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Abstract
This article continues a series of studies dedicated to Syriac love magic as attested by texts found in Syriac magical codices dated to the 18th–20th century. Here I address five Syriac recipes that I consider to belong to the category of separation spells. Four of them are titled ‘For Hatred’ and are edited for the first time. Another one can be found in The Nestorians and Their Rituals and exists only in the English translation provided by G.P. Badger. Based on their supposed proto-text, the five texts can be divided into three spells. The separation spells are also compared with Syriac spells for attraction. The comparison involves the textual level as well as the magical practices for inducing hatred or love. In the third section of the article, I address the phenomenon of Syriac hate spells in a wider context by providing parallels from Jewish, Coptic, Mandaic, and Arabic magical traditions.
Abstract
In this contribution we publish a lead circus curse tablet written in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (Princeton Art Museum excavation no. 3608-I57). The tablet was found in 1935 during excavations near the first turning-post at the hippodrome of Antioch on the Orontes (modern-day Antakya, Turkey). The use of Greek and Latin defixiones agonisticae (agonistic binding spells) in chariot races was a wide-spread phenomenon during the Roman Byzantine Period. Curse tablets were inscribed with aggressive incantations that aimed at the defeat of rivals in the chariot races. The tablet under discussion is a unique piece: It is the only known lead circus curse tablet that was written in a Jewish language and script. The tablet is datable to the fifth or sixth century CE.
Abstract
The Fragment Targums contain selections of verses from the Pentateuch and form a distinct textual family within the Palestinian Targum tradition. To date, our understanding of their textual tradition has been based on nine manuscripts (excluding those copied from printed texts). This article introduces another manuscript of Fragment Targum that has been previously overlooked. The article describes the manuscript’s content, provides a preliminary characterisation of the text’s relationship to the other extant witnesses of the Fragment Targums and the other Pentateuchal Targums, and considers some possible implications of this new witness for our understanding of the origins, purpose, and transmission history of the Fragment Targums.
Abstract
The early Christian work “The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity” consists of different parts combined into a single book. Three parts are generally accepted: 1) Perpetua’s Notes, 2) Saturus’s Vision, 3) the Eyewitness story and the Prologue and Epilogue written by the same author. We argue that the Prologue plus Epilogue and the Eyewitness story had different authors and there was one more person, who was neither a participant nor a contemporary of the Carthaginian martyrdom. The results of his activity can be found in short sentences connecting the parts, as well as in violations of the structure of the narrative and a serious mistake made in the enumeration of the arrested catechumens. The authors claim also that this kind of collection as in The Passion had no analogues in ancient classical literature and followed the model of the New Testament.
Abstract
This article argues that recent scholarship on premodern composition can help to reconceptualize the presence of diverse people, including enslaved women, in scribal spaces. A brief historiographic section reviews how scholars have imagined normative Jews to be elite literate men, neglecting evidence of dictation to scribes, and thus excluded evidence of lower-class women especially from their imagining of the past. Applying Wendy Doniger’s rejection of the category of the singular male author in religious texts to Jewish texts, it proposes a heuristic tool to identify women’s presence and perspectives in ancient prose, liturgical, and ritual texts. Finally, it analyzes four incantation bowls as test-cases of this approach. For every text produced by a scribe, scholars ought to imagine a dynamic compositional environment with at least two people, and they can look for evidence of inclusion and exclusion of perspectives based on religious markers, class status, and gendered concerns.