{"id":131,"date":"2013-04-10T21:03:04","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T21:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/?page_id=131"},"modified":"2021-08-25T14:40:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-25T18:40:28","slug":"shades-of-light-and-darkness-chaldean-dualism-gnosis-and-the-islamicate-milieu","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/research-projects\/shades-of-light-and-darkness-chaldean-dualism-gnosis-and-the-islamicate-milieu\/","title":{"rendered":"Shades of Light and Darkness: Chaldean Dualism, Gnosis, and the Islamicate Milieu"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe exploration of Gnosticism (sic<\/em>) happily still offers the invigorating opportunity for those dramatic clashes of main interpretation which in more settled fields of historical inquiry have yielded to the paler and sometimes tedious wrangle about finer points.\u201d \u2013 Hans Jonas<\/p>\n

“Perhaps one day we shall even be able to demonstrate the secret thread linking one gnosis to the other.” \u2013 Henry Corbin<\/p>\n

This volume presents a series of interlocking studies whose overarching focus is a morass of sectarian groups dwelling at the margins (both culturally and geographically) of the medieval Near Eastern world, an assemblage of religious fanatics and social misfits whom Ibn al-Nad\u012bm, a remarkably industrious tenth-century archivist of Baghd\u0101d\u012b intellectual life, labeled \u2018the sects of the Chaldean dualists.\u2019\u00a0Among these \u2018sects\u2019 he included some relatively familiar but officially proscribed religious communities like those of the Manichaeans, the \u2018gnostic\u2019 Mandaeans, and the eighth and ninth-century heirs of the sixth-century Zoroastrian reformer Mazdak among an intriguing roster of smaller and more obscure religious and social movements.\u00a0Presenting and developing the verbal portraits supplied by Ibn al-Nad\u012bm in tandem with a diverse variety of Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, and Persian language religious and historical sources, the present book focuses on the many conceptual and literary connections that can be discerned between the distinctive ideas and doctrines attested among these so-called dualist or \u2018gnostic\u2019 groups and the larger Islamicate intellectual universe within which they flourished.<\/p>\n

Chapter One initiates a broad discussion of these topics by rehearsing and then critiquing and refining the primary issues surrounding the oft-debated question of the possible genealogical relationship of eastern Mediterranean \u2018gnosticism\u2019 to religions like Zoroastrianism or Judaism.\u00a0I concur with one stream of recent scholarship which views the scholarly quest for the \u2018origins\u2019 of gnosticism as a distinct religious system to be methodologically flawed and hopelessly mired in apologetic presumptions and claims. Yet I seek to progress beyond the present impasse in this debate by showing that categorical labels like \u2018gnostic\u2019 continue to have a heuristic utility in controlled discursive arenas where the parameters of study and the semantic fields of meaning can be precisely delineated.\u00a0A successful rehabilitation of the adjective \u2018gnostic\u2019 is in my view intimately linked with the advent of a book culture and the new structures of authority which this scribal technology creates, along with a dawning awareness that the religious mentalit\u00e9s<\/em> of the late antique Near East are grounded in or counterpoised to a heretofore unappreciated common koine<\/em> of scripturally (i.e., biblically) based characters, narrative episodes, and social institutions.<\/p>\n

Chapter Two collects a select group of testimonies about the \u2018Chaldean dualists\u2019 primarily (but not exclusively) from two invaluable indigenous sources which have rarely been placed in conversation with one another: (1) the Syriac language Scholion<\/em> of Theodore bar Konai, the late eighth-century Nestorian Christian bishop of the city of Kashkar in southern Mesopotamia; and (2) the aforementioned Arabic language Fihrist<\/em> of Ibn al-Nad\u012bm, an encyclopaedic compendium of literary and quasi-scientific lore compiled by its author in Baghd\u0101d near the end of the tenth century. These testimonies are arranged and analyzed under two rubrics reflecting the genetic strains of a \u2018classical gnostic\u2019 (i.e., Valentinian and\/or Sethian) and a \u2018baptizing\u2019 (i.e., Nasorean, or so-called \u2018S\u0101bian\u2019) affiliation.\u00a0Each passage drawn from these Semitic language sources is freshly rendered into English, copiously annotated upon the basis of parallels gathered from a wide range of primary and secondary sources, and firmly situated within its cultural milieu.\u00a0While heresiological literature is notoriously mimetic and often derivative in character, the accounts provided by Theodore bar Konai and Ibn al-Nad\u012bm about most of these sects feature elements which are not attested in other Christian or Muslim writings, or which at least with regard to their respective reports about the notorious heretic Mani and the religion which he founded (Manichaeism), exhibit an unusual fidelity to the contents of authentic primary sources which preserve accounts of Mani\u2019s life and teachings.\u00a0It is therefore possible that their respective testimonies about the other \u2018dualist\u2019 teachers and groups may contain some reliable snippets of information that has been gleaned from a perusal of authoritative writings or an individual interaction with and observation of contemporary dualist sympathizers.<\/p>\n

Chapter Three, entitled \u2018A World of Prophets and Messiahs,\u2019 unpacks a characteristic doctrine which functions as a marker for identifying an ideological affinity with the proscribed beliefs and\/or practices of the \u2018Chaldean dualists.\u2019\u00a0Near Eastern constructions of the phenomenon of religious prophecy and the role of the prophet within the formative and institutional structures of religious life are subjected to a close comparative examination, and I devote special attention to the emerging cyclical patterns of prophetic revelation which are depicted and predicted in diverse Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and \u2018gnostic\u2019 literatures from late antiquity until roughly the end of the \u2018Abb\u0101sid period (i.e., the middle of the thirteenth century).\u00a0Embedded in this discussion is an exploration of the role played in some of these prophetologies by non-Abrahamic figures like the Iranian prophet Zoroaster, the Indian teacher known as Buddha, or the Graeco-Egyptian figures of Hermes Trismegistus and Agathodaimon.\u00a0I also engage in a thorough inter-religious re-examination of the contested origin, meaning, and implications of the qur\u2019\u0101nic locution \u2018seal of the prophets\u2019 (Q 33:40) and its intriguing reverberations in several non-Muslim literary works.<\/p>\n

Chapter Four complements the preceding narrative about prophets and the prophetic office by directing attention to the increasing authority being granted to books or \u2018written scriptures\u2019 by the various religious communities, both large and small, who were resident in the Near East of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.\u00a0An initial case study focusing upon Manichaeism and its hypothetical candidacy for attracting notice as an ahl al-kit\u0101b<\/em>, or \u2018People of the Book,\u2019 argues that some of the commonly held assumptions about the content and scope of the canonical scriptures in Byzantine-era forms of Judaism and Christianity now require a drastic revision and reformulation.\u00a0Extensive portrayal and discussion of the scriptural polemics waged both within and across religious boundaries highlights the remainder of this chapter, and I strive to show that the kinds of questions and criticisms first raised among the adherents of a \u2018dualist\u2019 religiosity often play a catalytic role in the final textual codification of monotheistic canons of scripture like the Jewish Tanakh, the Christian Bible, and the Muslim Qur\u2019\u0101n.<\/p>\n

Chapter Five attempts to reconstruct some of the historical and social currents associated with the spread of Manichaeism\u2013probably the most famous of the medieval schools of Chaldean dualism\u2013in the pre-Islamic Near East and the initial centuries of Islamic hegemony in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia.\u00a0The contentious issue of the identity of the mysterious group which the Qur\u2019\u0101n calls \u2018S\u0101bians\u2019 (2:62; 5:69; 22:17) and which some scholars argue actually encodes \u2018Manichaeans\u2019 is re-examined in the light of the wider religious history of the region, and some attention is also devoted to the presence of Graeco-Egyptian hermetism and its characteristic ideology in the northern Mesopotamian city of Harr\u0101n.\u00a0The prevalent confusion (or deliberate conflation?) in both Syriac and Arabic language sources between \u2018Manichaeans\u2019 (zan\u0101diqa<\/em>) and \u2018S\u0101bians\u2019 is exemplified by an exposition of a gruesome ritual of human sacrifice that I have termed the \u2018Manichaean blood-libel.\u2019\u00a0Some attention is also devoted to the enigmatic religio-historical background of the religious group known as the Mandaeans (Aramaic for \u2018gnostics\u2019), and I review and reassess some recent proposals and new textual evidence that pertain to the disputed question of their possible western origin in first or second-century Syria-Palestine.<\/p>\n

Concluding the volume is Chapter Six, wherein I present a short series of thematic studies that illustrate the thoroughly interlaced nature of a small group of roughly contemporaneous writings and testimonies emanating primarily from Babylonian Jewish and \u2018Chaldean dualist\u2019 scribal circles.\u00a0Herein I explore some intriguing specimens of speculative literature concerned with cosmogonic and cosmological traditions, some shared affinities in angelology and demonology, and the evidence for a survival of certain classical \u2018gnostic\u2019 topoi<\/em> in Islamicate Jewish esoteric literature like that of the Hekhalot genre, Re\u2019uyot Yehezqel<\/em>, Sefer Yesirah<\/em>, and Sefer ha-Bahir<\/em>.\u00a0I also pursue the long overdue exegetical task of unpacking the alleged \u2018Chaldean dualist\u2019 background for the conceptual and ideological substructure of the maverick Shiite Isma\u2018\u012bl\u012b tract known as the Umm al-Kit\u0101b<\/em>, an understudied work that several previous scholars have sought to align with earlier Jewish and \u2018gnostic\u2019 forms of esoteric speculation and tradition.<\/p>\n

There are simply no present works with which the book might be compared in terms of its scope and interests.\u00a0Academic studies of ancient gnosticism typically conclude their discussion of this phenomenon with the triumph of Christian orthodoxy, a point reached well before the advent and spread of Islam.\u00a0The few works which do pursue their historical investigations of gnosticism into the medieval period concentrate on Byzantine and European movements.\u00a0The persistent existence of \u2018Chaldean dualist\u2019 sects in an Islamicate context has attracted only sporadic scholarly attention since the fundamental studies of Israel Friedlaender in a series of lengthy journal articles which are now a century old.\u00a0Those sections of Theodore bar Konai\u2019s Syriac language Scholion<\/em> that are devoted to the teachings of these sects have never even been completely translated into English.\u00a0Most analytical work of more recent vintage concentrates only on small facets of the topics outlined above and usually circumscribes its critical gaze within the boundaries of a single religious community, typically either Judaism or Islam.\u00a0Steven Wasserstrom\u2019s magnificent Between Muslim and Jew<\/em> is however a remarkable exception to this general procedure: his work showcases the types of new insights that can be gained into the Islamicate social milieu when we juxtapose and analyze the \u2018symbiosis\u2019 at work in the conceptual structures and hermeneutic interests of at least two geographically contiguous and contemporaneous religious communities during this period.\u00a0The present volume builds on and extends the foundational labors of scholars like Friedlaender and Wasserstrom by adding further \u2018ingredients\u2019 to this percolating stew of ideas, such as the discernible contributions of religiously dissident and intellectually active minority groups like those mentioned above.\u00a0As a result, we as scholars will be in a better position to understand the cultural dynamics driving the complex network of intellectual and literary interfaces which fascinated and engaged an urban intelligentsia of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians, \u2018gnostics,\u2019 and other religious outsiders in the medieval Islamic world.<\/p>\n

Tentative Outline of Contents<\/h4>\n

1. Gnosis, Judaism, and a Syro-Mesopotamian \u2018Crucible of Religions\u2019<\/p>\n

Whence gnosis?
\n\u2018Classical gnosticism\u2019 and \u2018Judaism\u2019<\/p>\n

2. A Profile of the Chaldean Dualist Milieu<\/p>\n

Valentinian and Sethian strains<\/em>
\na. Marcion in the East
\nb. Bardaisan and his school
\nc. Quq and the Quqites
\nd. Hewy\u0101y\u0113 (Ophites or Naasenes)
\ne. \u2018Audians
\n\u2018Baptizing\u2019 (Nasorean? S\u0101bian?) strains<\/em>
\nf. Mughtasila
\ng. Early life of Mani
\nh. Kantaeans, Battai, the Nerigiyya, and the D\u014dstaeans (Mandaeans)
\ni. Janjay\u016bn
\nj. Khusraw al-Az-R\u016bmaq\u0101n<\/p>\n

3. A World of Prophets and Messiahs<\/p>\n

a. Manichaean prophetology
\nb. Seth, Zoroaster, and Jesus
\nc. Zoroaster and Chaldean lore
\nd. Jewish echoes: Ab\u016b \u2018\u012as\u0101 al-Isfah\u0101n\u012b and Yudghan
\ne. Echoes among other Islamicate sectarian movements
\nf. \u2018Seal of the prophets\u2019: The significance of a trope<\/p>\n

4. Manichaeans as Ahl al-Kit\u0101b<\/em>: Studies in scriptures and scripturalism<\/p>\n

a. Scriptures and scripturalism in the Near East of late antiquity
\nb. A Manichaean counter-version of Genesis 1-6?
\nc. Two powers in heaven redux<\/em>
\nd. H\u012bw\u012b al-Balkh\u012b: Marcionite or crypto-Manichaean?<\/p>\n

5. Reconstructing the contours of Islamicate Manichaeism<\/p>\n

a. Assessing the evidence: Manichaeism in Roman Arabia
\nb. The disputed identity of the qur\u2019\u0101nic S\u0101b\u2019i\u016bn
\nc. The Manichaean \u2018blood-libel\u2019
\nd. The \u2018marshland\u2019 S\u0101b\u2019i\u016bn: Mandaeism and the West<\/p>\n

6. Dualist gnosis and Islamicate Judaism<\/p>\n

a. The demiurgic angel and the Tree of Knowledge
\nb. An origin for Barb\u0113l\u014d?
\nc. The Days\u0101niyya and Sefer Yesirah
\nd. A textual collection of dualist cosmic imagery
\ne. The Umm al-Kit\u0101b<\/em> and its sources<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe exploration of Gnosticism (sic) happily still offers the invigorating opportunity for those dramatic clashes of main interpretation which in more settled fields of historical inquiry have yielded to the paler and sometimes tedious wrangle about finer points.\u201d \u2013 Hans Jonas “Perhaps one day we shall even be able to demonstrate the secret thread linking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":454,"featured_media":0,"parent":120,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-131","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P3kl1F-27","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1781,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/131\/revisions\/1781"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/john-reeves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}