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Mendæans
(Gr.)
Also called Sabians, and St. John Christians. The latter is absurd, since, according to all accounts, and even their own, they have nothing at all to do with Christianity, which they abominate. The modern sect of the Mendæans is widely scattered over Asia Minor and elsewhere, and is rightly believed by several Orientalists to be a direct surviving relic of the Gnostics. For as explained in the Dictionnaire des Apocryphes by the Abbé Migrie (art. “Le Code Nazaréan” vulgaire‐ment appele “Livre d’Adam”), the Mendæans (written in French Mandaїtes, which name they pronounce as Mandai) “properly signifies science, knowledge or Gnosis. Thus it is the equivalent of Gnostics” (loc. cit. note p. 3). As the above cited work shows, although many travellers have spoken of a sect whose followers are variously named Sabians, St. John’s Christians and Mendæans, and who are scattered around Schat‐Etarab at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates (principally at Bassorah, Hoveїza, Korna, etc.), it was Norberg who was the first to point out a tribe belonging to the same sect established in Syria. And they are the most interesting of all. This tribe, some 14,000 or 15,000 in number, lives at a day’s march east of Mount Lebanon, principally at Elmerkah, (Lata‐Kieh). They call themselves indifferently Nazarenes and Galileans, as they originally come to Syria from Galilee. They claim that their religion is the same as that of St. John the Baptist, and that it has not changed one bit since his day. On festival days they clothe them selves in camel’s skins, sleep on camel’s skins, and eat locusts and honey as did their “Father, St. John the Baptist”. Yet they call Jesus Christ an impostor, a false Messiah, and Nebso (or the planet Mercury in its evil side), and show him as a production of the Spirit of the “seven badly‐ disposed stellars” (or planets). See Codex Nazaræus, which is their Scripture (TG).
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Shortly: Also called Sabians, and St. John Christians. The latter is absurd, since, according to all acco...