Edition and Analysis of Twenty-Seven Unpublished Jewish Aramaic Bowl Texts from the Collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

Abstract

This thesis has three main aims. The first is to publish twenty-seven editiones principes of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic magic bowl texts from the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. Editions include: transcriptions and translations of the bowl texts; tracings of any artistic features; notes on grammatical features; and justifications of difficult readings. The appendix to this thesis identifies the likely derivation of the personal names of the human clients and antagonists found in the bowl texts; this is followed by glossaries that list and parse every word from all of the editions. The second aim of this thesis is to contribute to various topics related to bowls studies, or to Jewish studies more widely. Consequently, the editions are grouped into chapters based on themes derived from the bowl editions. Each chapter contains a discussion of what we can learn from the new editions grouped within them. Chapter 2 of this thesis contributes towards my third primary aim: to push magic bowl studies in the direction of quantitative analysis. The chapter seeks to investigate and challenge the assumption that ‘iron’ was considered to be a particularly magical substance, as if it possessed a special apotropaic characteristic, in this period. To do so, the chapter uniquely takes a quantitative approach by presenting as many references to the metals ‘copper’, ‘iron’ and ‘lead’ as possible from the magic bowls to see how the metals are used in their formulae. Furthermore, to investigate whether the scribes’ rationale was common to other roughly-contemporary Jewish writings, the references in the magic bowls are compared to mentions of the same metals found in the Babylonian Talmud, the Testament of Solomon, Sefer ha-Razim, and Ḥarba de- Moshe. It is argued that the use of these metals in magical formulae was more related to their associated physical qualities than any intrinsic apotropaic power.