The Baptist par excellence is of course Yahya, or John. The Book of John is important to Mandaeans. It is also known as the Books of Kings. The “Kings” refers to “angels”; we seem to be in analogous mythological territory to that of Enoch and the Watchers. John himself is credited with a number of beautiful discourses. These are expressed purely in the language of Mandaean mythology and cannot be regarded as records of the utterances of the historical John, though there is clearly a conviction that the spirit of the discourses is inwardly authentic. Here are some examples of a John long lost:
Yahya proclaims in the nights and says:
Through my Father’s discourses I give light and through the praise of the Man, my creator. I have freed my soul from the world and from the works that are hateful and wrong.
The Seven [rulers/planetary spirits] put the question to me, the Dead who have not seen Life, and they said unto me; “In whose strength dost thou stand there, and with whose praise dost thou make proclamation?” Thereupon gave to them answer: I stand in the strength of my Father and with the praise of the Man, my creator. I have built no house in Judea, I have set up no throne in Jerusalem. I have not loved the wreath of the roses, nor had commerce with lovely women. I have not loved the deficiency, nor loved the cup of the drunkards. I have loved no food of the body, and envy has found no place in me. I have not forgotten my night-prayer, not forgotten the wondrous Jordan. I have not forgotten my baptizing, nor forgotten my pure sign. I have not forgotten Sunday, and the Day’s evening has not condemned me. I have not forgotten Shilmai and Nidbai, who dwell in the House of the Mighty. They clear me and let me ascend; they know no fault, no defect in me.
When Yahya said this, Life rejoiced over him greatly. The Seven sent him their greeting and the Twelve made obeisance before him. They said to him: “Of all these words, which thou hast spoken, thou hast not said a single one falsely. Delightful and fair is thy voice, and none is equal to thee. Fair is thy discourse in thy mouth and precious is thy speech, which has been bestowed upon thee. The vesture, which First Life, did give unto Adam, the Man, the vesture, which First Life, did give unto Râm, the Man, the vesture, which First Life did give unto Shurbai, the Man, the vesture First Life did give unto Shum Bar Nû [Shem, son of Noah] has He given now unto thee. He hath given it thee, O Yahya, that thou mayest ascend, and with thee may those descend. . . . The house of the defect (thy body) will be left behind in the desert. Everyone who shall be found sinless, will ascend unto thee, in the Region of Light; he who is not found sinless, will be called to account in the guardhouses.”
John appears significantly in another Mandaean text: the Diwan of the Great Revelation, Called “Inner Haran,” also known as the Haran Gawaita. From its confused text we can discern that the community of Nasoreans was persecuted in Jerusalem, for which the city was destroyed, presumably a reference to the conflagration of 70 CE. Interestingly, the account features John as “the envoy of the king of light” and he is presented as an adversary of Christ. We may speculate that we have here the distant echo of a conflict with Paul’s particular version of messianic Christocentricity. However, the text gives no ground for conviction on this score. The “Right Ginza” speaks of persecution and, not surprisingly, is full of invective against “Christ the Roman,” a reference to the Byzantine Orthodox Church that dominated the Near East following the early fourth century.
John is never presented as the community’s founder, only as a disciple of the Mandaean revelation and a “priest” of the religion. Rudolph has suggested that the Mandaeans may have taken their idea of John from other heretical Christian or Gnostic groups, though it is difficult to see why John should have risen in their estimation to “rabi” status on such a basis alone. Taking John and dismissing the Christian interpretation would have won them few friends by itself. The John texts exhibit more than ordinary respect or reverence. Rudolph is, however, convinced that the Mandaeans belong in the world of first-century baptismal sects close to the Jordan, while the Haran Guwaita refers to Nasoreans fleeing Jewish leaders in Palestine during the reign of Parthian King Ardban (Artabanus). If this was Artabanus II, then we should be talking about the conflict in which Lucius Vitellius, governor of Syria took part after 35 CE, and shortly before John’s and Jesus’s executions. According to the Mandaean text, Nasoreans made their way to the Median hill country or “inner Haran” between Harran and Nisibis in north Persian territory (Harran and Nisibis are now in Turkey). Harran was the home of the Harranian astro-magi, or “Sabians” as they would call themselves after Islamification. Mandaeans today regard these Mesopotamian “Chaldaeans” with their magic and their astrology and their Hermetic writings as their own ancestors, whose interest in learning they maintain.
After the first sojourn in “inner Haran,” [sic] Nasoreans established themselves in Baghdad and became governors and built temples. These were destroyed during the consolidation of the Zarathushtrian state under the Sassanid Shapur I (241–272 CE). The Mandaeans had contacts with Mani in the third century, but found themselves more and more forced to look inward, a process intensified after the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia in the seventh century.
The Mandaeans now face a new struggle for survival, a struggle of adaption to the modern world. It has been mooted among Mandaeans that, contrary to years of custom, conversion to Mandaeism may yet be permitted. What if a Mandaean man or woman should want to marry outside of the faith while both parents agree they want their children raised as Mandaeans? Once conversion of spouses is permitted, what then? Might we see these spiritual descendants of John the Baptist standing by our flowing and hopefully not overpolluted rivers and once more issuing to a world gone mad a sacred call that the time has come for the world to clean up its act?
Then we might wonder whether John is not long dead after all, but liveth, on our own doorstep.
FOOTNOTES
*1. [Silver coins issued by various German states from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries —Ed.]
*2. In the standard English translation, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, translated and edited by Geza Vermes, (revised edition, Penguin, London, 2004), the initial digit of Qumran Scroll abbreviations refers to the number of the Cave in which the documents were found (11 caves yielded manuscripts). “Q” always means “Qumran.” 1Q means Qumran Cave 1. “S” refers to the Hebrew “Serekh”—meaning “Rule”; in this case the “Community Rule.” “1QS” means the Community Rule found in Qumran Cave 1.
“Sa” refers to appendix “a” of the Community Rule; appendix “a” has been called the “Messianic Rule.” So the Messianic Rule’s full abbreviation is “1QSa.” “Sb” refers to appendix “b” of the “Serekh” (Community Rule); that appendix is called “Blessings.” The full abbreviation of “Blessings” is then: 1QSb.
The “Temple Scroll” (“TS”) was found in Cave 11. So its abbreviation is: 11QTS.
Other abbreviations: a small “p” means a pesher, or Bible commentary. “Psa” means Psalms Scroll part “a.” Its full abbreviation then is: 11QPsa.
“H” refers to “Hymns.”
Where the text has a title included in the abbreviation, as in the cases above, Roman numerals appearing in abbreviations after the abbreviated name or manuscript number refer to column numbers, while Arabic numerals after Roman numerals refer to line numbers of words in Hebrew or Aramaic, on the original scroll or manuscript. So the reference abbreviation, 1QS V, 13-14, means: lines 13-14 of column 5 of the Community Rule, found in Qumran Cave 1. However, many texts are identified by manuscript number alone. In such cases, Arabic numerals in abbreviations refer to that manuscript number, viz: 4Q390 means: manuscript number 390 found in Cave 4. 4Q521, for example, is the abbreviation for a text known as ‘The Messiah of Heaven and Earth’ (manuscript no. 521), a name derived by scholars from text contents.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, James. Anderson’s Constitutions of 1723. Introduction by Lionel Vibert. Reprint. Kila, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, u
ndated.
_____. Anderson’s Constitutions of 1738. Reprint. Kila, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, undated.
The Bible in Hebrew. British and Foreign Bible Society, 1907.
Blair, Harold Arthur. The Kaleidoscope of Truth: Types and Archetypes in Clement of Alexandria. Worthing, West Sussex: Churchman Publishing Ltd., 1986.
Burns, Robert. The Works of Robert Burns. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1994.
Charles, Robert Henry, trans. The Book of Enoch. London: SPCK, 1994.
Churton, Tobias. Freemasonry—The Reality. London: Lewis Masonic, 2007.
_____. The Missing Family of Jesus. London: Watkins, 2010.
Copenhaver, Brian P., trans. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Dibelius, Martin. From Tradition to Gospel. London: James Clarke & Co. Ltd., 1971.
Ehrman, Bart. D. Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Eisenman, Robert. James the Brother of Jesus. London: Watkins, 2002.
Eisenman, Robert, and Michael Wise. The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered. London: Penguin, 1992.
Eusebius. Ecclesiastical History. 2 vols. Translated by Kirsopp Lake. London: Loeb Classical Library, 1973.
Fenton, John. St. Matthew. Pelican New Testament Commentaries. London: Penguin, 1978.
Fowden, Garth. The Egyptian Hermes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
H KAINH ΔIAΘHKH [The New Testament, in Greek]. London: The British and Foreign Bible Society, 1965.
Herodotus. Translated by Canon Rawlinson. London: John Murray, 1897.
The Holy Bible. Authorized King James Version. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Hughes, David. The Star of Bethlehem Mystery. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1979.
Jöckle, Clemens. Encyclopaedia of Saints. London: Parkgate Books, 1997.
Josephus, Flavius. Antiquities of the Jews. Translated by William Whiston. Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1865.
_____. Jewish Wars. Translated by William Whiston. Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1865.
Kelly, John Norman Davidson. Early Christian Doctrines. London: A & C Black, 1977.
Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901.
Mason, Rex. The Books of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Cambridge Bible Commentary on the Old Testement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
May, Herbert G., ed. Oxford Bible Atlas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
More, St. Thomas. Utopia. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1997.
Pliny. Natural History. 2 vols. London: Loeb Classical Library, 1989.
Robinson, James M., ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984.
Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis. Translated by Wilson R. McLachlan. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.
Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars. Translated by Robert Graves. London: Folio Society, 1964.
Throckmorton, Burton H. Jr. Gospel Parallels—A Synopsis of the First Three Gospels. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1967.
Vermes, Geza, trans. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. London: Penguin, 2004.
Yamauchi, Edwin. The Stones and the Scriptures. London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973.
ALSO BY TOBIAS CHURTON
Aleister Crowley—The Biography
The Missing Family of Jesus
The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians
Freemasonry—The Reality
Kiss of Death—The True History of the Gospel of Judas
The Magus of Freemasonry—The Mysterious Life of Elias Ashmole
Gnostic Philosophy—From Ancient Persia to Modern Times
The Golden Builders—Alchemists, Rosicrucians, and the First Free Masons
The Fear of Vision (poetry)
Miraval—A Quest (a novel)
The Gnostics
Why I Am Still an Anglican (ed.)
The Babylon Gene (under the name Alex Churton)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tobias Churton is a filmmaker and the founding editor of the magazine Freemasonry Today. He studied theology at Oxford University and created the award-winning documentary series and accompanying book The Gnostics, as well as several other films on Christian doctrine, mysticism, and magical folklore. He lives in England.
ABOUT INNER TRADITIONS • BEAR & COMPANY
Founded in 1975, Inner Traditions is a leading publisher of books on indigenous cultures, perennial philosophy, visionary art, spiritual traditions of the East and West, sexuality, holistic health and healing, self-development, as well as recordings of ethnic music and accompaniments for meditation.
In July 2000, Bear & Company joined with Inner Traditions and moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico, where it was founded in 1980, to Rochester, Vermont. Together Inner Traditions • Bear & Company have eleven imprints: Inner Traditions, Bear & Company, Healing Arts Press, Destiny Books, Park Street Press, Bindu Books, Bear Cub Books, Destiny Recordings, Destiny Audio Editions, Inner Traditions en Español, and Inner Traditions India.
For more information or to browse through our more than one thousand titles in print and ebook formats, visit www.InnerTraditions.com.
Become a part of the Inner Traditions community to receive special offers and members-only discounts.
BOOKS OF RELATED INTEREST
Gnostic Philosophy
From Ancient Persia to Modern Times
by Tobias Churton
The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians
The World’s Most Mysterious Secret Society
by Tobias Churton
The Magus of Freemasonry
The Mysterious Life of Elias Ashmole—Scientist, Alchemist, and Founder of the Royal Society
by Tobias Churton
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
by Jean-Yves Leloup
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus
by Jean-Yves Leloup
Founding Fathers, Secret Societies
Freemasons, Illuminati, Rosicrucians, and the Decoding of the Great Seal
by Robert Hieronimus, Ph.D. with Laura Cortner
The Temple of Solomon
From Ancient Israel to Secret Societies
by James Wasserman
An Illustrated History of the Knights Templar
by James Wasserman
INNER TRADITIONS • BEAR & COMPANY
P.O. Box 388
Rochester, VT 05767
1-800-246-8648
www.InnerTraditions.com
Or contact your local bookseller
Inner Traditions
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
www.InnerTraditions.com
Copyright © 2012 by Tobias Churton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Churton, Tobias, 1960–
The mysteries of John the Baptist : his legacy in gnosticism, paganism, and freemasonry / Tobias Churton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
print ISBN: 978-1-59477-474-4
ebook ISBN: 978-1-59477-505-5
1. John, the Baptist, Saint. I. Title.
BS2456.C48 2012
232.9'4—dc23
2012013498
To send correspondence to the author of this book, mail a first-class letter to the author c/o Inner Traditions • Bear & Company, One Park Street, Rochester, VT 05767, and we will forward the communication or visit the author’s website at www.tobiaschurton.com.
Electronic edition produced by
&nbs
p; www.antrikexpress.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: The Mystery of John the Baptist
JOHN AS DIVINE MERCURY
Chapter 2: St. John’s Men and the Passion of the Corn
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST AS LORD OF THE FEAST
THE KNIGHTS HOSPITALLER
HERALD OF THE HARVEST
Chapter 3: John the Baptist in History and Tradition
JOSEPHUS
THE NATURE OF NEW TESTAMENT EVIDENCE
Chapter 4: John as Herald in Christian Scripture
MATTHEW’S GOSPEL
LUKE
THE ESSENES AND JOHN
Chapter 5: John and John
Chapter 6: Why Must John Die?
FROM JOHN’S EXECUTION TO JESUS’S CRUCIFIXION
THE REAL DATE OF JESUS’S CRUCIFIXION
Chapter 7: John and Jesus
JOHN AS SON OF MAN
THE REED, THE PROPHET, THE MAN IN FINE RAIMENT
JOHN AND JESUS
Chapter 8: The Great Prophecies
THE NAZARENES
THE FOUNT OF LIVING WATERS AND THE HIDDEN CORRUPTERS OF EARTH
STANDING THE TRIAL
Chapter 9: The Third Day
SECRET ISRAEL
Chapter 10: A Reed Shaken in the Wind
PROBLEM PAUL
THE PILLARS OF ENOCH
Chapter 11: St. John’s Men Today
BAPHOMET
THE MANDAEANS
Footnotes
Bibliography
The Mysteries of John the Baptist Page 28
