By the Living Water

At dawn one morning last week, while most of Baghdad was still asleep, 55-year-old Abdul Rahman, a silversmith, padded down to the Tigris and squatted on the eastern bank. Covering his head with his kaffiyeh, he recited the prayer: "In the name of the Great Life, healing and purity are thine, my Father, their Father, Great Yardna of living water." Then he began his ablutions. First he washed his hands and face and cleaned out his ears, snuffed water from his cupped palm into his nostrils three times, washed his loins, bathed his knees and legs three times, dabbled all ten fingers in the river, and finished by dipping his right foot twice and his left foot once.

Then Abdul Rahman turned to face the day with gladness, for it was Qam Arya, a lucky month for the people of his sect, the Mandaeans. It was also the beginning of summer, for the Mandaeans have never corrected their twelve-month calendar through the centuries, and their seasons have lost track of the sun.

Underground for Survival. The Mandaeans, markedly taller and fairer than the swarthy Arabs of Iraq, sometimes identify themselves in their broken English as "John Baptist Christians." But the suggestion that they are some kind of primitive Christian sect with a special reverence for John the Baptist is false--and deliberately so. The Mandaeans are neither Moslems, nor Jews, nor Christians.

They regard John the Baptist as a major prophet, but look upon Jesus as a heretic who distorted the true Word.

They have long been known in the Middle Eastern world--the Koran lists them with the Christians and Jews as worthy of special consideration. And they have survived the bloody centuries partly because of their exclusive faith and their horror of conflict, partly by going underground. "If persecuted," instructs a Mandaean text, "say, 'We belong to you.' But do not confess him in your hearts, or deny the voice of your Master, the high King of Light." The Christian Demons. Together with the King of Light, the Mandaeans worship the Great Life, which takes the form of the "living water" or yardna--water flowing in a natural stream. As John baptized in the River Jordan, so the Mandaeans baptize by total immersion, and almost invariably live beside the banks of streams.

They accuse the baptized Jesus of heresy for teaching that baptism may be performed with water that is not flowing.

Nonetheless, they anticipate his return to destroy all religions except the Mandaean.

These pre-Christian Baptists are all but extinct today; barely 5,000 of them live on in Iraq, and in each generation there are fewer and fewer priests who can become bishops. Reason: a new prelate traditionally should be consecrated in the presence of a dying man who is to carry the bishop's words to paradise.

For the present, the Mandaeans do their best to perform their daily water rituals and to exorcise evil spirits. Mandaean demons are bad enough, but Moslem or Christian ones are worse. If after an exorcism, an evil spirit departs on time he is known for a Mandaean--but if he hangs on after the limit, he is probably Moslem or Christian, and the possessed victim is in for a rough time.

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