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ReViews: Repelling the Evil Eye

By Michael D. Swartz

Angels and Demons: Jewish Magic Through the Ages

Edited by Filip Vukosavovic
(Jerusalem: Bible Lands Museum, 2010), 192 pp., $39 (soft cover)

Here is a brief quiz for BAR readers:

(1) What are the two most ancient copies of a Biblical text?

(2) What is the largest body of inscriptions documenting ancient Judaism?

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Footnotes

1.

See Gabriel Barkay, “The Riches of Ketef Hinnom: Jerusalem Tomb Yields Biblical Text Four Centuries Older than Dead Sea Scrolls,” BAR 35:04.

2.

See Hershel Shanks, “Magic Incantation Bowls: Charms to Curse, to Cure, and to Celebrate,” BAR 33:01.

Endnotes

1.

The Biblical texts in fact tell a far more complicated story. See Mark Geller’s comments in the volume under review (Angels and Demons, p. 34) and especially Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007), pp. 11–35.