan gods with a nation of His own, it would not be sufficient for this new Nation of God to merely model itself on the pagan nations. To do so would be to hopelessly debase God and forsake His purificatory role in the world, for which He sought to enter history in the first place. For this reason, Abraham and his descendants would struggle to fit the perfect and unlimited form of the One True God into the corrupt and limited form of the nation. This is why Jacob is said to have wrestled with that mysterious Divine Being on the banks of the Jabbok and why he and his descendants came to be called Israelites, “they who wrestle with God.” 

The Israelites’ struggle with God was to reach its culmination with the revelation of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. Now the Israelites were in possession of a comprehensive code of conduct meant to guide them in handling the affairs of nationhood while doing minimal damage to the moral perfection of the God whom they sought to serve. This development, however, was not without its cost. In the course of this struggle, the Israelites were forced to radically rethink the relationship between God and the world. In this rethinking we may identify yet another point on which the Abrahamic faiths deviate from the faith of the Mandaeans. With the dreadful memory of that near tragedy that occurred between Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah fresh in their minds, the Israelites became filled with anxiety over the dangers of God’s great power becoming corrupted by the impurities of this world. Thus the Israelites began to conceive of a God who is radically separated from the world of man and who is ever ready to condemn man and strike him down for his inequity. Whereas the Mandaeans readily recognized that all things are emanations from God and that God’s essence permeates all things, the Israelites came to see the perfection of God’s essence as being concentrated within a single point that stands high over all things in Creation. By channeling the essence of the Divine into a single point, that might act as a beacon toward which they could always strive, the Israelites were able to orient themselves in the grand scheme of Creation and guide their actions toward a perfect, though ever out of reach, moral end. This change of perspective is indicated in the manner of worship that was to be established by the Israelites. Now, divorced from His connections to the world, God was no longer seen as immediately present in nature, therefore it was no longer fitting for the Israelites to worship God in the openness of nature in the manner of the Mandaeans with their river baptisms. Instead they developed a mode of worship which reflected their new thoughts on the remoteness of God from the world. They took the Tablets given to Moses on Sinai and placed them within the Ark of the Covenant. To house the Ark they built a great Temple to God and they placed the Ark, not in the center where anyone could see it, but behind a veil at the back of the Temple. And whereas in the Mandaean religion anyone could experience the presence of God that is all around, in the case of the Israelites, only those of the priest class, who undertook ritual purifications in the prescribed times and manner, were deemed fit to enter the Holy of Holies and stand directly in the presence of God. Thus the Temple, and more specifically the Ark of the Covenant and the Tablets within it were to become the focal point around which all of the religious practices of Ancient Israel were to revolve. This arrangement served to reflect the manner in which the Israelites envisioned all of Creation as revolving around God’s essence in which all possible perfections were infinitely concentrated within a single point. This point might be identified with what is referred to as the One in Platonic thought. If we are to follow the impulse toward anthropomorphization, this point might be identified with the Head of God, while the rest of Creation may stand as the various parts of the rest of the Divine Body. Such anthropomorphizing tendencies do, to be sure, exist within the more mystical and esoteric branches of Jewish thought, but are largely absent in the more conventional and exoteric strains of thought, in which the connection of God’s head to the rest of the Body of Creation is concealed from view. Mandaeism, on the other hand, has no need to confine God to a particular form or separate God from the rest of Creation. All of Creation is but an outpouring of God’s essence and from the depths of Creation this essence flows eternally back into God. While this essence might reach different parts of Creation in different proportions, every part of Creation is ultimately an outpouring of the Divine Essence. Thus on the Mandaean view there is no room for a radical separation between man and God, as all things might be said to exist as a sort of extension of God’s essence. This emphasis on the original pure and formless essence of God is reflected in the Mandaean festival of Parwanayi, which marks the five Mandaean intercalary days and is specifically dedicated to this essence. As Mandaean priest Brikha Nasoraia explains, 

These are five sacred days (or ‘white days’) during which are celebrated aspects of the Divinity in His fullness before any Creation was manifest, whether in heaven or on earth. This is also known as the five days of the ‘pre-emanation’ of the Worlds of Light. The five days establish the ushering of the Primordial Great Life… and its divine Emanations. 

This leads us to another important difference that arose between Mandaeism and the Abrahamic faiths. Because, for the Mandaean, all of Creation is thoroughly permeated by God’s essence, the Mandaean is capable of feeling God’s presence in all that is around him simply by looking for it. Thus it is possible for the Mandaean to be in possession of a faith that is entirely rooted in feeling and direct experience. On the other hand, because the Abrahamic faiths seek to channel the essence of God into a single point standing at the head of Creation, an act which we might say was itself accomplished through the power of conceptualization, in Abrahamism, faith increasingly became a matter of reason. Now, in order to orient themselves in the world and identify the concentrated essence of God, as well as to contemplate how they ought to conduct themselves in order to bring about a world more consistent with this Supreme Principle, the adherents of the Abrahamic faiths would have to rely on their rational faculties. Intensive study and training in the art of disputation was to become an essential devotional activity. And, as they began to establish relations with the pagan nations, the Abrahamic nations would increasingly adopt the pagan’s mode of rational deliberation, philosophy! As a result, philosophy came to occupy an exalted role as an essential tool, equal, if not superior to direct experience, for the evolution of the Abrahamic faiths and, with it, the moral progress of the world in a manner that was inconceivable in the Mandaean faith. 

With these critical distinctions between the thought of the Mandaeans and the descendants of Abraham in mind, we may now hope to better understand the differences in the Mandaean and Christian accounts of Jesus’ baptism as well as the significance that this rite was to take on in Christianity. Let us begin with a point that both Christian and Mandaean accounts of the baptism of Jesus agree on; that John the Baptist was hesitant to baptize Jesus. We read in the third chapter of Matthew, 

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you and do you come to me?’ Jesus replied, ‘Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness’ Then John consented. 

The Mandaean account also depicts John as reluctant to baptize Jesus, but there John takes a very different tone in expressing his concerns. The Mandaean Book of John records a rather tense and accusatory dialogue between John and Jesus prior to the baptism. There we read,

Who told Jesus? Who told Jesus Christ, Mary’s son? Who told Jesus, so he came to the Jordan’s banks and told him, ‘John, perform your baptism over me, and pronounce over me the name you pronounce! If I become your disciple, then I shall mention you in my epistle. If I do not become your disciple, then erase my name from your scroll!’ 

John spoke, saying to Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, ‘You have lied to Jews, and you have deceived men, the priests. You cut seed off from men, and labor and pregnancy from women. You loosened the Sabbath that Moses ordained in Jerusalem. You lied to them with a horn and played different things with a trumpet.’ 

Jesus spoke, saying to John in Jerusalem, ‘If I have lied to Jews, then may a burning fire consume me. If I have deceived the men, the priests, then may I die two deaths instead of one. If I have cut seed off from men, then may I not pass the great Ocean. If I have cut labor and pregnancy from women, then may a judge be established in my presence. If I have undone the Sabbath, then may a burning fire consume me. If I have lied to Jews, then may my path be through thistle and thorn. If I played different things with a trumpet, then let my eyes not fall on Abator. As for you, baptize me with your rite, and pronounce over me the name you pronounce! If I become your disciple, then I shall mention you in my epistle. If I do not become your disciple, then erase my name from your scroll!’ 

From here, the dialogue turns to a rather cryptic exchange of questions and answers between John and Jesus. Though this section is certainly interesting and deserving of further analysis, we need not concern ourselves with its contents here. At the end of the questioning Jesus makes one final plea for John to baptize him, but John only relents after receiving a sign from the ‘uthra Abator, the weigher of souls. We read,

‘And you, John, baptize me with your rite, and pronounce over me the name you pronounce! If I become your disciple, then I shall mention you in my epistle. If I do not become your disciple, then erase my name from your scroll! You will be held responsible for your sin, and I shall be held responsible for mine.’ 

When Jesus Christ said this, a letter came from Abator’s house, ‘John, baptize the deceiver in the Jordan! Bring him down to the Jordan to baptize him, bring him up to the bank to confirm him!’

Ruha took the form of a dove, and made a cross in the Jordan. She made a cross in the Jordan, and lifted up the waters in every way, and said, ‘Jordan, you will make me holy, and you make my seven sons holy! The Jordan in which the Christ is baptized, I have made into a blank of the font! The morsel which the Christ takes, I have made into a blank of the Eucharist! The spring water which Christ takes, I have made into a blank of the Eucharist! The turban which the Christ takes, I have made into a blank of the priesthood! The staff which the Christ takes, I have made into a blank of the crozier! Beware for me, my brothers, beware for me, my friends. Beware for me the Romans, who are like offshoots of the cross that they fix on the walls, and begin to worship the crucifix. Beware for me, my brothers, the god framed by a carpenter! If a carpenter framed a god, then who framed the carpenter. And Life is praised, and Life triumphs!”

To those who are only familiar with the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism, the Mandaean side of the story must certainly be jarring, if not altogether disturbing. Here John is not the awe struck preacher exuberantly proclaiming the coming of the Saviour, but a cautious and guarded wise man with heavy doubts about Christ and his mission, who goes so far as to declare Jesus a deceiver who threatens to lead the Jews to ruin. Moreover, that the wicked Ruha appears to celebrate once Jesus has actually been baptized seems totally foreign to the spirit of the Gospel accounts. What precisely are we to make of John’s accusations and Ruha’s presence?

 The key to reconciling the Christian and Mandaean accounts of Christ’s baptism lies in a more comprehensive understanding of Ruha’s role in the Mandaean religion. It will perhaps be shocking to learn that the Mandaeans regard Ruha as none other than the Holy Spirit. Indeed, ruha, in addition to being a proper name, can be translated quite literally as spirit. This being the case, Ruha’s appearance at Jesus’ baptism is not so radical a departure from the Gospel account as it might appear at first glance, for we read in the first chapter of John the Evangelist, 

Then John [the Baptist] gave this testimony, ‘I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.

Thus, if we understand Ruha as the Holy Spirit, the Mandaean and Gospel accounts actually display a great deal of agreement concerning what occurred at the Baptism of Jesus. The Gospel account even retains the detail of a dove appearing, which the Mandaean account tells us is, in fact, Ruha. Moreover, both accounts are in agreement that John’s order to baptize Jesus came from a heavenly source, with the Gospel account vaguely alluding to “…the one who sent me to baptize with water…” and the Mandaean text specifying that the order came from the uthra, Abator. But how are we to reconcile the Christian’s understanding of the Spirit as a Pure and Holy force which, indeed, is typically understood as consubstantial with God Himself as a crucial member of the Trinity, with the Mandaean understanding of the Spirit as a dark and evil force responsible for the imprisonment of the Divine Light within the world? And if the Mandaeans reject the prophethood of Jesus and understand his baptism to have been a victory for the evil Ruha, why do they agree with the Christians that Jesus’ baptism was carried out according to a divine command? 

To answer these questions we must come to a better understanding of the figure of Ruha in Mandaean thought. While Ruha is frequently depicted as a malevolent or evil entity, this is not always the case and, at times, Ruha might be seen in a more positive, if not altogether holy, light. For instance, in one legend of a wise man’s assent to heaven, reported by Drower, Ruha’s domain is described as being “…of God and of great loveliness.” Ruha and her children are, at times, held in high regard and it is not unheard of for a Mandaean to call out to Adonai in praise. In another instance, Drower reports that, after telling a story that painted Ruha and her children in a particularly positive light, the man who related the story explained that the opposition between the worlds of light and dark is little more than a fiction created by the priests who wrote the scriptures, saying, “Why should there be enmity between us and the powers of darkness, or between the powers of the darkness and those of the light? There is only love! Love holds all things together so that they form a whole.” 

Perhaps the closest parallel to the figure of Ruha that we can find within the orthodox Abrahamic traditions is the Islamic conception of Satan, where he is known as Iblis. In Islam, Iblis is not the enemy of God and his fall from Heaven is not a punishment for his rebellion against God. On the contrary, Iblis is said to be the most loyal and devout of all the angels, the only one capable of looking directly upon the pure essence of God and it is in service to God, not rebellion, that Iblis descends to the very depths of Creation so that he may serve, not as God’s enemy, but as man’s. Iblis’ hatred of man lies in the fact that beside himself, man is the only creature in all of Creation capable of knowing the pure essence of God, yet, unlike Iblis, man all too often forsakes his gift and turns away from God. Thus, when Iblis observes mankind turning away from God, this provokes his wrath and envy and he stands ready to devour man. In this way, however, Iblis continues to play a divine role as the guard of humanity’s moral purity who must nip ever at the heels of man so that man will constantly strive for ever higher degrees of moral perfection. Yet, despite his enmity for man, Iblis must ever hope for man’s success, for as man reaches ever higher levels of perfection, Iblis is brought ever closer to the God whom he loves above all else. Thus, in the end, even Iblis must be saved. 

In the Mandaean scripture Ginza Rba we find Ruha expressing a very similar sentiment to that expressed by Iblis, 

Spirit lifted up her voice, she cried aloud and said, ‘My Father, my Father why didst Thou create me? My God, my God, my Allah, why hast thou set me afar off and cut me off and left me in the depths of the earth and in the nether glooms of darkness so that I have no strength to rise up thither

When we understand Ruha, not as an absolutely evil and unredeemable enemy of God, but as a tragic figure, cut off from God as a necessary consequence of fulfilling the very station assigned to her by God, it begins to become clear why Ruha rejoiced at the baptism of Jesus, for at the heart of Christ’s message is the promise of forgiveness for even the lowliest of sinners, and the call for each and every person to strive toward the ideal of moral perfection embodied in Christ. In this way we might say that the great revelation of Christ’s ministry was that of the possibility of the moral perfection of mankind. But Christ’s promise is not merely that of the redemption of mankind, but the redemption of all fallen natures, for Ruha’s hopes for reunion with God, as much as man’s, can only be realized through the realization of man’s moral perfection, for man represents the perfect microcosm in which all aspects of the macrocosm are recapitulated. Thus as it is with Christ’s baptism that the long and arduous process of the moral perfection of mankind truly begins, Ruha must rejoice upon witnessing it. Indeed, it is not Christ alone who is purified at his baptism, but all of the world, for Ruha declares, “Jordan, you will make me holy, and you make my seven sons holy.”  It is in Christ’s baptism that Ruha, as the spirit which resides in each and every man, becomes distinctly aware of God’s plan and her role in it, and that she becomes capable of lifting man’s eyes to God and inspiring him to live in accordance with God’s plan. This, however, would not be an immediate transformation. Man’s Will, accustomed to mundane existence and the impure desires such existence brings about, would continue to drag Ruha down and attempt to resist her new, purifying influence. But Ruha’s turn toward the light caused a source of resistance to the Will’s corrupting influence to rise up in the spirit in the form of the pangs of conscience. Thus, the Gospel declares that while John baptized with water, Jesus was to baptize with fire and the holy spirit. In this respect, Ruha might be compared to the figure of Sophia, in later Gnostic systems, whose name is Greek for wisdom, and who, like Ruha, is responsible, through deceit and seduction, for the creation of the material world, and whom it is the task of Christ to redeem by reawakening her to the presence of God that was always within her.

By understanding Christ’s mission as that of the redemption of the entire world, we are better positioned to understand Christ’s relation to both Mandaeism and Judaism, as well as the reasons that caused him to break away from both of these older traditions. The cause of Christianity’s break with these traditions can, perhaps, be summed up in a single word with which I am sure we are all familiar; Messiah. “Messiah” is a Hebrew word which, if translated literally, means “anointed one,” and which, historically, was typically used in reference to both kings and high priests. In this respect, Christ’s designation as messiah is, by no means, a radical departure from the Mandaean tradition, for it is not uncommon for Mandaean priests to be referred to with the Mandaic word for king; malka. But,  while messiah and malka might both refer to kings as well as priests, messiah is loaded with implications that malka is not. Messiah is typically reserved for kings of considerable historical significance, for instance it has been applied to the Biblical King David, as well as to Cyrus the Great of Persia, who freed the Jews from their captivity in Babylon. Thus, Christ’s designation as Messiah serves to indicate that Christ’s ministry is one that is meant to have historical significance, which flies in the face of the Mandaean aversion to participation in historical processes that we have already noted. But as it is applied to Christ, messiah takes on entirely new and more radical connotations, for Christ is messiah in a very different sense than any earthly king. He is the King of Kings, the Ideal man, the perfected Adam, who is to be held up as the standard which we must all adopt as our ultimate goal. His law is not to be written on tablets or in codices, but on the heart of every man, and it is to be fulfilled, not by force of arms, but through the genuine transformation of men’s souls. Thus, in assuming the role of messiah Christ was to be exalted over all other men and even all other priests, in a way that would have been entirely unacceptable to the Mandaean ethos. For these reasons, we must regard Christ’s messianic claims as the crucial factor forcing the ultimate break between Mandaeism and Christianity. 

In this light, let us consider more carefully the accusation which both John the Baptist and Abator levy against Christ, namely that he is a deceiver. While, I recognize that it is a strange sermon, coming dangerously close to blasphemy, which casts moral aspersions on the character of Jesus, we must admit, that at least in some sense, Christ was a deceiver. In the first place, as a Nasorean, Christ would have necessarily recognized that all men are children of Adam and, therefore, in possession of souls forged from sparks of the Divine Nature and that it is possible for the spark of each and every person to be rekindled and restored to its original, and glorious nature. Thus, Christ must have understood that in leading others to believe that he had a share in the Divine Essence that others lacked, he was indeed deceiving others. But Christ’s deception was neither absolute, nor nefarious. In the first place, in his superior moral development, Christ was indeed, in some sense, more divine than others. Or to put it more appropriately, Christ had cultivated the divine within himself to a far higher degree than had his fellow man. Therefore, Christ’s claims to divinity were not entirely unfounded. Moreover, insofar as Christ may be said to have deceived others about his nature, this deception might be likened to Plato’s notion of the noble lie, for Christ’s deception was intended to serve a greater good. Christ surely would have understood that there is a great danger in the revelation that every human soul is a spark taken directly from God’s Essence. The wicked and morally uncultivated are liable to see this revelation as a justification for pursuing their most destructive desires. Given the barbarism that prevailed in the world at the time of Christ, it would have been disastrous for the doctrine of universal divinity to have been revealed all at once. Christ had to first establish a partial preparatory teaching in order to clear the way for the complete teaching, and that preparatory teaching would have to be a moral teaching. To this end, Christ himself was to serve as the example of moral perfection toward which all of humanity could look to for guidance. This transfiguration of Christ from a mere man to the Ideal man was to be completed through the crucifixion, wherein Christ, this image of moral perfection, in the ultimate act of selflessness, willingly offered himself up as a sacrifice so that his fellow men might have their sins forgiven and be saved. That being said, it is a shallow understanding which sees the principal significance of Christ’s sacrifice in its expiatory character, for the initiate knows that the true significance of the crucifixion lies in its transformative character. It is not enough to merely rejoice over the good news that Christ’s sacrifice has delivered us from our sins, but we must show genuine gratitude by endeavoring to internalize Christ’s example of moral perfection, so that it becomes the active principle by which we govern all of our actions. It is only through the realization of this principle within ourselves that we may be said to be truly worthy of governing ourselves. Thus, it is only through the internal realization of this principle in all people that the grounds for external government evaporate, and all men may be granted their rightful status as kings. In this we may also understand the meaning of the messianic age, the second coming of Christ, and his rule over his kingdom. There is a kabbalistic tradition which holds that every person has messianic potential. We may understand Christ’s mission to be that of awakening all people to their messianic potential and to supply people with the tools necessary to make that potential actual. So, the messianic age will begin only when all men have adopted Christ’s image of moral perfection as their internal active principle and Christ’s rule may be understood to be of an internal nature, and not like that of an external state. But in a time in which all people have messianic natures, there is no longer room for any one person to be exalted over another, and thus no room for anyone to acquire the status which distinguished a messiah from a mere king. Thus, once Christ’s mission of awakening all people to their messianic potential is completed, the very concept of messiah is to be nullified, and all men, Christ included, are to become equals joined together in their devotion to their God. When this comes to pass, rather than the term messiah, it will become more appropriate to refer to all people by the more humble, Mandaean term, malka. For this reason, the crucifixion did not signal the completion of Christ’s mission, but merely the beginning of the long and arduous process of the moral purification of humanity. 

This leads us to the reason why John the Baptist accuses Jesus of loosening the Sabbath, lying, and generally bringing the Jewish people to ruin. Whereas the notion of a messiah was repugnant to Mandaean sensibilities, many Jews of the Second Temple period readily awaited the coming of a Messiah. But these messianic hopes were largely political in nature. The Jewish people awaited a great king who would liberate their homeland from foreign rule and reestablish a Unified Kingdom such as existed in the days of King David and King Solomon. But Jesus was not that sort of messiah. Christ’s mission was not to liberate the Jewish people from foreign rule, but to liberate them from the cult of nationhood and to liberate God from the artificial confines into which the cult of nationhood had molded Him, and return them to a more pure form of devotion to God, like that of the Mandaeans, free from the anxieties and corruption of a faith mingled with political and historical concerns. It should, perhaps, come as no surprise that amidst the hopes of the restoration of an independent Jewish nation and the revival of the nationalistic worship of God, that the main body of the Jewish population should have turned their back on a Messiah such as Jesus, for there remained a widespread sentiment that Israel had yet to fulfill its proper purpose on the world stage, and the Jewish people were not yet prepared to dissolve their nationalistic mode of worship. But if the Jewish people were to reject Christ as a messiah of a purer faith due to their desire for a political messiah, Christ would become the sort of messiah they had hoped for, not for the Jews, but for the Gentiles. Thus Christ’s greatest immediate accomplishment was to be the liberation of the nationalistic mode of monotheism from its Hebrew trappings. This is why the Gospels tell us that at the moment Christ let out his dying breath, the veil in the Temple in Jerusalem which served to cut off the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple was torn, signifying the release of God from the state cult of Ancient Israel. Now the God of Israel was free to be carried off by the pagan nations who would adopt Him as their own, retaining the basic shape the Israelites had molded him into, while replacing the Israelite ornamentation with ornamentations representative of their own cultures. To add insult to injury, in the process of carrying away the God of the Jews for their own use, the Gentiles would destroy the Temple which had been God’s home in Jerusalem. Thus God, stripped of His Israelite adornments, but still in possession of the nationalistic form Abraham and his descendants had molded Him into, would maintain His presence on the world stage, with every people he met adorning him with ornaments appropriate to their culture. Ironically, it would be the very Roman Empire which ordered Christ’s execution who would prove to be the greatest force in the spread of Christ’s message (and in the process, the Sabbath would indeed be broken, as Christians moved its observance to Sunday). Of course, this was not the pure message of Christ, but one that had been molded by Emperors and Bishops to fit the needs of Empire, and, with Christ’s message, like the Form of God Himself, molded into a form fit for the needs of Empire. Thus Ruha declares, “Beware for me the Romans, who are like offshoots of the cross that they fix on the walls, and begin to worship the crucifix.”

Though Christ did not immediately succeed in his mission of freeing God from the cult of nations, at the heart of his teachings was a crucial element which had always stood at the heart of God’s essence, but which had been largely concealed in the process of concentrating God’s essence into a single point. That element was Love. Though Love was clearly present in the Mandaean conception of God and its influence still shines through at times in the Hebrew conception of God, as God became wrapped up in the functions of State, this aspect of God’s nature became hidden deeper and deeper within His essence. Though Love most certainly would not be the primary motivation drawing kings and emperors to adopt Christianity, nor did Love motivate them in forcefully converting those whom they conquered, no matter how it spread and who spread it, wherever Christianity went, so too did the seeds of Love, with the promise that they might one day bloom in new and glorious ways. To be sure, in some cases, Christ’s teachings on Love may have seeped into the conscience of the ruling class, perhaps even causing them to treat their subjects with more benevolence. On the other hand, we cannot deny that Jesus’ teaching on Love went entirely unheard by some rulers, and that others even actively tried to conceal it. But try as they might, the Light of Love could not be extinguished, but would remain for generations of Christendom to gradually uncover. 

It was the uncovering of this Light which helped to ignite the revolutionary fervor of the eighteenth century and inspire a Love for Liberty in the West. We must thank this Love of Liberty for succeeding in effectively severing religion from the state and establishing the doctrines of religious freedom and toleration. For this reason we may rightfully point to the revolutions of the eighteenth century as the point at which Christ began to succeed in his mission of freeing worship of God from the confines of the state cult. That being said, these ties have yet to be entirely severed in all places, and there are those who would like to reestablish those ties that have already been cut. Moreover, this severing of the ties of church and state coincided with remarkable advances in the empirical sciences which served to fascinate the public. Soon the method of empirical science would come to be seen as the gold standard for the establishment of knowledge, and any claims that could not be submitted for review by the methods of empirical science came to be viewed with suspicion. But God and the objects of religion are not empirical objects and their existence cannot be proved by the methods of natural science. So, with advancements in science came also an age of skepticism of and disillusionment with religion. Mixed with the fervor for liberty which had animated the eighteenth century, this turn away from religion toward a base materialism spelled disaster. Society was to be dislodged from its religious foundations and freed from the bonds of morality which once contained it. A truly secular government is incapable of speaking of and being motivated by a respect for man’s God given rights, but instead must be content to justify itself with appeals to dull and vague concepts like utility. In such a state, concern for the most essential needs of man’s soul falls by the wayside, in exchange for concern over empty, materialistic progress. Even worse is the effect of Liberty divorced from Faith. For, while Liberty is absolutely essential for any society, as it is only through free choice that one can ever come to true religion, when Liberty is divorced from the limiting influence of religion and is embraced for its own sake, the resulting hedonism and licentiousness can only bring about chaos and destruction. 

Still, however, despite these setbacks, we must remain confident that Christ’s mission will ultimately prove to be successful. We must not lose hope and give into despair, but turn to our contemplation of Christ’s life and message with renewed vigor, for Christ does not only hold the key that shall set man free from the shackles of state, but also the wisdom necessary for overcoming the dangers of unchecked Liberty. If we are not to squander our great gift of Liberty and let it bring us to absolute ruin, it is not only essential that our Liberty become tempered by the principles of our religion, but also that our religion become tempered by Love. Indeed, in this mission, even the Mandaean sources seem to believe that Christ shall be successful for, as we read in the Haran Gawaitha, or The Baptism of Hibil-Ziwa,

Hibil-Ziwa taught that, ‘At the latter end of the world, when the Arab, the Son-of-Slaughter [Muhammad], hath completed his (allotted) four thousand years, it will come to pass that the false Messiah, son of Miriam, will succeed him, and that he will come and will show forth signs (wonders) in the world until the birds and the fish from the sea and rivers open their mouths and bless him and give testimony, until (even) the clay and mudbrick in a building bear witness to him, and until four-legged creatures open their mouths and testify to him.’

And Hibil-Ziwa explained (further): ‘(But) you, O Nasoreans, and righteous elect men, testify not to him, for he is a false Messiah that walketh by fraud and sorcery. He is Mercury, who attracteth attention and doth whatsoever he wisheth and his mind is filled with sorcery and frauds. I declare to you, (ye) chosen righteous ones and (ye) perfect ones that are stedfast, abide by this pure line of separation and alter no word or command of the great Father of Glory, that He may take you by the hand, watch over you and deliver you out of the hands of the children of Krun.

Hibil-Ziwa taught: ‘When the Messiah hath returned, ascending to the sky – and his reign will last six thousand years – he will ascend and assume his first body. From that epoch until worlds’ end, wickedness will depart from the world; that which issued from the earth will enter the earth and that which descended from the sky will return and enter the sky. And there will be righteous people in the world, and no man will covet his neighbour’s goods. And people’s senses will return to them and they will not perform circumcision; they will be converted and Nasoraeans will increase in the world. The eye of envy will be lifted from them and the sword will depart from the world. It will be as if the sword brought by the Son of Darkness, he whose sword was of the world of Satan, had never been in the world. And with it goeth a force which he possessed not in the world; until Mars came and set up his sign and bound him thereto by oath. 

But we must not sit idly back and wait for wickedness to depart from the world on its own or for Christ to establish his Kingdom entirely through his own efforts. On the contrary, the bringing forth of Christ’s Kingdom shall require the concerted efforts of mankind. Just as John the Baptist cleared the way for Christ’s first coming, so too must we clear the way for his second coming, by making ourselves worthy of the status of malka which Christ shall bestow on each of us. 

Given the current state of the world, the tasks that lie before the man of faith today appear quite clear. First, he must continue the work of severing what ties remain between church and state while convincing his fellow faithful to resist all urges to reestablish those ties once cut. This is certainly the easier task. Far more difficult is the need to combat the growing scourges of nihilism and libertinism. This is a problem with no single simple solution, but which must be approached from several different angles. However, as we have already mentioned, there can be little doubt that the successes of modern empirical science, along with the inability to prove religious truths through such means, are among the driving forces behind the abandonment of traditional religion and adoption of nihilistic and libertine attitudes. Thus, at the heart of this problem is an unmistakable rational element. Against this rational cause of nihilism the most valuable and effective tool available to us is philosophy. We must readily admit the impressive successes of modern science and concede the point that the methods of empirical science are incapable of confirming religious truths. However, we must also make the case that the empirical method is not the only, or even the best, source of knowledge available to us and that religious truths can be proved by other means. Moreover, a philosophical approach to faith is essential to the establishment of common ground between people of different religious backgrounds and uniting all peoples behind the common cause of the advancement of humanity, despite whatever outward differences might exist between different religious traditions. In this way philosophy must, in some sense become the common faith of humanity; the lingua franca through which all the various faiths are capable not only of understanding each other, but of better understanding themselves. Such dialogue shall prove crucial to the spiritual development of the human race.

But even with the most vigorous philosophical defense of faith, there will always be those for whom abstract arguments are empty and unconvincing and who will demand to experience the divine directly before assenting to any belief therein. Fortunately, there is already a wide array of methods, some of which with extremely long histories, from meditation, to the performance of involved rituals, to the use of entheogens, music, or other means, that have been used by various peoples at various times to bring about direct experiences of the Divine. These methods must be investigated and refined so that we might establish traditions that will act as reliable means of generating experiences of the Divine, so that even where arguments fail, the reality of the Divine cannot be denied. 

To this end, we must note the incredible, almost synchronistic, manner in which committed scholarship, together with good fortune, have brought the Gnostic, and more specifically, Mandaean origins of Christianity into focus at the same time as the successes of empirical science were beginning to erode confidence in purely rational justifications of religious belief. For here is a movement, intimately connected to the earliest Christians, which recognized the futility of trying to know God through reason and abstractions alone, and which instead emphasized the vital importance of experiencing God directly. We must not think of these ancient strands of religious thought as mere relics or curiosities only of interest for the disinterested studies of the scholar, but as crucial and, at least in the case of the Mandaeans, living parts of our spiritual heritage with which we must enter into dialogue and attempt to understand if we are to have any hope of better understanding and revitalizing our own faith. It should go without saying that entering into such dialogue with Mandaeism carries with it tremendous potential for revitalizing our understanding and practice of baptism, so that the meaning of baptism might more readily shine through and the performance of the baptism might provide a connection with God more readily.

We should begin this dialogue by highlighting the principle differences between Mandaean and Christian baptism. The greatest and most obvious difference is that, whereas Mandaeans may receive baptism many times over the course of their lives, typically, Christian baptism is offered but once in the course of one’s life. After this, perhaps the most significant difference is that Mandaeans insist that baptism consist of full immersion in a natural body of Living Water, while most Christians are perfectly happy to merely sprinkle stagnant water on the head of the initiate. That being said, these differences are, perhaps, not as hard and fast as they might appear at first glance. For instance, Mandaean communities that lack access to natural bodies of water have been known to substitute tap water for natural water in their ceremonies at times. More significant, however, is the diversity of opinion regarding these issues within Christianity itself, as such disagreements do not reflect mere material circumstances, as do the Mandaean modifications of the rite, but genuine theological differences that exist between competing schools of thought. Indeed, in the last several centuries these two major points on which Christian baptism differs from Mandaean baptism have been the source of bitter theological debates.

The first of these debates is one that never could have arisen within Mandaeism given that religion’s insistence on multiple and frequent baptisms, but which Christianity forced upon itself by insisting that baptism was a rite that should be enjoyed but a single time, for if one could only be baptized, and enjoy the corresponding washing away of one’s sins, a single time, the obvious question became when one should be baptized. The traditional answer to this question, for the vast majority of Christian history has been that Christians should be baptized as infants, the rationale being that all people have inherited original sin from Adam and that, this being the case, anyone who is to die without first receiving baptism is liable to be condemned for their original sin and unable to enter Heaven. There are others, however, who do not buy this line of argument and reject the practice of infant baptism. Some of these point to the fact that Jesus was baptized as an adult, taking this as an indication that faithful Christians ought to do the same. Some go so far as to take the lack of scriptural references to infant baptism to mean that infant baptism was unknown to ancient Christians.This, however is likely false, as the Mandaeans also believe that infant baptism is essential, holding that infants who die before baptism shall be sent to the world of the demiurge, Ptahil. While this is understood as a delightful paradise where their souls will be well cared for, such souls shall remain incapable of achieving the highest reward of Divine Union with God, making the baptism of infants a top priority for Mandaeans. Other Christians have opposed infant baptism on more practical grounds, reasoning that, because one can only have one’s sins washed away through baptism once, baptism should be put off as long as possible so that the recipient might be less likely to squander his forgiveness through some momentary moral failure. This is precisely the reason why Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, delayed his baptism until he was on his deathbed. While this is, perhaps, an understandable response to only having a single opportunity at being forgiven through baptism, it is hard not to, at the same time, see such delayed baptism as being at odds with the spirit of the sacrament. Surely a devout Christian in whom Jesus’ teachings truly lived would see early baptism, followed by a long life of carefully avoiding sin, as a worthy challenge. But this leads us to another objection to infant baptism. The infant is incapable of understanding the meaning of baptism or the moral demands that accompany it, therefore the infant is incapable of properly consenting to baptism and affirming the teachings that lie behind it. By far, the fiercest defenders of this line of reasoning have been those groups that emerged from the Anabaptist movement during the Reformation, but it has also been championed by Baptists, Pentecostals, and Methodists, amongst others. And there is certainly something intuitive in this line of thinking, for, in the first place, it seems absurd to think that a perfectly just God should eternally condemn a child for circumstances entirely outside of its control. Secondly, if baptism is meant to serve as an initiation into the community of Christians by signifying the initiate’s acceptance of Jesus’ teachings, then it would seem that the candidate for baptism, must have the mental capacity to understand Christ’s teaching and consciously affirm it, which would rule out infants from candidacy for baptism. 

The other major debate that has sprung up around baptism in recent centuries is the question of whether baptism should consist of full immersion and whether a natural body of water is to be preferred over a man made source. Those who favor baptism by full immersion in a natural body of water can very easily point to the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ baptism as proof that this was the manner in which baptism was intended to be performed, and the traditions of the Mandaeans certainly serve to confirm this. So, it would seem that scripture and the historical record are on the side of those Christians who advocate for baptism by full immersion in a natural body of water. Yet this is something of a minority view within Christianity even today and, for much of Church history, there were no serious proponents of such a view at all. So, are we to conclude that most baptisms that have been carried out throughout the history of Christendom have been false and invalid, or are such baptisms to be understood as an acceptable development of the baptismal rite stemming from legitimate theological grounds? And might we further develop the baptismal rite so as to reconcile the various camps of the controversy?

 In the first place, it is interesting to note that in many cases, the stance of a particular denomination on the issue of full immersion can be taken as a strong indication of that denomination’s stance on the issue of infant baptism. More interesting is the fact that those denominations which agree with the Mandaeans on the importance of full immersion in a natural body of water are more likely to disagree with the Mandaeans on the importance of infant baptism, preferring instead to save baptism for adulthood. Thus, it would seem that, in general, each of the major parties to the Christian baptism controversy retain some element of the original rite, while amending others. There are legitimate spiritual impulses behind each of these modifications of the rite of baptism. Let us now consider the theological justifications for these modifications, reconcile them, and point the way toward how we might further revitalize the rite of baptism. In doing so, we might also hope to bring the Christian rite of baptism into closer harmony with the rite of the Mandaeans. 

On the most basic level, we may understand Christianity’s turn away from baptism in natural bodies of water as a reflection of purely practical circumstances. As Christianity spread in urban centers, there were more and more Christians for whom the demand to be baptized in a natural body of water was impractical, therefore the religion adapted to the circumstances of its followers. That being said, in light of what we have said about Christ’s relation to Mandaeism and the God of Abraham, we may understand this development to have a deeper theological meaning. In this light, we may understand the channeling of water from natural bodies into the baptismal font as a continuation of the Abrahamic impulse to channel God’s essence into a single point. However, whereas in the Israelite religion this process could only be accomplished in a single location, the Temple in Jerusalem, through Christ it became possible for this process to be completed and for the purificatory power of God to be felt anywhere congregations of the faithful could be found. Thus Christianity’s move away from natural bodies of water to the baptismal font may be understood to signify the fact that, whereas Mandaeism was content to merely preserve their pure and ancient form of worship among a relativity small community of followers, Christianity sought to continue the Abrahamic process of harnessing the awesome power of God in order to bring about the perfection of the entire human race and institute a purer form of worship akin to that of the Mandaeans the whole world over. So, in its ultimate goals Christianity may be said to differ from Mandaeism only in its scope, however, because of this difference, Christianity would have to pass through a great number of alien and perverted forms before its pure form could be recognized and elevated to its proper place of prominence. It is only through the triumph of this pure form of religion that the forces of history might be brought into harmony and the world might be granted a reprieve from the pangs of the historical process. 

By understanding Christianity as a historical faith whose ultimate goal is the perfection of all of humanity, we may also begin to understand the impulse to offer baptism but a single time, in contrast to the repeated baptisms of Mandaeism. While righteous conduct is certainly a central tenet of Mandaeism, because Mandaeism is an ahistorical religion which emphasizes the spiritual progression of the individual soul, rather than that of humanity in general, it is of little consequence to the salvation of the righteous Mandaean if less scrupulous individuals take the possibility of having one’s sins forgiven repeatedly through baptism as permission to repeatedly engage in sin with no fear of consequences. But because the Abrahamic faiths sought to redeem all of humanity, even the most lost, such a circumstance was unacceptable and a means would have to be devised to prevent the abuse of the rite. In the religion of the Ancient Israelites, the solution was simply to make God’s forgiving power scarce by sequestering it in the Temple. But because Christianity had dispensed with the need for a Temple and water could be found anywhere, such a solution would not work for the new faith. That baptism might be offered only once, however, likely presented itself as a rather obvious solution to this problem. If one could only be baptized once, and only have their sins washed away once, the full gravity of the situation would become immediately evident to the one being baptized. This was to be the initiate’s single chance to begin life anew with a clean slate. From this day forth he must do all in his power to live a righteous life, avoid sin, and help his fellow man come to the same revelation he has. If he fails to live up to this new commitment and falls back into a life of sin, he risks forsaking the forgiveness Christ had offered him and forfeiting his chance at eternal salvation. Here we must emphasize baptism’s role as an initiation into the community of Christians, as it signifies a conscious choice to live one’s life according to the teachings of Christ and a recognition of the consequences of failing to live up to those teachings.

But when baptism is understood as an initiation which signifies the initiate’s conscious acceptance of Christ’s teachings, the controversy surrounding the baptism of infants rears its head with great force. For how could an infant, incapable of understanding Christ’s teachings, let alone the consequences of failing to uphold those teachings, consciously affirm its desire to live according to Christ’s teachings? To assert that an infant could make such a decision consciously would be the height of absurdity. Therefore, if baptism is to be administered to infants, it must be stripped of the initiatory character which justified offering baptism but a single time in the first place. This is why, beginning with the Reformation, various Christian groups have sought to revitalize the rite of baptism by only offering it to adults capable of consciously affirming their faith. This development, however, did not sit well with those Christians who remained committed to the tradition of infant baptism. In addition to concerns over the fate of the souls of unbaptized infants, proponents of infant baptism were also motivated by more worldly concerns for the social well being of their children. In particular, many found the notion that a child’s parents might be regarded as proper Christians and members of the Church, while that child might be excluded from such status, quite unsettling. And to be sure these concerns are just as legitimate as those surrounding the infant’s inability to consciously accept the teachings of Christ, for the idea that a child should be forsaken by God or deprived of the benefits of Church membership simply because that child has yet to reach the proper age or maturity to consciously affirm Christ’s message seems entirely at odds with Christ’s message of universal and unconditional love. 

Given the legitimate nature of the concerns on each side of the debate surrounding infant baptism, and the impossibility of either corner of the debate addressing all of these concerns adequately, it would seem that the only path to a satisfactory solution to these problems must lie in a synthesis of these two opposing forms of baptism. As is often the case with synthesis, we can expect the resultant product to be, not a mere amalgamation of thesis and antithesis, but something new altogether. But truly, as we read in the Book of Ecclesiastes, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun”, for perhaps the most obvious solutions to these conflicts is to open our mind to the idea that Christians ought to have the opportunity to undergo the rite of baptism more than once, thereby bringing the Christian rite of baptism into closer accord with that of our Mandaean cousins. More precisely, in order to ensure that baptism is capable of fulfilling all of the functions which Christians have traditionally hoped it would, we must devise at least two, if not three, forms of baptism to be administered at different points in the life of the Christian. In this way we might at the same time reconcile the controversy regarding whether baptism should be through full immersion in a natural body of water or if sprinkling water from a baptismal font is sufficient.

The first sort of baptism must be one that addresses the concerns of believers regarding the relationship of their children to God and the Church, therefore this must be a baptism that is offered to infants and those otherwise incapable of consciously affirming Christ’s teachings. Such baptism, therefore, must not be understood to be reflective of any conscious disposition on the part of the recipient of baptism, but must instead be reflective of the intent of those who baptize them to initiate them into the community of Christians and to guide the recipient toward the light so that they might eventually affirm Christ’s teachings themselves and partake in the full rite of baptism. It would seem that the method of sprinkling water from a baptismal font would be the most appropriate method for administering infant baptism for both practical and theological reasons. On the practical side, we must admit that there is a degree of danger in baptism by full immersion, particularly to infants who are unable to swim, therefore to reflect our concern for the safety of those we baptize, baptism by sprinkling would seem to be most appropriate for infant baptism. On the theological side, this method is to be preferred because of the baptismal font’s significance as a symbol of the Christian desire to harness God’s power in order to perfect all of humanity. In the first place, the birth of every child brings with it the hope that the child will reach a greater level of perfection than those who came before. More than this, the baptismal font serves as a reminder to the community of their duties to the child being baptized. Childhood is meant to be a time for focusing on the Good in the world and the building of a strong moral foundation in which the personality of the adult may take root and eventually bloom in its full glorious and divine individuality. Therefore it is the duty of all parents to teach their children how to identify the Good in the world and to teach them why they should always choose the Good, so that once they reach adulthood they might help to cultivate the Good and reject the bad and do their part in bringing about a more perfect world. 

If the first form of baptism we are to propose is to be an infant baptism, then the second type we will propose must be a believer’s baptism. Whereas the infant baptism is meant to signify the intent of the community’s to count the child as a part of the community and their desire to educate the child in the doctrines of the church, then the believer’s baptism must be one which signifies that the recipient has reached an adequate level of understanding of Christ’s teachings to consciously affirm those teachings and commit to a life guided by the principles of those teachings. In this way, the believer’s baptism serves to indicate that the recipient has reached the point of moral responsibility for their actions. For this reason, the believer’s baptism must emphasize the power of baptism to bring about the rebirth of the recipient with a clean moral slate, while imparting to the recipient the gravity of the task they have committed themselves to by accepting the believer’s baptism. In light of these goals, baptism by full immersion in a natural body of water presents itself as a particularly fitting method for administering the believer’s baptism. In the first place, as we have already noted, baptism by full immersion serves to replicate the condition of the baby in the womb and the condition of the Cosmic Adam immersed in the primordial waters of Heaven. Furthermore, while the danger presented by baptism by full immersion is markedly less for one who has reached an appropriate age and maturity to be a candidate for the believer’s baptism than it is for an infant, we must admit that there is no way to completely eliminate all dangers associated with baptism by full immersion. This inherent element of danger, however, while a reason for opposing full immersion in the case of infant baptism, makes full immersion a perfect method for the believer’s baptism. This is not to say that we should go out of our way to make baptism by full immersion any more dangerous than it needs to be. Every effort must be taken to ensure that believer’s baptisms do not end in tragedy. That being said, the recipient of the believer’s baptism should be made acutely aware of the possibility, however slim, that something may go wrong and bring about their death, as the full weight of moral responsibility can only be felt in the face of the fact of human mortality. Therefore, it is only through coming face to face with the possibility of their own death in the rite of baptism that the recipient might fully understand the importance of Christ’s mission and the gravity of the task they are accepting in committing themselves to the furtherance of Christ’s mission. 

The believer’s baptism, as we have just described it, stands as a particular;y potent expression of the initiatory character of baptism, as such, it presents itself as an excellent rite to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood, an element of nearly all cultures, which many anthropologists, historians of religion, and philosophers have noted is sorely missing in our own society. There are several factors that make the believer’s baptism a fitting candidate for a rite to initiate the child into adulthood. First and foremost is its function of not only bringing the initiate face to face with the possibility of their own death, but also its function of replicating the conditions of the womb and of the primordial man, as well as its ability to simulate the rebirth of the initiate, as these features are found in initiation rites throughout time and history. That the recipient of the believer’s baptism recognizes their responsibility to live a Good life, consistent with Christ’s message of Love, is further reason for the believer’s baptism to mark the transition into adulthood, as adulthood is typically understood as the time at which one becomes fully morally responsible for their actions. We may also identify great significance in the symbolism of the transition from the baptismal font of the infant baptism to the immersion in natural water of the believer’s baptism. If the baptismal font symbolizes the community’s desire to create a fitting environment for the child to focus on the Good, then full immersion symbolizes the breaking of the baptismal font and the initiate’s immersion into the full reality of life in all of its positive and negative aspects. Thus the entry into adulthood also must mark a shift of intellectual focus. The child’s focus must be on the Good for the child must learn how to identify the Good and the reasons to always choose it, but having become intimately familiar with the nature of the Good and the reasons to always favor it, the adult must come to terms with the fact that not all the world is consistent with the Good and, in their Love for all of God’s Creation, their attention must shift to how this disparity might be overcome and all of Creation might be brought into more perfect harmony with the Good. This is symbolized by the initiate’s immersion, which serves to impress upon the initiate that they are constantly surrounded by God’s essence and that God is in all things, thus all things are ultimately worthy of redemption. 

Because of the great weight of the responsibility that one accepts in undertaking the believer’s baptism and the radical shift of perspective it is meant to engender, the period leading up to and following the administration of such baptism should be one of rigorous study and instruction, as well as, perhaps other rites of an initiatory character. In addition, it might also be appropriate to mark such a momentous occasion with the administration of other rites in the course of the service in which the baptism occurs. This may include, as is often included in Mandaean baptism, anointing with oil, celebration of the eucharist, as well as new innovations.

In addition to these two principal, initiatory forms of baptism, there may also be good reason to establish a third form of baptism.Though we can understand the desire to limit the number of times one might be baptized in order to prevent people from believing that they can abuse God’s offer of forgiveness and to impress the weight of one’s commitments as a Christian, we must at the same time acknowledge that such dire attitudes toward sin and the prospect of redemption have often been the cause of great anxiety throughout the Christian world. While it is admirable to commit oneself to living a perfectly moral life, we must acknowledge that the nature of the world makes perfect adherence to such a commitment incredibly difficult. It is incredibly easy to fall short of such a goal through some minor, momentary lapse of judgment or discipline and, at times, one might find themselves in circumstances in which no choice is perfectly consistent with such a goal.  Such circumstances may at times produce anxieties concerning one’s own salvation that can stunt or retard the spiritual growth of the individual. For this reason, there is good reason to offer a rite which serves to reassure the believer that they may overcome their shortfalls by reaffirming their commitment to the Good. In addition, it is conceivable that even a person who has led a completely sinless life might nevertheless desire to experience the connection to God that they had during baptism once again, in order to help to reinvigorate their faith. For this reason this third form of baptism might be referred to as a sinner’s baptism or baptism of regeneration. As this baptism seeks to recapitulate the experience of the believer’s baptism, it would be most appropriate for this baptism to be a less elaborate version of the believer’s baptism, however accommodations may be made for the needs of the believer. The establishment of such baptismal practices may also inadvertently benefit us in other ways, for if full immersion in natural bodies of water is to become a centerpiece of religious life, this may serve as an impetus for humanity to become more ecologically conscious. 

It is my hope that in presenting the historical context of baptism, engaging in dialogue with the Mandaean and Jewish traditions, and in proposing these radical transformations of the Christian rite of baptism, I have also been able to make more clear the true meaning of the Christian religion and the purpose of Christ’s mission. Moreover, I hope that the transformations I have proposed to the rite of baptism will serve to awaken all Christians to their ultimate, Divine, Nature and to impress upon them the vital personal significance of Christ’s message, so that they might be motivated to enthusiastically accept the duties to which their religion calls them. Perhaps through vigorous study and a revitalized ritual life we might all be motivated to conduct ourselves in the world in a manner that is fitting to bring forth the Messianic Age in which we shall all finally claim our rightful status as kings, or malka.