Talk:Robert Eisenman
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[edit] John the Baptist
Literally almost every source I have ever seen on the Mandeans have explicitly stated that the Mandeans only ever referred to John the Baptist because by doing so they could get the Muslims to basically think of them as "People of the Book" and leave them alone. These sources go on to say that John the Baptist was chosen as their "link" to Judeo-Christianity because of his strong connection to baptism, a ritual the Mandaeans use for the remission of sins. This would seem to cast the entire assumption that the Mandeans were "making claims" about Jesus into at best a very dubious light, as such claims were seemingly only ever made to, as it were, keep the Muslims off their backs. In fact, the books I have seen have uniformally indicated that the Mandeans originated from a clearly non-Jewish, non-Christian setting, Gnostic Lebanon/Jordan to be exact, and that Christianity is in fact almost completely contrary to almost their entire belief system. I believe that this calls into very great question whether the statements made in the article as it currently stands should be presented in the way they are, as they seem to indicate that there was a connection between the Mandaeans and Judeo-Christianity, when almost literally every source I have ever seen seems to specifically, explicitly denounce the very possibility of there existing anything but a very late, opportunistic connection between the two, and that based solely on the advantages they received as basically fraudulently passing themselves of as "people of the book". John Carter 20:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Mandaeans
I dispute the accuracy of this section, and since no reference has been provided, I'm removing the following material to the talk page for discussion:
"for his radical re-interpretation of the early Christian community as one imitating the Nasoraeans, who still exist today as the priests (Nasuraiya)of the Mandaeans. His theory that John the Baptist did not recognise or authorise the mission of Jesus[citation needed] backs up the history of the Mandaeans."
This statement is completely false. Eisenman does not say the early Christian community imitated the Nasoraeans, nor does he link the Nasoraeans with the Mandaeans. This is some editor's conflation or OR synthesis. What Eisenman does do repeatedly in "James the Brother of Jesus" is link early Christianity, which he sees as synonymous with the Essenes and Nazoraeans, with Shia Islam. The Naassenes were a second century gnostic group that revered the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a symbol of wisdom. Nahash (Na'as) = serpent in Hebrew. Ovadyah (talk) 15:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
