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{"id":8304,"date":"2012-07-09T10:40:42","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T14:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=8304"},"modified":"2012-07-09T10:40:42","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T14:40:42","slug":"anush-uthra-vs-jesus-smackdown-in-jerusalem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/07\/anush-uthra-vs-jesus-smackdown-in-jerusalem.html","title":{"rendered":"Anush-Uthra vs. Jesus: Smackdown in Jerusalem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ I just posted another draft of a chapter from the Mandaean Book of John. In this chapter, chapter 76<\/a>, there are a few places where the meaning of the text is not entirely clear (do I need to mention this when it is true of pretty much every section of every Mandaic text?). But the gist is that Anush-Uthra did works in Jerusalem that Christians claim Jesus did. This is blatantly polemical, and so it would obviously be a mistake to view this as in any sense pre-Christian, as opposed to being a late response to Christian claims.<\/p>\n

I used \u201cChrist\u201d in my English translation because the Aramaic\/Mandaic word m\u0161iha<\/em> in the text seems to be used as a way of designating Jesus, almost as a name, rather than in its more general meaning of \u201canointed one.\u201d<\/p>\n

An \u201cUthra\u201d is a spirit being \u2013 an Aeon or angel \u2013 but because both those terms are loaded from other traditions, it seemed best not to render the term using either of those words. We may change our minds about that, and some of you may remember me blogging about this very translation issue before<\/a>. Anush corresponds to the name Enosh or perhaps Enoch. Whether and to what extent the Mandaeans were interacting with other strands of thought about Enoch in other literature will require a detailed study of its own by someone at some point. There is so much work to be done on the Mandaean literature, and its relationship to the literature of other religious traditions to which theirs is related and with which the Mandaeans interacted.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"