>>280854224
Yeah, the whole slew of early eastern branches of christianity alone were an interesting mess already, before a bunch of dudes in Nicea told them they don't count. But the Mandaeans were extra interesting because
>they probably have their roots in pre-exile judaism, meaning they where a fossil carrying some of the beliefs that were later suppressed and memoryholed by the second temple era
>including indications that gnosticism was derived from those systems originally
>and because of that the new establishment judaism hated them
>then they ran into John and his riverside activities and thought he was cool
>but they didn't really buy that whole Joshua guy so they just stuck around to following the first one
>which made them rather unpopular with the (lots) of people who went to follow that other guy
And that's how you had a whole ethnic minority of people who plausibly are genetically and religiously descended from the banks of Jordan, living in southern Iraq for almost 2000 years.
And then 2003 happened and now they're virtually gone