Dramatis Personae in the Jewish Magic Texts: Some Differences Between Incantation Bowls and Geniza Magic

Abstract

The magic texts are very often based on a dramatic view of the situation which they aim at controlling. There is action implied and sometimes depicted in the text; most often, however, the dramatic event which forms the backbone of the practice is only alluded to by short elliptic phrases. It must have been familiar to the audience, if the texts were spoken out aloud, and they were certainly part of the world of associations with which most people in the entourage of the practitioners were supposed to be familiar. In this paper I should like to explore some of the figures which pop up in the magic texts, by comparing the repertory underlying the Geniza material with that of the Babylonian magic bowls, in order to try and define the range of stories and characters which fill the texts, and see what function they fulfil. Before we approach this subject, let us look at some of the differences between Geniza magic and the Babylonian magic bowls, which represent a similar kind of Jewish magical material. The most striking difference is of course that the magic bowls are Babylonian, and belong to a Babylonian tradition, while the Cairo Geniza reflects a Palestinian tradition of magic. This is quite clear from the language of the two sets of texts and is to be expected from the geographical situation of the two centres to which these texts are tied.2 There are at the same time other differ