Hibil set the sons of Ruha as sun and moon and planets in the sky. When man was made these constructed the body of Adam, while Hibil brought out a soul from the treasury of life and put it into Adam's body (GR 172).
No satisfactory derivation for the names Abatur and Ptahil has yet been found. (See Pallis: Mandaean Studies, pp. 111-114.) Abathur has become the judge and "weigher" of Mandaean souls (see esp. .113 70-72), but this does not seem to have been his original function.
Manda corresponds exactly to the Syriac madd, which Bardai san used for the Divine element in man (Mitchell ii. 158), dis tinct from knowledge, and corresponding to something between "reason" and "revelation." The actual phrase mad`d d'hayye oc curs in the Syriac Bible in Luke i. 77 aurripLas).
The Mandaean hostility to Eshu mshiha (Syr. Isho` mshihd, Jesus Christ) is hostility to the fully developed post-Nicene Church. In several places "Christ" is actually called "the Byzan tine" (Rumaya), and we read that the disciples of this Christ be come "Christians," and turn into monks and nuns who have no children and who keep fasts and never wear white clothes like the Mandaeans (GR 55). The Holy Spirit of Catholic theology is identified by the Mandaeans with the evil Ruha. The peculiar Mandaean terminology sometimes makes the ordinary use of fa miliar terms impossible and other words have to be substituted. Thus Ruha to the Mandaeans means exclusively the evil spirit, so that they never use it, as all other Aramaic dialects do, for "wind," but use ziha (lit. "storm") instead. Similarly Alaha means to them "false god," so for "true God" they speak of "the Great Mana" or other titles. Now we have seen that "Jesus Christ" was to the Mandaeans only the Pseudo-messiah wor shipped by the official Christians: the Mandaean name for the true Jesus was Anush (or Enush). In GR 29 and 53 we read that Anush-Utra comes into the world in the days of Piliatus (or Pal tus, i.e., Pilate) the king of the world; he heals the sick, makes the blind to see, cleanses the lepers, etc. (cf. Luke vii. 22). (Utra [Syr. uthra, lit. "wealth," "treasure"] is the Mandaean term for a good spirit, so that Anush-Utra might almost be rendered "St. Enosh.") With the power of the high King of Light he raises
the dead. Those who believe in him among the Jews he teaches that there is truth and error, life and death, light and darkness and burning fire. At his word 36o (or 365) prophets go out of Jerusalem and preach : then Anush ascends to the Mandaean paradise (Mshune-Kushta, "the abode of Truth") and will not be seen again by mankind till the end comes. Kushta, lit. "truth," is much used by Mandaeans for "true religion" generally; "to give Kushta" means to shake hands (always the right hand), a ceremony which takes the place of the laying on of hands in Catholic ritual. (Note that this word is spelt by Mandaeans with k not k.) Before he ascended, however, he will have unmasked the Deceiver, the Byzantine Christ, who will confess that he is only Hermes-Mercury (Nbo), one of the deceiving Seven Planets; he will be seized by the Jews and crucified (GR 58).
What more or less orthodox Christians thought of the Man daeans we learn from the Scholion of Theodore bar Konai ( ?Ke wani=Saturninus) who compiled a sort of catalogue of heretics in A.D. 792. He treats them as a comparatively recent sect, founded by one Ado, a beggar (i.e., a wandering fakir) from Adia bene, and says that their doctrine is borrowed from the Marcion ites, from the Manichees and from the Kantaeans (or Knathae ans). Of these last, who are only known from Theodore himself, the one significant fact handed down is that they professed to derive their teaching from Abel, as in part the Mandaeans do.
In polemic against Catholic Christianity some Mandaean writ ers must have studied the Bible. In all cases it is the Syriac Bible (the Peshitta) of which they shos. knowledge. Their general grasp of Bible history and geography is extremely slight and they do not clearly distinguish the Jews from the Church Christians. (See esp. Pallis: Mandaean Studies, p. 141.) The evidence which has from time to time been brought forward to show inde pendent Mandaean knowledge of Jewish traditions or literature breaks down on closer investigation.