Seth, Noah, Shem and John the Baptist to be prophets with Adam the founder and John the greatest and final prophet. Scriptures The Mandaeans have a large corpus of religious scriptures, the most important of which is the Ginza Rabba or Ginza, a collection of history, theology, and prayers. The Ginza Rabba is divided into two halves—the Genzā Smālā or Left Ginza, and the Genzā Yeminā or Right Ginza. By consulting the colophons in the Left Ginza, Jorunn J. Buckley has identified an uninterrupted chain of copyists to the late second or early third century. The colophons attest to the existence of the Mandaeans during the late Parthian Empire. The oldest texts are lead amulets from about the third century CE, followed by incantation bowls from about 600 CE. The important religious texts survived in manuscripts that are not older than the sixteenth century, with most coming from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mandaean religious texts may have been originally orally transmitted before being written down by scribes, making dating and authorship difficult. Another important text is the Haran Gawaita, which tells the history of the Mandaeans. According to this text, a group of Nasoraeans (Mandean priests) left Judea before the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century CE, and settled within the Parthian Empire. Other important books include the Qolusta, the canonical prayerbook of the Mandaeans, which was translated by E. S. Drower. One of the chief works of Mandaean scripture, accessible to laymen and initiates alike, is the Mandaean Book of John, which includes a dialogue between John and Jesus. In addition to the Ginza, Qolusta, and Draša d-Yahya, there is the Diwan Abatur, which contains a description of the 'regions' the soul ascends through, and the Book of the Zodiac (Asfar Malwāshē). Finally, there are some pre-Muslim artifacts that contain Mandaean writings and inscriptions, such as some Aramaic incantation bowls. Mandaean ritual commentaries (esoteric exegetical literature), which are typically written in scrolls rather than codices, include:The Thousand and Twelve Questions (Alf Trisar Šuialia)The Coronation of the Great ŠišlamThe Great "First World"The Lesser "First World"The Scroll of Exalted KingshipThe Baptism of Hibil ZiwaThe language in which the Mandaean religious literature was originally composed is known as Mandaic, a member of the Aramaic group of dialects. It is written in the Mandaic script, a cursive variant of the Parthian chancellery script. Many Mandaean laypeople do not speak this language,