Negotiating “White Rooster” Magic and Binitarian Christology

Abstract

The article explores a set of religious and mythical motifs found in a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic magic bowl from the Moussaieff collection (M 163), which includes references to the sun god Šamaš(-Mithra); Jesus, his heavenly Father, and the cross; binitarian Christology; the oppression of the Great Man of the End and Suffering Messiah; a cosmic bird referred to as White Rooster; and a semi-divine angelic figure called ḤRWM AḤRWM. These motifs are situated in the broader context of contemporaneous Jewish Babylonian traditions incorporated in the talmudic, mystical, and magical corpora, on the one hand, and the surrounding Christian, Syro-Mesopotamian, and Iranian cultures, on the other hand. The article contributes to the decentralization of Greco-Roman culture as the sole context for ancient Judaism as well as the decentralization of rabbinic expressions as representative of ancient Jewish culture at large. The cultural mapping of the religious and mythical motifs found in this magic bowl, both within and beyond the confines of Jewish Babylonia, exemplifies the complex and dynamic nature of the participation of Jewish Babylonian magic practitioners, not only in the larger fabric of contemporaneous talmudic, mystical, and magical currents in Jewish culture, but also in the broader framework of the Christian, Syro-Mesopotamian, and Iranian cultures that pervaded the Sasanian East.