Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah
Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah

Author: Lawrence Schiffmann

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 1992-01-01

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9781850752851

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In this volume, the authors assemble a group of Jewish incantation texts which were copied in the Middle Ages and preserved in the Cairo Genizah. Most of these texts, now in Cambridge University Library, are published here for the first time. All the texts are translated and provided with detailed philological and historical commentary, tracing the praxis and beliefs of the Jewish magical tradition of Late Antiquity. Their relation to Jewish legal and mystical teachings is also explored.

Jewish Prayer Texts from the Cairo Genizah
Jewish Prayer Texts from the Cairo Genizah

Author: Stefan C. Reif

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-03-11

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 900431332X

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Jewish Prayer Texts from the Cairo Genizah, which sets a new tone for future studies, consists of a selection of transcribed and translated Genizah fragments that contain some of the earliest known texts of rabbinic prayers. Reif describes in detail the physical makeup of each manuscript and assesses the manner in which the scribe has tackled the matter of recording a preferred version. He then places the prayer texts included in the manuscript within the context of Jewish liturgical history, explaining the degree to which they were innovative and whether they established precedents to be followed in later prayer-books. He offers specialists and more general readers a fresh understanding of the historical, theological, linguistic, and social factors that may have motivated adjustments to their liturgical formulations.

Aramaic Incantation Bowls in Museum Collections
Aramaic Incantation Bowls in Museum Collections

Author: James Nathan Ford

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-11-04

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 9004411836

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The Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection of Babylonian Antiquities at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena houses one of the major European collections of incantation bowls. Forty bowls bear texts written in the Jewish, Manichaean Syriac or Mandaic scripts, and most of the rest (some twenty-five objects) in the Pahlavi script or in various pseudoscripts. The present volume comprises new editions of the Aramaic (and Hebrew) bowl texts based on high-resolution photographs taken by the authors, together with brief descriptions and photographs of the remaining material. New readings are often supported with close-up photographs. The volume is intended to serve as a basis for further study of magic in late Antiquity and of the Late Eastern Aramaic dialects in which the texts were composed.

The Sorcery of Solomon
The Sorcery of Solomon

Author: Sara L. Mastros

Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser

Published: 2024-01-08

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1578637864

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A user's guide to working with the 44 magical pentacles, or magical symbols, found in "The Key of Solomon," the renowned occult grimoire ("spellbook"). The fifteenth century occult text Clavicula Salomonis ("Key of Solomon") is a classic grimoire most notably as translated by S. L. Mathers in 1889. The Clavicula Salomonis presents Solomon's famed 44 planetary pentacles but offers very little guidance for how to work with these spells. Sara Mastros, a leading teacher and practitioner of magic, translates and interprets each of the 44 pentacles, or seals, and presents a practical method for working with their magical powers. In The Sorcery of Solomon author Sara Mastros: places the Key of Solomon in a historical and folkloric context presents a complete, fresh translation of all 44 pentacles guides the reader through the process of working with Solomon pentacles Primarily intended for intermediate level magicians who already have basic knowledge of spellcraft but is also appropriate for relative beginners who are willing to do a bit of extra "homework."

Ancient Magic and Ritual Power
Ancient Magic and Ritual Power

Author: Paul Mirecki

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-08-24

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 9004283811

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This volume contains a series of provocative essays that explore expressions of magic and ritual power in the ancient world. The essays are authored by leading scholars in the fields of Egyptology, ancient Near Eastern studies, the Hebrew Bible, Judaica, classical Greek and Roman studies, early Christianity and patristics, and Coptology. Throughout the book the essays examine the terms employed in descriptions of ancient magic. From this examination comes a clarification of magic as a polemical term of exclusion but also an understanding of the classical Egyptian and early Greek conceptions of magic as a more neutral category of inclusion. This book should prove to be foundational for future scholarly studies of ancient magic and ritual power. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

Dress and Clothing in the Hebrew Bible
Dress and Clothing in the Hebrew Bible

Author: Antonios Finitsis

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-08-08

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 056768976X

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Built upon the flourishing study of costume, this book analyses sartorial evidence provided both by texts of the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible. The essays within lend clarity to the link between material and ideological, examining the tradition of dress, the different types of literature that reference the tradition of garments, and the people for whom such literature was written. The contributors explore sources that illuminate the social, psychological, aesthetic, ideological and symbolic meanings of clothing. The topics covered range from the relationship between clothing, kingship and power, to the symbolic significance of the high priestly regalia and the concept of garments as deception and defiance, while also considering the tendency to omit or ignore descriptions of YHWH's clothing. Following a historical sequence, the essays cross-reference with each other to create a milestone in biblical sartorial study.

A Mirror of Rabbinic Hermeneutics
A Mirror of Rabbinic Hermeneutics

Author: Giuseppe Veltri

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-09-14

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 311036641X

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Rabbinic hermeneutics in ancient Judaism reflects this multifaceted world of the text and of reality, seen as a world of reference worth commentary. As a mirror, it includes this world but perhaps also falsifies reality, adapting it to one's own aims and necessities. It consists of four parts: Part I, considered as introduction, is the description of the "Rabbinic Workshop" (Officina Rabbinica), the rabbinic world where the student plays a role and a reformation of a reformation always takes place, the world where the mirror was created and manufactured. Part II deals with the historical environment, the world of reference of rabbinic Judaism in Palestine and in the Hellenistic Diaspora (Reflecting Roman Religion); Part III focuses on magic and the sciences, as ancient (political and empirical) activities of influence in the double meaning of receiving and adopting something and of attempt to produce an effect on persons and objects (Performing the Craft of Sciences and Magic). Part IV addresses the rabbinic concern with texts (Reflecting on Languages and Texts) as the main area of "influence" of the rabbinic academy in a space between the texts of the past and the real world of the present.

Officina Magica
Officina Magica

Author: Shaul Shaked

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 9047407849

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This book of essays deals with magical phenomena in Mesopotamian, Zoroastrian, Greek and Jewish cultures. The topics discussed include Mesopotamian magic, its impact on the Aramaic magic bowls, Jewish magical literature, magical gems, Zoroastrian omens, and methods of research.