JEWISH MAGIC AND JEWISH HISTROY

No description of Judaism in late antiquity can be complete without an account of the diverse practices, texts, and traditions called “magic.” In Jewish magic, one has insight into the interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish cultures in the Mediterranean, the beliefs and practices not always confirmed in the rabbinic canon, the complexity of social structure in Jewish communities, and the nature of rabbinic Judaism itself. Moreover, the study of Jewish magic has important historical value outside the light it sheds on the religious nature of ancient Jewish society. The largest corpus of extant literary texts in Hebrew and Aramaic actually transcribed between the third and ninth centuries CE are magical incantations written on amulets and incantation bowls.

Of all forms of discourse among the wide variety of peoples under Roman rule in the Mediterranean basin, magic was perhaps the most cosmopolitan. From the libraries of ritual instructions, prayers, incantations, and recipes known as the Greek Magical Papyri, one can detect an astonishing variety of influences. Archaic Egyptian deities and rituals, Olympian gods, Mithraic mysteries, and such biblical heroes as Moses and Solomon rub elbows in these cryptic documents. At the same time, Jewish magical texts from the same period invoke Helios and contain whole sentences in Greek transcribed into Hebrew. Magical names are used to lend power to incantations derived from Hebrew and Greek. Thus, the Greek Magical Papyri contain names like Iao, Raphael, and Sabaoth, as well as Jewish magical texts that often derive their names from such Greek figures as Dionysus.