Ethnoreligion

Mandaeans, an ethno-religious group mostly living in Iraq and Iran, are bearers of a Gnostic tradition based on the scriptures written in Mandaic. As a small minority living under the threat of cultural extinction and ethnocide, Mandaeans have developed highly elaborated purification rites as the source of their group identity. The concern for group integrity is well encoded in these rituals that symbolically and practically maintain the boundaries of group identity. In a mutual relation, the rituals and Mandaean world-view comprise a cultural system characteristic of Mandaean religion. However, political instability and wars have led to the emigration of a substantive number of the Mandaeans and the formation of diasporas in Australia, Europe and North America. The Mandaean dispersion is a turning point of the people's history. It liquefies the boundaries of group identity and puts the Mandaean identity challenge in an unprecedented paradigm. Simultaneously, it is bringing about further development in their religious system in terms of accommodation, rationalization and exegeses. These changes can be summarized as pluralism and secularization in the community, especially in the diasporas and an incipient move from mythos towards logos in the religious system.

The Mandaeans are the members of an ethno-religious group living in Iran and Iraq. The religion of the Mandaeans is a written tradition and is the main reference of their identity. As a small endogamous group under the hegemony of the non-Mandaeans and exposed to epidemics, they always have been under the threat of cultural extinction. Therefore, group identity protection has become one of their major concerns, which is reflected in their religious practice. The Mandaeans practice a doctrinal ritualistic religion with recurrence theme of purity. The doctrinal rituals allow them to transmit a large number of religious codes through generations and to re-establish their identity. Simultaneously, the obsession with bodily purity symbolically shows their preoccupation with the unity and integrity of the threatened group boundaries. Since recent decades the Mandaeans' homeland in Iran and Iraq has undergone dramatic socio-political changes caused by the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the first and second Persian Gulf Wars and their entailed instabilities. These circumstances led to the emigration of many Mandaeans to other countries and formation of Mandaean diasporas around the world. These new social conditions are making a crucial effect on the Mandaeans' religious system and identity policy. The article is based on a long-term ethnographic study on the Mandaeans of Iran.

The paper addresses the Mandaeans' long lasting identity challenge as a small ethno-religious group living under the threat of cultural extinction. The Mandaeans are followers of an ancient gnostic tradion and they have been living in Mesopotamia for several centuries. Because of their unkown and partly esoteric relgion, they have always been the subject of the religious intolerance of thier neghbouring people. This have made the identity concern one of the main social concerns of the Mandaeans. This concern, in turn, reflects in the religious system of the Mandaeans.
The Mandaeans have developed elaborated rituals with the repetitive theme of body purification. Babtism, ablutions and food taboos show this carful concern about purity. This obsession with body purification symbolically expresses the Mandaeans' anxious care about the purification of the group body.
In last decades, because of the wars and social and plitical unrests in their homeland, the Mandaeans have started to emigrate from their countries to Europe, North America and Australia. Fromation of scattered diaspora and living in mulitcultural scular societies can bring about dramatic changes in the Mandaeans religious practice and cosmology. There are some signs that show this changes have been started.

German-speaking Protestant theology was caught in a real dilemma through its inquiry into the historical Jesus, since from its very beginnings with Reimarus it had to grapple with the fact that Jesus was a Jew in more than a casual sense. This suited neither orthodox dogma nor modern Protestant theology’s arrangement with historical criticism. In order to maintain theological control, scholars described a tension between Jesus’ “religion” and his “ethnicity” (or “nationality”). Jesus was construed as a figure whose religion conflicted with or transcended his (Jewish) ethnicity or nationality, which were understood as merely external or formal facts. Further, when, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the non-dissoluble cohesion of Jesus’ ancient ethno-religious Jewish identity had to be acknowledged, the pattern shifted to (Christian) transethnic religion versus (Jewish) ethno-religion (including the historical Jesus). In the quest for the historical Jesus, the modern concept of “religion” was conceived as a separate sphere; a modern conception of individualism allowed scholars to construe a historical Jesus along lines in which the nature of his “religion” could be distinguished or even separated from his “ethnicity.” Examples include the “de-nationalizing” of Jesus’ religion in the First Quest (Herder, Baur) and his “de-Christianizing” in the so- called No Quest (Wellhausen, Bultmann), which paved the way for the return of the Life-of-Jesus-theology in the New or Second Quest (Käse- mann). Although the Third Quest locates the Jesus movement clearly within Judaism, a number of scholars have recently questioned whether Jesus’ Judaism is really acknowledged everywhere.

Contemporary Anthropology of Religion is proudly sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. We seek
proposals for ethnographic monographs and edited volumes that contribute broadly to the anthropological study of religious
experience, cultures and practice. To this end, we are especially keen for manuscripts that combine vivid ethnography with
strong and innovative theoretical orientations. Examples might include new approaches to ritual theory and practice;
explorations of religious (inter)subjectivities; ethnographies of vernacular religion and modes of secularity; and
ethnographies that challenge the boundaries between text, cosmology and social practice.
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At first sight, the Syriac Orthodox community in Bethlehem appears to be well-described as “ethno-religious”: while many Palestinian siryān emphasise their connection to an ancient Aramean ethnos, this identification also usually entails some relationship to the Syriac Orthodox Church. However, “religion” (ethno or otherwise) is arguably too overburdened a category to tell us much about how being siryāni in Bethlehem compares to being something else. I propose, instead, that thinking of Syrian self-articulation as a kind of ecclesiology, a tradition of incarnating a body (specifically Christ’s), draws attention to the creative, situated and dialogic process of being and becoming siryāni, while problematising categories with which social scientists customarily think about groups. Unlike ethno-religion, ecclesiology captures the fraught pursuit of redeemed sociality, connecting Bethlehem’s destabilized local present to universal and eternal hope. In Bethlehem, what’s more, these dialo...

This article argues that German-speaking Protestant theology was caught in a real dilemma through its inquiry into the historical Jesus, since from its very beginnings with Reimarus, it had to grapple with the fact that Jesus was a Jew in more than a casual sense. This suited neither orthodox dogma nor modern Protestant theology’s arrangement with historical criticism. To exercise theological control, a tension was therefore established between Jesus’ “religion” and his “ethnicity” (or “nationality”), albeit in two characteristic and distinct manners. First, Jesus was construed as a figure whose religion conflicted with or transcended his (Jewish) ethnicity or nationality, rendering negligible the latter aspect of his identity as a merely external or formal fact. Second, however, when, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the non-dissoluble cohesion of Jesus’ ancient ethnoreligious Jewish identity had to be acknowledged, the pattern shifted to (Christian) transethnic religion versus (Jewish) ethnoreligion (including the historical Jesus). Starting with the present scholarly discussions about the problem of applying modern categories like “ethnicity,” “ethnoreligion,” “nationality,” and “religion” to ancient history, I argue that in the quest for the historical Jesus, the modern concept of “religion” was conceived as a separate sphere from the outset. Only a modern concept of individualism was able to construe a historical Jesus along lines in which the nature of his “religion” could be distinguished or even separated from his “ethnicity.”

ABSTRACT
The Mandaeans are members of an ethno-religion living in Iran and Iraq. They are bearers of a Gnostic tradition that makes their main identity reference. Being a small, local, endogamous group under non-Mandaeans hegemony, they have always been under the threat of cultural extinction. The concern for group identity is well reflected in the Mandaeans’ religiosity. The Mandaeans practice a doctrinal ritualistic religion with the recurrent theme of purity. This doctrinal ritualistic religion allows them to transmit complex networks of religious codes through generations and establish and re-establish the Mandaean identity. Simultaneously, the obsession with bodily purity symbolically shows their preoccupation with the unity and integrity of the threatened group boundaries. During last decades, the Mandaeans’ homeland has gone under dramatic political and social changes, that have led to the Mandaeans’ emigration and formation of the Mandaeans diasporas all around the world. These new social conditions are making an unprecedented effect on the Mandaeans’ mode of religious practice and could be regarded as a turning point in the Mandaeans’ historical experience.

KEY WORDS:
Purity, Cosmology, Ritual, Identity, Threat