THE MANDAEANS ARE GETTING SOME PRESS TOO, which is also a good thing.

Iraq's Baptist Mandaeans are survivors, but ranks are thinning (Kansas City Star)

BY TOD ROBBERSON

The Dallas Morning News

BAGHDAD, Iraq - (KRT) - They call themselves the original Baptists, but any similarities to Americans of that description pretty much end with the waterborne ritual they share.

Iraq's Baptists, known as the Sabaean Mandaeans, don't gather in suburban megachurches equipped with TV screens and state-of-the-art sound systems. Their Baghdad headquarters is a tiny temple whose cash-strapped congregation doesn't own so much as a bullhorn.

Preaching the Gospel and winning converts are not among their strong suits. For one thing, while some Mandaeans have studied the Bible, they don't regard it as their holy book. For another, these Baptists don't consider themselves Christians. Their faith, with influences from Judaism, Gnosticism, pre-Christian religions, Christianity and Islam, predates Christianity, possibly by centuries, if not millennia.

[...]

The word Sabaean comes from the Aramaic-Mandic word saba, or "immersed in water," according to the group's Web site, www.mandaeans.org. Mandaean comes from the word menda, or "knowledge."

"We are one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world. Some say we are the oldest," Sheikh Jabbar Helu, the most senior Mandaean cleric, who wears a long gray beard, flowing robes and is a fluent speaker of Aramaic, the language of Jesus and John the Baptist. "Our religious texts date to Seth, son of the prophet Adam. Our last prophet was John the Baptist."

[...]

Unlike Christians, for whom baptism is typically a once-in-a-lifetime event, Mandaeans may be baptized thousands of times as a purifying rite, Sheikh Jabbar said.

Couples, for example, will be baptized once after their engagement, again before the wedding ceremony and yet again after the marriage is consummated.

Pallbearers must be baptized before and after carrying a coffin. Anyone who comes into contact with a "sinner," or nonbeliever, must be baptized. And every Sunday, all Mandaeans are encouraged to undergo baptism.

[...]

The business about Madaeans being mentioned in the Bible is dodgy:

They are mentioned four times in the Old Testament, not always in the most glowing terms. In the Book of Job, Mandaeans are described as violent raiders who seized livestock and killed servants "at the edge of a sword." But the Book of Isaiah describes them as "men of stature."

Job 1:15 mentions Sabeans, but they are North Arabian tribes, not Mandaeans. The Sabeans in Isa 45:14 seem to be an African people, perhaps in Nubia. There's another reference to Sabeans in Joel 3:8, which may refer to the people of Sheba in South Arabia. (See the article "Sabeans" in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. I'm not sure what the fourth reference would be. We have no evidence that the Mandaeans existed this early (it seems most unlikely: from the little I've read about them they seem to fit the profile of a baptizing sect in the early centuries C.E.), our sources for them are very late, and it looks to me as though their title Sabaeans is a later Aramaic term, coincidentally similar to the Arabic (?) word Sabeans in the Bible. Any specialists in the Mandaeans out there who want to comment?

The website cited in the article is dead and I can't find a replacement.