Thursday, April 16, 2020

The Book of John and Writings on Metal Plates


Commenting on her encounter with a Mandaean Sheikh, Jourunn Jacobsen Buckley wrote:

We entered the enclosed courtyard of the house of Sheikh Abdullah Khaffagi, the head of Mandaeans of Iran. I spotted cows tethered off to one side. A strikingly beautiful woman, veil-less, with high cheekbones, blue eyes, and dark blonde hair, came across the courtyard and smiled at us. Enchanted by her, Hawa paid her a compliment, laughed and clapped her hands. We were led up the stairs by a young man, one of the priest’s grandsons, as I recall. He warned us not to touch the old man, who must remain pure. Glasses of Coca-Cola were brought, and we sat down to wait in the upstairs room. Sheikh Abdullah appeared in the doorway, with a slight smile and twinkling keen blue eyes. He was about ninety-five, bent over approximately the same number of degrees, white bearded, clad entirely in white, with white cloth slippers (no animal hide must touch him). Living separately from his family, he cooked his own food. Now we smiled and bowed, but we did not stretch out our hands to him.

The sheikh sat down on a cushion on the floor, his covered knees almost up to his ears. We conversed for an hour, he showed us letters from European scholars (in Mandaic) and told us that he had met Lady Drower many times and had visited Professor Rudolf Macuch in Tehran. I let him know that I had met Lady Drower once, a few years earlier, when she was ninety-one, less than a year before she passed away

The priest fetched several Mandaean books and scrolls to show us, all in their individual white cloth bags. He also gave me a paper copy of the imprint on the Mandaean skandola, the ritual iron ring with an iron chain. This is used to seal newborn babies on their navels, and it also seals graves. Sheikh Abdullah showed us his ring and explained that the four animals depicted on the seal—the lion, the wasp, the scorpion, and the encircling snake—were “the elements of life.”

Then he began to tug at something under his cushion. We helped him pull out a large cloth bag, like the others, but this one was heavy as a rock. It was an archetypal book, The Book of John, made entirely of lead, inscribed with stylus on lead pages bound together like a regular book. No wonder it was heavy. Its edges were frayed and worn. We leafed through it reverently. C. G. Jung might have fantasized about a tome like this. There is probably not its like in the world. Sheikh Abdullah told us that the book was 2,053 years old and written by John the Baptist himself. There and then, it seemed a likely view (Jourunn Jacobsen Buckley, The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern Peoples [American Academy of Religion The Religions Series; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002], viii-ix, emphasis in bold added; my thanks to my friend Allen Hansen for making me aware of this book)

One can find a copy of the original text language of The Book of John here. What is striking is that this book is not a short text, but over 200 pages in length, showing that the Book of Mormon is not unique in that it is a lengthy volume that was written on metal plates.

For more on writing on metal plates (and much more, such as use of stone boxes, etc), see: