Ginza Rba
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The Ginza Rba or Ginza Rabba (Hebrew-script Aramaic Modern Mandaic: גינזא רבא Ginzā Rabbā; literally "The Great Treasure") or Siddra Rabba, "The Great Book" (rabba means great") is the largest of the many holy scriptures of the Mandaean religion, which reveres John the Baptist but rejects Jesus of Nazareth. It is also referred to as The Book of Adam.
Contents |
[edit] Language, dating and authorship
The language used is Mandaic, a dialect of Eastern Aramaic written in Mandaic script (Parthian chancellory script), similar to Syriac script. Authorship is unknown and dating is placed in the 2nd-3rd centuries CE.[1]
[edit] Structure
The Ginza Rba is divided into two parts - the Right Ginza, containing 18 books, and the Left Ginza, containing 3 books.
The book, still mainly hand written, traditionally contains the Right Ginza on one side, and, when turned upside-down and back to front, contains the Left Ginza, this latter also called "The Book of the Dead." The Right Ginza part of the Ginza Rba contains sections dealing with theology, creation, ethics, historical, and mythical narratives; its six colophons reveal that it was last redacted in the early Islamic Era. The Left Ginza section of Ginza Rba deals with man's soul in the after life; its colophon reveals that it was redacted for the last time hundreds of years before the Islamic Era.
[edit] Contents summary
[edit] The Right Ginza
- Books 1 & 2, prose texts, contain two versions of a very stylized history of creation and of Mandaeism.
- Book 3 is a reconstructed poem also dealing with creation themes but concentrating more on the origin of evil.
- Book 4 is a small text usually ignored.
- Book 5 contains five separate prose texts, the first and largest dealing with a journey to the Underworld.
- Book 6 deals with a "heavenly journey" theme.
- Book 7 consists of John the Baptist's words.
- Book 8 deals briefly with creation and evil.
- Book 9 deals with other religions and the nature of the Godhead.
- Book 10 deals with the sacrament.
- Book 11 deals with Nag Hammadi-type themes and is the most difficult text.
- Book 12 mixes poetry and prose and provides a basic introduction to Mandaean beliefs.
- Book 13 comprises a short interim conclusion to what seems to be the original version of the Ginza.
- Book 14, a prose text, deals with material from book 3.
- Book 15 is a collection of 21 poems (one unpublished).
- Book 16 contains 10 or 11 mostly shorter poems, many compartively simple and straightforward.
- Book 17 contains 2 rather obscure but colorful poems.
- Book 18 is history-of-the-world plus an apocalypse
[edit] The Left Ginza
- Book 1 is a four-part prose text on the salvation process, beginning with the ascension to heaven of Seth, in advance of his father Adam (compare Sethian Gnosticism).
- Book 2, poetic, comprises 28 hymns.
- Book 3, poetic, comprises 62 hymns. The last two books, especially the third, seem to have a more rudimentary doctrinal content than found in the Right Ginza.
[edit] Editions
Presently, there are two published Mandaic-language editions of the Ginza published by Mandaeans themselves. Readers of Aramaic, can read the original books, which have been published and are freely accessible in university research libraries, and in online archives[specify].
Important sources for scholars today who cannot read Mandaean Aramaic, are still the German translations; notably that by Mark Lidzbarski (1869-1928): "Der Ginza oder das grosse Buch der Mandaer" published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1925. He translated an edition of the Ginza by Petermann (1860s) which in turn relied upon four different Ginzas; Lidzbarski was also able to include some material from a fifth Ginza, that at Leiden, Holland.
The first full English translation of the Ginza Rba was made by author Carlos Gelbert, The Great Treasure Living Water Books (2011) Sydney, Australia.
[edit] External links
- ^ The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran: Their Cults, Customs, Magic Page 20 E. S. Drower, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley - 2002 "Their authorship and the date at which each fragment, possibly originally memorized, was committed to writing is even more problematic. Even such a book as the Ginza Rba cannot be regarded as homogeneous, for it is a collection of "
