Left Ginza

[2] As of 2024, a critical edition that includes an annotated translation of the Left Ginza is being prepared by Bogdan Burtea and Christoph Markschies [de].

Book 1 is a four-part prose text on the salvation process, beginning with the ascension to heaven of Seth, in advance of his father Adam (compare Sethian Gnosticism).

Many of the opening lines are repeated but with the individual words ordered differently; in such cases, both versions are provided and are separated by semicolons.

Poems in Book 3 poetically describe the masiqta (ascension) of the soul to World of Light.

They typically describe the soul (nišimta) being taken out of the ʿuṣṭuna, or "bodily trunk," and being guided by uthras through the matartas and past Ruha and the Seven Planets, as well as being taken up by the right hand into the World of Light and clothed in radiant garments of light.

[11] Shlama beth Qidra is the earliest Mandaean scribe named in the Left Ginza's colophon.

[8]: 4 Several of the prayers in Drower's 1959 Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans (CP),[12] mostly ʿniania ("responses") and masiqta prayers, correspond to hymns in Book 3 of the Left Ginza (GL 3):[11][2] Several of the Left Ginza hymns correspond to some of the Psalms of Thomas.

Theodore bar Konai, c. 792 in the Book of the Scholion (Syriac: Kṯāḇā d-ʾeskoliyon), quotes the following passage as part of the teachings of the Kentaeans.

They greeted me a thousand times and wailed and said to me, ‘O Son of Light, go and say to our Father, "When will those in bonds be set free?