Shaul Shaked on Jewish Magic (2019) (original) (raw)

Officina Magica Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity - SHAUL SHAKED

This book touches upon ancient Mesopotamian magical practices and par-ticularly discuss the question relating to the survival and continuity of Mesopotamian culture in the later period, especially as regards the magic of the Talmud and of the magic bowls. Some of the essays deal with topics of Jewish magic in various periods: the Aramaic incantation bowls, the Jewish tradition in Mediaeval manuscripts, which partly ref l ects early themes, and the fragments of the Geniza, which testify to the role played by magic in the life of the period. One of the contributions to this volume deals with Zoroastrian omen texts, and two with magical artifacts from Late Antiquity. Two of the papers deal with the underlying questions of the theory and method of studying the magical tradition. The work of Yuval Harari devotes special attention to the situation in Judaism. These are questions which have already exercised the minds of numerous scholars, and which are likely to go on occupying a central position in the scholarly debate on the elusive problems of the def i nition and phenomenology of magical practices and their place in society in the years to come. The conference of 1999 was conceived with the aim of marking the conclusion of a period of intensive work carried out under the auspices of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London on Aramaic magical texts, chief l y written on earthen-ware bowls, and deriving presumably from Mesopotamia. Some of the members of the Department were involved in this ef f ort. The texts, written in a variety of forms of Aramaic, namely Jewish Aramaic, Mandaic, Syriac, as well as in a group of artif i cial scripts, some of which resemble Pahlavi, presented a serious challenge of decipher-ment and interpretation, ARAMAIC SPELLS: SOME JEWISH THEMES [The poetics of magic texts] The Aramaic magic texts from Babylonia, which belong to the end of the Sasanian period or the late Talmudic period, are now avail-able in dramatically increased quantities, with about 800 new texts that have now joined those already published. MAGICAL GEMS - It is estimated that roughly 5,000 ‘magical gems’ have come down to us from the ancient world,1the single largest collection of which, numbering about 700 items, is to be found in the British Museum, London.2The present essay of f ers a selective overview of the results of my work on nearly three thousand magical gems in all of the accessible collections in Europe, the USA and in private possession Mesopotamia + Ancient Near East Lore + Myth - In the battle of Tiamat against Enki, and later Marduk, in the poem called Enuma elish, the great gods create a number of monsters which all have names, like the fl ying dragon, the wolf-lion, etc. In fact their name is their being. These creatures are exactly what the words used sug-gest that they are. Another simple example is the unicorn, a horse with a horn. Although nobody had ever seen one, nothing was more easy to represent, and to give all the attributes of a horse. That is how all the monsters of the world are created, such as our modern fl ying saucers, which we call science-f i ction, so as not to give the impression that we are still interested in mythology. But the rhetorical activity is exactly the same in composing science-f i ction as mythology, especially as mythology has nothing to do with religion. 300 marcel sigrist In mythology it is no longer a matter of formulation, but of hyposta-sis. The word creates the object we are talking about. The word is hypostasized, it stands for the reality it expresses. This is meta-physics. In Greece the nymphae, daughters of the waters, are the small clouds hanging over the swamps of Mémé. As they could not be explained, these clouds were simply personif i ed. What cannot be explained is hypostasized or personified. JEWISH MAGICAL TEXTS FROM LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES IN MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE CAIRO GENIZAH AND ASHKENAZ- The Cairo Genizah is the richest source for research in almost every f i eld of Jewish history. Studies in the Masora, Rabbinic literature and Apocryphal traditions, early and medieval Piyyut, liturgy, Jewish Philosophy, mysticism, Jewish languages, social history etc., all have greatly prof i ted from the innumerable fragments and manuscripts from the Genizah. Time and again we are astonished to note the enormous diversity of traditions attested in the Genizah. However, for a long time research on Jewish magic had lagged considerably behind that in other fi elds of Genizah studies before J. Naveh, Sh. Shaked, L.H. Schif f man, M.D. Swartz and P. Schäfer over the last f i fteen years began to draw our attention to the richness and diver-sity of Genizah magic as well. Jewish texts + Kabbalah + Mysticism to Enoch 3 (Enochian magic , Angels , Demons and so much more - In the last 20 years not many other areas of Jewish studies have experienced the boom that early Jewish mysticism has. The interest in this fi eld was in no small measure spurred on by the publication of the Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur, edited by Peter Schäfer in 1981, which became the textual basis for all further scholarly works in the f i eld.1 Ever since, several monographs and numerous essays have been appearing on the subject every year—apparently this not very extensive body of writings continues to exert a quite strong fascina-tion on scholars. Those who are active in this special fi eld are always astonished to note that just when it seems that all the theses imag-inable on the origins and social background of these writings have been discussed, a new explanation is of f ered. It is well-known that Gershom Scholem tried to place early Jewish mysticism, which found its literary voice in the Hekhalot writings, in the center of Rabbinic Judaism, whereby we should remember that he formulated his thesis in obvious opposition to 19th-century scholars of Judaism, from whom he wanted to disassociate himself. AND SO MANY MORE SUBJECTS ANX LIKE MINDED MATERIAL IN THE -CONTENTS AND CHAPTER HEADINGS (look in book for a more exhaustive subjects and writings info , this abstract was not meant to explain the whole book obviously

A Jewish Magical Handbook in the Babylonian Talmud

JSQ 29.3, 2022

Among the medical and magical discussions in the sixth chapter of BT Shabbat, there is a distinct unit of four curative spells intended for combatting demons or disease. This spell unit has a unified structure that resembles the literary style of late antique Jewish magical handbooks and is replete with parallels to the contemporary Jewish Aramaic incantation bowls. This article analyzes the talmudic spell unit and argues that it is well situated within the Jewish Babylonian magical tradition of Late Antiquity. It then examines the style and content of two additional spells from a Geniza fragment of BT Shabbat. It proposes that the talmudic spell unit stemmed from an external local magical handbook and discusses possible implications regarding the relationship between Babylonian rabbis and magic practitioners and the transmission of Jewish magical traditions.

Gideon Bohak, *Ancient Jewish Magic: A History* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

2008

Ancient Jewish Magic is a pioneering attempt to write a broad history of ancient Jewish magic, from the Second Temple to the rabbinic period (or, roughly, from the Hellenistic period to the Muslim conquests). The roots of the Jewish magical tradition lie in the Second Temple period -- and sometimes even in the First Temple period -- but it reached maturity only in late antiquity, and as a result of its contacts with the Greco-Egyptian magical tradition. It is based both on the ancient magicians’ own compositions and products (exorcistic hymns, amulets, curses, erotic spells and so on) in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, and on the descriptions and prescriptions of non-magicians, in an effort to reconstruct a historical picture that is as balanced and nuanced as possible. Its main focus is on the cultural make-up of ancient Jewish magic, with special attention paid to processes of cross-cultural contacts and borrowings between Jews and non-Jews and to inner-Jewish cultural creativity. Another major issue is the place of magic within Jewish society at the time, the Jewish attitudes to magic -- from the Hebrew Bible, through the Second Temple period literature, to the rabbinic literature -- and the identity of its practitioners. Throughout, it seeks to explain the methodological underpinnings of any sound research in this demanding field, and to point out areas where further research is likely to prove fruitful.