posted 08 April 2005 02:11 PM            

In this essay the term magic will thus be used within a particular frame of reference, as the applicability of the notion to each cultural context must be decided on a case-by-case _. In the case of Judaism, it is possible to use the term to debe identifiable textual corpora having distinct literary traits.

In paying close attention to literary features of magical texts, I have the opportunity to listen to the voices of the magicians themselves, concentrating on their distinctive rhetoric and logic.

led on recent studies of Jewish magical texts in late antiquity and earlier Middle Ages,
we can identify three prevailing elements Jewish magical texts:

(1) the emphasis on the power of the Ie of God; (2) the intermediacy of the angels in negotiating veen divine providence and human needs; and (3) the applica
of divine names and ritual practices for the needs of specific nviduals.
This characterization has the advantage of describing a type 0 f
activity that can exist within the framework of religious behavior, e_ch of its components can be found in other areas of ancient
lism.

18 Yet these elements come together in a fairly coherent
in what are conventionally called magical texts-especially
lets, handbooks containing incantation texts and ritual preiptions. We therefore have a way of designating them that, like heuristic, allows us to proceed in an economical manner.

***In magical piety, magicians express their desires through some the most deeply held values and priorities of the society and its

17 See Swartz, "Scribal Magic and Its Rhetoric: Fonnal Patterns in Hebrew
Aramaic Incantation Texts ftom the Cairo Genizah," HTR 83 (1990): 179; iffinan and Swartz, Incantation Texts, 12-15.
18 Cf. Anne, "Magic in Early Christianity," 1516: "Magic is not religion in the sense tbat the species is not the genus."

posted 08 April 2005 02:15 PM            

...The phenomena described here can tell us about the relationship
between the central values of ancient and medieval Judaic soc_1
and the subculture of magical practitioners.

In the first case, 1 have seen how Rabbinic notions of tradition and scholastic serve the cause of the magical text or ritual. In the second, 1 have seen how techniques drawn from the literature of Jewish a Mediterranean magic are deployed for the purposes of increasl the individual's prowess in what Rabbinic Jews considered to be 1: greatest form of piety-the study of Torah. In each case, t; phenomenon's indebtedness to the central values of the society offset by a tendency at odds with those values.

The magical Ie not only uses the ideal figures and chains of tradition for purpOJ not intended by the originators of those patterns of succession, t circumvents the scholastic process by which only a dialecti! system of learning and discipleship can reveal God's word to the individual. The same is true for the Sar-Torah and memory ritual. They seek to bypass the Rabbinic academic process by offering kind of magical shortcut to the success and prestige of a s

Is the magician a subversive? If we consider it subversive to employ a system's values for purposes not necessarily advocated! that system, then the Jewish magician may be one. Jewish mal cians seem to have functioned in Jewish societies neither as ou casts nor as those who held the reigns of power. The proliferatu of magic among all classes of late-antique and medieval Je_ societies suggests that magicians were tolerated, if suspiciously,: official society.

posted 08 April 2005 02:27 PM            

Rebecca Lesses

The adjuration of the Sar ha-Panim. the Prince of the Presce,l is found in the early Jewish mystical texts known as the ,khalot literature.2 This adjuration calls on ' Ozhay' a. the Prince the Presence. to come down to earth and reveal' wisdom to

posted 08 April 2005 02:29 PM            

The Prince of the Presence is the greatest angel in heaven, second only to God in power and control.

The adjuration is introduced by ascetic preparations, goes on to a four-fold adjuration of the angel by divine and angelic Names, and ends with the dismissal of the angel from the presence of the adept.

The adjuration begins with an initial pseudepigraphic framing paragraph in which Rabbi Aqiba asks Rabbi Eliezer the Great how one can "adjure the Prince of the Presence to descend to earth to reveal to man secrets of above and below. . . secrets of wisdom and subtlety of knowledge."

It continues with Rabbi Eliezer's account of how he once caused the Prince of the Presence to descend in such a way that he sought to destroy the world. The narrative then moves from a dialogue between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Aqiba to the narrator's instructions addressed to the implied reader of the incantation.

The narrator gives instructions on how to bring down the Prince of the Presence in a safe manner:

The one who binds himself to make theurgic use of him should sit in fast one day, and before that day he should sanctify him. self seven days from seminal emission (ken), dip himself in the water. canal, and not have conversation with his wife. At the end of the days cf his fasting and purification, on the day of his fast, he should go down and sit in water up to his neck, and say before he adjures. . . .

The words "The one who binds himself to make theurgic use of him" could refer back to Rabbi Aqiba but also potentially to the implied reader of the passage-or even both at the same time, justifying the reader's (possibly) engaging in the adjuration by reference to the authority of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Aqiba.

Fol. lowing the instructions come an adjuration to defend the adjurer against the dangerous angels who injure those who are not worthy, a mention of the 42-letter Name of God by which the adjurer seals

posted 08 April 2005 02:32 PM            

To put it another way, the social world of the adjurer did not consist wholly of (possible) mystical circles, tbe larger Jewish community, and then the larger non-Jewish commu. nity; it included as well close links with the angelic/divine and demonic realms.

The world was inhabited by more than just humans; it was filled as well by a multitude of angels and demons. This view of the world made plausible both ascents to tbe Merkabah and adjurations of angels to descend from heaven.

In the Hekhalot texts the divine/angelic hierarchy contains sev. eral elements:

(1) God, the creator of heaven, earth, angels, and humans;
(2) the divine Names, by which God created everything, including the angels and the divine Throne;
(3) the highest an. gels, including the Prince of the Presence, and their Names;
(4) angels on a lower level, like the "princes of fear," who are ap' pointed to attack those who are not worthy of "making theurgic use" of the angels; and(5) the pure human being, who can make use of the Names of creation to force the Prince of tbe Presence to do his will

Acts which people can per. form verbally if they possess sufficient power in a particular bu. man institution (e.g., a king ordering a subject to come into bi! presence) provide an analogy for the types of acts which people with sufficient power can order angels to do.

Extra-human society is built on a model similar to (but not necessarily identical with) human society; laws and modes of operation which work in human society also work in that society. Thus humans can interact wiili the denizens of the extra-human world as they might act with.
other humans.

posted 08 April 2005 02:35 PM            

Given the local Levantine tradition reflected in
Ugaritic snake-charm and the Hagar story in Genesis 21, it d not seem farfetched to suppose that a local Syrian poet had some previous point recast an Egyptian myth in Semitic poe form.

posted 08 April 2005 02:40 PM            

In other words, at death Samuel becam both god and ghost. What follows is an evaluation of this consen sus as well as some alternative proposals for not only the origins but also the character, of Israelite necromancy and for the affilia tion of ghost and god in early Israelite religious tradition.

***Did the Israelites adopt a late second-millennium version of Ca naanite necromancy? Our compositional analysis favors the vie\1 that 1 Sam 28:3-25 is a literary construct of the mid-first millen. nium. As a unified text, these verses form a sequel to 1 Sam IS.: Therefore, whatever can be reconstructed in terms of a composi. tional history for ch. 15, that for 28:3-25 should follow. Contex. tual features indicate that 1 Sam 15 comprises a late addition tc the Deuteronomistic History.6 Both the style and the language

posted 08 April 2005 02:43 PM            

The crux interpretum in 1 Sam 28 is the term' elohlm or "god(s)"
in v. 13. It is typically understood to refer to the dead Samuel in
spite of the several syntactic complexities such a view creates. The
woman's response to Saul's query in v.13-that she saw "gods
ascending"-comprises a plural noun coupled with a plural partici. pIe: 'elohlm . . . coum.

But Saul's immediate response in v. 14,
"what is his/its appearance?" or mah-to 'ora, employs a singular
pronominal suffix.

Now the same term 'elohlm shows up in v.
15, but there it is followed by a singular finite verbal form sar and
given a sin_ular force: "God (= Yahweh) has turned away from
me," 'elohlm sar meCalay. In Exod 32:1 the same form occu_
with a plural finite verb denoting multiple gods: ' elohlm Josey
yelelsU lep.iinenu, "the gods who will go before us."

Thus, the immediate morpho-syntactic distinctions indicated by the two occur. rencesof ' elohlm in 1 Sam 28 might be a deliberate attempt to convey the respective numbers intended:

in the first instance more
than one god is in view, in the second case, clearly a single god

This might also help to resolve the potential discrepancy involv.
ing the singular SUfflX (to 'ora v. 14) and its plural antecedent ('elohlm v. 13). In any case, the explicit mention of Samuel in v.
12 can provide the appropriate antecedent for the singular mascu.
line suffix on to 'ora in v. 14.30 As for the question posed in v. 14,

posted 08 April 2005 02:46 PM            

In the last decade of the last century the great Hungarian 181* and scholar Ludwig Blau published the first cross-cultural and intraTalmudic study of Jewish magic, Das a/tjiJdische Zauberwml BIau's study was not the first German monograph on the subject! but it certainly has proven the most durable, for two reasons:

contains an outstanding philological investigation of the terminology of Rabbinic texts concerning magic, and it poses many excellent questions in comparative magic and ritual. Blau' s knowledge diverse documents which illuminated Rabbinic magic was imprefo sive.

The first to apply social scientific methods and move beyoaf the methodology of an intellectual historian, he anticipated the work of Joshua Trachtenberg's cultural history of Jewish folk magic and religion3and Morton Smith's various historical siuda of Jewish magic.

RabbiS sources amplify upon the topic and condemn certain magial practice as a vestigial and superstitious remnant of earlier doat
nant cultures, chiefly those of the Babylonians and Egyptians I well as other "foreigners" who inhabited the land.

S This attitude is recalled in a famous Rabbinic maxim: "Ten measures of magic... have come into the world. Egypt received nine of these, the rest of the world It one measure" (BT Qidushin 49b).