Mandeans Strike Back
Hot on the heels of Forrest Gander’s appreciation of Eliot Weinberger’s An Elemental Thing comes this letter* in the new Harper’s:
Eliot Weinberger’s essay “Mandaeans,” which appeared in the May 2007 issue of Harper’s Magazine, contains the following incorrect statements that vilify Mandaeans:
They dislike the Jews, whom they call “an evil nation” founded by the renegade Mandaeans Abraham and Moses, a people “who do not agree on a single utterance,” who circumcise with swords and sprinkle the blood on themselves, whose husbands abandon their wives and lie down with each other.
They say the Christians have secret rites in which they worship a female donkey with three legs.
They dislike the Zoroastrians, who sleep with their mothers and sisters and eat the dead, who take vows of silence and abort their babies.
These allegations are without foundation. Mandaeans hold no such views. Mandaeans do not entertain any hostility toward Jews, Christians, or Zoroastrians. Mandaeans have nothing but goodwill toward Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.
Nor is it correct to say, as Weinberger does, that “each year they have a ceremony to honor the Egyptians who drowned when the Red Sea closed over them as they pursued Moses and the Jews.” This statement implies that Mandaeans strongly sympathize with a tyrant who was pursuing people who were escaping from slavery. Mandaeans do not hold such views. In fact, the annual commemoration of Nuh relates to those who drowned in Noah’s flood.
Some followers of John the Baptist
via the Internet
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