This article examines the resemblance between the Talmudic privy demon (“Shed Bet ha-Kise”) and Šulak, a well-known Akkadian demon. There are four considerations that point to identifying the privy demon of the Talmud with the Babylonian demon Šulak: (1) They both dwell in the privy; (2) they both are demons that cause epilepsy, strokes, or sudden falls; (3) they both seem to have the form of a lion; and (4) their names (“Šulak” and “Bar Širiqa”) are very similar. This suggestion is yet another example of the presence of beliefs and opinions from the Ancient Near East that found an echo in the Babylonian Talmud, one that may be added to a number of examples given by M. Geller.
In the Aramaic incantation bowls there is extensive use of legal formulae known also from rabbinic literature and from archaeological findings. Such formulae can be found in oaths, vows, pronouncements of excommunication and especially pronouncements of divorce. In this article, I shall describe the nature of this common legal language by pointing out verbal parallels in the divorce formulae found in the bowls, the Talmud, and the archaeological findings of divorce documents. I will then suggest what can be learned from these parallels.
This article focuses on the social and professional contexts of the producers of Jewish Aramaic incantation bowls. Based on the vast amount of legal terminology deployed in the bowls, as well as a reference to bowl writers as ‘writers of books’ in bowl AMB6, I argue that bowl scribes were part of a professional guild of scribes (
soferim
) that engaged in a variety of forms of Jewish writing. Furthermore, I suggest that the scribal context of the practitioners of the magic bowls was different from the professional context of the contemporaneous corpus of Jewish metal amulets. Identifying the unique
Sitz im Leben
of the bowls reveals that for Jews in Sasanian Babylonia the line between magic, law and religion was not rigid, and perhaps non-existent. Further work on the context of ancient Jewish magic may therefore lead to new perceptions of ancient Jewish society.
The root gzr, in nominal and verbal forms, is prominent in rabbinic literature and is usually translated ‘legislation’ or ‘decree’. However, attention to the numerous rabbinic accounts in which rabbis employ this root demonstrates that it was not merely a term used for human legislation. Rather, in rabbinic Amoraic narratives, the root gzr was often used by the rabbis to gain control over their surroundings and subdue the natural and supernatural, in both Palestine and Babylonia. Comparing these narratives to contemporary Jewish magical texts highlights the uniqueness of this rabbinic decree. Therefore, translating gzr in rabbinic literature strictly as a legal decree obscures important components of the self-presentation of the rabbis, especially the way they conceived of and represented the power of their rulings. Finally, I suggest that a careful reading of legal-magical decrees may teach us about the place of the rabbis in a world in which miracle workers, magical practitioners, and the rabbis themselves competed over the power to defeat demonic forces of evil.
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