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Magic in the Biblical World From the Rod of Aaron to
the Ring of Solomon 1st Edition Todd Klutz Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Todd Klutz
ISBN(s): 9780567318015, 056731801X
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 14.50 MB
Year: 2004
Language: english
JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
SUPPLEMENT SERIES
245
Executive Editor
Stanley E. Porter
Editorial Board
Craig Blomberg, Elizabeth A. Castelli, David Catchpole,
Kathleen E. Corley, R. Alan Culpepper, James D.G. Dunn,
Craig A. Evans, Stephen Fowl, Robert Fowler, George H.
Guthrie, Robert Jewett, Robert W. Wall
This page intentionally left blank
Magic in the Biblical World
From the Rod of Aaron

to the Ring of Solomon
edited by
Todd E. Klutz
Copyright © 2003 T&T Clark International
A Continuum imprint
Published by T&T Clark International

The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
15 East 26th Street, Suite 1703, New York, NY 10010.
www. continuumbooks .com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset by ISB Typesetting, Sheffield

Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by The Bath Press, Bath
ISBN 0-8264-6684-2 (hardback)

0-5670-8362-4 (paperback)
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Abbreviations ix
List of Contributors xv
TODD E. KLUTZ
Reinterpreting 'Magic' in the World of Jewish
and Christian Scripture: An Introduction 1
Part I
'MAGIC' IN JEWISH SCRIPTURE AND AT QUMRAN
THOMAS C. RÖMER
Competing Magicians in Exodus 7-9:
Interpreting Magic in the Priestly Theology 12
CHRISTOPHE L. NIHAN
1 Samuel 28 and the Condemnation
of Necromancy in Persian Yehud 23
ALAIN BÜHLMANN
Qoheleth 11.1-6 and Divination 55
GEORGE J. BROOKE
Deuteronomy 18.9-14 in the Qumran Scrolls 66
Part II
'MAGIC' IN THE NEW TESTAMENT AND ITS GRAECO-ROMAN MILIEU
F. GERALD DOWNING
Magic and Scepticism in and around
the First Christian Century 86
vi Magic in the Biblical World
DANIEL MARGUERAT
Magic and Miracle in the Acts of the Apostles 100
ANDY M. REIMER
Virtual Prison Breaks: Non-Escape Narratives
and the Definition of 'Magic' 125
THIERRY LAUS
Paul and 'Magic' 140
LLOYD K. PIETERSEN
Magic/Thaumaturgy and the Pastorals 15 7
Part III
'MAGIC' IN DISREPUTABLE BOOKS FROM LATE ANTIQUITY
PHILIP S. ALEXANDER
Sefer ha-Razim and the Problem of Black Magic
in Early Judaism 170
DAVID BAIN
MEAANITIITH in the Cyranides and Related Texts:
New Evidence for the Origins and Etymology of Alchemy? 191
TODD E. KLUTZ
The Archer and the Cross: Chorographic Astrology
and Literary Design in the Testament of Solomon 219
Index of References 245

Index of Authors 256
PREFACE
All the contributors to this volume participated in the Magic in the World
of the Bible colloquium held at the Universities of Manchester and Shef-
field, 6-8 May 1999, when scholars and students from the two host insti-
tutions and from the University of Lausanne gathered to read papers and
exchange ideas on the colloquium's chosen topic. Eleven of the essays pub-
lished here were presented and discussed in that context; another (my own
introductory essay) was planned there; and the remaining piece, namely
Professor David Bain's essay on the 'black land', which at the time of the
colloquium was already in press with another publisher (see below), was
summarized by Professor Bain during our discussion of his work-in-pro-
gress on the Cyranides, a magico-medical work which, though it should
perhaps not be dated to earlier than the fourth century CE, transmits infor-
mation and earlier traditions that merit the attention of anyone seeking to
understand ancient Christian literature's earliest cultural context in its full
polyphonic complexity.
As the colloquium was self-consciously selective in its coverage of the
chosen topic (e.g. none of the participants concentrated on the question of
Jesus as 'magician'), our collection makes no claim to have covered the
field in a comprehensive fashion. However, for reasons given in the 'Intro-
duction', the collection can claim to possess a good measure of topical
coherence, which, along with the fresh insights afforded by the individual
essays, should be appreciated by readers who share the contributors' fas-
cination with this field of research.
As volume editor, I myself wish to thank several individuals and insti-
tutions who have made my work on the volume a rewarding experience:
my colleague Professor George Brooke, for suggesting that the privilege
of editing the collection be given to me in the first place; to Professor Philip
R. Davies of Sheffield Academic Press, for his good-humoured advice on
a variety of editorial and technical matters; to J. Edward Crowley, who,
with assistance from Dr Pamela Milne and Professor Walter Skakoon of
the University of Windsor, skilfully translated the French originals by
Alain Btihlmann and Thierry Laus; to the Norwegian Institute of Athens,
viii Magic in the Biblical World
for granting permission to re-publish Professor Bain's article, which in a

slightly different form was first published as a chapter in David R. Jordan,
Hugo Montgomery and Einar Thomassen (eds.), The World of Ancient
Magic: Papers from the First International Samson Eitrem Seminar at the
Norwegian Institute at Athens, 4-8 May 1997 (Papers from the Norwegian
Institute at Athens, 4; Bergen: The Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1999);
to Sheffield Academic Press, for agreeing to re-publish Gerald Downing's
'Magic and Scepticism in and around the First Christian Century', which
was first published very soon after the colloquium, by Sheffield, in Down-
ing's Making Sense in (and of) the First Christian Century (JSNTSup, 197;
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); to the Arts and Humanities
Research Board (AHRB), whose financial assistance has helped me to
work on this and several related projects free from the usual responsibili-
ties of full-time teaching and administrative work; and to the other con-
tributors to this volume, whose scholarship, congeniality and patience I
have appreciated throughout our collaboration.
ABBREVIATIONS
AB Anchor Bible
ABD David Noel Freedman (ed.), The Anchor Bible Dictionary
(New York: Doubleday, 1992)
ACF Annuaire du College de France
AE L 'annee epigraphique
AfO Archivfur Orientforschung
AGP Archivfur Geschichte der Philosophic
AJBI Annual of the Japanese Biblical Institute
AnBib Analecta biblica
ANRW Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (eds.), Aufstieg und
Niedergang der romischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms
im Spiegel der neueren Forschung (Berlin: W. de Gruyter,
1972-)
Anth. Pal The Palatine Anthology of Greek poetic epigrams
AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament
APF Archivfur Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete
ATANT Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen
Testaments
ATh Acts of Thomas
AV Authorized Version
BBB Bonner biblische Beitrage
BDF Friedrich Blass, A. Debrunner and Robert W. Funk, A Greek
Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian
Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961)
BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium
BEvT Beitrage zur evangelischen Theologie
BFLL Bibliotheque de la Faculte de philosophic et letters de
1'Universite de Liege
BibOr Biblica et orientalia
Bis ace. Bis accusatus sive tribunalia, Lucian of Samosata
BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BKAT Biblisches Kommentar: Altes Testament
BLR The Bodleian Library Record
BM Tablets in the collections of the British Museum
BN Biblische Notizen
x Magic in the Biblical World
BS The Biblical Seminar

BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
BullEp Bulletin epigraphique (published annually in Revue des etudes
grecques)
BWANT Beitrage zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament
ByzZ Byzantinistische Zeitschrift
BZ Biblische Zeitschrift
BZAW Beihefte zur ZA W
CAAG M. Berthelot and C.-E. Ruelle, Collection des anciens
alchimistes grecs (Paris: Masson, 1887)
CAT Commentaire de 1'Ancien Testament
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CCA G F. Cumont et al, Catalogus codicum astrologorum graecorum,
I-XII (12 vols.; Brussels: M. Lamertin, 1898-1936)
CCWJC Cambridge Commentaries on Writings of the Jewish and
Christian World 200 BC to AD 200
CE Chronique d'Egypte
CH A.-J. Festugiere and A.D. Nock (eds.), Corpus Hermeticum (4
vols.; Paris: Belles Lettres, 1948-54)
CIQ Classical Quarterly
CMAG J. Bidez et al., Catalogue des manuscripts alchimiques grecs
(Brussels: Lamertin, 1924-32)
ConBNT Coniectanea biblica, New Testament
CR Classical Review
CurTM Currents in Theology and Mission
Cyr. Cyranides
DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert
DK H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds.), Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker, I-III (3 vols.; Berlin: Weidmann, 1960)
DSD Dead Sea Discoveries
EBib Etudes bibliques
EKKNT Evanglishce-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament
EncJud Encyclopaedia Judaica
EPRO Etudes preliminares aux religions orientales dans 1'empire
Romain
ET English translation
ETS Erfurter theologische Studien
FHG C. Miiller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (Paris:
FirminDidot, 1841-70)
fr. fragment
GMPT H. Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation,
including the Demotic Spells. I. Texts (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985)
Hipp. off. med. In Hippocratis librum de officina medici commentarii Hi, Galen
Hist. nat. Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder
Abbreviations XI
HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs

HTKNT Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament
HTR Harvard Theological Review
ICC International Critical Commentary
ICS Illinois Classical Studies
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JEA Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JOByz Jahrbuch der osterreichischen Byzantinistik
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic
and Roman Period
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement
Series
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series
JSP Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha
JSPSup Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Supplement
Series
JWI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament
KEK Kritischexegetischer Kommentar tiber das Neue Testament
KTA KCU TCX AOITTCC, and the rest, et cetera
KTU M. Dietrich, O. Loretz and J. Sanmartin (eds.),
Keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugar it, I (Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener Verlag, 1976)
LAS S. Parpola (ed.), Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings
Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, I—II (2 vols.; Kevelaer: Butzon
& Bercker; Neukirchen—Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1971,
1983)
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LSJ H.G. Liddell, Robert Scott and H. Stuart Jones, Greek-English
Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 9th edn, 1968)
LXX Septuagint
MD Materiali e discussioni per Tanalisi del testi classici
MT Masoretic text
NASB New American Standard Bible
NCB New Century Bible
NEB New English Bible
Neot Neotestamentica
NGG Nachrichten von der Koniglichen Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse
NICNT New International Commentary on the New Testament
Xll Magic in the Biblical World
Niv New International Version

N JA Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und
deutsche Literatur und für Pädagogik
NovT Novum Testamentum
NovTSup Novum Testamentum, Supplements
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
NTD Das Neue Testament Deutsch
NTS New Testament Studies
OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis
OLP Orientalia lovaniensia periódica
OT Old Testament
OTG Old Testament Guides
OTL Old Testament Library
OTP James H. Charlesworth (ed.), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
PCPhS Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society
PG J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrología cursus completa... Series graeca
(166 vols.; Paris: Petit-Montrouge, 1857-83)
PGM K. Preisendanz et al, Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die
griechischen Zauberpapyri (2 vols.; Stuttgart: Tuebner, 2nd
edn, 1973-74)
PLLS Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar
PLRE A.H.M. Jones, J.R. Martindale and J. Morris (eds.), The
Prosopography of the Later Roman Roman Empire
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971)
PMichael Papyri Michaelidae
PW August Friedrich von Pauly and Georg Wissowa (eds.), Real-
Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1894-)
PWSup Supplement to PW
RA C Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum
RB Revue biblique
REJ Revue des etudes juives
RevQ Revue de Qumran
RFIC Rivista dißlologia e di istruzione classica
RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart
RivistBSup Rivista bíblica, Supplement
RPh Revue de philologie
RSV Revised Standard Version
SBB Stuttgarter biblische Beiträge
SBLTT Society of Biblical Literature Texts and Translations
SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien
SBT Studies in Biblical Theology
SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series
STDJ Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah
Abbreviations xiii
TC Tablettes Cappadociennes
.
TDNT Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (eds.), Theological

Dictionary of the New Testament (trans. Geoffrey Bromiley;
10 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964-)
TDOT G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theological
Dictionary of the Old Testament
TNTC Tyndale New Testament Commentaries
TRE Theologische Realenzyklopädie
UF Ugarit-Forschungen
VT Veins Testamentum
VTSup Veins Testamentum, Supplements
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten and Neuen
Testament
WO Die Welt des Orients
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
ZA W Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZHT Zeitschrift für historische Theologie
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Philip S. Alexander, Department of Religions and Theology, University

of Manchester
David Bain, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of

Manchester
George J. Brooke, Department of Religions and Theology, University of

Manchester
Alain Bühlmann, PInstitut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

Lausanne
F. Gerald Downing, Centre for Biblical Studies, University of Manchester
Todd E. Klutz, Department of Religions and Theology, University of

Manchester
Thierry Laus, l'Institut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

Lausanne
Daniel Marguerat, l'Institut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

Lausanne
Christophe L. Nihan, l'Institut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

Lausanne
Lloyd K. Pietersen, School of Theology and Religious Studies, University

of Gloucestershire
Andy M. Reimer, Canadian Bible College and Canadian Theological Semi-

nary, Regina, Saskatchewan
Thomas C. Römer, l'Institut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

Lausanne
REINTERPRETING 'MAGIC' IN THE WORLD OF JEWISH
AND CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURE: AN INTRODUCTION
Todd E. Klutz
In the last quarter of a century, historical scholarship has made a quiet but
impressive advance in the study of magico-religious phenomena in ancient
Jewish and Christian culture. This progress is most evident in two general
areas of scholarly activity: on the one hand, there has been a sharp increase
in translation and publication of magico-religious texts that for various
reasons had been difficult to access for many students;1 but, just as impor-
tantly, during the same period a shift in theory and method has taken place
which, by critically scrutinizing some of the key categories normally used
to organize and evaluate the evidence, has facilitated a growth in awareness
of how ideological interests have influenced not merely the magico-reli-
gious activities of ancient worshippers but also the interpretative manoeu-
vres of modern analysts.2
1. See, e.g., H.D. Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, including
the Demotic Spells (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); J.G. Gager (ed.),
Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992); M. Meyer and R. Smith (eds.), Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of
Ritual Power (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994); M.A. Morgan, Sepher ha-
Razim: The Book of the Mysteries (SBLTT, 25; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983); D.L.
Penney and M.O. Wise, 'By the Power of Beelzebub: An Aramaic Incantation Formula
from Qumran', JBL 113 (1994), pp. 627-50; J. Naveh and S. Shaked, Amulets and Magic
Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2nd edn,
1987); D.C. Duling, 'Testament of Solomon', in OTP, I, pp. 935-87; and G. Luck,
Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). Some of these sources, it is worth noting, had
never been published in a modern language edition prior to their publication in the
collections just cited.
2. Especially influential has been A.F. Segal, 'Hellenistic Magic: Some Questions
of Definition', in R. van den Broek and MJ. Vermaseren (eds.), Studies in Gnosticism
and Hellenistic Religions (EPRO, 91; Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1981), pp. 349-75; but see also
2 Magic in the Biblical World
For instance, although the increasingly recognized shortcomings of defin-

ing 'magic' as a primitive form of behaviour exemplifying a type of men-
tality different from and inferior to that of'religion' had become apparent
to a handful of scholars by the 1950s,3 the majority of authorities contin-
ued long after this to assume that such definitions were valid and useful.4
More recently, however, a growing number of influential historians and
exegetes have published studies that criticize or even totally dismantle this
conceptualization of the topic.5
J.Z. Smith, 'Trading Places', in M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (eds.), Ancient Magic and
Ritual Power (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 129; Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1995),
pp. 13-27; G. Poupon, 'L'accusation de magie dans les Actes apocryphes', in F. Bovon
(ed.), Les actes apocryphes des apotres (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), pp. 71-85;
D.E. Aune, 'Magic in Early Christianity', ANRWII.23.2, pp. 1507-57; S.R. Garrett,
The Demise of the Devil: Magic and the Demonic in Luke 's Writings (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 2-5, 11-36; F. Graf, Magic in the Ancient World (trans.
F. Philip; Revealing Antiquity, 10; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1997), pp. 8-19; H.-J. Klauck, Magie und Heidentum in der Apostelgeschichte des
Lukas (SBS, 167; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1995), p. 12; H.C. Kee, Medicine,
Miracle and Magic in New Testament Times (SNTSMS, 55; Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986), pp. 2-8; M. Meyer and R. Smith (eds.), Ancient Christian
Magic, pp. 2-6; and J.G. Gager, 'Introduction', in idem (ed.), Curse Tablets andBind-
ing Spells, p?. 22-25.
3. See, e.g., E.R. Goodenough (ed.), Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman World.
II. The Archaeological Evidence from the Diaspora (13 vols.; New York: Pantheon,
1953), p. 156.
4. G. Fohrer, e.g., in his Introduction to the Old Testament (trans. D. Green; Nash-
ville: Abingdon Press, 1968), pp. 209,356, repeatedly assumes not only that 'magic'
exists as a definable reality in the extralinguistic world of Jewish Scripture, but also
that wherever a 'magical' point of view can be detected in the biblical text, it indicates
that the material in question is early in origin, a key assumption thus being that 'magic'
originated earlier than genuine 'religion' in the history of Israelite culture. Also
R. MacMullen (Paganism in the Roman Empire [New Haven: Yale University Press,
1981 ], pp. 50-51), after characterizing 'religion' as public and 'magic' as private, classi-
fies exorcism in general as a form of 'magic' yet offers no comment either about who
in the Roman world can be shown to have held such a rigid view, or about the signifi-
cant differences between various exorcistic practitioners, or about how exorcism's
tendency to occur in agonistic settings could sometimes result in observers and partici-
pants arriving at conflicting evaluations of a single therapeutic act (e.g. Mt. 12.22-30;
par. Lk. 11.14-23; Mk 3.22-27).
5. In addition to the work of Segal noted above, see especially Garrett, The
Demise of the Devil, pp. 13-19; Gager, 'Introduction', pp. 24-25; and W.J. Lyons and
A.M Reimer, 'The Demonic Virus and Qumran Studies: Some Preventative Meas-
ures', DSD 5 (1998), pp. 16-32.
KLUTZ Reinterpreting 'Magic': An Introduction 3
A particularly interesting example of this development is Alan Segal's

1981 article 'Hellenistic Magic: Some Questions of Definition', which
stresses that words for 'magic' in many parts of the ancient Mediterranean
world tended to be used with such pejorative overtones and with so wide
a range of referents that giving the terminology a precise and analytically
useful definition is probably impossible.6 More recently, and in a similar
vein, John Gager has astutely observed that even relatively enlightened
discussions that describe 'magic' and 'religion' as overlapping one another
presuppose, very problematically, that both categories are definable and in
at least some respects distinguishable.7 These observations and others like
them have been articulated and developed in so many academic contexts
from the early 1980s to the present that something resembling a new
consensus about magic in antiquity has begun to emerge. This consensus,
moreover, is a consensus characterized less by what it is willing to propose
than by what it is unwilling to leave unchallenged—that 'magic' (if it is to
be spoken of at all) should be seen as more manipulative, illogical, primi-
tive, individualistic, private and clandestine than what is usually recognized
as 'religion' ;8 indeed, in a manner resembling Michael A. Williams's recent
and very devastating critique of the scholarly construct, 'Gnosticism',9
some adherents to this new paradigm would prohibit all use of the term
'magic' except in contexts where it is the only sign that can accurately
connote the biased or confused thinking of scholars and religionists past.10
With this newer outlook growing in strength from one year to the next,
and since nearly all the essays in the present collection have at least a
6. Segal, 'Hellenistic Magic', pp. 349-51.

7. Gager, 'Introduction', p. 25.
8. This way of representing the debate, it is worth noting, usefully hints at one of
the most important but often overlooked difficulties in scholarly efforts to define
'magic': namely, by defining the term chiefly through the semantics of contrast, those
formulating the definition need to be able to invoke some Platonistic, essentialist and
normative idea of the contrasting predicate 'religion', something, in other words, we
most certainly do not have, as demonstrated recently by J.Z. Smith, 'Religion, Relig-
ions, Religious', in Mark C. Taylor (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 269-81.
9. See M. A. Williams, Rethinking 'Gnosticism': An Argument for Dismantling a
Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. pp. 7-53.
10. A policy consistently followed, e.g., by Gager, 'Introduction', pp. 3-41. From
outside biblical and historical studies, the same outlook has been articulated by Edmund
Leach, Social Anthropology (London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1982), p. 133, who observes,
'As for magic.. .1 can only say that, after a lifetime's career as a professional anthro-
pologist, I have almost reached the conclusion that the word has no meaning whatever'.
modicum of respect for this emerging perspective, one may well wish to
ask what sort of contribution my collaborators and I imagined we could
make to this field of discourse. None of us, after all, provides between
these covers either a critical edition or a translation of a previously unpub-
lished or untranslated primary source; nor does any of us deviate in any
dramatic way from existing theories concerning 'magic'. What this collec-
tion does offer, however, is a very specific discursive concentration that
differs significantly from that of other recent works published in the same
broad field of research. To be more precise, while several recent publica-
tions have attempted to redescribe select corpora of ancient magico-
religious texts from the standpoint of the emerging theoretical perspective
mentioned above,11 none of these has concentrated on the problems posed
by 'magic'—either as a category of first-order, participant-orientated dis-
course or as one of second-order, observer-orientated analysis—for students
whose primary interest is to interpret the relevant portions of the Jewish
and Christian canons; nor, as a corollary, has any of them tried to bring
this latter set of interests into conversation with select extracanonical texts
whose ideas and values exemplify, at least roughly, what producers of the
canonical literatures probably would have derided as 'magical'.
Since several thorough treatments of the theoretical debates concerning
magic have already been published by others,12 and with various facets of
the same topic being picked up in the studies that follow here, a compre-
hensive overview of the matter would be superfluous in this context. Nev-
ertheless, a couple of issues closely related to this one—namely, whether
the growing scholarly reticence to continue using words like 'magic' to
11. See esp. Gager (ed.), Curse Tablets and Binding Spells; and Meyer and Smith
(eds.), Ancient Christian Magic.
12. For discussion that stays close to our interest in interpreting the biblical mate-
rials, see esp. Garrett, The Demise of the Devil, pp. 1-36; and S. Ricks, 'The Magician
as Outsider in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament', in Meyer and Mirecki (eds.),
Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, pp. 131-44. For treatments that deal at length with
relevant theories and debates in the history of the social sciences, see G. Cunningham,
Religion and Magic: Approaches and Theories (New York: New York University
Press, 1999); F. Bowie, The Anthropology of Religion (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000),
pp. 13-28; H.G. Kippenberg, 'Einleitung: Zur Kontroverse über das Verstehen fremden
Denkens', in H.G. Kippenberg and B. Luchesi (eds.), Magie: Die sozialwissenschaft-
liche Kontroverse über das Verstehen fremden Denkens (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987),
pp. 9-51; J. Skorupski, Symbol and Theory: A Philosophical Study of Theories of Relig-
ion in Social Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); and
Smith, 'Trading Places', esp. pp. 13-20.
denote the religious beliefs of others (i.e. non-Westerners and ancient

peoples) is anything more than an academic fad, inspired less by serious
commitment to correcting Western images of the two-thirds world as
intellectually backward than by troubled liberal consciences trying to
staunch a global haemorrhage with an anthropological Band-Aid; and, if
indeed it is more than that, what exactly makes it so—do deserve our
attention at this juncture, especially since the high cost of misunderstand-
ing the religion of others has been demonstrated afresh by the leading
news stories of 2001 and 2002.13
Significantly, scholarly references to 'magic' and 'the magical world
view' have normally been accompanied by either explicit or implicit
denigration of the mental capacities of people who traffick in such stuff.14
Thus, while theoretical resources for debunking this scholarly tendency
are normally sought (and sometimes found) in the writings of social anthro-
pologists, a critique with greater power and relevance might be derived
from a discipline whose interests have more to do with human mind and
cognition—namely, linguistics, and especially the contributions made to
this field by Noam Chomsky. If for instance Chomsky is right (as I believe
he is) that the ongoing slaughter of some of the world's most impover-
ished people on the altar of Western affluence is legitimated chiefly through
a web of ethnocentric fictions and self-flattering illusions, collectively nur-
tured and disseminated by Western governments and their corporate and
media patrons,15 then Western academic discourse about 'primitive peoples'
and their 'magical' or 'superstitious' mentalities fully deserves any suspi-
cions we might have about its sources and functions.16
13. See, e.g., Amy Waldman, 'How in a Little British Town Jihad Found Young
Converts'(http.//www.nytimes.com/2002/04/24/international/europe/24BRIT.html);
and Andrew Sullivan, 'This is a Religious War', New York Times, 1 October 2001,
section 6, p. 44.
14. J. Fitzmyer (Luke the Theologian: Aspects of His Teaching [London: Geoffrey
Chapman, 1989], pp. 150-51), for instance, after describing Luke's demonic aetiology
of illness as symptomatic of'protological thinking', asserts that 'ancient folk, unable
to diagnose properly an illness or discern its secondary, natural causality, ascribed it to
a preternatural being, a spirit or a demon' (italics mine).
15. N. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Vintage, 1992), pp. 9-58,73-87,
215-48,357-401.
16. Although Chomsky himself, to my knowledge, nowhere addresses our particu-
lar concern explicitly, his discussion of academic inquiry into the relationship between
human language, intellectual endowment, and race ('Equality: Language Development,
Human Intelligence, and Social Organization', in J. Peck [ed.], The Chomsky Reader
This suspicion is only intensified, moreover, by the implications of

Chomsky's revolutionary theories of human language and mind. To be
more precise, as Chomsky and many influenced by him strongly argue that
essentially comparable levels of grammatical complexity and communica-
tive competence are manifest in all the world's different systems of natural
language,17 Chomskyan linguistic theory can easily be understood to cohere
on a deep level with Chomskyan political analysis, the universalism of the
former reinforcing the egalitarianism of the latter and thus dealing its own
heavy blow to the use of words like 'magical', 'naive' or 'protological' in
discussions of non-Western modes of human cognition.18
Notwithstanding the seriousness with which Chomsky's work deserves
to be considered, however, and if the reader will permit use of a more
autobiographical register for a couple of paragraphs, I myself should
confess to being plagued by doubts nurtured by the late Ernest Gellner,
who raised a number of very awkward questions specifically in regard to
Chomsky's criticism of the American social scientists who assisted their
government's war effort in Vietnam.19 To be more precise, and as Gellner
himself observed, Chomsky emphatically denounces the morality and
politics of these academics yet 'cannot refrain, at the same time, from
scorning their scientific pretensions'.20 But what if, Gellner asks, the scien-
tific claims of Chomsky's academic opponents could be proved to be no
mere pretence, but rather genuine and valid? Would America's political
objectives and military strategies in Vietnam therefore have been morally
less objectionable?21 And more broadly, can we really expect valid science
always to dovetail so conveniently with our noblest and kindest intuitions
about what is moral and best for the flourishing of human beings in gen-
eral? And—to make explicit the connection between these questions and
our present topic—is it really the case that our most valid science conclu-
[New York: Pantheon Books, 1987], pp. 195-202) has direct implications that are con-
sistent with the inference I am drawing here.
17. See, e.g., N. Chomsky, Language and Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovano-
vich, enlarged edn, 1972), pp. 112-14; and S. Pinker, The Language Instinct: The New
Science of Language and Mind (London: Penguin, 1994), pp. 25-31.
18. On the subtle but profound unity of Chomsky's political and linguistic ideas,
see J. Lyons, Chomsky (Modern Masters; London: Fontana/Collins, 1970), pp. 13-15.
19. E. Gellner, Relativism and the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985), p. 101.
20. Gellner, Relativism and the Social Sciences, p. 101.
sively demonstrates the existence of something akin to universal equality

in human cognitive competence, and with it the theoretical bankruptcy of
intellectualist and similar traditions of writing about 'magic', when this
same science is by and large our science and therefore a product chiefly of
particular traditions and institutions that distinguish the modern West (for
better or worse) from other sociocultural formations?
Letting myself be reduced by this sort of dilemma to a state of ethical and
political indecisiveness, I confess, must constitute some kind of uniquely
awful (and largely Western) vice; but it is not one without a few redeem-
ing effects: at the very least, were I to start my academic career afresh and
find myself practising one variety or another of social science, the scholars
I would join ranks with would clearly not be those pictured by Gellner
as strutting confidently about, 'shaking their paradigm like a coxcomb,
instructing the students, advising authorities'.22 No, almost certainly, I
would find my home instead among Gellner's 'more becomingly doubt-
ridden' family of theorists, and quickly learn how to grumble that no
Mephistopheles from CNN or the British Foreign Office had offered to
buy my soul. And thus, in some very fractional but not imperceptible way,
the world would become a better and nicer place.
Accordingly, readers will find no strutting in this introduction, no con-
fident pronouncements about how, at last, the long debate concerning
'magic and religion' can be brought to a universally satisfying resolution.
The farthest I can go in this direction is to say, right here and very briefly,
that the linguistic distinction between competence and performance may
well offer us a way out of this dilemma; for although Chomsky and his
heirs are almost certainly right to assert that remarkable psycholinguistic
and mental competencies are equally manifest in all the world's known
societies and natural language systems, this fact scarcely guarantees that
these competencies will be used in any given context to produce discourse
in either an intelligent or a humane fashion, as the numerous examples
adduced by Chomsky himself of ill-informed and inhumane discourse in
Western political propaganda well attest.23 Consequently, if certain West-
ern academics wish to perpetuate the hoary tradition of calling religious
practices that from their point of view seem foolish or harmful 'magic',
they should by all means feel free to do so—as long as they are willing to
acknowledge that their own societies' amalgams of, say, Christianity and

23. See, e.g., N. Chomsky, 'The Manufacture of Consent', in Peck (ed.), The
Chomsky Reader, pp. 121-36 (121-24).
secularist capitalism could by this same definition turn out to be as 'magi-

cal' and savage as anything found in the darkest cave of their historical
imagination.
Many, however, including some of the contributors to this volume,
would take exception even to this relatively modest proposal. What prin-
ciples of literary and thematic organization, one might therefore ask, can
be found (or created) that would bring an appropriate sense of coherence
to a collection like this, whose individual essayists differ from each other
almost as widely as can be imagined in regard to their views of the central
sign around which the volume revolves? In general, I think, something
both credible and potentially useful to the reader can be said in reply to
this. In the 'Contents' pages of this book, most readers will recognize a
combination of historical and interdiscursive logics underlying the particu-
lar groupings of articles into higher-level parts on the one hand and the
relationships between these parts themselves on the other hand. More speci-
fically, early Christian rhetoric about 'magic', which is the unifying con-
cern of Part II (Marguerat, Downing, Laus, Reimer, Pietersen), cannot be
properly contextualized unless it is understood at least partially in relation
to its biblical antecedents and Jewish cultural resources, which Part I
(Brooke, Römer, Nihan, Bühlmann) does much to illumine. At the same
time, though, and unless we wish to embrace the unlikely thesis that early
Christian rhetoric about 'magic' was so referentially slippery that we can-
not know anything about the actual practices that Christians were oppos-
ing, our attempt to understand this rhetoric will make at best only modest
progress without a comparable effort being expended to understand other,
now lesser known and often devalued documents that exemplify some-
thing like the allegedly 'magical' point of view; hence, each of the studies
in Part III (Alexander, Bain, Klutz) concentrates on a different extraca-
nonical text whose ideas and instructions are typical of what many ancient
Christians probably would have regarded as 'magic'.
The ancient sources treated in Part III, however, all derive at the earliest
from the Late Antique period and are therefore too late in origin to inform
interpretation of the Jewish biblical texts treated in Part II in anything
more than a very general way. Does this fact not constitute a serious break-
down in the logic of the volume's organization? It would, I think, if the
chief aim of this collection were to enrich interpretation of the key pas-
sages specifically in the Jewish biblical canon; however, as the name of
the monograph series to which this volume belongs signifies very explicitly
that, on the contrary, it is the New Testament and its various contexts of
production and early reception that the collection as a whole is primarily
intended to illumine, its lack of a major section on comparative sources

from the ancient Near East cannot be judged a grave fault. Indeed, the
intense concentration on Hebrew biblical texts in Part I, with nearly all the
focus in these chapters falling on the original functions and contexts of the
passages in their own right rather than on their subsequent Christian recep-
tion, could well merit praise as a unique surplus of value in a volume osten-
sibly dedicated to New Testament scholarship. But most importantly, if
this feature and the discussions in Part III stimulate students in New Testa-
ment studies and cognate disciplines to contextualize more richly and read
more widely in the larger field of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern
religion, the volume will have achieved one its most important aims.
Partí
'MAGIC' IN JEWISH SCRIPTURE AND AT QUMRAN
COMPETING MAGICIANS IN EXODUS 7-9:
INTERPRETING MAGIC IN THE PRIESTLY THEOLOGY
Thomas C. Römer
1. Foreword: Problems of Definition

To define 'magic' is as difficult as giving a precise definition of'religion'.
Yet it is always in relation to 'religion' that historians of religion attempt
to locate 'magic'. S. Mowinckel, for instance, following B. Malinowski,
contrasts magic to religion and sees the former as having much in common
with the natural sciences, for in his view both magic and science are pow-
erfully shaped by pragmatic aims and empirical functions.1 N. Söderblom
also strongly distinguishes between religion and magic: 'in religion, man
reveres divinity; in magic, man makes use of divinity to his own advan-
tage ' .2 According to F. Graf, this distinction goes back to Plato, who in the
Laws contrasts magic's goal of persuading the gods to true religious behav-
iour's respect for the gods' freedom of will and superior knowledge of
what is good for us.3 On the other hand, scholars such as A.E. Jensen have
strongly criticized the view according to which magical practices would
belong to a 'proto-religious' state of humanity and form the basis on which
religion would later develop. Jensen insists that one cannot have either
magic deriving from religion or religion from magic, even if there are many
correlations between the two.4 This view is clearly opposed to that of the
1. S. Mowinckel, Religion und Kultus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,

1953), pp. 15-28.
2. N. Söderblom, Der lebendige Gott im Zeugnis der Religionsgeschichte: nach-
gelassene Gifford-Lektüren (Munich: E. Reinhardt, 1942), p. 33.
3. F. Graf, La magie dans l'Antiquité gréco-romaine: Ideologie et pratique
(Histoire, 28; Paris: Beiles Lettres, 1994), p. 38.
4. A.E. Jensen, 'Gibt es Zauberhandlungen?', Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 75 (1950),
pp. 3-12 (repr. in L. Petzoldt [ed.], Magie und Religion: Beiträge zu einer Theorie der
Magie [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978], pp. 279-95). See, for
instance, p. 294: 'Magie und Religion sind wahrscheinlich gleich alt und haben im
RÖMER Competing Magicians in Exodus 7-9 13
school of J.G. Frazer, which adopts an evolutionist outlook and distin-

guishes between three stages in humankind's mental development: magic,
religion and science;5 from this perspective, magic is characteristic of
archaic and primitive man. And thus one will try, as Graf points out, to
distinguish magical rites from those one wants to view as religious.6 This
effort often betrays a pejorative view, stemming from certain theological
or philosophical conceptions of what is called 'magic'.
Today, it turns out that the word 'magic' is not very functional as a
global concept. True, one may specify which different rites are considered
as magic—witchcraft, necromancy, divination, miracles and so on—but
no alternative has been suggested to that generic term. Thus we adopt
J. Kümmerlin-McLean's pragmatic definition when she speaks of'methods
associated with the gaining of suprahuman knowledge and power or with
influencing suprahuman power' .7 It is obvious, especially as far as ancient
Near Eastern religions are concerned, that a strict distinction between
magic and religion is impossible. This fact may even be confirmed from
the etymology of the Greek word payos which comes from Persian and,
according to Xenophon, refers to 'experts in matters related to the gods'
(oí TTEp'i TOÚS 0SOÚS TEXVÍTai). 8 What, then, about magic in the Old
Testament?
2. Magic in the Old Testament

Let us first remember that the Hebrew Bible does not immediately reflect
religious and ritual practices of the average Israelite of the first millennium
BCE. The Hebrew Bible is to a large extent a literary product composed by
intellectual elites from the Persian period in order to reorganize or even
create Judaism out of the crisis of exile. All the same, these texts assimi-
late information about popular ritual customs for a variety of polemical,
subversive and even antiquarian reasons.
The Hebrew Bible is rich in terms for specialists in magic or witchcraft:
^tODQ ('magician', 'sorcerer', e.g. Mai. 3.5); "Din ('charmer', e.g. Ps. 58.6);
wesentlichen nichts miteinander zu tun. Die zahlreichen Verbindungen zwischen

magischen Praktiken und religiösen Vorstellungen sind sekundär'.
5. For more details, see Graf, La magie, pp. 19-27.
6. Graf, La magie, p. 26.
7. J.K. Kuemmerlin-McLean, 'Magic: Old Testament', inABD, IV, pp. 468-71
(468).
8. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.3.11, quoted in Graf, La magie, p. 31.
Ön^D ('enchanter', e.g. Jer. 8.17);DniÖnnDDn ('expert in magic', Isa. 3.3);

DDpQ ('divination', Ezek. 12.24) and so on.9
In 1 Kgs 18.17 Ahab addresses Elijah as a sorcerer who would have put
a spell on Israel.10 This shows that the border between prophetism and
magic is very fluid. Elijah and Elisha are not only prophets but also magi-
cians. They know how to decontaminate polluted waters and make an iron
axe come back up to the water's surface (2 Kgs 2.19-22; 6.1-6). Through
magical rites, they restore dead children to life by making their vital
energy pass over the child (1 Kgs 17.19-23; 2 Kgs 4.33-37). A number of
prophetic 'symbolic acts' are also quite near to magic rites (e.g. the model
of a besieged and destroyed city in Ezek. 4.1-3, and in Jer. 51.59-64).
These instances, to which others could be added, confirm F. Cryer's hy-
pothesis: 'ancient Israel was a "magic society" like those around her'.11
Yet most exegetes think the Old Testament has, in general, a hostile view
of magic.12 This perspective may be explained in two ways: first, by the
exegetes' theological options; and next, by the undue valorization of a
single theological trajectory in the Old Testament—namely, that of the
Deuteronomists.
3. 'Popular Religion' and the Constitution of an Official Judaism under

Persian Rule: The Deuteronomic versus the Priestly Antagonism
The Pentateuch or Torah appears today to be a compromise document duly
negotiated between the two major ideological trends13 that will give Juda-
ism its profile from the Persian period onward: the Priestly trend (P) and
the lay-scribal, Deuteronomistic (D) trend. Within the framework of this
essay, we can leave aside the question of whether the publication of the
Torah was favoured by the Persians themselves (theory of the 'imperial
9. For more details, see R. Albertz, 'Magie II: Altes Testament', in TEE, XXI, pp.
691-95; and D.N. Fabian, 'The Socio-Religious Role of Witchcraft in the Old Testa-
ment Culture: An African Insight', Old Testament Essays 11 (1998), pp. 215-39 (225-
30).
10. For this translation of 131?, see G. Fohrer, Elia (ATANT, 31; Zürich: Zwingli-
Verlag, 1957), p. 11.
11. F.H. Cryer, Divination in Ancient Israel and Its Near Eastern Environment: A
Socio-Historical Investigation (JSOTSup, 142; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), p. 324.
12. K. Galling, 'Magie: 7. Im AT', in RGG3, IV, p. 601.
13. The word 'trend' should not be understood as meaning a vast, popular move-
ment. The Pentateuch was edited by a small group of elites who knew each other and
met in Jerusalem (and Babylon?).
authorization') or if it was due rather to a process within the Jewish com-

munities in Palestine and in the Diaspora.14 Nevertheless, it is also too
simplistic to conceive the Pentateuch as resulting from the combination of
two trends only; this model would certainly not account for the whole
material knitted together in the Torah. All the same, it allows us to account
for the divergence between the two main trends, D and P, in their treat-
ment of magic. On the one hand, Priestly and Deuteronomistic writers
agree as to the fundamental theological options of the Pentateuch: the
monotheistic creed and the essential role of Moses as a mediator between
the divine word and the people. On the other hand, they deeply disagree as
to their strategy for the promotion of this 'new religion' among adepts of
the former Yahwistic and polytheistic pre-exilic religion. While the Deu-
teronomistic group favours breaking off and banning certain religious
traditional practices, the Priestly writers would rather have a strategy of
integration and transformation.
Let us take as an example the practice of worshiping dead ancestors, a
phenomenon quite widespread in the ancient Near East, as well as in Judah
and in Israel.15 This worship implies veneration of the ancestor's tomb and
strategies of getting in touch with the dead (see especially 1 Sam. 28).
The D tradition wants to eradicate these practices, identifying them with
Canaanite customs and forbidding them.16 The Priestly school, also hostile
to the worship of the dead (cf. Lev. 19.31-32), is more aware of cultural
realities. Thus, P has an entire chapter about the tomb Abraham bought in
Makpela, near Hebron (Gen. 23). In this long secular narrative of oriental
bargaining, where God does not interfere, the Priestly writers succeed both
in 'desecrating' the patriarchal tomb and at the same time paying tribute to
it.17 Yes, in Hebron is Abraham's tomb, but the place of the tomb has no
sacred power, since the Patriarch had to buy it just as he would have any
other good property. In this way, the Priestly writers recognize the func-
14. For a presentation of present research on the Pentateuch, see T. Römer, 'La
formation du Pentateuque selon l'exégése historico-critique', in C. Amphoux and
J. Margain (eds.), Les premieres traditions de la Bible (Histoire du texte biblique, 2;
Lausanne: Editions du Zébre, 1996), pp. 17-55.
15. See, for instance, N.J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether-
world in the Old Testament (BibOr, 21; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1969).
16. E.g. Deut. 18.9-12: 'you shall not learn to do after the abominations of those
nations'; and Deut. 26.14, with its ban on 'feeding' the dead.
17. Cf. J. Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1975), pp. 293-95.
tion of the tomb for the genealogical identity of a group, but they trans-
form worship of the dead into a memorial to the Patriarchs.18
This divergence between P and D is still more evident regarding their
attitude towards magical rites. On the whole, for the D tradition, anything
involving magic is rigorously forbidden, as is clear from some examples.
a. 'You will not suffer a sorcerer (nBBaDD) to live' (Exod. 22.17). In
the law of the Book of Covenant,19 this is the only occurrence of
the feminine form of the word.20 This has led some exegetes to
consider the word here as a collective. It might suggest that there
were women excelling in witchcraft. The ban is religious and, as
in Deut. 18.9-14, means rejection of practices envisioned as non-
Yahwistic.21
b. 'There shall not be found with you any one that makes his son or
daughter to pass through the fire, one that uses divination (DOp),
one that practises augury, or an enchanter (OfDD), or a sorcerer
(*]ODE), or a charmer ("On), or a consulter of a deceased spirit
pIK ^80), that is one who consults dead people. For whoever
does these things is an abomination unto Yhwh' (Deut. 18.10-
12).22 It is difficult to tell precisely which magical practices this
list has in mind; it looks like an attempt to cover the widest range
of magical practices possible. These interdictions figure in the
context of the law regarding prophets and obviously aim at a dis-
tinction between 'true' prophecy and magical practices.
18. According to O. Loretz, 'Vom kanaanäischen Totenkult zur jüdischen Patri-

archen- und Elternehrung', Jahrbuch für Anthropologie und Religionsgeschichte 3
(1978), pp. 149-201, the command to honour (living) parents in the Decalogue should
also be understood as a transformation of worship of deceased ancestors.
19. We shall not discuss the question of a Deuteronomistic redaction of this collec-
tion. According to L. Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Das Bundesbuch (Ex 20, 22-23, 33):
Studien zu seiner Entstehung und Theologie (BZAW, 188; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1990),
pp. 329-30, this prescription would date from the seventh century BCE.
20. See the discussion by C. Houtman, Das Bundesbuch. Ein Kommentar
(Documenta et monumenta Orientis antiqui, 24; Leiden: E J. Brill, 1997), pp. 218-21.
His proposition, according to which the matter is not a sorcerer but an adulteress, is not
very convincing.
21. Cf. J.M. Sprinkle, 'The Book of Covenant': A Literary Approach (JSOTSup,
174; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), p. 164.
22. For these various expressions in Deut. 18, see Kuemmerlin-McLean, 'Magic:
Old Testament', pp. 468-69.
Many other texts from the Deuteronomistic trajectory adopt a rejecting

attitude towards magic, as for instance the Decalogue command: 'You
shall not take the name of Yhwh in vain' (Deut. 5.11), which forbids the
use of the divine name in magical incantations (see also Jer. 27.9; Mai.
3.5).23
For the Deuteronomistic trend, prophecy must be separated from magic,
and all magical ritual should be declared an insult to Yahwistic religion.
After the ban in Deut. 18.9-12, Moses becomes the founder of a prophetic
succession which is in radical opposition to practices considered to be
'non-Yahwistic'. This is in no way the option of the Priestly school, which
chose instead to transform Moses and Aaron into 'super-magicians'.
4. The Narrative of the Plagues of Egypt as a Paradigm

of an Ideological Conflict within the Pentateuch
In its canonical form, the narrative of the 'ten'24 plagues of Egypt (Exod.
7.14-12.3 625) prepares for the night of the massacre of the firstborn and the
exodus out of Egypt (Exod. 12-14). The episodes of the various 'plagues'
are composed with the following six elements:
a. Discourse of Yhwh to Moses: an order to ask Pharaoh to release
(n^Ü) the people, and an announcement of the plague to come;
b. Discourse of Yhwh to Moses (and Aaron): an order to carry out
the plague;
c. Realization of the plague;
d. Intervention of the magicians;
e. Pharaoh summoning Moses (and Aaron): discourse of Pharaoh
with an imperative ('pray/serve Yhwh');
f. Result: obstinacy/Pharaoh hardens his heart.
The distribution of these elements allows for a regrouping of the plagues
into three series of three (I: 1, 2, 3; II: 4, 5, 6; III: 7, 8, 9),26 the tenth
23. Cf. W.H. Schmidt, Die zehn Gebote im Rahmen alttestamentlicher Ethik
(Erträge der Forschung, 281; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993),
pp. 82-85.
24. Let us recall that the number ten comes from a certain synchronic reading, but
nowhere does that number appear in the text.
25. The end of the last plague is not easy to determine—a difficulty which favours
the thesis that the narrative has been elaborated on the basis of the story of the
massacre of the Egyptian firstborn in Exod. 12.
26. This idea is already present in Rashbam (eleventh and twelfth centuries); see on
catastrophe Standing apart. The 'a' element (i.e. divine discourse about the
announced plague) is present in the first two plagues of each triad but
missing from the third; in plagues 1, 4 and 7, there is insistence on the
urgency of the announcement ("IpDD); and plagues 2, 5 and 8 all have the
imperative 'go to Pharaoh'. This composition shows that the final redactor
of the book of Exodus understood the pericope 6.28-7.13 as a prelude to
the plagues. But in fact, when one looks at the structure of this unit, one
realizes that it is built in a fashion very comparable to other episodes in
Exod. 7-12 (only the 6 a' element differs). Its place outside the cycle comes
from a preconception of Exod. 7-12 as a cycle of plagues and divine pun-
ishments. But this reading does justice to only some of the units assembled
in this corpus—namely, the pericopes of Deuteronomistic origin: as a
matter of fact there exists a certain consensus among scholars on Exodus
7-12 about distinguishing between priestly texts and non-priestly ones that
have similarities with the Deuteronomistic school.27
The Deuteronomists seem to have written an account in which there were
seven plagues,28 an observation supported by Pss. 78.44-51 and 105.28-38
since both allude to a cycle of seven plagues. As J. Van Seters has notably
demonstrated, this is a literary creation and not 'ancient tradition'. The
author got his inspiration from the expression 'signs and prodigies', which
he uses to sum up the exile out of Egypt and the catastrophes he has
adapted from Assyrian vassal treaties (cf. Deut. 28.21 -68).29 According to
the D composition, the manifestations of Yhwh in Exod. 7-12 are to be
understood as divine punishments caused by the obstinacy of Pharaoh (cf.
the use of the roots ÍM3 or^] in 7.27 [D]; 11.1 [D30]; 12.13-23 [D]).TheD
composition draws a parallel between the destruction of Judah and the
destruction of Egypt: catastrophe came to Judah because Israel did not
this J. Kegler, 'Zur Komposition und Theologie der Plagenerzählungen', in E. Blum

(ed.), Die hebräische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte (Festschrift R. Rendtorff;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990), pp. 55-74.
27. For the book of Exodus, I follow the approach of E. Blum, Studien zur Kompo-
sition des Pentateuch (BZAW, 189; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1990); cf. also W. Johnstone,
Exodus (OTG; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990).
28. See, for instance, the study by F. Kohata, Jähwist und Priesterschrift in Exodus
3-14 (BZAW, 166; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1986); however, she still attributes this ver-
sion to a Yahwist of the tenth century.
29. J. Van Seters, 'The Plagues of Egypt: Ancient Tradition or Literary Inven-
tion?', ZAW9& (1986), pp. 31-39.
30. Following Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, pp. 35-36. Accord-
ing to Kohata, Jahwist, this verse belongs to the final redaction.
listen, and cataclysm came upon Egypt because Pharaoh did not listen
(Exod. 7.16). To this prophetico-deuteronomistic ideology of judgment
and punishment, P opposes a more irenic, indeed humorous, version of the
manifestations of Yhwh to the nations. Priestly texts in Exod. 7-12 never
mention plagues, but talk instead of signs and prodigies (7.3; 11.9). These
are Demonstrationswunder—that is, miracles which seek to demonstrate
Yhwh's power.31 In contrast to Deuteronomistic ideology, the Priestly
school is not concerned with the judgment of Israel and the nations (a
concern expressed, e.g., in the theology of the hardening of Pharaoh's
heart), but rather with the place and specificity of Israel among the nations.
This is why the Priestly school transforms the Deuteronomistic narrative
of the plagues into a contest of magicians.32
5. Competing Magicians
The Priestly version of the miracles in Egypt has five episodes, of which
7.1-13, often understood as a prologue on the level of a synchronic read-
ing, is the first.33 In each of these five scenes, Moses and Aaron come to
compete with the magicians of Egypt.
After Aaron's stick has been transformed into a 'dragon', Pharaoh sends
for the wisemen (D^DDn) and the sorcerers (D^SÖDÖ, cf. Deut. 18.10).
These two categories of specialists are called D^Dinn later on (Exod.
7.11). This word,34 which occurs repeatedly in the five episodes (7.22; 8.3,
14-15; 9.11), is usually translated as 'magician' and is probably a term
borrowed from Egyptian, designating a priest of high rank and in charge of
reading ritual instructions (Redford: 'chief lector priest'35). Aaron and the
31. H.-C. Schmitt, 'Tradition der Prophetenbücher in den Schichten der Plagener-
zählung Ex 7, l -11,10', in V. Fritz et al (eds.), Prophet und Prophetenbuch (Festschrift
O. Kaiser; BZAW, 185; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1989), pp. 196-216 (203).
32. As argued by O.H. Steck, DerAbschluss der Prophetic im Alten Testament: Ein
Versuch zur Frage der Vorgeschichte des Kanons (Biblisch-theologische Studien, 17;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), p. 17, the P document was conceived
as an anti-Deuteronomist work.
33. Belongingthen to P,grossomodo, 7.19-22*; 8.1-3,11*; 12-15; 9.8-12. There is
an astonishing unanimity on this matter among exegetes.
34. Translated by LXX as eTiaoiSos, which may be a neologism; cf. J. Lust et al, A
Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, Part /(Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft,
1992), p. 165.
35. D.B. Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Genesis 37-50),
(VTSup, 20; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), p. 203.
D n ftft"in thus have a double identity: they are both priests and 'magicians'.
What makes them differ is the origin of their knowledge: Egyptian magi-
cians base their performance on occult sciences (D^EDf"!]1?, cf. 7.11,22; 8.3,
1436), whereas Aaron can rely on Yhwh's word as transmitted by Moses
(7.9,15; 8.1,12). The author clearly wants to show that Aaron holds the
best cards from the first round on, since his stick will eat up that of the
magicians (7.13). All the same, Pharaoh's sorcerers are taken seriously,
since the second and third confrontations end in a draw. Just like Moses
and Aaron, they succeed in transforming water into blood (7.22) and have
the frogs come up (8.2). This means that the author takes the magical
capacities of the Egyptians seriously and that, for him, magic as such is no
problem.37 Indeed, what he wants to prove is that the magic of God's word
is more effective than the magic of the Egyptians.
So, in the fourth plague, the magicians of Egypt are unable to imitate
Aaron's magical gesture—namely, the transformation of dust into mosqui-
toes (Exod. 8.13-14). They acknowledge Moses and Aaron's (and their
God's) superiority when they declare to Pharaoh, 'This is the finger of
God [elohim}' (8.15). This expression, attested in Egyptian magical for-
mulas, undoubtedly points to Aaron's stick,38 whose superiority the sorcer-
ers acknowledge. They do not use the tetragrammaton but rather the more
universal name elohim used by P in reference to pre-Msosaic settings and
the gods of other peoples. As in the Joseph novel (Gen. 37-50), elohim is
the word that allows the Hebrews and Egyptians an area of theological
agreement. In contrast to Pharaoh (whom Yhwh has hardened), the magi-
cians begin to understand their adversaries' superiority.
The defeat of the Egyptian magicians is finally confirmed in the fifth
episode, where they are themselves affected by the ashes of the furnace
that Moses and Aaron transform into a vehicle of skin disease (9.10-11).
This last episode differs from the preceding ones: it offers no trace of the
customary reference (7.11,22; 8.3,14) to the occult sciences of the Egyp-
36. These are the only occurences of the word in the plural in the whole Hebrew
Bible.
37. Cf. W.H. Schmidt, 'Magie und Gotteswort: Einsichten und Ausdrucksweisen
des Deuteronomiums in der Priesterschrift', in I. Kottsieper et al (eds.), 'Wer ist wie
du, HERR, unter den Göttern?' Studien zur Theologie und Religionsgeschickte Israels
(Festschrift O. Kaiser; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), pp. 169-79 (178);
the opposition he constructs between magic and word of God stems from his dogmatic
presuppositions.
38. So, convincingly, B. Couroyer, 'Le "doigt de Dieu" (Exode, VIII, 15)', RB 63
(1956), pp. 481-95.
tian magicians, a conspicuous absence that underlines their incapacity. But

there is also a change on the Hebrew side. Contrary to the four previous
episodes, this narrative does not open with ' Yhwh told Moses: tell Aaron'
(cf. 7.8, 19; 8.1,12), but with 'Yhwh told Moses and Aaron' (9.8). Here
Moses does not transmit the divine order to his brother who will execute it
later; both take a direct part in the magical operation, with Moses even
playing the most important part, just as if the author wanted to show that it
is through the direct involvement of Moses that the Egyptian magicians
are finally defeated. Moses, who had more or less stayed out of the first
four episodes, is characterized in the end as the one who puts a definitive
end to Egyptian magic.
6. Origin and Intention of the Competition Narrative

One of the important debates in discussion of the Pentateuch concerns the
status of P. Would it originally be an independant document, or a redac-
tion integrating and editing the composition D? In regard to the cycle of
the plagues, J. Van Seters has recently reiterated his arguments in favour
of the redactional character of P. He thinks Exod. 7.1 -7 is not to be under-
stood solely as an introduction to the episodes of the magicians' competi-
tion, but also has been written in view of non-Priestly texts.39 Nevertheless,
the competition narrative has a certain unity and consistency, as Blum
noted,40 and it is thus very possible that P would have included an oral or
written tradition in his work.41 J. Reindl stood up for the thesis that P
would have taken up a narrative originating in the Egyptian Diaspora,42
which seems to me a very attractive idea. It is certainly not pure coinci-
dence if all the occurrences of the word D n ftft"in outside Exod. 7-9 are
found in the Joseph story (Gen. 41.8, 24) and in the narrative part of
Daniel (Dan. 1.20; 2.2), that is to say in two diaspora novels. Genesis 41
and Daniel 1-2 have aims comparable to the story of the magicians'
39. J. Van Seters, 'A Contest of Magicians? The Plague Stories in P', in D.P.
Wright, D.N. Freedman and A. Hurvitz (eds.), Pomegranates and Golden Bells:
Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of
Jacob Milgrom (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1995), pp. 569-80.
40. Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch, pp. 250-52.
41. I do not understand why Blum wants to cut out 7.8-13.
42. J. Reindl, 'Der Finger Gottes und die Macht der Götter: Ein Problem des
ägyptischen Diasporajudentums und sein literarischer Niederschlag', in W. Ernst etal.
(eds.), Dienst der Vermittlung: Festschrift Priesterseminar Erfurt (Erfurter Theolo-
gische Studien, 37; Leipzig: St Benno, 1977), pp. 49-60.
competition in Exod. 7-9; the reader discovers there that the magical skill
of the Jews is superior to that of the specialists in the great cultures (for
Joseph and Daniel, it is mainly a matter of oneiromancy). Besides, the
author of Exod. 7-9 seems to know quite well a certain popular Egyptian
culture.43 Thus, the first episode in Exod. 7.8-13 shows some parallels with
a story in Papyrus Westcar, where an Egyptian changes a wax crocodile
into a real one by throwing it into the water; when he takes it out of the
water, the crocodile turns back to wax.44
In this way Exodus 7-12 can be understood as a dialogue with Egyptian
culture. The author accepts, and maybe admires, the magical knowledge of
the Egyptian priests; but he wants to convince his readers that belief in
Yhwh, the only God, can integrate and exceed such knowledge in might.
7. Summary: Moses, a Magician?

Whilst the Deuteronomistic ideology sets 'magical' practices against Yah-
wistic prophetism (Deut. 18.9-19), the Priestly school merges them by
integrating a tradition from the diaspora. The fact that Aaron, priest and
magician, is called nabV in Exod. 7.1 reveals a strategy in conflict with
that of Deut. 18.
Presented with these ideological options, moreover, Rabbinism can be
seen to have adopted the stance of the Deuteronomistic school vis-á-vis
magic. According to the Mishna (Sank. 7.7) magic is equivalent to idola-
try. The Sabbat treatise denounces magical remedies as 'the custom of
the Amorites' (Sab. 6.10). In spite of this condemnation, however, and as
Graf reminds us, traditions about Moses as a magician exist in Jewish
circles of both Alexandria and Syro-Palestine, as well as in the Graeco-
Roman world.45 These traditions must be based on a positive appreciation
of the magical powers of God's messengers; besides, the Talmud takes
this fact into account when it declares that magical practices performed for
the benefit of teaching are not included in the prohibitions (b. Sank. 68a).
Thanks then to the Priestly strategy of integration, magic (in due service of
the Torah!) found a niche within the Pentateuch.
43. M. Görg, Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Alten Israel und Ägypten: Von den
Anfängen bis zum Exil (Erträge der Forschung, 290; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1997), p. 149.
44. The link with this narrative might explain the use of "pfl instead of 013; cf.
A. Jirku, Altorientalischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg,
1972), p. 83.
45. Graf, La magie, pp. 14-16.
1 SAMUEL 28 AND THE CONDEMNATION
OF NECROMANCY IN PERSIAN YEHUD*
Christophe L. Nihan
This paper deals with the topic of divination in the Old Testament, a prac-
tice which undoubtedly played a decisive part in the social, political and
religious life of the ancient Near East, and one well attested in the Old
Testament.1 In what follows, I shall take up this issue by focusing on a
specific divinatory practice—namely, necromancy. It seems to me, indeed,
that this aspect of Israelite divination has been somewhat overlooked by
F. Cryer in his recent treatment of the subject.21 shall try to show for my
part that necromancy is very likely to have played an important role among
the divinatory methods in use in ancient Israel—something already sug-
* I would like to thank H. Lubell and A.-L. Nihan for their helpful comments on
my translation, as well as Dr T. Klutz, who kindly revised my English.
1. See, for instance, the well-known apodictic law of Deut. 18.10-11, where divina-
tion is mentioned several times among the practices prohibited by the Deuteronomistic
school: esp. divination (DDp), auguries (5ÖTT3), and consultation of the dead.
2. F.H. Cryer, Divination in Ancient Israel and its Near Eastern Environment: A
Socio-Historical Investigation (JSOTSup, 142; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994). How-
ever, many important studies have been devoted to this question in the past years; see,
among others, T. J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (HSM, 39;
Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); J. Tropper, Nekromantie: Totenbefragung im Alten
Orient und im Alten Testament (AOAT, 223; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 1989); O. Loretz, 'Nekromantie und Totenevokation in Mesopotamien, Ugarit
und Israel', in B. Janowski, K. Koch and G. Wilhelm (eds.), Religionsgeschichtliche
Beziehungen zwischen Kleinasien, Nordsyrien und dem Alten Testament: Internation-
ales Symposion Hamburg, 17-21 März 1990 (OBO, 129; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag;
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), pp. 285-318; B.B. Schmidt, Israel's
Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult andNecromacy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tra-
dition (Forschungen zum Alten Testament, 11; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1994); and a
recent study by M. Morisi, 'II culto siro-palestinese dei morti e il culto greco degli eroi:
Pinquieta(nte) ricerca del sovrumano tra pietá privata e ufficialitá', Henoch 20 (1998),
pp. 3-50.
gested by the fact that the exilic and postexilic editors of the Old Testa-
ment, despite the partiality of their accounts about Israel's past, mention
necromancy several times (mainly to condemn it vigorously). At the same
time, necromancy represents an interesting problem to Old Testament
scholarship since the key witness to this form of divination in the Old
Testament—namely, the report on Saul's consultation of Samuel's spirit at
En-Dor in 1 Sam. 28—raises many questions regarding the origin and the
intention of this text, which are still widely debated. Therefore, the follow-
ing discussion is devoted mainly to analysis ofthat chapter, along with
related texts, whose close examination will afford more general insight
into necromancy, postexilic Judea, and the formation of biblical texts con-
cerned with divination. However, it is first necessary to introduce some
preliminary considerations on the notion of 'necromancy' in the ancient
Near East in general and Israel in particular.
1. Necromancy in the Ancient Near East and in the Hebrew Bible

In the following pages, 'necromancy' will refer to any form of knowledge
obtained by way of consultation of a defunct person. This definition delib-
erately limits necromancy to the range of divinatory practices, in confor-
mity with etymology.3 In his impressive work on necromancy in the ancient
Near East, J. Tropper attempted to contest this restriction, and proposed to
use the term in reference to any occurrence where a conjuration of dead
persons (Totenbeschwörung) takes place, be it for divinatory purposes or
not.4 Nevertheless, to the extent that necromantic divination corresponds
in the ancient Near East to a specific class of ritual practices related to the
evocation of the dead, with its own procedures and purposes, it seems
more appropriate to dismiss the approach advocated by Tropper, and to
reserve the term 'necromancy' for the divinatory consultation of the dead.5
3. So E. Bourguignon, 'Necromancy', in M. Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of

Religion (16 vols.; New York: Macmillan, 1987), X, pp. 345-47: 'Necromancy, the art
or practice of conjuring up the souls of the dead, is primarily a form of divination. The
principal purpose of seeking such communication with the dead is to obtain informa-
tion from them, generally regarding the revelation of unknown causes or the future
course of events' (p. 345).
4. Tropper, Nekromantie, pp. 13-23; see in particular pp. 14-15, where he distin-
guishes between a restricted application of the term and a more general one for which
he opts.
5. On this, see also the critical comments by Schmidt, Israel 's Beneficent Dead,
p. 11 n. 27. Schmidt criticizes Tropper for exaggerating the importance of necromancy
NlHAN 1 Samuel 28 and the Condemnation of Necromancy 25
In the ancient Near East (and apparently elsewhere as well6) necromancy

is closely related to the worship of dead ancestors.7 The funerary cult
in the ancient Near East by broadening the term's range to include a wide range of
diverse practices, some of which are only loosely related to necromantic divination or
conjuration of the dead. However, Tropper is right in pointing out that necromantic
divination requires prior evocation of the defunct person, and that it therefore has to
be understood in relation to the wider body of ritual practices designed to establish
a link between the world of the dead and the world of the living. See, for instance,
J.A. Scurlock, 'Magical Uses of Ancient Mesopotamian Festivals of the Dead', in
M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (eds.), Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (Religions in the
Graeco-Roman World, 129; Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1995), pp. 93-107, who shows very
well how in Mesopotamia the yearly festival of the dead served various functions for
the community of the living, and how divinatory inquiries could be pursued on this
occasion.
6. So Bourguignon, 'Necromancy', pp. 345-47; Tropper, Nekromantie, pp. 3-23.
7. In view of the importance assigned to the worship of ancestors in Egypt and
Mesopotamia, it is difficult to accept the thesis recently defended by Schmidt, Israel 's
Beneficent Dead, that such worship never occurred in Syria-Palestine. In Ugarit, for
instance, ancestors could be deified, at least in the sphere of the royal family, as is
indicated by the mention of the 'il 'ib (see mainly the Ugaritic 'King List', KTU 1.113);
and some kind of help could be expected from them in return (see, e.g., the case of the
rp'um). Schmidt's proposal to understand the expression 'il'ib as 'the gods (of) the
fathers' (pp. 53-59, taking 'U 'ib as an abridgment for a collective instead of a reference
to a single deity) seems unlikely on grammatical grounds, and the traditional reading
'divine ancestor' seems preferable. In addition, Schmidt's interpretation of the syntagm
'il + a royal name in KTU 1.113 as refering to the personal god of the royal figure
mentioned is not convincingly supported.
The debate on the identity of the rp 'urn is far too complicated to be given full
treatment in this essay. But in brief I should say that these figures are best understood
as being closely associated with the dead and with the divinities of the underworld, as
is indicated clearly for instance in the Funerary Liturgy of KTU 1.161. The usual ety-
mology deriving the term rp 'urn from the root rp ', 'to heal', remains the most satis-
fying solution; Schmidt's proposal, taking rp 'to be cognate to Akkadian rabä 'um, 'to
be large, great', takes rp'um to mean 'the Great Ones' or 'the Mighty Ones' (see
p. 92), but this etymology is less likely. Most likely, then, the rp 'urn were mythical
warrior-heroes and kings from the past, who had obtained after death a divine or
'quasi-divine' status and from whom some kind of help could be expected on certain
occasions (esp. in crucial times for the royal house, when, e.g., the succession to the
throne was endangered by the absence of a heir, as in KTU 1.20-22, or at the death of
the king, as in KTU 1.161). In fact, in the Ugaritic texts kings are sometimes repre-
sented in exactly the same way divinities are: they were 'eternal' (KTU 1.108.1), they
received sacrifices, they had a variety of cultic functions (e.g. protective, oracular), and
on the whole they played a central part in the royal worship. On the rp 'urn, see, for
instance, H. Rouillard, 'Rephaim', in K. van der Toorn, B. Becking and P.W. van der
devoted to the deceased by their descendants,8 by virtue of which the dead

could survive both in the underworld and in the memory of their family or
clan, is well attested in all the ancient Near East.9 The funerary cult had its
counterpart in the belief that some illustrious ancestors of the familial clan
(raised to the rank of family deities or quasi-deities10) were granted after
Horst (eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1999),
pp. 692-700.
More generally, the potential perceived in Syria-Palestine of the dead to be malevo-
lent to humans (acknowledged by Schmidt on p. 49) and the concomitant necessity that
they be treated with special care, an additional incentive being that some kind of bene-
faction could be expected from them in return (as is made clear in the final lines of
KTU 1.161), demonstrates that although death was certainly considered a state of weak-
ness in this context, as in Mesopotamia the dead were not completely deprived of
power.
I therefore can see no convincing reason to think Syria-Palestine might not have
shared with the rest of the ancient Near East a form of ancestor worship similar to the
worship displayed towards divinities. Certainly, in view of the evidence at our dis-
posal, the question of the exact status of such deified ancestors among the numerous
deities of the underworld remains to be answered (see, e.g., Morisi's observations ['II
culto siro-palestinese dei morti'] on the 'limited immortality' of the dead ancestors—
observations that are at least broadly relevant to Mesopotamian practice as well); but
this difficulty scarcely forms sufficient reason to dispute the possibility, at least in the
context of the royal cult, that certain illustrious ancestors became the object of a special
worship.
8. 'Funerary cult' refers here to the body of rituals intended for the dead: funerary
rites, rites concerning the preservation of the sepulchre, rites for supplying the dead
with food and water, and rites of commemoration. On the distinctions between these
ritual activities, see Schmidt, Israel's Beneficent Dead, pp. 4-13.
9. On the funerary cult of the dead in relation to the conception of the afterlife
in the netherworld in Mesopotamia and Syria-Palestine, see inter alia J. Bottéro, 'La
mythologie de la mort en Mésopotamie ancienne', in B. Alster (ed.), Death in Mesopo-
tamia: Papers Read at theXXVIe Rencontre assyriologique internationale (Copenha-
gen Studies in Assyriology, 8; Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1980), pp. 25-52; A.
Tsukimoto, Untersuchungen zur Totenpflege (kispum) im alten Mesopotamien (AOAT,
216; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1985); K. Spronk, Beatific Afterlife in
Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (AOAT, 219; Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener Verlag, 1986); and Lewis, Cults of the Dead.
10. In Schmidt's view we do not have any clear witness for the deification of
ancestors in the ancient Near East (cf. Israel's Beneficent Dead, pp. 210-14); against
this judgment, however, it is normally assumed that ancestor worship did in fact take
place in the ancient Near East—an assumption which, if correct, significantly weakens
Schmidt's case against the practice's existence in Syria-Palestine in particular since the
latter is very unlikely to have remained uninfluenced in this regard by its powerful
NlHAN 1 Samuel 28 and the Condemnation of Necromancy 27
death supernatural powers, from which their lineage could benefit. ** Among
the powers usually 'conferred on them', some sort of superior knowledge
was often attributed to the dead because of their proximity to, and acquaint-
ance with, the deities of the underworld; besides, the gods themselves
played a decisive role in evoking the spirit of the deceased for divinatory
purposes.12 Therefore, in the ancient Near East necromancy had its setting
neighbours. In my opinion, Schmidt's attempt to contest the existence of ancestor wor-

ship in the rest of the ancient Near East is not convincing. His review of the available
evidence, for instance, is not exhaustive, with relevant information concerning the
kings from the Akkad and Ur dynasties as well as of Egypt (the divinization of Pharaoh
after his death) receiving no mention in his account. Moreover, the fact that ancient
Near Eastern kings are often presented as functioning in the role of the national deity's
'lieutenant', in some instances being adopted by him at his birth, weighs strongly
against Schmidt's thesis.
Furthermore, and also contra Schmidt, numerous factors indicate clearly that the
dead were often regarded as powerful supernatural beings in Mesopotamia: the
apotropaic and propitiatory function of the 'fepw-offering'; the presence of the dead
ancestors among the 'Council of the Annunaki', where they were supposed to intercede
on behalf of their lineage; the mention of the etemmu alongside ghosts and demons in
contexts of exorcism; and the oft-observed proximity of the graphical sign for the dead
(GEDIM) and the sign UDUG, which referred to some kind of demon. All these consid-
erations, none of which Schmidt discusses, point to the existence of a close relationship
between the dead and the countless entities of the underworld which, though lower in
status than the main divinities in the pantheon, nonetheless possessed important powers
and played key roles in social and religious life. Indeed, it is precisely the involvement
of the divine sphere in communication with humans which Schmidt's argument seems
to misconstrue: although Schmidt is certainly right to accentuate that the dead were not
simply equated with the main deities of the underworld, his insight in this connection
neither proves that the dead were not thought to be potentially beneficent to the living
nor justifies the strict boundary he assumes between the sphere of the gods and the
sphere of humans. This latter perspective, while characteristic of some modern cos-
mologies, does not correspond to the cosmology of the ancient Near East, where media-
tion between the world of the gods and the world of the humans is commonplace.
11. Cf. Tsukimoto, Untersuchungen zur Totenpflege, pp. 159-60; Tropper, Nekro-
mantie, pp. 27-60; and Spronk, Beatific Afterlife.
12. Schmidt, Israel's Beneficent Dead, pp. 215-19. This is particularly clear, for
instance, in the fragment of the Mesopotamian ritual BM 36703 (col. 2,11.1-6), where
the instructions for conjuring a ghost explicitly attribute the procedure to the god Samas
himself; see I.L. Finkel, 'Necromancy in Ancient Mesopotamia', 4/029-30(1983-84),
pp. Í-17, who comments: 'It is.. .Samas who has the power and the authority to bring
up (sülü) a ghost from the Underworld, and the whole operation is put under his aus-
pices' (p. 5). On the relationship between the sun-god and the underworld in Mesopo-
in the cultic community formed by both the living and the dead of individ-
ual family clans; we shall see later the significance of this observation for
dealing with necromancy in the Old Testament. Although the evidence at
our disposal is rather limited, it seems to indicate that necromancy (in the
restricted sense defined above) was practised throughout the ancient Near
East.13 It is possible that the practice of necromantic divination enjoyed a
decisive expansion during the Neo-Assyrian period;14 the writing down of
various necromantic rituals might thus indicate that necromancy was then
recognized as the equal of the other divinatory 'sciences'.15 A fragment of
a letter dating from the reign of Esarhaddon (LAS 132.1-11) even shows
that the problem of the royal succession was decided by resorting to the
spirit of Esarhaddon's recently deceased widow, a strategy suggesting that
necromancy at that time was highly esteemed in the royal court.16
tamia and Ugarit, see J.F. Healey, 'The Sun Deity and the Underworld: Mesopotamia
and Ugarit', in Alster (ed.), Death in Mesopotamia, pp. 239-42.
13. For ancient Mesopotamia, we have a passage in the Gilgamesh Epic, a fragment
from a letter of Kültepe (see TC 1, 5), the neo-assyrian letter LAS 132, and several
references to the necromancer in the 'List of Lu', an enumeration of professions from the
second millennium BCE; on this, see Finkel, 'Necromancy in Ancient Mesopotamia', pp.
1-17; and Tropper, Nekromantie, pp. 58-76. Tropper also analyzes various Mesopota-
mian rituals united by an interest in how to deal with ghosts; some of these rituals have
an oracular function (i.e. they serve to elicit an oracle from the dead) and can therefore
be considered necromantic in nature. For Ugarit, see the so-called 'Protocol of a Necro-
mancy', KTU 1.124, and the critical edition of this text by M. Dietrich and O. Loretz,
Mantik in Ugarit: Keilalphabetische Texte der Opferschau, Ommensammlungen,
Nekromantie (Abhandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syrien-Palästinas, 3; Munich: Ugarit-
Verlag, 1990), pp. 205-40; many Ugaritic texts also allude to ancestor worship (see ATI/
1.17; KTU 1.161, etc.), though they are not concerned specifically with necromancy.
Necromancy is not attested in Egypt before the first half of the first millennium, but see
the famous 'Letters to the Dead', which, though they are not directly relevant to the issue
of necromancy, cast valuable light on the more general problem of communication
between the living and the dead in the ancient Near East.
14. So, e.g., B.B. Schmidt, 'The "Witch" of En-Dor', in Meyer and Mirecki (eds.),
Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, pp. 111-29 (117).
15. As suggested by Tropper, Nekromantie, p. 103.
16. Against Schmidt, Israel's Beneficent Dead, pp. 138-43, 284-86, this obser-
vation does not warrant the claim that necromancy would have been imported to Judah
by the Assyrians (under the reign of Manasseh for instance). Since necromancy takes
place mainly in the sphere of the family cult, rather than in the context of the official
cult, it is unlikely to have arisen due to Assyrian influence. Despite their paucity, the
existence of documents attesting to necromantic practice in various parts of the ancient
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
pantalon. C’est le costume andalou, et Andalous ils sont presque
tous.
L’Andalousie est réputée pour ses toreros. Les courses de Séville
passent pour les meilleures d’Espagne. Là fut fondée en 1830 une
fameuse école de tauromachie sous la direction des illustres maîtres
Candido et Pedro Romano. C’est à Séville que Joaquim Rodriguez
inventa, voici cent ans, un coup fameux, but des études de toutes
les espadas : frapper le taureau de telle sorte qu’aucune goutte de
sang ne rougisse sa peau et qu’il meure comme s’il demandait grâce
en tombant sur ses genoux.
Une autre école célèbre formait de bonnes épées dans la vieille
ville andalouse de Ronda.
C’est aussi en Andalousie, en pleins champs, au milieu de
grands troupeaux de taureaux, que s’apprend le dangereux art.
On joue de la cape comme dans les courses ordinaires et l’on fait
avec des baguettes le simulacre de planter les banderilles ; un bâton
remplace l’épée. Les propriétaires des troupeaux, leurs femmes,
leurs filles assistent à ces « entraînements » sur des estrades
improvisées ou derrière de fortes barrières, quelquefois à l’ombre,
sous l’arche d’un pont. Il y a toujours quelques coups de corne, un
peu de sang répandu, ce qui procure des émotions dont raffole toute
vraie fille d’Ève, qu’elle s’appelle Mary, Marie, Meriem ou Mariquita,
qu’elle ait les yeux bleus, verts ou noirs. Quand les élèves se
sentent assez forts, ils s’essayent dans les petites villes et
bourgades ; les courses ont lieu sur une place publique, à défaut
d’une Plaza de Toros, et ce ne sont pas les moins émouvantes.
On barricade de planches les rues adjacentes, on dresse des
estrades, et croisées, balcons, toitures se garnissent de spectateurs.
Puis ils donnent des courses de novillos, jeunes taureaux de quatre
à cinq ans, plus faciles à tuer que les autres.
La meilleure époque est le printemps, quand l’animal est dans
toute sa fougue. Les courses, d’après ce que m’ont dit les toreros
eux-mêmes, seraient aussi intéressantes si l’on ne tuait pas, mais il
faut satisfaire la férocité du bas peuple. Quand on se laisse
surprendre par la nuit, on ne tue pas le taureau, l’effet serait
manqué ; on l’emmène par le procédé ordinaire et on l’égorge dans
le toril.
Les taureaux coûtent de 9000 à 10 000 réaux (2500 francs), les
novillos de 6 à 7000. Les chevaux sont fournis par un entrepreneur
qui reçoit de 15 000 à 20 000 réaux par course. Il doit en fournir
autant qu’il est nécessaire. C’est pourquoi il est de son intérêt de
faire resservir les blessés qui peuvent encore se tenir debout.
Après la course, il faut faire une visite au desolladero ; c’est là
qu’on écorche, et l’on procède rapidement à la besogne. La chair est
donnée aux hôpitaux ou aux troupes, à moins qu’un torero n’ait été
blessé ; alors elle lui appartient comme juste dédommagement.
XIX
L’ESCORIAL
Quand on a vu les courses de taureaux, le musée, les ombres de

flamencos, il n’y a plus rien à voir à Madrid, pas même le Prado
poussiéreux, bien au-dessous de sa réputation qui n’a d’autre cause,
je le crois, que
L’éventail de jeune fille,

Tout en ivoire et garni d’or,
que près de sa grille, l’imagination d’un poète y ramassa un soir.

C’est le moment de partir pour l’Escorial, éloigné d’une dizaine
de lieues, et comme autour de Madrid le pays est désert, les plaines
brûlées et jaunes avec les tons bleus des montagnes rocheuses de
Guadarrama pour constant horizon, il est préférable de laisser cette
fois le sac et le bâton du voyageur pédestre pour le train, qui ne met
guère plus de deux heures à vous déposer à l’Escorial de Abajo, à
vingt minutes du palais. Deux heures pour dix lieues, c’est à peu
près la moyenne de la vitesse des trains espagnols, formés de tout
notre matériel de rebut. Il y a là des locomotives qui datent de Watt
ou de Stephenson ; celle qui nous traînait avait dû échapper, par
miracle, à une nombreuse succession d’accidents depuis 1840.
Quand je parle de cinq lieues à l’heure, je ne compte pas les
imprévus, toujours nombreux ici, car comme les lignes ne sont
dotées que d’une voie, le train est tout à coup obligé de s’arrêter en
pleine campagne pour laisser passer un camarade annoncé à
l’arrière ou à l’avant, et comme nul ne se pique de ponctualité, on
stationne quelquefois trente ou quarante minutes. On discute alors,
on se répand dans les environs, chose simple vu l’absence de toute
barrière, ou bien l’on se couche au bord d’un fossé. C’est ainsi que
j’ai fait une bonne sieste en compagnie d’une escouade de
gendarmes, ornés d’un trompette, qui seul veillait, et dont la mission
est sans doute de donner l’alarme à l’approche des brigands. La
vérité m’oblige à dire que dans ce voyage à l’Escorial, aller et retour,
nulle bande n’attaqua le train.
Partis de Madrid à huit heures du matin, nous arrivâmes à dix
heures et demie. Une troupe de drôles nous attendait, nous tendant
des cartes, nous criant des adresses extraordinaires. C’étaient les
députés des différentes gargotes qui flanquent les abords du palais
et se disputent les visiteurs. On n’y est du reste nullement écorché,
et pour trois pesetas et demie, on y peut faire un déjeuner qui
coûterait le double ou le triple dans un restaurant du boulevard. La
tortilla (omelette) traditionnelle, du jambon, une chuleta (ragoût), des
rognons et du fromage, le tout arrosé de vin de Val de Peñas, versé
par une jolie fille, que peut-on demander de plus ?
L’Escorial et non Escurial, puisque le mot tire son origine des
scories de fer abondantes dans les rocs du voisinage, serait, suivant
les Espagnols, la huitième merveille du monde artistique. Il en est de
cette réputation comme de celle du Prado.
C’est un amas de constructions du style cher à nos architectes
de séminaires et de casernes ; par le fait, l’un et l’autre, puisqu’il
contient un cénacle de moines et un détachement de soldats.
On dit que l’Escorial affecte la forme d’un gril, en l’honneur de
saint Laurent ; je veux bien le croire, mais rien n’en paraît au dehors.
L’aspect, par sa masse même, est imposant ; mais cette
monumentale majesté est écrasée par les énormes roches qui la
dominent.
Quant aux détails, ils sont assez laids. Triomphe de la ligne
droite ; si c’est un gril, c’est un gril triste, comme tout gril. Ajoutez
qu’il est en granit, ce qui, malgré ses douze cents fenêtres et les
dorures du soleil, ne lui donne pas une teinte de gaieté.
On sait que Philippe II le fit construire pour accomplir un vœu à
saint Laurent, qu’il voulait dédommager du bombardement de son
église à la prise de Saint-Quentin. Il y dépensa vingt et un ans et six
millions de ducats.
De grandes cours froides et désolées, de vastes galeries
couvertes de fresques, d’immenses salles silencieuses, des
corridors humides, de larges escaliers de pierre, et tout à coup,
montant de soupiraux grillés, des bouffées nauséabondes que vous
envoient, du fond de leurs sépulcres, des générations de morts
royaux, sans doute pour se rappeler à la mémoire des vivants.
Je dis des soupiraux, mais cette odeur sépulcrale doit émaner de
partout. Outre le Panthéon des rois, l’Escorial, avec ses caveaux et
les quarante-huit autels de son église, est une véritable mine à
reliques. On pourrait y puiser pour en fournir tous les temples du
monde chrétien : onze corps de saints auxquels il ne manque pas un
poil ; cent trois têtes en bon état, parmi lesquelles une douzaine au
moins appartenant à l’armée des onze mille vierges ; le squelette au
complet d’un des innocents ; des bras, des jambes et des cuisses
pour tous les goûts, car on en compte plus de six cents appareillés
et dépareillés ; trois cent quarante-six veines — je vous prie de
croire que je ne les ai pas comptées, mais le nombre est inscrit en
toutes lettres — et des doigts, et des ongles, et des crânes, et des
mèches de cheveux, et des dents « à bouche que veux-tu ? » et à
faire pâmer cent générations de dévotes ; enfin, plus de sept mille
pieux rogatons [9] .
[9] Une inscription détaillée, placée dans le chœur,
constate que l’église contient 7422 reliques.
Ajoutez à ces trésors des morceaux de la vraie croix, un bout de

la corde qui servit à attacher Jésus, un débris de l’éponge avec
laquelle on lui présenta du vinaigre et du fiel, un fragment de la
crèche et des guenilles provenant de la sainte chemise (?) de la
Vierge Marie, le jour où elle accoucha, à la stupéfaction de Joseph.
Un moine, à l’œil vide, nous ouvre la bibliothèque. Il y a là des
incunables, des merveilles de bibliographie, des manuscrits arabes
enluminés, des œuvres inédites, travail de patience et de
compilation, écrites au fond des cloîtres, monuments de bénédictins,
tout cela sous cloche ou sous une couche de poussière, enveloppé
d’une odeur de moisi.
Personne ne les ouvre, les moines moins que tout autre. Les
gardiens de ces richesses ne sont pas bénédictins ; simples
hiéronymites, la science n’est pas de leur partie.
On sent planer en tous lieux la froide et sinistre figure du
fondateur. Son ombre s’étend sur l’Escorial et pèse encore sur
l’Espagne entière. Moine fanatique et hypocondriaque, monarque
farouche, despotique et cruel, il a de l’Escorial continué l’œuvre de
destruction commencée par son père et son bisaïeul et que devait
achever son fils imbécile ; la destruction du génie et de l’industrie
espagnols par les persécutions et finalement l’expulsion des Maures.
Au temps glorieux des conquérants arabes, l’Espagne comptait
trente-deux millions d’habitants ; elle en compte à peine la moitié
aujourd’hui.
Dans son habitacion, il faut évoquer la sombre figure. En un coin
du palais, près de l’immense église, est une salle longue, carrelée,
sans meubles, avec des murs nus, blanchis à la chaux, et une seule
fenêtre. C’est l’antichambre de Philippe II ; là qu’attendaient princes,
généraux, ambassadeurs. Au fond, deux portes de chêne, dont l’une
donne accès à une cellule qui ne reçoit de jour que quand elle est
ouverte, la chambre à coucher. La seconde pièce, oratoire et cabinet
de travail, n’est éclairée que par une fenêtre dans le mur de l’église ;
de cette ouverture le roi assistait à l’office, lorsque la goutte
l’empêchait de prendre sa place dans le chœur ou un coin du
chapitre. Une table de chêne, un pupitre, un fauteuil et deux chaises,
c’est, avec un crucifix, tout le mobilier royal. Dans ce réduit, pendant
quatorze ans, se discutèrent les destinées du monde.
Nous rentrâmes de nuit à Madrid. A cinq ou six lieues de la ville,
il y eut une panique. On apercevait au loin des gens armés, qui
escaladaient les fossés et accouraient à travers champs. Les
gendarmes faisaient mine de préparer leurs armes, lorsque l’on
découvrit qu’on avait affaire à de paisibles chasseurs attardés. Ils
faisaient de grands signes, agitaient leurs chapeaux. On arrêta le
train pour les attendre et, dix minutes après, on les recueillait, eux et
leurs chiens, sans qu’aucun voyageur eût songé à murmurer.
XX
TOLÈDE
De Madrid à Tolède, vingt lieues de campagne plate et triste. On

entre dans la Manche, manxa, terre desséchée : c’est bien le nom.
On peut marcher une demi-journée sans rencontrer ni un arbre, ni
un homme, ni un chien. Parfois la route traverse des pâturages où
paissent, paisibles et inconscients des prochaines tueries de l’arène,
des troupeaux de taureaux.
Comme division territoriale, partie de l’ancien royaume des
Castilles, la Manche n’existe plus. Elle forme maintenant les
provinces d’Albacete, de Cuenca, de Ciudad Real, de Tolède, les
plus pauvres de l’Espagne. Mais elle existe toujours comme pays de
Don Quichotte, des pierres, des chardons et des moulins à vent. A
mesure qu’on approche du Tage, le paysage, jusqu’ici monotone,
devient grandiose avec ses grandes lignes grises, jaunes et vertes,
ses oasis le long des rives et ses hautes montagnes bleues
crénelant les horizons.
Tolède, la merveilleuse, assise comme Rome sur sept collines,
dominée par son vieil Alcazar, devenu École militaire, paraît tout à
coup au milieu de ses portes colossales, de ses murailles et de ses
tours. Son aspect féerique dédommage des fatigues du chemin et
du vulgarisme de Madrid.
La Ciudad imperial, la reine des villes, la cité la plus fameuse de
l’histoire, et, comme l’appelait Juan de Padilla, la couronne de
l’Espagne et la lumière du monde !
Vous pensez qu’il faut un peu en rabattre, comme toujours, pour
ne pas se voir encore arracher de nouvelles illusions.
Tolède est une ville qui se meurt, voilà plus de cent ans qu’on le
dit ; depuis cent ans, elle se meurt toujours. Cependant, toute
moribonde qu’elle soit, elle vaut à elle seule le voyage d’Espagne.
Ses alcazars, ses portes mauresques, ses synagogues et ses
mosquées transformées en églises, ses murailles roussies, ses deux
ponts jetés sur le Tage, sa cathédrale, siège du primat, ses palais,
ses innombrables monuments, jusqu’à ses rues étranges,
témoignent de son antique splendeur et du rang de capitale dont elle
fut indignement spoliée.
Si ses titres de noblesse ne sont pas antérieurs au déluge, ainsi
que le prétendent ses habitants, elle était déjà, sous l’empire romain,
une importante cité. Sa position centrale en faisait le grand carrefour,
la place d’armes, en même temps que le dépôt général, où venaient
s’entasser les richesses minières du pays, avant d’être expédiées à
la Ville des forbans qui, pendant des siècles, détroussèrent l’Europe,
l’Afrique et l’Asie. Puis, pendant deux cents ans, elle fut la capitale
religieuse et politique des rois Visigoths, et, quand les Maures s’en
emparèrent, ils eurent la clef de l’Espagne.
Romains, Goths, Juifs, Maures y ont donc chacun laissé leur
empreinte, que l’on retrouve pêle-mêle, des fondations de ses murs
au faîte des maisons particulières, dans les arcs, les ogives de ses
fenêtres, les colonnettes, les voûtes, les écussons armoriés, les
animaux fantastiques, les délicieux patios, les grilles en fer forgé des
balcons et des portes. « Souvenirs à occuper un historien pendant
dix ans et un artiste toute sa vie. »
Il faudrait, dit-on, une année pour étudier Tolède et cela jour par
jour, et le peintre Villa Amil prétendait qu’après neuf mois il n’en
connaissait rien encore.
Aussi, moi qui n’y ai même pas séjourné huit jours, ne parlerai-je
que de mes impressions.
Ce qui m’a frappé le plus, c’est l’aspect oriental de certains
quartiers. On s’y croit en pleine ville arabe. Ruelles silencieuses,
escarpées, étroites, tortueuses, désertes, pavées de cailloux
pointus, bordées de maisons mauresques blanchies à la détrempe,
où tout, depuis la porte constellée de clous énormes et bardée de fer
jusqu’aux petites fenêtres hermétiquement grillées, jusqu’à la saillie
des toits, sent sa forteresse musulmane. Un clocher qui a gardé
presque intacte sa physionomie première de minaret, un baudet
errant, un chat maigre qui traverse la rue, et soudain un refrain
mélancolique et doux, comme en chantent les filles du Tell, et qui
s’élève dans le silence pour montrer que derrière ces murs vivent la
jeunesse et l’amour, complètent l’illusion.
Çà et là une porte ouverte pour établir de bienfaisants courants
d’air, laisse pénétrer l’œil ravi dans le patio. Près d’un bouquet
d’orangers, de plantes et de fleurs tropicales qu’arrose un petit jet
d’eau, sous l’ombre du tendido de toile, une brune et belle fille aux
yeux arabes, semblable à une odalisque, est mollement étendue.
Dans ce patio, cour intérieure entourée d’une galerie, les dames
espagnoles passent les trois quarts de leur vie. C’est le salon, la
salle à manger, le dortoir dans les nuits chaudes.
Ces belles créatures coulent leurs jours dans le doux farniente,
nonchalantes et rêveuses. Elles ne lisent pas, la lecture est un
travail, et tout travail une fatigue. Aussi leur ignorance est
légendaire. Aimer, elles ne savent autre chose et ne veulent rien
savoir de plus. Elles se laissent vivre près des fleurs, à l’ombre,
attendant la fraîcheur des étoiles pour s’aventurer au dehors. C’est
alors que le boutiquier, qui a somnolé, lui aussi, tout le jour, reçoit
ses clientes. Des sièges sont disposés le long des comptoirs des
magasins sans vitrines, et la señora regarde les marchandises qu’on
étale et qu’on lui vante, jouant de l’éventail, semblant encore
écrasée par la fatigue et la chaleur.
Qui peut remplir le vide de leur journée quand elles ne font pas
l’amour ? S’habiller, bavarder, dormir, rêver ? Mérimée raconte qu’au
temps de l’Empire, toutes les Espagnoles de petite noblesse
songeaient à devenir impératrice.
Et il cite plaisamment une demoiselle de Tolède ou de Grenade
qui, se trouvant au spectacle quand on annonça dans sa loge le
mariage de la comtesse de Teba avec Napoléon III, se leva avec
impétuosité et dépit en s’écriant : En este pueblo, no hay porvenir.
« En ce pays, il n’y a pas d’avenir. »
Tolède est le faubourg Saint-Germain de l’Espagne, le centre de
l’étroite orthodoxie, le siège de l’aristocratie la plus encroûtée. On y
a compté trente-deux couvents de femmes, seize monastères, vingt-
trois hospices religieux ; tout cela maintenant désert. Les vieilles
maisons nobiliaires sont hantées par des maîtres farouches qui
boudent la société moderne. Plusieurs exhibent une chaîne au-
dessus de leur porte, signe honorifique de celles qui reçurent des
hôtes royaux. Mais les hidalgos qui ne peuvent en parer leur fronton
haussent les épaules.
« Vieille taverne n’a pas besoin de rameau, » disent-ils.
Il n’est peut-être pas dans le monde nombreux des formidables
ignorants et des sots incurables, seigneurs plus hautains que les
hobereaux espagnols.
Cette chaîne symbolique des altières demeures semble river les
habitants dans les ténèbres des âges enfouis.
Elle attache aux murs du passé leurs idées et leur intelligence.
La vieille Espagne est réfugiée dans Tolède, et l’on peut dire de ce
coin silencieux ce que Lara disait de sa patrie entière : « Ici on ne
parle, on n’écrit, on ne lit. »
Si tous les naturels de Tolède ne sont pas petits-neveux du roi
Ferdinand ou de l’empereur Charles-Quint, ils sont au moins cousins
germains de ce cuisinier de l’archevêque de Burgos qui répondait
menaçant à une réprimande du prélat :
« Homme ! je ne souffrirai jamais qu’on me querelle, car je suis
de race de vieux chrétiens, nobles comme le roi et même un peu
plus. »
Aux yeux de beaucoup de ces braves gens, le fils de Dieu lui-
même n’est pas assez bon gentilhomme. Quand se forma l’ordre de
Calatrava, et qu’on proposa la candidature de Jésus-Christ comme
membre honoraire, les chevaliers se récusèrent poliment.
« C’est le fils d’un charpentier, » dirent-ils.
On passa cependant aux voix. Jésus fut blackboulé, mais
désireux de sauver l’amour-propre du fils de Dieu, les chevaliers de
Calatrava fondèrent en sa faveur l’ordre du Christ, où l’on acceptait
des gens de plus mince noblesse, et lui en conférèrent la grande
maîtrise [10] .
[10] La sainte Vierge est colonel d’un régiment de
cavalerie. On lui a donné en cette qualité une sentinelle
en permanence à la chapelle d’Atocha, qui, paraît-il, est
son quartier d’état-major.
XXI
LA PETITE DÉVOTE DE COMPOSTELLE
Il n’est guère de voyageurs qui, relatant leurs impressions,

n’aient à raconter une demi-douzaine d’entrevues au moins avec les
hauts personnages du lieu qu’ils traversent. Les princes les ont priés
à dîner, les généraux ont ordonné pour eux des revues, les hommes
d’État leur ont fait des confidences, sans parler du grand artiste ou
de l’éminent littérateur qui a soulevé pour eux le voile de l’ébauche
du chef-d’œuvre impatiemment attendu.
« J’étais là, disent-ils négligemment, quand le fameux
Tartanpionado, qui est aussi un artiste et un lettré, passant son bras
sous le mien… » « Au dîner somptueux offert en mon honneur par le
ministre Esculado… » « Le consul, apprenant mon arrivée,
s’empressa… » « La délicieuse marquise de la Friponnetta, à côté
de qui j’eus le plaisir de me trouver à table chez l’archevêque de
Tolède… »
Humble piéton, pérégrinant sac au dos, poudreux et roussi, je fus
privé de ces honneurs prodigués à mes confrères princiers. Je n’eus
de conversation intime avec aucun diplomate, aucun ambassadeur,
aucun prélat, aucun maréchal. Loin de recevoir l’hospitalité de
quelque monarque, c’est à grand’peine que j’obtins parfois celle des
plus modestes posadas, et encore fallait-il, au préalable, montrer un
douro entre le pouce et l’index.
Eh ! mes camarades, une pièce de bon aloi frappée aux effigies
nationales, est encore dans tout pays ce qu’il y a de mieux comme
lettre de recommandation, et même de plus économique. Joignez-y
une forte trique, de bonnes jambes, des pieds sains, et vous passez
à peu près partout.
C’est du moins ce que je croyais et me disais avant de traverser
l’Espagne. Grave erreur, le douro ne suffit pas toujours. L’aubergiste
espagnol, le moins commerçant de tous les aubergistes, ce qui ne
veut pas dire le moins voleur, place ses aises avant le douro. C’est
ce que fait chaque Andalou, d’ailleurs, à tous les degrés de l’échelle
sociale. Fainéant comme un lézard, il se console de sa misère et
excuse sa paresse par ce fier proverbe : Profit et honneur ne vont
pas dans le même sac.
Dans le faubourg de Tolède, où nous débouchions tout
poussiéreux, fatigués et assoiffés, nous montrâmes vainement le
douro. Nous étions en si triste équipage que j’hésitais à pénétrer en
cette cité qui se dressait devant nous comme une merveille oubliée
de l’Orient. Je tenais à faire préalablement toilette, mais l’amo nous
engagea à continuer notre chemin.
Il est vrai qu’il était midi passé, heure où les vagabonds et les
bandoleros seuls osent se présenter aux portes. En un pays où tout
gentilhomme qui se respecte est bravement étendu à l’ombre ou ne
s’aventure au soleil que muni d’une vaste ombrelle par égard pour le
teint, le posadero ne pouvait que s’indigner d’être dérangé à l’heure
de sa méridienne, heure sacrée, que peuvent seuls s’aviser de
troubler des étrangers malappris.
Il faut de bien graves événements pour réveiller un Espagnol qui
fait sa sieste. Turenne, voulant ravitailler je ne sais plus quelle place
assiégée par un corps d’armée de Sa Majesté Catholique, attendit
midi. Tout le monde dormait au camp, général, officiers, soldats,
factionnaires. Le convoi, sans entrave, passa.
Nous dûmes donc continuer notre chemin et traverser le pont
d’Alcantara. Notre pas résonna sous les vieilles et gigantesques
portes mauresques qui le flanquent, et à ce bruit insolite un
carabinier de la reine entr’ouvrit un œil qu’il referma aussitôt.
Nous gravissons la chaussée montueuse qui côtoie les remparts
et passons sous la porte del Sol, pour nous arrêter à la première
auberge d’aspect honnête, que nous rencontrons, la posada de
Santa-Cristina, à l’entrée de la place de la Constitution.
Heureusement on y est éveillé.
Si jamais, lecteurs, vous allez à Tolède, gardez-vous de la
posada de Santa-Cristina. Elle est tenue par le señor Manuel
Fernandez, le roi des aubergistes filous.
Il soupçonna, sans doute, en nous des millionnaires déguisés en
colporteurs et nous le fit sentir sur sa note.
Je lui sus gré, cependant, de ses louables efforts pour nous
délivrer d’un visiteur qui voulut à tout prix, pendant que nous étions à
table, nous offrir ses civilités et services, en qualité de compatriote.
Quand sur le sol étranger on rencontre un Anglais, un Russe, un
Allemand, un Turc, un Yankee, un Chinois, rien que de très naturel ;
mais la vue d’un Français étonne toujours un peu et quand ce
Français vient à vous, la bouche en cœur, si le premier mouvement
est de lui serrer la main, le second est de serrer son porte-monnaie,
car neuf fois sur dix c’est à ce dernier qu’il veut rendre hommage.
Je ne cherche ni à expliquer, ni à excuser cette impression, je la
constate simplement.
« Señores, nous dit le soir au souper le señor Manuel Fernandez,
car tout le monde est seigneur dans ce pays-là, le seigneur français
insiste pour vous parler. C’est la quatrième fois qu’il vient. Je l’ai
renvoyé ; il ne se lasse pas. C’est un homme persévérant.
— Que nous veut-il ?
— Souhaiter la bienvenue à ses compatriotes.
— Il est bien aimable.
— Tous les Français le sont, señor. »
On ne peut décemment refuser de recevoir un compatriote qui se
présente si obstinément pour vous souhaiter la bienvenue.
« Qu’il entre donc. »
Nous voyons une sorte de Gascon moitié sacristain, moitié
souteneur qui débute par nous dire qu’il est placier en vins et
finalement se propose comme cicerone.
« Je connais tous les bons endroits de Tolède, nous dit-il en
clignant de l’œil, vous savez, tous les bons endroits, les cafés et le
reste.
— Merci, nous ne venons pas ici pour voir des cafés. »
Il ne se décourage pas et nous offre des cigarettes. Pour nous en
débarrasser, nous l’engageons pour le lendemain et, afin d’être
certains de ne plus le voir, nous lui payons sa journée d’avance.
En effet, nous ne le revîmes plus.
Un autre gré que je sais au señor Manuel Fernandez, c’est
d’avoir mis à notre service une petite brunette à teint mat, pas plus
haute que ça, et qui est bien la plus singulière petite créature que
j’aie rencontrée dans les posadas, ventas, hospederias et paradors.
Elle n’était pas enceinte comme celle de l’auberge de la route de los
Passages, bien qu’elle eût au moins quinze ans, mais il était visible
qu’elle ne tarderait pas, car elle avait la bosse de la maternité.
Tout d’abord, elle trompait fort son monde ; quoique assez
mignonne et jolie, elle prenait un air si terriblement revêche, pincé et
désagréable, avec sa petite face toute confite en vertu et la multitude
de médailles pendues à son cou, que je l’avais surnommée la petite
dévote de Compostelle. Dévote ? Fiez-vous à ces dévotes-là !
Je ne sais si elle allait souvent s’agenouiller devant le somptueux
autel de la miraculeuse Vierge de Tolède, mais il est bien certain
qu’elle lui préférait de beaucoup celui du dieu Pan, et sa dévotion y
était ardente autant qu’infatigable.
Fort maussade, farouche et sévère au dîner, elle se dérida au
souper et le lendemain matin était tout à fait apprivoisée et gentille.
Le seul désagrément attaché à cette jeune personne est qu’elle
était habitée par des puces. Chaque fois qu’elle s’approchait de
nous, il nous en arrivait deux ou trois en éclaireurs ; mais il faut leur
rendre cette justice, aux premiers mouvements hostiles, elles
regagnaient prestement le gros du bataillon.
Ces petites bêtes, paraît-il, ne se dépaysent pas facilement ;
elles ont la nostalgie de la chair natale — je parle des puces de
Tolède — comme les poux arabes, elles retournent vite à leur
premier propriétaire.
C’est ce qu’elles durent faire à notre départ de la posada ; elles
délogèrent de nos personnes pour reprendre leur ancienne
demeure, qui, debout sur le seuil de la porte, nous disait : A dios ! a
dios ! d’un air plein de dignité.
Et jusqu’au détour de la rue, nous aperçûmes la petite dévote de
Compostelle nous faisant signe de la main droite, tandis que de la
gauche elle se grattait avec nonchalance.
Le dernier souvenir vivant que j’emportais m’abandonna sur le
pont de Tolède, juste au moment où je me croisais avec un paisible
muletier qui rentrait en ville fredonnant quelque vieil air, un client
sans nul doute de l’hôtel de Santa-Cristina, où il dut la réintégrer.
XXII
LA VIERGE EN CHEMISE ET LE CHRIST EN
JUPON
Une des singularités de la plupart des vieilles cités espagnoles,

ce sont des rues entières dont de chaque côté, les fenêtres
barricadées par d’épais grillages, le plus souvent en saillie, donnent
l’aspect attristant d’une succession de petites prisons. Mais dans les
quartiers riches, les réjouissantes enluminures des façades mitigent
cette impression pénible. Les méridionaux raffolent des fresques et
des trompe-l’œil : fleurons, rosaces, mascarons, médaillons, fifres et
hautbois, guirlandes de fruits, de fleurs et d’amours, Vénus et
Apollon, cornes d’abondance, Cérès et Pomone, voltigeant dans des
flottements d’écharpes diaphanes, courent des frises au rez-de-
chaussée. L’amour du décor est porté si loin qu’on peint de fausses
portes, de faux volets, des colonnades, des balustres, de fausses
grilles [11] .
[11] Les Italiens surpassent sous ce rapport les
Espagnols. Non seulement ils imitent à la perfection une
fenêtre ouverte, mais ils la garnissent souvent d’une belle
dame qui tient un bouquet et sourit aux passants.
Pour en revenir aux portes barrelées de fer et aux grilles
véritables, l’on se demande comment, avec de semblables
précautions, une fille bien née et si bien gardée peut perdre son
capital. Avec ce luxe de ferronnerie, les mamans dorment sur leurs
deux oreilles, oubliant qu’à l’âge de leurs filles elles les gardaient
ouvertes et qu’il n’y a ni grille ni verrou qui tiennent quand l’amour,
plus que les puces, commence à démanger.
C’est ainsi que, par de chaudes soirées d’août, j’aperçus plus
d’un joli minois avec des allures inquiètes de l’oiseau en cage,
aspirant à la liberté.
Une nuit, entre autres, que mon pied se foulait aux cailloux
pointus de la rue tortueuse et déserte, je découvris un élève de
l’École militaire de Tolède, adolescent imberbe, filer, près d’une
fenêtre basse, ce qu’on appelle, je ne sais pourquoi, le parfait
amour, vu qu’il est fort imparfait.
Un grillage serré laissait juste une petite place pour une toute
petite main, et celle-ci l’occupait de son mieux. Elle passait, se
retirait, puis repassait encore pour se livrer à des lèvres goulues.
Quel appétit, mon futur capitaine ! A cet âge on a de telles faims, et
n’avoir qu’une main sous la dent !
Le reste du plat était des plus croustillants et apéritifs, autant que
j’en pus juger par une inspection rapide ; chaussé que j’étais
d’alpargatas, le couple absorbé ne m’entendit pas, et je distinguai
dans un fond intense d’ombre, grâce à une lanterne urbaine, la
blanche esquisse d’une ravissante fillette, que l’amour, quand tout
dormait, tenait éveillée. Elle me vit et, retirant brusquement sa main,
disparut dans les ténèbres, comme l’image fugitive du bonheur.
Le jeune affamé, qui pourtant ne se repaissait que d’un festin de
Tantale, me jeta un regard sombre, furieux de ce que j’eusse
interrompu une seconde la frénétique succession de ces bouchées
illusoires.
Mais d’autres pas s’approchaient et une voix, celle du veilleur de
nuit, retentit dans le silence :
« Ave Maria carissima ! Il est minuit. Le temps est serein. »
Minuit ! Tout le monde dort à Tolède.
Pas une lumière aux balcons.
L’amoureux jugea qu’il était temps de partir.

« A dimanche, dit-il, amiga de mi alma. »
Je n’entendis pas la réponse, mais je compris bien que c’était à
la cathédrale qu’on se donnait rendez-vous.
Cela m’amène à en parler, mais je veux dire préalablement un
mot de la synagogue, la seule que possédèrent les juifs d’Espagne.
Tolède fut, en effet, la ville bénie des tribus d’Israël, et bien que
les membres en soient à peu près disparus, — je parle des juifs
judaïsants, — l’on y rencontre à chaque pas le type de la race dans
toute sa pureté.
Ils devaient la faveur spéciale dont ils jouissaient à la tradition qui
prétend que les juifs de Tolède, consultés par le grand prêtre
Caïphe, votèrent l’acquittement de Jésus.
D’après les historiens, cette synagogue était une merveille
architecturale de l’art oriental. Les Maures la transformèrent en
mosquée. A leur expulsion, elle passa au culte catholique, et
finalement fut mutilée et dépouillée de toute richesse artistique
sentant le juif ou le Sarrasin, par une prêtraille imbécile secondée
par l’ignorante et fanatique canaille.
D’une antiquité respectable, la cathédrale subit, comme la
synagogue, diverses destinées, mais échappa au vandalisme.
D’église elle devint mosquée, pour redevenir église. C’est
maintenant la primatiale et l’une des plus riches du royaume.
Immense et magnifique, ses cinq nefs produisent sur tout ce qui
n’est pas absolument anglais ou philistin la plus profonde
impression. Cent fois, de plus autorisés que moi l’ont décrite, aussi
n’insisterai-je pas sur les merveilles qu’elle contient, mais ce que
vous ignorez peut-être, c’est que la bonne Vierge Marie en personne
la visita.

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Index of References 245

for granting permission to re-publish Professor Bain's article, which in a

BS The Biblical Seminar

HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs

Niv New International Version

TDNT Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (eds.), Theological

Philip S. Alexander, Department of Religions and Theology, University

David Bain, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of

George J. Brooke, Department of Religions and Theology, University of

Alain Bühlmann, PInstitut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

F. Gerald Downing, Centre for Biblical Studies, University of Manchester

Todd E. Klutz, Department of Religions and Theology, University of

Thierry Laus, l'Institut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

Daniel Marguerat, l'Institut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

Christophe L. Nihan, l'Institut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

Lloyd K. Pietersen, School of Theology and Religious Studies, University

Andy M. Reimer, Canadian Bible College and Canadian Theological Semi-

Thomas C. Römer, l'Institut romand des sciences bibliques, University of

For instance, although the increasingly recognized shortcomings of defin-

A particularly interesting example of this development is Alan Segal's

6. Segal, 'Hellenistic Magic', pp. 349-51.

denote the religious beliefs of others (i.e. non-Westerners and ancient

This suspicion is only intensified, moreover, by the implications of

sively demonstrates the existence of something akin to universal equality

22. Gellner, Relativism and the Social Sciences, p. 101.

secularist capitalism could by this same definition turn out to be as 'magi-

intended to illumine, its lack of a major section on comparative sources

1. Foreword: Problems of Definition

1. S. Mowinckel, Religion und Kultus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,

school of J.G. Frazer, which adopts an evolutionist outlook and distin-

2. Magic in the Old Testament

wesentlichen nichts miteinander zu tun. Die zahlreichen Verbindungen zwischen

Ön^D ('enchanter', e.g. Jer. 8.17);DniÖnnDDn ('expert in magic', Isa. 3.3);

3. 'Popular Religion' and the Constitution of an Official Judaism under

authorization') or if it was due rather to a process within the Jewish com-

18. According to O. Loretz, 'Vom kanaanäischen Totenkult zur jüdischen Patri-

Many other texts from the Deuteronomistic trajectory adopt a rejecting

4. The Narrative of the Plagues of Egypt as a Paradigm

this J. Kegler, 'Zur Komposition und Theologie der Plagenerzählungen', in E. Blum

tian magicians, a conspicuous absence that underlines their incapacity. But

6. Origin and Intention of the Competition Narrative

7. Summary: Moses, a Magician?