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:
John A. Tvedtnes, The
Book of Mormon and Other Hidden Book: “Out of Darkness Unto Light”
