''The Wedding of the Great
Shishlam'' ( ) is a
Mandaean text. As a liturgical rather than esoteric text, it contains instructions and hymns for the Mandaean marriage ceremony. Traditionally,
Mandaean priests recite the entire book at marriage ceremonies. The hymns in the text often contain the refrain "When the proven, the Pure One Went." Unlike most other Mandaean ritual scrolls, ''The Wedding of the Great Šišlam'' is not illustrated.
Manuscripts and translations
Copies of the text include Manuscript 38 of the
Drower Collection (DC 38), currently held at the
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, it is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in ...
. A full transliteration, English translation, and commentary were published as a book by
E. S. Drower in 1950.
[Drower, E. S. 1950. ]
Šarḥ ḏ qabin ḏ šišlam rba (D. C. 38). Explanatory Commentary on the Marriage Ceremony of the great Šišlam
'. Rome: Ponteficio Istituto Biblico. (text transliterated and translated)
Manuscripts held at the
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...
include:
*Code Sabéen 15 (Mark Lidzbarski's F manuscript) (partial copy)
*Code Sabéen 25 (Mark Lidzbarski's E manuscript) (partial copy)
Contents
The DC 38 manuscript has five parts. However, since Part 5 is a duplicate of Part 1, there are only four unique parts.
*Part 1 (about 240 lines): instructions on how to perform each step of the Mandaean wedding ceremony, with ritual and
Qulasta
The Qulasta, also spelled Qolastā in older sources (; ), is a compilation of Mandaean prayers. The Mandaic word ''qolastā'' means "collection".
The prayerbook is a collection of Mandaic prayers regarding baptisms ('' maṣbuta'') and other sa ...
prayer sequences
*Part 2 (about 110 lines): hymns
*Part 3 (about 1,320 lines): hymns
*Part 4 (just over 170 lines): titled "The weekly forecast of hourly fortune," an astrological treatise dealing with the planets and times of the day and week
Part 2 has 16 hymns, and Part 3 has 55 hymns. They are not numbered in Drower (1950).
See also
*
Qabin, the Mandaean wedding ritual
*
Gospel of Philip, which may have been used as a Valentinian wedding ritual text
*
Song of Songs
The Song of Songs (), also called the Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon, is a Biblical poetry, biblical poem, one of the five ("scrolls") in the ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh. Unlike other books in the Hebrew Bible, i ...
References
External links
Full textat
Archive.orgDiwan Sharh d-Qabin d-Shishlam Rba(Mandaic text from the Mandaean Network)
(Mandaic text from the Mandaean Network)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wedding of the Great Shishlam
Mandaean texts
Works about weddings