Unveiling the Hidden—Anticipating the Future: Divinatory Practices Among Jews Between Qumran and the Modern Period 9789004445062, 9789004445703

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Unveiling the Hidden—Anticipating the Future

Prognostication in History Edited by Chia-Feng Chang (Taiwan National University) Michael Lackner (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg) Klaus Herbers (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg) Alexander Fidora (icrea – Autonomous University of Barcelona)

volume 5

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/prhi

Unveiling the Hidden— Anticipating the Future Divinatory Practices among Jews between Qumran and the Modern Period

Edited by

Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: ms Budapest Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Kaufmann Collection A 384, fol. 85v (tripartite maḥzor, first volume, written in the region of Lake Constance, Bavaria or the region of the Upper Rhine around 1320, parchment, Ashkenazi square and semi-cursive script). On the illumination the sun, the moon, and ten stars are represented on top of the image against a blue backdrop with the four winds in the form of four tiny heads in the four corners of the image. The central part is a vine tree displaying its branches full of leaves and bunches of grapes against a reddish/ocher background. The Hebrew word ‫אות‬, meaning “sign,” is written in gold on the lower half of the image. Image by permission of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2020047374

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. issn 2589-4404 isbn 978-90-04-44506-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-44570-3 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas and Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Movido por el hábito, interrogo —sucede que soy hombre de costumbres— en un puesto cercano, al vendedor, si no tendrá melocotones buenos. ¿Melocotones—me pregunta—rojos o amarillos? Usted dirá. De cuáles. —Y mi respuesta me revela entonces qué poco me conozco. La razón de mi fracaso en esta vida y otras futuras, si de cierto las hubiera—. Démelos como sean. De los buenos. adrián gonzález da costa

… Lo que no entiendes es el marco de lo que sí entiendes. J.R.A.

∵

Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Figures and Tables xi Table for the Transliteration of the Hebrew Characters xiii Table for the Transliteration of the Arabic Characters xiii Notes on the Contributors xiv Introductory Essay: Divination in Jewish Cultures—Some Reflections on the Subject of This Book 1 Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas 1

Divination as Transaction: Rhetorical and Social Dimensions of Ancient Jewish Divination Texts 21 Michael D. Swartz

2

Aramaic Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Question of Divination 46 Helen R. Jacobus

3

Jewish Oneiric Divination: From Daniel’s Prayer to the Genizah Šeʾilat Ḥalom 101 Alessia Bellusci

4

The Judeo-Arabic Version of the Pitron Ḥalomot (“Interpretation of Dreams”) Attributed to Ḥai Gaon 140 Blanca Villuendas Sabaté

5

If You Seek to Take Advice from the Torah, It Will Be Given—Jewish Bibliomancy through the Generations 161 Shraga Bar-On

6

Judah bar Barzillai and His Role in Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s Letter on Astrology 192 Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas

7

Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s Letter to Judah bar Barzillai—Translation Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas and Amos Geula

217

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contents

8

Maimonides on Magic, Astral Magic, and Experimental Science Dov Schwartz

261

9

On the Various Faces of Hebrew Physiognomy as a Prognostic Art in the Middle Ages 286 Joseph Ziegler

10

Inscriptio characterum: Solomonic Magic and Paleography. With an Appendix on the Making of the Grimoire by Nicholas Pickwoad 311 Charles Burnett Bibliography 333 Index of Quotations and Citations of Biblical, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran, and Rabbinic Texts 377 Index of Names (People, Places, and Texts) 382 Index of Subjects 389

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Acknowledgments The International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (ikgf at the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg) hosted an international workshop on the topic of Jewish Divination in March of 2015. Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas (visiting fellow at the ikgf during 2014–2015) was the convenor of this workshop and participants from Europe, the USA, and Israel came to present new research about Jewish divination and divinatory practices among Jews. Papers were presented by Alessia Bellusci, Charles Burnett, Helen R. Jacobus, Eliezer Papo, Anne Regourd, Shlomo Sela, Michael D. Swartz, Blanca Villuendas Sabaté, and Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas. This workshop was the cradle of this monograph. Most of the participants in the workshop submitted chapters for this book, and a few scholars joined the project a bit later (Dov Schwartz, Joseph Ziegler, and Shraga Bar-On). I thank all of them, both those whose research is reflected in this book, and those who took part in the workshop. I especially thank Michael Lackner (Director of the ikgf), Klaus Herbers (Deputy Director), Petra Hahm (Administrative Coordinator), Rolf Scheuermann (Research Coordinator), and many other members of the ikgf staff and ikgf fellows of the academic year 2014–2015 for their support and feedback, and for making the workshop and this monograph possible. I have been a researcher of divination for more than fifteen years, and I have never found any other academic context in which the highly charged and imbricated subject of divination has been studied with such respect for this phenomenon and its intriguing persistence and spread throughout time and space. I feel very thankful for having benefitted from the human resources, the interdisciplinary expertises, and the intercultural approaches that are distinctive of the ikgf. Thank you all. I thank Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, who joined me as co-editor at the beginning of the long and tough, but exciting, process that is editing a book. Her assistance has been indispensable for a monograph written and edited in English whose authors and editors have, in many cases, a mother language that is not English, but not least for her experience and expertise in Greco-Roman divination and her open-mindeness and curiosity for the subject in general. Last but not least, Dorian and I thank the Brill editors, Albert Hoffstädt, for his wise advice and support in a difficult matter, and Patricia Radder, for her assistance with so many aspects of the editorial process. To give readers an idea of how the book has been assayed to get the best result for authors, editors, and readers, each chapter has been blind peer-

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acknowledgments

reviewed by at least two scholars with expertise in the corresponding field. Given the nature of some papers and their complexity, sometimes three reviewers were involved. Thus, a considerable number of anonymous reviewers read, corrected, and commented on the chapters in this monograph. The editors want to express their enormous appreciation for these reviewers, who read, at times, some very long papers without any kind of compensation, not even the humble reward of seeing their names here. Thank you all. This volume would have been not possible without your expertise and generosity. When I was a fellow at the Consortium in 2014–2015, divination in Jewish culture seemed at that moment to be a neglected subject in the research program of the ikgf, while other cultures very close to Judaism, like Arabic, were being studied and, on several occasions, discussed from different methodological perspectives. With the organization of a workshop focused specifically in Jewish divination, I tried to show that divination was not only a practice as common among Jews as it was among the members of other cultures (even though it emerged some times as a controversial subject in historical sources), but I also wanted to explore how Jews who practiced divination developed specific ways of remaining Jewish and making their practices “Jewish.” This was apparent when they appropriated and adapted non-Jewish practices that frequently came from surrounding cultures, most of which dated back centuries. Dorian and I hope this monograph shows a little of the territory that is the practice of divination among Jews (astrology, bibliomancy, physiognomy, dream requests, dream divination, astral magic, etc.) which, despite having been explored for several decades now, is still mapped fragmentarily, with some practices more popular (astrology and astral magic) and some remaining more or less in the shadows or completely unexplored (palmistry, geomancy, metoposcopy, onomancy, palmomancy, etc.). This monograph does not claim to make a full map of the territory; there are still many unexplored sources, and perhaps more work to be done on the differences between forms of popular and learned divination and their relationships with magic, mysticism, the socalled Hermetic sciences, and science in general. Nevertheless, the monograph now in your hands remains a good overview of some specific regions of this immense land.

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Figures and Tables Figures

2.1 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2

ms London British Library Or. 10878, fol. 17v. 20 Reconstruction of the existing data of scroll 4Q209 fragment 7. ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.111v. 138 ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.111r. 139 ms Cambridge University Library ts ns 322.39, fol. 1r. 159 ms Cambridge University Library ts Misc. 6.156, fol. 1r. 160 ms Amsterdam Ets Haim 47 A 27, fols. 36–37. 260 ms London British Library Add. 11639, fol. 115r. 332

75

Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13

4QZodiac Calendar (scroll 4Q318) reconstructed. 56 Gates, months, equinoxes, and solstices in 1Enoch 72. 73 Reconstruction of scroll fragments 4Q208–4Q209 with gate numbers and their corresponding zodiac signs. 78 Winter solstices for the nineteen-year cycle 3ce–16bce and 17bce (Jerusalem, midnight). 90 Dates for the vernal equinoxes for the nineteen-year cycle 3ce–16bce and 17bce (Jerusalem, midnight). 92 Dates in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii compared to dates in the Julian calendar for the demonstration year 3ce. 94 Dates in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii 1–9 compared to dates in the Julian calendar for the demonstration year 17bce. 95 Dates for the year 9bce plus the nineteen-year cycles for the winter solstices until the third century bce. 96 Dates for 1 Nisan in 9bce plus the nineteen-year cycles for the vernal equinoxes until the third century bce. 97 Dates for the year 3ce plus nineteen-year cycles for the winter solstices until the third century bce. 98 Dates for the year 3ce plus nineteen-year cycles for the vernal equinoxes until the third century bce. 99 Dates in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. ii lines 6–12 compared to demonstration dates in the Julian calendar 3ce. 100 Dates in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. ii lines 6–12 compared to demonstration dates in the Julian calendar 17bce. 100 - 978-90-04-44570-3

xii 3.1 4.1

4.2

4.3 6.1

figures and tables Comparison between ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.111 and Ps 139. 125 Table of contents of the Hebrew version of the of Pitron ḥalomot attributed to Ḥai Gaon (ms Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek heb. oct. 35, fols. 1r–9v and the printed edition, Rome 1547). 149 Literal parallel translations of the chapter on bloodletting in the two manuscripts: the Judaeo-Arabic version of the Pitron ḥalomot attributed to Ḥai Gaon and the Hebrew version (ms Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek heb. oct. 35, fols. 5v–6r). 152 Judaeo-Arabic (on the left) and Hebrew (on the right) versions of the chapter on bloodletting of Pitron ḥalomot attributed to Ḥai Gaon. 154 The rule of the planets in the diurnal and nocturnal seasonal hours of every week day or the so-called planetary hours. 208

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Tables for the Transliteration of Hebrew and Arabic Characters

‫א‬ ‫ב‬ ‫ג‬ ‫ד‬ ‫ה‬ ‫ו‬ ‫ז‬ ‫ח‬

Hebrew Characters ‫ט‬ ʾ ‫י‬ v/b ‫כ‬ g ‫ל‬ d ‫מ‬ h ‫נ‬ v ‫ס‬ z ‫ע‬ ḥ

ṭ i/y ḵ/k l m n s ʿ

‫פ‬ ‫צ‬ ‫ק‬ ‫ר‬ ‫שׁ‬ ‫שׂ‬ ‫ת‬

f/p ṣ q r š s t

Arabic Characters ‫ب‬

b

‫ض‬

ḍ

‫ي‬

y/ῑ

‫ت‬

t

‫ط‬

ṭ

‫ء‬

ʾ

‫ث‬

ṯ / th

‫ظ‬

ẓ

‫ى‬

ā

‫ج‬

j

‫ع‬

ʿ َ

a

‫ح‬

ḥ

‫غ‬

ġ / gh

ِ

i

‫خ‬

kh

‫ف‬

f ُ

u

‫د‬

d

‫ق‬

q

‫َـ ْي‬

ai

‫ذ‬

ḏ / dh

‫ك‬

k

‫َ ْو‬

au

‫ر‬

r

‫ل‬

l

īy

‫ز‬

z

‫م‬

m

‫ِ ـّي‬ ‫ُ ّو‬

‫س‬

s

‫ن‬

n

‫ة‬

a / ah

‫ش‬

š

‫ هـ‬/ ‫ ه‬h

‫ص‬

ṣ

‫و‬

ūw

w/ū

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Notes on the Contributors Shraga Bar-On is Head of the David Hartman Center for Intellectual Excellence at the Shalom Hartman Institute and teaches Jewish Thought and Talmud at Shalem College, both in Jerusalem (Israel). His research deals mainly with the literature of the Second Temple, rabbinic thought, and contemporary Jewish identity. His last book, Lot Casting, God and Man in Jewish Literature: From the Bible to the Renaissance, was published by Bar-Ilan University Press (2020). Alessia Bellusci is a historian of Hebrew culture, particularly interested in the reconstruction of Jewish magical behaviors and in the transmission of technical knowledge in late antique, medieval, and early modern Judaism. In her work, which is chiefly text-oriented and based on the direct examination of manuscript sources (Genizah fragments, European and Oriental medieval codices), she studies the magical phenomenon in its historical development, attempting to understand its impact on religious, cultural, and social aspects of Hebrew culture. In 2018, she was awarded the Shai Bleimann recognition for her PhD dissertation by the Middle East & Islamic Studies Association of Israel. Bellusci is a Blaustein Judaic Studies Postdoctoral Associate in Medieval Jewish History at Yale University. She held previous fellowships from the Italian Council of Research and the Yad Ha-Nadiv/Beracha Foundation. Charles Burnett PhD (Cambridge), Fellow of the British Academy, and Licentiate of the Guildhall School of Music, is Professor of the History of Islamic Influences in Europe at the Warburg Institute, University of London. His work centers on the transmission of Arabic science and philosophy to Western Europe, which he has documented by editing and translating several texts that were translated from Arabic into Latin, and by describing the historical and cultural context of the translations. Amos Geula is Lecturer for literature of the Sages (midrash and haggadah) in the Department of Hebrew literature (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), director of the Research Authority, and lecturer of the interdisciplinary program at the Herzog Academic College. Holding a Bachelor of Science in Biology, with a ma and PhD in Hebrew literature (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), he wrote his

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notes on the contributors

xv

dissertation on Lost Aggadic Works Known Only from Ashkenaz: Midrash Abkir, Midrash Esfa and Devarim Zuta. His research mainly deals with Jewish literary works in Southern Italy between the eighth and tenth centuries. He is the editor of the Jewish Studies Series, co-published by the Research Authority of Herzog Academic College and the World Union of Jewish Studies, and has published articles in a variety of fields in Jewish studies. His forthcoming publication is an Ashkenazi commentary on the Torah based on a Vatican manuscript. Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum is a Tutor at the University of Wales Trinity St David. Her PhD thesis from the Warburg Institute formed the basis of her book, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology: Origins and Influence (2016). Her areas of interest are the history of astrology; the concept of the daimon in antiquity; astronomy, astrology, and medicine; divination and cosmology; and concepts of fate in antiquity. Recent articles are “Porphyry of Tyre on the Daimon, Birth and the Stars” (2018) and, with Alexander Jones, “P. Berl. 9825: An elaborate horoscope for 319ce and its significance for Greek astronomical and astrological practice” (2017). Among other texts, she has edited Johannes Kepler’s astrological writings, Kepler’s Astrology (2010), and, with Charles Burnett, From Māshāʾallāh to Kepler: Theory and Practice in Medieval and Renaissance Astrology (2015). Helen R. Jacobus earned her doctorate at the University of Manchester (UK) in the Department of Religions and Theology, under the supervision of George J. Brooke. She received the 2011 Sean W. Dever Memorial Award for her paper published as “4Q318: A Jewish Zodiac Calendar at Qumran?” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Contexts, ed. Charlotte Hempel (2010). Helen was an Honorary Research Associate at University College London, Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, from 2011 until 2018 and was appointed Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester in 2019. Her publications include Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception: Astronomy and Astrology in Early Judaism (2014), a revision of her doctoral thesis. Her research areas are the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew Bible, Second Temple literature, and early Jewish documents, early Jewish calendars and liturgical cycles, the use of the zodiac in Judaism from antiquity until the modern period, as well as a wide range of different aspects of Biblical interpretation. Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas holds a ba in Classics and a PhD in Hebrew Language and Literature. She is now a research fellow at the Institut für Jüdische Studien (Westfälischen

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notes on the contributors

Wilhelms-Universität Münster), and has been a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ikgf, Warburg Institute, Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Sidney M. Edelstein Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, and the Departments of History of Science and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. The core of her research is medieval scientific manuscripts, pre-modern science and technology (including instruments), and pre-modern divinatory techniques and theories. She is co-editor of Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures (2017 and 2019) and author of Astrolabe Knowledge in Ashkenaz (forthcoming) and El cielo de Sefarad: Los judíos y los astros (2011). She has written articles and chapters on medieval Jewish science, scientific instruments, and Jewish divination and is currently preparing two books: A Cultural History of Astrolabes among Jews: Texts and Instruments and a critical edition and translation of Judah ben Solomon al-Ḥarizi’s Sefer goralot (on geomancy). Dov Schwartz was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Bar Ilan University and head of the departments of philosophy and music. He was the head of interdisciplinary programs at this university. Currently he is the head of the Department of Philosophy, as well as the Warhaftig Institute for Research on Religious Zionism. He is a senior researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He has written forty-five books and hundreds of articles on Jewish thought. Michael D. Swartz is Professor of Hebrew and Religious Studies at the Ohio State University and received a PhD from New York University. He is the author of The Mechanics of Providence: The Workings of Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism (2018); The Signifying Creator: Non-Textual Sources of Meaning in Ancient Judaism (2012); Scholastic Magic (1996), and Mystical Prayer in Ancient Judaism (1992); and coauthor, with Joseph Yahalom, of Avodah: Ancient Poems for Yom Kippur (2005) and Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah (1992), with Lawrence H. Schiffman. He also served as the Associate Editor for Judaica for the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Religion (2005). Blanca Villuendas Sabaté is an Arabic philologist working at the Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Tübingen since April 2017, as a post-doctoral research assistant for the Chair of Islamic Doctrine. Her research is related to the intellectual history of the Islamic world and aims to contribute to this field with the study of primary sources in Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic, producing editions of manuscript texts

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and studying their history and transmission. She is particularly interested in working on examples of global traditions that challenge the boundaries of religious and cultural identities. This is the context for her study of Judaeo-Arabic divinatory texts in the Cairo Genizah, which was the base of her ma (geomancy) and PhD (dream interpretation) theses at the Spanish National Council for Scientific Research (csic). Currently she is expanding research on these topics by further investigating the Arabic legacy. Joseph Ziegler is the Head of the School of History at the University of Haifa. He is the author of Medicine and Religion c. 1300: The Case of Arnau de Vilanova (1998) and the coeditor of The Invention of Racism in the West (2009). Over the last two decades he has published extensively on various aspects of learned Latin physiognomy in the Middle Ages, most recently “The Ruler’s Body in Pre-Modern Learned Physiognomy,” in Macht der Natur—gemachte Natur: Realitäten und Fiktionen des Herrscherkörpers zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. M. Gadebusch Bondio, B. Kellner, and U. Pfisterer (2019). His contribution in this book is his first venture into Hebrew physiognomy.

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Introductory Essay: Divination in Jewish Cultures—Some Reflections on the Subject of This Book Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas

1

The Inevitable Presence of Divination in Culture

This monograph opens with a quotation from a Spanish contemporary poet in which the poetic persona complains about his inability to get good peaches from a market stall. He has never cared about distinguishing peaches by their visible colors—yellow and red—, so how will he be able to distinguish good from bad, these qualities being even less apparent to the eye? This inability to be mindful of visible details in order to discern hidden qualities—he confesses—is the root of all his misfortunes, but it does not prevent him from continuing to demand good peaches from other people, namely, the fruit seller. Is he wise in deeming the fruit seller an expert in distinguishing good from bad (fruit), or is he just leaving his decision to someone else? Whichever the case, is it not perhaps his attitude and corresponding assumption the root of all his misfortunes—namely, his dependence on the knowledge of others? The subject of this book, inquiring—from others or by means that are not entirely within one’s reach—about what is hidden or unknown (whether these be the future, secrets, or far away things), reminded me of this poem and the paradoxical circumstances of its poetic persona. Divination was a controversial subject in some religions and societies, but a careful eye cannot fail to detect the persistence of this phenomenon in most cultures. Why do people want to anticipate the future or uncover what is hidden? The answer is apparent: to avoid errors in the important decisions of life, to have some advantage over chance and the unexpected, to improve a given situation with reliable decisions, to make easy money, to keep only trustworthy friends, to choose the right partner, etc. Not all of those who practice divination or believe in omens and portents have the same understanding about the state of things in the world and the result of individual actions, what one might call fate. The divinatory phenomenon seems to work within different mental attitudes regarding past, present, and future events, for instance a hard or a soft version of fate as regards the future (using modern terminology and leaving room for a spectrum between the two). In the hard version nothing can be changed, while in the soft version there is a possibility of changing the outcome

© Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445703_002

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or of adapting or preparing oneself for whatever is anticipated. These different understandings of fate are usually not referred to explicitly or discussed in the context of the divinatory performance and are likelier to emerge in theological and philosophical discussions disconnected from actual practices. However, careful analysis of the specific divinatory practice and the use of the language and terminology of the practitioner and his/her client can reveal underlying beliefs and assumptions regarding fate and the role of human choices. The ancient heimarmene of the early Stoics—“the compulsion/necessity” of the stars or “interdependence of causes” in the universe—left room mainly for a hard version, while the interrogational astrology outlined by Dorotheus Sidonius implied that individual fate is not completely determined and divination can help to mold it. This is not the place to discuss these long and contradictory traditions, which do not concern only Judaism or divination, but also other cultures and other human endeavors. Nevertheless, we can say that most Jewish divinatory practices presented and discussed in this book seem to work in a more or less hard understanding of fate, although—as several examples mentioned in its chapters show—the belief was that Jews can tip the balance to a softer version when they live within the path indicated by their religion. In the Middle Ages, astrology was classified among the empirical and mathematical sciences, although it was also frequently considered an art rather than a science. Along these lines, the Iberian astronomer Abraham bar Ḥiyya (twelfth century), considered astrology an art based on experience whose results are not always accurate.1 But astrology was also considered as one of the highest forms of divinatory technique, because it deals with signs coming from the highest levels of the universe (stars and planets). Similar classifications of divination are used in Christian Latin sources; for example, the twelfth-century Iberian translator Dominicus Gundisalinus defined divination as conjectural knowledge of the future based on human opinion (i.e., probable knowledge), and the Dominican Albertus Magnus (thirteenth century) interpreted prognostic knowledge as knowledge based on conjecture (conjectural knowledge). Fidora reflects on this classification in his interesting introduction to a monograph on 1 In his Sefer ṣurat ha-areṣ (“Book on the shape of the Earth”), Bar Ḥiyya says: “However, this part [astrology] is not included among the sciences (ḥoḵmat ha-maddaʿ), but, on the contrary, it must be named an art based on experience (meleʾḵet ha-nissaion). Even so, many people consider this part as the fruit and advantage obtained from the first (astronomy), for the men of this world obtain advantage from it. Sages do not give this high consideration to it, for the proofs (reʾayot) that it uses are not sure and solid, but they rely on interpretations (hasbarot) and experiences (nisionot);” see J.M. Millás Vallicrosa, La obra Forma de la Tierra, de Rabbi Abraham bar Hiyya ha-Bargeloni (Barcelona: Consejo Super. de Invest. Cientificas / Instituto Arias Montano, 1965), 29–30 (my translation of the Hebrew version).

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the epistemology of medieval divination.2 As interesting as Fidora’s study is, its understanding concerns a limited selection of Christian Latin authors, disciplines (astrology, medicine, and meteorology), and a very specific definition of divination (as only knowledge of the future).3 Even a superficial glance at divinatory practices among medieval Jews reveals that not all practitioners and clients of divination undertook the divinatory performance with the same assumptions of what they were doing and why it might work. There are important differences in terms of the epistemology that underlies the different divinatory practices that were in use, an assertion that also applies to divinatory practices in other cultures and religions. Those practices based on randomness (bibliomancy), those based on technical knowledge (astrology, physiognomy, palmistry), and those based on a combination of both (for instance, astrological geomancy) evidently operated within different epistemological frameworks that need further study beyond the specific cases that have received scholarly attention so far. Differences also emerge in the gap between learned or sophisticated forms of practices (any of those previously mentioned) and folk or popular forms of them (e.g., onomancy, omens, etc.). Gundisalinus’ and Albertus Magnus’ understandings of divination do not do justice to the complex and multicultural phenomenon of divination and the different forms in which it was practiced in the medieval period. Their approach excludes inspired divination and divination based on randomness, as well as mixed forms of divination—all practices that were in use in the Middle Ages.4 These definitions also exclude a divination that is intended not to know

2 See Alexander Fidora, “Divination and Scientific Prediction: The Epistemology of Prognostic Sciences in Medieval Europe,” Early Science and Medicine 18, 6 (2013): 517–535, especially, 517 and 520–521; and his German version, “Einleitung: Mantische Disziplinen und wissenschaftliche Vorhersage im Mittelater,” in Die Mantischen Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter, ed. Alexander Fidora (Köln: Böhlau, 2013), 9–21, especially, 11–12. For Albert the Great and his understanding of astrology, see JeanPatrice Boudet, “Astrology Between Rational Science and Divine Inspiration. The PseudoPtolemy’s Centiloquium,” in Dialogues among Books in Medieval Western Magic and Divination, ed. S. Rapisarda and E. Niblaeus (Firenze: sismel—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014), 49–76 (at 67–69). 3 Carlo Ginzburg’s definition of “conjectural” or “divinatory” knowledge, does not account either for the complexity of the different divinatory practices, because practicioners frequently understood their practice to involve deductive rather than inductive knowledge (e.g., Bar Ḥiyya in Chapter Seven of this book); see Carlo Ginzburg and Anna Davin, “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method,” History Workshop 9 (1980): 5–36. 4 As Kanarfogel shows in his study of the role of divination (specifically dream divination) in the halakhic decisions of the rabbis: “those Tosafists who engaged matters of Jewish law and practice directly on the basis of their dream experiences had recognizable proclivities

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the future, but rather what is hidden or unknown, whether it be something in the past, the present, or the future. As for the specific nature of the divinatory signs, which are the stuff of all divination, technical or inspired—a sign or a message has to be interpreted not just in technical, but also in inspired divination when the message is not directly given. Depending on their understanding, signs determine whether divination is considered a non-science (in the Aristotelian understanding), or a conjectural or non-Aristotelian science (in Gundisalinus’ view) in which the practitioners consider that divinatory/prognostic signs indicate but do not cause what they indicate.5 Nonetheless, divinatory signs deserve careful study, for their role in Jewish and non-Jewish sources is complex and at times even contradictory. It is clear that some signs are just signs (e.g., any geomantic figure) or symptoms (as in medicine), while others seem to have some causal role depending on the authors and the disciplines (e.g., stars can work as secondary or intermediate causes in astrology). Furthermore divinatory signs are more often than not perceived as unequestionable, unequivocal, and infallible in their roles either as signs or as causes, and thus human interpretation is considered the main reason for mistakes in judgments related to divination.6 It is possible to classify divinatory practices according to the sign that is observed or perceived and then interpreted. The sign can be natural, spontaneous, or

for and involvements with forms of mysticism, or with formulaic magic that was centered around Divine names;” see Ephraim Kanarfogel, “Dreams As A Determinant of Jewish Law and Practice in Northern Europe During the High Middle Ages,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History: Festschrift in Honor of Robert Chazan, ed. David Engel et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 111–143 (at 125). 5 See Alexander Fidora, “Mantische Disziplinen als aristotelische Wissenschaft—Der epistemologische Integrationsversuch des Dominicus Gundissalinus,” in Die Mantischen Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter, ed. Alexander Fidora (Köln: Böhlau, 2013), 61–72 (at 62–64). 6 In relation to Eliezer ben Nathan (Raban) of Mainz, Kanarfogel refers to an experience of dream divination in twelfth-century German lands in which: “Raban did not treat the dream itself as a definitive ruling or directive. Rather, he conducted an experiment or test, acting only after he had verifed the results;” see Kanarfogel, “Dreams As A Determinant of Jewish Law,” 113. Sometimes the nature of the sign is clearly infallible. See, for instance, in regard to a Sefer goralot (“Book of lots”) attributed to Abraham ibn Ezra, based—as other lottery books—on randomness, Marienza Benedetto, “Is it Possible to Foresee the Future? Divination Practices and Prophetic Visions in the Jewish Middle Ages,” Quaderni storici 52, 3 (2017): 681–697 (at 684): “the strategic one of making the authority of geomancy come directly from God, so that the interrogator (or whoever) is not in the condition to doubt the truth of the soothsayer’s response … with the—now obvious—conclusion that everything the soothsayer reveals will be certain and indisputable, since it is based on the divine.” See also Fidora, “Divination and Scientific Prediction,” 524 (for an understanding of divinatory signs as “fallible”).

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constructed or sought (as in lecanomancy, referred to in Chapter Seven of this book). It can be normal (the regular periodical movements of the stars, or nonperiodical like the croaking of a raven) or abnormal (like monsters, comets, etc.). It can be established as a sign a priori (a pre-coded sign), a posteriori (one decides that something is a sign after perceiving it), or simultaneously.7 The semiology of divination is a topic that rarely emerges in scholarship, except in the form of case studies, which gives a very partial and biased insight into their nature and status.8 We need more sources to be edited and published and more case studies analyzed before we can obtain a more accurate general picture of this intriguing human inclination to fathom the unknown by pushing the limits of human knowledge, especially now that divination and other dark disciplines have become a licit (if not respected) scholarly subject.

2

Criteria and Limitations of the Approaches in This Book

At the end of the long process that is reading, properly understanding, organizing, and creating a common structure from the different subjects collected in this book, we realized two paradoxes: first of all, it is not at all easier to be a historian than a diviner; and secondly, somehow it is a less complicated task to write a book than to edit one. We can predict with a high degree of accuracy that not everybody (authors, editors, and readers) will find what they are expecting here, but let us hope that ultimately we are better historians than diviners! As previously said, this monograph emerged from a workshop, with most of its chapters stemming from the papers presented at it; other papers were requested and added later during the collection of the contributions in an effort to reflect as much as possible the catalogue of divinatory practices available and used in Jewish cultures. We were more interested in actual divinatory practices, both the variety of ways used to unveil what is hidden and unknown, and with how Jews understood their divinatory pratices within the frame of contemporary religion, philosophy, and science. I think both aspects are well (though partially) reflected in this book (the former in Chapters Two, Three, Four, Five, Eight, and Nine, the latter in Chapters One, Six, and Seven). 7 Jean Bottéro, “Symptômes, signes, écritures en Mésopotamie ancienne,” in Divination et rationalité, ed. J.P. Vernant et al. (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1974), 111. 8 An exception is Giovanni Manetti, Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993 [1987 Italian]).

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It is, however, apparent that further research in both dimensions must be pursued in order to get a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the divinatory phenomenon in pre-modern societies, cultures, and mentalities. Given that divination seems to be a human phenomenon in all periods and cultures, the choice of the papers was determined—following the workshop— by the focus on what might be specifically Jewish about the forms of divination that Jews practiced, some of which are still in use. Divination, prognostication, and manticism are used in this book as synonyms. Bar-On (Chapter Five) and Ziegler (Chapter Nine) are the only ones to use the term “manticism” to denote divination, perhaps because the authors of these chapters are aware of certain connotations in the root of the word “divination” that they prefer to avoid. Prognostication, as Ziegler uses it (Chapter Nine), is a term more connected to medicine and related to physiognomy and its non-divinatory aspects. The field of Jewish divination has inherent limits but also a huge scope, and is still barely explored, as Villuendas Sabaté (Chapter Four) makes clear in relation to dream divination: her account implies that between the Babylonian Talmud, the first example of a Jewish dream book, and the last, most famous, dream handbook by Solomon Almoli (1516), the study of Jewish medieval dream books remains virtually unexplored. She concludes that more critical editions and further study are necessary to understand the transmission and connections of dream divination in medieval Arabic and related cultures. A similar conclusion can be applied to the remaining forms of divination described or mentioned in this book: we need to collect and analyze more case studies in order to understand how, why, and what for. In this monograph, two necessary self-restrictions are evident in the table of contents and the titles of the different chapters. One restriction is temporal and relates to the decision to exclude the Biblical period and its contexts, which are so rich in this respect. Divinatory practices in the Bible have long been discussed in the context of Biblical scholarship, as well as in books and articles dealing with ancient Near Eastern religions, though this should not imply that there is nothing left to refute, confirm, or discover: for instance, the highly relevant connection of prophecy with divination, and especially with inspired divination might need further research.9 Notwithstanding the stated omission of Biblical divination, forms of divination mentioned in the Hebrew Bible are still present everywhere in this monograph within the context of discussions about the legitimacy of divination in Jewish religion, and Biblical sources are quoted,

9 An excellent overview of divination in the Hebrew Bible is Ann Jeffers, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1996).

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cited, and used with this purpose in several chapters of this book (notably, Chapters Three and Seven). The convenor of the workshop is a medievalist, and medieval divinatory practices, underexplored in Jewish culture, were her main interest, though some latitude was allowed for studies dealing with antiquity (Chapters One and Two) and the modern period (Chapter Five). Readers should keep in mind that this is the first book in the field of Jewish studies dealing exclusively with divination among Jews, as its title makes clear, and only for that it is already an important contribution. The other self-restriction is methodological, resulting from the absence in this book of any discussion about the definition of divination and its relation to magic. Magic is a popular subject in the field of Jewish studies, perhaps due to the long historical association of Jews with it. Possibly divination’s neglect in general scholarship is exacerbated by its overlapping with magic, which in some cases is clearly indistinguishable, and not only in Jewish sources.10 The end of Chapter One discusses this overlap of magic and divination, which might have been customary in ancient and medieval times (see also Chapter Eight), but the fact is that some medieval Jewish authors saw them as very different fields (see Chapters Six and Seven), at least in the intention of the practitioner and the forces being put to work. Bellusci, following Gideon Bohak and others, considers dream-requests and divination in general to be a branch of magic (she calls dream-requests a “magical technique” several times in her chapter). The relationships of divination and magic need further clarification, especially regarding certain forms of divination in which non-human or angelic revelation plays no role at all (for example, astrology as in Chapters Six and Seven, physiognomy as in Chapter Nine, geomancy, etc.), though divination always operates in Jewish cultures within a more or less theocentric understanding of the universe.11 Did ancient and medieval practitioners consider both kinds of practices—magical and divinatory—as identical, similar, or just

10

11

So it is explained in an anonymous Hebrew epistle copied in the fourteenth century and originating somewhere in the Iberian Peninsula (after an Arabic source). According to the instructions, an anthropoid form, molded at the moment of a specific configuration of the sky, is intended for divinatory uses and the disclosing of secrets, among other things; see Moshe Idel, “An Astral-magical Pneumatic Anthropoid,” Incognita 3 (1991): 19–23 (quotation of the text at 13). “La divination suppose toujours une appropriation plus ou moins poussée du savoir—et d’ un savoir dont les dieux eux-mêmes sont garants—par un groupe restreint de spécialistes”; see Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Parole et signes muets,” in Divination et rationalité, ed. J.P. Vernant et al. (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1974), 14. Also “dans la divination déductive, c’est l’ homme qui découvre et déchiffre la vérité que le dieu a placé dans le présage”; see Bottéro, “Symptômes, signes, écritures,” 137 n. 1.

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related? This is a highly complex question that indirectly emerges in this book and awaits further research. A few excellent monographs dealing with magic in Judaism have been cited in this book (these can be found in the general bibliography); however, none of these books extensively discusses the relationship between magic and divination, considering both as one single category, magic.12 Though this assumption could be questioned, most authors wrote their chapters with the understanding that there is no separation between magic and divinatory practices, but the author of the twelfth-century Hebrew text translated in Chapter Seven was very concerned with this separation. In theory, magic and divination might look like closely related fields separated only by their goals. On a simplistic level, one might say that knowledge is the purpose of divination, even if its acquisition is frequently intended to change things in the world, while action/change/control of the world and its beings would be the main purpose of magic. However, magic and divination

12

There are three, more or less recent, books in the field of divination that can be helpful for this issue. Dealing specifically with the epistemology of prognostic sciences and some theoretical reflections on the ways mantic sciences and arts work, see Alexander Fidora (ed.), Die Mantischen Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter (Köln: Böhlau, 2013). The other book, dealing with the tentative definition of a canon of books in medieval western magic and divination, separates magic and divination (at least in its title, though its content does not deal with this distinction), see Stefano Rapisarda and Erik Niblaeus (eds.), Dialogues among books in Medieval Western magic and divination (Florence: sismel—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014). Both books are also the result of scientific meetings organised at the ikgf, just as the present book is. None of them deals with divination and/or prognostication among Jews, although the Latin Bible remains an important source and reference in some of the medieval authors studied in both books. Finally, Alessandro Palazzo and Irene Zavattero (eds.), Geomancy and Other Forms of Divination (Florence: sismel—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2017), deals especially with the divinatory technique called geomancy, in Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources, but also includes other forms of divination as well as a final section dealing with magic. So this latter monograph on divination somehow acknowledges the closeness of both fields, though it separates them in the organization of the book. In the final section of the book two chapters are worth mentioning: one surveys the relationship of magic and divination in medieval classifications of disciplines and the other considers the use of magic for divinatory purposes; see Isabelle Drealants, “Magica vero sub philosophia non continetur: Statut des arts magiques et divinatoires dans les encyclopédies et leurs auctoritates (1225–1260),” 463–518; and Nicolas Weill-Parot, “Des images qui disent et font dire l’avenir? Talismans, divination et bonne fortune (xiiie–xve siècle),” 519–536. In relation to the definition of magic and Jewish magic, see Sophie Page and Catherine Rider (eds.), The Routledge History of Medieval Magic (London: Routledge, 2019), especially parts one and five, in which there is discussion about the definitions of magic and its status among medieval disciplines (including magic practiced by Jews).

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historically frequently overlapped in practice, for instance in astral magic or in the knowledge of the hidden and the future attained by revelatory means (for instance, in dream-requests and bibliomancy). Magic and divination can both be considered forms of technology; some form of control is the intended purpose in both and their knowledge is built upon experience and tradition, though also upon divine inspiration. Hence, they are both technical knowledge in different degrees, depending on the specific form of the practice and the expectations of the practitioners and their clients. They can also be understood, in certain cases, as forms of science, especially considering that in ancient and medieval times science denoted just knowledge, any knowledge, contrary to the very specific meaning of the modern concept, based in mathematics (measure) and the experimental method (repeatability of the same phenomena under the same conditions). Many of the chapters let us glimpse how intrinsic the assistance of nonhuman or spiritual beings might be to the diviner in attaining the desired knowledge about the future or the hidden. All the divinatory techniques explained in this book are either forms of technical or deductive (also known as artificial or mechanical) divination, and natural or emotive (also known as inspired) divination (for example, divination by possession or oracles), or a combination of both. What separates technical from natural is the training required by the performer of technical divination, who needs the tools of deductive thought to attain a result and, above all, his/her independence from non-human beings and means to achieve the intended knowledge. Nevertheless, inspired or natural divination also requires some sort of technique or experience in order to get an answer (as in Chapter Three). These questions should be considered in more depth in future research, for they concern not only Jewish divinatory practices but the phenomenon of divination in general in all cultures and periods. Diviners are technicians, just like magicians.13

13

In relation to the notion of medieval technology in the field of the occult, especially magic, see David Zeitlyn, “Divination as dialogue: Negotiation of Meaning with Random Responses,” in Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence, ed. E.N. Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 189–205, especially 190, and the bibliography quoted there. See also Yuval Harari, “What is a Magical Text?: Methodological Reflections Aimed at Redefining Early Jewish Magic,” in Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity, ed. Shaul Shaked (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 91–124 (quotations at 94 and n. 14, respectively): “The technician has a different view of the world. He wants to produce results, either by adjusting his techniques and tools to the task to be performed or by reducing the task to the power of the tools at his disposal;” and Harari considers magic a kind of technology: “in the sense that it offered a comprehensive system of practical applications of the

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The diviner who forecasts when possessed by the god has no possibility of being wrong (only of being misunderstood, as many examples in ancient sources show), while technicians of any sort can always make mistakes either in the procedure or in the interpretation,14 so that they need a long training period to become experts through study and experience. Diviners perform their art and display their expertise and knowledge before clients but also before their peers, other fellow diviners, who confirm or refute their expertise.15 Certain divinatory performances (like astrology, geomancy, dream interpretation, etc.) imply some sort of negotiation of meaning, just as in any dialogic situation between people. If the speech of the diviner turns out to be unrelated to the circumstances of the client, it is always possible to work retrospectively and correct previous inaccurate or wrong answers in the light of the new information provided by both, or by changing the questions, for wrong questions can invalidate the whole process.16 It is unfortunate (but significant) that most of the time this dialogical process, and, in general, the process of interpretation is neither written nor described in manuscripts or printed texts. We frequently are given just a few sentences that do not help much in reconstructing the actual scenario and dialogue of the divinatory seance. The dialogic character of technical divination allows us to consider it a form of rationality, just as Marcel Sigrist holds for magic.17 It is also pertinent to keep in mind that there is an important body of material culture that illuminates different and unexpected aspects of divination that do not emerge in textual sources and frequently escape the attention of scholars.18 An attentive reader will notice the explicit mention or the silent necessary presence of divinatory artifacts in some of the chapters, though almost all the studies take a textual approach to their respective subjects. As Chapter One (Swartz) enunciates it, divination is “a quest of meaning” and it looks for signi-

14 15 16 17

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perception of the way by which reality is run, for the purpose of improving the human condition.” Sigrist places magic as one manifestation of the homo faber and underlines its pragmatic rather than transcendental or mystical nature; see Marcel Sigrist, “Magic and human reason,” in Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity, ed. Shaul Shaked (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 295–316, especially, 303 and 307. Zeitlyn, “Divination as dialogue,” 190 and 196. “Interpretation occurs both between divination and diviner as well as between diviner and client;” see Zeitlyn, “Divination as dialogue,” 190. Zeitlyn, “Divination as dialogue,” 191 and 203. “Magic is an integral part of human rationality;” see Sigrist, “Magic and human reason,” 296; or “belief in divination is held to be irrational, but its practice is extremely rational according to the ethnographies;” see Zeitlyn, “Divination as dialogue,” 196. The possible material culture associated with divination in ancient Israel is briefly surveyed by Jeffers, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria, 19–20 and 197–229.

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fication in everyday objects and events, but most material aspects of divinatory practices are not to be found in texts. Notwithstanding, the physicality of the divinatory act is, in some practices, very clear, for instance in the handling of books in bibliomantic contexts (Chapter Five) or in the use of specific materials and their handling in magical performances (Chapter Ten), in horoscopes calculated and frequently drawn on paper or parchment for astrology (Chapters Six and Seven); as well as, in other senses, in the facial and corporeal signs that have to be interpreted in physiognomy (Chapter Nine), or the lists of specific signs and their corresponding specific meanings in dream handbooks and lottery books (Chapters Three and Five, respectively). Chapter Ten focuses directly on the materiality of its topic, with a complete immersion in the most material aspects of the kind of magic that relies on writing names (using skins, inks, writing tools, etc), a practice which seems to be especially associated with Jews or Jewish figures (notably, King Solomon). Comparative approaches are frequent, especially with Christian and Islamic cultures. Chapter Three gives keys for understanding the historical background of dream-requests in antiquity (notably the Greek and Demotic magical papyri) and in the Middle Ages in both Jewish and non-Jewish sources (Arabic istiḵāra in ḥadīth literature and dream requests in magical Latin texts). Dream-requests can be studied not only in the long tradition of dream divination in ancient and medieval Near-Eastern and Mediterranean civilizations, but in the context of an extensive tradition of interrogational systems for decisionmaking, in which the Arabic masāʾil and the Hebrew šeʾilot (both of which deal with different systems to get an answer) are clearly placed. Further research could explore this approach, with possible roots in Babylonian sources of the second millenium bce: one of the Akkadian words denoting a diviner is šaʾilu (“one who asks or questions”), which suggests that the art of divining might have started and developed as the art of inquiring, the art of “framing a question”19 in such a way that the given answer would be clear and unambiguous. With this in mind, a clear difference should also be made among divinatory practices according to the kind of answer they can provide: a yes or no answer to a definite question resulting from a procedure based on revelation or randomness, or a more complex answer resulting from a more or less long and complex interpretational process performed by a specific diviner. As Guillaume put it: the former can only answer the question shall, while the latter can answer the question what.20 It was not infrequent in medieval divination for the client to 19 20

Alfred Guillaume, Prophecy and Divination among the Hebrews and Other Semites (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), 41. Guillaume, Prophecy and Divination, 120.

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ask the diviner to provide not only the answer to a question, but sometimes also the question itself, often with the intention of testing the expertise of the diviner, as Judah al-Ḥarizi’s maqama shows.21 Physical books and written words are read or heard in different divinatory contexts (Chapters One, Three, and Five), and these could be combined. Thus it is possible to find bibliomancy at the heart of an oneirocritic episode, so that the forecast would be given by a Biblical verse heard during a dream (examples in Chapters Three and Five). Astrology is present in our volume under different aspects (Chapters Two, Five, Six, Seven, and Eight), and a physical artifact associated with its practice (an astrolabe) is briefly mentioned in Chapter Six. Chapter Two gives an idea of how astrological anticipation was dependent on tables and written calculations, which are, in the end, artifacts of a written variety. Chapter Six mentions the use of astronomical data in Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter, which must have been available in the form of tables or through the use of an astronomical instrument. Furthermore, instruments in Chapter Two are mentioned as evidence. Qumran scrolls 4Q208–4Q209 present “gates” numbered 1 to 6 that Jacobus contends are here synonymous with the zodiac signs. She completes the fragmentary calendar in these scrolls and proposes that it synchronizes a lunar year of 354 days with a solar year of 360 days. The gates of this calendar refer to twelve points of a local horizon where the sun rises, which—using the astrological notion of the ascendant—she makes equivalent to the twelve zodiac signs, i.e., the horizon-based zodiac system of Babylonian mul.apin astronomy. Jacobus underpins her hypothesis with evidence found in astronomical Greco-Roman instruments. One of the editors is working on medieval scientific instruments and is familiar with the use of different devices in prognostication and divination contexts.22 The use of instruments in these contexts can give us an insight into the actual practice that very frequently is not in texts and can confirm how real the actual practice was, as well as providing daily-life details about the specific performances. This book cannot and did not intend to examine all the forms of divination practiced among Jews, so that some widespread practices are mentioned only briefly (palmistry, geomancy, scrying, etc.). However, the second part of Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter translated in Chapter Seven constitutes a treasure of divinatory

21 22

David S. Segal (transl.), The Book of Tahkemoni, Jewish Tales from Medieval Spain (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2003), 208 (maqāma 22). See, for example, Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, “Medical and Astrological Plates: Their Roles in Medieval and Renaissance Knowledge,” in Heaven and Earth United—Instruments in Astrological Contexts, eds. Richard Dunn, Silke Ackermann, and Giorgio Strano (LeidenBoston: Brill, 2018), 42–60.

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practices certainly known if not practiced by many of Bar Ḥiyya’s contemporaries (both Jews and non-Jews). Some of these missing practices are shown in images as they appear in Hebrew manuscripts (notably, geomancy and palmistry, see Figures in pp. 260 and 332, respectively). It is possible to find underlying epistemological connections among different prognostication practices. In Chapter One Swartz, who follows Richard Gordon’s four characteristics for building the authority of a practitioner in a healing event—namely, empirical knowledge, prestige of traditional knowledge, ritual actions, and verbal utterances or charms—finds an identity between the states of the person consulting a healer and the person consulting a diviner. Furthermore, the Jewish text translated in Chapter Seven compares the practice of astrologers choosing the right moment to perform an activity with that of physicians who choose the right drug to treat an illness. It is relevant to remember that medicine was likewise considered a prognostic art or science.23 Swartz, who approaches ancient and early medieval Jewish divination within the larger framework of ancient divination, underscores our reliance on textual sources to know and understand divination in the ancient world (Chapter One). The exclusively textual approach of this book allows readers to realize some linguistic aspects of Jewish divinatory texts (though not exclusive to Jews). Chapter One opens with the frequently under-acknowledged fact that divination is also “a field of literature,” which Swartz confirms with examples taken from Qumran to the medieval period, notably through the introductions and preliminary prayers distinctive of magic and divinatory texts, which root them in a long and legitimate Jewish tradition. The language and style of these texts and what they might have in common with similar texts in other cultural and lingüistic traditions are sources about the nature, scope, and roles of these practices in Jewish societies.

23

See, for instance, in non-specifically Jewish contexts, Charles Burnett, “Doctors versus Astrologers: Medical and Astrological Prognosis Compared,” in Die mantischen Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften, ed. Alexander Fidora (Köln-WeimarWien: Böhlau, 2013), 101–112; Luke E. Demaitre, “The Art and Science of Prognostication in Early University Medicine,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77, 4 (2003): 765– 788; Faith Wallis, “Signs and Senses: Diagnosis and Prognosis in Early. Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts,” Social History of Medicine 13 (2000): 265–278; Roger Kenneth French, “Foretelling the Future: Arabic Astrology and English Medicine in the Late Twelfth Century,” Isis 87, 3 (1996): 453–480; Michael R. McVaugh, “The Nature and Limits of Medical Certitude at Early Fourteenth-Century Montpellier,” Osiris 6 (1990): 62–84; and Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990).

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Chapters Three and Four, dealing with dream divination, are, consequently, focused on the philological: they include the edition and translation of several Genizah fragments in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic, respectively, but they also analyse the language and the structure of these specific divinatory texts. Chapter Three (Bellusci) considers Hebrew recipes (instructions) and finished products (part of the ritual) of the dream-request, which are equally based on ritual sleep (the necessary condition for experiencing the ritual dream) and linguistic magic (adjurations, invocations, magical formulae, and prayers, many of them consisting of clusters of Biblical verses). This linguistic aspect of dream-requests allows Bellusci to make an illuminating analysis of the language, verbal constructions, and prayers that are distinctive of these Genizah texts, pinpointing their proximity to the language of mysticism, liturgy, and magic. Chapter Four (Villuendas Sabaté) presents the topic in the context of a “cross-cultural written legacy of dream symbol codification” dating back to 2000bce, which also shares the linguistic expression of dream omina in the form of conditional sentences (“if you see x, y will happen”), also noticed by Bellusci in the expression of dream-requests. Villuendas Sabaté disinguishes between earlier dream books (lists of symbols and their meanings in conditional form) and later dream treatises (expanded versions of the former that include more materials related to the interpretation of the dream). Villuendas Sabaté perceptively notes that dreambooks are composed of “units that can be easily isolated and then relocated elsewhere within the text or transferred to others,” which is explained by their formulaic language, the recurrence of lists, and the weakness or absence of textual coherence that characterizes this literary genre. This structure might be applicable to most kinds of divinatory texts and their formulae, but this remains the subject of future research. Finally, is there something specifically Jewish in the divinatory practices described and analysed in this book? Chapter One (Swartz) is quite right in not placing any emphasis on differences between cultures and religions regarding divinatory practices, although he points out that, in contrast to other ancient civilizations that institutionalized divination, Jewish divination (except for a short period with the ʾurim and tummim of the high priest) was always a private business. It remained a private business throughout the Middle Ages, even when divination was performed in courtly contexts for the sake of rulers and princes. Bar-On forthrightly acknowledges “the inevitable presence of manticism in the Jewish tradition” in Chapter Five: divination and prognostication are an ubiquitous phenomenon in Jewish cultures, from Biblical times up to the present, albeit with bans, discussions, nuances, and conflicts that depend on the author and the period. However, it is still clearly a Jewish phenomenon, too, because it happens among Jews and in distinctive Jewish contexts. Bar-On,

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Bellusci, and Villuendas Sabaté underscore the persistence of these divinatory techniques even up to present times. Are there specific Jewish forms of divination? This is another topic needing further research. Some chapters (One, Three, Five, and Nine) suggest that certain divinatory practices have a long tradition among Jews and might have an origin in Biblical times, but most practices seem to be Jewish adaptations or Jewish developments of divinatory practices that were not originally Jewish; more research would clarify their history. These adaptations or developments took on a Jewish flavor to fit Jewish religious and customs, possibly to escape religious and social polemics and elude halakhic bans.24 Bar Ḥiyya (Chapter Seven) echoes the Jewish belief that Abraham was an astrologer, which certainly presents astrology as a distinctively Jewish science and art. The patriarch Joseph and the prophet Daniel practiced dream divination (Chapters Three and Four), which also presents this practice as genuinely Jewish. The Book of Daniel seems to be of paramount importance in the Jewish tradition (Chapters Three and Seven) and is frequently quoted in the context of dream-requests, though it remains uncertain whether there was a established Second Temple period tradition of Jewish oneiric divination. Preliminary prayers and invocations (Chapters Three and Five) addressed to the God of Israel somehow made the practices Jewish and licit and certainly gave them a Jewish flavor. What is more concretely Jewish is the introduction of certain sources (Hebrew Bible, Talmud, Rabbinic literature) and figures (Moses, Abraham, King Solomon, etc. and later figures like Ḥai ben Sherira Gaon and Elijah Gaon of Vilna) in the discussion and the practice of divination. Another intriguing and distinctive feature of Jewish divination is the belief that Israel is entitled to a special comunication with God, which separates it from the other nations of the world, as mentioned in Chapter One. This topic also figures prominently in Chapter Seven regarding the talmudic question about whether Israel has a star. As Bar Ḥiyya states in his Letter: “Israel does not have a star. This means that the righteous ones of Israel can nullify the stellar decrees that 24

For instance, as regards dream divination, Kanarfogel states that “there is ample reason to believe that the Jews were aware of some of the larger ideas and tendencies about dreams that were prevalent within Christian circles;” and on the question of dreams and their impact in halakhic decisions, he concludes: “the (surprisingly) positive or receptive attitude that a number of Tosafists expressed with respect to the potential impact of dreams on the halakhic process, as well as the differences between them about how such dreams should be evaluated and classified, had much in common with the surrounding host culture, even as the Tosafist attitudes were clearly a function of their own rabbinical and mystical sensibilities;” see Kanarfogel, “Dreams As A Determinant of Jewish Law,” 141 and 143, respectively.

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act upon them, by their righteousness and their prayers. The other nations of the world cannot do this.” Specifically Jewish ritual aspects are also fundamental in establishing the Jewish character of the practice (Chapters One, Three, and Five), even if ritualistic aspects in divinatory performances generally are present in all cultures and religions. These established ways of performing and validating the practice usually include preliminary prayers and serve to legitimate it. Bar-On (Chapter Five) classifies the ritual as “magical pietism” following a expression coined by Swartz (Chapter One), which Bellusci (Chapter Three, “magical piety”) also uses to denote the religious attitude of the practitioner of divination. It should be noted that prayer is especially important in the preparatory rituals preceding those forms of divination that rely more on revelation and randomness than on the technical and professional expertise of a diviner, though it can be found everywhere.

3

Arrangement of the Chapters and Overview of Their Contents

As for the arrangement of the chapters, the order is roughly chronological according to their contents. Chapters One (Swartz) and Two (Jacobus) discuss the oldest forms of divination in Judaism presented in this book, namely Second Temple practices dating before or around the turn of the eras—leaving aside references to divinatory practices in the Hebrew Bible that surface many times in different chapters (notably, Chapter Seven and Bar Ḥiyya’s discussion on Biblical terms related to divination and magic). Chapter One takes a theoretical and general approach which justifies its introductory position and gives context for the topics that follow. Chapter Two discusses Aramaic calendars in the fragmentary scrolls of Qumran. These calendars (which Jacobus has reconstructed) are based on a luni-solar cycle that considers the days of the lunar month that the sun and the moon entered the different signs of the zodiac and constitute a schematic zodiac ephemeris that can be easily adjusted for any date for all time. Jacobus’ proposal is that this ephemeris was used by the sectarians of Qumran to construct simple horoscopes using just the positions of the sun and the moon in the zodiac across a year of three-hundred and sixty days with twelve months of thirty days each. Most of the remaining chapters deal with the description of specific divinatory practices. Thus Chapters Three and Four deal with dream divination. Bellusci (Chapter Three) studies Hebrew dream-requests in fragments of the Cairo Genizah, in which the client, after performing certain preparatory rituals (concerning the body of the sleeper and the sleeping place), inquires about a subject with an answer expected during the dream. This answer may come from a divine or

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angelic source, or from the interpretation of certain codified signs perceived in dreams. Villuendas Sabaté’s study (Chapter Four) focuses on a fragmentary dream handbook attributed to Ḥai ben Sherira Gaon in its Hebrew versions (Pseudo-Ḥai’s Pitron ḥalomot), which she reconstructs from eleven JudaeoArabic Genizah fragments, providing the edition, Hebrew parallel version, and English translation of the chapter dealing with bloodletting. Chapter Five (Shraga Bar-On) discusses the divinatory practice known in Hebrew as goralot, an ambiguous Hebrew term that here denotes, specifically, bibliomancy, in the form that was most widespread among Jews, namely the use of the Hebrew Bible for decision-making.25 Bar-On (quoting Van der Horst) shows that some form of bibliomancy might have been used in Qumran, but it remains unexplored how and why Jews passed from a specific and limited “Lot of the Torah” to broader and unspecific “lottery books” that seem to be a whole literary genre, expanding the use of Biblical texts to include other literary pieces of different (and perhaps non-Jewish) provenances. Though Bar-On states that bibliomancy was the most accepted form of divination among Jews, this is perhaps something to be discussed and explored in more detail given, for instance, the frequent occurrences of dream divination (Chapters Three and Four) and astrology (Chapters Two, Six, Seven, and Eight) in Jewish cultures. Chapter Six (Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas) presents an introduction to the Letter (a responsum) that Abraham bar Ḥiyya addressed to Judah bar Barzillai, with the personal purpose of defending himself from an accusation of “consultation of Chaldeans” for supporting the use of electional astrology to choose the hour of a wedding. The broader and more ambitious purpose of the Letter is to defend astrology as a legitimate, beneficial, and required knowledge and practice for Jews. Because it uses halakhic language and arguments, this Letter becomes a very important document in the history of divination among Jews. Judah ben Barzillai is doubtless the addressee of the Letter, but he has been also identified as the objector by most scholars. Rodríguez-Arribas refutes this identity and concludes that the objector must have been a foreigner who attended the wedding. Chapter Seven (Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas and Amos Geula) presents an English translation of Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s Letter to Judah bar Barzillai, whose basic features the previous chapter has already introduced. This Letter is an 25

Goral is a rather ambiguous term that we find denoting other forms of divination that have nothing to do with books (e.g., geomancy); see J. Rodríguez-Arribas, “Divination According to Goralot: Lots and Geomancy in Hebrew Manuscripts,” in Geomancy and Other Forms of Divination, ed. Alessandro Palazzo and Irene Zavattero (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018), 243–270.

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essential document to understand the halakhic strategies that allowed medieval Jews to learn and practice astrology. Chapter Eight (Dov Schwartz) is a good companion piece to Chapters Six and Seven. While Chapters Six and Seven deal with the defense of astrology and the illicit character of other divinatory practices for Jews (those related to magic and some forms of qesamim), Chapter Eight deals with Maimonides’ refutation of any form of divination and magic based in stellar knowledge. According to scholars, Maimonides forbade all kinds of magic in his halakhic works and in the Guide of the Perplexed, but Schwartz argues for some nuance in this position. Maimonides differentiated between professional (astral magic) and popular magic (non-astral magic); the former was the only one targeted in Maimonides’ condemnation, but he did accept experiential science (segullot), whose knowledge can only be attained by experience, as long as it was unrelated to astral magic. The double classification of magic extends to idolatry, which also presents two forms, one learned (which involves astral magic) and the other popular (with no knowledge of astrology and relying only on the tradition or authority of others). The former is actual true idolatry while the latter is not, only resembling true idolatry. In Schwartz’ view, Maimonides’ major challenge was refuting the first form. Maimonides made a separation between segullot (true and halakhically permitted) and “the ways of the Amorite” (imaginary and banned) in the efficacious character of segullot confirmed by experience and unrelated to astrology with respect to Amorite practices. Chapter Nine (Joseph Ziegler) deals with physiognomy in medieval Jewish and non-Jewish sources and discusses the increasing non-mantic character of this discipline, which places this practice closer to the fields of medicine, natural philosophy, and psychology than to divination. There is textual evidence that the Second Temple community at Qumran imported physiognomical knowledge which was clearly divinatory from Babylonia, and used it together with the zodiac sign of the person to determine the adequacy of candidates for membership in the sect. Similar practices, as well as chiromancy and metoposcopy, were also used among Merkavah and Hekhalot mystics to determine the qualities of applicants, in the Zohar and later kabbalistic movements, and among the Ḥasidei Ashkenaz to determine not only a man’s character but also his future. These practices relied on mastering the techniques of the art but also on religious intuition and union with the divine intellect. Ziegler notes the “skewed understanding of Hebrew physiognomy by modern historians of Jewish thought and science, who stressed its mantic character and transposed it entirely to the realm of esoteric magic.” Chapter Ten (Charles Burnett) introduces the consideration of the material aspects of books of magic, namely the different skins and writing supports,

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inks, writing instruments, and bindings used in the making of these books and the ways in which these materials were selected and handled. The focus is on Latin books of magic dealing with those practices that the Magister speculi in the Speculum astronomiae considers “detestable,” i.e., “spirits, demons, or jinns are summoned with these names.” King Solomon appears especially associated with this category of talismanic magic that relies on “the writing of characters which have to be exorcised through certain names,” i.e. magic that works through “writing names” rather than “speaking names out loud,” which links this chapter with Jewish culture, as well as the use of magic to foretell future. The chapter closes with an Appendix by Nicholas Pickwoad on the making of a grimoire as described in The Four Rings of Solomon, pinpointing the very specific material steps that underlay the process of making the grimoire. Burnett concludes that “the emphasis on writing … is likely to reflect the character of the works originally written in Hebrew.” In conclusion, in spite of necessary omissions of content, what is covered in this book makes an intriguing and variegated display of what divination meant and implied in Jewish cultures (though not all Jewish cultures are equally represented here). With this volume we hope to open a window on some illuminating views, even if partial, of this enticing and neglected landscape of Jewish culture.

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ms London British Library Or. 10878, fol. 17v (Hebrew fortune wheel). Collection of brief texts on astronomy, mathematics, music, and astrology (parchment, fifteenth century, Ashkenazi semi-cursive script). image by permission of the british library

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chapter 1

Divination as Transaction: Rhetorical and Social Dimensions of Ancient Jewish Divination Texts Michael D. Swartz

The practice of divination has deep conceptual implications for how people see the world. It is a rich subject for those of us who study ritual and it has significant social implications as well.1 It is also, in surprising ways, a field of literature. Divination is an area of human endeavor that exemplifies the quest for meaning outside the text. Even ancient Jews, long considered the people of the book par excellence, lived no less than their neighbors in a world in which signification could be found in everyday objects, actions, and images.2 The flight patterns of birds, the swaying of palm trees, the contours of the face, all spoke to the ancients as eloquently as scriptures. But paradoxically, our knowledge of ancient divination relies on textual sources. Even the extant archaeological evidence for ancient divination is practically useless without literary sources to give them some context. For the Greco-Roman world, there is also a significant corpus of divination texts on papyrus and in medieval manuscripts. So the study of divination in antiquity is of necessity the study of literature. There are two types of evidence for ancient Jewish divination. There are stories about diviners and acts of divination, almost exclusively from rabbinic literature, and particularly from the Talmuds. There are also manuals and other texts of divination written by the practitioners themselves. Each of these sources is deeply flawed as a historical source. The Talmuds are not primarily interested in informing us in a historical or ethnographic way about their practices and peers. Stories of acts of divination and encounters with diviners usually appear in rabbinic literature in order to drive home a point about the nature of religious authority or the inevitability of the divine will.3 Those books

1 For the role of ritual in divination, see Chapters Three, 107–109; and Five, 182 of this book. 2 For this argument, see Michael D. Swartz, The Signifying Creator: Nontextual Sources of Meaning in Ancient Judaism (New York: New York University Press, 2012). 3 See Louis I. Rabinowitz, “Divination in the Talmud,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik, 22 vols. (Detroit: MacMillan, 2007 [2nd ed.]), 5:705–706; Swartz, Signifying Creator, 64–69; see also Stephanie L. Bolz, Rabbinic Discourse on Divination in the Babylonian Talmud (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2012). On rabbinic sources about dreams see, for example,

© Michael D. Swartz, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445703_003

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of divination that can be dated to late antiquity tell us virtually nothing explicit and reliable about who used them, how they were written and acquired, and even the way the books were physically used and how they operated in daily life. But the literary nature of the evidence may allow for an approach to this problem. In this chapter, it will be argued that Jewish divination texts from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages provide rhetorical and conceptual evidence that can help us understand the social location of their authors and their relationship with their clients and neighbors. This study will draw on several lines of research undertaken in the last couple of decades, particularly the work of Richard Gordon on ancient magic and ritual practices, recent publications on Greco-Roman divination and the work of Michael Meerson, Evelyn Burkhardt, Gideon Bohak, and others on magical and divination texts from the Cairo Genizah and other corpora.4

1

The Divinatory Event

One way of addressing the elusive nature of the Sitz-im-Leben of ancient Jewish divination is to focus on the transactional nature of divinatory practice. In the study of religion in antiquity, a model for this method can be found in Richard Gordon’s classic 1995 article, “The Healing Event in Graeco-Roman Folk-Medicine.”5 In this article, Gordon describes the staging of a ritual encounter as a multidirectional interactive process. The term “healing event” refers to a crucial moment whereby, as Gordon puts it, “the practitioner intervenes to crePhilip S. Alexander, “Bavli Berakhot 55a–57b: The Talmudic Dreambook in Context,” Journal of Jewish Studies 46 (1995): 230–248; Ken Frieden, Freud’s Dream of Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press 1990), 73–93; Richard Kalmin, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia (Atlanta: 1994), 61–85; and Maren R. Niehoff, “A Dream which Is Not Interpreted Is like a Letter which Is Not Read,” Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (1992): 58–84. 4 This study is indebted to research undertaken in recent years by Michael Meerson, Evelyn Burkhardt, and the Magic Team of the Friedberg Genizah Project, led by Gideon Bohak. This paper also builds on some of the arguments I made in The Signifying Creator and at a conference entitled “Scripted Forms of Magic Knowledge: Grimoires in the Matrix of Western Cultures,” held in Jerusalem in 2014. My thanks to the organizers and participants of the Erlangen conference on which this chapter is based as well as Professor Yuval Harari and the participants of the 2014 conference. My thanks also to Jay Rovner of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. 5 Richard Gordon, “The Healing Event in Graeco-Roman Folk-Medicine,” in Ancient Medicine in Its Socio-Cultural Context, ed. Ph.J. van der Eijk, H.F.J. Horstmanshoff, and P. Schrijvers (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995), 2:363–376.

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ate a social situation between him- or herself, the patient and the disorder.”6 He goes on to discuss literary reports of root-cutters and diviner-healers in the Greco-Roman world and isolates four elements that come together to establish the practitioner’s authority.7 One is “asserting their natural effectiveness” by empirical knowledge. The second is their “appeal to knowledge practices, such as writing, made prestigious by their remoteness”; a third is the use of peculiar ritual actions such as “performing actions three times,” or “use of spittle, nakedness, fasting and so on”; these actions serve “to isolate the event as socially remarkable.”8 The final is the use of verbal utterances or charms. He goes on to state that although, in the case of his root-cutters “the plant or animal remedy was of fundamental practical importance in the process of healing, socially the most important aspect of the healing event is the charm or utterance.”9 Both spoken and written actions contribute to the healing event. Of course, the client who consults a diviner or the reader who uses a divination manual is not exactly involved in the literal process of healing; but, as these books attest, that client is often in a state of crisis or anxiety and the relationship to this state of disquiet and the practitioner’s expertise is essential to how divination institutions and traditions function. In the case of our diviners, divination texts such as sortes, physiognomy manuals, and dream interpretations figure in a larger framework of performance that constitutes a sequence of actions that come together in a comparable encounter. Likewise, David Frankfurter, citing George J. Park, observes, “divination is ultimately a social drama, both in its ritual elements and its capacity to process—to criticize and to legitimate—acts of social significance.”10 Another effective application of this model is AnneMarie Luijendijk’s introduction to the Gospel of the Lots of Mary, a miniature Coptic codex written in Upper Egypt in the fifth or sixth century ce, which preserves a rare example of a complete original manuscript of an early Christian sortes.11 Luijendijk analyzes the impli-

6 7 8

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Gordon, “The Healing Event,” 366. Gordon, “The Healing Event,” 366. See Chapter Three, 107–109; Five, 162, 173, and 182; and Ten, 316–326 of this book for the use of epecific ritual actions in specific contexts of dream-requests, bibliomancy, and magic, respectively. Gordon, “The Healing Event,” 366–367. David Frankfurter, “Voices, Books, and Dreams: The Diversification of Divination Media in Late Antique Egypt,” in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter T. Struck (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 285, citing George J. Park, “Divination and Its Social Contexts,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 93 (1963):195–209. AnneMarie Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles?: The Gospel of the Lots of Mary (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).

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cations of the physical form of the codex as an element in the performance of the divinatory event as well as the interactions between diviner and client. Students of Jewish divination in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages must also deal with distinct types of evidence. Gordon bases his findings on literary accounts of popular medical practices and therefore must advise caution about the limitation of his sources. Students of ancient Judaism are at a similar disadvantage when plumbing the rabbinic canon for descriptions of divination. However, a fair amount of internal evidence for ancient Jewish divination does exist. There are a few early texts from Qumran, a Palestinian Aramaic lunar omen from late antiquity, and many fragments of divination manuals scattered throughout the Cairo Genizah. Thanks to the pioneering work of several scholars, including those whose work appears in this volume, the first steps have been taken towards gathering and collating this material.12 Historians of ancient Judaism are therefore both more and less fortunate than Gordon regarding the sources available. The very literary nature of the evidence for the Greco-Roman practices provides students with a coherent body of narrative, names, life stories, and evaluations—prejudiced, to be sure—of the effectiveness of the healers and practitioners. But whereas Gordon must rely on a highly selective and highly literary corpus of second-hand reports, the Genizah is paradoxically an inclusive and random selection of documents. This range of documents allows a view into a true cross-section of a Mediterranean society, including the voices of the practitioners. Moreover, each of these documents has a specific, physical history. Each was written down, perhaps for a needy customer, curious scholar, or apprentice diviner. A manual could be the focus of a ceremony in which the book was opened for a client, its procedure followed carefully, and its results read.13 Moreover, all documents from the Cairo Genizah have one thing in common: they were eventually thrown away. This allows for the construction of a narrative, however schematic, of each text

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For the most comprehensive studies of ancient and medieval Jewish divination texts and related textual traditions, see Evelyn Burkhardt, “Hebräische Losbuchhandschriften: zur Typologie einer jüdischen Divinationsmethode,” in Jewish Studies between the Disciplines: Papers in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, ed. K. Herrmann, Margarete Schlüter, and G. Veltri (Leiden and Boston: Brill 2003), 95–148; Michael Meerson, “Book is a Territory: A Hebrew Book of Fortune in Context,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 13 (2006): 388–411; and Reimund Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2006). Much valuable material is also included in Peter Schäfer and Shaul Shaked, Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza, 3 vols. so far (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994–1999). A fourth volume of divination texts, including the Genizah goralot texts discussed here, has been promised. As described in Chapter Five of this book, 161, 181–182, and 185–186.

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as an artifact. For this reason, a desideratum for current research on magic and divination in the Genizah and other medieval manuscripts is the collection of documentary sources attesting to such practices, in which they are mentioned in passing or in an economic, administrative, or interpersonal context. When this has occurred, we should have a much more complete picture of how these documents operated in society.14

2

First Person Plural and Second Person Singular

We turn now to a few divination texts and look at the interplay of the individual and community. This inquiry can help us determine who speaks in the text and to whom and what the text supposes about the reader and user. One of the few Jewish divination texts that can be reliably dated to late antiquity is a lunar omen text in Palestinian Aramaic published by Michael Sokoloff with the late Jonas Greenfield. It was then published by Joseph Yahalom and Michael Sokoloff in their collection of Aramaic liturgical poems, or piyyutim.15 The text has all the earmarks of a divination manual but it is framed in quite a different literary form. It is an Aramaic rhyme composed for the sanctification of the New Moon at the month of Nisan, from a genre known as qiduš yereḥim, or “sanctification of the moons.” These poems seem to have been recited at the public events celebrating and announcing the New Moon, accompanied by a blessing over wine.16 Other examples of this genre take the form of narrative in which the months contest with each other over which is greater.17 However, Greenfield and Sokoloff argued that the poet pieced together the poem 14

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See now Gideon Bohak and Ortal-Paz Saar, “Genizah Magical Texts Prepared for or against Named Individuals,”Revue des études juives 174 (2015): 77–110. For the relationship between the handbooks and amulets that were actually used by clients, see Lawrence H. Schiffman and Michael D. Swartz, Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 20– 21. Jonas C. Greenfield and Michael Sokoloff, “Astrological and Related Omen Texts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 48 (1989): 201–214. The text was also published in Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom, Širat benei maʿarava: širim aramiyim šel yehudei ʾerets-yisraʾel ba-tequfah ha-bizantit (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and the Humanities, 1999), 223–229. See Ezra Fleischer, Širat ha-Qodeš ha-ʿivrit bi-yemei ha-beinayim (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), 256–261. On this genre and its background see Michael Rand, “An Aramaic Dispute between the Months by Sahlan Ben Avraham,” Melilah, Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies 8 (2012): 101–113.

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from a previous prose omen text, adding an unrelated introduction and conclusion in rhyme and recasting the text into an alphabetical acrostic but leaving it unrhymed. The following short excerpt demonstrates how this composition reflects this composite nature: If you saw the moon upright towards the south and its other horn inclined towards the north, let it be a sign for you; be careful of evil; trouble will go out of the north. If you saw the moon pointing towards the north and its other horn inclined toward the south, (there will be) great joy for the entire royal court; cheap prices and plenty will be in the world. If the moon is … like snow in the month of Elul, you should know that it18 will be smitten with snow. There will be a great dissension in the world between Israel and the government. The moon is never eclipsed in Tishri. But if it is eclipsed, it is a bad sign for the “enemies of the Jews.”19 Religious persecution will issue from the kingdom and woeful destruction will be upon the Jews.20 Here the text acts as a kind of public oracle, providing rules for interpreting how the form of the moon will signify the fate of the nation as a whole. Greenfield and Sokoloff point out parallels between the omens in this text and Akkadian lunar omens.21 Ezra Fleischer suggests that the qidduš yereḥim genre goes back to an even more public ceremony, the declaration of the New Moon, which, according to the Mishnah, was announced with great fanfare by the Sanhedrin in early rabbinic Palestine.22 Fleischer argues that the genre survived after these events ceased in Palestine, and was transferred to be recited at a festive meal at the New Moon.23 In its collectivity, another precedent to the poetic lunar omen text is a brontological composition from the Dead Sea Scrolls, scroll 4Q318. The text lists occurrences of thunder according to the astrological period in which they happen, linking its data to the fate of several nations: If it thunders , revolutions against affliction for the province and a swot of the king and in

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“It” refers to the land. A euphemism for the Jews themselves. The translation is from Greenfield and Sokoloff, “Omen Texts,” 204–205 (lines 11–12). Greenfield and Sokoloff, “Omen Texts.” See Mishnah Roš ha-šanah 1–3. Fleischer, Širat ha-Qodeš, 256–257.

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the province there will be. And for the Arabs, famine. And they will plunder each oth. If it thunders in , fear and distress from the foreigners and .24 The Qumran community was grounded in a highly collectivist ideology, one deeply invested in the immediate eschatological future and how it would affect all nations.25 Another divinatory technique, physiognomy, seems to have been applied to individuals in the community for collectivist reasons. Physiognomy seems to have played a part in determining where an individual member of the sect stood according to the doctrine of the Two Spirits, by which every person was said to possess the positive or negative essence that qualified or disqualified him or her for membership in the sect.26 For the Palestinian Jewish communities in late antiquity who performed the lunar omen text, there was also a great deal at stake in the politics of omens. In the face of their rivals, the Babylonian Jews, the Palestinians took pride in their land as the geographic center of the Jewish world, from which the news of the first sighting of each new moon would have been announced. Likewise, in the fate of an increasingly aggressive Christian empire, it was valuable to assert that God’s hand controlled history.27 But these examples of collective Jewish divination are rare. Although Israel, like the other nations, once had its own 24

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Jonas C. Greenfield and Michael Sokoloff, “An Astrological Text from Qumran (4Q318) and Reflections on Some Zodiacal Names,” Revue de Qumran 16 (1995): 507–525. See also Michael O. Wise, Thunder in Gemini and Other Essays on the History, Language and Literature of Second Temple Palestine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 13–60; and Mark J. Geller, “New Documents from the Dead Sea: Babylonian Science in Aramaic,” in Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World: A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon, ed. M. Lubetski, C. Gottlieb, and S. Keller (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 224–229. For the presence of astrology in Qumran, see Chapter Two of this book, especially 49–53, 60–61, and 69–79. See Philip S. Alexander, “Physiognomy, Initiation, and Rank in the Qumran Community,” in Geschichte—Tradition—Reflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger, and P. Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 385–394. See also Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 218– 224; and Mladen Popović, Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007). See also Chapter Nine of this book, 292–295. The literature of piyyut, including Aramaic liturgical poetry, is an area where some of the most explicit polemics against Christianity can be found in Judaism before the rise of Islam. See for example Joseph Yahalom, Piyyut u-metsiʾut ba-zeman ha-ʿatiq (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbuṣ ha-meyuḥad, 1999), 67–82; Ophir Münz-Manor, “Carnivalesque Ambivalence and the Christian Other in Jewish Poems from Byzantine Palestine,” in Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, ed. R. Bonfil, O. Irshai, G. Stroumsa, and R. Talgam, (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 831–845.

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public divinatory institution in the form of the ʾurim and tummim, that institution had receded into myth by the time these documents were written.28 In contrast, for the Romans divination was inseparable from statecraft. With the rise of imperial Christianity, divination became almost exclusively privatized, as it had no doubt become in Judaism long before. One genre that flourished in the Mediterranean in late antiquity that brings the complex social dynamics of divination into relief is the book of sortes. The term sortes refers to divination by random numerical selection, often by dice or arbitrary human choices, which is then used by a diviner to select an answer from a list by means of a process of calculation. Antecedents to these books are attested in classical sources, which describe local shrines in which one casts dice or lots before a god,29 and in material finds in which such shrines and instruments of divination appear.30 The earliest extant book of sortes, known as the Sortes Astrampsychi, probably dates from the second or third century and was reworked by Christian editors later on.31 Similar texts, such as the Sortes Sanctorum, likewise a Christianized Greco-Roman manual, were preserved in medieval Latin manuscripts.32 In 2014 AnneMarie Luijendijk published the Coptic miniature codex entitled The Gospel of the Lots of Mary.33 This genre also appeared in Jewish divinatory literature, where it was known in Hebrew as goralot or “lots.” Fragments of several handbooks of goralot are found throughout Genizah collections; a few specific books, such as the Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim, have appeared in print from the seventeenth century to the 28 29 30

31

32

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On the ʾurim and tummim, see Cornelis Van Dam, The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997). Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.25.10. On these, see Sarah I. Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 99–100; and Fritz Graf, “Rolling the Dice for an Answer,” in Mantikê. Studies in Ancient Divination, 51–97. For a translation see Randall Stewart and Kenneth Morrell (transl.), “The Oracles of Astrampsychus,” in Anthology of Ancient Greek Popular Literature, ed. W. Hansen (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), 285–287; and Franziska Naether, Die Sortes Astrampsychi: Problemlosungsstrategien durch Orakel im römischen Ägypten. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). On the history of the text, see Randall Stewart, “The Textual Transmission of the Sortes Astrampsychi,” Illinois Classical Studies 20 (1995): 135–147. For a general overview, see Pieter Willem van der Horst, “Sortes: Sacred Books as Instant Oracles in Late Antiquity,” in The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World, ed. L.V. Rutgers., P. van der Horst, H.W. Havelaar, and L.M. Teugels (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 143–174. On the history of the Sortes Sanctorum and related textual traditions, see William E. Klingshirn, “Defining the Sortes Sanctorum: Gibbon, Du Cange, and Early Christian Lot Divination,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 (2002): 77–130. Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles?

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present and are now published in popular editions.34 It had been thought that the Genizah texts were simply translations or renditions of Arabic manuals.35 But there is evidence that Jewish books of goralot go back to late antiquity. Recently Michael Meerson has argued that at least one such book from the Genizah provides a bridge between the medieval genre and the ancient GrecoRoman and Christian sortes.36 In addition, an Aramaic book of goralot in the Oxford Genizah collection has been identified; from a preliminary look at the language, it is likely that the text originated in Palestine in late antiquity.37 Texts of sortilege (lots) range in complexity from simple lists of answers, to bibliomantic manuals that rely on the selection of a verse from scriptures, to intricate systems of selection and location of questions and answers.38 One type allows the inquirer to come up with any question he or she has; the answers that are selected are then not always keyed to those questions but chosen directly by a process of randomization. In such cases, the answers must of necessity be ambiguous and open to many interpretations. Such was the case for many traditional public oracles in the ancient world. However, the literary sortes tradition soon developed a system whereby an extensive list of questions was written down beforehand at the beginning of the text. The practitioner would then choose a question from that list, based on the client’s wishes, and undergo the process of randomization and response from a larger list of possible answers. Texts of this latter type can only be complete books, unlike the collections of magical instructions, or grimoires, found in the magical papyri or medieval manuscripts.39 Magical handbooks can vary a great deal in their composition; they may be highly literary works with cosmological or historical organizing principles, as in the case with Sefer ha-razim, or simply miscellaneous collec34

35 36 37

38 39

See Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelarters und die Jüden als Dolmetscher (Berlin: Kommissionsverlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus, 1893), 867– 871; and Meir ben Yitzhaq Bakal (ed.), Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim he-ḥadaš ve-ha-šalem ʿim pitron ha-šeʾilot (Jerusalem: Bakal, 1995). See also Chapter Five of this book, 177 and 185 (and the corresponding bibliography in footnotes). See, for example, Israel Friedlaender, “A Muhammedan Book on Augury in Hebrew Characters,” Jewish Quarterly Review (old series) 19 (1907): 84–103. Meerson, “Book Is a Territory.” Meerson has identified two recensions of the text from extant fragments. ms Oxford, Bodleian Library Heb. 8.8, fols. 3–6; see Adolf Neubauer and Arthur E. Cowley, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1906), 337–339; and Burkhardt, “Losbuchhandschriften,” 99 n. 14. For a typology, see Burkhardt, 98–105; on bibliomantic sortilege see especially Van der Horst, “Sortes.” For the physical details of how to make a grimoire, see Chapter Ten of this book, 327–331.

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tions of recipes and incantations, with or without a brief introduction. In the Genizah there are many single leaves on which there are written nothing but a few magical formulae. In contrast, the book of goralot must have at least instructions for carrying out the procedure; the questions to choose from (in many cases); the mathematical signifiers that point to the results of the inquiry; and the array of answers to the inquirer’s questions. The introductions to these books also include two components frequently found in esoteric handbooks and grimoires. The first is a historical introduction, which traces the origins of the book to the mythic past, in the course of which the author testifies to its great powers. Introductions like these are common to magical manuals, ritual texts in early Jewish mysticism, and medical books. An example is this manual of palmomancy, or body tremors, published online by Gideon Bohak and Esther-Miriam Wagner. The manuscript is in the hand of a prolific twelfthcentury scribe named Ḥalfon ben Manasseh. Judging by a historical reference to a seventh-century historical figure, the text must have been composed sometime in the early middle ages: In the name of God may we begin and may we succeed! This is the Book of Twitches composed by Shem son of Noah—Peace be upon him!—and it was handed down by the children of Israel generation after generation until the time of Solomon son of David peace be upon him! It was taken from the treasury of Solomon son of David by the Greeks and remained in use among them until the time of Bustanai son of David, the Patriarch;40 but when he entered their territory he retrieved it from their possession, for it was written in the sacred tongue and was in the handwriting of Shem the son of Noah. And so it returned to the possession of the children of Israel. Thereafter the children of Israel handed it down and passed it on as an inheritance. It has been tested and is genuine, and must be preserved, for it is a fine method. Shem son of Noah said: If anyone twitches in his right eye, he will receive good news, will be endowed with an excellent livelihood and a comfortable life …41 40

41

Bustanai ben Ḥaninai was a seventh-century exilarch (reš galutaʿ), the political head of the Babylonian Jewish community. Here he is called nasi, “patriarch,” a title usually reserved for the equivalent leader of the Palestinian Jewish community. Both institutions claimed Davidic lineage. Bustanai was the subject of legends in which his father and mother, and by extension he and his line, were saved from assassination on account of a miraculous dream; see Simha Assaf and Leah Bornstein-Makovetsky, “Bustanai ben Ḥaninai,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 4:316–317. Esther-Miriam Wagner and Gideon Bohak, “ts as 157.50: A Twitch Divination Text in the

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This introduction follows a pattern that can be called the esoteric chain of tradition, a motif that serves many different genres.42 Like the Torah according to the Mishnah tractate Avot, the Sayings of the Fathers, the Book of Twitches was passed down from teacher to disciple until it reached the present generation. Unlike the so-called oral Torah, however, the knowledge was transmitted solely in the form of a physical book, which is available to all who hold it in their hands. More than this, the Book of Twitches was lost to the Jewish nation— it was snatched away by the Greeks and only recovered in latter times. This reinforces its status as esoteric knowledge. It also helps to explain why, if the book has such a distinguished pedigree, the reader has never heard of it before. This motif also appears in the earliest Hebrew medical manual, Sefer ha-refuʾot šel ʾAsaf ha-rofe (“The Book of Remedies of Asaph the Physician”), where the introduction states that the book was passed down from Noah to Shem and from there circulated among the sages of India and Macedonia. However, after a Macedonian sage by the name of Asclepius and his forty wizards tried to steal the medicinal trees from Paradise, it was taken away until another wise Macedonian, a certain Hippocrates, recovered it and passed it down to Asaph the Physician.43 Like the story of the Book of Twitches, this convoluted chain of tradition begins with Noah and Shem and wends its way through a narrative of proliferation among the nations, concealment, and eventual recovery by esoteric Jewish tradents. The reader is thus at once assured that the book contains universal wisdom and that he or she is privileged as a recipient of that wisdom. Introductions like these function as advertisements of sorts in two ways: They encourage the prospective practitioner to buy the book, and they can be used by practitioners to recommend its practices to their clients. Versions of Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim likewise tell an elaborate story of how the book was written by seventy elders in the age of Ptolemy but buried underground in time of persecution. This introduction draws, knowingly or unknowingly, on an ancient legend that first appears in the Letter of Aristeas, of the seventy elders who translated the Septuagint under divine inspiration.44 Longer and shorter versions of this story appear in late manuscripts and printed edi-

42 43 44

Hand of Ḥalfon ben Manasseh,” available online at https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/ handle/1810/301150, accessed 15 November 2020. See Michael D. Swartz, “Book and Tradition in Hekhalot and Magical Literatures,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 3 (1994): 189–229. See Swartz, “Book and Tradition,” 214–216, and the references cited there. On this legend and its history in later Jewish literature, see Abraham Wasserstein and David J. Wasserstein, The Legend of the Septuagint from Classical Antiquity to Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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tions of the text.45 In one longer version it was buried three times, once when the Greeks sought to burn all books of Torah, at which time it was buried underground in Alexandria; a second time in the Second Temple period; and a third during the destruction of the Second Temple. The book was then lost until it was recovered later, “in the time of the Ishmaelites,” by an elder who remembered that it had been deposited in a cave in Tiberias.46 The introduction thus inserts the book into classical Jewish history and gives it a role in that history and parity with other “books of Torah.” Another frequent component of introductions to divination texts is a prayer to be recited before consulting the oracle.47 One example from the Genizah is ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.131, a leaf containing a prayer superscripted as “And this is the request” (ve-zo hi ha-baqašah) in an introduction to a book of goralot.48 Similar prayers appear in the various versions of Goralot Aḥitofel.49 This prayer emphasizes that the petitioner will not use them in order to “transgress the Torah and what is written in it,” and expresses the hope that the community will be among those who hold fast to the Torah. Among other things, the petitioner asks to use the oracle because: We have neither prophet nor priest to inquire of the ʾurim and tummim. Therefore, I approach you and rely on your abundant mercy in inquiring of these oracles for every matter, to inform humanity of your ways; they50 will thank you for all your works, whether good or bad, whether healing or sickness, whether deprivation or abundance, as it is written: “I shall raise the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord; I shall find trouble and agony, and call out the name of the Lord” (Ps 116:13–14).51

45

46 47 48

49

50 51

A longer version of the origin story appears in ms Jewish Theological Seminary 2059, written in Baghdad in 1780–1781 by Baba ben Moses ha-Levi. This portion of the introduction is translated in Burkhardt, “Losbuchhandscriften,” 134; a shorter version appears in Sefer ʾurim ve-tummim, Adrianople 1728, 4. ms Jewish Theological Seminary 2059, fols. 56r–62v. On this genre of prayer see Burkhardt, “Losbuchhandschriften.” 137–142. See Meerson, “Book is a Territory,” 404. Elsewhere in the introduction the text discusses the ways in which birds convey the divine will to human beings; this may be evidence that the introduction belongs to Meerson’s “Geniza Goralot” text, which is organized according to the names of birds; cf. for example ms Jewish Theological Seminary 2938.2, single leaf. See Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen, 870; Goralot Aḥitofel is also published in a popular edition by Meir ben Yitzhaq Bakal: Goralot Aḥitofel ha-šalem (Jerusalem: Bakal, 1965). That is, the community. ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.131, lines 1–12.

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Here the author states explicitly that the text’s divination system can substitute for the ʾurim and tummim in the Temple.52 The prayer thus harks back to the glorious history of Israel’s divination tradition and links it to the domesticated, individualized event that is about to occur.

3

Form and Function

The literary organization of the sortes, and likewise the goralot, is thus necessitated by the divination procedure it represents. Indeed, unlike many magical manuals, the book itself is an integral part of the ritual. Several analysts have noted how this genre participates in the culture of writing and its sanctity in Greco-Roman religion.53 Mary Beard observes that alongside of the spoken oracles of Apollo at Delphi and other shrines, other, equally authoritative oracles flourished exclusively in written form.54 David Frankfurter notes how the proliferation of sortes and other books of oracles in the second and third centuries mark a new confidence in the efficacy of rituals based on writing. Describing a divination spell in the Greek Magical Papyri that attributes its origins to a holy book found in the archives of a temple of Hermes,55 he observes: The very notion of oracle rite has therefore clearly shifted into a selfconscious textuality; and it would seem that one of the major functions of this textuality is its independence from the temple structure, its mobility, efficiency, and general practicality (even if restricted to a limited and literate number of specialists).56 52

53

54 55 56

On this introduction and its references to the Temple system, see Michael D. Swartz, “Sacrificial Themes in Jewish Magic,” in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 303–315; and Dorothea M. Salzer, Die Magie der Anspielung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 316–344. On writing in magical traditions, see David Frankfurter’s seminal essay, “The Magic of Writing and the Writing of Magic: The Power of the Word in Egyptian and Greek Traditions,” Helios 21 (1994): 189–221. On writing and divination in particular, see Mary Beard, “Writing and Religion: Ancient Literacy and the Function of the Written Word in Roman Religion,” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. Mary Beard et al. (Ann Arbor: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1991), 35–58; Van der Horst, “Sortes”; David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 179–184; and Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles?, on which see below. Beard, “Writing and Religion,” 49–50. pgm xxiva.1–25, translated in Hans D. Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1986), 264. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 180–181.

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The textual tradition’s independence from the temple infrastructure has social as well as conceptual implications. Frankfurter’s principal argument is that the practitioners of these esoteric trades came from the Egyptian priesthood, intent on diversifying much older priestly interests. But he also suggests that: For the client the divination spells would represent a “freelance” version of temple oracles, indeed as an actual alternative to them, not ideologically exclusive of temple oracles but promoting the same access to the voices of, quite often, the same divinities.57 An essential feature of books of lots that makes for their adaptability for freelancers is their portability. AnneMarie Luijendijk argues that the miniature format of the Gospel of the Lots of Mary, a codex of eighty sheepskin folios that measures only 80 by 68.7 millimeters, contributes to this function. Such a small codex could be easily brought to private clients; small-scale books also figured in revelatory myths such as Revelations 10:10 and the Shepherd of Hermas, and in rituals such as the wearing of amulets and miniature books of scriptures for apotropaic purposes.58 Luikendijk also suggests that in the face of restrictions on private divination in some parts of the early Christian world, such a codex would be easy to conceal. The economy of small books may also contribute to their usefulness; a miniature codex such as the Gospel of the Lots of Mary would probably have taken up the skin of only half of one sheep, in contrast to the three-hundred sixty-five sheep that would have to be used for a masterwork like the Codex Sinaiticus.59 At the same time, the consultation of books of divination requires at least one literate participant. This requirement privileges religious professionals, especially in cultures in which clerics are the curators of literary traditions. In Jewish culture in late antiquity, as in the surrounding Roman culture, literacy was a feature of the higher classes and the sages, although not all rabbis could write and not all scribes were rabbis.60 Therefore, it was possible for a literate diviner to be outside of the rabbinic class and for a client to be literate to some extent.

57 58 59 60

Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 180–181. Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles?, 51–56. Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles?, 56. See Catherine Heszer, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001).

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Questions and Answers i

One way or another, however, books of sortes and goralot are framed so as to stage an encounter between an expert diviner and an illiterate or lay client. Both their literary structure and the discourse of questions and answers assume such a framework. Instructions for the divination ritual are intended for the diviner. Instructions for carrying out the randomization procedure often presuppose at least two persons present. In some introductions the inquirer, that is the client or any person who has the question to be answered, is designated ha-šoʾel (“the questioner”) and the diviner, who submits the question to the oracle, is designated ha-mašʾil (literally, “one who causes the question to be asked” or “one who presents the question”).61 One edition of Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim instructs: “The šoʾel and the mašʾil must sit in a synagogue before the ark, and afterwards they should inquire.”62 One method of randomization involves the “casting of fingers” (hašlaḵat ʾeṣbaʿot) by two or more people, similar to the way children or players in a game today might choose who goes first by extending their fingers and adding up odd or even numbers. In the instructions for goralot, the sum of the two becomes the number from which the answer is calculated.63 More telling, however, is the discursive nature of the answers. Various books of goralot frame this dialogue in several different styles. Some sets of answers are quite concise, for example: “The journey from your house will go well”; or “the debt that others owe you will be repaid.”64 Others take a more conversational tone. In several books each answer begins with the phrase “you, man” (ʾatah ben ʾAdam) and continues with the answer; in another, many answers address the questioner as “my brother” (aḥi). The text sometimes uses the first person singular, beginning with answers with the phrase: “You have asked me about ” or “I see you as …” This tone is especially striking in answers impugning the character of the questioner: You asked me if you are wise or foolish. I see you as exceedingly foolish, and it is fitting for you to be silent and do not show people your foolish-

61 62 63

64

See for example Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim; see also the following note. Sefer ʾurim ve-tummim, Adrianople, 1728, fol. 5r. This printed edition represents a shorter recension of the introduction. See Burkhardt, “Losbuchhandschriften,” 132, citing ms Jewish Theological Seminary 2059 and ms Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 228. Cf. also the selection of priests by a similar method in Mishnah Yoma 2:1. Among Genizah manuscripts, examples of lists of short answers can be found in mss Cambridge University Library ts K 1.59 and ts K 1.75.

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ness. And why are you lacking intelligence? Because you were born on a day of foolishness … I see you as a master of words. You say, “I am a mighty man,” but you have nothing but a mouth and a tongue, and you praise yourself exceedingly before your friend. You say “I am a mighty man,” but “the battle is not to the mighty” (Eccles 9:11).65 Who exactly is speaking in these passages and to whom? In a 2005 essay, Fritz Graf analyzes the answers in Greek dice oracles from Western Anatolia that had been preserved on inscriptions on monumental stone pillars.66 The texts are poetic answers to questions derived from the throwing of astragaloi, or the knuckle-bones of sheep. Following Umberto Eco’s insight that “every text constructs its implied narrator and its implied reader,” Graf argues that “the implied narrator of our oracles speaks in the first person singular; and he addresses a reader whom he sees as interacting with him.”67 Graf’s insights raise two possibilities for our Jewish sortes, both of which may be true at the same time. The first possibility is that the book itself is speaking in an authorial voice to the reader, who may be using it as an individual, without the mediation of a professional. But another possibility is raised by the literary and linguistic structures of the text. Although there are books of goralot in Judaeo-Arabic, some of the most important texts are in Hebrew or Aramaic. Some are in good Hebrew with clear signs of rabbinic orthography and phonology, and some in rather awkward Hebrew. In addition, a few manuscripts of these books are vocalized. A striking example is a book found in one of the earliest manuscripts in the Genizah, from the late ninth century, which was published by Shaul Shaked in 1988.68 This manuscript contains several leaves of the last fifteen entries of the answer section of a book of goralot (numbers 75 to 90). Shaked’s manuscript is not vocalized. But another, later manuscript of the same text is vocalized.69 It

65 66 67 68

69

ms Cambridge University Library ts K 21.78, fragment 1r, left side, lines 14–17; and fragment 1v, left side, lines 11–14. See also Meerson, “Book is a Territory,” 407. Graf, “Rolling the Dice for an Answer,” 51–85. Graf, “Rolling the Dice for an Answer,” 76, citing Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). ms Cambridge University Library ts as Ar. 50.117, published in Shaul Shaked, “An Early Magic Fragment from the Cairo Geniza,” in Occident and Orient: A Tribute to the Memory of A. Scheiber, ed. Robert Dán (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 361–371. ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.33. This manuscript contains many variations from the older version but it is recognizably the same composition.

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is therefore equally likely that the text is there to provide a kind of script for a professional to recite to the client, either in the original language, or perhaps in translation to the vernacular. The status of Hebrew as a holy language would have enhanced its standing in the eyes of the client, and by the Middle Ages not all clients would have understood the original. In other ways, the text models face-to-face encounters. In several cases, the answer comments on the client’s state of mind. This answer, though fragmentary, seems to be directed to a client who is depressed: in your heart, for you say, “I have no fortune,” its end never comes to you, and one “and everything is from heaven,” and one says, “I do not see good.” But there is great good for you and it is expected, but your deeds are evil therefore, it will not come to you.70 The client is evidently ambivalent about his future—perhaps he is conflicted about whether God has anything good in store for him and perhaps his friends (or even his private thoughts) are giving him contradictory messages. The oracle tells him that his pessimism is justified. He had been designated to receive good fortune, but it has been denied to him because of his evil deeds. This might explain his ambivalence. Here the oracle knows something about the client that he is apparently hiding. Occasionally, the oracle also knows that the client, who apparently came to ask about an inappropriate sexual desire, holds a particularly shameful secret: Have mercy on your soul and return to the Lord. I see you descending into debauchery (zenut) and you are engaging in all manner of licentiousness (zimah). Save yourself from evil—why should you die? Repentance is before God,71 blessed be He.72 Here the text admonishes the client to repent, a statement often made in Jewish and Christian divination texts.73 In another text, the client is simply warned away from his inappropriate desire: 70 71 72 73

Shaul Shaked, “An Early Magic Fragment from the Cairo Geniza,” 366 (ts Ar. 50.177 page 2, lines 7–11, according to Shaked’s reference in his article). Hebrew, ha-M. ms Jewish Theological Seminary 2938.2, recto, lines 11–13. This pious tone is especially characteristic of the “Genizah Goralot” text tradition identified by Meerson and Burkhardt; see note 43 of this chapter. In a similar way, Greco-Roman books of Sortes took on a pious tone when adapted by Christian editors; see Stewart, “Textual Transmission”; cf. Meerson, “Book Is a Territory” 403–404.

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My brother, if you stay away from the forbidden relations in which you are engaged,74 it will be good for you—and also from the matter in your heart, for it is not good, it will not turn out well for you, and you will not succeed in it. And beware of it so that you do not fall into shame and disgrace. Rather, another request is proper for you, and it is good.75 The book then endows the diviner with the power of clairvoyance—or rather, access to the externalized power derived from the data in the text. Other esoteric Jewish texts from late antiquity claim to convey similar powers on their users. For example, the introduction to the early Jewish mystical text Hekhalot rabbati promises that the traveler to the Merkavah will have the power to look into a person and know his behavior in private or if he has any illegitimate ancestors.76 Instructions to the books of goralot also emphasize that the inquiry should be taken seriously. A version of the Sefer ʾurim ve-tummim stresses that the early sages commanded that the participants should not attempt to “test” the oracle by asking inappropriate questions: They commanded, saying that all who use and deal with it must be sure not to consult it except in time of great need and concerning a crucial matter, because it is a great secret from wisdom of the early sages and great is its wisdom in knowledge … If it is his wish to hear from them the correct and true answer on the matter about which he is inquiring, he should not do so frivolously and should not scoff. Nor should he try to inquire like one who scoffs at it and tests whether it will give inappropriate answers, for according to the question the answer will be found. And further, they commanded that one should not ask two or three times about one subject, and so one should not ask at one time or at one hour about two or three matters.77

74 75 76

77

Hebrew ha-ʿarayot še-atah ba-hem, referring to incest or sexual transgressions; see Mishnah Ḥagigah 2:1. ms Cambridge University Library ts as Ar. 50.117, fol. 1 lines 13–17, published in Shaked, “Early Magic Fragment,” 364. Peter Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), §83–92. On this introduction, known as the gedulah hymns, see Gerd A. Wewers, “Der Überlegenheit des Mystikers: zur Aussage der Gedulla-Hymnen in Hekhalot Rabbati 1,2–2,3,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 17 (1986): 3–22. ms New York Jewish Theological Seminary 2059, dated 1780 in Baghdad, which preserves a long version of the introduction to Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim. A shorter version was printed in Adrianople in 1728.

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In this way the text takes pains to ensure that no one will challenge the verifiability of the oracle.78 By definition, anyone who does so insincerely, whether to treat it as a joke, or to test it by empirical means, will fail at getting a correct answer. We have seen that the divination procedure constitutes what Luijendijk describes as a “three-way conversation” between the book, the diviner, and the client.79 The literary form of the books of goralot facilitate, even necessitate, this conversation. In the introduction the book speaks directly to the diviner, in which it argues for its validity and effectiveness and gives instructions for the procedure. These indirectly transfer to the client, who will participate in the ritual and perhaps be persuaded of the book’s power. The mechanics of the book thus play an essential part in each stage of the ritual. In the first stage, the client approaches the diviner with a question or concern. The diviner then selects a question from a list of questions in the book. These questions are numbered. From here, the diviner and the client employ one of several methods of randomization to begin the process of finding an answer. This process can vary; popular forms of random procedures range from the inquirer simply thinking of a number with eyes closed, to selection of a Biblical verse, to geomantic processes such as drawing a grid and throwing objects onto it. Michael Meerson observes that the structure of the books of sortes and goralot are in fact the most stable elements while the methods of selection of the answers are the most variable.80 This process will then generate a number. The diviner then identifies that number, usually from a table. That number will lead to an answer. It is within these two steps that the books vary in complexity. At its simplest, the number leads directly to an answer. A more complicated method of determining the answer is exemplified by Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim, in which the diviner must locate a letter each from several tables to spell out the answer.81

5

Questions and Answers ii

The subjects covered by the questions and answers can also provide clues to the living context in which the books appear and the social status of the clients. In his analysis of the Anatolian dice oracles, Graf has shown that the main pur78 79 80 81

For other cases in which the diviner is tested, see Chapter Three of this book, 133. Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles?, 57–78. Meerson, “Book is a Territory.” Meerson, “Book is a Territory.”

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poses of the inquiries demonstrate an audience of traders and local business people concerned with the safety of their travels, the fate of their investments, and the state of their families. These can be compared easily with the answers in the Jewish books of divination, especially the goralot. As we have seen, some of the questions concern the most personal matters, involving marriage and sex, hope and despair, vice and virtue. But a great many of the questions involve practical matters of material concern. A sample of brief answers from one Genizah fragment will provide an example.82 This list provides brief answers for questions labeled vav (6) to yod-bet (12): 6. You will leave the fields that you have bought and others will buy them. 7. The journey from the city or house is very good. 8. The debt that others owe you will be settled by judges. 9. In the middle of his days, after his youth, he will succeed and grow. 10. The prisoner will not stay in prison and will leave it soon. 11. Another matter will distract your mind from the matter about which you are asking. 12. You will succeed in business dealings, travel,83 and the wisdom of judges.84 Travel, probably for business purposes, figures in #7 and 12; judicial or legal affairs, including prison, figures in #8, 10, and 12. In other answers, the client seems to be concerned that once a prisoner is let out he will either help him or harm him. From the questions and answers in these fragments, then, the authors presuppose a man of means.85 He conducts business, has a household and is concerned about its stability and that of his children, and is also concerned with enemies and allies. One frequent answer concerns the inquirer’s associate or companion and gauges the love (ahavato) he has for him. In several cases the oracle seems to be warning the client not to be too suspicious, reassuring him: “Your friend loves you; do not deny him anything that he asks of you, for he loves you the most. And if you ask anything of him, he will do it for you, so do it and do not refuse.”86 In others, the book presupposes an agonistic environment in which enemies are attacking the questioner and he is striving for civic

82 83 84 85

86

ts Cambridge University Library K 1.75, recto, lines 1–7. Hebrew, ve-ha-deraḵim (literally, “the ways”). Meaning presumably that judicial affairs will go in his favor. The inquirer is almost invariably addressed in the masculine, although there is no reason that a practitioner could not change the gender of the inquiry. On this question see Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles?, 66–67 and 72. ms Cambridge University Library ts K 21.78, fol. 1r, right side, lines 7–9.

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power. For example, one answer assures the questioner that God will grant his request and “you will be victorious over your adversaries. Now those who hate you are falling before you by the decree of heaven and no one can prevail (over you).” In others, the client is concerned about whether the ruling authorities will be favorable to him: The ruler about which you ask will rule for a long time. He is a good man and truly endures. If people stand against him with malicious speech (bilešon raʿ) they will not be able (to defeat him). Who can do anything to him?87 In assessing this evidence, it is useful to compare Graf’s observations about the astragaloi inscriptions, their physical setting, and its presumed clientele: We are confronted with an almost homogeneous series of oracular texts from one given region and one given epoch, all with a similar function: whether inscribed on the pillars, or, rarely, on walls, monuments, doorposts, they served as the reference pinax of an astragalos oracle, and their main clients were the traders and merchants who used the agora and travelled out through the city gate; during a lull in business or before going further with a deal or a journey abroad, you checked with Hermes and Apollo.88 No doubt the similarity in subject matter has something to do with the transmission of the sortes tradition from the Greek world to the Jewish community. But there are several places where an older model has been clearly adapted to specifically Jewish concerns. For example, an answer will often advise that the giving of charity (ṣedaqah) will avert a bad outcome. Thus, a client worried about a sick person is told that the patient will get well, but that alms should be given on his behalf, for, according to the proverb, “charity saves from death.”89 In another, the questioner is told that he will not find the wealth he is looking for, but “if you give to charity you will find it, but you will not find it by force, for wealth is not to the clever.”90 87 88 89

90

ms Cambridge University Library ts K 21.78, fol. 1r, right side, lines 10–12. Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles?, 76. Prov 10:2 and 11:4. See for example ms Jewish Theological Seminary 2938.2, verso, lines 6– 9. See this expression (translated as “righteousness releases from death”) also emerging in an astrological context in Chapter Seven of this book, 229, 231, and 242. ms Cambridge University Library ts K 21.78, fol. 1r, lines 2–5, quoting Eccles 9:11. This verse is often cited in these texts as proof of the unpredictability of fate.

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The books thus presuppose an active participant in the economic and civic life of a community, who is concerned about the dangers of living in a complex society, in which not only disease and personal grief are at risk, but one’s social standing, business investments, and the success of one’s heirs. We may presume, then, that the consultation of such an oracle requires an investment, either to purchase the book or to hire a diviner. There are, after all, less expensive divinatory practices, mentioned in Talmudic sources in the realm of folklore, many of which do not involve consulting an expert.91

6

The Divinatory Event and the Diviner

The act of consulting the book, carrying out the physical acts that accompany it, and then reading answers from the manual would therefore convey the necessary sense that the diviner’s words are not his own but those of a higher authority. The process of randomization also complicates the interpersonal dimension of the encounter between the professional and the client. It is in the nature of divinatory events to place barriers between the diviner and the results he or she wants to achieve. Moreover, this is a necessary feature of chance operations, both pre-modern and modern.92 Whether answers are derived from physical acts such as throwing dice or tossing objects into sand, mental operations such as the cultivation of visions or reliance on the minds of children,93 or some combination of the two, such as closing one’s eyes or pointing to a place on a grid, the divination system takes pains to ensure that the will of the questioner or diviner does not contaminate the path of communication between the divine world and the human recipient. In practice, of course, this is often not the case. A competent diviner will usually gather as much information about the client as possible; in small societies where everybody knows everybody else’s business, this is not difficult.94 Sarah Iles Johnston has shown that while the ostensible purpose of using children in divinatory practices is to rely on an innocent, disinterested medium, it actu91 92 93

94

See n. 3 of this chapter. Swartz, Signifying Creator, 55–58. This is the premise of an ancient method of oil divination attested in medieval Jewish manuscripts; see Samuel Daiches, Babylonian Oil Magic in the Talmud and in the later Jewish Literature (London: H. Hart, 1913). On the complex dynamics of face-to-face encounters in divination rituals, see David Zeitlyn, “Divination as Dialogue: Negotiation of Meaning with Random Responses,” in Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence, ed. E.N. Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 189–205.

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ally has the opposite effect. Children are in fact highly suggestible and attuned to what answers the adults may want to hear.95 In this way we can also read the passages that provide a “script” in which the text comments on the client’s mood or hints at deeper anxieties. They can be seen not simply as text to be read but as the beginning of a more substantial, personal conversation. At the same time, some divination texts require procedures that are not necessary to ensure randomness. The best example is the method for reading out the answer in the Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim. As Meerson shows, the number that results from the randomization process leads to a series of grids, each of which supplies a letter of the answer one by one.96 Practically speaking, there is no reason for this extra step. However, it requires the user to spend more time spelling out the final answer. It also hides the answers from plain view. For this reason, modern editions of this text provide a “key” in which the answers that would have to be spelled out are listed as conventional sentences, allowing quick access to the answers that are embedded in the grid.97 The effect of such an unnecessary complication is to place a barrier not between the divine and the human, but between the diviner and the client. These observations have direct implications for our search for the social context of ancient divination. The diviner acts as an intermediary between the divine message and the individual client. This requires a paradoxical ambivalence toward the practitioner’s self: On the one hand, it is necessary to assure the client that the results are not tainted by the imposition of human will and wishful thinking. The diviner must efface himself or herself in order to let the voice from the beyond speak clearly. If the technique does not rely on the unconscious, as in trance divination, this transparency can be achieved by a series of steps that distance the results from the human act of selecting the initial data. Hence the elaborate mathematical systems used by systems of sortes; they are meant to convey precisely an impression of impersonality. On the other hand, the persona of the diviner is also crucial to the divinatory event. Here it has the greatest affinities with the root-cutters and magicians that Gordon describes. The practitioner must demonstrate both “vertical” and “lateral” expertise; that is, his or her actions must communicate “vertically,” as it were, with the deity, spirits, or supernatural entities effectively; and “laterally” to the social environment by demonstrating that expertise to the client’s satisfaction. In this case, the diviners’ empirical knowledge will be the range 95 96 97

See S.I. Johnston, “Charming Children: The Use of the Child in Ancient Divination,” Arethusa 34 (2001): 97–117. Meerson, “Book is a Territory,” 396–398. See, for example, Bakal, Sefer ʾurim ve-tummim, 71–104.

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of topics covered by questions in the books. We recall that Gordon also lists peculiar ritual actions such as those that serve “to isolate the event as socially remarkable.” In our case, preparatory abstentions and prayer as well as the selection of the data and the mathematical operations required to produce the results serve this function.98 And finally, the books of divination, as Gordon puts it, “appeal to knowledge practices, such as writing, made prestigious by their remoteness.” Here David Frankfurter’s nuanced accounts of the role of writing in magic and divination in Roman Egypt remind us that writing is the often domain of ritual experts and therefore introduces a form of mediation between the professional and the client; the materiality of the object such as the book or inscribed dice with letters also serves to focus the power of supernatural force.99 Like Bronislaw Malinowski’s Trobriand magicians, then, the diviners must introduce the “coefficient of weirdness” marking both the procedure and the practitioner as extraordinary.100 Much has been made of the question whether magicians and other specialists in esoteric enterprises were marginal or dominant to ancient Jewish societies—are they, as Gershom Scholem would say of Jewish mystics, essentially “religious anarchists” acting subversively, or, as Steven Katz and others have argued, are they beholden to tradition?101 Certainly the social location of these individuals can vary, especially from era to era. For example, Frankfurter’s subjects were acting out traditional roles of Egyptian priests, and the Talmud demonstrates that the Rabbis exercised considerable magical expertise. But the extraordinary nature of the divining event assures the marginality of the practitioner, if only for the time frame in which the ritual occurs. Moreover, the investment of time and money required to stage such an event will mark such a person as a professional. This designation also entails a network of teachers, students, and colleagues who transmit, share, and trade secrets and techniques. Such a network must also develop methods of protecting them from the outside world, not to mention each other, as competitors. And finally, it will be important for each of them to foster a reputation as an individual who can get the job done. This means the diviner

98 99 100

101

For these preparatory steps, see also Chapter Three of this book, 107–109. Frankfurter, “Writing of Magic”; and “Voices, Books, and Dreams.” Bronislaw Malinowski, Coral Gardens and their Magic: A Study of the Methods of Tilling the Soil and of Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands, 2 vols. (New York: Gordon & Breach, 1978 [reprint of 1975]), 2:218–223. On this question see Michael D. Swartz, “Magical Piety in Ancient and Medieval Judaism,” in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 167– 183.

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is known for specialized knowledge not available to the average person; on the other hand, he or she cannot be seen as a threat to society as a whole. In ancient societies, everyone knew how to seek such a person out. For contemporary historians, the process is a bit more complicated.

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chapter 2

Aramaic Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Question of Divination Helen R. Jacobus

The main focus of this study is research on the proposed calendrical cycles of the Aramaic calendars from Qumran which, it is suggested, could be used to construct a form of astrology using only the sun, the moon and the zodiac. The theory that the Aramaic calendars from Qumran could be used for astral divination may be supported by the calendrical scrolls 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar1 (= 4Q208–4Q209, copied c. 175–125bce and 30 bce–70 ce, respectively),2 and 4QZodiac Calendar and 4QBrontologion ar (= 4Q318, copied c. 30–1 bce).3

1 In 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar, “ar” is the abbreviation for Aramaic. The convention in Dead Sea scroll studies is to give the cave number before Q, which stands for Qumran, then the fragment number in Arabic numerals, the column number in lower case Roman numerals (where more than one column is preserved), and the line numbers in Arabic numerals. All in this order. If there are no Roman numerals for the column, it is because the fragment does not have more than one. 2 The critical editions of the synchronistic calendar are in Józef Tadeusz Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 273–284; Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar and Florentino García Martínez, “208–209. 4Q Astronomical Enocha–b ar,” in Qumran Cave 4.26. Cryptic Texts and Miscellanea, Part 1, ed. S. Pfann, P. Alexander, et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 95–171 (and the introduction in 95–103); and Henryk Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208–4Q211) from Qumran: Text, Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon, 2011). 3 The critical edition of scroll 4Q318 is Jonas C. Greenfield and Michael Sokoloff, with A. Yardeni and D. Pingree, “318. 4QZodiology and Brontology ar,” in Qumran Cave 4.26, 259–274. See also Matthias Albani, “Der Zodiakos in 4Q318 und die Henoch-Astronomie,” Mitteilungen und Beiträge der Forschungsstelle Judentum der Theologischen Fakultät Leipzig 7 (1993): 3–42; Matthias Albani, “Horoscopes in the Qumran Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, ed. P.W. Flint and J.C. VanderKam, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2:279–330 (at 296–301, 322–323); Matthias Albani, Astronomie und Schöpungsglaube: Untersuchen zum Astronomischen Henochbuch (Neukirchener-Vlyun: Neukirchener, 1994), 83–87; Michael O. Wise, “Thunder in Gemini: An Aramaic Brontologion (4Q318) from Qumran,” in Thunder in Gemini and Other Essays on the History, Languages and Literature of Second Temple Judaism (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 13–50; Mark J. Geller, “New Documents from the Dead Sea: Babylonian Science in Aramaic,” in Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World, ed. M. Lubetski et al. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 224–229; Helen R. Jacobus, “4Q318: A Jewish Zodiac Calendar at Qumran?,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts

© Helen R. Jacobus, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445703_004

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There are other non-calendrical texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, namely scroll 4QZodiacal Physiognomy (= 4Q186, dated 30bce–30 ce),4 the Wisdom scrolls 4QInstructionb,c (= 4Q416 and 4Q417, dated 25–15 bce and 30–1 bce),5 and scroll 4QMysta (= 4Q299, dated 20–50ce).6 Furthermore, a Hebrew fragment and Context, ed. C. Hempel (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 365–395 (at 365–374); and Helen R. Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception: Ancient Astronomy and Astrology in Early Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 44–176. For the revision of the title, “4QZodiology and Brontology ar” to “4QZodiac Calendar and Brontologion” by the author, see Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 3–4. 4 The latest critical edition is Mladen Popović, “4Q186. 4Q Zodiacal Physiognomy: A Full Edition,” in The Mermaid and the Partridge from the Copenhagen Conference on Revisiting Texts from Cave Four, ed. G.J. Brooke and J. Høgenhaven (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 221–258; and Mladen Popović, Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 29–32 (transcription and translation); the original transcription and translation is in John M. Allegro, “186,” in Qumran Cave 4.1 (4Q158–4Q186) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 88–91, plate 21. The Aramaic physiognomic text, entitled 4Q Horoscope ar (4Q561) (formerly 4QPhysiognomic Horoscope), contains physiognomic descriptions that are comparable to those of 4Q186. The editor argues that scroll 4Q561 is an older, Aramaic version of scroll 4Q186 and that it contains technical astrological terms found in scroll 4Q186, such as “house of spirit” (part-reconstructed in frg. 3 line 9). It does not include a sign of the zodiac, or none has survived; see Émile Puech, “561. 4Q Horoscope ar,” in Qumrân Grotte: 4.27, Textes Araméens deuxieme partie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), 303–321. 5 The critical edition is John Strugnell, Daniel J. Harrington, and Torleif Elgvin, in consultation with J.A. Fitzmyer, Qumran Cave 4.24, Sapiential Texts, Part 2: 4QInstruction (Mûsār lĕMēvîn): 4Q415 with a Re-edition of 1Q26 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) from which the main transliterations and translations have been taken. Regarding the age of the texts, the editors state that the paleography of 4Q416 is “transitional between the late Hasmonean and earlier Herodian (late first century bce) hands, so 4Q415, 4Q417, 4Q418 but the hand of 4Q416 is judged to be earlier than those hands by some 25 years.” Qumran Cave 4.24, Sapiential Texts, Part 2, 76. “416,” 73–141; “417,” 143–210; “418,” 211–474. See also Daniel J. Harrington, Wisdom Texts from Qumran (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, To Increase Learning for the Understanding Ones: Reading and Reconstructing the Fragmentary Early Jewish Sapiential Text 4QInstruction (Leiden: Brill, 2001); and Joseph M. Baumgarten, “Some Astrological and Qumranic Terms in 4QInstruction (Mûsār lě-Mēvîn),” Tarbiz (2003): 321–328 (Heb). 6 Critical edition in Lawrence H. Schiffman, “299–301. 4QMysteriesa–b, c?,” in Qumran Cave 4.15: Sapiential Texts, Part 1, ed. Torlief Elgvin et al., in consultation with Joseph A. Fitzmyer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 34–37, dated as Herodian (late first century bce), 31; Józef Tadeusz Milik, “1Q27. (1QMyst) ‘Livre des Mystères,’” in Qumran Cave i, ed. D. Barthélemy, O.P. and J.T. Milik (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964 [reprint of 1955]), 102–107 (at 103), dated it as late first century bce; see “Hellenistic Roman” at Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Library, available online at https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore‑the‑archive, accessed 20 July 2019. Although classified as a sapiential text, 4Q299 is one of a sub-group within that genre due to the use of the term ‫“( רזים‬mysteries”) in conjunction with aspects of divine wisdom; see Schiffman, “299–301. 4QMysteriesa–b, c?,” 31–32.

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from the Judean desert known from the Book of Jubilees, previously only known in Ethiopic, in which Abram7 is portrayed as practicing astrology (scroll 11Q12 = 11QJubilees, copied c. 50 ce),8 may imply that an interest in astrology in various forms probably existed in late Second Temple Judaism. The passage of interest was fortuitously preserved, albeit in a highly fragmentary and lacunose condition (scroll 11Q12, frg. 8 lines 2–6 parallel to Jub 12:16–17). The other texts were previously completely unknown prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These texts may be understood as an interconnected ideological corpus from different groups in Second Temple Judaism concerned with predestination— a concept which may be defined in early Jewish context as an individual’s or collective’s destiny that is known by God, a definition that may be supported by some passages in some “sectarian” prayers from Qumran.9 In the Aramaic texts from Qumran, there are calendars that, it may be argued, could be used for astral divination, a practice that may be described in this context as foretelling that which has been predetermined by God by using certain specialist techniques to reckon the position of heavenly bodies in the sky and then assigning an interpretative meaning to these observations. This study suggests that 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar (4Q208–4Q209) are copies of what is likely to be a schematic year based on the luni-solar cycle of a calendar that includes the days of the lunar month in which the sun and the moon entered zodiac signs. Such a cycle would constitute a calendar-based astrological ephemeris that could be used to construct simple horoscopes

7 Abraham’s name was changed from Abram in Gen 17:5 and Jub 15:7. According to later Jewish tradition, God changed his name to Abraham to alter his astrological destiny; see Genesis Rabbah 44:12 in Midrash Rabba Genesis, translated by Rabbi Dr. Harry Freedman and Maurice Simon, 2 vols. (London: Soncino, 1977), 1:367–369 and 1:393, n. 5. Hebrew edition in Hanoch Albeck and Julius Theodor (eds.), Berešit rabbah, 3 vols. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1912, reprint in Jerusalem: Shalem Books, 1996), 1:432–434. See also Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 32a. Further discussion in Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 240–242. 8 Florentino García Martínez and Adam S. van der Woude, “11Q12,” in Qumran Cave 11:ii: 11Q2–18, 11Q20–31 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 216–217, plate 26. 9 For example, the Thanksgiving Psalms (Hodayot), 1QHodayota col. ix lines 21–22, and 1QHodayota col. xx lines 12–14; see Eileen M. Schuller and Carol A. Newsom, The Hodayot (Thanksgiving Psalms): A Study Edition of 1QHa (Atlanta: sbl, 2012), 30–31 and 62–63. See also Armin Lange, “Wisdom and Predestination in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Dead Sea Discoveries 2 (1995): 340–354; and Armin Lange, “The Essene Position on Magic and Divination,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues. Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995, ed. M. Bernstein, F. García Martínez and John Kampen (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 377–436. For further discussion and references on the Essenes and the practice of divination, see Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 15–18.

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using the zodiac position of the sun and the moon, which can be easily adjusted for any date for all time.

1

Astrological Practice in Early Judaism

The Aramaic calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls, 4QZodiac Calendar and 4QBrontologion ar (4Q318) and the synchronistic calendar of 4QAstronomical Enocha–b (4Q208–4Q209) are, this contribution claims, working schematic zodiac ephemerides. It is here demonstrated that they both state the daily position of the moon in the zodiac signs, according to the texts’ internal cosmological models and methods of schematisation that can be used in practice.10 (The brontologion is not a calendar but it is part of the same manuscript, 4Q318; see below). Scrolls 4Q208 and 4Q209 also include the position of the sun, unlike scroll 4Q318, which does not mention the sun at all.11 4QZodiac Calendar (4Q318 cols. iv, vii lines 1–6a), which lists the daily zodiac sign of the moon through the course of one year of 360 days in an ideal calendar (a selenodromion) is followed by 4QBrontologion (4Q318 col. viii lines 6b–9), an astrological omen text. The combination of a selenodromion with an astrological brontologion, or similar omen texts based on earthquakes, were known from Byzantine manuscripts prior to the discovery of scroll 4Q318, and this double text is still the only known form of this genre in Aramaic.12 In contrast, neither scroll 4Q208 nor scroll 4Q209 have an accompanying divinatory text. Furthermore, only scroll 4Q318 contains the names of the zodiac signs in the calendar. Scrolls 4Q208–4Q209 do not state the names of the zodiac signs; instead, it is also argued, the zodiac signs are represented 10

11 12

The theory for scroll 4Q318 is explicated in Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 47–51; and summarised in Helen R. Jacobus, “Astral Divination in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Hellenistic Astronomy: The Science in Its Contexts, ed. A.C. Bowen and F. Rochberg (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 539–550. This essay focuses on scrolls 4Q208–4Q209 in an expanded version to that in Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 305–311. Also see Helen Jacobus, “Reconstructing 4Q208– 4Q209 as an Astronomical Artefact,” Bible and Interpretation (2015, revised in 2017, republished in 2018), http://www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Aramaic%20calendars2.pdf; and “Calendars,” in T & T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. G.J. Brooke and C. Hempel (London: T & T Clark, 2018), 435–448 (at 441–442). It is a 360-day ideal zodiac calendar. The sun moves 1 degree per day in the ideal ancient astronomical scheme, so that it takes 360 days to complete the zodiac circle. See Greenfield and Sokoloff, “318. 4QZodiology and Brontology ar,” 269–272 (Pingree’s contribution); Albani, Der Zodiakos, 13–20; Albani, “Horoscopes,” 301; Wise, “Thunder in Gemini: An Aramaic Brontologion,” 15–17 and 20–34; and Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 177–228.

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by numbered heavenly “gates” known from the Ethiopic ‘Astronomical Book’ (1Enoch 72–82).13 The manuscripts of 4Q318, 4Q208–4Q209 are fragmentary. 4QBrontologion is written in an archaic style of Mesopotamian omen texts, imitating their protasis and apodosis structure (“If P … then X”).14 It gives predictions about the king, the state of the country politically, its markets, and the people, based on the moon’s position in the zodiac on the ominous day of thunder, as given in 4QZodiac Calendar. The prognostications are possibly forecasts for the year ahead taken from the first thunder at a certain given point in the year, be that the new year (whenever that took place) or at one of the solstices or equinoxes, as was the practice in Hellenistic weather astrology.15 4QBrontologion (= scroll 4Q318 col. viii, lines 6b–9) 6. vacat it thunders (there will be) msbt against 7. affliction for the province, and a sword rt of the king and in the province of Ab 8. will be. And to the Arabs , hunger, and they will plunder each oth 9. vacat If in Gemini it thunders, (there will be) fear and sickness from the foreigners and from .16 We shall examine the possible development of these tables within the context of late Second Temple Judaism and the intellectual circles from Hellenistic Mesopotamia and Greece of which the scribes who collected and wrote the manuscripts at Qumran were a part, if indirectly. The new element in this contribution is to investigate my hypothesis that the two Aramaic calendars (scrolls 4Q318 and 4Q208–4Q209) were based on an ideal year in a nineteen-year cycle,

13 14

15 16

See discussion in the section of this chapter titled “The Zodiac,” below. See, for example, Erlend Gehlken, Weather Omens of Enūma Anu Enlil (Tablets 44–49) (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Hermann Hunger and David Pingree, mul.apin: An Astronomical Compendium in Cuneiform (Horn: Berger & Söhne, 1989), Tablet ii iii 16–iv 12; and René Labat, Un calendrier babylonien des travaux des signes et des mois. Séries iqqurîpuš (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1965). See also Francesca Rochberg, “‘If P, then Q’: Form and Reasoning in Babylonian Divination,” in Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World, ed. A. Annus (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2010), 19–27. For the presence of this syntactic structure in other divinatory texts, see Chapter Four, 140–141 and 151. See discussion and a contextual survey on brontologia with zodiac calendars in Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 184–208. Translation after Greenfield and Sokoloff, “4Q318,” 264, slightly modified; see Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 179–184.

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similar to that attested in the Babylonian standard calendar, which was originally introduced in the early fifth century bce.17 The Babylonian nineteen-year cycle is similar to the Greek Metonic cycle, named after its discovery by Meton of Athens some 50 years later, beginning at the summer solstice of 27 June, 432bce.18 In the Greek Metonic cycle the lunar months do not begin at the sighting or predicted sighting of the first crescent as they do in the Babylonian calendar but in alternating 29 and 30day months, or 59-day “double months” as the moon’s monthly orbit takes 29.5 days.19 This appears to be the case with the 354-day lunar calendar component

17

18

19

Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy. 3 vols (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1975), 2:615–623 (at 622). (Neugebauer examines the attribution to Meton in antiquity, 2:623 n. 12). John P. Britton, “Treatments of Annual Phenomena,” in Under One Sky: Astronomy and Mathematics in the Ancient Near East, ed. J. Steele and A. Imhausen (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2002), 21–78; and John P. Britton, “Calendars, Intercalations and YearLengths in Mesopotamian Astronomy,” in Calendars and Years: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient Near East, ed. J.M. Steele (Oxford: Oxbow, 2007), 115–132; Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing, Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 239–240; and Mathieu Ossendrijver, “Babylonian Scholarship and the Calendar during the Reign of Xerxes,” ed. C. Waerzeggers and M. Seire, Xerxes and Babylonia: The Cuneiform Evidence (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), 135–163. Alan C. Bowen and Bernard R. Goldstein, “Meton of Athens and Astronomy in the Late Fifth Century bc,” in A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs, ed. Erle Leichty, Maria de J. Ellis, and Pamela Gerardi (Philadelphia: Samuel Noah Kramer Fund, The University Museum, 1988), 39–82. However, according to Pannekoek, the Metonic cycle had still not been adopted in Athens by 340 bce; see Anton Pannekoek, A History of Astronomy (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1961), 106–108. On the Greek nineteenyear cycle as explained by Geminos, see James Evans and John Lennart Berggren, Geminos’ Introduction to the Phenomena: A Translation and Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), 183–184 (Chapter xiii 50–57); Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 2:622– 624; Alan E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity, (Munich: Beck, 1972), 42–49; Gerald J. Toomer, “Meton” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie, 16 vols. Supplements: vols. 17–18, ed. Frederic L. Holmes (New York: Scribners, 1970–1990), 9.337–340; and Gerald J. Toomer, “Meton,” Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 969–970. On calendrical tampering, see Francis M. Dunn, “Tampering with the Calendar,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 123 (1998): 213–223; William Kendrick Pritchett, “Postscript: The Athenian Calendars,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 128 (1999): 79–93; and Robert Hannah, Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Time in the Classical World (London: Bloomsbury, 2005), 49–52. William K. Pritchett and Otto Neugebauer, The Calendars of Athens (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947), 1–14; Bowen and Goldstein, “Meton of Athens,” 43; and Evans and Berggren, Geminos’ Introduction to the Phenomena, 176 (Chapter viii.3). The average synodic month is a little more than 29.53 days.

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of scrolls 4Q208–4Q209 as can be reckoned from the schematic arithmetical pattern in the Qumran fragments, argued by Milik20 and Tigchelaar and García Martínez,21 but not by Drawnel.22 The Babylonian nineteen-year cycle did not contain a fixed number of days, and the months do not alternate schematically in a 29 and 30-day sequence.23 A nineteen-year cycle of 235 lunar months is attested from the second half of the sixth century bce in Mesopotamia, but not of a precise 6340 days’ length as in Greek astronomy, which relied on a 365.25 day solar year.24 In contrast, the Babylonian nineteen-year cycle did not determine the length of the solar year. The consistent use of the Mesopotamian nineteen-year cycle with fixed spacing of two and three years between intercalations can be dated from about 367bce. It is then that, according to Britton, the Babylonian calendar from the neo-Babylonian until the Seleucid era had an additional month xii for six of the seven intercalary years and an intercalary month vi in the first year of the cycle.25 The sequence, with a second month xii only, is similar to that in the present-day Hebrew calendar.26

20 21

22

23

24 25 26

Milik, The Books of Enoch, 274. Accepted and reproduced in Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 96. The authors attempt to identify whether each fragment belongs to a full or hollow month, and the numerical months where possible; see Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 105–106; “4Q209,” 134–135; and passim. Drawnel disputes Milik’s thesis that the full and hollow month-lengths alternate due to the incomplete and fragmentary nature of the material. The month-lengths are defined in terms of fractions of light on the moon’s disc, and do not necessarily alternate; see Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 285–290. However, Drawnel has usefully provided the schematic arrangement of the month-lengths in fractions harmonized with the lunar phases (“the monthly pattern of lunar visibility”); see Aramaic Astronomical Book, 421– 424 (Appendix i and ii). Where possible, he suggests whether a fragment comes from a 29-day or 30-day month, based on the pattern of lunar visibility, without identifying the numerical month; Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, passim. Neugebauer places the use of the Babylonian nineteen-year cycle to about 490bce. He states that it is possible that the Greek Metonic cycle of 432bce may have been independently conceived, noting the differences of approach between the Greek and Babylonian cycles; Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 2:622. However, citing Theophrastus (371–287bce) as an early source, Bowen and Goldstein suggest that Meton was indebted to Babylonian influence, having learned of the nineteen-year cycle from his teacher, a “resident alien” in Athens called Phaeinos; see Bowen and Goldstein, “Meton of Athens,” 80. See also Hannah, Greek and Roman Calendars, 53; and Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (New York: Dover, 1957, second edition), 140. Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 2:622–623; Britton, “Calendars, Intercalations and Year-Lengths,” 127. Britton, “Calendars, Intercalations and Year-Lengths,” 121–123. The present Hebrew calendar contains a fixed length nineteen-year cycle of between

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According to Otto Neugebauer, the arrangement of Babylonian intercalary years was different to that described by Britton and had an intercalary month vi in the eighteenth year of the cycle in the Seleucid period.27 Notwithstanding the various sequences of intercalary months, after 235 lunar months (19 solar years) the sun and moon return to the same positions relative to each other, against the background of fixed stars to within ¼ degree, on the same coinciding lunar and solar calendar dates, or closely thereabouts,28 hence the use of the zodiac in the calendar.

2

Angelic Knowledge as a Possible Background to the Aramaic Calendars

Before moving onto the Aramaic calendars themselves I suggest that these texts may have been taught as angelic knowledge. The contents of the Aramaic calendars from Qumran have not been found in any Hebrew calendrical texts at Qumran, but 4QAstronomical Enocha–b arguably may have survived in an abbreviated and corrupted form in fragments corresponding closely to some passages in 1Enoch.29 Whether or not the reception of 1 Enoch 73 origi-

27

28 29

seven and eight hours less than 6349 days. It comprises 235 synodic months of alternating 29- and 30-day months, which are variable in sequence according to the lunar year lengths; see Judah Ben-Zion Segal, “Intercalation and the Hebrew Calendar,” Vetus Testamentum 7 (1957): 250–307 (esp. 273); summary in Arthur Spier, The Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar: Twentieth to Twenty-second century (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1983), 13–19. See also Leo Depuydt, “History of the heleq,” in Under One Sky, 79–108. Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:354–357; Otto Neugebauer, Astronomical Cuneiform Texts, 3 vols. (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1983 [reprint of 1955]), 33. It is likely that the early Jewish calendar had an intercalary sixth month (Elul ii) in the 17th year of the cycle and that this ceased in late antiquity because the Talmud argues against the practice of intercalating a month before Rosh Hashanah, the liturgical new year on 1/vii (tb Sanhedrin 12a and Roš ha-šanah 19b); see Ben-Zion Wacholder and David B. Weisberg, “Visibility of the New Moon in Cuneiform and Rabbinic Sources,” Hebrew Union College Annual 42 (1971): 237–238. Britton, “Calendars, Intercalations and Year-Lengths,” 127 and 130. 4Q201–4Q202, 4Q204–4Q212; bibliography of their critical editions in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, A Guide to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 52– 54; and Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 209–234 (4Q210–211). See also Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 2 vols. (Leiden-New York-Köln: Brill, 1999), 1:398–445; Michael O. Wise, Martin G. Abegg Jr., and Edward M. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (San Francisco: Harper, 1996), 278–303; for a summary of dates and context, see James C. VanderKam, “The Book of

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nated from a Vorlage of the formulaic calendrical fragments of 4QAstronomical Enochb (scroll 4Q209), copied after 1ce, is a subject of scholarly debate.30 The calendar of 4Q208–4Q209, which has not been found in any of the Ethiopic versions of 1Enoch to date,31 may or may not be connected to fragments from scroll 4Q209 (frgs. 23, 25, 26, and 28), which correspond to the literary framework of the Book of the Luminaries in 1Enoch 76:13–77:4; 78:6–8, 10, 17– 79:2; 79:3–5; and 82:9–13. These describe Enoch’s instruction in heaven by the archangel Uriel into the secrets of cosmology and astronomy.32 However, the fragments of 4QAstronomical Enocha (scroll 4Q208), one of the earliest scrolls,33 do not have a literary narrative, so it is not known if the astronom-

30

31

32

33

Enoch and the Qumran Scrolls,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. T.H. Lim and J.J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 254–258. VanderKam argues that the astronomical Ethiopic material is based on a much abbreviated Aramaic Urtext; see James C. VanderKam, “The Aramaic Astronomical Book and the Ethiopic Book of the Luminaries,” in With Wisdom as a Robe. Qumran and Other Jewish Studies in Honour of Ida Fröhlich. ed. K. Dániel Dobos and M. Kőszeghy (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. 2002), 219–221. Drawnel reconstructs the first lines of 4Q209 according to the text in 1 Enoch 73:4–8 and 1 Enoch 73:6–7 in Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 267–285, 440–441, 446–447. However, VanderKam is critical of Drawnel’s approach to the Ethiopic text; see George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch Chapters 37–82, ed. K. Baltzer (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 433–434 and 436–439 (response to Drawnel at 439). To date, no copies of this calendar have been found in any of the Ethiopic versions of the Book of Enoch. I thank Loren Stuckenbruck, who is conducting fieldwork on Enoch manuscript discoveries in Ethiopia at the time of writing, for sharing this information (private conversation). Milik, The Books of Enoch, 288–291; 293–296; García Martínez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 1:436–439; and Georges W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: A New Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 106, 109, and 114. Tigchelaar argues that 4Q208, which is dated to the late third century bce or the second or first century bce by radiocarbon dating, appears to be the remains of the formulaic calendrical fragments only; see Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, “Some Remarks on the Book of Watchers, the Priests, Enoch and Genesis, and 4Q208,” Henoch, 24 (2002): 143–145. He argues that it is likely that 4Q208 was not originally part of the extended literary astronomical narrative of 4Q209. This is questioned by VanderKam in “The Aramaic Astronomical Book and the Ethiopic Book of the Luminaries,” 220–221. Milik dated 4Q208 to the late third century bce by paleography; see Milik, The Books of Enoch, 273. See also A.J. Timothy Jull, Douglas J. Donahue, Magen Broshi, and Emanuel Tov, “Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judaean Desert,” Radiocarbon 37 (1995): 11–19 (dated in 186– 92 bce at 14). Cf. Israel Carmi, “Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years After their Discovery, ed. L.H. Schiffman, E. Tov and J.C. VanderKam, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Shrine of the Book, 2000), 2:881–888, who dates the manuscript to the first century bce; but see Johannes van der Plicht, “Radiocarbon Dating and the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Comment on ‘Redating,’” Dead Sea Discoveries 14 (2007): 77–89 (at 82), who supports Jull, Donahue, Broshi, and Tov.

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ical heavenly journey existed at that point, if it was a separate framework, or whether it was attached to the formulaic calendar at a later stage.

3

The Aramaic Calendars as Schematic Ephemerides

The technical, arithmetical reconstruction of scroll 4Q318 is relatively straightforward since it is written formulaically. There is a schematic pattern for the moon’s movements through the signs of the zodiac. The moon moves quickly, about one degree every two hours, schematically taking two and half days to travel through one zodiac sign.34 However, 4Q318 averages out the fraction of two and half days to fit in with its 360-day ideal calendar of twelve 30-day months: the moon in 4QZodiac Calendar stays in a zodiac sign for two days, then two days, and then three days, repeated until completing twelve 30-day months in a 360-day year. The year in 4Q318 begins with the moon in the sign of Taurus, which is regarded as an anomaly since the zodiac begins with the sign of Aries and very similar schematic zodiac schemes in late Babylonian texts also begin with the moon in Aries.35 Hence, the averaged-out pattern of the moon’s stay in each zodiac sign for the first month can be reconstructed from the extant text. The pattern is the same in each month, moving up by one sign for each day parallel to the one in the previous month (see Table 2.1). In 30 days, the moon would have travelled through all 12 signs and the first sign through which it traversed at the outset. In other words, the moon moves through 13 zodiac signs in a synodic month: 12 signs plus the first sign that it set out from to reach the same phase because the sun has appeared to have moved the distance of one sign since the beginning of the month. Therefore, in one month the moon travels through 390° consisting of 360° plus the first sign it moved through at the beginning of the month, traversed again at the end of the month when the sun has apparently moved by one whole zodiac sign.

34

35

John P. Britton, “Studies in Babylonian Lunar Theory: Part iii. The Introduction of the Uniform Zodiac,” Archive of the History of the Exact Sciences, 64 (2010): 617–663; Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 126–131; and Bartel L. van der Waerden, “History of the Zodiac,” Archiv für Orientforschung, 16 (1952–1953): 216–230; see also John M. Steele, “A Late Babylonian Compendium of Calendrical and Stellar Astrology,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 67 (2015): 187–215. For references and discussions on this anomaly, see Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 53–60.

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56 table 2.1

jacobus 4QZodiac Calendar (scroll 4Q318) reconstructed (shaded cells indicate extant fragments).

Nisan Iyyar

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉

♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊

Sivan Tammuz

♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋

♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌

Av

Elul

♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍

♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎

Tishri Heshvan Kislev

♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏

♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐

♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑

Tevet Shevat Adar

♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒

♓ ♓ ♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓

♈ ♈ ♉ ♉ ♊ ♊ ♊ ♋ ♋ ♌ ♌ ♍ ♍ ♍ ♎ ♎ ♏ ♏ ♐ ♐ ♐ ♑ ♑ ♒ ♒ ♓ ♓ ♓ ♈ ♈

There are no methods of intercalation written down for any of the calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls including the Hebrew 364-day year calendar traditions, a term coined to describe the pluriform nature of these texts.36 The 36

Philip R. Callaway, “The 364-Day Calendar Traditions at Qumran,” in Mogliany 1989. Papers on the Dead Sea Scrolls Offered in Memory of Jean Carmignac. Part i: General Research on the Dead Sea Scrolls-Qumran and the New Testament- The Present State of Qumranology, ed. Zdzislaw Jan Kapera (Krakow: Enigma, 1993), 19–29. The phrase was adopted by Glessmer in his survey of the different types of calendrical texts within this genre; see Uwe Gless-

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method of intercalation, if any, for the schematic luni-solar 360-day calendar in Babylonian astronomy is also the subject of scholarly debate. In her extensive survey of the history of the 360-day year composed of twelve 30-day months in Mesopotamia, Lis Brack-Bernsen concluded that the 360-day calendar was adjusted according to the real lunar calendar both for its early function as an administrative calendar in the third millennium bce and as an ideal year in the astronomical and astrological compendium mul.apin, from c. 1000 bce.37 The compendium was still being copied in the Hellenistic period; according to Oelsner, one colophon dates the source’s scribe to the early second century bce.38 John Steele states that the 360-day calendar would have been used without intercalation: “It is important to note that the schematic calendar never operated as a real-world calendar: it only acted either in a completely schematic framework, unconnected to the actual calendar, or as a computational convenience, allowing calculations to be made that could then be mapped onto the actual luni-solar calendar.”39 However, it is not clear how the ideal 360-day year calendrical texts that also use the moon’s path through the zodiac signs, would work if they did not rely on intercalation in some form. I have suggested that the Aramaic month-names given in 4QZodiac Calendar intimates a later schematic connection between its calendar and the standard late luni-solar Mesopotamian civil or cultic calendar, which had a fixed nineteen-year cycle from roughly the mid-Persian period onwards.40 In

37 38

39 40

mer, “Calendars in the Qumran Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years, 2:213–278 (at 231). For summaries of the different genres that use the 364-day calendars, see James C. VanderKam, Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Routledge, 1998). Lis Brack-Bernsen, “The 360-Day Year in Mesopotamia,” in Calendars and Years: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient Near East, 83–100. mul.apin colophon K line 3: “K is from the Hellenistic period as shown by the name of a King Seleucus (in an otherwise broken date)”; see Hunger and Pingree, mul.apin: An Astronomical Compendium, 9. See also Hermann Hunger and John Steele, The Babylonian Astronomical Compendium mul.apin (London: Routledge, 2019), 112 and 130; and Joachim Oelsner, “Von Iqīšâ und einigen anderen spätgeborenen Babyloniern,” in Studi sul Vicino Oriente antico dedicati alla memoria di Luigi Gagni, ed. S. Graziani (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale), 797–814 (at 810). John M. Steele, Rising Time Schemes in Babylonian Astronomy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2017), 10. Francesca Rochberg, “Astronomy and Calendars in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. J.M. Sasson, 4 vols. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 3:1945–1940; John P. Britton, “Treatments of Annual Phenomena in Cuneiform Sources,” in Under One Sky, 21–78 (at 33–39 and 53); Britton, “Calendars, Intercalations and YearLengths,” 115–132 (at 121–124, 130); and Mathieu Ossendrijver, “Babylonian Scholarship and the Calendar during the reign of Xerxes,” in Xerxes and Babylonia, 135–163.

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these models there were seven intercalary years in a fixed cycle over a 19 solaryear period equating to 235 months;41 the named or numerical months thereby remain aligned with their corresponding zodiac signs. According to Britton, the Mesopotamian nineteen-year cycle with fixed spacing of two and three years between intercalations can be dated from 484 bce, the second year of the reign of Xerxes (485/4–465/4bce).42 Ossendrijver has corrected Britton’s dating to the 10th year of Xerxes and the formal introduction of the nineteen-year cycle with fixed spacing of intercalations to Xerxes year eight and Artaxerxes i (465–424bce) year eight.43 It is then that the Babylonian calendar from the neo-Babylonian until the Seleucid era had an additional month xii for six of the seven intercalary years and an intercalary month vi in the first year of the cycle, rather than a system of seven intercalations during 19 years without fixed-space intervals. The pre-set sequence of intercalary months, with a second month xii only (without an intercalary sixth month), is similar to that in the present-day Hebrew calendar, although prior to early rabbinical reforms of the calendar, Elul (month vi) was intercalated.44 Pingree observed that the calendar of scroll 4Q318 was “not nonsensical.”45 His statement has been explored using the data in Babylonian horoscopes.46 The findings support the hypothesis that 4Q318 is useable schematically, that is, it can be used to ascertain the zodiac sign that the moon traverses on any day of the year and demonstrates that the Hebrew calendar is unexpectedly close to the ideal Babylonian calendar when the moon’s position in the zodiac is factored in, despite the differences between them.47 The results suggest that the 41 42 43 44

45

46

47

Britton, “Calendars, Intercalations and Year-Lengths,” 127 and 130. Britton, “Calendars, Intercalations and Year-Lengths,” 121–123. Ossendrijver, “Babylonian Scholarship,” 139–149. See n. 26 of this chapter. See also Wacholder and Weisberg, “Visibility of the Moon in Cuneiform and Rabbinic Sources,” and Depuydt, “History of the ḥeleq,” in Under One Sky, 79–108. See Greenfield and Sokoloff, “318. 4QZodiology and Brontology ar,” 271 (Pingree’s contribution). For the theory that the scribe of the Book of Psalms knew the Metonic Cycle, see Alan Lenzi, “The Metonic Cycle, Number Symbolism, and the Placement of Psalms 19 and 119 in the mt Psalter,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34 (2010): 447–473. See also Michael Chyutin, “The Redaction of the Qumranic and Traditional Book of Psalms as a Calendar,” Revue de Qumran 16 (1994): 367–395. Using the data compiled in Francesca Rochberg, Babylonian Horoscopes (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1998). See Helen R. Jacobus, “4QZodiac Calendar in Relation to Babylonian Horoscopes,” in Astrology in Time and Place: Cross-Cultural Questions in the History of Astrology, ed. N. Campion and D. Gieseler Greenbaum (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), 217–244 (previously in Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 99– 115). Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 99–132. See also Jacobus, “4Q318: A Jewish Zodiac Calendar at

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zodiac signs that the moon schematically passes through in the 360-day zodiac calendar found in 4Q318 comprises a system that was intended to be used for all-time.48 In contrast, in the Islamic lunar calendar, which is not intercalated, the moon regresses through the zodiac signs, slipping back to the previous sign about every three years on the same lunar calendar date, thereby breaking the connection between the zodiac signs and their seasons.49 Therefore, the zodiac calendars were very probably intended to be luni-solar, as shown by the later addition of the lunar zodiac, which can only work with a fixed method of intercalation.

48 49

Qumran?,” 371–374. Current scholarship on the early Jewish calendar relates to the 364day Hebrew calendars at Qumran, and the Book of the Luminaries, and does not consider the nineteen-year cycle in antiquity to be relevant to the later development of the rabbinical calendar, which reached its fixed form in the medieval period; see Sacha Stern, Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar Second Century bce- Tenth Century ce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). For a response to other aspects of Stern’s hypotheses, such as the procedures for sighting the new crescent moon, see Roger T. Beckwith, Calendar, Chronology and Worship: Studies in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 5–15 (on Sacha Stern’s Calendar and Community). Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 83–91, 451. For example, Safar 10, 1439 ah (i.e., Hijri year) (Pisces) (31 October, 2017); 1440 ah (Pisces) (21 October, 2018); 1441 ah (Pisces) (10 October, 2019); 1442ah (Aquarius) (28 September, 2020); 1443 ah (Aquarius) (18 September, 2021); 1444 ah (Aquarius) (7 September, 2022); 1445 ah (Capricorn) (27 August, 2023), and so on, taking about 34 years to complete the cycle. Such data can be replicated by converting the Islamic calendar date to the Gregorian or a Julian calendar year, and looking up the position of the moon in the zodiac in an astrological ephemeris on that date. See, for example, https://www.fourmilab.ch/ documents/calendar/ for converting most calendars to Julian and Gregorian dates. For an example of a modern astrological ephemeris, see Neil F. Michelsen and Rique Pottenger, The American Ephemeris for the 21st Century 2000 to 2050 at Midnight (San Diego: acs, 1982). Note that “astrological” ephemerides are anachronistic constructs because, unlike modern astronomical ephemerides, they state the daily position of the moon and other heavenly bodies in the zodiac as they were c. 2,000 years ago. With reference to such tables in antiquity, Alexander Jones defines an ephemeris as “a table that gives day-by-day positions of some or all of the heavenly bodies for a range of dates organized according to calendar months”; see Alexander Jones, Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999), 1:40 and 1:175–179. (The earliest Greco-Egyptian ephemeris, from Oxyrhynchus, is dated 24 bce; see Jones, Astronomical Papyri, 175–179).

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The Micro-Zodiac

4QZodiac Calendar is closely related to late Babylonian texts known as dodekatemoria and “Kalendartexte,” tablets dating from about the late fourth century bce, that connect dates in the 360-day year ideal calendar with the moon’s position in the zodiac signs. In these texts the zodiac signs are sub-divided into degrees in increments of 13°, reflecting the distance the moon travels for each day of the 30-day schematic synodic month, a system not paralleled in the Qumran text.50 Although 4QZodiac Calendar has a similar structure to the dodekatemoria scheme and its zodiac signs are not divided into degrees, these can be superimposed for comparative purposes.51 I have argued that 4QZodiac Calendar is an ideal intercalary year and that this is reflected in its calendar, which commences with the moon in the sign of Taurus on 1 Nisan, rather than with the moon in Aries. Hence, the moon’s zodiac sign can be in Taurus on 1 Nisan in an intercalary year, and also the one immediately following, but not in the third year (an intercalation takes place every two or three lunar years, seven times in the nineteen-year cycle).52 It is also clear that 4QBrontologion is descended from late Babylonian and Hellenistic-Mesopotamian sources and, as is well-known,53 it is a precursor

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Lis Brack-Bernsen and John M. Steele, “Babylonian Mathemagics: Two AstronomicalAstrological Texts,” in Studies in the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of David Pingree, ed. Jan P. Hogendijk, Kim Plofker, Michio Yano, and Charles Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 95–121. Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 96–97, Table 1.4.1a and Table 1.4.1b. Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 122–132 and 176. In the solar calendar, the moon can be in any zodiac sign on a solar date, for example March 21, but it will be in the same sign or close to it on any lunar date, for example, on Nisan 1 it will be in Aries or Taurus, depending on whether the year has been intercalated, as stated. This may be demonstrated with random examples using the nineteen-year/Metonic cycle of the Hebrew calendar as an approximation and the astrological zodiac whereby the vernal point is fixed at Aries 0°. For instance, 1 Nisan 5772: 24 March, 2012 (Moon in Aries); 1 Nisan 5779; 6 April 2019 (Moon moves from Aries into Taurus, intercalary year); 1 Nisan 5780: 26 March 2020 (Moon moves from Aries into Taurus, non-intercalary year); 1 Nisan 5781: 14 March 2021 (Moon in Aries); 1 Nisan 5782: 2 April 2022 (Moon moves from Aries into Taurus, intercalary year). One may use the mentioned calendar conversion website for the Hebrew calendar dates and an astrological ephemeris and compare with Table 2.1, above. For the first two dates, compare the date of the crescent moon with the converted Babylonian calendar: 24 March, 2012 = 24 March, 2012 (Second Addaru); 6 April, 2019 = 6 April, 2019 (month i); M. Ossendrijver, “Babylonian Calendar for 2000–2019,” available online at https://amor.cms.hu‑berlin.de/ ~ossendrm/firstcrescent.pdf, accessed 20 July 2019. Summary of sources and secondary literature in Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 208–215. See

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to very similar Greco-Roman and Byzantine texts. Near-identical schematic zodiac calendars to 4Q318, beginning the year in March-April with the moon in Aries as well as commencing in April-May with the moon in Taurus, reappear in the Byzantine world written in Greek in variant forms, frequently with a brontologion.54 It will now be proposed that 4Q208–4Q209 may have represented an ideal non-intercalary 360-day year in a nineteen-year cycle when the moon is in Aries on 1 Nisan. When the calendar in scrolls 4Q208–4Q209 is reconstructed according to the arrangement described below, from my restoration using the very fragmentary remains of the manuscripts, the calendar begins with moon in Aries on 1 Nisan (as it does in the dodekatemoria scheme).

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The Synchronistic Calendar of Scrolls 4Q208–4Q209

The fragments of scroll 4Q208 (4QAstronomical Enocha ar) may comprise one of the earliest manuscripts at Qumran. As stated in the introduction, scholars have generally accepted a date in the earlier half of the second century bce for this manuscript, or the end of the third century bce, according to the paleographical dating by Milik, and more controversially, by radiocarbon dating.55 The synchronistic calendar of 4QAstronomical Enochb ar (scroll 4Q209 frgs. 1–22, 29–31, 32?, 33–39, 40?, 41?), consists of 42 fragments.56 Scroll 4Q209 is dated to around the turn of the eras when it was copied: to the late first

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also particular late Babylonian astro-medical texts, for example, Mark J. Geller, Melothesia in Babylonia: Medicine, Magic, and Astrology in the Ancient Near East (Boston: W. De Gruyter, 2014), 73–75, 80–83; Mark J. Geller, Look to the Stars: Babylonian medicine, magic, astrology and melothesia (Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2010), 60–62 and 68–71; and John Z. Wee, “Virtual Moons over Babylonia: The Calendar Text System, Its Micro-Zodiac of 13, and the Making of Medical Zodiology,” in The Circulation of Astronomical Knowledge in the Ancient World, ed. J.M. Steele (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 199– 201. Józef T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judea (London: scm Press, 1959, translated from the French, 1957), 42; and Michael O. Wise, “Thunder in Gemini: An Aramaic Brontologion,” 3–50. For summary and further references, see Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 184–208. Józef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 7 and 273; Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1Enoch 2: A Commentary, 339–340; Jull, Donahue, Broshi, and Tov, “Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judaean Desert,” and cf. I. Carmi, “Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 881–888. The critical editions for scroll 4Q209 are in Milik, The Books of Enoch, 273–274, 278– 284 (frgs. 7 and 6 only); the largest fragment, frg. 7 cols. ii and iii, is relabelled frag-

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century bce or the early first century ce.57 It is not an identical textual replication of scroll 4Q208, which has 37 fragments, all related to this calendrical text.58 As stated above, unlike scroll 4Q209, scroll 4Q208 does not include the heavenly journey of Enoch. It possibly consists of the synchronistic calendar only and may not have been part of the longer Vorlage of scroll 4Q209,59 although this hypothesis is questioned by VanderKam, who states that the absence of extant text does not constitute evidence that it did not exist.60 Be that as it may, based on the arrangement of fragments, below, into a coherent calendrical scheme, it is proposed that the mathematical calendrical data of scroll 4Q208 and its reception in scroll 4Q209 are probably the same calendar (see Table 2.3).61 Milik argued that 4Q208–4Q209 represented the fragments of a synchronistic calendar comprising a single year in a triennial cycle, and that, hypothetically, there was a summary of the remaining two years in parts of chapters 73, 74, and 79 of the Book of the Luminaries (reproduced by Tigchelaar and García Martínez and explored textually by Neugebauer in 1981 and later by VanderKam in 2012).62

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ment 1 of the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, available online at https:// en.freedownloadmanager.org/Windows‑PC/AstroCalc.html, accessed 20 July 2019. Milik only partially edited the astronomical fragments; see Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 132–171; H. Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 134–208. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 273–274 (scroll 4Q209 = formerly Enastr b); Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2: A Commentary, 341–342. The critical editions for scroll 4Q208 are in Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 104–131; see also Tigchelaar and García Martínez “208– 209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 95–103; and Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 71– 133. Tigchelaar, “Some Remarks on the Book of Watchers,” 143–145; and Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4Q Astronomical Enocha–b ar,” 95. Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2: A Commentary, 341–342; and VanderKam, “The Aramaic Astronomical Book and the Ethiopic Book of the Luminaries,” 220–221. The reconstructions are indebted originally to Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 307–310 (Fig. 3.2.1), long version in Jacobus, “Reconstructing 4Q208–4Q209 as an Astronomical Artefact”; and Jacobus, “Astral Divination in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 542–548. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 274–275; accepted by Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208– 209. 4Q Astronomical Enocha–b ar,” 96; Otto Neugebauer, The ‘Astronomical’ Chapters of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch (72–82). Translation and Commentary. With Additional Notes on the Aramaic Fragments by Matthew Black (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 1981), 3–42 (at 13–19 and 30–31); and Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1Enoch 2: A Commentary, 429–439, 440–456, and 515–520.

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According to Milik, and García Martínez and Tigchelaar, the 354-day lunar year has month-lengths of 29 or 30 days that are arranged alternately; this is synchronized with a 364-day solar year with the addition of a 30-day intercalary month every three years (364×3 = 354×3+30).63 Scrolls 4Q208–4Q209 divide the lunar disk into schematic fractions of increasing units (waxing from the first visible crescent to the full moon) and decreasing units (waning from the day after the full moon to the last visible crescent) of half-sevenths in a linear sequence. The month-length is defined by the day of the first crescent: 0.5/7ths appears on Day 1 of a 29-day month and on Day 2 of a 30-day month. The fraction 7/7ths for the full moon (day 14 in a 29-day month and day 15 in the 30-day month) is omitted in the text.64 Drawnel does not commit to the theory that the full and hollow months are in alternate pairs in the text because the data for the beginnings and ends of the month are not extant. He also does not accept a 364-day year length for the solar year since, he argues, the mentions of the sun are insertions and the hypothesis of the 364/354 synchronized calendar does not exist in either text; hence, he rejects the editors’ views that the texts represent a luni-solar synchronized calendar.65 In another major difference between scholarly theories, the editors of the official editions argue that the fractions of sevenths and half-sevenths in scrolls 4Q208–209 that describe the daily progressive steps of the moon’s waxing and waning represent the incrementally increasing and decreasing visual areas of lightness and darkness on the lunar disk throughout the month.66 Disagreeing with the editors, Drawnel analyzes the Aramaic terminology and interprets the fractions as representing the daily pattern of time periods that the moon is visible during the day-time and night-time in relation to the sun: moonrise, moonset, sunrise, and sunset when the moon is waxing and waning. He argues that the data are based on an elaboration of particular Mesopotamian antecedents: ideal schemes of lunar visibility and invisibility

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Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 285–290. Milik’s hypothesis has been followed by Ratzon, who proposes that the fragments constitute the three years of the triennial cycle itself, not simply one year as contended by the editors; see Eshbal Ratzon, “The First Jewish Astronomers: Lunar Theory and Reconstruction of a Dead Sea Scroll,” Science in Context 30, 2 (2017): 113–139. Her reconstruction is not unequivocal; see the different restoration by Jacobus (below in the chapter). See also Helen R. Jacobus, “Reconstructing the Calendar of 4Q208–4Q209 (and a Response to Eshbal Ratzon),” Revue de Qumran 31 (2019): 251–273. Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 237, 421–424. Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 299 and n. 137. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 64; and Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4Q Astronomical Enocha–b ar,” 96–97.

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for a single equinoctial month detailed in tables 2.4 and 2.5 of Tablet 14 of the Enūma Anu Enlil astrological series.67 His theory has given rise to a scholarly debate.68 We will now illustrate the formulaic astronomical relationship in the synchronistic calendar including the zodiac signs, which this hypothesis proposes are cognate with the gate numbers in 4Q208–4Q209. As with 4QZodiac Calendar, the moon in the text takes about two and half days to pass through each sign, traversing 13 zodiac signs in one synodic month. The sun takes one synodic month to travel the length of each sign, and one solar year to travel through all 12 zodiac signs. The sun and moon come together at the end of the lunar month at the conjunction, described in 4Q209 frg. 6 line 9. The text relates to the moonset of night 29 and the moonrise for a schematic 30-day lunar month. The author uses astronomical poetry to express an ancient scientific concept: that the moon is illuminated by the sun, while the sun orbits the Earth.69

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Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, Preface, vii., 24–25, 38–39, 237, 251, 302–307 and passim; and also Index of non-Biblical Literature, 486, for a theory that he first proposed in Henryk Drawnel, “Moon Computation in the Aramaic Astronomical Book,” Revue de Qumran 23 (2007): 3–41. Farouq N.H. al-Rawi and Andrew George, “Enūma Anu Enlil xiv and Other Early Astronomical Tables,” Archiv für Orientforschung 38–39 (1991–1992): 52– 73 (at 55–56). Table A measures the duration of lunar visibility in an equinoctial month in the tradition used in Nippur, and Table B measures the lunar visibility of an equinoctial month with a water-clock in the mathematical scribal tradition of Babylon. Duke and Goff have contested this hypothesis on astronomical grounds and on differences in the mathematical formats between the Aramaic and cuneiform texts; see Dennis Duke and Matthew Goff, “The Astronomy of the Qumran Fragments of 4Q208 and 4Q209,”Dead Sea Discoveries 21 (2014): 176–210. Note that Duke and Goff incorrectly claim that the pattern of alternating 29- and 30-day months in 4Q209 was a practice used from the third millennium bce. Their citation on p. 204 n. 23 (for John M. Steele, A Brief Introduction to Astronomy in the Middle East, London: Saqi, 2008, 23) does not claim this, but refers to the third millennium bce 360-day year composed of twelve 30-day months. They further claim that 4Q208 is possibly composed of twelve 30-day months, like the third millennium bce ideal calendar, or that both scrolls 4Q208 and 4Q209 were structured according a 364day solar year calendar of 360 days with four additional days. They cite 1Enoch 82:4 (not in the Aramaic text); see Duke and Goff, “The Astronomy of the Qumran Fragments,” 204; cf. Ratzon who argues that their astronomical assumptions and methodology lack historicity, although she does not defend Drawnel’s theory per se; see Eshbal Ratzon, “Methodological Issues Concerning the Astronomy of Qumran,” Dead Sea Discoveries 22 (2015): 202–209; Dennis Duke and Matthew Goff, “A Response to Eshbal Ratzon. Methodological Issues Concerning the Astronomy of Qumran,” Dead Sea Discoveries 23 (2016): 79–87; and Eshbal Ratzon, “Astronomy of Qumran: Further Considerations,” Dead Sea Discoveries 23 (2016): 88–95. For references to the geocentric cosmological system in an astrological context, see Chapter Seven of this book, 236.

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There are differences in the reconstruction and translation between the editors Milik, and Tigchelaar and García Martínez, and Drawnel of this important, but broken text.70 The highly piecemeal fragments of scrolls 4Q208–4Q209 contain more astronomical data than scroll 4Q318. They include a numerical “gate” system in which “gates” are numbered from 1 to 6. The editors argue that the “gates” are integral to the synchronistic calendar: harmonizing the passage of the sun, a 364-day solar calendar, the movements of the moon, and a 354-day calendar of alternating 29- and 30-day months.71 Against this theory, Drawnel states that the “gates” in 4Q208 and 4Q209 appear in a random way and cannot be used to indicate the length of time that the moon remains in a “gate.”72 However, the manuscripts are very fragmentary and the explanation that they are only randomly cited does not account for their presence. Any hypothesis must be able to explain all the elements in a text and be able to test them. It is here contended that the Aramaic “gates” echo the dual gate system of 12 “gates” numbered from one to six, listed formulaically in 1 Enoch 72. Although in 1Enoch 72 the “gates” are defined in terms of ratios of daytime to nighttime and their alignment with the solar months of the year, our interest resides in the hypothesis that the “gates” are synonymous with the zodiac signs and that by applying this theory, the text can be reconstructed and the fragments placed in their position in the manuscript (see in this chapter the section titled “The Zodiac”). In 1Enoch 72 portions of daylight to darkness are measured in relation to the months of the 364-day year (composed of eight 30-day months and four 31day months in months iii, vi, ix, and xii, the last day of which, day 31, are the equinoxes and the solstices). The “gate” numbers in 1 Enoch 72, in their order, begin with Gate 4 (sunrise in “the large gate” in Month i, 1 Enoch 72:6) as follows: Gate 4, Month i (vernal equinox); Gate 5, Month ii; Gate 6, Month iii; Gate 6, Month iv; Gate 5, Month v; Gate 4, Month vi; Gate 3, Month vii;

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Scroll 4Q209 frg. 6 line 9: “ht for all of it. And all the rest of its light is taken away. And its disc rises empty of all light hidden with the s,” translation and reconstruction in Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 156–159 and 297. Note that the editors reconstruct the text as stating that the moon sets in a “gate” (number not extant) and that the moon is covered for the rest of this day: Milik, The Books of Enoch, 284; and Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 144. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 274; repr. in Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4Q Astronomical Enocha–b ar,” 96. Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 293–294.

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Gate 2, Month viii; Gate 1, Month ix; Gate 1, Month x; Gate 2, Month xi; and Gate 3, Month xii. According to the proposal by Milik, and Tigchelaar and García-Martínez, 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii has the clue to the calendar that enabled Milik to see how the moon and the sun and the “gates” are harmonised into an ingenious single astronomical scheme. It contains the most centrally important information about this calendar. In 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 6 and 8, the moon rises in Gate 5 on the ninth day of the 10th month (during the day). The lunar date coincides with: “An almost completely preserved description of the setting and rising of the sun … at the end of the ninth solar month which falls on at sunset on the eighth day of the tenth lunar month (4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 1–2) and the rising of the sun on the first day of the tenth solar month which falls on the morning of the ninth day of the tenth lunar month (4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 5– 6).”73 Since the sun appears in other instances in the synchronistic calendar of scrolls 4Q208–4Q209, it cannot be argued that the greater luminary appears only infrequently. Even though the scrolls are fragmentary, no two mentions of the sun are alike and there are grammatical inconsistencies—all of which led Drawnel to regard the sun as an intrusion in the text.74 However, the larger luminary is mentioned seven times in the extant synchronistic calendar and must, therefore, be significant. The note of the sun at the conjunction, for example in scroll 4Q209 frg. 6 line 9 (above) is not the end of the solar month: it is descriptive of the totality of the moon’s absence of light at the end of the lunar month. To give a flavor of the text with the fractions denoting the lunar phases, the text with the clearest synchronism is discussed below.

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Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4Q Astronomical Enocha–b ar,” 102. It is not certain that the sun sets and then rises in that order although it is logical as the sun is moving through Gate 1. It is possible that the sun rises on day 8 / month x (lunar month) at the end of the ninth solar month in 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 1–2 (‫ )מפק‬and sets on day 9 / month x (lunar month) in 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii line 5 (“sets” מערב‬as the end of the line is broken). So, Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4Q Astronomical Enocha–b ar,” 147–148; and Milik, The Books of Enoch, 279, who reconstruct “sets” מערב‬while Drawnel reconstructs “rise” מפק‬here, see Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 163, repeating the same verb for the sun’s subsequent movement. It is more likely that the sun “rises” and “sets,” on day 8–9 / month x (lunar month) in that order in Gate 1, rather than “sets” and “rises,” or “rises” and “rises.” In addition to scroll 4Q209 frg. 6 line 9 and 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 2 and 5, the sun is also mentioned at scroll 4Q208 frg. 10a col. i lines 1, 2; scroll 4Q209 frg. 34 line 2; and 4Q209 frg. 35 line 2; see Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 91–94, 204–205; 205; and 297–300.

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Scroll 4Q209 Frg. 7 Col. iii

The fragment, 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii, contains one synchronized date: 8–10/x (the 8th–10th day of the 10th lunar month), when the sun is in Gate 1 rising and setting (see note above) at the end of the ninth solar month. The translation covers the 8th, 9th and 10th days of the lunar month75 Scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 1–3 (L1) [blank space] this (the tenth month) with four-ve. And then it sets and enters (‫)ערב ועל‬. During this night the sun compl (L2) the passage of all its courses (‫ )כל חרתיה‬of the first gate. And it begins again to go and to emerge through its courses. (L2–3) sets and enters and it is concealed (or dark) (‫ )וקבל‬during the rest of this night by three sevenths …76 On night 8 of the 10th lunar month the moon shines with four-sevenths of its disk. This makes perfect sense for the 8th day of the month; the first quarter on the 7th day of the month would be three and a half sevenths, the half-moon. On the same night the sun completes its journey through Gate 1 and travels again through its courses (meaning uncertain). The number of the “gate” through which the moon rises and sets on night 8 is not stated. A little further on in the fragment, we learn that on night 10 the moon sets and enters Gate 5: Translation of scroll 4Q209 frg. 7, col. iii lines 4b–8 (L4) vacat And it (the moon) shines on night nine of (L4–5) with four-and-a-half-. And then it sets and enters. This night the sun begins again to travel through course (L5–6) through them. And then the n sets and enters the fifth gate. And it is dark (‫ )וקבל‬during the rest of this night by

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Transliteration, translation and textual apparatus in Milik, The Books of Enoch, 279–283; Tigchelaar and García-Martínez, “4Q209”; Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 163–165; and Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 293–316. Translation in Milik, The Books of Enoch, 281; Tigchelaar and García-Martínez, “4Q209,” 147; Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 164–165; and Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 293– 295.

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(L6–7)

and-a-half-seve. And it increases (‫ )וקוי‬during this day up to five-sevenths, and its light (ר‬is equivalent to fivesevenths. (L7–8) from the fif gate . vacat And it shines during night ten in it (L8–9) for five-sevenths. And then it sets and enters. And it is dark during the rest of this night for two-sevenths. And it increases during this day (L9–10) for five-and-a-half sev.77 The text may be saying that while the sun is moving through Gate 1 the moon on nights 8 and 9 is in Gate 4 (not given). Milik observed that in the text when a gate number is mentioned it is the first time that the moon rises or sets in that gate. When a gate number is not given for its rising or setting, it means that the moon is in the same gate as before.78 It sets in Gate 5 on night 9, and rises in Gate 5 during the daytime of day 9 (as the waxing moon rises in the day and sets after sunset; the calendrical day begins at sunset). The moon sets for the first time in Gate 5 on night 10 after sunset, the new calendrical day, having risen in Gate 5 during day 9.79 The first lunar crescent of the waxing moon is one half of one-seventh shining and six-and-a-half sevenths of darkness. For the purposes of the calendar the scholarly dispute regarding the quantitative distinction between daily time periods of lunar visibility contended by Drawnel against the theory of lunar spatial visibility presupposed by Milik, Tigchelaar and García Martínez does not affect our argument. Taking a different perspective, I argue that the solar year with which the 354day lunar year is synchronized is probably 360 days, the number of degrees in the zodiac and the number of days in the ideal year. 77

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Milik, The Books of Enoch, 281; Tigchelaar and García-Martínez, “4Q209,” 148; Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 163–165 (including the reconstruction of line 8b–10); and Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 296–297. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 283. In his translation of scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii he demonstrates that when the moon “sets and enters” and no gate number is given, the moon is in “(the same gate as before)” or “(the same gate),” or he puts the ordinal gate number in parentheses the second time it is referenced in the text “(i.e. of the first gate)”; see Milik, The Books of Enoch, 281. This pattern is eloquently described by Drawnel in terms of the moonrise to the sunset, and the moonset to the sunrise in detail in his model; see Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 165, Table 2.33.

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The Zodiac

As stated above, the “gates” in the Aramaic calendar, it is proposed, are represented by the same numbers assigned to the heavenly gates as those in the Book of the Luminaries (1Enoch 72–82).80 The consensus view in earlier scholarship in the late 19th and early 20th century was initiated by Richard Laurence who advocated that the zodiac in the Ethiopic Book of the Luminaries was represented by the system of 12 heavenly gates through which the sun, moon, and the stars rose and set.81 R.H. Charles presented the zodiac thesis in the notes to his translation,82 which was opposed by Otto Neugebauer in his study of the Book of the Luminaries.83 Neugebauer argued that the 12 heavenly gates did not represent the zodiac signs but the different points on the horizon where the sun and moon rose and set throughout the year, and that the identification of the gates with the zodiac signs came from Islamic astronomy and Slavonic Enoch (2Enoch).84 Writing before the publication of mul.apin in 1989,85 Neugebauer partially supported the suggestion that the presentation of the unit-lengths of incre80 81

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Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 260–283. Richard Laurence, The Book of Enoch the Prophet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1821). In the commentary “Remarks,” to this translation, the chapter numbers are slightly different, 197–202 and 205–206. For the literature review of the long history of this scholarly debate, see Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2: A Commentary, 371–373; and Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 263–273. Ratzon has argued in favor of a relationship between the “gates” in the Book of the Luminaries and the zodiac signs as a horizon mapping system; see Eshbal Ratzon, “The Gates Cosmology of the Astronomical Book of Enoch,” Dead Sea Discoveries 22 (2015): 93–111 (at 108). Robert Henry Charles, The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), 151, note to 3:237–238 and 3:240–241. Otto Neugebauer, “Notes on Ethiopic Astronomy,” Orientalia, 4 (1964): 49–71 (at 50–61); and Neugebauer, The ‘Astronomical’ Chapters, 12. Neugebauer, “Notes on Ethiopic Astronomy,” 58 and 61; Ethiopic Computus and Astronomy (Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie Wissenschaften, 1979), 156–161; and The ‘Astronomical’ Chapters of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch (72 to 82), 12. Neugebauer’s trigonometric argument was partly based on data published using ms Bibliothéque Nationale de France Ethiopian 64 (Catal. Zotenberg); see Sylvian Grébaut, “Table de levers de la lune pour chaque mois de l’ année,” Revue de l’ Orient Chretien 21 (1918–1919): 422–428, and on data from different Ethiopic computus treatises. Grébaut’s publication reproduces information from the Book of the Luminaries but in a more detailed form than that which has survived in any known Ethiopic copies. This raises the question of whether The Book of the Luminaries is a condensed and abbreviated version of a longer work, as suggested by Milik, The Books of Enoch, 275–277, and VanderKam, “The Aramaic Astronomical Book and the Ethiopic Book of the Luminaries,” 217–221. Hunger and Pingree, mul.apin: An Astronomical Compendium.

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mental increasing and decreasing daylight and nighttime in relation to the sequential order of the months in 1Enoch 72 (a sequence known as the “linear zig-zag function”) was related to Babylonian astronomy, including, for example, the daylight lengths in mul.apin.86 He was, however, of the view that the Book of the Luminaries was compiled by generations of scribes: “The whole Enochian astronomy is clearly an ad hoc construction and not the result of a common Semitic tradition.”87 Neugebauer died in 1990, a year after the first publication of mul.apin by Hunger and Pingree, and so he did not live to see the publication of 4Q318 in 1992, which showed that the zodiac existed in the Dead Sea Scrolls (the manuscript had already been described by Milik in Ten Years of Discovery in 1957).88 Glessmer contested the long-term influence of Neugebauer on the consensus relating to 1Enoch 72, which persisted even after the publication of mul.apin in 1989. Glessmer pointed out that the astronomical compendium was still being copied in the Seleucid period, which, he argued, provided stronger evidence that 1Enoch 72 had Babylonian antecedents.89 Neugebauer did not write about or study the Aramaic ‘Astronomical Book’ in his life-time, although Milik’s publication on the Aramaic books of Enoch in 1976 contained astronomical fragments that were not known in 1 Enoch 72–82, namely, 4Q209 frg. 7 cols. ii–iii and 4Q209 frg. 6, which describes the sun-moon conjunction (see above), and 4QAstronomical Enochd ar (4Q211), copied c. 50– 1 bce. Neugebauer’s translation and commentary on the Ethiopic Book of the Luminaries, published in 1981, was included in Matthew Black’s 1985 translation and commentary on 1Enoch; and Black, not Neugebauer, added his own brief comments on the astronomical Aramaic fragments.90 This situation is also relevant to the problem of Neugebauer’s posthumous influence on current modern interpretations of the Aramaic ‘Astronomical Book’, particularly given the fact that Neugebauer, as well as not commenting on the reception of the Aramaic ‘Astronomical Book’ or the existence of

86 87 88

89

90

Neugebauer, The ‘Astronomical’ Chapters, 3 and 10–12. Neugebauer, The ‘Astronomical’ Chapters, 3 and 4. Robert H. Eisenman and M. Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered: The First Complete Translation and Interpretation of 50 Key Documents withheld for over 35 years (London: Penguin, 1992), 258–263. Uwe Glessmer, “Horizontal Measuring in the Babylonian Astronomical Compendium mul.apin and in the Astronomical Book of 1 En,” Henoch 18 (1996): 250–282 (at 251–252 and 281–282). Matthew Black, The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch: A New English Edition with Commentary and Notes, in Consultation with James C. VanderKam, with an Appendix on the ‘Astronomical’ Chapters (72–82) by Otto Neugebauer (Leiden: Brill, 1985).

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4Q318, had not offered any further observations on the “gates” in the Book of the Luminaries in relation to the fragments from Qumran. Little has changed since Glessmer complained that the consensus is tenaciously out-of-date. Neugebauer produced an Ethiopic table of lunar risings from composited data collected from a number of manuscripts. These data showed that the moon can stay in specifically numbered gates for periods from one to eight days.91 Hence he concluded that the “gates” in the Book of the Luminaries could not represent the zodiac signs because the moon cannot stay in one sign for eight days but that they represented points on the horizon from which the sun rose and set.92 Despite Neugebauer’s analysis, there is no contradiction between the “gates” representing the sun’s changing rising and setting points on the horizon throughout the year and the “gates” representing the solar months and their corresponding zodiac signs as well. In Hellenistic horoscopic astrology the ascendant is signified by the zodiac sign rising on the eastern horizon, that is, where the ecliptic or zodiac circle intersects the circle of the horizon. The concept of the great circle and the obliquity of the ecliptic is Hellenistic, not Babylonian.93 The zodiac signs were also linked to the sun’s rising points on the horizon on a number of inscriptional zodiac Greco-Roman sundials, from the second century bce.94 Brack-Bernsen and Hunger have suggested that the beginning of each zodiac sign in late Babylonian astronomy may have been determined by the position of the rising sun on the eastern horizon and that the “abstract division of the ecliptic into twelve arcs (the zodiac signs) was done through intervals along

91 92

93

94

Neugebauer, “Notes on Ethiopic Astronomy,” 57–58. The editors, Tigchelaar and García Martínez, tried to align the “gates,” the days of the month in the Aramaic texts with the moon’s gates in the Ethiopic lunar tables but found that there were differences of one or two days, a problem that they noted also occurred between the different Ethiopic tables; see Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 100–103 (at 103). John M. Steele, “Celestial Measurement in Babylonian Astronomy,” Annals of Science 63, 3 (2007): 293–325 (at 319–320); and Alexander Jones, “Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and the obliquity of the ecliptic,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 33 (2002): 15–19. On most existing or known Greco-Roman zodiac sundials, see Sharon L. Gibbs, Greek and Roman Sundials (New Haven: Princeton University Press, 1976). Later research includes: Andrea Carusi and Danilo Baldini, “Il globo di Matelica,” L’Astronomica 92 (1989): 30–38; Karlheinz Schaldach and Ortwin Feustel, “The Globe Dial of Prosymna,” British Sundial Society Bulletin 25, 3 (2013): 6–12; Alexander Jones, “Some Greek Sundial Meridians,” in From Alexandria Through Baghdad: Surveys and Studies in the Ancient Greek and Medieval Islamic Sciences in Honor of J.L. Berggren, ed. N. Sidoli and G. Van Brummelen (Springer: Berlin-Heidelberg, 2014), 175–188; and Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 344–351 and 354–388.

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the horizon,” that is, they may have been derived from these rising points.95 Brack-Bernsen and Hunger’s hypothesis adds support to Uwe Glessmer’s contention that 1Enoch 72 is based on astronomy found in mul.apin, and that it uses a horizon-based zodiac system.96 Glessmer points out that this kind of astronomy is not related to “the newest scientific knowledge (and “technology” of Hellenistic sundials) based on the zodiac reference system internationally.”97 However, Albani and Glessmer also proposed that a stone disk with radial marks and concentric circles with a small central hole found at Qumran may have been an astronomical instrument, related to a sundial that could be used to ascertain the rising times of the zodiac signs.98 Their hypothesis remains unproved, to date,99 while a variety of other theories about the disk’s possible use have abounded subsequently.100 The circulation and development of scientific knowledge in antiquity was not underscored by linear scientific progress but by the co-existence of the preservation of ancient knowledge together and parallel with innovative practice. The plethora of zodiac sundials and astronomical instruments from the second century bce to the second century ce from the Mediterranean, mainly created in Greece and Italy, offers archaeological support from Greco-Roman culture for the order of the zodiac signs corresponding to the sequence of heavenly “gates” and their corresponding months on some astronomical instruments. On several dials, the zodiac signs correspond to the parallel points on the ecliptic on either side of the equinoxes or solstices. The scheme on such dials arguably relates to the system of “gates” in 1 Enoch 72, if the gate numbers were substituted for the months and zodiac signs (see Table 2.2).101

95 96 97 98

99 100 101

Lis Brack-Bernsen and Hermann Hunger, “The Babylonian Zodiac: Speculation on its invention and significance,” Centaurus 41 (1999): 280–292 (at 289–290). Brack-Bernsen and Hunger, “The Babylonian Zodiac,” 283–285, Figs. 1 and 2; and Glessmer, “Horizontal Measuring.” Glessmer, “Horizontal Measuring,” 281. Uwe Glessmer and Matthias Albani, “An Astronomical Measuring Instrument from Qumran,” in The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. D.W. Parry and E. Ulrich (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 407–442. Cf. Albani, “Horoscopes,” 295 n. 57: “There is indeed a correspondence between the rising-points of the sun along the eastern horizon and its positions within the zodiacal signs (e.g., gate 4 with Aries, gate 5 with Taurus). The zodiacal signs are not treated in the ab (Astronomical Book / Book of the Luminaries): on the contrary, this work seems to avoid mentioning the zodiacal signs, which were worshipped as gods in antiquity.” Further discussion in Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 267–268 and 386–387. Albani, “Horoscopes,” 311. He admits that the hypothesis is “thus far pure conjecture.” Summary in Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 386–388. For the discussion on the correspondence between a type of zodiac sundial with the “gates” in the Book of the Luminaries and scrolls 4Q208–209, see Helen R. Jacobus, “Greco-

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aramaic calendars in the dead sea scrolls table 2.2

Gates, months, equinoxes, and solstices in 1 Enoch 72, with zodiac signs added according to the representational scheme.a

Gate nos. Months

Zodiac signs

Equinoxes and solstices

Gate 4 Gate 5 Gate 6 Gate 3 Gate 2 Gate 1

Aries and Virgo Taurus and Leo Gemini and Cancer Libra and Pisces Scorpio and Aquarius Sagittarius and Capricorn

(Equinox)

Month 1 and Month 6 Month 2 and Month 5 Month 3 and Month 4 Month 7 and Month 12 Month 8 and Month 11 Month 9 and Month 10

(Summer Solstice) (Equinox) (Winter Solstice)

a In a large proportion of antique zodiac solar instruments where this correspondence occurs, the sign of Aries is opposite the sign of Virgo. This signifies that, in the sun’s journey northwards, the vernal equinox takes place at the very beginning of Aries, at the border with Pisces, and the autumnal equinox takes place at the very end of Virgo, at the border with Libra. The grouping of parallel equinoctial or solstitial points on the ecliptic may be Hellenistic in origin. Known as the theory of antiscia, it has been attributed to Hipparchus, although there is no evidential support that he originated the scheme. See Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:331; and Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 357–358. For a summary of zodiac sundials that use the antiscia sequence, see Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 364–379.

It may be argued that Neugebauer’s distinction between the “gates” as zones along the circle of the horizon, from which the sun apparently rises and sets during different months in year, and the zodiac signs should be reconsidered within the context of the Aramaic ‘Astronomical Book’, as well as with regards to 1Enoch 72. With respect to 4Q208–4Q209, the gate numbering (or, indeed, having any “gates” at all) is immaterial and unnecessary for the scheme to function per se, as opposed to their purpose in 1Enoch 72, in which they were defined in terms of ratios of daylight to night-time. This raises the interesting question as to the purpose of the “gates” without the daylight schemes in a calendrical context, and whether there was an unspecified function of the synchronistic calendar, such as, possibly, to create a calendrical system whereby time was mapped astronomically by the sun, moon, and the stars. When one aligns the “gates” to the zodiac signs in 4Q208–4Q209 according to the mathematical restoration in Table 2.3 (below), the schematic pattern is similar to that in 4QZodiac Calendar. Beginning with the moon in Gate 4

Roman Zodiac Sundials and their Links with a Qumran Calendar,” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 14 (2014): 67–81, available online http://maajournal.com/Issues/ 2014/Vol14‑3/Full7.pdf.

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on Month i, day 1 (Gate 4 equates to Aries in the scheme as it represents Month i in the daylight scheme of 1Enoch 72), the moon would stay in each “gate” as follows: two days, two days, two days, three days, two days, two days, three days, two days, two days, three days, two days, then three days in the 30-day month, or a final two days in the 29-day month. Although the vernal equinox is not extant in the Aramaic synchronistic calendar, it is clearly referenced in 1Enoch 72:6–8.102 Neugebauer commented that the year in the Ethiopic ‘Astronomical Book’ begins at the spring equinox, thereby following the Babylonian calendar computation (a system that does not apply to the Ethiopic calendar).103

8

The Background to the Reconstruction of Scrolls 4Q208–4Q209 with Zodiac Signs

The visual reconstruction of data from scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii (see Figure 2.1 below) adapts the daily arrangement of the moon in 4QZodiac Calendar (in 4Q318), as shown in Table 2.1, reconstructed on an extrapolated basis for the entirety of the 10th lunar month (Month x). The month is partially represented in fragment 7 (cols. ii and iii, see below).104 The calendrical day of the month begins after sunset, according to the reconstruction of the calendar, in keeping with its late Babylonian background. Hence, the waxing moon is in Gate 5 on day 10 as the day begins at sunset (4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii line 8, after the vacat), and the moon has risen in Gate 5 during day 9 before sunset (4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii, the end of line 7 to 8). The use of the term vacat in the transcription draws attention to the astronomical moments; they are precise, meaningful spaces in the text, as much as the words. Milik noted that the data began on the day 8 of month x (Tevet in the Hebrew calendar), equating it approximately with 8 Tevet, and 1 Enoch 72:25b–27.105 In 102

103

104 105

Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch, 96–97. Neugebauer numbered the verses differently (followed in the extract) to clarify the table of lengths of daylight in 1Enoch 72 according to the respective “gates.” His arrangement makes the text easier to follow. Neugebauer stated that the variation of daylight in 1 Enoch 72 “suggests an early Babylonian background”; see Neugebauer, The ‘Astronomical’ Chapters, 4. With reference to 1Enoch 72:6–7a, he noted: “ this implies that the year begins at the vernal equinox (as in Babylonia) whereas the Ethiopic calendar follows the Alexandrian year that begins with the month Thoth, roughly September ,” see Neugebauer, The ‘Astronomical’ Chapters, 12. Reproduced from Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 309, Fig. 3.2.1. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 283.

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figure 2.1 Reconstruction of the existing data of 4Q209 fragment 7 (month x), aligning the numbered gates numbered 1–6 to their zodiac signs (each gate represents two signs) in a similar schematic arrangement to that in 4QZodiac Calendar. The sun is in Gate 1 on the first day of the solar month, indicated by the solar disk. The moon rises and sets on days 8–10 (extant, shaded) of the lunar month from Gate 4 to 5 and the corresponding gates/zodiac signs that the moon traverses on those days (it is a 29-day month). The lunar fractions are on the outer circle.

the zodiac hypothesis, in which Gate 1 represents the zodiac signs of Sagittarius and Capricorn, the winter solstice is closer to astronomical reality than the last cardinal day of the 364-day calendar in the Book of the Luminaries 31/xii. The sun’s position in Gate 1 also denotes the lunar date of the winter solstice: nights 8 to 9 of the 10th lunar month in the year represented in the fragments.106 In

106

Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 291–311; 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii commences with night 8. Night

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the Metonic Cycle, it would be 19 solar years, or 235 synodic months before that same relationship between the sun and the exact lunar phase/lunar date repeats itself on, or very close to, the same solar calendar date. The text, by focusing on the lunar zodiac, is not concerned about pin-point accuracy of synchronising the 354-day year with the 360 days of the solar year, so long as the months are aligned in their season. No festivals are marked in the text as they are in the Hebrew calendars of the priestly courses, the mišmarot. Below is a proposed arithmetical reconstruction of 4Q208–4Q209 based on existing fragments with sufficient data from this arithmetical jigsaw puzzle using the conceptual arrangement discussed. The mathematical pattern demonstrates that the “gates” or the gate numbers are not random, as claimed by Drawnel. The scheme is supported by Drawnel’s reconstructions for the smaller fragments (although he does not assign any of the fragments to any particular numbered months because the month-numbers are not given in the text); see Table 2.3. If Drawnel’s reconstruction of 4Q208 frg. 16 and 4Q208 frg. 24 col. i are correct, there is a strong probability that the formulaic calendrical section in scroll 4Q209 is a copy of the calendrical data in scroll 4Q208.107 The editors demonstrated from the lunar fractions in the text that the months began on the first visible crescent at 0.5/7ths after sunset on day 1 of a 29-day month, and day 2 of a 30-day month, as discussed above, not the conjunction, in keeping with schematic Babylonian procedures, whereby the month begins when the first lunar crescent can be seen setting just after sunset on the western horizon after 29–30 days.108 This scheme is very close to the practice in the current Hebrew calendar, in which the beginning of the months is also schematic, and fixed, and not based on observation.109

107

108

109

1 to 7 of the 10th lunar month would be in column ii in a section which is not extant; see Tigchelaar and Garcia Martínez “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 134; and Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 159–160. Drawnel has reconstructed scroll 4Q208 frg. 24 col. i as the crescent moon shining on night 2 for one-seventh, therefore, a 29-day month, and rising in Gate 4 on that night. The reconstructed text fits the data of the lunar fractions for month xii, night 2 to night 6. If so, this supersedes the suggestion in the editio princeps that the fragment describes month v, a 30-day month, night 2 to night 6. The moon rises in Gate 4 on night 2 of month v, changing signs from Gate 5 to Gate 4 (night 3); see Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 124–125; and Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 118–120. Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4Q Astronomical Enocha–b ar,” 97–99; Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 285–290 and 421–424 (Appendix i and ii); Francesca Rochberg-Halton, “Calendars: Ancient Near East,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D.N. Freedman, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1:810. Stern, Calendar and Community, 191–196.

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Table 2.3: Scroll 4Q209 Showing the Gates and the Corresponding Signs of the Zodiac

Extant fragments containing sufficient data with “gate” numbers are shaded. Top row: months; left column: days of the month; far right columns: fractions of the visible moon in half-sevenths for 29 and 30-day months, for example day 3 of a 29-day month is 1.5/7ths (excluding the fractions of the invisible parts of the moon in day 28 of a 29-day month and day 29 of a 30-day month). The shaded areas represent extant fragments with preserved “gate” numbers in bold and italics for the dates for the first time that the moon rises (waning) or sets (waxing) in that “gate” after sunset, that is, the presupposed new calendrical day in the lunar calendar. The non-extant gate numbers have been reckoned according to the schematic pattern of the moon changing zodiac signs every 2–3 days (described above). The pattern agrees with the extant gate numbers and the calculation of their position in the calendar according to their lunar fractions. The methodology supports Milik’s statement that the “gates” are only mentioned when the moon changes the “gate” in which it sets or rises.110 The preserved fragments with relevant data are as follows:111 Month i, nights 25–27: Scroll 4Q209 fragment 16. The waning moon on night 25 shines for 2/7ths and sets in Gate 3 (extant) in the morning, a new gate (therefore, having risen in Gate 2, its position after sunset on that date). The moon rises from Gate 3 on night 26 after sunset (date restored)112 and sets in Gate 3. (There is a possible overlap with 4Q208 frg. 15 for nights 26–27). Based on the days and fractions, it is a 30-day month.113 Month iii, nights 27 and 28: Scroll 4Q208 fragment 33. The waning moon rises and shines for 1/7th on day 27, setting in Gate 6 and on night 28 it rises from Gate 6, after sunset, shining for 0.5/7th, on the new calendrical day (a 30day month).114

110 111

112 113 114

Milik, The Books of Enoch, 283. The fragment numbering follows the Dead Sea Scrolls inventory system in Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series. The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library website has different fragment numbering in many instances (for example, 4Q209 frg. 7 is labelled 4Q209 frg. 1 on the website). In order to study the digitised fragments in the Leon Levy Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Library one has to identify the fragment from the plates in the print or electronic editions and compare the images and texts with those on the site. Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 180 (line 3). Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 154–155; and Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 178–180. Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 129; and Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 129–131.

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Month

jacobus Reconstruction of scroll fragments 4Q208–4Q209 with gate numbers and their corresponding zodiac signs (each gate number represents two zodiac signs). The schematic 354-day lunar calendar of alternating 29- and 30-day months begins on Nisan 1 with the moon in Aries. Extant gate numbers are in bold (with other relevant data shaded).

i

ii

iii

iv

v

vi

vii

viii

ix

x

xi

xii

Day

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

29d

30d

1/7ths of the visible moon 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 6♋ 6♌ 6♌ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 4♈

5♉ 5♉ 6♊ ♊ 4♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉

6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♊

6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋

5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 5♌

4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍

3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 3♎

2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏

1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♐

1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑

2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 33♓ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 2♒

3♓ 3♓ 4♈ 4♈ 5♉ 5♉ 6♊ 6♊ 6♊ 6♋ 6♋ 5♌ 5♌ 4♍ 4♍ 4♍ 3♎ 3♎ 2♏ 2♏ 1♐ 1♐ 1♐ 1♑ 1♑ 2♒ 2♒ 3♓ 3♓

.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 (7) 6.5 6 5.5 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 .5

.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 (7) 6.5 6 5.5 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 .5

Gate numbers key: Gate 4: Aries and Virgo; Gate 5: Taurus and Leo; Gate 6: Gemini and Cancer; Gate 3: Libra and Pisces; Gate 2: Scorpio and Aquarius; Gate 1: Sagittarius and Capricorn. The lunar fractions for 29 and 30-day months, in half-sevenths of “shining” (the moon’s visibility), are in the two right-hand columns. They begin on day 1 in a 29-day month and day 2 in a 30-day month.

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Month vii, nights 25 and 26: Scroll 4Q208 fragment 16. On night 25, the waning moon would set after sunset in Gate 5. It rises before sunset in Gate 4 and shines for 2/7ths (the scribe made an error which was corrected, stating that the moon shines for 2.5/7ths). It sets in Gate 4 and shines after sunset, the beginning of the new calendrical day, on the evening of night 26, in Gate 4 (a 30-day month). Month ix, nights 23–27: Scroll 4Q209 fragment 7, column ii. The waning moon would set in Gate 3 on night 23 in the morning, rising in Gate 3 after sunset. The moon sets in Gate 2 on night 25 in the morning and rises from Gate 2 on night 26, the new calendrical day, after sunset, shining for 1.5/7th. There is wide, broken space in the manuscript following night 27 (a 30-day month).115 Month x, nights 2–4/5: Scroll 4Q209 fragment 3 col. ii. On night 4 the waxing moon is 2/7ths light (in Gate 2) and it sets in Gate 3. It rises from Gate 3 and shines (and sets) in that gate after sunset on night 5. If our mathematical placement of this fragment is correct, it would have formed part of 4Q209 frg. 7 col. ii, after the wide margin (see above), because col. iii (below), begins on the 8th day of the 10th month (a 29-day month). Month x, nights 8–10: Scroll 4Q209 fragment 7, column iii: The sun rises in Gate 1 (in the text, not shown in Table 2.3). On day 9, before sunset, the waxing moon rises in Gate 5 and shines after sunset on night 10, the new calendrical day (a 29 day-month, see above).116 Month xii, nights 2–4: Scroll 4Q208 fragment 24 col. i: On day 2 the moon rises from Gate 4 in the daytime and shines during nights 3 and 4 after sunset, in Gate 4 (a 29-day month).117

10

The Proposed Nineteen-Year Cycle

Having argued that there is a relationship between the zodiac signs in 4Q318 and the “gates” in the synchronistic calendar in scrolls 4Q208 and 4Q209, a preliminary study is set out below. It is possible that, like the 360-day ideal

115

116 117

Milik, The Books of Enoch, 278–282; Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 134 and 145–146; and Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 159– 163. Milik, The Books of Enoch, 281–283; Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 147–148; and Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 163–165. Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 124–125; and Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 119–120.

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calendar in Mesopotamia—originally used for administrative purposes and later for magic and divination— the calendar in 4Q208–4Q209 could also be calibrated to fit astronomical reality. Accordingly, in lieu of appropriate computer software, the calendar in 4Q208–4Q209 is compared to astronomical actuality in order to enquire whether the calendar is workable and intended to be adjusted for use. This is done by aligning a date in the lunar calendar in 4Q208–4Q209 with the nearest equivalent date in the solar calendar in the nineteen-year cycle.118 To repeat, the actual years used in this study are for demonstration purposes for the nineteen-year cycle and are not intended to indicate particular or significant years historically. It is hypothesized that the calendar in 4Q208–4Q209 is a realistic single yardstick year in the nineteen-year cycle that begins with the first crescent on Nisan 1, when the moon is in Aries. With respect to parallels from Mesopotamia, Hartner maintained that the coincidence between 1 Nisannu (the first month) and the vernal equinox would have been a natural beginning for the repeated nineteen-year cycle.119 It will be seen (a) that 8th–10th Tevet in the Hebrew calendar, the dates preserved in our fragment in a sunset-to-sunset day division, can realistically coincide with the winter solstice in the Hebrew calendar; and (b) that tracking back the calendar in the same year in the manuscript, 1 Nisan in an actual year can come close to aligning with the vernal equinox to a day or so. The substitution of numbers for months and zodiac signs is attested in dif-

118

119

This preliminary study employs available computation to reconstruct the lunar calendar date of the vernal equinox in the same schematic year as scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii, following through the astronomical data for the winter solstice in this text. The results from the methodology in this study are for illustrative purposes only. It compares computerized retrojected data from the Hebrew calendar, which employs the nineteen-year/Metonic cycle (currently our only available and accessible comparative calendar), and computerized calendrical data for lunar phases at the equinoxes and solstices in antiquity, astrological programs and an on-line ephemeris for the zodiac positions of the sun and moon on given dates in antiquity. The main programs used are: a calendar conversion program for the Hebrew/Julian calendars in antiquity https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/ calendar/, the Astronomical Applications Dept, US Navy, astropixels.com (lunar phases in antiquity) http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/phasescat/phasescat.html. The astrological programs, Astrocalc (Undena Publications, 1982, cd); now available online at https://en .freedownloadmanager.org/Windows‑PC/AstroCalc.html, accessed 20 July 2019; and the Swiss Ephemeris, available online at https://www.astro.com/swisseph/swephinfo_e.htm, accessed 20 July 2019. Willy Hartner, “Old Iranian Calendars,” in Cambridge History of Iran, 7 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 2:742–743, cited and discussed in Sacha Stern, Calendars in Antiquity: Empire, States and Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 117 n. 123.

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ferent genres of astronomical-astrological cuneiform sources,120 some of which include divisions of the zodiac signs into degrees in various Babylonian magical hemerological texts.121 In the tables in the Appendix, the dates, the “gates” and the argued corresponding zodiac data in 4Q209 frg. 7 are examined; in particular, c. Tevet 8–10 to the winter solstice (in keeping approximately with the synchronism of the sunrise in Gate 1 at the time of 8–10/x) in 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii. I have used 0° of the cardinal zodiac signs—Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn (the solstices and equinoxes)—when reckoning the moon’s zodiac position in keeping with current research on ideal late Babylonian astronomy-astrology (the starting point of zodiac signs at 0° underlies ideal Seleucid sources)122 and Greek scientific practice, discussed further below.123

120

121

122 123

Laurie E. Pearce, Cuneiform Cryptography: Numerical Substitution for Syllabic and Logographic Signs (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1988); Brack-Bernsen and Steele, “Babylonian Mathemagics: Two Astronomical-Astrological Texts,”; and John M. Steele, “Astronomy and Culture in Late Babylonian Uruk,”Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union 7 (2011): 331–341. Arthur Ungnad, “Besprechungskunst und Kunst und Astrologie in Babylonien,” Archiv für Orientforschung 14 (1941–1944): 251–284; JoAnn Scurlock, “Sorcery in the Stars: stt 300, brm 19–20,” Archiv für Orientforschung 51 (2005–2006):125–146; and Geller, Melothesia in Babylonia, 28–39 and 40–41. Brack-Bernsen and Steele, “Babylonian Mathemagics,” 102–119. The fixing of the equinoxes and solstices at 0° of the cardinal zodiac signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra Capricorn was a Hellenistic innovation known by Euctemon (c. 431 bce), Callippus (c. 331 bce), and used by Hipparchus (fl. c. 150–125 bce), and in the calendar of Dionysius (285 bce to c. 241 bce); see Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 2:600. Bowen and Goldstein suggested that Meton adopted 0° as the cardinal degree for the equinoxes and solstices, following Euctemon, in Bowen and Goldstein, “Meton of Athens,” 61. Roughton, Steele, and Walker found the 0° cardinal degree in a late Babylonian text; see N.A. Roughton, John M. Steele, and C.B.F. Walker, “A Late Babylonian Normal and Ziqpu Star Text,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 58, 6 (2004): 537–572, at 452 n. 28. It is also possible that 1° of the cardinal zodiac signs was used in the Antikythera Mechanism; see Derek J. De Solla Price, “Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism—A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 bc,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 64, 7 (1974): 1–70 (at 18–19 n. 11, the degree of the autumnal equinox on the zodiac ring of the Antikythera Mechanism was marked with the Greek letter alpha, i.e., the numeral 1 and indicated either 30° Virgo or 1° Libra). In Price’s view it probably straddled 1° Libra. See also Alexander Jones, A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 108. Price’s findings have been confirmed and extended from computed tomography (ct) data.

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The Solstices and Equinoxes in Babylonian and Greek Astronomy as Astronomical Background

In one aspect of Greek astronomy attributed to Hipparchus and known from Ptolemy’s Almagest, the vernal equinox, defined as the intersection between the celestial equator and the ecliptic, took place when the sun was at 0°, the first degree in Greek astronomy.124 Hence, the summer solstice, autumnal equinox, and winter solstice occurred when the sun was at 0° of Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn, respectively.125 The time-unit of a year, known as the tropical year, was defined as the time of the return of the sun’s passage from vernal equinox to vernal equinox, or from solstice to solstice.126 Due to an anomaly in the earth’s axis of rotation, the vernal equinox moves backwards, that is, westwards, along the zodiac belt contrary to the direction of the sun’s annual motion along the ecliptic, drifting with respect to the “fixed” stars about 1° every 72 years. This causes the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes; Hipparchus, who interpreted the phenomenon in a geocentric system in which the Earth was still, estimated that the shift of the starry sphere was about 1° every 100 years, a value adopted by Ptolemy.127 As the longitude of the fixed stars in relation to the vernal equinox slowly increases over time, the vernal equinox makes a complete circuit against the moving background of the ancient zodiac constellations approximately every 26,000 years (for the value of the precession mentioned above).128 Consequently, in the tropical zodiac the longitude of the fixed stars appears to have moved by about one zodiac sign with respect to the vernal point, as seen from

124 125

126

127

128

Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 2:582 n. 22. Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:293; Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 131. Evans and Berggren (ed.), Geminos’ Introduction to the Phenomena, 114–115 (i.9). Geminos writes that according to Greek astronomers the solstices and equinoxes occur in the first degrees of these signs, and that Chaldean astronomers place the cardinal points at 8°. See also Jones, A Portable Cosmos, 106–107 and 107–109 (on the zodiac scale of the Antikythera Mechanism). Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:293; and Clemency Montelle, “The Celestial Sphere,” in Hellenistic Astronomy: The Science in its Contexts, ed. A.C. Bowen and F. Rochberg (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 12–16. Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:54–55 and 2:631; Montelle, “The Celestial Sphere,” 22–23; and Gerd Grasshoff, “Star Lists from the Babylonians to Ptolemy,” in Hellenistic Astronomy: The Science in its Contexts, ed. A.C. Bowen and F. Rochberg (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 243–244. Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:292–296; and Otto Neugebauer, “The Alleged Babylonian Discovery of the Precession of the Equinoxes,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 70 (1950): 1–8; and Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing, 128.

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the Earth, since Hipparchus’ time. Hence, when measured against the background of the stars, 0° Aries is no longer the vernal point, it is currently in the early part of Pisces, apparently moving westwards towards Aquarius. Babylonian astronomers defined the year as the sun’s apparent return to the same position in the sky with respect to a fixed star, a time-period known as the sidereal year, not the return of the sun from vernal equinox to vernal equinox.129 The zero point cardinal degree is unattested in the textual evidence of of late Babylonian astronomy (c. 300 bce), in which the solstices and equinoxes were reckoned sidereally. The zodiac signs of equal sizes of 30° were formed by the positions of significant, exemplary stars, called “normal stars” by modern scholars, on the boundaries of the zodiac constellations centered on the ecliptic, divided at 30° intervals, or possibly from the middle of the signs.130 The first sign of the sidereal zodiac is also Aries, and being independent of the moving vernal equinox, it is not affected by precession. When the sidereal zodiac was in its final formative stage at around 400bce,131 there is no evidence that the Babylonians were aware of the phenomenon of precession.132 The concept of precession was hardly ever mentioned in ancient astronomical literature until Ptolemy,133 and the history of transmission and use of the Babylonian systems in Greek astronomy is complex. Since the longitude of the signs in the sidereal zodiac did not begin at the vernal equinox, the seasonal turning points of the year did not align with zero degrees of the cardinal zodiac signs. From other astronomical texts and ancient scientific literature, it is known that the vernal equinox in Babylonian astron-

129

130

131 132

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Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 128 and 131–133; Britton, “Studies in Babylonian lunar theory: Part iii. The introduction of the uniform zodiac,” 619; Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:368–369 and 2:593–600; and “The Alleged Babylonian Discovery of the Precession of the Equinoxes.” For research confirming that the sidereal zodiac was used by the Babylonians (based on observational data in the Astronomical Diaries), see John M. Steele and Jennifer M. Gray, “A Study of Babylonian Observations Involving the Zodiac,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 38 (2007): 443–458. Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 126–131; Steele and Gray, “Study of Babylonian Observations Involving the Zodiac,” 453–454 and 456–457; Britton, “Introduction of the Uniform Zodiac,” 632; and Mathieu Ossendrijver, “Techniques of Measurement and Computation,” in Hellenistic Astronomy: The Science in its Contexts, ed. A.C. Bowen and F. Rochberg (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 48. Britton, “Uniform Zodiac,” 646, 648–649. Neugebauer, “The Alleged Babylonian Discovery of the Precession of the Equinoxes,” 1–8; Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:369; and Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 128, 132. Montelle, “Celestial Sphere,” 23.

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omy was located at the 8th degree of Aries or, from other texts, at 10 degrees of Aries; 12 degrees is also attested.134 Thus, the summer solstice, autumnal equinox, and winter solstice occurred when the sun was at those degrees of Cancer, Libra, Capricorn, respectively. The cardinal points of 8° Aries and 10° Aries in Babylonian mathematical astronomy are attested in Greco-Roman science and western scientific literature, and they were still in use in the medieval period.135 The variant systems of computations to account for the differential in the positions of the Babylonian vernal equinox are not understood.136 Although the Babylonians never used the value of 0° Aries for the vernal equinox (nor, therefore, 0° for the autumnal equinox and the summer and winter solstices),137 it is implied in schematic micro-zodiac texts, possibly for mathematical convenience, as noted above. It being accepted that 4Q208 is dated to the early second century bce by paleography and radiocarbon dating, it is possible that the 0° of the cardinal points was used in the schematic calendar of 4Q208–4Q209, influenced by either schematic Babylonian astronomy or Hellenistic astronomy (if they could be separated at this historical stage). The tables (see Appendix at the end of this chapter) compare actual nineteen-year cycles with the data of the ideal lunisolar year in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 1–2 and 5–6, and take the single ideal year represented in the Qumran text as beginning theoretically with the sun at 0° Aries and the moon at 13°, based on the mathematical reconstruction in Table 2.3. The methodology and results are summarized in the next section. The point of the tables in the Appendix is to explore whether the Astronomical Enoch Aramaic calendar from Qumran requires intercalation in order to be used. If this procedure took place it may be argued that this calendar could be used easily on a schematic basis.

134

135

136

137

Otto Neugebauer, “The Rising Times in Babylonian Astronomy,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 7 (1953): 100–102; Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:368–369 and 598; Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 132–133; Evans and Berggren (ed.), Geminos’ Introduction, 114–115 (1.9); and Ossendrijver, “Techniques,” 43. Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 2:594–598; and Francesca Rochberg, “The Babylonian Contribution to Greco-Roman Astronomy,” in Hellenistic Astronomy: The Science in its Contexts, ed. A.C. Bowen and F. Rochberg (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 147–159. Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 133; Francesca Rochberg-Halton, “New Evidence for the History of Astronomy,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 43 (1984): 115–162; and Steele and Gray, “Study of Babylonian Observations Involving the Zodiac,” 443–458. Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 2:600.

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Summary of Findings

The methodology in the Appendix to this chapter assumed that the fragments represented one single year of a synchronistic calendar. They fortuitously contain data for the sunrise and sunset at the winter solstice of the year in question, in 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii. Following the proposed arrangement of dates of 4Q208–4Q209 from a few fragments for this year (reconstructed in Table 2.3), the nineteen-year/Metonic cycle was investigated to see if the proposed single year in the text was a significant ideal year in the cycle that could be adjusted to real years. To do this, I explored the luni-solar date at the vernal equinox and the winter solstice in single years in real nineteen-year cycles from the early first century ce to the third century bce (see tables in the Appendix to this chapter). The objective was to see if 1 Nisan could coincide with the vernal equinox when the sun was in Aries, and if then the new crescent moon in Gate 4 (Aries) on day 1 / month I occurred in the same real year as the moon in Gate 4 and 5 (Aries and Taurus) on days 8–10 of month x, when the sun was stated to be in Gate 1 at the winter solstice (the beginning of Capricorn), in our reconstitution of the ideal calendar, 4Q208–4Q209. The spring phenomenon of 1 Nisan coinciding with the vernal equinox every 19 years is an ideal year with which to commence the nineteen-year cycle. Hence, according to our reconstruction this occurred in a year when the winter solstice fell around the dates preserved in our text. The “gates” and the equivalent position of the sun and the moon in the zodiac were tested against aligned approximate equivalent dates in the Hebrew calendar in actual years in order to demonstrate the astronomical viability of 4Q208–4Q209 as a synchronized, luni-solar-stellar ideal calendar that could be calibrated with the nineteen-year/Metonic cycle. It has been stressed that the corresponding years that matched our data are not historically significant in themselves, since the cycle is repeated mathematically every 19 years. In Table 2.5 (see Appendix) it is seen that on 23 March, 3 ce, the vernal equinox was on, or close to the lunar crescent and the retrojected Hebrew date, Nisan 2, according to modern computation. The sun was also on, or close to, the cardinal point of 0° Aries.138 The moon was at 14° Aries, a just-visible, day-old

138

Data for the new moon (conjunction) and vernal equinox taken from the United States Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department, Spring Phenomena (25 bce– 38 ce). Data for 17 bce is accurate to within 2–3 hours; it is accurate for 3 ce. to within 1–2 hours; see online at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/SpringPhenom.php, accessed 20 July 2019. For the conversion of the Hebrew calendar dates online see footnote 49 of this chapter. Sun and Moon zodiac data according to Astrocalc and the Swiss Ephemeris.

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crescent. At the winter solstice, on 24 December, 3 ce (Table 2.10 in Appendix), the lunar date was 11 Tevet, and the moon was in Taurus, which is also within range of the zodiac sign for this date in the reconstruction (Table 2.3). On 22/23 March, 9bce, equivalent to 1 Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the sun and the moon were both at the beginning of Aries at around midnight (Table 2.5) (in conjunction, not the first crescent, as stated above). In the same year, 9 bce (Table 2.4 in Appendix) the winter solstice fell on the retrojected Hebrew calendar date of 9 Tevet and the moon’s zodiac position was in Aries, in line with scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 4–7 in the reconstructed year (Table 2.3: day 9 of month x, Gate 4 / Aries). When all corresponding dates for the winter solstice for that nineteen-year cycle were computed (Table 2.8 in Appendix), it was seen that days 9–11 Tevet had a lunar zodiac position, mainly in the latter degrees of Aries or the early degrees of Taurus, that was in line with the zodiac hypothesis (Gate 5 equating to Taurus on days 10–11 of month x, in Table 2.3). It is valid to postulate, or at least not rule out, that the ideal year in the Aramaic synchronistic calendar was intended to begin at the spring equinox, although 1 Nisan only coincides with the equinox infrequently. A similar ideal year has been postulated, by Sacchi, as the basis of the calendar in 1 Enoch 72.139 An actual exposition of the solar, lunar, equinoctial, and zodiac positions for the nineteen-year cycle in question, with times (thereby expanding the data for Table 2.5 in 3ce and 17bce), illustrates that the reconstruction of scrolls 4Q208–4Q209 is close to reality as an ideal calendar that can be used with the nineteen-year cycle:140

139

140

Sacchi interpreted 1 Enoch 73: 4, which states that the moon rises on the 30th day of the month through the same gate as the sun, to be based on the Enoch author’s “hypothesis of a year in which the first day of the solar year coincides with the new moon,” see Paolo Sacchi, “The Two Calendars of the Book of Astronomy,” in Jewish Apocalyptic and Its History (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press 1990), 128–139 (at 131). The term “new moon” is ambiguous, so it is unclear whether the Sacchi meant the conjunction or lunar crescent. He adds that the “alternation of 29 and 30 days in the moon’s phases is not mentioned.” However, Neugebauer points out that the verse indicates that the previous month was a hollow month of 29 days; see Neugebauer, The ‘Astronomical’ Chapters, 15. Nickelsburg and VanderKam suggest that 1 Enoch 73:5–8 corresponds to 4Q209 frg. 7 cols. ii–iii; see Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch, 100, note n. Computation, as in note 158 below (Tables 2.12 and 2.13 in Appendix). The data has been computed for Universal Time, Greenwich, for convenience, not Jerusalem, so there is a slight difference to the data in Table 2.5.

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March, 3ce New Moon: 21st, (15.00 ut = Universal Time) Nisan 1st: 21st (from sunset) / 22nd (to sunset) Nisan 2nd: Vernal Equinox 23rd (9.00 ut) Nisan 3rd: Sun 23rd, Aries 0° (19:00 ut) Nisan 3rd: Moon 23rd, Aries 25° (19:00 ut) March, 17bce (the next parallel year in the nineteen-year cycle) New Moon: 21st (8:00 ut) Nisan 1: 21st (from sunset) / 22nd (to sunset) Nisan 2nd: Vernal Equinox 22nd March, (18:00 ut) Nisan 2nd: Sun 23rd, Aries 0° (08:00 ut) Nisan 2nd: Moon 23rd, Aries 21° (08:00 ut) In these parallel years in the nineteen-year cycle the vernal equinox, which comes near to 0° Aries, correlates with a visible lunar crescent on Nisan 2nd (on March 23, 3ce; March 22, 17bce), that is, usually on the day after the beginning of the luni-solar year. If 4Q209 calendar describes an ideal year, it could, therefore, possibly be one in which the lunar crescent appears in Aries, close to the vernal equinox. What this examination has shown is that 4QAstronomical Enocha–b could have been used to ascertain a schematic formulaic zodiac position of the moon. The lunar and solar zodiac positions could be used for astrological purposes, as reflected in the zodiac formula for the thunder omen text, 4QBrontologion, which uses the moon’s position in the zodiac as given in 4QZodiac Calendar. Although it is true, of course, that there are no zodiac signs in 4Q208–4Q209, there is no obvious reason why there should be “gates” in the Aramaic text, since there is no evidence for their use in signifying the ratio of the lengths daytime to nighttime as there are in the Book of the Luminaries. This problem led Drawnel to the conclusion that they were used randomly and that their purpose was unknown. If there is a purposeful “gate” scheme, which, as has been demonstrated, is feasible, then it is also possible that 4Q208–4Q209 could also have been applied astrologically using the sun and the moon. In conclusion, by examining the Aramaic calendars more technically and reconstructing the ideal year for 4Q208–4Q209 with the zodiac it is possible that, like 4QZodiac Calendar, 4QAstronomical Enocha–b is a useable tool for a possible astrological purpose. The texts also enable the practitioner to easily calculate the degree, or position of the sun in a zodiac sign using the conceptual equivalent of the sun’s motion of one degree per day on the eclip-

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tic,141 where the sun’s entrance into the next zodiac sign is determined by its position at the solstices and equinoxes in the luni-solar calendar in a system comparable to the late Babylonian Uruk Scheme. These manuscript fragments are evidence of the only such tables found within a Jewish context. Whether or not they were utilized for astrological purposes with other techniques, used alone, or were simply meant to be cosmologically and astronomically descriptive, perhaps for educational purposes, is not known. What is intriguing and remarkable is that the perpetual Aramaic calendars found at Qumran can arguably be read with the nineteen-year/Metonic cycle as it has been preserved in the present Hebrew calendar when the position of the moon in the zodiac is factored in. This finding invites further exploration in related areas of research.

Appendix with Tables Notes in relation to Table 2.4 In Table 2.4, all the years with the Julian and Hebrew dates in the nineteenyear cycle 3ce–16bce are shown with the zodiac position of the moon and its gate number when the sun is at 0° Capricorn, the winter solstice (ws). The year 17bce, the parallel year in the Metonic cycle to 3 ce, is also shown because the methodology involves comparing the relevant corresponding ideal luni-solar years of an existing nineteen-year cycle with scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii line 1–2 and 5–6 in the following tables below. The year 9bce, as an illustration, is also of interest: in that year, the ws falls on Tevet 9 (in bold) when the moon is in the last decan of Aries (20°–30°), corresponding to Gate 4. (The fact that 9 bce is close to the date that scroll 4Q209 was copied is not significant as the calendar, it is proposed, is based on the 19 year/Metonic cycle; therefore, the moon’s phase and zodiac position is repeated close to that date every 19 years). Applied to the Qumran text, the moon will be in Gate 5 (Taurus, if the solar month is equated to the zodiac month) close to day 10 of month x in the reconstructed text (equated to c. Tevet 10). The actual years in the cycle in the Hebrew calendar, used for demonstration purposes only, which align closely to the data in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii—3 ce, 9 bce, and 17bce—are due for an intercalary Adar in the following year.142 141

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Using a system similar that described in Evans and Berggren (ed.), Geminos’ Introduction, 114 (i 6), that is, acknowledging that the sun moves one revolution of 360° through the zodiac in one year; see Brack-Bernsen and Hunger, “The Babylonian Zodiac,” 289. The intercalary years in the Hebrew calendar are years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, 19. This is similar to

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Table 2.4 shows the data for the sun and moon’s positions at the winter solstice (0° Capricorn) for one nineteen-year cycle for the solar date in the Julian calendar, plus the 19th year, counting exclusively, as stated above, so that one can see that the moon returns to the same position in the zodiac, at the same age, on the same or similar date, every 19 years. The sun’s position of 0° Capricorn falls on the retrojected Hebrew date, 11 Tevet in 3 ce and 17bce of the Julian calendar (shaded), and on 9 Tevet in 9 bce (shaded), dates that are within range of the data in 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii. The zodiac position of the moon in Table 2.4 is compared to its positions on dates in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii (Tables 2.6 and 2.7).143 For convenience and ease, the remainder of the data are set to midnight, Universal Time (the longitude of Greenwich, United Kingdom). (The difference in results is small: the moon is about 1° ahead for the longitude of Jerusalem, not significant enough to have an impact on the results.) The lunar date is presupposed to begin at sunset on the solar, Julian calendar date of the day before and ends at sunset. The Julian calendar is reckoned from midnight as it is today, by modern computation, not from sunrise to sunrise as it was in practice, thus, 11 Tevet in 3 ce equates to 23/24 Dec, sunset to sunset. The purpose is to show that the zodiac position of the moon in 4Q208–4Q209 could be ascertained by using the ideal zodiac calendar at Qumran adapted to the nineteen-year/Metonic cycle. In Table 2.4 it may be seen that if one takes the solar position of the winter solstice in the zodiac, 0° Capricorn (traditionally coinciding with 23rd or 24th December), from 3 ce to 16bce, as an example from the cycle, the computed date in the Hebrew calendar can fall on any date between 29 Kislev (the earli-

143

the sequence in the Babylonian calendar, which has an intercalary Ululu (sixth month) in the first year of the cycle; see Britton, “Calendars, Intercalations and Year-Lengths,” 121–123. Cf. Neugebauer, who states that intercalary Elul took place in the 18th year of the cycle and that intercalations were fixed in years 1, 4, 7, 9, 12, 15, and 18; see Neugebauer, Astronomical Cuneiform Texts, 1:33. Rabbinical sources are divided as to whether an intercalary Elul was removed from the Hebrew calendar in antiquity or during the process of Jewish calendrical reform before the calendar was finally fixed in the medieval period; see Wacholder and Weisberg, “Visibility of the New Moon,” 237–238. They placed the intercalary Elul in the 17th year, following Parker and Dubberstein; see Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626bc–ad 75 (Providence: Brown University Press, 1956), 6, Plate 1. The position of the moon in the zodiac on the Hebrew dates in Tables 2.4 and 2.5 are reckoned at midnight for the corresponding day in the Julian calendar (calculated for 11:59p.m. on the previous day). For example, the moon’s position at midnight 24 December, 3 ce is computed for 23 December at 11:59 p.m. for the latitude of Jerusalem.

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jacobus Winter solstices (ws) for the nineteen-year cycle 3ce–16bce and 17bce (Jerusalem, midnight).

Hebrew date Julian date

Sun in zodiac (ws) Moon in zodiac (Lunar Gate)

11 Tevet 30 Kislev 19 Tevet 7 Tevet* 27 Tevet 16 Tevet 5 Tevet* 23 Tevet 13 Tevet 2 Tevet* 21 Tevet 9 Tevet 29 Kislev* 17 Tevet 7 Tevet* 25 Tevet 15 Tevet* 3 Tevet 23 Tevet 11 Tevet

0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn

24 Dec, 3 ce 23 Dec, 2 ce 23 Dec, 1 ce 23 Dec, 1 bce 24 Dec, 2 bce 23 Dec, 3 bce 23 Dec, 4 bce 23 Dec, 5 bce 24 Dec, 6 bce 23 Dec, 7 bce 23 Dec, 8 bce 23 Dec, 9 bce 24 Dec, 10 bce 23 Dec, 11 bce 23 Dec, 12 bce 23 Dec, 13 bce 24 Dec, 14 bce 23 Dec, 15 bce 23 Dec, 16 bce 23 Dec, 17 bce

20° Taurusa 3° Capricorn 21° Leo 2° Aries 1° Sagittarius 13° Cancer 29° Aquarius 11° Libra 10° Gemini 22° Capricorn 6° Virgo 21° Aries 20° Sagittarius 2° Leo 14° Pisces 1° Scorpio 30° Gemini 12° Aquarius 22° Virgo 11° Taurus

5 1 5 4 1 6 2 3 6 1 4 4 1 5 3 2 6 2 4 5

a Note that in the sidereal zodiac, the moon was at 23° Taurus and the sun at 3° Capricorn (Swiss Ephemeris). *Years with a previous intercalary Adar

est date, in 10bce) to 27 Tevet (the latest date, in 2 bce). The Hebrew date, 11 Tevet (equating to c. night 11 of month x) 3 ce has the moon in Taurus (Gate 5) as does the reconstructed Qumran text (Table 2.3). The lunar zodiac position is close to that on 17bce, one cycle, or 20 years apart. On 9 Tevet (equating to c. night 9 of month x) 9 bce the moon is in Aries (Gate 4), also in agreement with Table 2.3. For precision, if degrees were superimposed on the text, the retrojected Hebrew calendar date closest to scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii, showing the closest corresponding zodiac position of the moon at the winter solstice is 9 Tevet, 9 bce (23rd December in the Julian calendar) (cf. night 9, month x: 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 5–6). The moon is in the third decan of Aries, 20°–

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30° (Aries corresponds to Gate 4). The Qumran text states that the moon rises in Gate 5 after sunset on night 10, month x (4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii lines 7–9). The computed data commensurate with the sun’s and moon’s synchronization in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii is a realistic alignment. It can be shown that the intersection between the winter solstice and the lunar date informs the reader where the year in the text falls in the nineteen-year cycle (as does the Uruk scheme).144 As noted above, in late Mesopotamian astrology, the date of the winter solstice is stated in an individual’s horoscope.145 Notes in relation to Table 2.5 Table 2.5 shows that the Julian date, 22/23 March, 9 bce, aligns with the retrojected Hebrew calendar date, 1 Nisan. According to astronomical computation the vernal equinox took place on March 22, 9bce at 5 p.m.146 The sun was in

144

145

146

The Uruk Scheme is a late Babylonian arithmetical system that presupposes the nineteenyear cycle used for determining the dates of the solstices and equinoxes (and the phases of Sirius). It is attested in tablets from 350 bce until about 50bce and is equivalent to the nineteen-year intercalary cycle in a simple form, consisting of seven intercalations in 19 years. The first year of the cycle was usually marked by an intercalary sixth month (vi2) and an intercalary twelfth month (xii2) was spaced at two and three year intervals; see Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:361–363. Neugebauer’s dates were modified by Britton, “Treatments,” 22, 43–44 (Fig. 7), 48, 51 n. 41, 76–77, Figure D, Appendix D, and 78; and Alice Slotsky, “The Uruk Scheme Revisited” in Hannes D. Galter, ed. Die Rolle der Astronomie in den Kulturen Mesopotamiens (Graz: GrazKult, 1993), 359–366. The origins of the scheme are unknown but it is believed to post-date the fixation of the nineteen-year cycle from the Achaemenid period, and there is textual evidence that it predated the Seleucid era and that it was used during that time; see Otto Neugebauer, “The Solstices and Equinoxes in Babylonian Astronomy during the Seleucid Period 1948,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 2 (1948): 209–222; and Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 1:362 (Table 3). The scheme consists of the placement of the solstices and equinoxes at equal intervals in the year, beginning with the summer solstice. The day equates to the time-unit of one tithi, which is equivalent to 1/30 of a month; hence the chronometric arrangement is in tithis, rather than solar days. The cardinal points of summer solstice (ss), autumnal equinox (ae), and winter solstice (ws) are spaced at 3 months and 3 tithis apart; and the spring, or vernal equinox (ve) is 3 months and 2 tithis from the ss, thus adding up to a “solar” year of 12 months and 11 tithis. In Rochberg (Babylonian Horoscopes, 44, Table 3.2), there are five birth charts in which the date of the winter solstice is noted: Texts 6 (285 bce), 8 (251bce), 14 (220bce), 15 (203bce), and 23 (115 bce). In Text 8 the winter solstice falls on Tebetu 8 (Year 5 of the nineteen-year cycle in the Uruk scheme); see Rochberg, Babylonian Horoscopes, 77–78. The data for the new moon (conjunction) and the vernal equinox are taken from the United States Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department, Spring Phenomena (25 bce.–38 ce) https://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/SpringPhenom.php.

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table 2.5

Dates for the vernal equinoxes (ve) for the nineteen-year cycle 3ce–16bce and 17 bce (Jerusalem, midnight).

Hebrew date

Julian date

Sun in zodiac (ve)

Moon in zodiac

2 Nisan 20 Adar ii 9 Nisan 28 Adar ii 18 Nisan 7 Nisan 24 Adar ii 15 Nisan 5 Nisan 22 Adar ii 11 Nisan 1 Nisan 18 Adar ii 9 Nisan 26 Adar ii 17 Nisan 6 Nisan 24 Adar ii 13 Nisan 2 Nisan

23 Mar, 3ce 23 Mar, 2ce 23 Mar, 1ce 23 Mar, 1bce 23 Mar, 2bce 23 Mar, 3bce 23 Mar, 4bce 23 Mar, 5bce 24 Mar, 6bce 23 Mar, 7bce 23 Mar, 8bce 23 Mar, 9bce 23 Mar, 10bce 23 Mar, 11bce 23 Mar, 12bce 23 Mar, 13bce 24 Mar, 14bce 23 Mar, 15bce 23 Mar, 16bce 23 Mar, 17bce

0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries

14° Aries 13° Sagittarius 25° Cancer 11° Pisces 23° Libra 23° Gemini 3° Aquarius 21° Virgo 4° Taurus 2° Capricorn 11° Leo 1° Aries 15° Scorpio 11° Cancer 20° Aquarius 10° Libra 7° Gemini 19° Capricorn 29° Leo 19° Aries

conjunction with the moon at around midnight on March 22, 9 bce147 at 0° Aries.148 1 Nisan should ideally coincide with the observable first lunar crescent on the western horizon after sunset astronomically, meaning an elongation of at least 10°,149 which would have been the case by sunset on March 23, 9 bce (Nisan 2). 147

148

149

Data from www.astropixels.com, notice that the New Moon, March 22, -0008 equates to 9 bce, 11:59 p.m., conjunction, see http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/phasescat/phases ‑0099.html. For the Sun and Moon zodiac data the Astrocalc computer program was computed for Jerusalem at midnight for the vernal equinox date (when the sun is at 0° Aries) in the Julian calendar. The zodiac used by the usnoaa is the tropical zodiac. US Navy Observatory Astronomical Applications Department (usnoaa), https://aa.usno .navy.mil/faq/docs/crescent.php.

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On the 23 March, 3 ce, the first lunar crescent was on 2 Nisan.150 The sun was also on, or close to, the cardinal point of 0° Aries.151 The moon was at 14° Aries, and was a new crescent (astronomically, an ideal 1 Nisan). In detail, in Table 2.5 it can be seen that on 23 March, 3ce, the vernal equinox (at 9am) was on,152 or close to, the lunar crescent and the retrojected Hebrew date, 2 Nisan, (shaded) according to modern computation. Notes in relation to Tables 2.6 and 2.7 The demonstration years 3ce and 17bce, in which 8th–10th Tevet coincide with the winter solstice are further explored in Tables 2.6 and 2.7. Again, to repeat, it is not suggested that the schematic calendar is referenced to a historically significant year in the cycle. The Qumran data are compared to the winter solstice dates in the Julian calendar, the retrojected Hebrew calendar dates in the same years, and the zodiac positions of the sun and the moon on those dates (in bold). As the data are aligned to the Hebrew calendar dates, they cover two Julian calendar dates from sunset to sunset because the Julian calendar dates begin at midnight. In Table 2.4 the data were computed for midnight in the Julian calendar; therefore, the lunar data in Table 2.6 and 2.7, computed for sunset at the beginning of the lunar date would be expected to begin about two degrees or so before that as the mean motion of the moon is about 1° per two hours, and sunset in Jerusalem at this time of year is about 4:40 p.m.153 For 11 Tevet, 3 ce, the moon’s zodiac position at midnight on 24 December was c. 20° Taurus (Table 2.4), and c. 17°–29° Taurus from sunset to sunset on 23–24 December (Tables 2.6 and 2.7). For 11 Tevet in 17bce, the moon’s zodiac position at midnight was c. 11° Taurus on 23 December (Table 2.4); and 150 151

152

153

The moon at 14° Aries when the sun is at 0° Aries would be a thin crescent after sunset as the moon moves at about 13° per day. The data for the new moon (conjunction) and the vernal equinox are taken from the United States Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department, Spring Phenomena (25 bce–38 ce). Data for 17 bce is accurate to within 2–3 hours, for 3 ce. to within 1– 2 hours, http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/SpringPhenom.php. New Moon, c. midnight, March 21, 17 bce (-0016), see http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/phasescat/phases‑0099 .html. New Moon 3 ce. For converted Hebrew calendar dates online see footnote 49 of this chapter. The vernal equinox established by observation prior to the Julian calendar was slightly different. According to Ptolemy, Hipparchus observed the spring equinox at dawn on 24 March, 146 bce and after midnight on 23/24 March, 135bce; see Gerald James Toomer, Ptolemy’s Almagest (London: Duckworth, 1984), 135 and 138 (iii 1) (paragraphs marked H199, H205 respectively in the margin). Program used available online at http://www.timeanddate.com/.

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94 table 2.6

jacobus Dates in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii compared to dates in the Julian calendar for the demonstration year 3 ce. The Hebrew dates are shaded and the solar and zodiac dates are in bold.

Solar date / Parallel Lunar day Lunar Gate sunrise solar of month in gate zodiac text Scroll 4Q209 sign 7 iii After sunset

Parallel lunar zodiac sign for day

Julian date sunset to sunset

1st day of the Sag/Cap (8th day) ‘solar month’ / the sun is in Gate 1

(4)

(Aries)

20–21 27°–28° Dec, 3ce Sag

Gate 1

(4) Aries before before moonset moonset

Sag/Cap 9th day

Solar zodiac computation

Approx. Hebrew date computed

Lunar zodiac computation

8 Tevet

11°–23° Aries

22–23 0°–1° Cap 9 Tevet Dec, 3ce

17° Aries–0° Taurus

5 after Taurus moonset after moonset (line 6) Gate 1

Sag/Cap 10th day

(5)

(Taurus)

22–23 29° Sag– Dec, 3ce 0° Cap

10 Tevet

5°–17° Taurus

Gate 1

Sag/Cap 11th day

(5)

(Taurus)

23–24 0°–1° Cap 11 Tevet Dec, 3ce

17°–29° Taurus

c. 8°–20° Taurus from sunset to sunset on 22–23 December (Tables 2.6 and 2.7). Hence, the moon has returned to the same zodiac position on the same luni-solar date (and therefore, the same phase) after 19 years. Moonset, when the moon changed its “gate” to Gate 5 (scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii line 6) follows sunset when the moon is waxing. In the tables below, the demonstration year is 3ce, the Hebrew date is shaded and the solar and zodiac data are in bold. Notes in the relation to Table 2.8 Table 2.8 illustrates the dates of the winter solstice for actual consecutive nineteen-year cycles from 9bce to 275bce (following Table 2.4). The corresponding Julian calendar dates in the nineteen-year cycle of the retrojected Hebrew calendar cycle ranged from 9 Tevet to 11 Tevet, corresponding to the data concerning “gates” (and their equivalent zodiac signs) in the Qumran fragments. The moon was in Aries and Taurus, equating to Gates 4 and 5; Gate 5

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aramaic calendars in the dead sea scrolls table 2.7

Dates in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. iii 1–9 compared to dates in the Julian calendar for the demonstration year 17 bce. The Hebrew dates are shaded and the solar and zodiac dates are in bold.

Solar date / Solar Gate sunrise zodiac

Lunar day

Lunar gate

Lunar zodiac

Julian date sunset to sunset

Solar zodiac computation

Approx. Hebrew date computed

Lunar zodiac computation

(Aries)

19–20 Dec, 17bce

27°–28° Sagitt

8 Tevet

1°–13° Aries

20–21 Dec, 17bce

28°–29° Sagitt

9 Tevet

13°–25° Aries

Scroll 4Q209 7 iii Month 9/10 (Gate 1)

Sag/Cap 8th

(4)

Month 9/10 (Gate 1)

Sag/Cap 9th

(4) Aries before before moonset; moonset; 5 after Taurus moonset after moonset (line 6)

Month 9/10 (Gate 1)

Sag/Cap 10th

(5)

(Taurus)

21–22 Dec, 29° 10 Tevet 17bce Sagitt–0° Capricorn

25° Aries–8° Taurus

Month 9/10 (Gate 1)

Sag/Cap 11th

(5)

(Taurus)

22–23 Dec, 17bce

8°–20° Taurus

0°–1° Cap 11 Tevet

being extant in 4Q209 fragment 7 col. iii lines 6 and 8 (part-restored). In 9 bce the moon was approximately in the late degrees of Aries (Gate 4), moving into the early degrees of Taurus (Gate 5) when sun was at 0° Capricorn on 9 Tevet, by modern computation, which is in agreement with our text.154

154

The approximate motion of the moon is 1° per 2 hours (as the lunar motion is schematically 13° per day). Therefore, on December 23, 9 bce, at 21° Aries (at midnight, Jerusalem) the moon, crudely calculated by mental reckoning, would be about 18 hours away from 0° Taurus at 4 p.m., an approximate sunset time. Cf. Astrocalc computer program: the moon was at 28° Aries, 4 p.m., 23 December, 9 bce, Jerusalem, in the zodiac beginning at 0° Aries (and at 2° Taurus in the sidereal zodiac). Sunset was at 16.41 on 9 Tevet, 24 December, 2001, Jerusalem, for example, see https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/israel/jerusalem.

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96 table 2.8

jacobus Dates for the year 9 bce plus the nineteen-year cycles for the winter solstices (ws) until the third century bce.

Hebrew date

Julian date

Sun in zodiac (ws) Moon in zodiac

9 Tevet 10 Tevet 9 Tevet 10 Tevet 10 Tevet 10 Tevet 9 Tevet 10 Tevet 9 Tevet 10 Tevet 11 Tevet 10 Tevet 10 Tevet 10 Tevet 11 Tevet

Dec 23, 9bce Dec 23, 28bce Dec 24, 47bce Dec 24, 66bce Dec 23, 85bce Dec 24, 104bce Dec 24, 123bce Dec 25, 142bce Dec 24, 161bce Dec 24, 180bce Dec 25, 199bce Dec 25, 218bce Dec 24, 237bce Dec 25, 256bce Dec 25, 275bce

0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn

21° Aries 17° Aries 1° Taurus 3° Taurus 1° Taurus 6° Taurus 27° Aries 1° Taurus 28° Aries 0° Taurus 14° Taurus 10° Taurus 2° Taurus 4° Taurus 28° Aries

Notes related to Table 2.9 Table 2.9 is for the same years as Table 2.8 above, but for the vernal equinox (ve). The sun is at 0° Aries and moon in Aries or Pisces for consecutive nineteen-year cycles from 9bce to 256bce. In the demonstration year 9bce, as already shown, the lunar crescent is visible after sunset on 1 Nisan; according to computation it would have been visible as a crescent on 1 Nisan in the nineteen-year/Metonic Cycle on 85 bce, 123 bce, 142bce, 161 bce, and plus or minus one day in other years in the modern Hebrew calendar at the vernal equinox, as defined by the sun at the beginning of Aries. The results indicate that the Qumran text could realistically match up with an exemplary year that could theoretically commence a nineteen-year cycle beginning at the vernal equinox on 1 Nisan and in that same year 8–11 Tevet would fall at the winter solstice (cf. Tables 2.4 and 2.8). Notes related to Table 2.10 In Table 2.10, the Hebrew calendar dates for consecutive nineteen-year cycles from 3ce to 264bce are given for when sun is in at 0° Capricorn, at the winter solstice, occurring at around 23–25 December. These dates approximately

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aramaic calendars in the dead sea scrolls table 2.9

Dates for 1 Nisan in the year 9 bce plus the nineteen-year cycles for the vernal equinoxes (ve) until the third century bce.

Hebrew date

Julian date

Sun in zodiac (ve) Moon in zodiac

1 Nisan 29 Adar 29 Adar 29 Adar 1 Nisan 2 Nisan 1 Nisan 1 Nisan 1 Nisan 29 Adar 2 Nisan 2 Nisan 2 Nisan 2 Nisan

March 23, 9bce March 23, 28bce March 24, 47bce March 24, 66bce March 23, 85bce March 24, 104bce March 25, 123bce March 25, 142bce March 24, 161bce March 24, 180bce March 25, 199bce March 25, 218bce March 25, 237bce March 25, 256bce

0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries

0° Aries 27° Pisces 12° Aries 11° Aries 6° Aries 11° Aries 15° Aries 11° Aries 9° Aries 9° Aries 22° Aries 15° Aries 19° Aries 12° Aries

coincided with 10–11 Tevet in the retrojected nineteen-year/Metonic cycle in the Hebrew calendar when the moon was in Taurus or Gemini. The results in the first and second centuries bce coincide, in the main, with the moon’s zodiac position for 11 Tevet in Table 2.7. Notes related to Table 2.11 Table 2.11 carries the data for the same years as Table 2.10, but for the vernal equinox when the sun is at 0° Aries for consecutive nineteen-year cycles from 3ce until 264bce. In these years in the cycle, there was not an alignment between the vernal equinox and 1 Nisan, but there was for 2 Nisan in the present Hebrew calendar. Notes related to Tables 2.12 and 2.13: Scroll 4Q209 Frg. 7 Col. ii (Month ix) for Exemplary Years 3ce and 17bce Having examined the calendrical dates in column iii, we now turn to column ii on the right-hand side column of the fragment: 4Q209 frg. 7 col. ii lines –13: days –27, month ix (see Table 2.3).155 The data for dates in the text equated 155

Scroll 4Q209 fragment 7 (in critical editions), renumbered Fragment 1 on the Leon Levy

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table 2.10 Dates for the year 3 ce plus the nineteen-year cycles for the winter solstices (ws) until the third century bce.

Hebrew date

Julian date (00 ut) Sun in zodiac (ws) Moon in zodiac

11 Tevet 11 Tevet 11 Tevet 12 Tevet 12 Tevet 11 Tevet 12 Tevet 11 Tevet 10 Tevet 11 Tevet 12 Tevet 12 Tevet 11 Tevet 11 Tevet 12 Tevet

Dec 24, 3ce Dec 23, 17bce Dec 24, 36bce Dec 24, 55bce Dec 24, 74bce Dec 23, 93bce Dec 24, 112bce Dec 24, 131bce Dec 24, 150bce Dec 24, 169bce Dec 24, 188bce Dec 25, 207bce Dec 25, 226bce Dec 24, 245bce Dec 25, 264bce

0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn 0° Capricorn

21° Taurus 12° Taurus 20° Taurus 19° Taurus 20° Taurus 20° Taurus 26° Taurus 18° Taurus 22° Taurus 17° Taurus 17° Taurus 2° Gemini 0° Gemini 23° Taurus 26° Taurus

to Hebrew dates in the real, example years 3ce (Table 2.12) and 17bce (Table 2.13), below, show a connection between the “gates” in the Aramaic astronomical fragment (only Gate 2 is preserved) and the equivalent zodiac positions for the sun and moon in the actual calendars to within a day (a day’s difference between these two years of two Metonic cycles). As with col. iii, the month number or name is not extant in the text (column ii begins on the 23rd of the month) and the solar gate number is not in the text. The solar zodiac month, Sagittarius (month 9) and luni-solar month ix are presupposed, as materially col. ii comes before col. iii, which contains dates in month x, according to Milik, discussed above. His calculation is supported by the reconstruction and fragment placing in Table 2.3.

Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, available online at http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/ex plore‑the‑archive/image/B‑371095. Transliteration, translation and textual apparatus of scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. ii in Milik, The Books of Enoch, 278–283; Tigchelaar and García Martínez, “208–209. 4QAstronomical Enocha–b ar,” 145–146; Drawnel, Aramaic Astronomical Book, 160–163; and Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars, 316–321.

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table 2.11 Dates for the year 3 ce plus the nineteen-year cycles for the vernal equinoxes (ve) until the third century bce.

Hebrew date

Julian date (00° ut) Sun in zodiac (ve) Moon in zodiac

2 Nisan 2 Nisan 2 Nisan 2 Nisan 3 Nisan 3 Nisan 3 Nisan 3 Nisan 2 Nisan 2 Nisan 2 Nisan 4 Nisan 3 Nisan 4 Nisan 3 Nisan

23 Mar, 3 ce 23 Mar, 17bce 23 Mar, 36 bce 24 Mar, 55 bce 24 Mar, 74bce 23 Mar, 93bce 24 Mar, 112 bce 24 Mar, 131bce 24 Mar, 150 bce 24 Mar, 169 bce 24 Mar, 188 bce 25Mar, 207 bce 25Mar, 226bce 25Mar, 245 bce 25Mar, 264bce

0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries 0° Aries

14° Aries 19° Aries 15° Aries 0° Taurus 0° Taurus 26° Aries 1° Taurus 23° Aries 29° Aries 27° Aries 28° Aries 11° Taurus 5° Taurus 9° Taurus 1° Taurus

In both years, the waning moon traverses Gate 3 (in one of the equivalent signs, Libra) on 25 Kislev 3ce and 17bce, respectively. In scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. ii lines 6–8, the waning moon rises in the morning (in Gate 3, not extant) and sets in the evening of night 25 (month ix) in Gate 2 (extant), followed by a vacat in line 8, probably to indicate the end of the day.156 The moon rises from Gate 2 (extant) on night 26 (month ix), for the first time after sunset in Gate 2, the new day of the month (scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. ii lines 9–10). The moon enters Scorpio (equivalent to Gate 2) on 26 Kislev in 3 ce and 17 bce.157 In Table 2.3, the moon changes sign from Gate 3 (Libra) to Gate 2 (Scorpio) on the 26th in month ix. Therefore, using the zodiac hypothesis, the text agrees with the equivalent dates in the Hebrew calendar. 156 157

There is a vacat before night 24 (line 3), night 25 (lines 5–6), night 26 (lines 8–9) and night 27 (lines 11–12). Note that the moon rises in Jerusalem from 6–8 December, 2015 (25–27 Kislev) less than an hour later each day, rising in the early hours of the morning, and setting in the afternoon. See http://www.timeanddate.com. According to computation in Astrocalc and the Swiss Ephemeris, the moon would have moved into Scorpio in the afternoon of Kislev 26 (7 December 2015).

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table 2.12 Dates in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. ii lines 6–12 compared to demonstration dates in the Julian calendar 3 ce (solar and zodiac dates in bold). Solar date / Solar Lunar gate zodiac date

Moonrise gate

Lunar zodiac

Julian date

Solar zodiac Hebrew computation date

Lunar zodiac computation 9° Libra–24° Libra

Month 9 Gate 1

Sagitt

25th/ix

3

Libra

7–8 Dec, 3 ce

14°–15° Sagitt 25 Kislev

Month 1 Gate 1

Sagitt

26th/ix

2

Scorpio

8–9 Dec, 3 ce

15°–16° Sagitt 26 Kislev 24° Libra–9° Scorpio

Month 9 Gate 1

Sagitt

27th/ix

2

Scorpio

9–10 Dec, 16°–17° Sagitt 27 Kislev 3 ce

9° Scorpio– 23° Scorpio

table 2.13 Dates in scroll 4Q209 frg. 7 col. ii lines 6–12 compared to demonstration dates in the Julian calendar 17 bce (solar and zodiac dates in bold). Solar date / Solar Lunar gate zodiac date

Moonrise gate

Lunar zodiac

Julian date

Solar zodiac Hebrew computation date

Month 9 Gate 1

Sagitt

25th / ix

3

Libra

6–7/Dec, 13°–14° Sagitt 25 Kislev 17 bce

Month 9 Gate 1

Sagitt

26th / ix

2

Scorpio

7–8/Dec, 17 bce

Month 9 Gate 1

Sagitt

27th / ix

2

Scorpio

8–9/Dec, 15°–16° Sagitt 27 Kislev 17 bce

Lunar zodiac computation 11° Libra–26° Libra

14°–15° Sagitt 26 Kislev 26° Libra–10° Scorpio 10° Scorpio– 23° Scorpio

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chapter 3

Jewish Oneiric Divination: From Daniel’s Prayer to the Genizah Šeʾilat Ḥalom Alessia Bellusci

In antiquity, dreams were highly regarded on both a private and social level and, to some extent, oneiric fragments shaped the social consciousness of the ancient world.1 The ancients often took their dreams to heart, believing they were messages from the non-human world (from god/s, angels, demons or deceased people) and most cultures exploited the liminality of the oneiric experience for divinatory purposes, translating the vivid impressions left on dreamers in signs that could be read and interpreted.2 In this contribution, I would like to draw attention to a specific form of oneiric divination—i.e. the dream request—that has been performed cross-culturally and throughout a long time span, focusing on the Jewish variant of this technique, which is known by the name of šeʾilat ḥalom. I will survey this dream behavior, which is documented in Jewish sources from the tenth century onwards, based on the rich evidence uncovered in the Cairo Genizah. In particular, to exemplify 1 The following study was written during my doctoral research project—The History of the Sheʾelat Ḥalom in the Middle East: From the Medieval Era back to Late Antiquity (PhD dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 2016), which will be published in Alessia Bellusci, Dream Requests in the Middle East: The History of the Sheʾelat Ḥalom from the Medieval Era back to Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming)—in part supported by the Yad ha-Nadiv Foundation. A version of this paper was presented at the Workshop on Jewish Divination organized by Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (ikgf), Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen (17–18 March 2015). I am deeply grateful to Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas for inviting me to participate in the workshop and to those who offered me their comments and suggestions on this occasion. I would also like to thank Professor Gideon Bohak of Tel Aviv University, who directed me toward the study of the šeʾilat ḥalom, for offering his generous guidance and valuable comments. I consider myself solely responsible for the views expressed herein and for any possible error or mistake. 2 For the thesis that oneiric structures can be culturally shaped, see Eric R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966 [1951]), 102–134; Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 10–11; Maurizio Bettini, Alle porte dei sogni (Palermo: Sellerio, 2009), especially 47 and 56; and William V. Harris, Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), especially 14–17.

© Alessia Bellusci, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445703_005

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the specific Jewish character of this magical technique and its marked relation to prayer, I will examine a long recipe for šeʾilat ḥalom preserved on an early twelfth-century Genizah fragment, i.e. ms Cambridge University Library Taylor Schechter Collection Box K 1.111, and written in the form of a prayer. After providing its annotated transcription and translation into English, I will comment on the recipe, showing its several connections with other Jewish and non-Jewish textual excerpts. Finally, the long quotation from the Book of Daniel registered in the Genizah recipe will be the starting point to briefly re-examine relevant excerpts from the Biblical apocalyptic book in light of the Genizah evidence and consider the šeʾilat ḥalom from a diachronic perspective in the wider context of Jewish divination.

1

The Šeʾilat Ḥalom according to the Evidence of the Cairo Genizah

By the term “dream request” I refer to a divinatory technique, in which, through different methods, a person auto-induces a dream on a specific topic to foretell the future, convey hidden knowledge or receive an answer to a certain question. The topic of the request may concern specific day-to-day matters, such as finding lost property, general knowledge or spiritual gifts. Some techniques for dream request are based on the definition of pre-coded oneiric signs, to which is attributed a certain meaning, such as in dream interpretation traditions, while other oneiric practices of this kind imply a direct encounter with a numinous being or a non-human entity in an epiphany dream.3 Dream requests have been performed in various manners by people of all ranks and beliefs in different historical and geographical contexts and, particularly, within Near-Eastern and Mediterranean cultures. The idea that kings, rulers, and prophets might have a privileged relationship with the divine through message dreams is already documented in the earliest literary and religious texts from the Ancient Near East.4 Similarly, the first evidence of the existence of standardized ritual acts aimed at provoking divinatory dreams is found in ancient ritual texts from Mari, Babylonia, and Egypt.5

3 On epiphany dreams, see Harris, Dreams and Experience, 23–90. 4 See Robert K. Gnuse, “The Temple Experience of Jaddus in the Antiquities of Josephus: A Report of Jewish Dream Incubation,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 83 (1993): 349–368, especially 356–357; and Gil H. Renberg, Where Dreams May Come. Incubation Sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman World, 2 vols. (Leiden, Brill, 2017), 1:36–73. 5 Marco Bonechi and Jean-Marie Durand, “Oniromancie et magie à Mari à l’époque d’Ebla,” Quaderni di Semitistica 18 (1992): 151–159; Jean-Marie Husser, Dreams and Dream Narratives

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Yet the earliest attestations of a well-developed technique for dream request are found in the late antique corpus of the Greek and Demotic magical papyri.6 The more than thirty dream requests in the corpus—which describe both simple divinatory techniques and complex multi-stage rituals, often involving lamp divination and the instruction to write down/recite specific phylacteria— might have been related to Classical dream incubation, perhaps even representing a privatized and miniaturized version of it.7 The technique of the dream request is documented also in Christian and Islamic sources and is still performed nowadays in certain religious communities.8 In particular, according to Islamic traditions, the dream request—in Arabic istiḵāra—has been prac-

in the Biblical World, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 47; Wayne Horowitz, “Astral Tablets in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 90 (2000): 194–206; Kasia Szpakowska, Behind Closed Eyes: Dreams and Nightmares in Ancient Egypt (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2003), 147–151; and Renberg, Where Dreams May Come, 1:76–77. 6 For an overview of the corpus of Greek magical papyri, see William. M. Brashear, “The Greek Magical Papyri: An Introduction and Survey; Annotated Bibliography (1928–1994),” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Part ii—Principat, ed. W. Haase and H. Temporini, 37.6 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), 18.5:3380–3684. Most of the spells are edited in Karl Preisendanz (ed.), Papyri Graecae Magicae. Die griechischen Zauberpapyri, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1928–1931), and in Robert Walter Daniel and Franco Maltomini (eds.), Supplementum Magicum, 2 vols. (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990–1992). For an English translation of most of the papyri, see Hans Dieter Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986). On the dream requests preserved in the magical papyri, see Samson Eitrem, “Dreams and Divination in Magical Ritual,” in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 175–187; and Lubja M. Bortolani, “‘We Are such Stuff as Dream Oracles are Made on’: Greek and Egyptian Traditions and Divine Personas in the Dream Divination Spells of the Magical Papyri,” in Cultural Plurality in Ancient Magical Texts and Practices: Proceedings of the iwh Symposium 12th–13th September 2014, Heidelberg, ed. Ljuba M. Bortolani, William D. Furley, Svenja Nagel, and Joachim F. Quack (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 149–170. On a possible domestic form of dream incubation outside the corpus of the Greek and Demotic magical papyri, see Renberg, Where Dreams May Come, 1:4– 5. 7 On the phenomenon of the miniaturization of temple rituals, see Jonathan Z. Smith, “Trading Places,” in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 13–27; Ian S. Moyer and Jacco Dieleman, “Miniaturization and the Opening of the Mouth in a Greek Magical Text (pgm xii.270–350),” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 3, 1 (2003): 47–72. On privatization, see David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). For a different interpretation of the origin of the dream requests in the corpus of the Greek and Demotic magical papyri, see Bortolani, “ ‘We Are such Stuff as Dream Oracles are Made on.’” 8 For contemporary psychological techniques applied to problem solving, see Deirdre Barrett, “ ‘Committee of Sleep’: A Study of Dream Incubation for Problem Solving,” Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams 3 (1993): 115–123.

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ticed without interruption from the Islamic Golden Age to the contemporary era.9 Several medieval Latin manuscripts of ritual magic preserve recipes for receiving a revelatory dream on a specific subject or enlightenment of a more open-ended nature, thus demonstrating that the use of oneiric magic, and specifically dream requests, was widespread also within Christianity.10 Like their neighbors, the Jews had been performing oneiric divinatory techniques since antiquity. With its many accounts of dreaming and prophetic dreams, in fact, the Hebrew Bible not only legitimized the discussion of the oneiric experience in later Jewish texts, but also established the authoritative precedent for the performance of oneiric divination.11 Yet the Hebrew

9

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Toufic Fahd, “Istikhāra,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. Peri Bearman, Thierry Bianquis, Clifford E. Bosworth, Emeri van Donzel, and Wolfhart P. Heinrichs, 12 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1960– 2005 [2nd edition]), vol. 4, available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573‑3912_islam _SIM_3682, accessed 6 November 2020; Hidayet Aydar, “Istikhara and Dreams: Learning about the Future through Dreaming,” in Dreaming in Christianity and Islam: Culture, Conflict and Creativity, ed. Kelley Bulkeley, Patricia Davis, and Kate Adams (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 123–136. For ethnographic examples of istiḵāra as practiced by contemporary Muslims, see Iain Edgar and David Henig, “Istikhāra: The Guidance and Practice of Islamic Dream Incubation Through Ethnographic Comparison,” History and Anthropology 21, 3 (2010): 251–262. Frank Klaassen, “Magical Dream Provocation in the Later Middle Ages,”Esoterica 8 (2006): 120–147. See two medieval Christian dream requests in the fifteenth-century Latin magical book, ms Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Codex Latinus Monacensis 849 (from now on clm 849), fol. 35v–36r and fol. 106r–v. The manuscript, preserved at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, is edited and commented on in Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, Gloucester: Sutton Publishing, 1997). For the relevant passages on the dream requests, see Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 234–235 and 342–343. Specific forms of collective dream request/dream incubation are practiced nowadays in contemporary Orthodox Christianity; see Kimberley C. Patton, “‘A Great and Strange Correction’: Intentionality, Locality, and Epiphany in the Category of Dream Incubation,” History of Religions 43, 3 (2004): 194–223, especially 196. On Biblical passages describing dream experiences exhibiting a divine revelatory character (e.g., Gen 28:10–22), see Ruth Fidler, “Dreams Speak Falsely”? Dream Theophanies in the Bible: Their Place in Ancient Israelite Faith and Traditions (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005) (in Hebrew). Considering the authoritativeness of the Biblical text, even the rabbis could not completely deny the authority of the oneiric experience as a medium between God and man, concluding that “dreams are one sixtieth of prophecy” (tb Beraḵot 57b). This is, however, only one of the many opinions on dreams preserved in rabbinic literature; for an opposite interpretation of the oneiric phenomenon, consider, for instance, Rabbi Samuel ben Naḥmani’s statement that men see in a dream only what is suggested in their own thoughts (tb Beraḵot 55b). For a thorough analysis of dream conceptions and practices in rabbinic literature, see Haim Weiss, “All Dreams Follow the Mouth”: A Reading in the Talmudic Dreams Tractate (Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan Devir Publishing House, and Heksherim Institute, 2011) (in Hebrew); see also Philip S. Alexander, “‘A

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expression šeʾilat ḥalom (‫—)שאלת\שאילת חלום‬which literally means “dream request”12—is not documented in sources before the end of the Early Middle Ages. This datum does not necessarily imply that Jews did not engage in this specific oneiric technique in an earlier period. Yet lack of the technical term šeʾilat ḥalom—or, as a matter of fact, any name/title—in earlier Jewish documents might suggest a phase in which the šeʾilat ḥalom was not fully defined and distinct from other oneiric or divinatory techniques. Both the first outsider and insider sources on this oneiric technique do not precede the tenth and eleventh century ce, respectively, and all originate from the East, either Palestine, Babylonia, Ifriqiya, or Egypt.13 Only from the twelfth-thirteenth century onwards is the šeʾilat ḥalom mentioned also in Ashkenazi documents (i.e. the writings of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, Baʿalei Tosafot and kabbalists),14 while only

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Sixtieth Part of Prophecy’: The Problem of Continuing Revelation in Judaism,” in Words Remembered, Texts Renewed. Essays in Honor of John F.A. Sawyer, ed. Jon Davies, Graham Harvey, and Wilfred G.E. Watson (Sheffield, Eng.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 414–433; and “Bavli Berakhot 55a–57b: The Talmudic Dream Book in Context,” Journal of Jewish Studies 46 (1995): 230–248; Yuval Harari, Early Jewish Magic, Research, Method, Sources (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, Ben-Zvi Institute, and Hebrew University, 2010) (in Hebrew), recently amplified in its English version, Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2017), 431–445. This is the translation adopted by Gideon Bohak and which I use throughout this study; see Gideon Bohak, “Cracking the Code and Finding the Gold: A Dream Request from the Cairo Genizah,” in Edición de Textos Mágicos de la Antigüedad y de la Edad Media, ed. Juan A. Alvarez-Pedrosa Nuñez and Sofía Torallas Tovar, (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2010), 9–23. Other scholars, such as Yuval Harari, translate the Hebrew expression šeʾilat ḥalom as dream inquiry, see, for instance, Yuval Harari, “Metatron and the Treasure of Gold: Notes on a Dream Inquiry Text from the Cairo Genizah,” in Continuity and Innovation in the Magical Tradition, ed. Gideon Bohak, Yuval Harari, and Shaul Shaked (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 289–320. By the expression “insider evidence,” I refer to textual and archaeological sources produced and used by Jewish magicians and their clients, as opposed to “outsider evidence,” i.e. all the references to Jewish magic preserved in non-magical literature or written by people who did not necessarily engage in magical rituals; see Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008), 70–71. The first outsider sources on the šeʾilat ḥalom are found in a few Karaite excerpts written in Palestine in the first half of the tenth century, published in Jacob Mann, Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature, 2 vols. (New York: Ktav, 1972 [1931–1935]), 2:82–83; the famous description of the technique in the eleventh-century Babylonian response of Ḥai Gaon to the rabbis of Kairouan, published in Simcha Emmanuel, Newly Discovered Gaonic Responsa (Jerusalem: Ofek, 1995), 126–127 and 137–138 (in Hebrew). The first insider evidence on the šeʾilat ḥalom is found among the fragments of the Cairo Genizah, on which see below, 106–112. Among the most relevant studies on the šeʾilat ḥalom in the medieval Ashkenazi world is Monford Harris, “Dreams in Sefer Hasidim,”Proceeding of the American Academy for Jewish Research 31 (1963): 51–80; Joseph Dan, “The Dream Theory of the Ḥassidim from Ashkenaz,”

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the late medieval and modern recipes for this purpose can be found in European and Oriental Hebrew kabbalistic and magical codices or printed books.15 Today, a simple search on the Internet is sufficient to ascertain that, at least in Israel, experts in practical kabbalah and magic offer instructions for engaging in a šeʾilat ḥalom along with the amulets (segullot) they sell online.16 To understand the development and nature of the šeʾilat ḥalom, it is necessary to go back to the earliest sources attesting to the performance of this oneiric technique in the Jewish world. Therefore, in what follows, I offer a summary of my findings based on the analysis of a corpus of more than fifty specimens selected from the earliest fragments from the Cairo Genizah which document the actual use of the šeʾilat ḥalom within the Jewish community of Fusṭāṭ (Old Cairo).17 The Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom are in the form of both recipes, i.e. texts aimed at transmitting the instructions for engaging in the oneiric technique, and finished products, i.e. texts designed for active use and part of the

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Sinai 68 (1971): 288–293 (in Hebrew); Tamar Alexander-Frizer, “Dream Narratives in Sefer Hasidim,” Trumah 12 (2002): 65–79; Moshe Idel, Nocturnal Kabbalists (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2006), 15–36 and 91–119 (in Hebrew); Reuven Margaliot, Responsa from Heaven (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1957) (in Hebrew); Pinchas Roth, “Responsa from Heaven: Fragments of a New Manuscript of Sheʾelot u-Teshuvot min ha-Shamayim from Gerona,” Materia Giudaica 15–16 (2010–2011): 555–564; Ephraim Kanarfogel, Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999); and “Dreams as a Determinant of Jewish Law and Practice in Northern Europe during the High Middle Ages,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History. Festschrift in Honor of Robert Chazan, ed. David Engel, Lawrence Schiffmann, and Elliot Wolfson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 111–143. For recipes for šeʾilat ḥalom in modern printed books based on late medieval and modern Hebrew codices, see, for instance, Sefer Raziel ha-malach (Amsterdam, 1701), fols. 33v and 40r; and Nissim Hamawy, Rabbi Abraham Hamuy (1838–1886) and His Place in Modern Jewish Magic (PhD dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 2014), 308–328 (in Hebrew). For instance, see the instructions provided by the Tavori Center for Kabbalah, Psychology and Judaism, available online at http://www.tavori.co.il/%D7%A9%D7%90%D7%9C %D7%AA‑%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%9D/, accessed 6 November 2020. The personal notebook of the famous kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri (died 2006), includes a remarkable number of recipes for šeʾilat ḥalom. For the history and legitimacy of the practice of šeʾilat ḥalom in Jewish culture from a rabbinic perspective, see Rabbi Boaz Shalom’s popular book on Jewish conceptions and traditions on dreams, oneiric practices and dream interpretations, The Theory of Dreams (Jerusalem: Feldheim-Yafe Nof, 2006), 141–160. On the discovery of the Cairo Genizah and the treasure of Genizah fragments, see Stefan C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (London: Curzon, 2000; and Richmond, Surrey: Routledge, 2000); and Stefan C. Reif and Shulamit Reif (eds.), The Cambridge Genizah Collections: Their Contents and Significance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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magical praxis itself. Some recipes are written on loose sheets, while others originally were part of more extensive magical writings.18 Together, then, the different Genizah specimens inform us about the production and transmission of magical and divinatory knowledge associated with this specific technique. According to the Genizah sources, the šeʾilat ḥalom is a technique mainly based on ritual sleep and linguistic magic, i.e. a set of magical acts that exploit the power of speech, either written or uttered.19 Although not necessarily explicated in the instructions, ritual sleep represents the conditio sine qua non for the fulfilment of the šeʾilat ḥalom, since it enables experiencing a ritual dream, which simultaneously represents the means and result of the divinatory act.20 Attaining a state of oneiric consciousness represents the fundamental ritual pattern that distinguishes the šeʾilat ḥalom from other techniques aimed at acquiring information, such as the šeʾilah be-haqiṣ (“request on awakening”) or the conjuration of angels, which are carried out during wakefulness or altered states of consciousness.21 Furthermore, the oneiric material produced by the user while dreaming represents also the temporal and spatial dimension in which the desired information can be retrieved, in other words, the attainment of the magical-divinatory goal itself. According to the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom, the magical activities aimed at attaining the ritual sleep were preceded by a preparatory period of three or seven days during which users observed alimentary and sexual restrictions (or, in general, avoidance of any contact with women) and purified themselves and their corresponding sleeping places. Ascetic norms of this kind, common in apocalyptic and mystical Jewish texts and clearly aimed at transforming the user’s body and the place where the ritual was set to a pure and fit environment for the encounter with the divine entity invoked, are attested in non-Jewish dream requests as well.22 18

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For a general and exhaustive overview on the different types of Jewish magical documents from the Cairo Genizah, see Gideon Bohak, “Reconstructing Jewish Magical Recipe Books from the Cairo Genizah,” Ginzei Qedem 1 (2005): 9*–29*. For a detailed description of the corpus of the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom, see Bellusci, Dream Requests in the Middle East, ch. 2. Besides linguistic magic, the Genizah recipes for šeʾilat ḥalom include, in a few cases, magical acts not related to the power of words; see Bellusci, Dream Requests in the Middle East, ch. 2. This linguistic aspect (written or uttered speech) is also present in bibliomantic practices; see Chapter Five of this book, 182–183 Ritual sleep is generally indicated in the recipes by specific spatial and temporal settings in regard to the bedchamber at night. On these ways of divination, see Yuval Harari, “Divination through the Dead in Jewish Tradition of Magic (Jewish Dream Magic i),” El Prezente: Studies in Sephardic Culture 8–9 (2015): 167–219 (in Hebrew); and Yuval Harari, “Demonic Dream Divination (Jewish Dream Magic ii),” Teʿuda 28 (2017): 187–232 (in Hebrew). Michael D. Swartz, “ ‘Like the Ministering Angels’: Ritual Purity in Early Jewish Mysticism

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As mentioned, if we exclude ritual sleep, the šeʾilat ḥalom is a technique mainly based on linguistic magic, where a set of adjurations, invocations, magical formulae, and prayers are uttered by users with the intent of activating the ritual dream in which the revelation is believed to be delivered. Linguistic magical segments vary consistently in the different Genizah recipes and finished products for šeʾilat ḥalom, dictating the length and wordiness of the text and, thus, producing the most relevant differences from a literary and linguistic point of view. On the performative side, these dissimilarities may indicate different traditions of the šeʾilat ḥalom or highlight specific developments and mutations in the history of this practice. Most of the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom register standard pleas aimed at expressing the content of the divinatory question of the type “the request that I am going to ask is such and such.”23 A few Genizah recipes articulate this standard formula listing some possible topics of divination, such as travelling, trade, and choosing a spouse. All the relevant Genizah sources present verbal constructions such as ‫תראוני\הראוני‬ (“show me”) and ‫“( תודיעוני\הודיעוני‬let me know”), which are technical expressions often attested in Jewish divinatory texts, such as Dan 2:5, ‫ְתהוֹ ְדעוּ ַנּ ִני ֶחְלָמא‬ ‫“( וִּפְשׁ ֵרהּ‬you will make known to me the dream and its interpretation”; translation mine). The adjuration of the angels, generally in the form “I adjure you [pl.]” (‫)משביע אני עליכם‬, is also a recurrent feature in most of the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom.24 Many of the Genizah sources show that the angels were often adjured by the name of the Jewish God. A few Genizah recipes include instructions to write down the adjuration and the request on a piece of paper or parch-

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and Magic,” Association of Jewish Studies Review 19 (1994): 135–167; and Michael D. Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 153–172. For examples of the prescription of observing ascetic norms in the dream requests from the Greek and Demotic magical papyri, see pgm vii 359–369; 478–490; 664–685; 703–726; 747–748; 795–845, translated in Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri, 127, 131, 137, 138, 139, 140–141. For a relevant example in the medieval Christian world, see the instructions in ms Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 849, fol. 106r, edited in Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 342–343. For a pertinent example, see the recipe edited in this contribution, ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.111 verso, right side of the bifolio, line 2. On the adjuration in Jewish magical texts, see Yuval Harari, “What Is a Magical Text: Methodological Reflections Aimed at Redefining Early Jewish Magic,” in Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity, ed. Shaul Shaked (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 91–124. The adjuration of the angels, as well as pleas containing the matter of the request, either in a general or more specific form, are documented also in non-Jewish dream requests; see, for instance, pgm xii 148–150, published in Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri, 158–159; and ms Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 849, fol. 35v and fol. 36r, edited in Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 234–235.

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ment and position it near the user’s body, under his head or pillow.25 It is likely that users believed that placing their questions under the ear would enable them to hear the pertinent answer during the dream. Similarly, it is possible that they expected to find upon awakening an answer to their request written down on these papers, probably through automatic writing.26 This assumption seems to be confirmed by some codicological features of the Genizah finished products for šeʾilat ḥalom, most of which were written only on the upper part of long and tiny fragments whose bottom part was left blank for writing the answer; in addition, most of these papers exhibit clear signs that they had been folded, suggesting that they might have been actually placed under the user’s head/pillow while sleeping.27 The adjurations and standard pleas listing the topics of divination found in the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom tend to be quite homogenous, with divine, angelic, and magical names representing the only substantial variable in the formula. Much more heterogeneous are, instead, the prayers associated with the oneiric technique. Most of them consist of clusters of Biblical verses, generally related to dreams or visions, joined together to form a fluid text.28 A few fragments register actual prayers belonging to the statutory liturgy, such as the Amidah, Šemaʿ ʿal-ha-miṭah, Birḵat ha-mapil, and so on, while others document prayers, which are not part of the Jewish liturgical canon and are not preserved in other Jewish sources.29 These unknown

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See, for instance, the relative instruction in the fragment ms Philadelphia Halper 475 recto, line 10, edited in Alessia Bellusci, Dream Requests from the Cairo Genizah (ma thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2011), 46, and in ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.28, fol. 1r, line 15, edited in Peter Schäfer and Shaul Shaked, Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza, 3 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994–1999), 1:136. On automatic writing related to the technique of šeʾilat ḥalom, see Harris, “Dreams in Sefer Ḥasidim,” 53; Amos Goldreich, Automatic Writing in Zoharic Literature and Modernism (Los Angeles: Cherub, 2010), especially 302, 303–316, and 318 (in Hebrew); and Harari, “Demonic Dream Divination,” 213. A similar practice is well documented also in non-Jewish dream requests. For instance, a Graeco-Egyptian recipe for an oracular Sarapis gem instructs users to put on the index finger of their left hand a ring with the image and the name of Sarapis engraved on it and sleep holding the stone to their left ear; see pgm v 447–458, published in Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri, 109. For the instruction of writing down a series of angelical and magical names on a virgin parchment that shall be placed under the user’s right ear, when s/he goes to sleep, see the Latin dream request in ms Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 849, fol. 35v, edited in Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 234. The most quoted Biblical verses are Ezek 1:1, Num 12:6–8, Dan 2:19–22, Gen 24:49, Amos 3:8, and Ps 91:1; see Bellusci, Dream Requests in the Middle East, ch. 3. For an extensive study of the prayers associated to the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom, see Bellusci, Dream Requests in the Middle East, ch. 3. The association between the šeʾilat ḥalom and the recitation of commanded prayers is attested also in non-Genizah sources, see Moshe

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prayers, an example of which will be given in the next section of this contribution, are often close to the style of Hekhalot and early piyyut and seem to be based on a specific textual tradition transmitted at least since the eleventh century onwards, when they were appropriated by medieval Cairene users who engaged in the technique of šeʾilat ḥalom. The occurrence of the same prayers in the different Genizah recipes provides remarkable evidence of their circulation among people interested in the performance of the šeʾilat ḥalom. The considerable number of known and unknown prayers associated with the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom suggests the importance of prayer in the context of this magical technique. The recurrence of Biblical verses and liturgical prayers is a known phenomenon characterizing Jewish magic in general.30 The use of the same textual material in liturgical piyyut, Hekhalot, and magical literature emphasises the cultural proximity and, often, overlapping of these distinct traditions documenting the diffusion of a religious attitude (magical piety) connecting magic with some of the values and beliefs expressed by normative Judaism.31 In the case of the šeʾilat ḥalom—or, at least, in the case of the šeʾilat ḥalom as portrayed in the early evidence of the Cairo Genizah—the (re)use of prayers seems even more accentuated and might suggest that, from an emic standpoint, this magical technique was perceived as a form of prayer.32

30

31

32

Idel, “On Sheʾelat Ḥalom in Hasidei Askenaz: Sources and Influences,” Materia Giudaica 10, 1 (2005): 99–109, especially 101–102. Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Magic Spells and Formulae (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), 22–31. For instance, the same phenomenon is documented in the Babylonian incantation bowls; see Shaul Shaked, “ ‘Peace be Upon You, Exalted Angels’: On Hekhalot, Liturgy and Incantation Bowls,” Jewish Quarterly Review 2, 3 (1995): 197–219. Already in the seventh century bce, a prayer associated with the official cult (the priestly blessing) was incorporated in an amulet for magical use; see Stefan C. Reif, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 30; and Gabriel Barkay, Marilyn J. Lundberg, Andrew G. Vaughn, and Bruce Zuckerman, “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Evaluation,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 334 (2004): 41–71. Michael D. Swartz, “Cultic Motifs in the Literature of Jewish Magic,” Peʿamim: Studies in Oriental Jewry 85 (2000): 62–75 (in Hebrew), especially n. 30; Michael D. Swartz, “Magical Piety in Ancient and Medieval Judaism,” in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 167–183; and Michael D. Swartz, “ʿAlay le-shabbeah: A Liturgical Prayer in Maʿaseh Merkabah,” Jewish Quarterly Review 77 (1986– 1987): 179–190. For the notion of “magical piety” in relation to prayers in bibliomantic practices, see Chapter Five of this book, 186–191. Consider, for instance, that the šeʾilat ḥalom is mentioned as “the prayer of the dream” (‫ )התפלה של חלום‬in the letter of the rabbis of Kairouan to Ḥai Gaon, i.e. one of the earliest outsider sources documenting this behavior; for the text, see Emmanuel, Newly Discovered Gaonic Responsa, 126. See also my detailed analysis of the association between the šeʾilat

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Several Genizah recipes and finished products for šeʾilat ḥalom include a literary report of the expected dream, which was, thus, pre-established and codified in a written or verbal form before the actual oneiric experience. Since it is impossible to reconstruct the segment of ritual sleep/dream, due to both the lack of information in the Genizah evidence and the elusive nature of dreams, these anticipated reports of the expected oneiric material represent the closest window on the dreaming mind of medieval Jews of Fusṭāṭ that we can hope to attain.33 As is clear from both the earliest outsider and insider sources, the expected dream could assume two main forms: either an oneiric encounter with a non-human creature, or the oneiric perception of codified signs, which, in the written report, follow a binary system aimed at producing yes-or-no answers and are expressed in a conditional sentence (protasis and apodosis: “if I see X, show me Y”).34 Both typologies of dream experience—the apparition of a non-human entity, or pre-coded signs—are documented also in non-Jewish dream requests.35 Nevertheless, the second typology is seldom attested in nonJewish and later Jewish sources and seems specifically associated with the earliest middle-eastern Jewish šeʾilot ḥalom, where the coded signs are indicated by standard formulae and good/bad omina correspond to people, places, or objects whose traits are based on the dualism between good/evil, Jewish/nonJewish, and pure/impure. The anticipated exposition of the dream represents

33

34

35

ḥalom and prayer in the context of the history of the oneiric technique, in Bellusci, Dream Requests in the Middle East, ch. 1. For a detailed study of this topic, see Alessia Bellusci, “Immaginazione e modelli onirici tardo antichi nei frammenti magici della Genizah del Cairo,” Materia Giudaica 23 (2018): 65–77; and Dream Requests in the Middle East, ch. 5. For a relevant example in outsider sources, see the passage in the response of Ḥai Gaon to the rabbis of Kairouan, edited in Emmanuel, Newly Discovered Gaonic Responsa, especially 126 and 137. For an insider source mentioning the apparition of an angel, see the recipe edited in this contribution, fragment ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.111 recto, left side of the bifolio, lines 16–18. For the reference to dream signs in insider sources, see, for instance, fragment ms Philadelphia Halper 475, lines 4–9, edited in Bellusci, Dream Requests, 46–49, and partially quoted in Rebecca M. Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power. Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), 237 n. 338. The belief in an epiphany dream in which an otherworldly entity visits the user and reveals the divination in truth and without danger is attested in both Graeco-Egyptian and medieval Christian dream requests; see, respectively, Inscriptiones Graecae xiv 2413, 16r, lines 3–8, translated in Renberg, Where Dreams May Come, 1:4; and ms Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 849, fol. 106v, edited in Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 343. A binary system of coded signs is featured in two dream requests in the corpus of the Greek and Demotic magical papyri, i.e. pgm xxiib, 27–31 and 32–35, published in Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri, 261, as well as in certain Islamic traditions of istiḵāra, on which see Aydar, “Istikhāra,” 123.

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the response itself to the issued question. From a performative point of view, then, this pattern has a double function, i.e. setting the parameters for understanding/interpreting the dream (listening to the angel; decoding the oneiric signs), as well as exercising psychological conditioning on users, so that they may actually experience a dream on the desired topic. As I attempted to show with the previous analysis, the evidence of the Cairo Genizah enables us to reconstruct the ritual dynamics according to which the šeʾilat ḥalom was performed by the Jews of Fusṭāṭ, as well as certain literary features and textual traditions associated with the technique. It ought to be noted that even the earliest recipes for šeʾilat ḥalom uncovered in the Cairo Genizah exhibit standard linguistic and ritualistic features, thus pointing to a certain degree of ritual maturity already reached in the eleventh century and suggesting that this technique might have developed earlier in Jewish culture. Before discussing this hypothesis further and showing the relationship between the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom and earlier Jewish divinatory texts, I would like to present a remarkable specimen of šeʾilat ḥalom from the Cairo Genizah, which will exemplify the ritual and literary features of the technique discussed above, providing also a relevant textual basis for the comparative analysis that will follow.

2

The Prayer of the Dream: A Recipe for Šeʾilat Ḥalom from the Cairo Genizah

The fragment I present here belongs to the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection in the Cambridge University Library, shelf mark ts K 1.111.36 It is a paper bifolio (two leaves), 16.662cm high and 22.741cm wide. Each leaf of the bifolio presents one column with a range of 13–20 lines written in black ink. The bifolio is mostly preserved and exhibits only a few tears. It is written on both sides, in the following order: (A) verso, left side of the bifolio, (B) recto, right side, (C) recto, left side, (D) verso, right side. The bottom part of the last page of the composition (D), about a third of the leaf, is left blank and the text is incomplete. The quite beautiful and neat handwriting, Oriental common square script, can

36

A preliminary edition of the fragment is found in Bellusci, Dream Requests, 57–64. Part of the text is quoted by Weiss, in an online paper, Haim Weiss, “Incubation Dreams and Invitation of a Dream in the Ancient World” (in Hebrew), available online at http://www .hebpsy.net/community.asp?id=96&cat=article&articleid=1489, accessed 20 July 2019; and in Weiss, “All Dreams Follow the Mouth,” 45 n. 62. Haim Weiss incorrectly refers to the fragment as ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.101 (a Genizah fragment, which also transmits a recipe for šeʾilat ḥalom).

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be dated to the early twelfth century. The fragment is written in Hebrew and Aramaic with Tiberian vocalization.37 Although the text is left incomplete in its explicit, the indication of the title in the incipit (verso, left side, line 2), “Tested šeʾilat ḥalom” (‫)שאילת חלום בדיקה‬, leaves no doubt that we are dealing with the Jewish variant of the oneiric technique known as the dream request. The fragment might have been the inner quire of a free-formulary of magical recipes, or, more probably, a single recipe produced by or for a certain user. Yet the lack of personal details in the text prevents us from speculating about whether and how the fragment had been used in the magical praxis. The text of the recipe is remarkably long and in the form of a prayer exhibiting a marked poetic tone. The main theme underlying the prayer, part of which is created by the juxtaposition of Biblical verses, concerns the disparity between the moral inferiority of human nature and God’s perfection, emphasized throughout the text by the use of many divine attributes built in different linguistic structures. Although the recipe does not quote from any known Jewish liturgical composition, it includes a few liturgical-mystical motifs and finds some parallels with other Jewish and non-Jewish dream requests (Islamic and Christian). Below, I offer the transcription and translation into English of the recipe followed by a detailed discussion of the rich textual material it transmits.

37

I wish to thank Amir Ashur of Tel Aviv University for kindly performing the paleographic analysis of the fragment.

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‫‪bellusci‬‬

‫‪A. Verso, left side of the bifolio‬‬ ‫‪.1‬‬ ‫‪.2‬‬ ‫‪.3‬‬ ‫‪.4‬‬ ‫‪.5‬‬ ‫‪.6‬‬ ‫‪.7‬‬ ‫‪.8‬‬ ‫‪.9‬‬ ‫‪.10‬‬ ‫‪.11‬‬ ‫‪.12‬‬ ‫‪.13‬‬ ‫‪.14‬‬ ‫‪.15‬‬ ‫‪.16‬‬ ‫‪.17‬‬

‫בשמך ר>חמנ===נאמרועד עלמא דיה היאוהוא מה< שנא >ע< ָד ַנ ָיא> ומהעדה מלכין ומומנע< מה בחשׁוָֹכה‬ ‫וּ ְנהוֹ ָרא ִﬠֵמיה ְשׁ ֵרי‪ְ 53‬וִה ְנ ִני מתנֵפל לפניך ִלְפ ֵני‪54‬‬ ‫ַרֶחֶמיָך ִמְשַתֵט ַיח ִלְפ ֵני ְחָסי ָדיָך ֶשִתֵתן‬ ‫ִלי ַהַל ְיֳלה ַה ֶזה ְלַפ ֵנם ִמשוּ ַרת ַה ִדּין וַתֶﬠ ֵני ִני‬ ‫ְוַאף ַﬠל ִפי ַשֵאין ָא ִני ָרֻא ִוי ֶחָס ָדיָך ָרֻאו ִי ִים‬ ‫ְוַאף ַﬠל ִפי שאין ַא ִני ָהגון רחמיך ַהגוֹ ִנין‬ ‫ַﬠֵשׂה למען ַחִסידוֶּתיָך וֶהמֵצא ְבָצ ָרִתי הלילה‬ ‫הזה ַוֶהִב ֵני ִני את אשׁר ִבְלָבִבי ומה אוַֹמר ֶאת‬ ‫אשר לא ַת ַדע ומה ֶאָצְפֵצף את אשר לא‬ ‫ָתִבין ְוּכל ַתֶﬠלומות ְגלוּ ִית ְלָפ ָניָך ְוָכל ַמְחשבות‪55‬‬ ‫ְל ֶנ ְג ֶדיָך‪ 56‬וכל ִמְסֶתתרוַתי ְפרוּשׁות לנג ִדיך‪ 57‬וִאם ֶהְﬠ ֵו>ו…. Lines 9–12 seem to rephrase some topics from Ps 139.

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‫‪bellusci‬‬ ‫‪.17‬‬ ‫‪.18‬‬

‫ומרבות טוָבֶתיך >……< סיפרו >……ת==.‬‬ ‫‪.‬בקשתי ‪There is a subtle line over the letters šin and tav of the word‬‬ ‫‪ is written above the line.‬ואם ‪The expression‬‬ ‫‪ are written above the line.‬כוננתני ‪The letters nun and yod of the word‬‬

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‫‪63‬‬ ‫‪64‬‬ ‫‪65‬‬ ‫‪66‬‬

oneiric divination: dream request 17. 18.

119

and the vastness of Your kindnesses (?) (?) (?)

C. Recto, left side of the bifolio 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

67

on (?) I shall not have come before you, but Your mercy pulled me to come before Your greatness, and my heart filled me I shall be secure in You to implore in front of Your glory, and my safety is Your compassion to find grace and favor in Your eyes. And now, Lord, God, gird Yourself in Your mercies, and cover Yourself in Your grace, and reach out to me, in this night, Your hands, and receive me in Your kindness, and bring my salvation in front of You and may my deeds not reproach me to distance myself from you, since You are He who knows and is witness that my heart is fervent for Your Divinity, and my hesitation is strengthened in the faith in You,67 and I have nothing but You in all my questions, and I have nothing but You in all my requests. Consent and answer to me according to the extension of my request, in the shortcoming of my understanding in my questioning, and if I do not know how to ask properly, You have created me and if I do not know how to ask in a correct manner, You shall answer me, And send me a good angel who will make known to me my request,

Here, I consider ‫ חניתי‬as contracted form for ‫חנייתי‬, formed by the feminine verbal noun ‫( חניה‬from the root *‫)חנה‬, with the meaning of “being,” “halting,” “staying,” in the construct state and with the attached enclitic form of the possessive pronoun of speaking person singular. The reading of ‫ מחזקת‬is unsure, but the final tav corroborates the hypothesis that this is a feminine participle referred to ‫חניה‬, which in Hebrew is feminine. The translation “I placed my holding” is also plausible, considering ‫ חניתי‬as a Qal form from the root *‫חני‬, perfective, speaking person singular; in this case, ‫ מחזקת‬would be an error for ‫ מחזקתי‬and the term ‫ מחזקה‬would have been used by the author for conveying the meaning of “holding,” “belongings,” “dominion”; compare with the expression ‫ואני חניתי‬ ‫ בגיא בדבר ייי‬in an anonymous piyyut dated to the eleventh century and preserved on the Genizah fragment St. Petersburg Russian National Library Antonin B 73 (single fragment written on one side), line 15.

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‫בנחת בשקט ְבקוֹ ַרת >רנק………לא< ְכִמדוַתי סלח ְכמדוֵתיָך‬recto, right side, line 13) might be compared to the verses from the Pater Noster: “Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris,” obviously used in the opposite meaning.

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God expressed in the imperative: ,‫ פשוט‬,‫ התעטף‬,‫ התאזר‬,‫ סלח‬,‫ ֶהִב ֵני ִני‬,‫ ֶהמֵצא‬,‫ַﬠֵשׂה‬ ‫ ִהְת ֶרַצה‬,‫קבליני‬, and ‫( ְﬠ ֵנ ִני‬recto, right side, lines 8–9; 13; recto, left side, lines 5– 7 and 12). The most meaningful of these commands for the sake of the šeʾilat ḥalom is that of making known to the user, on this night, what is concealed in his/her heart (‫הלילה הזה ַוֶהִב ֵני ִני את אשׁר ִבְלָבִבי‬, on the recto, right side, lines 8–9), which is found also in the Judaeo-Arabic šeʾilat ḥalom preserved on ms Cambridge University Library ts as 143.325 line 12, ‫אן תכשף הדה אללילה מא פי נפשי‬ (“that You reveal, on this night, what is in my soul”). The passage draws on the last part of Dan 2:30: ,‫ ֱגִּלי ִלי; ָלֵהן‬,‫ ָר ָזא ְד ָנה‬,‫ַח ַיּ ָיּא‬-‫ָכּל‬-‫ִאיַתי ִבּי ִמן‬-‫ ָלא ְבָחְכָמה ִדּי‬,‫ַוֲא ָנה‬ ‫ ִתּ ְנ ַדּע‬,‫ ְו ַרְﬠיוֹ ֵני ִלְבָבְך‬,‫ ִדְּב ַרת ִדּי ִפְשׁ ָרא ְלַמְלָכּא ְיהוֹ ְדעוּן‬-‫ַﬠל‬, and its late antique magical re-elaboration in ‫( אני אודיעך מה בלבך‬Sefer ha-razim “The Book of Mysteries” i § 109), thus establishing a deep connection between these three texts.88 As in the first section of the prayer, divine attributes are used abundantly also here and are often employed as a synecdoche for the Divinity itself.89 The theme of human helplessness and meaninglessness in comparison to God’s perfection is found in at least two non-Jewish medieval texts related to the dream request technique. A plea emphasizing the disparity between God’s mighty and human unworthiness is associated with an istiḵāra tradition (the Islamic version of the

88

89

One of the most famous Jewish books of magic, Sefer ha-razim was probably edited in Palestine in the Pre-Islamic period; see Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 170–175. The book was first published in Mordechai Margaliot, Sepher Ha-Razim, A Newly Recovered Book of Magic from the Talmudic Period Collected from Genizah Fragments and other Sources (Tel Aviv: Yediot Acharonot, 1966) (in Hebrew). For a more recent edition, see Bill Rebiger and Peter Schäfer, Sefer ha-razim I und ii: Das Buch der Geheimnisse i und ii, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). Throughout the paper, when I quote from Sefer ha-razim, I follow Margaliot’s edition, unless otherwise stated; however, to refer to the relevant passages, I follow Rebiger and Schäfer’s edition. For a concordance between the two editions, see Rebiger and Schäfer, Sefer ha-razim, 1:xi. For a discussion of the specific passage quoted in the contribution, see Alessia Bellusci, “A Genizah finished Product for Sheʾelat Ḥalom based on Sefer ha-Razim,” Journal of Jewish Studies 67, 2 (2016): 305–326. On the relationship between the Book of Daniel, Sefer ha-razim, and the šeʾilat ḥalom, see my discussion below, in the next section of the chapter, 134–137. In the third section, divine attributes mainly occur in the following linguistic structures: (1) “My X (attitude of mind) is Your Y (divine attribute)” [recto, left side, line 4]; (2) “I (the user) X (action expressed by a verbal voice with the participle, infinitive, or perfective) in front of Y (divine attribute)” [recto, right side, lines 3–4; recto, left side, lines 2–4]; (3) “Although I (the user) am not X (adjective, singular form), Your Y (divine attribute, plural form) are X (adjective, plural form)” [recto, right side, lines 6–7]; (4) “X (verbal voice in imperative referred to God) for the sake of Your Y (divine attribute)” [recto, right side, line 8; recto, left side, lines 5–7]. Divine attributes are mentioned also on the recto, right side, lines 17; 14–15; recto, left side, lines 2; 9–10; yet the linguistic structures in which they occur are unclear or less relevant.

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dream request) in a section of the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Buḵārī, an authoritative collection of ḥadīth composed by the ninth century Persian Muslim scholar Muḥammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Juʿfi al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870);90 in the book, the ḥadīth is attributed to Jābir ibn ʿAbdūllah, one of the Prophet’s companions. The passage, which is still recited during the salāt al-istiḵāra, reads as follows:91 ُ ‫ك تقَ ْ دِر ُ و َل َا َأق ْدِر‬ َ ّ ‫ك ال ْع َظ ِيِم ف ِ َإ َن‬ َ ِ ‫ضل‬ ْ َ ‫ك م ِْن ف‬ َ ُ ‫ك و َ َأْس َأل‬ َ ِ ‫ك و َ َأْستقَ ْ دِر ُك َ بقِ ُْدر َت‬ َ ِ ْ‫خير ُك َ بعِ لِ م‬ ِ َ ‫ال َل ّه َُّم ِإن ِ ّي َأْست‬ ‫ب‬ ِ ُ‫ت ع َل ّام ُ ال ْغيُ و‬ َ ْ ‫و َتعَ ْل َم ُ و َل َا َأع ْل َم ُ و َ َأن‬ My lord, I seek your benevolence through your knowledge, I turn for your assistance through your might. On the sake of your magnificent excellence, I beseech you, for you are capable, while I am incapable, you have knowledge, while I am ignorant; you are the one who knows matters unseen. In the Islamic text, the reference to God’s knowledge and human ignorance (“You have knowledge, but I do not”) explains the choice of practicing istiḵāra, whose literal meaning is “seeking the good.”92 Since only God knows what is best for man, one should trust divine judgment rather than his/hers and should solicit it by means of istiḵāra.93 A prayer similar to the one preserved in the Genizah fragment is found also in a long recipe for engaging in a dream request for finding a hidden treasure registered in the fifteenth century ms Munich Bay-

90

91

92 93

On the author and his work see Jonathan A.C. Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon (Leiden: Brill 2007), 65– 81. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Buḵārī, Ḥadīth by Jābir ibn ʿAbdūllah; see Muhammad M. Khan (Arabic ed. and English transl.), The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari, 9 vols. (Riyadh: Darussalam, 1997 [1979]), 2:157–158; online as Sahih al-Bukhari 1166 (Book 19, Ḥadīth 45), available online at http://sunnah.com/bukhari/19, accessed 20 July 2019. The term istiḵāra (‫ )ا ِْست ِخاَ ر َة‬is the maṣdar (verbal noun) in the tenth form from the root *‫خير‬. Quʾrān, Surah al-baqara 2/216:

َ ‫شي ْئ ًا و َه ُو‬ َ ‫تح ِ ُب ّوا‬ ُ ‫شي ْئ ًا و َه ُو َ خ َي ْر ٌ لـ َك ُْم و َع َس َى َأْن‬ َ ‫ل و َه ُو َ كرُ ْه ٌ لـ َك ُْم و َع َس َى َأْن تكَ ْر َه ُوا‬ ُ ‫ب ع َل َي ْك ُم ُ ال ْقتِ َا‬ َ ِ ‫كت‬ ُ َ‫“( ش َرّ ٌ لـ َك ُْم و َال َل ّه ُيعَ ْل َم ُ و َ َأن ْت ُم ْ ل َا تعَ ْل َموُ ن‬For you fighting has been ordained, even though hateful to you. But you might hate a thing and it is good for you and love a thing and it is bad for you. God knows, while you know not”); for the translation, see Saheeh International Qurʾan, available online at http://quran.com/2/216, accessed 20 July 2019. This verse shares with the previous supplication the language of knowing and not knowing.

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erische Staatsbibliothek clm 849.94 Besides a couple of prayers belonging to the official liturgy, the Latin recipe presents three unknown prayers, the first of which is a plea to God, the Creator, so that he will receive the cry of his unworthy creature:95 O rabi, rabi, rex meus et deus meus ac dominus dominancium, qui conditor es uniuersorum, exaudi oracionem mei, misere et indigne creature, et redempcionis tue in hac hora et semper,96 et indignus clamor meus ad te perueniat. O rabbi, rabbi, my king and my God, and Lord of lords, you who are the creator of all things, hear the prayer which I, a wretched and unworthy creature, make, and of your redemption in this hour and always, and may my unworthy cry come unto Thee. A further appeal to divine mercy is found later on in the Latin recipe, in ms Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 849, fol. 106 verso, et velis respicere ad offensiones meas (“and that you may be willing to see beyond my offences”), a passage focusing on the same theme underlying the Hebrew prayer, according to which the unworthy creature asks to be answered not for his/her merits but for his/her faith (ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.111, recto, left side, lines 8–9). Although the Genizah prayer is much more articulated than the above-mentioned Christian and Islamic supplications, there is a conceptual and, perhaps, even textual correspondence between these sources, which all stem from Abrahamic traditions and are related to the oneiric technique of the dream request. The textual sections surveyed so far, which roughly correspond to three quarters of the šeʾilat ḥalom preserved on ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.111, do not exhibit magical features. The text is, in fact, in the form of a prayer that could have been recited also outside the context of the oneiric technique. The situation changes drastically in the fourth section (recto, left 94

95

96

The recipe is edited in Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 342–343. On ms Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 849, see above, 104, note 10. For finished products for šeʾilat ḥalom specifically aimed at finding a treasure, see Bohak, “Cracking the Code”; Harari, “Metatron and the Treasure”; and Bellusci, “A Genizah finished Product.” The prayers from the official liturgy are: Asperges me, Gloria Patri, and Miserere; see Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 342. For the three unknown prayers see Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 342–343. For the following quotation and its translation, see Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 342 and 114, respectively. As noted by Richard Kieckhefer, who indicates “sic in ms,” here a verb is probably missing; see Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 342, note b.

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oneiric divination: dream request

129

side, lines 16–19; verso, right side, 1–13), which includes several magical linguistic devices and formulae employed to communicate with non-human entities and obtain the sought revelation.97 This section presents, in fact, a plea to God to send a trustworthy angel in charge of delivering the requested answer in the dream (recto, left side, lines 16–18), as well as a generic formula that users would have needed to substitute with the divinatory topic in which they were interested (verso, right side, line 2), both features typically documented among the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom. The text presents an additional specific formula associated with the genre of the šeʾilat ḥalom followed by a quotation from Exod 33:16, a verse deeply related to divination: \ ‫ויתן לי \ אות אשר אודיעיהו או מופת אביניהו‬ ‫או פסוק מתורתיך או מדברי נביאיך \ כי בזאת נפלאו עמיך מכל העם אשר \ על פני האדמה‬ (verso, right side, lines 2–6: “And he shall give me / a sign which I shall recognize, or a wonder that I will understand / or a verse from Your Torah or from the words of Your prophets / since in this, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people / on the face of the earth”). The formula and the Biblical verse are used to emphasize that the oneiric answer expected in the dream has to be intelligible to users, who are entitled to a special communication with God as part of the nation of Israel. The formula adopts the typical phraseology used to refer to divination since the Hebrew Bible: the terms ‫“( אות‬sign”) and ‫מופת‬ (“wonder”) are used a few times in Scripture either to indicate the activity of false prophets and diviners, such as in Deut 13:1–2, or a God-sent message, such as in Isa 20:3. A similar formula, which refers, though, only to “a verse” and “a sign,” is found in the parallel recipe in Judaeo-Arabic:98 97 98

For the presence of magical names in magical texts and linguistic magic associated with Jews, see Chapter Ten of this book, 313–322 and 326–327. Fragment ms Cambridge University Library ts as 143.325, lines 12–14. A slightly different version of the formula is found in the Adjuration of the Prince of Dream included in the synopsis of Hekhalot texts; see Peter Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), 56 (§ 505); and Lesses, Ritual Practices, 395–313. A similar version is documented also in a fourteenth-fifteenth century Genizah recipe for šeʾilat ḥalom; see ms Jewish Theological Seminary 1628, fols. 41r–42v, edited in Bellusci, Dream Requests, 79. Markedly corrupted versions of the formula occur also in the Genizah šeʾilot ḥalom preserved on mss Cambridge University Library ts Misc 11.125, ts ns 307.54, and ts as 108.184, edited in Bellusci, Dream Requests, 37–38. In these fragments the formula is integrated with additional words and becomes a string of voces magicae, suggesting that at least certain copyists did not understand the original meaning of the text and interpreted it as a series of magical words; see my discussion in Dream Requests in the Middle East, ch. 3. A certain “sign” expected to be made by the oneiric visitor is mentioned also in the Latin dream request preserved in ms Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 849, fol. 106v, “et signum ibi faciat vt cognoscam verum et ipsam veritatem” (“and make a sign there, so that I may know it as true, and the truth itself”), edited in Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 343 and 114 (translation).

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130

bellusci

‫ותעטיני איה מן כתאבך \ אלמקדס או יוערץ׳ עלי דלילא יוצ׳ח לי מא אצ׳מרתה פי אמר‬ ‫\ >כדא וכיא.

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149

dream interpretation in judaeo-arabic table 4.1

Table of contents of the Hebrew version (ms and printed version)

Manuscript version26

Printed edition (Rome 1547)

1. Chapter on … (… ‫)שער‬. 1. Chapter on wine, liquor, and oil (‫שער היין והשכר‬ ‫)והשמן‬. 2. Chapter on vegetables (‫)שער הירקות‬. 3. Chapter on thunder, snow, and rain (‫שער‬ ‫)הרעמים והשלג והמטר‬. 4. Chapter on wind and earthquakes (‫שער הרוח‬ ‫)והרעש‬. 5. Chapter on the sun, moon, and stars (‫שער החמה‬ ם‬. 6. Chapter on death (‫)שער המות‬. 7. Chapter on the sea, lakes, and water reservoirs (‫)שער הים והברכות ומקוי מים‬. 8. Chapter on boats (‫)שער הספינה‬. 2. Chapter on silver and gold (‫)שער הכסף והזהב‬.

9. Chapter on silver and gold (‫)שער הכסף והזהב‬.

3. Chapter on gems and rings (‫שער מרגליות‬ ‫)וטבעות‬.

10. Chapter on gems (‫)שער המרגליות‬.

4. Chapter on horses and mules (‫שער הסוסים‬ ‫)והפרדים‬.

11. Chapter on horses and mules (‫שער הסוסים‬ ‫)והפרדים‬.

5. Chapter on donkeys and she-donkeys (‫שער‬ ‫)החמרים והאתונות‬.

12. Chapter on the donkey and the she-donkeys (‫)שער החמור והאתון‬.

6. Chapter on camels (‫)שער הגמלים‬.

13. Chapter on the camel (‫)שער הגמל‬.

7. Chapter on cattle and fatlings (‫שער הבקר‬ ‫)והמריא‬.

14. Chapter on the bull (‫)שער השור‬.

8. Chapter on sheep and goats (‫)שער הצאן והעיז‬.

15. Chapter on sheep and goats (‫)שער הצאן והעזים‬.

9. Chapter on the lion and the lioness (‫שער הארי‬ ‫)והלביאה‬.

16. Chapter on the lion and the elephant (‫שער הארי‬ ‫)והפיל‬.

10. Chapter on the bear and the tiger (‫שער הדוב‬ ‫)והנמר‬.

17. Chapter on the bear, tiger, and dog (‫שער הדוב‬ ‫)והנמר והכלב‬.

26

ms Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek heb. oct. 35, fols. 1r–9v. Since the manuscript is acephalous, the number of chapters missing can only be inferred from the other example offered.

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150 table 4.1

villuendas sabaté Table of contents of the Hebrew version (ms and printed version) (cont.)

Manuscript version

Printed edition (Rome 1547)

11. Chapter on the fox and the rat (‫שער השועל‬ ‫)והחולדה‬.

18. Chapter on the fox and the cat (‫שער השועל‬ ‫)והחתול‬.

12. Chapter on the gazelle, deer, and the like (‫שער‬ ‫[ )האייל והצבי ודומיהן‬sic].

19. Chapter on the gazelle and deer (‫שער הצבי‬ ‫)והאיל‬. 20. Chapter on women and laying with them (‫שער‬ ‫)הנשים ושכיבתן‬. 21. Chapter on the snake (‫)שער הנחש‬. 22. Chapter on students and worshipers (‫שער‬ ‫)הלומדים והמתפללים‬.

13. Chapter on the partridge and the pigeon (‫שער‬ ‫)הקורא והיונה‬.

23. Chapter on the pigeon and turtledoves (‫שער‬ ‫)היונה והתורים‬.

14. Chapter on the rooster and the hen (‫שער הגבר‬ ‫)והתרנגולת‬.

24. Chapter on the rooster and the hen (‫שער הגבר‬ ‫)והתרנגולת‬.

15. Chapter on birds (‫)שער הצפרים‬.

25. Chapter on birds (‫)שער הצפרים‬.

16. Chapter on the vulture/eagle (‫)שער הנשר‬.

26. Chapter on the vulture/eagle (‫)שער הנשר‬.

17. Chapter on the crow and the kite (‫שער העורב‬ ‫)והדאה‬. 18. Chapter on the barn owl, the tawny owl, and the Egyptian vulture (‫)שער התנשמת והקאת והרחם‬. 19. Chapter on the hoopoe and the bat (‫שער‬ ‫)הדוכיפת ועטלף‬. 20. Chapter on the ostrich (‫)שער בת יענה‬.

27. Chapter on the kite, buzzard, and barn owl (‫שער‬ ‫)הדאה ואיה והתנשמת‬.

28. Chapter on the hoopoe, the bat, and the ostrich (‫)שער הדוכיפת ועטלף ובת יענה‬.

32. Chapter on spices (‫)שער התבלים‬.

29. Chapter on spices (‫)שער התבלים‬.

21. Chapter on eggs (‫)שער הבצים‬.

30. Chapter on eggs (‫)שער הבצים‬.

22. Chapter on fish (‫)שער הדגים‬. 23. Chapter on milk and cheese (‫שער והחלב‬ ‫)והגבינה‬.

31. Chapter on fish, milk, and cheese (‫שער הדגים‬ ‫)והחלב והגבינה‬.

24. Chapter on honey (‫)שער הדבש‬. 25. Chapter on cooked dishes (‫)שער תבשילים‬. 26. Chapter on baths (‫)שער המרחצאות‬. 27. Chapter on bloodletting (‫)שער הקזה‬.

32. Chapter on baths and bloodletting (‫שער מרחץ‬ ‫)וההקזה‬.

29. Chapter on trees (‫)שער האילנות‬.

33. Chapter on trees (‫)שער האילנות‬.

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151

dream interpretation in judaeo-arabic table 4.1

Table of contents of the Hebrew version (ms and printed version) (cont.)

Manuscript version

Printed edition (Rome 1547)

28. Chapter on lands and borders (‫שער הארצות‬ ‫)והגבולים‬.

34. Chapter on lands, borders, and provinces (‫שער‬ ות‬.

30. Chapter on the king and ministers (‫שער המלך‬ ‫)והשרים‬.

35. Chapter on the king and ministers (‫שער המלך‬ ‫)והשרים‬.

31. Chapter on fruit (‫)שער הפירות‬. 36. Chapter on clothing (‫)שער המלבושים‬. 37. Chapter on humans (‫)שער האנשים‬. 38. Chapter on the letters [of the alphabet] (‫שער‬ ‫)האותיות‬. 39. Chapter on wells [of water] (‫)שער הבאר‬. 33. Chapter on fragrances (‫)שער הריח‬.

Comparison of the tables of contents of these two texts with the table of contents of the Judaeo-Arabic version of the Pitron ḥalomot reveals a lack of cohesion between the versions (Table 4.1). Some chapters and titles exhibit exact correspondence, while others agree only partially. Other chapters appearing under different titles convey the same content. Furthermore, we notice absences and additions among them. To further illustrate the differences and similarities, I present literal parallel translations of a chapter in the two manuscripts (see Table 4.2), one in the Judaeo-Arabic version, the other in the Hebrew one.27 Further examination of the contents of the book reveals that the chapters follow a repetitive structure. In the sentences, the apodoses exhibit little originality and the actions contemplated in the protasis are usually the same. Therefore, the emphasis falls on the variety of objects displayed as symbols. In some chapters, the items are listed with great accuracy, making the text almost encyclopedic in scope. For example, the chapter on fruits distinguishes forty different kinds, considering whether a specific fruit is dry or fresh, or what color or variety it is. Then, every item is characterized by a negative-positive 27

As in the list of titles, here the texts are typed in the original orthography except for the abbreviations, which are restored between < >. Commas have been inserted between the vision and interpretation by rules of English syntax, even when not indicated in the original text. I use < > to introduce words that are not in the manuscript but are necessary to complete the text. Every illegible letter is represented by =. In the English translations gaps have been restored and introduced with < >.

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152 table 4.2

villuendas sabaté Translations of the chapter on bloodletting according to both manuscripts (Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew)

Judaeo-Arabic version

Hebrew version28

Chapter on bloodletting, the entry to bathhouses, and ritual ablution houses

Chapter on bloodletting29

Anyone who sees himself being bled from his forearm will suffer a loss soon, but it will not hurt him. Anyone who sees himself being bled from the palm of the hand, will lose something from his hand. Anyone who sees himself being bled from the foot or the heel, will be sentenced with pain and will be unable to stand up.

Anyone who sees himself being bled from his arm, will suffer a minor loss. If it is one of his hands/palms, he will lose something big. If it is his heel or one of his feet, something good will happen to him. If it is from the joint,30 he will achieve a bad reputation. Anyone who sees himself doing this to a body, his life will be shortened.

Anyone who sees himself being bled from the tongue, will be subject to defamation and suspicions and his calumnies will be discovered. Anyone who sees himself being cupped at any place of , his situation will get worse and he will become impoverished. Anyone who sees himself bleeding from the nose, will suffer from a severe illness but will heal quickly. Anyone who sees himself blood from a wound or a fissure or a falling, will suffer worries and afflictions.

Anyone who sees himself bleeding from the nose, will get ill but will recover. Anyone who sees himself bleeding from the body yet nothing from it is stained, this man has sinned. Anyone who sees himself stained with blood, if it is much, he will lose much, and if it is little, he will lose little. Anyone who sees himself urinating blood, his wife will have an abortion.

28 29

30

ms Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek heb. oct. 35, fols. 5v–6r. Notice that the order of the chapters has been inverted for a better comparison. There are other Hebrew copies in which these two chapters appear together as in the Judaeo-Arabic copies, but the Frankfurt manuscript is still closer in time and in phrasing. Translating from be-ṣamto, which is the most reasonable reading if we accept the original orthography. However, in none of the dictionaries employed is the word ṣomet given in the meaning of a body part. If we consider it a corruption, another possible translation is “from his neck”.

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dream interpretation in judaeo-arabic table 4.2

153

Translations of the chapter on bloodletting according to both manuscripts (cont.)

Judaeo-Arabic version

Hebrew version Chapter on the bathhouses

Anyone who sees himself entering a bath, will receive worries. Anyone who sees himself exiting a bath, will be released from evil. Anyone who sees himself enjoying water, if it is hot, afflictions and worries will take him over. If it is cold, the dream that came will be lighter. If he sees himself entering a house of ablution or sitting in one, a claim of foolish people will be imposed on him his position. Anyone who sees himself exiting a house of ablution, this person will get close to people who have goodness in them and will elevate his position. Therefore, anyone who sees himself purifying in a bath or a house of ablution, will be released from evil that is affecting him.

Anyone who sees himself exiting from a bathhouse, he will be saved from a misfortune. Anyone who sees himself bathing in hot water, he will suffer a calamity. If the water is cold, his calamity will be less. Anyone who sees himself entering a bath to perform an ablution, this person will be saved from bad people. Anyone who sees himself entering a bath and sitting in it, this man will join evil ones and his magnificence will diminish. Anyone who sees himself bathing in a bath, it is good for him.

polarization. However, in other chapters the apodoses are more developed and display greater variety, as in the case of the chapter on trees. On the other hand, the “Chapter on countries, locations, territories and agrarian provinces” falls outside of the regular pattern. It consists of two parts:31 first, it deals with prognostics according to the location the dreamer envisions himself in (man naẓara anna-hu fī …). Here follows a list of locations occurring in the chapter: The lands of the Far West (diyār al-garb al-baʿīda), the far ends of the Western countries (aṭrāf bilād al-gharb), the countries of upper Egypt (bilād al-Ṣaʿīd), the lands of the Abyssinians, Ethiopians and Sudanese (diyār al-Ḥubūš wa-l-Zunūj wa-l-Sūdān), the lands of Egypt and the Rīf (Nile Delta) (diyār Miṣr wa-l-Rīf ), islands of the sea (Egypt) ( jazāʾir albaḥr), the Jifār32 and its villages (al-Jifār wa-ḍiyāʿ al-Jifār), the lands of Palestine, its agrarian districts and villages (diyār Falasṭīn wa-rasātīqi-hā

31

32

Note that some of the Hebrew printed versions split this chapter into two: the first part corresponds to the “Chapter on the lands, borders, and countries” (‫שער הארצות והגבולין‬ ות‬and the second to the “Chapter on the letters” (‫)שער האותיות‬. Mediterranean region to the east of Egypt.

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‫‪villuendas sabaté‬‬ ‫‪Judaeo-Arabic (on the left) and Hebrew (on the right) versions of the chapter on bloodletting‬‬

‫‪table 4.3‬‬

‫שער הקזה‬

‫באב א֗כרא֗ג אלדם ואלד֗כול אלי אלחמאמאת ואלי‬ ‫אלמטאהר‬

‫הרו>אה< שהו>א< מקיז דם בזרועותיו הפסד מועט‬ ‫יהיה לו‬ ‫ואם בכפיו יאבד דבר גדול‬ ‫ואם בעקבו או ברגליו טוב יבא לו‬

‫מן נ֗צר אנה יפצד פי סאעדה פכסארה קריבה יכסרהא‬ ‫ולא תולמה‬ ‫מן נ֗צר אנה יפצד פי כפה פי֗ציע מן ידה שי‬ ‫מן נ֗צר אנה יפצד פי קדמה או כעבה פאנה יק֗צא עליה‬ ‫ו ֗גע פמנעה ען אלנהו֗ץ‬

‫ואם בצמתו‪ a‬שם רע יפול ממנו‬ ‫הרו>אה< שעושה מסו זה בגופה מתמעט חייו‬

‫הרו>אה< שהו>א< מוציא דם מחוטמו יחלה ויתרפא‬ ‫הרו>אה< כי יצא מגופו דם ולא נתלכלך שום דבר ממנו‬ ‫אותו האיש חטא‬ ‫הרו>אה< כי הוא מלוכלך בדם אם הוא הרבה יפסיד‬ ‫הרבה ואם הוא מעט יפסיד מעט‬ ‫הרו>אה< שהו>א< משתין דם אשתו מפלת נפלים‬

‫מן נ֗צר אנה יפצד פי לסאנה פאן אסם קביח וחק טענה‬ ‫ותהמה יתהם בהא>==אה< שהוא יוצא מן המרחץ ינצל מן הצרה‬ ‫הרו>אה< שהוא רוחץ במים חמים צרה תעבור עליו ואם מן נ֗צר אנה יפר ֗ג עליה מא אן חל חאר פהם וגם יתרבב‬ ‫עליה‬ ‫מים קרים מעט קל לצרתו‬ ‫ואן כאן מא אן בארד פא֗כף למנאמה ואצלת‬ ‫הרו>אה< שהו>א< נכנס במרחץ להטהר אותו האיש‬ ‫ינצל מן האנשי רעים‬ ‫אן נ֗צר אנה דא֗כל אלי מטאהר אן ֗גאלס פיה פאן‬ ‫הרו>אה< שהו>א< נכנס במרחץ והוא יושב בו אותו‬ ‫יתכ>==ממאה< שהו>א< רוחץ במרחץ טוב לו‬ ‫עליה‬ ‫‪ (from his neck).‬בצוארו ‪a It could be a corruption of‬‬ ‫‪ (with a dot on top of the gimmel).‬יחת ֗גם ‪b Given the context, it must be a corruption of‬‬

‫‪wa-ḍiyāʿ-hā), Jerusalem (al-Quds) and Hebron (al-Ḵalīl), the lands of Jor‬‬‫‪dan and Jericho (diyār al-Yardīn wa-Yarīḥa), Jawr, Baysān, …, and Amka‬‬ ‫‪(al-Jawr, Baysān, fqyls and ʿAmqā33), the lands of Tiberias and its vil‬‬‫‪ (with a dot on top of the tav), but ʿAmqā provides a plausible‬עמ֗תא ‪The manuscript reads‬‬

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‫‪33‬‬

dream interpretation in judaeo-arabic

155

lages (diyār Ṭabariya wa-ḍiyāʿ-hā), villages of the Mount of Galilee (ḍiyāʿ jabal Jalīl), the lands of Banias and Damascus, their rivers and their fields (diyār Bāniyās wa-Dimašq wa-anhāri-hā wa-basātīni-hā), the low mountains, like ʿIblin, ʿĀraba and … ( Jabal al-suflānī mithla ʿĪblīn wa-ʿĀraba wa-…), the lands of Palmyra, Nawa, Baalbek and the construction of King Solomon (diyār Tadmur wa-Nawā wa-Baʿalbik wa-binyān Sulaymān almalik), coastal regions (aqālīm al-sāḥil), the lands of the Armenians and the Copts (diyār al-Armān wa-l-Qubṭ), the lands of the Byzantines (diyār al-rūm), the lands of the Franks (diyār al-Ifrānj), the lands of the Berbers (diyār al-barbar), the lands of the East or the regions of Iraq (diyār alšarq aw aqālīm al-ʿIrāq), the regions of the Persians (aqālīm al-ʿAjam), the lands of the Indians (diyār al-Hind), the lands of Kasr34 (diyār al-Kasr) and Derbend35 (Bāb al-Abwāb). The second part is particularly distinctive as it offers interpretations corresponding to the first letter of the country’s name. The differences in style suggest that this is a multilayered text produced by combination of textual units of different origin. This possibility is encouraged by the fact that dream books are integrated by different types of textual components or units that can be easily isolated and then relocated elsewhere within the text (during a copying process) or transferred to others (when creating a new composition). Such mobility can be explained by the formulaic nature of dream books as well as the recourse to lists, which implies lack of cohesion. It is aggravated by an apparent feeble coherence seen in many instances, from the organization of the chapters to the connections between symbols and meanings. We can name five kinds of textual units in a dream book that are likely to undergo rearrangements: a) visions, b) meanings, c) clauses in which both are combined, d) chapters where the clauses are integrated, and e) dream narrations, often employed as illustrative examples. When analyzing the possibility of a process of transmission or debt between dream books, it is important to bear in mind that the number of visions commonly discussed in dream books is quite limited. Therefore, repetition in the symbolic imagery represents a weak

34 35

reading. The dot on top of the tav is not very clear and the confusion between tav and qof could be explained as a lapsus calami since, in the manuscript’s hand, the head of the qof appears as open as the two legs of tav, thus they only distinguish each other from the left foot. Wādī al-Kasr or Bilād al-Kasr, region in Hadhramaut, today Yemen. In the actual Republic of Dagestan.

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proof of influence.36 On the other hand, the recurrence of full clauses (repetition in both visions and meanings) among different dream books is more likely to derive either from a process of transmission or from a shared system of derivation from a specific symbol to its meaning.37 Finally, the concomitance of chapters can only be explained through transference. Unfortunately, it is very hard today to obtain a full picture of the processes of transmission in the Arabic and related traditions for two main reasons. One is, of course, the number of compositions that are unknown to us, including those that quite probably circulated orally. The second reason is the lack of critical editions of dream books, which is particularly problematic given the instability of their contents, a characteristic of their composite nature to which I have just referred. In the case of the dream book of Pseudo-Ḥai, we can identify cases with different levels of correlation to other works. For example, visions of entering a bathhouse are already mentioned by Artemidorus. While his phrasing and meanings do not match the ones in our dream book (see Table 4.2), Artemidorus refers to the negative connotation of baths among “the ancient people.” The meaning of this word is not clear, but he states that he travelled to Asia Minor in quest of sources on dream interpretation. Hence, the two authors may share a common source or legacy, not necessarily a written one.38 In contrast, Almoli, who cites Rabbi Ḥai Gaon extensively, introduces this section of Pseudo-Ḥai in his chapter on the “Element of Water,” split between the entries of “Bathhouse” and “Washing.”39 Another example of textual transmission identified in this composition comes from a recent finding: the chapter on visions according to different locations is collected in at least two dream books of Muslim authors, that of Abū

36 37

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Although we have cases like the vision of “eating the stars,” which are more likely repeated as a result of transmission. Of these derivation systems, we can refer to the principle of opposition: the meaning is the opposite of what the normal outcome would be; puns or wordplays; and analogy. For an account and explanation of the rules of derivation in the Arabic tradition (uṣūl altaʿbīr, “principles of interpretation”), see Meir J. Kister, “The Interpretation of Dreams: An Unknown Manuscript of Ibn Qutayba’s ʿIbārat al-ruʾyā,”Israel Oriental Studies 4 (1974): 90– 100; and Hagar Kahana-Smilanski, Middaʿ ha-ḥalom: torat ha-ḥalom be-tarbut ha-muslimit be-meʾa ha-tišiʿit ʿad ha-meʾa ha-aḥat-ʿesreh (“Dream Science: The Dream Theory of Muslim Culture in the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries”) (PhD dissertation, Tel Aviv University, 2001), 179–263. Similarly, Alexander, when discussing the concomitances between the dream book in the Talmud and Artemidorus, refers to the existence of a common culture in which both sides were taking part; see Alexander, “Bavli Berakhot 55a–57b,” 244. Elman, Shlomo Almoli, Dream Interpretation, 72.

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Ṭāhir ibn Ghannām (Harran, c. 1202—Cairo, 1275),40 and a much later work (but one of the most circulated), that of ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (Damascus, 1641–1731),41 who cited Ibn Ghannām among his sources. In all of these cases, the chapter in question exhibits variants that require careful analysis. Also, the two works, Pseudo-Ḥai’s and Ibn Ghannām’s, require more systematic comparison to identify other commonalities, and to elucidate the question of interdependencies between them, or with their common source. Likewise, the collation between the different versions requires further study. So far, I have referred to the Judaeo-Arabic and the Hebrew renderings and mentioned a manuscript copy of a Judaeo-Persian translation. Furthermore, a modern Judaeo-Arabic printed copy, which Yosef Shabbetay Farḥi (d. 1882) is said to have copied from the writings of Rabbi Ḥai Gaon, exhibits its own peculiarities.42 Finally, another question that subsequent study of this work, its variants, and its sources should answer is whether the attribution to Rabbi Ḥai Gaon is true or false. According to the information I have gathered so far, such an attribution is neither supported nor can it be rejected. The most compelling reason for denying the attribution is the lack of references to Rabbi Ḥai Gaon in Judaeo-Arabic copies from the Genizah, most likely the oldest copies of this work. However, all of these copies are acephalous and have no colophon. It was common practice to ascribe composition to famous figures as pseudepigraphy, for marketing or legitimacy purposes. However, overreliance on this line of reasoning caused scholars to discredit the attribution of Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdullāh ibn Qutaybah al-Dīnawarī’s dream book until it was eventually proven true.43 In addition, note that in the chapter on places, directions given for the locations do not match with any single point in Pumbedita, Iraq, where Rabbi Ḥai Gaon used to live. It is not possible to determine at this stage if the passage could be an extrapolation, since it is absent from the version of Shabbetay Farḥi. Finally, we know that, unlike his Karaite contemporaries, Ḥai ben Sherira Gaon was a strong defender of the Babylonian Talmud, where one finds the oldest known Jewish dream book. Although this alone would explain his interest in the subject, the lack of references to such a relevant source is somewhat odd. Rabbi Ḥai

40 41 42 43

The most complete title of this work still unedited is Al-muʿlam ʿalā ḥurūf al-muʿjam. I have consulted several of its manuscript copies. See ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī, Taʿṭīr al-ānām fī taʿbīr al-manām (Beirut: Dār al-Warrāq, 2001), 559–561. Eliʿezer Farḥi (ed.), Shabbetay Farḥi, Kitāb tafsīr al-manamōt (Tunis: Maṭbaʿ al-Nasr, 1908). See Lamoreaux, The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation, 27–28, who summarized the discussion and provided new arguments in favor.

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Gaon is the author of a dictionary of Hebrew-Aramaic,44 which could explain the terminological accuracy displayed in the Judaeo-Arabic version from the Genizah, in line with the attribution. Moreover, according to Menasseh ben Israel, Rabbi Ḥai Gaon made use of šeʿilat ḥalom to respond to a query. He received a Biblical verse as an answer (Micah 2:12),45 which reveals his belief in the ominous nature of dreams.

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I am referring to the Kitāb al-ḥāwī, which in spite of having been used extensively until the end of the thirteenth century, is only preserved incompletely in Judaeo-Arabic fragments from the Genizah. Some of them have been published in Aharon Maman, “The Remnants of Rabbi Ḥai Gaon’s Dictionary Kitāb al-Ḥāwi in the Adler and Taylor-Schechter Geniza Collections,” Tarbiz, 69, 3 (2000): 341–422 (in Hebrew). These fragments, as well as his Kitāb al-aymān, also preserved in the Genizah, could help to compare the usus scribendi in the texts. If the identification were true, this would be another point of correspondence between Ḥai Gaon and Ibn Qutayba (d. 889). In Löwinger, Der Traum in der jüdischen Literatur, 24. Although Löwinger does not provide further references, it should come as no surprise after learning how common this practice was, as demonstrated by Alessia Bellusci, among others; see Chapter Three of this book, 102–106 and 137.

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figure 4.1 ms Cambridge University Library ts ns 322.39, fol. 1r. reproduced by kind permission of the syndics of cambridge university library

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figure 4.2 ms Cambridge University Library ts Misc. 6.156, fol. 1r. This image and the previous one belong to the same codex. reproduced by kind permission of the syndics of cambridge university library

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chapter 5

If You Seek to Take Advice from the Torah, It Will Be Given: Jewish Bibliomancy through the Generations Shraga Bar-On

This chapter traces the roots of the contemporary practice of the lot of the gr''a, i.e., lot of the Gaon Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720–1797), in Jewish culture, which reveals extensive and variegated utilizations of the Torah as a means of divination from antiquity. Thus, in contrast to other divination techniques, bibliomancy was awarded legitimacy within Jewish culture as an expression of “mantic pietism.” This chapter suggests that this divination technique was misattributed to Elijah of Vilna, known as the Vilna Gaon, due to a confusion between his initials with another Rabbi Elijah. Nevertheless, through this mistaken attribution, this technique became embedded within the basic ethos of Lithuanian Jewish culture, which saw the Torah as the focal point of Jewish life.

1

The Episode Concerning the Lamed-Heh Convoy and Its Medieval Roots A sacred silence filled the hall. The burning candles added to the aura of this awesome assembly. The Bible was opened without a specific folio or page in mind. After each opening, they again leafed through the book at random seven times, and then they repeated the procedure another seven times.1

1 Description of the event and the photographed protocol from Simcha Raz, A Tzaddik in Our Time: The Life of Rabbi Aryeh Levin (Jerusalem: S. Zak, 1973), 111–117 (in Hebrew). This chapter is a modified and improved version of a previous Hebrew article: “Bibliomancy in Jewish Tradition: The Lot attributed to the Gaon of Vilna (Goral Hagra),” in Myth, Ritual, and Mysticism: Studies in Honor of Professor Ithamar Gruenwald, ed. Gideon Bohak, Ron Margolin, and Ishay Rosen-Zvi, (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2014), 521–585 (in Hebrew). I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Josefina Rodriguez Arribas and Dr. Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum for their insightful suggestions and comments. Furthermore, I would like to thank Prof. Adam Afterman, Prof. Gideon Bohak, Prof. Zvi Mark, Dr. Alessia Bellusci, Dr. Yakir Paz, Dr. Alon TenAmi, Bar Belinitzky, Shmuel Herr, Gene Matanky, and Yael Okun for sharing with me materials

© Shraga Bar-On, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445703_007

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This is how the journalist Yitzhak Deutsch described an event that took place in 1950 in the study hall of the famous ṣaddiq (pious man) of Jerusalem, Rabbi Aryeh Levin (1885–1969). There, Rabbi Levin had brought closure to a personal and national tragedy in the nascent state of Israel. By means of a technique (mistakenly) known as “the lot (goral) of the Gaon of Vilna,” he had identified twelve bodies of the Lamed-Heh Convoy. The Lamed-Heh Convoy was a platoon of thirty-five fighters who attempted to resupply the blockaded Etzion Bloc during the Israeli War of Independence. In the course of a difficult battle, the fighters were killed, and their bodies were subsequently brought for temporary burial to Kibbutz Kfar-Etzion. However, before the end of the war, the settlements of the Etzion Bloc fell, and they were transferred to Jerusalem for formal burial. Twelve of the dead could not be identified, a fact which would have precluded digging graves and setting up tombstones for them. Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Tzvi Pesaḥ Frank (1873–1960) recommended contacting Rabbi Aryeh Levin to ask him to perform the divinatory ceremony. Those present at the event described how opening to a random Biblical verse yielded results that matched the names of the fighters. Rabbi Levin documented the outcomes of the lot in his own hand. So, for instance, the body of Binyamin Bugoslavsky was identified via the verse “and out of the tribe of Benjamin (Binyamin) by lot” (Josh 21:4); that of Oded Ben-Yamin via “Am not I a Benjamite (ben-yemini)” (1Sam 9:21); and that of Eitan Gaon via “But the pride (geʾon) of Israel shall testify to his face” (Hosea 7:10). This story exemplifies how bibliomancy, the use of Scripture for the purposes of revealing the hidden and divining the future, had become a widespread practice at the core of the Jewish establishment.2 Such use of the Torah has a long, fascinating history that predates the birth of Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the Gaon of Vilna (1720–1797), by many years (in fact, centuries). This chapter seeks to investigate this practice that has, in recent generations, become known as the “lot of the Gaon of Vilna.” This term is the most common appellation in contemporary traditional Jewish literature for “bibliomancy,” i.e., the lay and rabbinic technique of making decisions through the use of the Bible as a tool for divination. It should be emphasized that the Jewish tradition has

and ideas that have found their place in this article. All errors, omissions, and imprecisions remain my own. 2 Also, concerning the place of magic in Jewish-Israeli society, as well as modern Jewish magic, see Gideon Bohak, “How Jewish Magic Survived the Disenchantment of the World,” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 19 (2019): 7–37, specifically 25–28, concerning the old yišuv, although he does not address this episode and the divinatory technique employed therein.

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no systematic classification of mantic or divinatory techniques.3 Furthermore, there is no ancient or medieval Hebrew term to denote bibliomancy specifically; rather goral/goralot (“lot/lots”) is the ambiguous term used to denote bibliomancy as well as other forms of divination. More specific terms can be found later, in the sixteenth century and beyond, such as “lot of the Pentateuch” (goral ha-ḥumaš), “lot of the Torah” (goral ha-torah) or, as already mentioned, “lot of the Gaon of Vilna” (goral ha-gr''a). Thus, from a Jewish perspective bibliomancy should be discussed in a broad fashion. Although the uses of this technique are varied, they share a common theme: divination by way of the Torah or Biblical verses randomly displayed or heard, and the arrival at a solution to the problem or question posed based on clues in those verses. Thus, this divinatory technique ultimately relies on the Bible.4 As I shall demonstrate, the attribution of this mode of divination to the Gaon of Vilna is mistaken; there are much earlier attestations to divination using the Torah in various modalities, and no other tool of augury has gained so much legitimacy within the Jewish tradition as written and practiced.5 This study reveals the variegated ways in which Biblical verses are utilized for divinatory purposes, whether through intentional or unintentional listening, as well as whether they are independent techniques or are combined with other divinatory methods. Likewise, this chapter traces the phenomenon of divination books that employ Biblical verses as well as the technique of opening the Bible for divinatory purposes. This study addresses the broad legitimacy of these practices, framed by the complex relationship of the Jewish tradition to various methods of divination (because of the forbidden divinatory practices mentioned in the Bible and the Talmud), the use of the word “lot” to refer to the technique, and the significance of its attribution to the Gaon of Vilna.

3 For a different view and a classification of divinatory practices according to the Bible and the Talmud, see Chapter Seven of this book, 243–255. 4 Regarding the use of texts, and specifically the Bible, for divinatory purposes, see Chapter One of this book, 24, 28–29, 31, and 34–42. 5 As a rule, many forms of divinatory practice by the Talmudic rabbis were accepted and were popular, if only for the universal acceptance of the Talmud and its presence in Jewish education from the youngest age. In this way also dream divination (present in the Biblical accounts of Joseph and Daniel) was a highly respected divinatory practice widespread among Jews; see Chapters Three and Four of this book, 123–126 and 132–137, and 141, respectively.

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The Inevitable Presence of Manticism in the Jewish Tradition

Common wisdom regards the Torah as forbidding all forms of manticism, based on the verses in Deuteronomy: There shall not be found among you … one who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead (Deut 18:10–11).6 This passage, which concludes: “you must be wholehearted with the Lord your God” (Deut 18:13), is understood in rabbinic tradition as a blanket prohibition on the practice of divination. All forms of manticism were deemed alien to the Jewish tradition and therefore intolerable.7 However, the same section of the Torah that prohibits manticism also promises that God will send a prophet to lead the people. Conceived thus, it should be understood that the text does not proscribe all forms of prognostication,8 but rather commands that it must be consonant with unwavering loyalty to God and the Torah (e.g., Joseph and Daniel). Or, put otherwise, this section enjoins the practice of specifically Jewish manticism. For example, typical Biblical mantic techniques include prophecy as well as consultation of the ʾurim and the tummim.9 6 All translations of Biblical texts are based on the new jps translation (Philadelphia, 1985). 7 For a thorough discussion of different hypotheses as to the composition of this passage, see Brian B. Schmidt, “Canaanite Magic vs. Israelite Religion: Deuteronomy 18 and the Taxonomy of Taboo,” in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. P. Mirecki and M. Meyer (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 242–262. See more in Yuval Harari, Early Jewish Magic: Research, Method, Sources (Jerusalem: Bialik, 2010), 284–286 (in Hebrew); and Gideon Bohak, “Prolegomena to the Study of the Jewish Magical Tradition,” Currents in Biblical Literature 8 (2009): 382–385; Giuseppe Veltri, Magie und Halakha: Ansätze zu einem empirischen Wissenschaftsbegriff im spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Judentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 220–293, esp. 244–245. 8 See Chapter Seven of this book on the specific forms of divination banned in the Torah, 243– 255. 9 Most prominent among the priestly mantic institutions was use of the ʾurim and the tummim. This is not the forum to expand on the nature of that oracle. For in-depth discussions and debates see Arie Toeg, “A Textual Note on 1 Samuel xiv 41,” Vetus Testamentum 19 (1969): 493– 498; Edward Robertson, “The Urim and the Tummim: What Were They?,” Vetus Testamentum 14 (1964): 64–74; Edward Lipinski, “Urim and Tummim,” Vetus Testamentum 20 (1970): 495– 496; Anne Marie Kitz, “The Plural Form of Urim and Tummim,” Journal of Biblical Literature 116 (1997): 401–410; William Muss-Arnolt, “The Urim and Thummim: A Suggestion as to Their Original Nature and Significance,” The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 16, 4 (1900): 193–224; Cornelis Houtman, “The Urim and Thummim: A New Suggestion,” Vetus Testamentum 40, 2 (1990): 229–232; Cornelis Van Dam, The Urim and Thummin: A Means of

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Furthermore, the book of Deuteronomy repeats this admonition as part of Moses’ parting oration before the people’s entry into Canaan.10 Such a prohibition, presented thus, can only be explained by assuming that these were widespread practices within the territory of Judah at the time of the passage’s composition.11 One can also discern an intra-Biblical conflict as to the level of legitimacy of certain modes of divination.12 In light of this, Schmidt seems justified in his claim that the “law of prophecy” in Deut 18 seeks to polemicize against Jewish customs by ascribing their origins to foreign peoples, and

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Revelation in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997); Wayne Horowitz and Victor A. Hurowitz, “Urim and Thummim in Light of a Psephomancy Ritual from Assur (lka 137),” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 21 (1992): 95–115; Victor A. Hurowitz, “True Light on the Urim and Thummim,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 88(1998): 263–274; and Shraga Bar-On, Lot Casting, God and Man in Jewish Tradition from the Bible to Late Renaissance (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2020) (in Hebrew). For the foundational studies on Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic school see Martin Noth, The Deuteronomistic History (Sheffield: jsot Press, 1981); Gerhard von Rad, Studies in Deuteronomy, Studies in Biblical Theology (London: scm, 1961); and Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). Cf. Isa 19:3 (on Egypt) and Isa 57:3 (on Israel). On the development of the passage in Deut 18:9–22, known as the “law of prophecy,” see Samuel Rolles Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (Edinburgh: Clark, 1996), 221–230; David CohenTzemach, “The Law of Prophecy,” in Olam Hatanakh: Deuteronomy, ed. Moshe Weinfeld and David Cohen-Tzemach (Tel Aviv: Divrei Hayamim, 2002), 147–149 (in Hebrew); and Schmidt, “Canaanite Magic vs. Israelite Religion,” 242–262. Exact dating depends on substantive debates vis-à-vis the Deuteronomistic school—some date it to the latter days of the kingdom of Judah, while others hold it to have been composed in exile. On the forms of manticism enumerated in the passage see William Robertson Smith, “The Forms of Divination and Magic in Dt. 18:10–11,” Journal of Philology 13 (1884): 273–287 and 14 (1885): 112–128 (reprinted in 2012: 273–287 and 113–118, respectively). But cf. the classification of Ann Jeffers, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria (Leiden: Brill, 1996). See Isa 3:1–3, and cf. other means of divination not repudiated by the Biblical text, such as in Gen 31:34; 37:5–9; 41; 44:5, 15; 45; 1 Sam 6:7–14; 19:13, and 28:6; Ezek 21:26–28; Jonah 1:7; and Job 4:12–16. In 1 Chron 10:13–14 as well, Saul’s consultation of the ghost is portrayed as opposed to the consultation of God, indicating an alternative tradition regarding Saul’s divination preceding the battle on the Gilboa. Notwithstanding, the problem was not the fact of his attempting to gain knowledge of the future per se. See also S. Ahituv, “Atid, Hagadat Atidot,” in Encyclopedia Biblica, ed. M.D. Cassuto (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1981 [2nd edition]), 416–421 (in Hebrew). For what follows, we must pay careful attention to the root qesem, which most likely first denoted the use of lots to divine the future and was subsequently expanded to apply to all forms of divination and magic. See Jeffers, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria, 197–215; and Frederick H. Cryer, Divination in Ancient Israel and its Near Eastern Environment (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 230–233. Cf. rabbinic interpretations, which also seem to retain an affinity for the original meaning; see Louis Finkelstein (ed.), Sifre ad Deuteronomium (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary Press, 1969), 218 (Sifre Rabbah, Deut 171).

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that the Biblical text in general does not supply any substantive criteria to distinguish between prohibited idolatrous divination and legitimate methods of prognostication.13 This holds true for rabbinic literature as well—besides legal discussions regarding forbidden manticism and the principled rejection of divination in general, one finds ample evidence of use of signs or omens by both sages and laypeople to foretell the future, including techniques such as hemerology, astrology, and bibliomancy.14 This tension, which continues to accompany popular and rabbinic literature into the Middle Ages and onward,15 exemplifies the multiplicity of voices that characterizes the historical record, in which condemnatory expressions regarding divination in general and specific techniques in particular—especially those identified with competing religions—appear alongside implicit or explicit attestations to various practical techniques for predicting the future. Thus, divination has occupied a permanent seat in the hall of Jewish life and literature, and we must resist generalizations that have held sway in past discourse regarding divination in the rabbinic corpus. Jewish culture has always existed within a larger non-Jewish environment and has been influenced by it. Thus, different divinatory techniques were borrowed, adopted, and adapted from non-Jewish societies and went through a Judaization process. Indeed, the enduring presence of divination within the Jewish tradition, as well as the opposition to it, are direct continuations of conflicting Biblical trends and both have precedent within the ancient Jewish tradition. Thus, it would be useful to introduce the physics term “vector” into this discussion as an indicator of direction and force, analyzing vectors of acceptance and rejection of divination as a whole and specific techniques that have been employed in the Jewish tradition for prognostication.

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Schmidt, “Canaanite Magic vs. Israelite Religion,” 242–262. For surveys of modes of approved and disapproved divination in rabbinic literature, see Harari, Early Jewish Magic, 313–352; and Louis I. Rabinowitz, “Divination in the Talmud,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. F. Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007 [2nd edition]), 5:705–707. See Moses Gaster, “Divination (Jewish),” Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1911), 4:806–814; Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 208–259; Michael D. Swartz, “Divination and Its Discontents: Finding and Questioning Meaning in Ancient and Medieval Judaism,” in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, ed. S.B. Noegel, J.T. Walker, and B.M. Wheeler (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003), 155–166; and Samuel Daiches, Babylonian Oil Magic in the Talmud and in Later Jewish Literature (London: Jews College, 1913).

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On the Cultural Legitimation of Bibliomancy

Particularly noteworthy among the various means of foretelling the future is the historically continuous legitimation of the use of the Torah as a tool for prognostication. The Torah’s special status as the basis for the Jewish way of life, its ancient association with wisdom and its image as the tool through which the world was created, the tendency to anthropomorphize it in various ways and its occasional conflation with God himself—all contributed to the legitimization of varied uses of the Torah that often diverged significantly from the study and observance of the laws contained therein.16 It is possible to discern the earliest attestation of such use quite soon after the canonization of the Torah, in the text of Psalm 119, especially 119:18: “Open my eyes, that I may perceive the wonders (niflaʾot) of your teaching (torateḵa).” Here we find a conception of the Torah that extends beyond its utility for study to “perceiving wonders.” Most scholars have noted the affinity between the language used in this verse to prophetic literature on one hand, and to wisdom literature on the other. Still, due to the context of the psalm, they have held it to refer to the study of the Torah and the divine inspiration for its interpretation.17 These understandings may not fully realize the meaning of the word “wonders” (niflaʾot), which is associated with the revelation of new concealed knowledge. Indeed, some see this verse, and the psalm as a whole, as the earliest example of the apotheosis of the Torah.18 It is certainly possible that we have here an early witness to the use of the Torah as a means of divination, although there is no hint in the verse as to how these wonders are to be mined from the Torah. Even if the verse does not intend to convey such a meaning, we should not be surprised when later sources interpret it thusly. 16

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See Gershom Scholem, Elements of the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1976), esp. 36–85 (in Hebrew); Gabriele Boccaccini, “The Preexistence of the Torah: A Commonplace in Second Temple Judaism, or a Later Rabbinic Development?,” Henoch 17 (1995): 329–350; Alice M. Sinnott, The Personification of Wisdom (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Jessie F. Rogers, “Wisdom and Creation in Sirach 24,” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 22 (1996): 141–156; Peter Schäfer, “Wisdom Finds a Home, Torah as Wisdom,” in Light in a Spotless Mirror: Reflections on Wisdom Traditions in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. J.H. Charlesworth and M.A. Daise (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2003), 26–44; Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); and Moshe Idel, “On Angels and Biblical Exegesis in Thirteenth-Century Ashkenaz,” Scriptural Exegesis 1, 9 (2009): 211–245. Kent Aaron Reynolds, Torah as Teacher: The Exemplary Torah Student in Psalm 119 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 113–146. David Noel Freedman with Jeffrey C. Geoghehan and Andrew Welch, Psalm 119: The Exaltation of Torah (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 87–92.

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The literature of Qumran (c. 300bce–100ce) as well presents a wealth of mantic customs and techniques.19 Various sources, both from Qumran and external documents, testify to the efficacy of such practices in foretelling the future.20 Among the methods of divination in use, Flavius Josephus enumerates the consultation of books: There are also among them those who profess to foretell (προγινώσκειν) what is to come, being thoroughly trained in holy books, various purifications, and concise sayings of prophets (προφητῶν ἀποφθέγμασιν). Rarely if ever do they fail in their predictions (ἐν ταῖς προαγορεύσεσιν).21

19 20

21

See Chapter Two of this book on one of the specific forms of divination (astrology) that may have been practiced in Qumran, 49–53. For discussions of the question of manticism in Qumran and its relation to Biblical prophecy, see James C. Vanderkam, “Mantic Wisdom in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Dead Sea Discoveries 4 (1997): 336–353; Armin Lange, “The Essene Position on Magic and Divination,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995, ed. M. Bernstein, F. García Martínez, and J. Kampen (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 377–435; John J. Collins, Seers, Sybils and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Mladen Popović, Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2007); James E. Bowley, “Prophets and Prophecy at Qumran,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, ed. J.C. Van der Kam and P.W. Flint, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2:354–378; Alex P. Jassen, Mediating the Divine: Prophecy and Revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Alex P. Jassen, “Prophets and Prophecy in the Qumran Community,” ajs Review 32,2 (2008): 299–334; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in Ancient Israel (Louisville, ky: Westminster, 1995); Hans Barstad, “Prophecy at Qumran?,” in In the Last Days: On Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic and its Period, ed. K. Jeppesen (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1996), 104–120; George J. Brooke, “Parabiblical Prophetic Narratives” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years, 271–301; “Prophecy and Prophets in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Looking Backwards and Forwards,” in Prophets, Prophecy, and Prophetic Texts in Second Temple Judaism, ed. Michael Floyd and Robert D. Haak (New York: Clark, 2006), 151–165; and George J. Brooke, “Prophets and Prophecy in the Qumran Scrolls and the New Testament,” in Text, Thought, and Practice in Qumran and Early Christianity, ed. R.A. Clements and D.R. Schwartz (Leiden: Brill 2009), 31–48. Steve Mason (ed.), Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 1B: Judean War 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), § (8.12) 159 and 128–129. See also Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: The Evidence from Josephus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). On the prophetic powers of Flavius Josephus himself, see Lester L. Grabbe, “Thus Spake the Prophet Josephus …: The Jewish Historian on Prophets and Prophecy,” in Prophets, Prophecy, and Prophetic Texts, 240–247.

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Although the exact technique of divination is not mentioned, one must conclude from this statement that devoted study of the words of the prophets was of use to diviners among the Essenes in predicting the future. In the Dead Sea scrolls we do not find explicit descriptions of using Biblical verses at random to illuminate the answer to a question, but we do encounter a different method of attributing old prophecies to current situations—the pešer (lit. interpretation). It is reasonable to assume that such techniques of re-reading the Bible and inferring predictions based on it was practiced by its group members. In a comprehensive study, Van der Horst describes additional mantic employment of ancient Jewish literature such as the books of Maccabees and the New Testament, comparing them to Greek and Roman parallels.22 Rabbinic literature also contains a number of literary accounts of divination through the chance hearing of given verses. The most prominent technique is to listen to children reciting verses during their studies, which is sometimes referred to as a “divine voice” (bat-qol).23 At times, a book or verse appears as a mantic sign within a different medium—a dream.24 The Babylonian Talmud (Beraḵot 56a), in parodic overtones, recounts the interpretation of the dreams of Abaye and Rava, which contained the same verse, and were nonetheless imbued with different meanings by the diviner Bar Ḥadya depending on the amount of payment offered him.25 In contrast to these instances, we find in the Babylonian Talmud a statement of Rabbi Joḥanan that describes a liminal state in which a verse appears in the mouth of a person upon waking. It should be noted that this is not a recollection of a dream, which could itself be conceived of as “one sixtieth of prophecy,”26 but a verse revealed to the person at the moment he wakes up: “If one wakes up and a verse falls into his mouth—this is a minor prophecy.”27 At times, the verse 22 23

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Pieter W. Van der Horst, Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Studies on Jewish Hellenism in Antiquity (Leuven–Paris–Sterling, VA: Peeters, 2002), 162–164. See, for example, tb Ḥagigah 15a; Giṭṭin 56a; 67b; Ḥullin 95a–b; ty Šabbat 6:10, as found in Yaacov Sussmann (ed.), Talmud Yerushalmi (Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language, 2001), 399–401; Judah D. Eisenstein (ed.), Oṣar Midrašim, 2 vols. (New York: J.D. Eisenstein, 1915), 1:55; and Esther Rabbah 7:13 (Vilna: Romm, 1878). tb Beraḵot 57b. On the question of the interpretation of dreams among Jews, see Chapter Four of this book, 140–158. On these and similar statements in the context of the problematic of revelation, see Philip S. Alexander, “ ‘A Sixtieth Part of Prophecy’: The Problem of Continuing Revelation in Judaism,” in Words Remembered, Texts Renewed: Essays in Honor of John F.A. Sawyer, ed. J. Davis, G. Harvey, and W.G.E. Watson (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 414–418. tb Beraḵot 55b and 57b. On the mantic context of dreams in rabbinic thought, see Harari, Early Jewish Magic, 330–340 and the extensive bibliography cited there.

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does not appear in the dream itself, but rather serves as a means of deciphering the meaning of the dream.28 Thus, it is interesting to see the way bibliomancy can include both unsought and sought divinations. Despite their limited number, one encounters hints of the mantic use of books in rabbinic literature. The most explicit and famous of them is the practice of the amora Samuel recounted in tb Ḥullin 95b: “Samuel would consult a book.” Later sources explicitly describe the option of using a Torah scroll: On the third new moon, etc. (Exod 19:1)—This is what the verse states: Indeed, I wrote down for you a threefold lore, wise counsel (Prov 22:20). If you seek to take advice from the Torah, it will be given. Says David: “If I required advice from the Torah, I would look and would take advice, as it says: In your commands I will converse, and in your ways I shall look (Ps 119:15) and as it says elsewhere: In your commands, I shall engage in reflective thought (Ps 119:104).”29 This late midrash, like others,30 identifies the proverb’s opaque reference to a book (“I wrote down for you”) as referring to the Torah. Still, the taking of counsel from it is based on the context of the chapter in Proverbs, as well as the verses from Psalm 119, which, according to the author of the midrash, attest to the practice of King David, who ostensibly composed them. Let us return to the Talmudic passage in tb Ḥullin 95b. It is possible that the book that Samuel consulted was not specifically a Torah scroll, but a volume composed specifically for purposes of divination. Had it been a Torah scroll, it is likely that the editor of the passage would have noted this explicitly. Neither does the immediate context in which Samuel’s practice appears hint to this effect. The same passage conveys that Rav, Samuel’s frequent interlocutor, would “consult a ferryboat,” a method that clearly has no connection to the Torah.31 Divination books were especially common in the Greco-Roman world,

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ty Maʿaser šeni 4:12; and Talmud Yerushalmi, 302–303. The dream in Gen 15:5 is interpreted in Salomon Buber (ed.), Lamentations Rabbah (Vilna: Rom, 1899), 1:52. See Galit HasanRokem, “ ‘A Dream is a Sixtieth of Prophecy’: Symbiosis between Textual Establishment and Popular Context in the Interpretation of Dreams in Rabbinic Literature,” in Studies in the History of Popular Culture, ed. B.Z. Kedar (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 1996), 45–54 (in Hebrew). Bernard Mandelbaum (ed.), Pesikta de-Rabbi Kahana (Newark: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962), 1: 213 (in Hebrew). tb Megillah 7a; and Saul Lieberman (ed.), Deuteronomy Rabbah (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1974), parašat Niṣavim 117 and various commentaries in that section. On the other hand, Rabbi Joḥanan, the Palestinian amora, would “consult a child.” Here

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where they were called sortes (“lots”) or sortium libri (“books of lots,” in Hebrew sifrei goralot) and this tool spread to several other cultures.32 These books also demonstrate an expansion of the technical term within Roman culture, including its later Christianization,33 in which the term sortes was employed to refer to other divinatory techniques, such as bibliomancy. Eventually, the term came to include all forms of divination and magic, as demonstrated by the meaning and uses of the term “sorcery.”34 In ancient Jewish culture up to the end of the

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traditional and modern commentaries identify the technique as the practice of asking a child to recite a verse at random. But as indicated by the continuation of the passage and parallels in the Jerusalem Talmud, this account was added to the earlier layer that immediately follows it in the passage, describing the practices of Rav and Samuel. Since we are told that Rav consulted ferryboats and Samuel books, we are also told that Rabbi Joḥanan would consult children. In addition to Van der Horst’s study, Japheth in the Tents of Shem, see the treatment of lotteries based on texts of diverse content and media in Franziska Naether, Die Sortes Astrampsychi: Problemlösungsstrategien durch Orakel im römischen Ägypten (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010); William E. Klingshirn, “Defining the Sortes Sanctorum: Gibbon, Du Cange, and Early Christian Lot Divination,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 (2002): 77–130; William E. Klingshirn, “Inventing the Sortilegus: Lot Divination and Cultural Identity in Italy, Rome, and the Provinces,” in Religion in Republican Italy, ed. P.B. Harvey and C.E. Schultz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 137–161; William E. Klingshirn, “Christian Divination in Late Roman Gaul: The Sortes Sangallenses,” in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, ed. S.I. Johnston and P.T. Struck (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 99– 128; Fritz Graf, “Rolling the Dice for an Answer,” in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, 51–97; Cristiano Grottanelli, “Sorte unica pro casibus pluribus enotata: Literary Texts and Lot Inscriptions as Sources for Ancient Kleromancy,” in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, 129–146; Jacqueline Champeaux, “Sors oraculi: les oracles en Italie sous la République et l’ Empire,”Mélanges de l’ Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité 102, 1 (1990): 271– 302; and Jacqueline Champeaux, “Sorts et Divination Inspirée. Pour une Préhistoire des Oracles Italiques,” Mélanges de l’ Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité 102, 2 (1990): 801–828. If Samuel’s book is taken to be a lottery book, then the Talmudic statement is one of the earliest recorded accounts of the use of lottery books in monotheistic culture. See Klingshirn, “Defining the Sortes Sanctorum,” 77–130. For example, see the ancient Roman practice of bibliomancy employing the work of Virgil, referred to as Sortes Vergilianae, in Kevin J. Hayes, Folklore and Book Culture (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 38. Concerning the expansive meaning of sortes, see William Smith and Charles Anthon (eds.), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1857), 904; Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, Salvatore Settis (eds.), The Classical Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 275; Georg Luck, Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2006), 244–245, 301, and 469; and Alex Nice, Divination and Roman Historiography (PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 1999), 302–303. Concerning our contemporary usage of the word “sorcery” to refer to all types of magic, see Sarah I. Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 145. We see this as well in common English nomenclature in which the “casting of lots” was transferred into the “casting of spells.”

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Talmudic period, we find accounts of the use of physical lots as a means of divination,35 but there are very few attestations to the expansion of the concept to include other mantic techniques. Although the Hebrew language too contains a wide range of terms that originally applied to specific methods of divination and whose application broadened, such as qesem (magic),36 naḥaš (augury), and nevuʾah (prophecy),37 the word “lot” (goral) never became synonymous with all magic; rather it generally remained within its original semantic field. It did expand from its original meaning of casting physical lots, such as pieces of wood or pottery, to include other mantic practices, such as bibliomancy, but this was understood to be another form of lot-casting. Therefore,

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On the etymology of the Hebrew goral (lot) and related terms see Rabbi Nathan of Rome (c. 1035–1106), “goral,” in Aruch Completum, 5 vols. (Vienna: [n.p.], 1928), 1:363; Eduard Yechezkel Kutscher, Words and Their History (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1965), 15–16 (in Hebrew); Shraga Abramson, Mi-pi baʿalei lešonot (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1988), 323; Nachum Bronznick, “Semantics of the Root Ḥalaš and Its Conjugations,” Leshonenu 41 (1977): 163–175 (in Hebrew); and Chaim Gevaryahu and Samuel Levinstam, “Goral,”Encyclopaedia Biblica, 460–461 (in Hebrew). On mantic uses of lots (beyond those mentioned here), see in brief John Lindblom, “Lot-Casting in the Old Testament,” Vetus Testamentum 12 (1962): 164–178; William W. Hallo, “The First Purim [the Lot (puru) of Iahali],” The Biblical Archaeologist 46 (Winter 1983): 19–29; Peter Ignatius, “Election of Saul as King by Lot-Casting (1 Sam 10, 17–27): Revisiting the Character of Saul,” Bible bhashyam 33, 2 (2007): 36; Charles E. Perry, The Theory and Practice of Lot-Casting in Ancient Near Eastern Countries and Israel (ma thesis, Grace Theological Seminary, 1975); Ada TaggarCohen, “The Casting of Lots among the Hittites in Light of Ancient Near Eastern Parallels,” The Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 29 (2002): 97–103; Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretations (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 108–110; Eric D. Huntsman, “And They Cast Lots: Divination, Democracy, and Josephus,”Brigham Young University Studies 36 (1996–1997): 365–377; Francis Schmidt, “Goral versus Payis: Casting Lots at Qumran and in the Rabbinic Tradition,” in Defining Identities; We, You, and the Other in the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Florentino García Martínez and Mladen Popović (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 175–185; and William A. Beardslee, “The Casting of Lots at Qumran and in the Book of Acts,” Novum Testamentum 4, 4 (1960): 245–252. For a broader cultural perspective, see Neil Duxbury, Random Justice: On Lotteries and Legal Decision-Making (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 16–23; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), 139–146; and Thomas Gataker, Of the Nature and Use of Lots: A Treatise Historical and Theological (London: John Haviland, 1627). For a different meaning of the Hebrew Biblical term qesem, see Chapter Seven of this book, 249–254. See e.g., the phrases “books of the heretics (minim)” and “books of the magicians (qosemim / qosemin),” which are apparently used by the rabbis to refer both to Christian and Zoroastrian books (though it is likely that each term was originally associated with its own referent) in Tosefta ḥullin 2:6; Šabbat 13:5; Yadayim 2:13; Sifre, Naso 16; tb Šabbat 116a; Sanhedrin 100b; Ḥullin 13a.

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we may assume that instances in Jewish literature where the term’s application is expanded further constitute evidence of acquaintance with mantic practices from other cultures and the assimilation of foreign means of divination—or at least of the term used to describe it.38 A later source, from the Middle Ages, serves as evidence of the incorporation of Biblical verses into the mantic technique of dream interpretation. This is attested in a famous question posed to Rabbi Ḥai Gaon (939–1038): And so with respect to asking a query regarding a dream, there are among us several elders and pious men who know and fast for several days, neither eating meat nor drinking wine; sleep in a pure place; pray; and recite specific verses and a certain number of letters. They then lie down and have wondrous dreams, akin to prophecy. Some of them are still alive and are known to us, and each has a specific, determined prophetic avatar: to one appears an elder; to his fellow appears a lad. The avatar tells him and recites before him verses relating to the matter about which he had asked his query.39 Rabbi Ḥai Gaon refrains from endorsing the enchantments described, as well as mantic symbolism. However, even he gives certain credence to dream requests in a manner that includes the interpretation of verses: But now, we have seen only for those who request signs such as … verses related to the matter requested.40 Here, unlike in the Talmudic sources, we encounter a “dream request,” i.e., the contrived solicitation of a prophetic answer as opposed to the interpretation of

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See Bar-On, “Bibliomancy in Jewish Tradition,” 541–543, in which I discuss tb Pesaḥim 113b: “From where is it derived that one may not consult kaldiyim,” which Rashi states are necromancers (baʿalei ʾov). However the tosafists argue in tb Šabbat 156b: “In the entire periscope it appears that kaldai refers to astrologers (ḥozim be-koḵavim) and not as Rashi explains in Arvei Pesaḥim (tb Pesaḥim 113b) … that it refers to necromancers (ʾov) … as it is written explicitly: Do not turn (Lev 19:31), and in the Sifre it is expounded: From where is it derived that one may not consult lots (goralot)? For it is written: You must be wholehearted (Deut 18:12), and a lot and astrologers are the same matter” (emphasis mine). As can be seen the Tosafists have expanded the meaning of goralot to include astrology as well. Simcha Emmanuel (ed.), Newly Discovered Gaonic Responsa (Jerusalem: Ofek, 1995), 126 (in Hebrew). Emmanuel, Newly Discovered Gaonic Responsa, 137.

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dreams that chance to occur. The answer is given according to the stated conditions of the asker. Alessia Bellusci has published fragments from the classical period of the Cairo Genizah that exquisitely demonstrate “dream requests” like those described to Rabbi Ḥai Gaon.41 Especially interesting is the supplication that appears in one of the formulas for dream requests: If I merit it … show me synagogues and study halls and good people corresponding to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, studying a verse related to the matter of my inquiry. If not, show me graveyards and circuses and evil people corresponding to Balaam and his fellows fighting another.42 We learn of dream requests such as these from Rabbi Jacob of Marvège’s famous work Šeʾilot u-tešuvot min ha-šamayim (“Responsa from Heaven,” thirteenth cent.).43 Throughout the various revelations the book describes, there is a constant invocation of verses, as Ta-Shma concludes: “The answer is given, in the majority of cases, by quoting verses or fragments of verses from the Bible, from which the inquirer can understand the hints or intentions of the answerer.”44 A lively and colorful depiction of dream requests that includes such elements appears in a mantic prescription from the Hekhalot literature:

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Alessia Bellusci, Dream Requests from the Cairo Geniza (ma thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2011). See also Bellusci’s contribution in Chapter Three of this book, 101–139. In relation to the oneirocritical tradition associated with Rabbi Ḥai in Judaeo-Arabic, see Chapter Four of this book, 140–160. ts ns 307.54 and its counterpart ts Misc 11.125. See as well Bellusci’s thorough discussion, “Dream Requests from the Cairo Geniza,” 32–39 and the transcriptions on 46–54. Reuven Margaliot (ed.), Rabbi Jacob of Marvège, Šeʾilot u-tešuvot min ha-šamayim (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1957). On the book and its elements and dream requests as a source of Jewish law, see Margaliot, Šeʾilot u-tešuvot, 3–24, and other findings 25– 41; Ephraim E. Urbach, “Jewish Law and Prophecy,” in World of the Sages, ed. Ephraim E. Urbach (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988), 22 (in Hebrew); Abraham J. Heschel, “On the Holy Spirit in the Middle Ages,” in Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume, ed. S. Lieberman, 2 vols. (Hebrew section and English section) (New York: Jewish Theological Seminar, 1950), volume Hebrew section: 175–209; Israel M. Ta-Shma, “Šeʾilot u-tešuvot min ha-šamayim,” Tarbiz 57 (1987): 51–66 (in Hebrew); and Neil Danzig, “Geonic Responsa: Shaʿarei teshuvah and sheʾelot u-teshuvot min ha-shamayim,” Tarbiz 58 (1989): 21–48 (in Hebrew). Also, on the subject, see Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books, 2011), 112–115. Ta-Shma, “Šeʾilot u-tešuvot min ha-šamayim,” 64.

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I bid you swear, O great Ragshiel, master of dreams, in the name of the Lord of Hosts …45 / that you will come to me tonight peacefully and kindly, and not in anger, and speak to me / and give me a sign (ot) or omen (mofet) or verse that I may have, and let me know such / and such and anything about it or that will concern it in the future, whether good or otherwise.46 It is interesting to note that the inclusion of such dream requests as a “lot” (goral) is hinted in one of the verses that the diviner must quote in preparation for the revelation of the angelic master of dreams: “The Lord is my allotted share and portion; You control my fate (gorali).”47 At times, the verse in the dream request is decoded through the utilization of advanced techniques, such as gematria (numerology), the expansion of words (in which each letter is transformed into a new word), or the association of the verse’s content with divine names. In this context the dream request of Rabbi Isaac ben Samuel of Acre (thirteenth–fourteenth centuries), published by Moshe Idel, is striking, since it includes the verse “You must be wholehearted with the Lord your God” in twelve different permutations.48 Rabbi Isaac does not see in this charged verse any hint or command against mantic pursuits; rather, he interprets it as instructions on to how to overcome the obstacle of pronouncing the divine name in order to request the dream. Thus, the revelation of the verse presents a new interpretation of the verse itself as teaching how to be “wholehearted,” while uttering the name of God, all for a quintessentially mantic purpose. As Idel notes, dream-answers in the form of Biblical verses are typical of the Sefer ha-mešiv (“The Book of the Responder”) school (fifteenth century), in the generation of the Spanish expulsion and afterward. In this context, one should note the dream request of Rabbi Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi (fifteenth– sixteenth centuries) in his epistle concerning the time of the redemption. 45 46

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Here appear other appellations for God and angels. Peter Schäfer (ed.), Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), 199, par. 505. For similar prescriptions from the Genizah, see Bellusci, “Dream Requests from the Cairo Geniza.” Cf. the formula for the dream request in Raphael Jehuda Z. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo, Lawyer and Mystic (Philadelphia: jps, 1980), 46–52, who enumerates six different types of revelation: dream, vision, verse, speech, law, and writing. Ps 16:5. Moshe Idel, Nocturnal Kabbalists (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2006), 21–22 (in Hebrew). The quote is from Sefer oṣar ha-ḥayyim (ms Moscow Russian State Library Günzburg 775, fols. 100v– 101r); on Rabbi Isaac of Acre’s experimentations and his approach to revelation and prophecy see Efraim Gottlieb, Studies in the Kabbala Literature (Tel Aviv: Chaim Rosenberg, 1976), 231–247 (in Hebrew).

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Almost all the knowledge divined in this epistle is based on revelations from Biblical verses.49 Dream requests such as these are also documented in the visions of Rabbi Ḥayyim Vital (1543–1620), who is known for having experienced more diverse and explicit visions.50 In one of his visions he expounds the meaning of Biblical verses that were revealed to him through speech out loud in his sleep in his parents’ presence, through which he prophesies the death of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–1572) and many of his disciples. When he awakes, he remembers the verses and their meanings, and as soon as he commits the vision to writing in his diary the prophecy is realized in full.51 Additionally, a special place is reserved for the prohibition concerning astrology, which also came to be associated with goralot in the Middle Ages. We find in the writings of Vital’s peer, Joseph Caro (1488–1575) in the Šulḥan ʿaruḵ: “One may not consult astrologers (ḥozim ba-koḵavim) or lots (goralot).”52 The fact that astrology did not warrant an independent section within this halakhic codex demonstrates how it was sometimes subsumed within the general prohibition concerning divination.53 This is not to say that Jewish literature did not distinguish between these various practices, but rather that within the halakhic semantic field, in which primary meaning is relegated to areas of permission and prohibition, these practices were considered by many to be identical.

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Quoted in Moshe Idel, “Inquiries into the Doctrine of Sefer ha-mešiv,” Sefunot: Studies and Sources on the History of the Jewish Communities in the East 17 (1983): 202–203 and 222 (a discussion of other dream requests that include a supplication to the magid using “a sign or omen from the Torah or the Prophets or the Writings.”) (in Hebrew). See Morris M. Faierstein (ed.), Rabbi Ḥayyim Vital, Sefer ha-ḥezyonot (Jerusalem: Yad BenZvi, 2005), 73 (where he decides to marry his wife); 85 (a revelation of Elijah, who quotes a verse); 89 (an interpretation of the vision of the ʾurim and tummim in a dream using verses); 79 (the appearance of a sentence in a verse that he mistakenly supposes is from Proverbs); and 82 (a waking vision [with closed eyes] in which Torah scholars studying a Torah scroll recite verses that hint as to his question, the secret of which they received from Rabbi Eliezer ben Yoḥai) (all in Hebrew). Still, even more prominent are the numerous dream requests in which others ask about him or other topics and are answered with verses and their interpretations; see several examples on 102–133. Also, of interest are the numerous references to divination throughout the diary, see Joseph H. Chajes, Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 101–104. Vital, Sefer ha-ḥezyonot, 83. Šulḥan ʿaruḵ, Yoreh deʿah 179:1. For a different view of the halakhic legitimacy of astrology, see Chapter Seven of this book, 227–233, 238–239, and 242.

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From Books of Lots to Goral ha-Torah

Lottery books (sifrei goralot) appear to have only been introduced into rabbinic culture in the tenth century. Aside from the Talmudic passage concerning Samuel’s practice of consulting a book, which is not explicitly referred to as the Bible or a lottery book, I know of no sources that can be interpreted as referring to lottery books until the tenth century. However, from the tenth century onward,54 there are numerous reports of various types of lottery books both in manuscripts as well as in halakhic literature.55 These books were copied, printed, and distributed increasingly widely over the years up to, and including, the twentieth century. These books, which were included within the general practice of goralot (lots), found their way into the Jewish world due in large part to Islamic influence;56 the books were “converted” while nonetheless leaving clear markers of the path traced by bibliomancy on its way into Jewish culture.57

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Some of which are likely earlier and should be attributed to the Geonic period. See Scholem on the codices “Maʿayan ha-ḥoḵma” and “Šimušei teḥillim” in Gershom Scholem, Kabbalistic Manuscripts in the National and University Library of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1930), 10 (in Hebrew). According to a lecture delivered by Yael Okun, the director of the Manuscripts Institute at the Israeli National Library, at the eighth “World of Hebrew Manuscripts” conference (11 Oct 2005), the institute has catalogued over 800 titles of lottery books of various types. Yael Okun and I hope to devote a separate article to them in the near future; in a preliminary study prior to the compilation of the Cairo Genizah, Gideon Bohak located 128 passages of lottery books aside from 22 “profane lotteries”; see Gideon Bohak, “Towards a Catalogue of the Magical, Astrological, Divinatory and Alchemical Fragments from the Cambridge Genizah Collections,” in “From a Sacred Source”: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif, ed. B. Outhwaite and S. Bhayro (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 53–79. For a study of Jewish lottery books, see Swartz, “Divination and Its Discontents,” 155–166; Moritz Steinschneider, Hebräische Bibliographie: Blätter für neuere und ältere Literatur des Judenthums (Berlin: A. Asher & Go., 1863), 120–123; Evelyn Burkhardt, “Hebräische Losbuchhandschriften: Zur Typologie einer jüdischen Divinationsmethode,” in Jewish Studies Between the Disciplines ( Judaistik Zwischen den Disziplinen): Papers in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, ed. K. Herrmann, M. Schlüter and G. Veltri (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 95–148; Michael Meerson, “Book is a Territory: A Hebrew Book of Fortune in Context,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 13 (2006): 388–411, esp. 404–407; and Shaul Shaked, “An Early Magic Fragment from the Cairo Geniza,” in Occident and Orient: A Tribute to the Memory of A. Scheiber, ed. R. Dan (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 361–371. See Pieter W. Van der Horst, “Sortes Biblicae Judaicae,” in Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity: My Lots are in Thy Hands, ed. A. Luijendijk and W.E. Klingshirn (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 156 n. 11; and Bohak, “Towards a Catalogue of the Magical, Astrological, Divinatory and Alchemical Fragments from the Cambridge Genizah Collections,” 66. See Meerson, “Book is a Territory,” 395 n. 21. On the use of lotteries and their connec-

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Jewish rabbinic-legalists were fundamentally opposed to various forms of magic, which were seen as violations of the Biblical prohibition against sorcery and similar practices.58 But the divinatory use of the Torah was given a special status in Jewish legal works. So, for instance, in the book Soddei razayyaʾ, attributed to Rabbi Eleazar of Worms (Germany, ca. 1165–1230), the outstanding leader of the Ashkenazi Pietists (Ḥasidei Ashkenaz), this means of soothsaying is ascribed even to the angels themselves: Some angels know the future and secrets of glory by vision in the cloud of His glory, and some by voice (qol), and some by being told (hagadah), and some by the constellations (mazalot), and some by vision of the Torah (reʾiyat ha-torah).59 Commentators and Jewish experts in halakhah with a sharply rationalistic orientation also accorded bibliomancy exceptional status. Even Maimonides (1138–1204), the most outspoken opponent of magic, astrology, and divination, ruled: “If one asks a child: What verse are you learning? And he responds with a verse from the blessings, it is permitted for one to rejoice and say: That is a lucky sign” (Mishneh Torah, hilḵot ʿavodah zarah 11:5). Still, in the continuation of this law, he limited the power of the omen to revealing information about events already in the past and to situations where receiving such a sign would not lead to any sort of practical course of action.60 From a legal responsum that

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tion with various Muslim figures (whose later appearance in Jewish literature I will treat elsewhere), see Emilie Savage-Smith and Marion Bush Smith, “Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device: Another Look,” in Magic and Divination in Early Islam, ed. Emilie Savage-Smith (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 211–276. For the consideration of qesem in Biblical bans, see Chapter Seven of this book, 249–254. Israel Kamelhar (ed.), Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, Soddei razayyaʾ (Bilgoraj: [n.p.], 1936), 9. For more on divination in Jewish Europe during the Middle Ages, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Visions and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 190–191; and Ephraim Kanarfogel, Peering Through the Lattice: Mystical, Magical and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000). Also, it should be noted that Maimonides placed these laws within the section of “Laws concerning Idolatry” and specifically within the chapter concerning the prohibition to mimic non-Jews, as his general prohibition on divination states: “We may not augur (manḥešin) as idol worshippers ,” see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, hilḵot ʿavodah zarah 11:4. This placement is quite telling concerning the general rabbinic view that the practice of magic is an inherently non-Jewish enterprise.

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he composed, we learn that bibliomancy, referred to as a “lot,” was accorded much credence by Jewish communities of his time: Question: Please instruct us regarding the case of a person who opens Torah scrolls by lot (ʿal dereḵ ha-goral, in Judaeo-Arabic ʿalai sabīl al-qirāʾa)—is doing so permissible or not? Especially since the man in question is a prayer leader (šaliʾaḥ ṣibbur), and he goes to the non-Jews and the uncircumcised to open the scrolls and cast (lots) for them and has achieved renown among them in this matter,61 and this has, at times, been beneficial. Is this permissible for him? He himself is not ashamed, nor is the community displeased, and there is no desecration of God’s Name. Should he be relieved of his position or not?

Answer: He should be prevented from doing so for non-Jews, because this can result in the desecration of God’s Name. But he should not be removed and should not be punished. So writes Moses.62 The moderate response of Maimonides, who fought strenuously against all forms of magic and manticism throughout the length of his career, is initially surprising, and remains a testament to the widespread acceptance of bibliomancy in Jewish culture.63 The process by which these practices were formally sanctioned reached its zenith upon their incorporation into the canonical works of Jewish law and their endorsement by foundational works such as the ʾArbaʿah ṭurim, Šulḥan ʿaruḵ, and Mappah. Rabbi Joseph Caro (1488–1575) writes in the Šulḥan ʿaruḵ: “If one builds a house, has a son, or marries , though he may not treat this as a divinatory omen, it does nevertheless portend well for him” (Yoreh deʿah, 179:4). Although this is not a case

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“Non-Jews” refers to Muslims, while “uncircumcised” refers to Christians. This distinction between circumcised and non-circumcised non-Jews, also finds expression in kabbalistic texts, in which circumcision plays an important role, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 129–185. Joshua Blau (ed.), Maimonides’ Responsa, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Reuven Mas, 1958–1961), 2:§ 172, 320–321 (in Hebrew). Stroumsa states that this answer exemplifies Maimonides’ pragmatic approach of not demanding from his followers more than they can bear, see Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 113–115.

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of bibliomancy, but rather of interpreting signs, Rabbi Moses Isserles (Cracow, 1530–1572) adds: “Similarly, it is permissible to tell a child: Recite for me the verse you are learning, though one who maintains his innocence and simply trusts in God, mercy encompasses him (Ps 32:10).”64 These statements refer to divination by means of Biblical verses recited, not necessarily to the use of books for mantic purposes. However, a contemporary of Caro and Isserles, Rabbi Jacob Castro (1525–1610), in commenting on the ruling of the Šulḥan ʿaruḵ that one should not inquire of astrologers and lots,65 writes: “Nevertheless, we are not overly exacting with people about this.” He also proposes a loophole: “It is possible that asking someone who has consulted with astrologers or soothsayers is not so severe a violation.”66 Later, he adds: “It seems to me that everyone would agree that it is permissible to open the Torah to see which verse turns up, for it is our lifeblood.”67 Castro’s words are valuable, both because they grant explicit halakhic legitimacy to the practice and as evidence of prevalent use of the Torah for mantic purposes within the community and its conceptual identification as a lot. Similar accounts can be found in manuscripts, which tend to shed more light on the character of the practices under discussion. Because this mantic tool—the Torah—was used for other purposes (ceremonial public readings, Torah study, etc.), it was readily available and simple to use. Therefore, the manuscripts cannot supply us with definitive evidence as to the prevalence of the use of the Torah as a means of divination. Nonetheless, the manuscripts do at times describe this process as a goral ha-Ḥumaš (“Lot of the Pentateuch”), provide instructions for conducting the lot divination, or describe its results.68

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Moses Isserles, gloss on Šulḥan ʿaruḵ, Yoreh deʿah, 179:4. Šulḥan ʿaruḵ, Yoreh deʿah, 179:1. For a related formulation, see Chapter Seven of this book, 224–227. Rabbi Jacob Castro, ʿEreḵ leḥem (Constantinople: Jonah ben Jacob Ashkenazi, 1718), fol. 35r. See e.g., a passage from the epistle from the Genizah to which Blau refers in Blau, Maimonides’ Responsa, 2:321 n. 2; and Jacob Mann, The Jews in Egypt and Palestine Under the Fatimids, 2 vols. in one (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920), 2:307: “I inspected a Torah scroll, and my fortune appeared: that I would be unsuccessful.” See also the discussion in Shlomo Dov Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 6 vols. (Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 1:346, 489; 3:136; and 5:331. (I will discuss manticism and its source in this context in another study.) I owe this citation to Gideon Bohak, who directed my attention to the fascinating confession of Goitein himself (who was a complete rationalist) regarding a mantic sign he witnessed in the prayers of Rosh Hashanah in the company of Erich Fromm at the house of Franz Rosenzweig before his journey to Palestine in 1922; see A Mediterranean Society, 5:597 n. 49; Stefan C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (Richmond, Surrey: Routledge, 2000 [and London: Curzon, 2000]), 112.

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Here I will cite only a few illustrative examples, which can also enlighten us regarding the phenomenon as a whole. The manuscript Šošan sodot (“Rose of Mysteries”), attributed to Naḥmanides, a book of practical kabbalah of the Ashkenazi style from the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries, which deals with the kabbalah of divine names,69 instructs the reader: The secret of casting a lot with a book …. is conducted thus: Recite the verse: “This is the book of Adam’s history,” (Gen 5:1) three times,70 and remember this name. Open the Pentateuch three times, one after another, and look at first letters of each page, sum them, divide them by sevens, and what is left of the third yielded quotient, there is what is meant.71 This technique combines the opening of a book with computation of the values of the letters using gematria, together referring the inquirer to the lines that hold the answer to his question.72

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The kabbalah of divine names understood the holy scriptures to be comprised of hints of divine names. Within this tradition, these divine names were understood as being the esoteric meaning of the Torah. The exoteric layer of the Torah was concerned with laws and stories, while the esoteric level dealt with the makeup of the divine realm. Through the understanding of the esoteric layer of the Torah, which was comprised of divine names, one would be able to use this power for practical purposes, such as divination and magic; see Moshe Idel, “Defining Kabbalah: The Kabbalah of the Divine Names,” in Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies, ed. R.A. Herrera (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 99–111. Also, see Idel, Absorbing Perfections, 319–351. This verse is dominant in Jewish literature of divination and magic insofar as its midrash forms the basis of the assumption that Adam possessed a book of oracles or spells. On these traditions see tb ʿAvodah zarah 5a: “This is the book of Adam’s history: Did Adam the first man have a book? , it teaches that the Holy One, Blessed Be He showed Adam the first man each generation and its expositors, each generation and its sages, each generation and its supporters.” Cf. the revelation of Samuel Yarhinaʾa, tb Bava meṣia 85: “I was shown the book of Adam, the first man,” and Genesis Rabbah 24:2, ed. Hanoch Albeck and Julius Theodor, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Shalem Books, 1996 [1912]), 1:230–231 and parallels and notes ad loc. See also Sefer Raziel (N8117), in Bill Rebiger and Peter Schäfer (eds.), Sefer ha-razim I und ii. Das Buch der Geheimnisse, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 1:6–7 (paras. 15–25). ms Ramat Gan, Bar Ilan University 1053, fol. 33r (= F 23035 in the microfilm catalogue of the National Library of Israel), but cf. the variant published in the name of Naḥmanides or Maimonides. On this, see Yosef Avivi, The Tent of Shem: A List of Manuscripts in the Moussaieff Collection (Jerusalem: Moussaieff, 1992), no. 53 (in Hebrew). Similar but distinct lotteries are mentioned in Isaac ben Eliezer of Mukachevo, Healing and Life from Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Isaac ben Eliezer, 1892), 9 (in Hebrew); and Meir Almagor, Treasures of Angels (Hod Hasharon: Magdiel, 2006), 82 (in Hebrew). It is possible that this passage originally served as an introduction to a lottery book that

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Very similar Pentateuchal lotteries appear in a Yemenite manuscript from the nineteenth century known as Šimušei sarim (“Uses of Ministerials”). I will cite one of them here: To cast lots, one must think of the Tetragrammaton, and in the course of this thought take an accurate Pentateuch and open the Pentateuch while concentrating, thinking of the question before he opens it. He must say: “Let it be your will O Lord my God and God of my fathers that upon the first opening, a verse will reach me that will be indicated by the eighth letter, that I will know thus my question, which is suchand-such, clearly, without any doubt whatsoever, in the name of ladalhaʾ daltan yaʿabaṣ naʾ maṣpaṣ yuhaḵ (‫)לדלהא דלתן יעבץ נא מצפץ יוהך‬.” And he should open the Pentateuch, and from the place to which he opens he should count seven folios and seven sides of a folio, and seven pages, and seven verses, and seven words, and seven letters, and he should seek the verse that corresponds to the eighth letter. If he does this seven times he will clearly see all he wishes.73 Another fascinating insight can be gleaned from the manuscripts: study of certain prayers included in the manuscripts of non-Biblical “books of lots” reveals that some were originally composed for consultation of Biblical books.74 So, for example, in one lottery book, that is written mostly in Persian and attributed to Abraham ibn Ezra, we find the following Hebrew prayer:75 This is the prayer he must recite: God, God of gods, Lord of lords, King of kings, / Great, mighty, and awesome King who sits astride the cherubim, I come / before You in fear and trembling, terror and awe, quaking and sweating / to request in prayer and supplication before the throne of Your g, / bowing and prostrating myself with a broken and humble heart majesty that Your attributes of mercy should be directed to me in

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included a table of answers organized by number, and that the diviner was referred by the Pentateuch to the table of answers as in the “lottery of the ʾurim and tummim” and other lottery formulas. ms Tel Aviv Gross Collection 373, fols. 49v–50r. The text was transcribed by Alon Ten-Ami; I am grateful for his permission to make use of the manuscript. For the use of prayers in contexts of dream divination, see Chapter Three of this book, 108–131. ms London, Wellcome Institute A 30, fols. 23r–46v (= F 43116 at the nli). The prayer is on fols. 23r–24r.

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this hour / and time, to let me know the secret of my question, the matter that I wish to know / by this lottery conducted by those who fear You / and your seers and prophets, to whom You revealed your secrets and your covenants, / as it is said: “Indeed, my Lord god does nothing without having revealed / His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). And it is written: “The secret of the lord is for those who fear Him; to them he makes known / his covenant” (Ps 25:14). Verily, it is open and known to You lord my God and God of my fathers / that when the Temple still stood, Your prophets and seers would prophesy / and Your priests would consult the ʾurim and tummim and would be notified what would / come to pass, good or evil. Now, in our great iniquity, our Temple has been destroyed, / prophecy has ceased, and we have no priest or prophet or seer to let us know / what we require. Therefore, I have come wholeheartedly and with an eager soul to seek counsel / by means of these lots, for I cannot veer right or left. / Therefore, may it be the will before Your throne of glory and Your majesty, that You straighten / my heart and guide my hand on the signs of Your Torah, and reveal / the foundation of my question and the matter I wish to know, and will consider my need in Your great mercy / and abundant grace, for I am acting in accordance with those who fear You. Establish / the matter for me plainly … and let me not fail / in this inquiry of mine, for I put my trust in You and depend on Your grace and look to / Your salvation …76 great, mighty, and terrible God, I cast the lots / … answer me and keep me, for You are “my allotted share and portion; / You control my fate. Delightful country has fallen to my lot; lovely indeed / is my estate. I bless the lord that … I am ever mindful etc” (Ps 16:5). … “Blessed is the Lord forever; Amen and Amen” (Ps 89:53). This unusually lengthy prayer (particularly in a work not written in Hebrew) is possibly comprised of several prayers, where the editor who compiled them believed that the efficacy of the combination would be greater than that of any of them individually. Some elements of the prayer are familiar from parallels in other lottery books, as well as other divinatory practices. These apologies and supplications are meant to legitimize the act of divination, so that it will be acceptable to God and merit a response, a phenomenon referred to by Michael D. Swartz as “magical pietism.”77 However, it would appear that the words I have emphasized petitioning God to guide the diviner’s hand on 76 77

Blackened and illegible section of the manuscript. See Michael D. Swartz, “Magical Piety in Ancient and Medieval Judaism,” in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 167–184.

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“the signs of Your Torah” hint that the prayer, or part of it, originally served as part of a “Pentateuchal lottery,” involving the placing of the diviner’s hand on random locations in the Torah. It should likewise be noted that this formula differs from the earlier prescriptions cited above. While those were for the most part based on the “kabbalah of divine names,” there is no reference to that genre in this prayer. It must therefore be assumed that “Pentateuchal lots” were conducted both within and without the cultural milieu of the kabbalah of names. One can discern traces of the use of the Pentateuch for divination in classic, well known lottery books as well. So, for example, in the lottery book known as Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim, between the prayer and the subsequent instructions for casting the lots described in the book, we find directions for the use of the Pentateuch, which can be incorporated into the technique but can also stand by itself.78 In the prayer that appears in the manuscript, the verse that opens the list of quotes meant to support the use of a lottery for mantic purposes is Ps 119:18, which we have discussed above: “Open my eyes, that I may perceive the wonders of your teaching.” As opposed to other verses used to legitimize the mantic use of books, this verse is useless if taken to refer to a non-Biblical lottery book. It therefore seems to be indirect evidence of the use of the Torah itself as a tool for divination, preceded by a prayer and quotations. In light of these findings, we must question the origins of prayers added into lottery books and leave open the possibility that they originated in mantic practices involving the Bible. To sum up what we have seen up to this point: We have numerous accounts, from the beginning of the second millennium and onward, of widespread use of the Bible as a lottery book. These sources explicitly attribute the technique to

78

See e.g., ms Berlin Staatsbibliothek Or. Oct. 2254 (= F17298 at the nli), from the 19th century. In the slightly different text published by Meir ben Yitzhaq Bakal, Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim, 10 (in Hebrew), use of the Pentateuch is mentioned immediately after the prayer: “Afterward, he will take in hand a Pentateuch, open it, and do as I will explain elsewhere with God’s help,” even though this sentence breaks the flow of the passage and the author attests further on (p. 16) that the use of the Pentateuch is dispensable. On the matter of the publishing of the book ʾUrim ve-tummim see Saloman Avram Rosanes, History of the Jews in Turkey and the Orient (Jerusalem and Sofia: Imprimerie Amishpat, 1936– 1938), 37 (in Hebrew). Cf. the report of Charles B. Friedberg, History of Hebrew Typography of the Following Cities in Europe: Amsterdam, Antwerp, Avignon, Basle, Carlsruhe, Cleve, Coethen, Constance, Dessau, Dyhernfurt, Halle, Isny, Jessnitz, Leyden, London, Metz, Strasbourg, Thiengen, Vienna, Zurich from Its Beginning in the Year 1516 (Antwerp: [n.p.], 1937), 61–62 (in Hebrew).

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medieval rabbis such as Naḥmanides (1194–1270) or Abraham ibn Ezra (1089– 1167). Some of the prayers attribute the founding of the techniques to sages who lived immediately after the destruction of the Second Temple (70ce), and various lottery books (that are not Pentateuchal lotteries) are even attributed to Biblical heroes and gaonim. Later attributions, which appear in manuscripts and prints, will point to Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–1572).79 If so, whence the common attribution specifically to the Gaon of Vilna?

5

The Lot of the Gaon of Vilna

As opposed to the various and diverse attributions of the technique to various preceding figures, there is no clear-cut source that can help us trace it to the Gaon of Vilna. Apart from one manuscript whose title contains an attribution to “our pride and strength, Rabbi Elijah of blessed memory,” there are no significant accounts that support this association.80 In my opinion, it is possible that the answer to this riddle lies in the misinterpretation of an acronym in a commentary on the Šulḥan ʿaruḵ. The kabbalist, halakhist, and rabbinical emissary Rabbi Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai (Israel, 1724–1806), in his work Birḵei Yosef (“Joseph’s Blessings”), writing on the chapter cited above in the Šulḥan ʿaruḵ, endorses the use of the Bible for purposes of divination. As evidence for this ruling, he cites the following work: I found in a pamphlet manuscript by Rabbi Elijah ha-Cohen of blessed memory (author of “Ševeṭ musar” etc.) that he writes: “I have received as a tradition from my masters, when they wished to know some matter and were in doubt as to act or not, they would take a Pentateuch or Bible and open it and see what verse appeared at the top of the page. And they would do whatever that verse showed them. In sum, they would consult with the Torah to know how to conduct themselves in all their affairs. And

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See e.g., “Sefer goral ṣaddiqim” (F 73808 at the nli), 3r: “The lottery conducted by the rabbi and kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac Luria of blessed memory: One must ask the question in his heart and take a book and open it twenty-four times …” See also Goral Qodeš, attributed to Rabbi Ḥayyim Vital (Chernowitz: Druck von Rudolf Eckhardt, 1899). On attempts to retrace the attribution to the Gaon of Vilna see Betzalel Landau, The Pious Genius of Vilna (Jerusalem: Torah me-Ṣion, 1968), 399–409 (in Hebrew) (this chapter was added in the third edition); Zev Greenwald, The Lottery of the Gaon of Vilna (Jerusalem: Gittler Press, 2005), 78–81 (in Hebrew); and E. Merzbach, Logic of the Lottery (Jerusalem: Reuven Mas, 2009), 68–85 (in Hebrew).

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this itself is hinted by the statement of the rabbis: take counsel from the Torah, which teaches the permissibility of doing this. It is not considered abuse of the Torah.”81 Rabbi Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai here attests to a manuscript in his possession which describes exactly the practice of a lot based on the Bible or Pentateuch, attributed to one Rabbi Elijah. Azulai is referring to Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon of Smyrna (d. 1720), author of Ševeṭ musar, as parenthetically noted. Azulai was well acquainted with Rabbi Elijah’s son and received other manuscripts from him as well.82 In my estimation, it can be hypothesized that Eastern-European readers who were unfamiliar with Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon of Smyrna and encountered his name (or perhaps oral traditions invoking the term “The Lot of Rabbi Elijah” referring to Rabbi Elijah of Smyrna) misattributed the practice to Rabbi Elijah of Vilna. It is even possible to thus interpret the title of the manuscript attributing Pentateuchal lots to “our pride and strength Rabbi Elijah of blessed memory.” Here, Azulai does not refer to the practice as a “lot,” and no wonder, since the entire chapter of the Šulḥan ʿaruḵ opens with a prohibition on consulting lots (goralot). Notwithstanding, in his book of Responsa, Ḥayyim šaʾal, Azulai grapples with the responsum of Maimonides we have seen above (which reached him through a secondary source), responds to it, and concludes: “And thus we see venerable rabbis opening a book in times of trouble in the manner of a lot.”83

6

Goralot—Between Hasidim and Mitnagdim

To recapitulate, attribution of the technique of a Pentateuchal lot to the Gaon of Vilna must be seen as a popular myth. This myth may have originated in the

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Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai, Birḵei Yosef. Yore deʿah, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Yahadut, 1990), 2:199 (§ 124). See Scholem, Kabbalistic Manuscripts, 153. On the visions of Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon of Smyrna himself, testimonies as to contemporary prophets and the credence he lent to Sabbatian prophecies, see Gershom Scholem, “Rabbi Elijah ha-Cohen of Smyrna and Sabbateanism,” in Alexander Marx: Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Saul Lieberman (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), 451–470 (in Hebrew). Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai, Ḥayyim šaʾal, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Yahadut, 1986), §38, 2:162. On Pentateuchal lotteries in the circle of Azulai, see Landau, Genius of Vilna, 400–401. In his diary he attests to conducting a complex Pentateuchal lottery that required the deciphering of acronyms.

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misconstruing of the acronym gr''a (referring to Elijah of Smyrna) in the writings of a different Jewish sage, Rabbi Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai. Still, it is not certain that this myth would have been so widely propagated had it not fallen onto especially fertile ground. I hypothesize that two factors contributed to the spread of the tradition attributing the Pentateuch lot to the Gaon of Vilna: first, the wide circulation of the technique and the halakhic legitimacy accorded it; second, the incorporation of this technique into the cultural struggle between the Hasidim and the mitnagdim. Polish Hasidism was a new social-religious movement within Judaism that developed beginning in the mid-eighteenth century. Hasidism placed emphasis on the spiritual worship of God around a new-type of leader—the ṣaddiq (pious one). This movement stirred much controversy and opposition among the more conservative leaders, whose center was in Lithuania. The most famous rabbi to be aligned with those who opposed (mitnagdim) this new movement was Elijah of Vilna, commonly known as the Gaon of Vilna, or the gr''a (acronym of Gaon Rabbi Elijah).84 Various scholars have discussed the unique attitude to Torah study that developed within Hasidism and the novel interpretation of the phrase “Torah for its own sake” that it posited. As an extension of this idea, the use of the Torah as a prophetic medium became widespread in the Hasidic world, based on the rabbinic traditions we have discussed above and preceding kabbalistic ideas.85 So, for example, Rabbi Meir Margoliot (d. 1790) recounts with regard to the Baʿal Shem Tov: When he merited to understand and adhere to the sacred letters, he was able to understand from the letters themselves even things to come. Therefore, the Torah is known as “making the eyes light up” (Ps 19:9), for it enlightens the eyes of one who adheres to it with sanctity and purity, like the letters of the urim and tummim.86 84

85

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For the most recent study of this illustrious figure, see Eliyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), and the studies cited therein. Specifically concerning his role in opposing the hasidic movement, see Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna, 83–114. See Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, Quietistic Elements in 18th-Century Hasidic Thought (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1968), 157–167 (in Hebrew); Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Jerusalem-Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2001), 324–339 (in Hebrew); and Moshe Idel, “The Baʿal Shem Tov as Prophet and Talismanic Magician,” in Studies in Jewish Narrative, ed. A Lipsker and R. Kushelevski (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006), 121–145 (in Hebrew). Rabbi Meir Margoliot, Sod Yaḵin u-Boʿaz (Satu Mare: Meir Leib Hirsch, 1944), fol. 4r, cited in Schatz-Uffenheimer, Quietistic Elements, 158.

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This attitude became prevalent among various Hasidic sects. The sanctity attributed to the Torah, which allowed it to be used as a tool for divination, spread among different denominations and the Hasidic courts themselves, even to folk-remedies and writings of the leaders of the sects. Apart from widespread Hasidic uses of lots involving the Pentateuch or Bible, a trend also developed of using Hasidic writings in order to arrive at decisions through a lot.87 Uses such as these, which expanded the concept of sanctity to apply to people, objects, and writings identified with the new movement, strengthened preexisting basic assumptions about the supernatural powers of the ṣaddiq. Use of the Torah by the mitnagdim, on the other hand, was limited to the profession of adherence to it alone, similar to the principle of sola scriptura that characterized the Christian Reformation. While Hasidic techniques of divination referred the diviner to a wealth of media, the “lot of the Gaon of Vilna” restricts him to the Torah itself when seeking answers. Thus, an acceptable alternative was posited by the opponents of Hasidism for pious diviners, one which would not conflict with the foundational cultural assumptions that characterized this group. On the contrary, the ability to offer such an alternative to Hasidic systems of consultation and guidance strengthened the central role that the Torah played in this community and served as an answer in kind to Hasidic practices. As soon as the practice began to be attributed to the Gaon of Vilna, it gained wider and wider traction. The Gaon’s ostensible technique of skipping pages and words in a Pentateuch or Bible proliferated amongst the community at large, from expert diviners to the Lithuanian rabbinic elite. The most famous example is the “Lot of the Gaon of Vilna” conducted by the Jerusalemite pietist Rabbi Aryeh Levin to identify the bodies of members of the Lamed-Heh, described in the introduction to this chapter.

7

Conclusion: The Torah Lottery as Jewish “Mantic Pietism”

Here we have traced the historical progression of the manifold uses of the Torah as a tool for foretelling the future. We discussed the various forms that bibliomancy took from antiquity to the twentieth century, among them: the

87

On the attribution of magical or mantic powers to the Hasidic ṣaddiq, see Idel, Hasidism, 347–378; Gedalyah Nigal, Magic, Mysticism, and Hasidism (Tel Aviv: I. Golan, 1992) (in Hebrew); and Mendel Piekarz, Hasidic Leadership (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1999), 15–59 (in Hebrew). For examples of the use of various writings in lotteries see Eliyahu GurArye, Ḥiqrei minhagim (Kfar Chabad: Mekhon Oholei Shem-Lubavitch, 1999), 1:230–239 (in Hebrew).

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revelation of secrets by virtue of the study and interpretation of Torah, use of a physical Torah scroll, receiving signs or hints from the reading of Biblical verses, interpreting signs that arise from verses in a dream, dream requests that define parameters for receiving an answer from Biblical verses, the use of various techniques of flipping through Biblical texts, and the intuitive interpretation of Biblical verses by various means in order to arrive at conclusions. Although we have not devoted a detailed discussion to the various needs that bibliomancy was employed to fulfill, the examples we have cited plainly show that these included personal decision-making, finding solutions to existential problems, and the advancing of personal interests. Bibliomancy was also used for matters of public import and even to support halakhic positions. We traced the identification of bibliomancy as a “lot,” as well as that of the Torah as a “lottery book.” We posited that the process by which this identification developed reflects the internalization and “conversion” of foreign mantic practices, which became increasingly prevalent in Jewish sources from the tenth century onward and show clear signs of Islamic influence. Use of these lots was attributed to prominent cultural heroes within the Jewish tradition, notably including renowned halakhists and kabbalists. Attribution to the Gaon of Vilna, which gave rise to the popular moniker for the technique, is an error and seems to have arisen from confused reading of certain sources. This attribution nevertheless harmonized with the ethos prevalent in the society of the mitnagdim and contributed to the technique’s broad acceptance and use by laypeople and scholars. In sum, this means of divination was widespread and legitimate in most quarters of the Jewish community, and even achieved the halakhic imprimatur both through its use by noted scholars and experts in halakhah and through explicit halakhic rulings. As noted in the introduction, bibliomancy is only one of many forms of divination in the Jewish tradition, and it is one of the most prominent examples of mantic practices viewed as legitimate. However, this case provides an opportunity to reassess the force of the widespread traditional theoretical generalizations about the relationship between magic, divination, and religion. Building on the phrase “magical pietism” coined by Swartz,88 I see the technique under discussion as a quintessential example of “mantic pietism.” In contrast to the classic theories of W. Robertson Smith and E. Durkheim, who view magic as primarily anti-social and threatening to social order,89 the use of the Torah as 88 89

See Swartz, “Magical Piety in Ancient and Medieval Judaism,” 167–184. See William Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series. The Fundamental Institutions (New York: A. and C. Black, 1889), 90, in which he differentiates clearly between the magical-superstitious and supernatural-religious phenomenon, even

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a means of divination seems benign. In spite of the rejection of various types of divination found across the historical arc of Jewish tradition, this type of consultation of the Torah has not generally been interpreted as a violation of the command to be “wholehearted with the Lord your God”; on the contrary, it reflects loyalty to this imperative insofar as it constitutes a rejection of other means of divination in favor of fealty to God’s Torah. The writings of halakhah scholars—even the most rationalistic among them—do not give the impression that the practice was perceived as a threat. Some communal leaders endorsed such use of the Torah through rulings, actions, or silence. What’s more, the view of the Torah as a tool for the revelation of the future enhances the myths connected to it and the ethos of life lived by its principles within all sectors of Jewish society throughout history—as mentioned, bibliomancy was sometimes employed even for communal ends. True, these techniques were limited in their application; in general, bibliomancy was not employed in in ancient religion. On a similar note he writes (p. 154): “All taboos are inspired by awe of the supernatural, but there is a great moral difference between precautions against the invasion of mysterious hostile powers and precautions founded on respect for the prerogative of a friendly god. The former belong to magical superstition, the barrenest of all aberrations of the savage imagination which, being founded only on fear, acts merely as a bar to progress and an impediment to the free use of nature by human energy and industry. But the restrictions on individual license which are due to respect for a known and friendly power allied to man, however trivial and absurd they may appear to us in their details, contain within them germinant principles of social progress and moral order.” The clear disdain for magical elements needs no explication in this passage. On this subject, see Thomas O. Beidelman, W. Robertson Smith and the Sociological Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 61–64 and 63–64, specifically concerning Smith and Durkheim: “Smith found in difficult to credit what he found morally distasteful as being sacred; he then took the step of equating whatever was sacred with what was social. What then remained had to be not only polluting and profane but also less social. Durkheim, reading Smith, came to a somewhat similar, though irreligious, conclusion; for him what was truly social must therefore be sacred.” See Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1995), 41–42, 200, 305. Albeit Durkheim does recognize that magic and religion share many characteristics, nevertheless, his conception is not based upon phenomenological features, but rather sociological, in which the key differentiation is magic’s individualistic nature and religion’s societal nature; see The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 39–40, 200, 204. Furthermore, see his derision of magic, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 286. Also, Wouter W. Belier, “Religion and Magic: Durkheim and the Année Sociologique Group,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 7, 2 (1995): 182. For more on Robertson Smith’s influence on Durkheim through this specific dichotomous conception of religion versus magic, see Alexandra Maryanski, “The Birth of the Gods: Robertson Smith and Durkheim’s Turn to Religion as the Basis of Social Integration,” Sociological Theory 32, 4 (2014): 367. Also see Yuval Harari, Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017), 23–35, concerning their opinions.

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halakhic contexts and its use by notable Jewish scholars was uncommon. Some sources express reservations concerning the practice or attempt to circumscribe its application. Nevertheless, for our purposes here, it should be noted that even these reservations were usually worded gently, and the widespread use of bibliomancy never aroused substantial debate or greatly affected the general trend of Jewish culture. This example reifies the inevitable presence of divination in the Jewish religion and testifies to an intricately woven relationship in which legitimate and acceptable mantic practices have been part and parcel of popular and established religion across history and cultures.

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chapter 6

Judah bar Barzillai and His Role in Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s Letter on Astrology Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas

The purpose of this chapter is to present the English translation of the Letter that Abraham bar Ḥiyya (Barcelona?, d. after 1136) wrote to his contemporary Judah bar Barzillai of Barcelona (Barcelona?, born ca. 1070) some time during the first quarter of the 12th century. Tzvi Langermann, in his excellent overview of Bar Ḥiyya’s astrology in The Jews and the Sciences in the Middle Ages, commented on the historical importance of the Letter (which he calls responsum) and indicated that “an annotated English translation is a major desideratum.” He also added that one of the reasons for its interest was that the Letter “is the only tract which Bar Ḥiyya wrote for the purpose of refuting a serious personal accusation connected with his scientific beliefs.”1 Despite very few minor corrections, Zechariah Schwarz’ edition of the only complete manuscript of the Letter (ms Warsaw, Zydowski Instytut Historyczny 282) remains valid and ms London, Montefiore 484 (containing just the beginning of the Letter and the colophon), which has also been consulted, does not contribute anything that affects the translation, except for the title, on which I comment in this introduction.

1

Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s Letter to Judah bar Barzillai

The motivation for the Letter is Bar Ḥiyya’s reaction to the controversy that took place in the Jewish community of Barcelona on the use of astrology to choose the hour of a wedding, considered by the person who led the controversy as 1 Yitzhaq Tzvi Langermann, “Science in the Jewish Communities of the Iberian Peninsula: An Interim Report,” in The Jews and the Sciences in the Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 1– 54, here 10–16, quotations at 11 and 12, respectively. For the translation of Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s Letter, see Chapter Seven of this book. The translation is based on the edition prepared by Zechariah Schwarz, “ʾIggeret R. Abraham bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi še-katav le-Rabbi Yehudah bar Barzilai ʿal šeʾilah ba-kaldaim,” in Festschrift Adolf Schwarz zum siebzigsten Geburtstage, ed. Samuel Kraus (Berlin and Vienna: R. Löwit, 1917), 23–36, which has been revised, corrected, and compared with the two extant manuscripts of the Letter.

© Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445703_008

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“consultation of Chaldeans,” and hence in clear conflict with the halakhah or Jewish law (tb Pesaḥim 113b).2 The bridegroom, who was a friend of Bar Ḥiyya, chose the hour of his wedding according to astrological beliefs, and Bar Ḥiyya, a committed astrologer who wrote widely about astrology (as well as a religious authority in the Jewish community of Barcelona), supported his decision and confirmed it with additional (horoscopic) astrological data that are mentioned in the Letter (three times, in iii.1 and iii.3), but not explained.3 Because of a funeral and the met miṣvah related to it,4 the hour of the wedding was delayed and a new hour was chosen following the rules of electional astrology: an odd-numbered hour, whose propitious nature Bar Ḥiyya confirmed with the actual positions of the planets. A person attending the wedding raised his voice against this electional practice and his objection prevailed, either by his authority and prestige, or because most of those attending the wedding supported his view (this is not explicit in the Letter), or perhaps because those attendees who supported astrology did not want to go further with this controversy at that specific moment (we are told that the objector was very persistent; see iii.5).5 What the Letter explains is that the new hour of the wedding that had been chosen according to astrology was ignored and the wedding took place at a different hour to avoid the consultation of Chaldeans objected to by the wedding guest (iii.4). The discussion about the meaning of “Chaldean” and the kind of prac-

2 For the conflict of astrology with the Jewish law and religion, notably in Maimonides’ understanding, see Chapter Eight of this book, 271–276 and 279–280. 3 For a general overview of astrology in Bar Ḥiyya’s books, see Shlomo Sela, “Abraham Bar Hiyya’s Astrological Work and Thought,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 12 (2006): 128–158, especially 134–135 along with the bibliography quoted there. For a study of specific aspects of Bar Ḥiyya’s astrology, see also Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, “Terminology for Historical Astrology according to A. Bar Ḥiyya and A. Ibn Ezra,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 10 (2011): 201–248; and Hannu Töyrylä, Abraham Bar Hiyya on Time, History, Exile and Redemption: An Analysis of Megillat ha-Megalleh (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2014), with updated bibliography. Throughout this chapter I refer to the English translation of the Letter with the number of the section in Roman numerals (i, ii, etc.) followed by the Indo-Arabic number of its subdivisions (1, 2, etc.) separated by a dot. I have related these numbered sections and its subdivisions to the Hebrew text edited by Schwarz in order to make the references to it easier to locate. 4 The Hebrew expression met miṣvah, literally, “a dead person that constitutes a religious duty,” implies either that a corpse has been found in a field and has to be buried in situ according to specific norms falling upon the responsibility of the person who found the dead, or that a dead person has no relatives and then the duty of his burial falls upon the nearest Jewish community (very likely the latter is the situation implied in the Letter). 5 Langermann considers that “significantly, this objection struck a sympathetic chord among those present, causing Bar Ḥiyya to feel isolated”; see “Science in the Jewish Communities,” 11; cf. what Bar Ḥiyya says in his Letter, iv.1.

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tices that fall within the consultation of Chaldeans, which is the subject of the second part of the Letter, will be analysed in a forthcoming article devoted to the analysis of the contents of the Letter. Bar Ḥiyya’s life is not very well known, but much of his work in Hebrew and Latin has been published and studied (although there are works still in manuscript). I refer readers to the most recent studies on him: Tzvi Langermann’s overview of his scientific works in his book The Jews and the Sciences of 1999 (with a section devoted to the Letter), Shlomo Sela’s perusal of his life and work (also with a section devoted to the Letter) in his article of 2006, and Hannu Töyrylä’s book on the Megillat ha-megalleh (2014) that also includes an overview of Bar Ḥiyya’s life and works. In these studies it is clear that Bar Ḥiyya dealt with different aspects of astrology and astrological practice (notably, and extensively, historical astrology) in several of his works, as author or translator, and he might himself have practiced astrology, as the specific circumstances described in the Letter show (iii.1 and iii.3). Bar Ḥiyya wrote the Letter, in which he neatly displayed “his skills in traditional legal texts and their methods of study,”6 with two aims, to defend astrological practice within Judaism and to defend himself before his co-religionists for practicing it since his youth. Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter to the rabbi of Barcelona, Judah bar Barzillai is, for its clarity and length, a remarkable document for showing the kind of problems that the study and practice of astrology engendered in the Jewish community of Barcelona and very likely other Jewish communities. Abraham bar Ḥiyya is not the first to try to define and legitimate the status of astrology (not only doctrine but also practice) within Judaism, but his essay is certainly the longest and most elaborate: the Letter is the longest apology for astrology in Hebrew. The extensiveness of the Letter, Bar Ḥiyya’s familiarity with the rabbinic sources on astrology and magic, the catalogue of magical and divinatory practices that Bar Ḥiyya’s analyses, as well as the personal tone of the Letter regarding Bar Ḥiyya’s concern with astrology, make this text a fascinating and intriguing testimony to some of the issues arising in both the daily life and intellectual circles of the Jewish communities of Sefarad in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It provides revealing insights into how astrological practices were accommodated among those Jews who believed in astrology and practiced it.7

6 Langermann, “Science in the Jewish Communities,” 11. Langermann notes that “the tactics employed are those of Talmudic deliberations, using the language, logic, and textual analysis of the academies, notably those of the French Tosafists,” ibid. 12. 7 Previous but more limited attempts to justify astrology in Judaism were carried out in Jewish

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Two features of the Letter must be highlighted. First of all, Bar Ḥiyya, who always follows in the steps of the rabbis’ words, not only defends astrology, he even states that Israel is required to practice it (xvi.1),8 for it is “a true science” (vii.3, x.2), “it is proper to study and rely on astrology” (vii.3, x.6, xxii.1), “one can deduce from astrology” (x.5), it “increases the fear of Heaven” (xix.5), and “Abraham practiced it” (vii.1–2, x.1), and “there is nothing illicit in it,” and so it “is licit” (vii.2, x.1). At the same time, Bar Ḥiyya endorses the rabbis’ belief in the special and unique status of Israel vis-à-vis the influence of the stars (vii.4, viii.1, ix), without denying the validity of astrology. Israel can nullify the stellar decrees and this knowledge—that the influence of the stars is conditional for it ultimately depends on God—constitutes the specific wisdom of Israel in contrast to the gentile nations (viii.1, xiv.1, xiv.4, and xv.1–2), who also practiced astrology and excelled in it. Secondly, the second half of the Letter displays an extraordinary catalogue of magical and divinatory practices that Bar Ḥiyya classifies (sciences based on the stars in xvii–xviii versus non-stellar arts/crafts in xx–xxi) and separates (astral magic that involves idolatry versus divination by different techniques). If the Letter is an individual witness to the position of certain Jews regarding the practice of astrology, it is as well a testimony of the variety, extension, and popularity of many kinds of magical and divinatory practices in medieval society.

literature. The stammaim, the rabbis who composed the anonymous statements and arguments in the Talmud (Babylon, ca. 550–650 ce), supported astrology, especially in their edition of the sugya or pericope of tb Šabbat 156a and b. For this sugya, see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, “Talmudic Astrology: Bavli Šabbat 156a–b,” Hebrew Union College Annual 78 (2007): 109–148; and Gregg Gardner, “Astrology in the Talmud: An Analysis of Bavli Shabbat 156,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. E. Iricinschi and H. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 314–338, at 325. Shabbetai Donnolo (c. 913–c. 982) discussed astrological matters in his Sefer ḥaḵmoni; see Piergabriele Mancuso (ed. and transl.), Shabbatai Donnolo’s Sefer Ḥakhmoni (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2010). Additionally, see Ahimaaz ben Paltiel in his Sefer yuḥasin (“book of genealogies” or “chronicle” written in the maqama style in 1054), Hebrew ed. in Benjamin Klar, Aḥimaʿaṣ ben Paltiel, Megillat Aḥimaʿaṣ (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1974 [1944]), or the more recent edition and translation by Reuben Bonfil, History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle: The Family Chronicle of Aḥimaʿaz ben Paltiel (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Ahimaaz gives an interesting picture of the magical practices among his contemporaries and presents himself as a knowledgeable astrologer. 8 This obligation recalls Saadia’s defense of the study of philosophy and science in Judaism, for they “serve as support for the principles of Judaism, so that study of these subjects is a religious obligation”; see Bernard R. Goldstein, “Astronomy and the Jewish Community in Early Islam,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 1 (2001): 38–39 and the bibliography quoted there.

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The natural position among the Jews who were interested in keeping the practice of astrology within the legal frame of Judaism was to separate it from the occult sciences (magic), which somehow were focused on changing things in the natural order of the world more than on the knowledge of the future, which is the distinctive aim of divination, and notably, astrology. The forbidden practices were also able to anticipate very specific aspects of the future which were beyond the reach of astrology, making them fall within the field of magic (astral magic) and so idolatry.9 Bar Ḥiyya’s stance on this question is, as will be analysed in a forthcoming article, rather typical: he condemns astral magic and separates astrology from the occult sciences and omina;10 he also acknowledges that astrology holds an ambiguous position that places it between science and craft/art. In any event, Bar Ḥiyya tried to establish and delimit the separation between astrology and any Hermetic, magic or occult doctrine/practice as his main strategy to make astrology košer for Jewish consumption. Langermann seems to understand that the Letter was a success: “we recall that most of those attending the wedding sided against Bar Ḥiyya; yet we rarely if ever hear of objections to astrology later on.” There are some exceptions like Maimonides and Isaac Polgar and some other isolated criticisms related to specific aspects

9

10

For astral magic and the rabbis, see Kocku von Stuckrad, “Astral Magic in Ancient Jewish Discourse: Adoption, Transformation, Differentiation,” in Continuity and Innovation in the Magical Tradition, ed. Gideon Bohak, Yuval Harari, and Shaul Shaked (LeidenBoston: Brill, 2011), 245–270. For astrology and the rabbis, see Kocku von Stuckrad, Frömmigkeit und Wissenschaft: Astrologie in Tanach, Qumran und frührabbinischer Literatur (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996), especially 135–161; Kocku von Stuckrad, “Jewish and Christian Astrology in Late Antiquity—A New Approach,” Numen 47, 1 (2000):1–40; Kocku von Stuckrad, Das Ringen um die Astrologie. Jüdische und christliche Beiträge zum antiken Zeitverständnis (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000); and Meir bar Ilan, “Astrology in Ancient Judaism,” and “Astronomy in Ancient Judaism,” in The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, ed. J. Neusner, A. Avery-Peck and W.S. Green, 5 vols. (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004), 5.2:2031– 2044. See also Chapter Eight of this book, 261–285. Kocku von Stuckrad, Astrología—Una historia desde los inicios hasta nuestros días (Barcelona: Herder, 2005), 22–24 (Spanish version of Geschichte der Astrologie: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Munich: C.H. Beck, 2003); Yuval Harari, “The Sages and the Occult,” in The Literature of the Sages, Second Part: Midrash and Targum, Liturgy, Poetry, Mysticism, Contracts, Inscriptions, Ancient Science and the Language of Rabbinic Literature, ed. J. Schwartz, P. Tomson, and Z. Safrai (Assen: Fortress Press, 2006), 521–564; Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge, UK-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Joshua Holo, “Hebrew Astrology in Byzantine Southern Italy,” in The Occult Sciences in Byzantium, ed. P. Magdalino and M.V. Mavroudi (Geneva: La Pomme d’ or, 2006), 291–323. Andrea D. Lobel also treated astrology as an occult practice in her Under a Censored Sky: Astronomy and Rabbinic Authority in the Talmud Bavli and Related Literature (PhD dissertation, Concordia University, Montreal, 2015), 23: “a subset of the

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of the practice.11 The isolation of Bar Ḥiyya is apparent in iv.1 (“it seemed to me as if all those who were listening to would consider me to be a transgressor of the law and a sinner”), despite the fact that some sided with the groom and Bar Ḥiyya to change the hour. We are also told that Bar Ḥiyya sided with the bridegroom regarding the election of that hour and confirmed it with additional astrological data (iii.1); he also persuaded him and his fellows to wait when the hour of the wedding had to be changed because of the funeral (iii.3: “the man listened to my advice, my words persuaded him, and he and his fellows decided to wait”). The decision of not delaying the hour for astrological reasons seems to have been related to the insistence of the objector (and possibly his authority: “[the objector] further insisted twice and thrice, until the bridegroom entered the nuptial canopy against his will at the sixth hour”; see iii.5).

2

The Addressee of Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter and the Un-identified Objector

From the title of the Letter in ms Warsaw (Zydowski Instytut Historyczny 282), we learn that the Letter was addressed directly to Rabbi Judah bar Barzillai, but it does not necessarily imply that Bar Barzillai is the rabbi who confronted the author for consulting the Chaldeans. According to the very similar but abbreviated title in ms London, Montefiore 484, it is explicitly stated that the rabbi who disagreed with Bar Ḥiyya and confronted him for supporting a Chaldean practice was Bar Barzillai himself. However, ms Montefiore 484 does not refer to him as the objector in any other part of the manuscript. It is pertinent to explain that ms Montefiore 484 is not of much assistance in establishing the text of the Letter because this copy is quite incomplete: it contains only the beginning, the colophon, and about one quarter of the Letter preserved in ms Warsaw 282. The fragmentary and miscellaneous character of codex Montefiore 484, in which the incomplete version of the Letter is preserved, seems to point to a collection used in teaching or compiled by a student to use as a reference work, and might explain the fragmentary character of the Letter in Ms Montefiore (the copyist stopped where the discusion about the specific meaning of the Chaldean practices starts).

11

larger set or category pertaining to magical practices, though there is no clear-cut or uniform view of this taxonomy in scholarship.” Langermann, “Science in the Jewish Communities,” 11.

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ms Warsaw 282, fol. 5r

ms Montefiore 484, fol. 37r

‫אגרת לנשיא ר׳ אברהם בר חייא צאחיב זאת האגרת לחכם הגדול הנשיא ר׳ אברהם‬ ‫ המכונה‬,‫אשורטא על עניין שארע בינו ובין הרב ר׳ בן הנשיא הגדול ר׳ חייא הספרדי ז״ל‬ ‫ ושלחה‬,‫ על דברים שאירעו‬,‫צאחב אל שורטא‬ .‫יהודה ב״ר ברזילי ברצלוני‬ .‫אל הרב ר׳ יהודה בר׳ ברזילי אל ברצלוני ז״ל‬

This is the letter about what happened that the great sage, the Nasi Rabbi Abraham ben ha-Nasi, the great Rabbi Ḥiyyaʾ the Sefaradi, of blessed memory, called Ṣaḥib al-šurṭa sent to Rabbi Judah bar Barzillai of Barcelona, of blessed memory.

Letter of the Nasi Abraham bar Ḥiyya, Ṣaḥib al-šurṭa, about what happened between him and Rabbi Judah bar Barzillai from Barcelona.

Judah bar Barzillai ha-Bargeloni, the rabbi of the Jewish community of Barcelona and an halakhic authority (he authored Sefer ha-ʿittim, among others), might or might not be the objector in Bar Ḥiyya’s text, given the ambiguous testimony of ms Warsaw 282 (we deal with this below), but he is certainly the addressee of Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter according to the two extant manuscripts.12 Let us consider why Bar Ḥiyya addressed his Letter to Bar Barzillai in the light of the most recent literature on the Letter (Shlomo Sela 2006 and 2011, and Dovid Markel 2015).13 Did Bar Ḥiyya address the Letter to Bar Barzillai because Bar Barzillai might be a potential defender of Bar Ḥiyya’s stance on astrology? Or

12

13

Regarding Bar Barzillai and his work, see Ángel Sáenz-Badillos and Judit Targarona Borrás, Diccionario de autores judíos (Sefarad siglos x–xv) (Córdoba: El Almendro, 1988), 128–129; Israel Moses Ta-Shma, “Judah ben Barzillai,”Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. F. Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007 [2nd edition]), 11:483–484; and Shlomo Sela, “Dos textos astrológicos conservados en el comentario al Sefer Yeṣirá de Yehudá ben Barzilay alBargeloní,” Sefarad 68, 2 (2008): 261–290. See Sela, “Abraham Bar Ḥiyya’s Astrological work and thought,” specifically 156–157. In relation to Bar Barzillai’s background, ibid. 155–157. See also Shlomo Sela, “Astrology in Medieval Jewish Thought (Twelfth-Fourteenth Centuries),” in Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, ed. Gad Freudenthal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 294 (Sela’s most explicit statement as regards Barzillai’s role in the Letter). Dovid Markel, “Rabbi Avraham bar Hiyya’s Defense of Astrology,” The Neirot Foundation of Jewish Thought (December 2015), available online at http://www.neirot.com/jewish‑prespective‑values/rabbi‑avrah am‑bar‑hiyyas‑defense‑of‑astrology, accessed 20 July 2019.

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was it rather because Bar Barzillai was a detractor of astrology and the one who brought the objection in the wedding and so the one to be refuted? That Bar Barzillai is just the addressee of the Letter and not the objector is apparent in the fact that Bar Ḥiyya addresses Bar Barzillai only at the end of his Letter (in a rhymed epilogue) as the arbiter of the dispute about the legitimacy of using astrology, and asks Bar Barzillai’s judgment about Bar Ḥiyya’s stance (xxiii.2).14 Bar Barzillai was the religious leader of the Jewish community in Barcelona, so his opinion would have been the most relevant for any issue of the community and could be enforced. Bar Ḥiyya’s resort to Bar Barzillai as the arbiter of the controversy placed Bar Barzillai above and ouside the dispute that was going on and so removed the possibility that he was the objector. Most of the Letter is devoted to refuting the statement of this objector who remains somehow hidden in the Letter, except for his identification in the title of ms Montefiore 484. The objector was present at the wedding, for he was able

14

See Sela, “Bar Ḥiyya’s Astrological Work and Thought,” 157. Both the objector (throughout the Letter) and Bar Barzillai (in the epilogue of the Letter) are always addressed in third person, but “he” is always the objector in the Letter, except for the epilogue, where “he” is Bar Barzillai. Bar Ḥiyya uses the second person plural (only in xxiii.3) when he addresses the rabbis of the Barcelona community. There is a specific section of the Letter (xxii.2–xxiii.1) which, in my understanding, is that Bar Ḥiyya first addresses the objector and then Bar Barzillai, but the transition from one addressee to the other is not marked with an explicit change in the subject: rather all the references are in the third person. These specific lines of the Letter could be understood as referring to the same person, so that the objector and Bar Barzillai might be the same person. However, the two very different ways the third persons are addressed here (with or without honorifics) contain the key to their actual identity. Bar Ḥiyya’s tone in xxii.2 is just the same as in iv.2–4, where he refers to the objector without any honorific in his words, while in xxiii.1–2, these honorifics are everywhere (because Bar Ḥiyya is addressing Bar Barzillai). On a different aspect, stylistically it makes sense that the rhymed epilogue (xxiii) be completely devoted to Bar Barzillai, rather than to the objector, who has been addressed in other parts of the Letter. Only in the epilogue does Bar Ḥiyya address Bar Barzillai directly for the first time, and it is written in verse for two purposes: first, it closes the work in a way that was distinctive to the Sephardic culture that Bar Ḥiyya and Bar Barzillai shared, and secondly, it is at the same time a token of respect that makes the addressee pay attention to the meaning of Bar Ḥiyya’s specific words by attracting Bar Barzillai’s attention to the rhymed language. Open letters in rhymed prose were also exchanged in the sort of Maimonidean controversy that took place in Languedoc in 1304–1306; see Gregg Stern, Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Interpretation and Controversy in Medieval Languedoc (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 136, 143, and 150 (quotation): “The prose of this extensive correspondence evinces considerable emotive force and literary craft. The felicitous and often entertaining reuse of phrases from Biblical and rabbinic texts and the frequent introduction of rhymed prose were among the literary devices that these writers skillfully exploited.”

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to speak against the election of the new hour right on the spot, while the hour was being discussed and decided (should we imagine Bar Ḥiyya with an astrolabe and/or a set of tables, given that he was able to relate information about the positions of the planets at that precise moment, when the change of hour was being discussed? See iii.3). As for Bar Barzillai, Markel has noticed that Bar Ḥiyya’s explanation of all the particular details in the Letter makes one think that Bar Barzillai was not at the wedding, so that he could not be the objector.15 Markel, however, did not notice that Bar Ḥiyya might have written the Letter as a responsum intended for public consumption rather than as a private individual letter,16 and because of that he needed to introduce in this responsum the specific circumstances in which the accusation of consulting Chaldeans took place. Even if Bar Barzillai had witnessed everything because he was there, Bar Ḥiyya needed to give details in order to make his defense more effective. The description of the specific circumstances does not necessarily imply that Bar Barzillai was not there—he might well have been. Bar Ḥiyya mentions that the people attending the wedding were “the heads and the principals of the congregation” (iii.2), which would imply that Bar Barzillai was also there, for he was the religious head of the community. Therefore the description in the Letter might be just a rhetorical device for an audience that was intended to be larger than the specific addressee of the Letter. Markel also notices that Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter refers to the objector in a very plain way, devoid of honorifics, for instance, in iv.1, iii.5, iv.2, and iv.4 (moreover, Bar Ḥiyya suggests that he should be called “guilty and a transgressor” in xxii.1).17 However, on one occasion Bar Ḥiyya refers to the objector with smooth words but in a very indirect and diffuse way, placing him among an unspecified group of sages that he presents as his judges (in xxiii.3): “now, 15

16

17

Markel, “Rabbi Avraham bar Hiyya’s Defense of Astrology,” 17–19. Markel repeats Sela’s ambiguous words when he says that Bar Barzillai “authored, among other things, an astrological horoscope” (“Rabbi Avraham bar Hiyya’s Defense,” 18), when Bar Barzillai merely translated the horoscope of another author (see below in the introductory study of this chapter). Markel even advances the claim that Bar Ḥiyya could have learned astrology from Bar Barzillai as his words in the Letter might suggest, which might be the case, especially in regard to Talmudic astrology. As regards the epistolary exchange in the controversy among the Jews of Languedoc and Catalonia about the study of philosophy and its impact in Jewish religion, see Stern, Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture, 143: “Of course, the letters of the controversy were not sent to their addressees to be held in confidence by them; rather, they were open letters that, once executed, were copied at their source as well as at their destination, and were disseminated widely.” This might have been the case with Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter, despite the scanty manuscript witnesses. Markel, “Rabbi Avraham bar Hiyya’s Defense of Astrology,” 17–19.

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when I have seen that righteous and humble sages who are expert and distinguished do not agree with my view, I reject my occupation.” The missing honorifics in referring to the objector would have been necessary and incontrovertible if the addressee had been Bar Barzillai, the communal religious leader in Barcelona. In any case, however, the objector must have been somehow influential in the community, since his remark on the Chaldean practice forced the change of the hour of the marriage against the will of the groom, his friends, and the opinion of the groom’s master, Bar Ḥiyya.18 It might also be that the bridegroom and the others who, against their wills, desisted from changing the hour, might have tried to prevent the controversy from attracting too much attention and becoming inconvenient to the festive mood of a wedding. Despite all these odds, Markel states that Bar Barzillai is the instigator of the objection, as did Marx, Baron, Sirat, and Orfali, among others.19 As for Sela’s stance in this question, he concludes that if Bar Barzillai were the objector, his “qualms about astrology would have been related to the practical halakhic question of whether one may make decisions (e. g., delaying a wedding) on the basis of astrological considerations and not so much to the theoretical question of the veracity of astrology per se.”20 Sela very rightly pointed out the question but did not completely settle the answer, and so left the door somewhat open for the opposite interpretation, despite his providing of evidence in one of his articles that can be used to reject Bar Barzillai as the objector. Let us go further in examining the specific role of Bar Barzillai in the Letter.

18

19

20

Markel already noticed that the authority of this person must have been greater than Bar Ḥiyya’s, for he made “Bar Hiyya’s protest [fall] on deaf ears.” In Markel’s understanding, this is additional support that the detractor was Judah bar Barzillai; see “Rabbi Avraham bar Hiyya’s Defense of Astrology,” 4 and n. 14. See Alexander Marx, “The Correspondence between the Rabbis of Southern France and Maimonides about Astrology,” Hebrew Union College Annual 3 (1926): 311–358, at 313; Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 18 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 6:149; Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 94–95; and Moses Orfali, Biblioteca de autores lógicos hispano-judíos (Siglos xi–xv), (Granada: El Almendro, 1997), 50. None of these scholars seems to have thoroughly studied the Letter. See Sela, “Bar Ḥiyya’s Astrological work and thought,” 157.

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Judah bar Barzillai and the Astrological Theories Discussed in Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter

Since ms Warsaw 282 mentions Bar Barzillai just as the addressee, and ms Montefiore 484 mentions him both as the addressee and the objector, the evidence of the manuscripts is ambiguous as regards the identity of the objector. In these circumstances, Bar Barzillai’s stance vis-à-vis astrology in his works might be the fulcrum for deciding whether Bar Barzillai is or is not the person who instigated the controversy about the election of the hour of the wedding according to astrological rules. The choice of the hour according to the propitious quality of the oddnumbered hours was a simple form of electional astrology available to everyone. It is astrology in its most popular and simplest form. It is also one attested in Talmudic sources, as Bar Ḥiyya shows in the Talmudic quotations of his Letter. Bar Barzillai does seem to have been involved in astrology in some capacity, as several passages of his commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah show (he would not have mentioned astrological theories without expressing his rebuke if he had not been interested in them). Sela edited these passages in his article of 2011 (in Spanish), but he did not exhaust the evidence they provided about Bar Barzillai’s precise relationship with Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter. I shall now provide a translation of a long quotation from Bar Barzillai’s commentary because of its undeniable relevance in determining whether he was the objector or not, on the basis of Bar Barzillai’s commitment to astrological doctrines and practices (my translation of Sela’s Hebrew edition): If you wish to know and determine by a short method anything related to the needs of any man that comes to ask you, observe in which part of the day , because you wish to divide the day into eight parts assigned to the seven planets and Teli [i.e., the northern or the southern lunar node]. Any thing they ask you in an odd-numbered hour finds quick favor, but if in an even-numbered hour, will be in an emergency and trouble. This is the explanation: the quarter of the daylight is given to Venus and it is favorable for anything; the second quarter of the daylight is assigned to Mars, which is bad for everything; the third quarter of the daylight is given to Teli, which is favorable for anything; and the fourth quarter of the daylight is for Saturn, which is bad for all. The first quarter of the night is assigned to Jupiter, which is favorable for everything; the second quarter of the night is given to Mercury, which is bad for all; the third quarter of the night is given to the moon, which is favorable for everything; and the eighth part [i.e., the fourth quarter of the night] is assigned to the sun, which is not favorable. This is a great secret of all the astrologers: all the oddnumbered parts are suitable, all the even-numbered are bad for anything related to people. However, if you wish to know whether the horoscope of any person is favorable or not, the planet the hour in which the child is born is his planet. If you do not know whether it is favorable or not, observe the zodiac sign that is the domicile of the planet. zodiac sign is rising, the newborn will be lucky in everything; but if the zodiac sign is setting, the newborn will be of low condition and poor. If is not either setting or rising, will be neither rich nor poor. This is a great mystery I am explaining to you, for there are planets who have two domiciles and you cannot assign ….21 The passage is not only about the doctrine of the favorable and unfavorable influence of odd-numbered and even-numbered divisions and hours of the day respectively, but it also includes the doctrine of the planets ruling certain parts and hours of the day and night. Both doctrines are related to the Talmudic passages that Bar Ḥiyya uses in the Letter to prove that the election of the hour of the wedding was according to Talmudic practices. According to the textual evidence of his commentary, Bar Barzillai was supporting a doctrine that was clearly included in consultation of Chaldeans according to the objector in the Letter. This makes it impossible to identify Bar Barzillai as the objector, unless he changed his mind between the composition of his commentary and the incident described in the Letter, which is difficult to prove and unlikely. This astrological background of Bar Barzillai also explains why Bar Ḥiyya called for his support: he was the religious leader of the community but he was also knowledgeable in astrology and so very likely inclined to favor Bar Ḥiyya’s cause. Furthermore, Bar Ḥiyya says in the Letter that he learned everything he said in the Letter from Bar Barzillai (xxiii.1–2). We do not know exactly to what specific content of the Letter he is referring (the horary astrology and planetary hours referred to in the Talmud and Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter?), but we know that one of the purposes of the Letter was to defend astrology as a legitimate science and practice. Did Bar Barzillai teach Bar Ḥiyya astronomy, as Markel suggests? 21

Solomon Joachim Halberstam (ed.), Peruš Sefer yeṣirah meʾet Yehudah ben Barzillai (Berlin: Mekize Nirdamim, 1885 [reprint Jerusalem: Maqor, 1970]), 248. See Sela, “Dos textos astrológicos,” 271–272 (Hebrew edition of the quotation, paragraph 4 and beginning of paragraph 5), 273–274 (Spanish translation), and 281–284 (astronomical/astrological commentary).

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The Letter provides a clue which is not conclusive, because it must have been a very common term: šaʿah nifredet (lit. “separate hour,” i.e., odd-numbered hour) is used by Bar Ḥiyya in the Letter (twice, in iii.1 and iii.3) and practically the same expression šaʿah mifredet appears in Bar Barzillai’s commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah (we have to remember that they were both pioneers in writing in Hebrew about scientific subjects).22 That Bar Barzillai taught Bar Ḥiyya seems unlikely but if they both were interested in astrology, they might have studied and discussed together some of the Talmudic and Biblical passages used in the Letter. Moreover, in his Letter (xxiii.1) Bar Ḥiyya refers to Bar Barzillai using an expression that the amora Samuel used to convey his great knowledge of the stellar sciences in tb Beraḵot 58b: “familiar with the paths of the heavens as with the streets of Nehardea,”23 which implies that Bar Barzillai was very knowledgeable in astrology and was proud of this knowledge, just like the amora Samuel. According to Sela, Bar Barzillai, contrary to Bar Ḥiyya, seems to have felt more comfortable in a “conservative” form of Jewish astrology, for he quotes astrological sources only from Jewish authors (especially different Baraitot).24 Sela’s argument seems to imply that Bar Barzillai did not accept Arabic astrological sources. But this is not completely accurate: we are going to see that Bar Barzillai also quoted very technical and specific horoscopic details that were distinctive of Arabic astrology rather than of “conservative” Jewish astrology, though Sela is right that he did it via a Jewish prestigious source, notably Saadia ben Yosef Gaon (882–942). Saadia wrote his Commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah in Arabic, but Bar Barzillai quotes it from an anonymous Hebrew translation. Here I translate a short section of the long technical quotation that Sela edited in his previously mentioned article (2008). I also correct Sela’s Spanish translation: The astrological judgment of the hours, their customary way [i.e., interpretation], astrological aspect, and the remaining parameters are according to this change . Likewise, the doctrine of those that return [i.e. any of the succedent houses], those that change [i.e., any of the cardinal houses], and those that fall [i.e., any of the cadent

22 23 24

Halberstam, Peruš Sefer yeṣirah, 248. See Markel, “Rabbi Avraham bar Hiyya’s Defense of Astrology,” 15. See Sela, “Dos textos astrológicos,” 261. These are quoted in Bar Barzillai’s Commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah from a lost astrological Hebrew text that was the source of these two Baraitot; see Peruš Sefer yeṣirah, 247–248; cf. Baraita di-Shmuel ch. 7 and Baraita deMazzalot ch. 12. See also Sela, “Dos textos astrológicos,” 261–290; and 293–294 and n. 8.

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houses] changes according to them; they [the houses] change at each of the quarters of the day, which is six hours.25 According to Sela, this passage is about the planetary hours and the change of the planetary rulers throughout the day and night, which affects the position of the signs (fixed, mutable/changeable, and tropical) and anything related to them. However, this is not what the passage is explaining, but rather how the houses (angular, cadent and succedent) and the cardines or angles of the horoscope change every two hours as result of the daily motion of the heavens (each of the signs correlated to the twelve astrological houses rises approximately every two hours). And so this Hebrew paragraph is explaining not a specific horoscope but how the astrological houses and the astrological aspects related to them change according to the daily motion of the sky (using the astronomical data of a specific day).26 Bar Ḥiyya supported the bridegroom’s decision to delay the hour of the wedding precisely because of this: the passage of two hours will change certain features of the horoscope (because of the motion of the houses), but the positions of most of the planets in the signs will actually remain the same. This is essential in electional astrology.27 If Bar Barzillai is quoting astrological lore of very different sources in one of his works—Talmudic astrology in the doctrine of the even/odd-numbered hours and planetary rulers, and Arabic astrology in the image of the horoscope whose zodiac signs for the astrological houses change every two hours—it is almost 25

26

27

Sela, “Dos textos astrológicos,” 266 (Hebrew edition, paragraph 8), 268 (Spanish translation). Cf. Sela’s Spanish version of the Hebrew text (the emphasis is mine): “La regla de las horas y sus acciones rutinarias, sus aspectos y los demás asuntos de esta variación, y también la doctrina de los fijos, variables y tropicales, y de ellos derivan cambios cada cuarto del día, que corresponden a seis horas” (ibid. 268). Bar Barzillai’s text is a fragment from a lost Arabic-to-Hebrew translation of Saadia’s Commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah (Tafsīr kitāb al-mabādi); see Shlomo Sela, “Astrology in Medieval Jewish Thought,” 293. For an English translation of the Arabic text of Saadia in which specific heavenly positions are discussed, see Goldstein, “Astronomy and the Jewish Community,” 50–54. For Bar Barzillai’s Hebrew text, see Halberstam, Peruš Sefer yeṣirah, 214. The heavenly positions are those of May 31st 931 ce, the date of the composition of Saadia’s Commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah; see Goldstein, “Astronomy and the Jewish community,” 39–40. Electional astrology (related only to the election of the moment of the conception) is also mentioned and briefly described in the letter that the rabbis of southern France wrote to Maimonides (before 1193); see Marx, “The Correspondence between the Rabbis,”: 348 (¶25) (Hebrew text); and the updated edition of Shlomo Sela, “Queries on Astrology Sent from Southern France to Maimonides, Critical Edition of the Hebrew Text, Translation and Commentary,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 4 (2004): 89–190, at 122 (Hebrew) and 123 (English translation).

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impossible to present Bar Barzillai as an opponent of astrology and thereby the objector in the Letter. Furthermore, his astrological quotations are directly related to the two astrological practices that Bar Ḥiyya mentions in the Letter as licit: electional astrology based on even/odd-numbered hours and the planetary hours (as the electional practice of the bridegroom), and according to the horoscope of the moment whose houses change zodiac sign every two hours (just as the horoscopic positions of the planets that Bar Ḥiyya mentions three times in the Letter to confirm the election of the hour by the bridegroom; see iii.1 and iii.3). It is also utterly illuminating that Bar Barzillai seems to have been interested in (but not necessarily that he practiced) astral/liturgical magic for, in his Commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah, Bar Barzillai gives a list of the angels ruling the seven planets.28 This list is “absolutely identical with that of the rulers of the planets according to the Chaldean wisdom” found in the old magical/astrological text that Gaster edited (The Wisdom of the Chaldeans) and also extant in Sefer Raziel (with the exception of only one angelic name).29 The Sefer Raziel follows the Baraita di-Shmuel in its list, while Bar Barzillai’s commentary seems to follow the Wisdom of the Chaldeans,30 a book attributed precisely to those whose knowledge and practice is banned in the Babylonian Talmud (Pesaḥim 113b) and who are largely discussed in Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter. It might be, as Markel put it, that Bar Barzillai “believed in astrology as well, but rather than placing the line where Bar Ḥiyya placed it, he drew it elsewhere.”31 If Bar Barzillai was not condemning either the use of astrology in general, or electional astrology in either of its two forms, the one based in odd/even-numbered hours and the one based on horoscopes (he refers to both forms in his Commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah), what might he have condemned if he was the objector? Everything seems to point to Bar Barzillai as

28 29

30 31

See Halberstam, Peruš Sefer yeṣirah, 247. Cf. the beginning of the Wisdom of the Chaldeans according to Gaster’s translation: “For in each sphere there is an angel that moves it. … I have gleaned concerning the seven angels of the week, and concerning the hours and their figures, and their position, and their use, and the manner in which one could make them serve one’s purposes, and wherefore they are called by such names”; see Moses Gaster, “The Wisdom of the Chaldeans: An Old Hebrew Astrological Text,” in Studies and Texts in Folklore, Magic, Mediaeval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha, and Samaritan Archaeology, 3 vols. (London: Maggs Bros 34 and 35 Conduit St., 1925–1928 [1900]), 1:348. See also Reimund Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2006), 325–326. Gaster, “The Wisdom of the Chaldeans,” 1:344–345. Markel, “Rabbi Avraham bar Hiyya’s Defense of Astrology,” 21.

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only the addressee of the Letter, while the objector must have been some other prominent person in the Jewish community. Who? The answer requires further research on the halakhic authorities of the Catalan Jewish community during the first quarter of the twelfth century. It is also possible that the objector was a Jew coming from outside the Catalan community or from abroad, a relative of either the bridegroom or the bride, who attended the wedding, someone who came from a Jewish community in which astrology was clearly a controversial practice or the attitude as regards halakhic bans was more stringent than in Bar Ḥiyya’s circle. The style of the halakhic discussion in the Letter (based on the Talmudic discussions of the French Tosafists) and the sources that Bar Ḥiyya chose to make his point and refute the objections against astrology (only Talmudic rather than philosophical or scientific Jewish sources, which were most favored in Sefarad) point in the direction that the objector might have been a French—or a German—Tosafist, a disciple of them, or someone coming from a similar environment.32 Furthermore, the fact that Bar Ḥiyya uses the expression ḥasid šoṭeh (“foolishly pious” in xxii.1) might be another indication that the objector was a man whose religious sensibility (ḥasid, “pious/pietist”) was in tune with that of Jews living in Franco-German lands.

32

The school of Talmudic scholars known as the French Tosafists is coeval with Abraham bar Ḥiyya: the earliest Tosafists Eliezer ben Nathan in Mainz (1090–1170) and Jacob ben Meir Tam in Troyes (1100–1171) were Bar Ḥiyya’s contemporaries. For the talmudic discussions of the French Tosafists, see Ephraim Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 69. For the Tosafist movement in general, see the in-depth study of Ephraim E. Urbach, Baʿalei ha-Tosafot, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1980, 4th ed.) (in Hebrew). For the characteristic stringency of most of the French and German rabbis in comparison with the more lenient approach of the Sephardic ones, see Hirsch Jacob Zimmels, Ashkenazim and Sephardim—Their Relations, Differences, and Problems as Reflected in the Rabbinical Responsa (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 188–204 (and 205–232 about Ashkenazi leniency versus Sephardic stringency).

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Appendix 1: The Rule of the Planets over the Diurnal and Nocturnal Hours = The Planetary Hours table 6.1

The rule of the planets in the diurnal and nocturnal seasonal hours of every week day or the so-called planetary hours. Me stands for Mercury; Mo for Moon; Sa for Saturn; Ju for Jupiter; Ma for Mars; Su for the sun; and Ve for Venus. The special feature of this table is that, following Jewish practice, every day starts on the evening of the previous day (i.e., Sunday night is before Sunday daylight, and so on).a

Hours

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Sunday night Sunday day Monday night Monday day Tuesday night Tuesday day Wednesday night Wednesday day Thursday night Thursday day Friday night Friday day Saturday night Saturday day

Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa

Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju

Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma

Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su

Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve

Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me

Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo

Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa

Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju

Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma

Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su

Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve Ma Sa Me Su Ju Mo Ve

a This table is taken from Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, “The Astrolabe Finger Ring of Bonetus de Latis: Study, Latin Text, and English Translation with Commentary,” Medieval Encounters 23 (2017): 81 and 97. For the use of these hours in ancient Jewish sources, see Gideon Bohak, “A Palestinian-Jewish Aramaic Planetary Horologion from the Cairo Genizah,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 18, 1 (2018): 7–26.

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Appendix 2: English-Hebrew Glossary of Technical Terms Related to the Stars in the Letter33

ascendant astrologer

‫מזל הצומח‬ ‫בעל חכמת הכוכבים‬ ‫חשבוני‬ ‫חכם הכוכבים‬ ‫חכם המהלכות‬ ‫חכם מהלכות הכוכבים‬ astrological judgment/decree ‫עצה‬ astrology ‫חכמת הכוכבים והמזלות‬ ‫חכמת המזלות‬ ‫חכמת מהלכות הכוכבים‬ ‫מהלכות הכוכבים‬ be direct in its motion (a planet) ‫ישר במהלכו‬ be retrograde in its motion (a planet) ‫נזור במהלכו‬ benefic planet ‫כוכב יושר‬ calculation of the motions of the stars (astronomy) ‫חשבון מהלכות הכוכבים‬ Chaldean science = idolatry ‫חכמת הכלדיים‬ constellation ‫צורה‬ constellation / star ‫מזל‬ consult Chaldeans ‫שאל בכלדיים‬ consultation of Chaldeans ‫שאלה בכלדיים‬ ‫שאילת הכלדיים‬ decree of astrology ‫גזירה‬ dominate (a planet a horoscope) ‫גבר‬ ecliptic ‫קו אופן המזלות‬ ‫אופן גלגל המזלות‬ even-numbered hour ‫שעת זוג‬ fixed star ‫כוכב שבת‬ forecast/predict/foretell (of any astrologer) ‫גזר‬ founders of observances (a sect practicing a stellar science that ‫מיסדי הנימוסים‬

commits idolatry) celestial equator heavenly positions of the planets in a specific horizon and at specific time 33

‫השוה‬ ‫מהלכות הכוכבים‬

Given that the glossary relates to the authors’ translation of Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter rather than to the Hebrew edition, the glossary is alphabetically arranged according to the English entries.

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(cont.)

heavens horoscope of any person influence (of any star or zodiac sign on the Earth and its beings) influence of any star (on the Earth and its beings) influence of the stars Jupiter hour makers of talismans (a sect practicing a stellar science that commits idolatry) malefic planet Mars hour masters of sympathetic relationships (a sect practicing a stellar science that commits idolatry) modify (God) the (stellar) decree nativity northern and southern sides (with respect to the equator or the zodiac) nullify the influence of a star nullify the influence of the stars nullify the rule (of the stars) nullify the rule of the horoscope nullify the stellar decrees

nullify the testimony of the stars part of the sky that is visible in the horizon planet planet / star position of any planet in a zodiac sign position of the planets and the zodiac signs (in a horoscope) remove (God) the influence of a star remove (God) the rule of the zodiac sign/horoscope revolution (of a planet) in its orb revolve (any planet) in its sphere rise (a star) in the east rise (a zodiac sign) above the eastern horizon

‫רקיע‬ ‫מזל אדם‬ ‫כח‬ ‫כח הכוכבים‬ ‫כח צבא השמים‬ ‫שעת צדק‬ ‫בעלי התמונות‬ ‫כוכב נזק‬ ‫שעת מאדים‬ ‫בעלי הצדדין‬ ‫המיר גזרה‬ ‫מולד‬ ‫פאת צפון ודרום‬ ‫בטל כח הכוכב‬ ‫בטל כח המזלות‬ ‫בטל ממשלה‬ ‫בטל ממשלת המזל‬ ‫בטל גזירות הכוכבים‬ ‫בטל גזרות מהלכות‬ ‫הכוכבים‬ ‫בטל עדות המזלות‬ ‫רקיע השמים‬ ‫כוכב לכת‬ ‫כוכב‬ ‫מושב‬ ‫עמידה‬ ‫מעמד הכוכבים והמזלות‬ ‫הסיר כח הכוכב‬ ‫הסיר ממשלת המזל‬ ‫מסב על גלגלו‬ ‫הקיף את רקיעו‬ ‫זרח במזרח‬ ‫עלה‬

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(cont.)

rising (of a star) rule (of the spheres, planets and stars) rule (of stellar decree) rule (a planet) an aspect of life or an activity rule (a planet) an hour rule (a planet) the birth of a person rule a nation (the zodiac signs or the testimony of the stars) rule (a planet) an hour or a day rule (a planet) the birth of a child rule (a planet) a specific stellar decree rule of the planets (upon the hours or upon a specific aspect of life or activity) ruling planet (of the day) ruling planet (of the hour) Saturn hour science of the stars (astrology) science of the stars (astronomy and astrology) season of the year separate hour, i.e., any odd-numbered hour set (a star) in the west set (a zodiac sign below the western horizon) setting (of a star) sign (of the stars) sphere of any planet and of the fixed stars spheres stellar decree of a star decree of the astrology testify a star about a specific matter/person testimony (of a star or a zodiac sign) testimony of the stars testimony or decree of the stars that is benefic testimony or decree of the stars that is malefic those who make the powers flow (sect practicing a stellar science that commits idolatry) work / influence of the stars zodiac sign (of the hour) zodiac sign (ruling the birth of a person) zodiac sign or planet (ruling a nation)

‫זריחה‬ ‫ממשלה‬ ‫שלט‬

‫משל‬

‫ממשלת הכוכבים‬ ‫מושל‬ ‫מזל‬ ‫שעת שבתאי‬ ‫חכמת הכוכבים‬ ‫תקופה השנה‬ ‫שעה נפרדת‬ ‫שקת במערב‬ ‫ירד‬ ‫שקיעה‬ ‫אות‬ ‫רקיע‬ ‫שמים‬ ‫גזירה‬ ‫העיד‬ ‫עדות‬ ‫עדות הכוכבים‬ ‫מזל טוב‬ ‫מזל רע‬ ‫מזילי הכחות‬ ‫מלאכת צבא השמים‬ ‫מזל‬

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Appendix 3: Overview of the Structure and Contents of the Letter34 i. 1 2

Introduction on Psalm 34:15 (24, 1–9) What Psalm 34:15 has to do with electiones (24, 10–17)

ii. 1 2

Electiones and bloodletting (24, 17–24) Malefic planets and even-numbered hours (24, 24–36)

iii. 1 2 3 4 5

Electiones for a wedding: An odd-numbered hour (25, 1–5) A funeral delays the wedding: An even-numbered hour (25, 6–8) The new hour is not good according to astrology (25, 8–12) Someone found that the election of the day and the hour is consultation of Chaldeans (25, 12–16) The objector prevails: The wedding takes place in an even-numbered hour against the will of the bridegroom (25, 16)

iv. 1 Bar Ḥiyya feels he is in a situation in which he has to defend his position and, consequently, astrology (25, 18–20) 2 Psalm 34:15 re-emerges: Choosing a suitable hour is like choosing a suitable medicine (25, 20–26) 3 Astrology is not consultation of Chaldeans: God rules the stars (25, 26–30) 4 Astrology is legitimate and does not infringe the law (25, 30–34) v. 1 2 3 4

34

Why did the sages warn against the consultation of Chaldeans? (25, 35– 36) Is the ban about consulting Chaldeans or about consulting and fearing their answers? (26, 1–3) The ban is only about consulting Chaldeans: Listening to their answers and being afraid of them is legitimate (26, 3–15) There is trangression of the law in consulting Chaldeans (26, 16–19)

References to Schwarz’ edition are given between parentheses (page number, line number).

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vi. 1 Why is there transgression in consulting Chaldeans? The words of the Chaldeans versus the words of the rabbis (26, 19–23) 2 The words of the rabbis are according to astrology not according to the Chaldeans (26, 23–28) 3 The rabbis practiced astrology (26, 28–32) vii. 1 Abraham practiced astrology (26, 33–37) 2 First conclusion: Astrology is a licit science, for Abraham practiced it (26, 37–38 and 27, 1–9) 3 Second conclusion: Astrology is a true and reliable science (27, 9–14) 4 Third conclusion: Israel, as opposed to the other nations of the world, can nullify their stellar decrees (27, 14–18) viii. 1 The meaning of Israel has no star is that Israel’s power is greater than the power of the stars (27, 18–23) 2 If Israel can nullify the stellar influence, it certainly means that the stellar influence also works for Israel (27, 23–29) ix. 1 Stellar influence versus stellar decree: Israel vis-à-vis the other nations (27, 29–32) 2 King Hezekiah’s case (27, 32–35) 3 Rabbi Akiva’s case (27, 35–37) 4 The relation of the Biblical constellation Kimah with the flood (27, 37 and 28, 1–8) 5 Israel and the other nations vis-à-vis the stellar influence (28, 8–10) 6 Abraham’s case shows the special status of Israel vis-à-vis the stellar influence (28, 10–17) x. Conclusions from Abraham’s story 1 First conclusion: Astrology is licit (28, 18–19) 2 Second conclusion: Astrology is a true science (28, 19–20) 3 Third conclusion: The stars rule the nations of the world (28, 20–22) 4 Fourth conclusion: The stars do not rule Israel (28, 22–23) 5 Fifth conclusion: One can deduce from astrology (28, 23– 28)

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xi. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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Sixth conclusion: The practice of astrology is proper, also for Israel (28, 29)

Astrology versus the Chaldean science (28, 29–31) Astrologers only prognosticate general features (28, 31–35) Astrologers cannot change the future (28, 35–37) Chaldeans can foretell very specific details: Joseph-who-honors-Shabbats (28, 37–38 and 29, 1–3) Chaldeans know how to change the future: Rabbi Naḥman’s case (29, 3– 6) Astrologers cannot prognosticate specific details: Rabbi Akiva’s case (29, 6–9) Astrologers cannot change the future: Ablat’s case (29, 9–12) Astrology is not the Chaldean science (29, 13–15) Bar Ḥiyya begins the analysis of the stellar sciences to separate licit from illicit (29, 15–17)

xii. 1 Definition of astronomy: the description of the heavens (29, 18–25) 2 Israel and the other nations agree in almost everything as regards astronomy (29, 25–27) xiii. 1 Definition of astrology: how the stars influence the world and its beings (29, 28–32) 2 Astrological knowledge relies on tradition, divine inspiration, and experience (29, 32–36) 3 The nations of the world believe that the stellar influence is non-conditional (29, 36–37 and p. 30, 1–2) 4 Israel believes that the stellar influence is conditional: It depends on God (30, 2–6) xiv. 1 According to the rabbis, Israel is obliged to calculate tequfot and mazzalot, i.e., to practice astronomy and astrology (30, 7–9) 2 To calculate tequfot and mazzalot does not mean to calculate the four seasons (30, 9–11) 3 To calculate tequfot and mazzalot does not mean calendrical calculation (30, 11–14)

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215

To calculate tequfot and mazzalot means astronomy (tequfot) and astrology (mazzalot) (30, 14–25)

xv. 1 The righteousness of Israel nullifies any unfavorable stellar decree: This is the distinctive knowledge of Israel as regards astrology (30, 25– 28) 2 Stellar influence versus stellar decree: Israel versus the gentile nations (30, 28–35) 3 The righteousness of Israel nullifies any unfavorable stellar decree: Hezekiah’s case (30, 35–37) 4 The righteousness of Israel nullifies any unfavorable stellar decree: Ahaziah’s case (30, 37–39 and 31, 1–4) 5 The righteousness of Israel nullifies any unfavorable stellar decree: Rabbi Akiva’s and Ablat’s cases (31, 4–6) xvi. 1 Everybody with the knowledge of it, Israel included, is required to practice astrology (31, 6–9) 2 Why the obligation to practice astrology? (31, 9–10) 3 Any astrological forecast needs astronomy, so they both are compulsory sciences for Israel (31, 10–13) xvii. 1 The remaining sciences related to the stars are banned for Israel: They involve idolatry (the belief that stars act knowingly and of their own free will) (31, 14–17) 2 The first non-licit stellar science: The founders of observances (31, 17–24) 3 The second non-licit stellar science: Those who make the powers of the stars flow (31, 24–30) 4 The third non-licit stellar science: The makers of talismans (31, 30–36) 5 The fourth non-licit stellar science: The masters of sympathetic relationships (31, 36–38 and 32, 1–6) xviii. 1 These four Arabic sciences are mentioned in Hebrew and Aramaic in Daniel 2:2 and 4:4 (32, 7–11) 2 The meaning of gazrayyaʾ (32, 12–18) 3 The meaning of meḵašfim (32, 18–31) 4 Ḥaḵamim and meḵašfim are the same (32, 31–37) 5 Ḥarṭummim and meḵašfim acted together (32, 37–38 and 33, 1–3) - 978-90-04-44570-3

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xix. 1 God establishes His divine decrees when the stars do not indicate them (33, 3–5) 2 Prophets prophesy what the stars do not indicate (33, 5–7) 3 Astrologers can forecast God’s decree but stellar decrees vary with respect to God’s decrees (33, 7–12) 4 Only astrologers can understand the special status of Israel vis-à-vis the stellar influence (33, 12–16) 5 Astrology increases the fear of Heaven and knowledge of God and makes visible God’s miracles and powers (33, 17–18) 6 The remaining four sciences of the stars are forbidden for Jews (33, 18–19) xx. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Forbidden practices mentioned in Scripture (33, 20–23) Qesem by means of ḥiṣṣim (33, 23–28) Qesem by means of terafim (33, 28–35) Any form of qesem mentioned in Scripture is forbidden for Jews (34, 1–13) The meaning of meʿonen (a form of qesem) (34, 13–22) The meaning of menaḥeš (a form of qesem) (34, 22–32) A meḵašef, kešafim, and ḥarṭummim perform magic acts (34, 32–34) Ḥover ḥever, šoʾel ʾov, šoʾel yiddeʿoni and doreš ʾel ha-metim are forms of qesem (34, 35–36 and 35, 1)

xxi. 1 It is licit to learn any kind of qesamim but not to practice those mentioned in Scripture (35, 1–7) 2 Any of these practices, which are forbidden in Scripture (qesem and magic), is considered Chaldean (35, 7–22) xxii. 1 The objector is stringent as regards astrology but permissive as regards the forbidden practices (35, 23–28) 2 The election of the hour of the wedding according to astrology is not banned (35, 29–30) xxiii. 1 Rhymed Epilogue addressed to Bar Barzillai (35, 30–32) 2 Bar Ḥiyya asks Bar Barzillai to stand in his defense (35, 32–37 and p. 36, 1–5) 3 Bar Ḥiyya addresses the rabbis and finishes the Letter (36, 5–23)

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chapter 7

Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s Letter to Judah bar Barzillai—Translation Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas and Amos Geula

The translation of Abraham bar Ḥiyya’s Letter to Judah bar Barzillai presented in this chapter follows Zechariah Schwarz’ edition.1 In his edition, Schwarz corrected some mistakes of the copyist and introduced some new terms not appearing in the manuscript he followed—ms Warsaw, Zydowski Instytut Historyczny 282—in order to clarify the meaning. When we follow or disagree with Schwarz’ readings or modifications of the manuscript we have indicated this in the footnotes, but we have not indicated in footnotes our corrections of visible typos in Schwarz’ edition. For the translation, we have compared Schwarz’ edition with the two manuscripts of the Letter: ms Warsaw, Zydowski Instytut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute) 282, fols. 5r–13v, previously in the collections of the library of the Jewish Community in Vienna (= ms Austria vi and ms Austria 285); and ms London, Montefiore Library 484, fols. 37r–38v. ms Warsaw 282 is complete while ms Montefiore 484 contains only the beginning of the Letter and the colophon, so it is not useful for the most important contents of the Letter; ms Montefiore 484 ends when the discussion about the meaning of “consulting Chaldeans” (the motive of the objection in the Letter) and their differences with other divinatory practices begins in ms Warsaw 282.2 In our translation we keep the pages and the lines of Schwarz’ edition in Arabic numbers indicated between ( ). We use [ ] to introduce brief clarifications in the body of the translation and < > to indicate that we have introduced a word that is neither in the manuscripts nor in Schwarz’ edition.3 1 See Zechariah Schwarz, “ʾIggeret R. Abraham bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi še-katav le-Rabbi Yehudah bar Barzilai ʿal šeʾilah ba-kaldaim,” in Festschrift Adolf Schwarz zum siebzigsten Geburtstage, ed. Samuel Kraus (Berlin and Vienna: R. Löwit, 1917), 23–36. 2 ms Warsaw 282 (microfilm F 11609 at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel) is written in a sixteenth-century mixture (difficult to decipher) of Sephardic cursive and Italian semi-cursive scripts, very likely by a Sephardic scribe in Italy, probably one who arrived there after the expulsion from Spain. ms Montefiore 484 (= microfilm F 6113 at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel) is written in a fifteenth-century semi-cursive form of Sephardic script from Provence. We thank Ilona Steimann for her advice on the paleography of both manuscripts. 3 We are grateful to Charles Burnett for his readings and comments on an earlier version of

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Translation (p. 24) this is the letter about what happened, which the great sage, the nasi rabbi abraham ben ha-nasi, the great rabbi ḥiyyaʾ the sefaradi, of blessed memory, called ṣaḥib al-šurṭa, sent to rabbi judah bar barzillai of barcelona, of blessed memory. i. 1 It is written: Depart from evil and do good (Ps 34:15) in your affairs and in any work of your hand, seek well-being and pursue it (Ps 34:15) with the word (5) of your mouth and the thoughts of your heart. : Depart from evil and do good in any affair between you and yourself, seek well-being and pursue it in any affair between you and your neighbor. : Depart from evil and do good: If your desire inclines toward something that does not deserve praise from either wisdom or knowledge, depart from the evil desire and receive the advice of good wisdom. Seek well-being and pursue it: If you see your fellow asking for advice, seek perfection, pursue it, then counsel him in the same way as you would pursue your own well-being and seek it. 2 (10) The explanation of this issue is : If you are ready to travel and a wise person who loves you tells you: “Do not travel at this hour because it is dangerous or is an even-numbered hour or Saturn’s or Mars’ hour”; or he tells you: “Do not travel on this day because its ruling planet is not suitable for the journey,”4 then you should pay attention to his advice and do not travel. Likewise, if there is before you some food you really like eating and your physician tells

this translation and to Maud Kozodoy for her assistance with several expressions. Needless to say, the authors are solely responsible for the contents and for any possible error or mistake. 4 We follow the reading in ms Montefiore 484 (‫)מזלו‬, rather than the reading in ms Warsaw 282 and Schwarz’ text (‫)מזלך‬. Mazzal has different possible translations, given Bar Ḥiyya’s use of the term in the Letter; the apparent meaning of mazzal here is “ruling planet” meaning the specific planet that rules a specific nation, country, or here, a day. For the meaning of mazzal in rabbinic contexts, see Reimund Leicht, “The Planets, the Jews and the Beginnings of Jewish Astrology,” in Continuity and Innovation in the Magical Tradition, ed. Gideon Bohak, Yuval Harari, and Shaul Shaked (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011), 282.

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you: “Do not eat it because it is harmful to men your age,” you should follow his advice and do not eat. This is depart from evil and do good: depart from the decree of the evil and perform the advice of the good. (15) And seek well-being and pursue it is: If you see your friend departing or beginning some business at an even-numbered hour, which is a dangerous hour, or on a day whose ruling planet is not appropriate to that business, dissuade him from travelling or doing that business. For, because of this action you will be the one who seeks his friend’s well-being and pursues his good. ii. 1 It is proper for all men of knowledge to be warned of any danger and to be careful not to begin any business at an hour unsuitable for it or on a day whose ruling planet is unsuitable for that business. And in the same way as they should be cautious and take care of themselves, they should also take care of their close friends and warn them, thus learning a rule of behavior from our rabbis of blessed memory, (20) who warned us about it in one place only, but in other places taught us to do their deeds and to emulate them. They that Samuel said:5 The suitable times for bloodletting are Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, but not Monday and Thursday. As a master said: One who has the merit of the patriarchs lets blood on Monday or Thursday, for the tribunal above and the tribunal below are as one. For what reason not on Tuesday? Because the planet Mars rules an even-numbered hour . Does not Saturn rule Friday and also an even-numbered hour ?6 As there are many who do this, , “the Lord preserves the simple” (Ps 116:6).7 2 The explanation is that Mars, which is in an even-numbered hour, is the ruler (25) among the planets that day.8 According to rough calculation, the astrologers know that even-numbered hours are inauspicious for beginning anything 5 We do not keep Schwarz’ reading (‫)אמרו‬, which requires his addition of ‫אמר‬. ms Montefiore 484 has ‫ אמר שמואל‬:‫ אמרו‬.‫והם‬ 6 We keep Schwarz’ addition to the manuscript (‫)נמי‬, which is also in ms Montefiore 484. 7 Quoted from tb Šabbat 129b. 8 We keep Schwarz’ addition (‫)כוכבי‬. The day implied is Friday, when Mars rules the fourth hour of the night and the sixth of the day; see Chapter Six (Appendix 1), 208.

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and all the more if one of the malefic planets rules them [the even-numbered hours]. There are those who are afraid of bloodletting at the hour of Mars because Mars rules over blood. So they warned that a person should not let blood on a day on which Mars rules an even-numbered hour of that day, such as Monday, when rules an even-numbered hour, or Thursday, when rules an even-numbered hour. These two days are dangerous because of the rule of the planets (30) and also because the tribunal above and the tribunal below are as one.9 Tuesday is dangerous because Mars controls its eighth hour.10 We know that these days—or the evennumbered hours of these days—when Mars rules are dangerous for bloodletting, according to the words of our sages of blessed memory.11 We learn from this fact that anyone wishing to build a house, plant a vineyard, or dig a well—and whatever activity Saturn rules—must begin on Sunday or Wednesday.12 One is warned against starting on Monday, Tuesday, (35) or , because Saturn an even-numbered these three days.13 In this way we deduce rules for each activity controlled by a planet. And we take as our basis the words of our sages of blessed memory, and nobody protests against us; this is clear.

9

10

11 12

13

Since the tribunal of Israel sat on Mondays and Thursdays (see tb Bava kamma 82a), then on these days a person may be sentenced in the tribunal above, and so bloodletting is dangerous on these days. Schwarz modified the reading of the manuscript, first rather than eighth hour. We keep the reading of mss Warsaw 282 and Montefiore 484 (eighth), which is correct in this context. Schwarz proposed the reading “first” possibly because Mars also rules the first hour of the day, which is why Tuesday is ruled by Mars, the planet that rules the first hour of this day, but the passage is dealing with the planets ruling the hours, not with the planets ruling the days. We keep Schwarz’ addition of ‫ אנו‬at the beginning of this sentence as the implicit subject of ‫רואים‬. “Hours” in this context means the seasonal hours of a day that starts at sunrise and is divided into day (from sunrise to sunset) and night (from sunset to sunrise), each having 12 unequal or seasonal hours whose duration changes according to the season (longer during the day in summer time but shorter in winter and vice-versa). So on Sunday Saturn rules the third hour of the night and the fifth hour of the day, i.e., two complete hours after sunset and one complete hour before noon. On Wednesday, Saturn rules the third hour of the day and the first hour of the night, namely, a couple of hours after sunrise and the first hour after sunset. See Chapter Six (Appendix 1), 208. We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ וששי‬and ‫ )בשלשת‬of the manuscript (‫ וחמשי‬and ‫)ושלשת‬. So, according to the corrected text, Saturn rules the second hour of the day of Monday; the fourth of the night and the sixth of the day of Tuesday; and the second of the night and the first and the eighth of the day of Friday; see the Table in Appendix 1.

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iii. 1 (p. 25) However, something happened to me relating to this issue, which I need to explain here and review all complaints, doubts, and problems until its truth becomes clear. A good disciple, one who loves me and is dear to me, was to be married on a Friday and I agreed [with him] that he should be married on the third hour of that day, at the moment when the congregation leaves the synagogue. In my opinion, his suggestion was quite correct, for this hour is odd numbered,14 the moon rules it, and it is (5) auspicious to begin in it anything good, according to everyone’s view. The hour was also auspicious for this because of the positions of the planets. 2 However, it became necessary to delay the ceremony because of the funeral of a person without family to bury him that was taking place in the city. The people in the wedding—the heads and the principals of the congregation—opted to bury the dead first. Therefore, the bride’s entry was delayed until they had completed everything that needed to be done for the dead. So the congregation came back from the burial at the end of the fifth hour of the day and the beginning of the sixth hour,15 which is even numbered and is ruled by Mars. 3 In my opinion, was not suitable, because of the positions of the planets and the ascendant .16 When I realized this, I told him: “Since the ceremony was delayed until the sixth hour, wait (10) until this hour is over and the seventh hour arrives,17 which is odd numbered and is ruled by

14

15 16

17

Lit. “separate number,” cf. Robert Ramsay Wright (Arabic text and English tr.), The Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology (Al-Tafḥīm) (London: Luzac & Co., 1934), 27 [87]: “numbers like seven and ten, which have no common factor other than one, and do not share in other particulars. They are therefore spoken of as separate numbers.” The hour shares the quality of the number that corresponds with it in the order of the hours of the day and the night. I.e., 11 a.m. and noon, respectively This information about the specific positions of the planets at that day and that time makes this calculation a clear occurrence of electional astrology in its most technical form, while the simple choice of even/odd-numbered hours related to the planets is a basic form of electional astrology, whose knowledge was within the reach of anybody, just as the elections based on the number of the hours unrelated to the rule of the planets. I.e., 1 p.m.

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the sun, and is suitable for beginning anything. In addition it has a different quality [lit. “status”] in connection to the positions of the planets.”18 The man listened to my advice, my words persuaded him, and he and his fellows decided to wait. 4 However, there was someone there who took issue with the decision and said that this delay was a case of consultation of Chaldeans; that our sages of blessed memory said not to consult Chaldeans;19 that the person who does this [choosing the hour of the wedding according to astrological rules] is transgressing the words of the sages; that what Samuel said, that the moment appropriate (15) to bloodletting is Sunday, 20 refers only to bloodletting because of the weakness that it causes to the body; and that we should not draw any other conclusion from it.21 5 He [the objector] further insisted twice and thrice, until the bridegroom entered the wedding canopy, against his will, at the sixth hour. iv. 1 Now, as I was the one who brought all this up, it seemed to me that all who heard this would consider me to be a transgressor of the law and a sinner. And so I need to justify my words and defend myself before God and before (20) my people, as it is written: You will be blameless before God and before Israel (Num 32:22). 18

19 20 21

The hour could have a different relationship to the planets than the previous degree rising at the earlier hour, and thus affect the aspects of the chart. The planets’ degrees would not move in a couple of hours, although the Moon would move faster and could affect the chart aspects. Bar Ḥiyya would have been well aware of all this, but the main change would have been the positions of the planets and the signs in the houses (because of the change in the ascendant’s position). On this specific question, see Chapter Six, 204–206. tb Pesaḥim 113b. tb Šabbat 129b. Namely, the days of week are taken into account for bloodletting because of the weakness that it causes to the body, but they are not taken into consideration for weddings.

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2 I stand by what I have said and I say that this one [the objector] held a stringent halakhic opinion in a case that does not require it,22 and that he adopts a stringent approach23 to an issue to which stringency does not apply. For anyone who states that a certain hour of a certain day is auspicious for a certain activity, or who says that it is good to begin a certain activity at the hour of Jupiter or at the hour whose zodiac sign is Aries, or at the hour Taurus rises or sets, is like one who states: “The water of this herb is good for eyes,”24 “this food is good for teeth or for intestines,” or “this drug brings about diarrhea and this hardens and constipates.” And just as this drug, food and herb do not (25) work in the same way , likewise hours do not act in the same way for all men, for the former and the latter are analogous cases, and nobody says that it [the former] is either banned or permitted.25 3 In the same way, the person who says that when Jupiter rules the nativity of a child, he shall be honest or humble, or that any girl whose nativity is dominated by Venus shall be beautiful and charming, neither consults the Chaldeans nor does he practice the deeds of the Chaldeans. With his words he does not depart from the way of the Torah, not even by the thickness of a hair, for all Israel unanimously believes that the influence conferred on the stars has been given to them conditionally, and they do not have power to cause benefit (30) or to harm of their own free will and knowingly, but everything is by judgment and command.26

22 23

24 25 26

We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )החמיר‬of the manuscript (‫)המאמר‬, which agrees with ms Montefiore 484 (‫)המחמיר החמיר‬. The technical term ḥumraʾ (stringency) has two meanings: first, an obligation in Jewish practice that exceeds the bare requirements of halakhah; second, a stricter interpretation of a Jewish law (halakhah), when two or more interpretations exist. The two meanings are very close. The maḥmir of the Letter is imposing a larger requirement of the law in the understanding that to do any less would be a violation of the halakhah. Cf. the use of this term below (xx.4, xxii.1, and xxii.2). We correct Schwarz’ reading (‫ )יפים‬of mss Warsaw 282 and Montefiore 484 (‫)יפה‬. I.e., this is not a case for halakhah according to Bar Ḥiyya. This statement has its equivalents in the Baraita di-Shmuel (end of the ninth chapter), the Baraita de-Mazzalot (ch. 15), and the Sefer megillat ha-megalleh (beginning of the fifth

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4 Such is the belief of everybody who fears Heaven [God] and studies the science of the stars [astrology]. Anyone who suspects one of the children of Israel on that issue is suspecting righteous people, and his way of thinking is not that of righteous people. We consider—by rational estimation—that the person who avoids engaging in an activity at an even-numbered hour or at any hour that is not auspicious because of the positions of the planets does not violate any ban and is relying on Samuel’s words. He infringes neither the words of the sages nor the words of the Torah;27 his act is not a consultation of Chaldeans, as the one who held the stringent legal opinion considers. v. 1 (35) However, we have to clarify and inquire into what our sages of blessed memory said: Do not consult Chaldeans. Does one should not consult them because one should not be concerned with their answers and should not listen to their advice? Or we are warned only against consulting ? 2 (p. 26) We organize the inquiry in this way. Let us say that the one who consults Chaldeans, listens to their advice, and fears their answers infringes upon the words of the sages and deserves death, for they said “Do not consult ,” but he does consult. in addition , he is afraid of their answers, because of his deeds, is he guilty of both [consulting them and fearing their answers] or just one of them [consulting them]?

27

chapter); see Schwarz, 25 n. 9. For the texts of the Baraita di-Shmuel and the Baraita demazzalot, see Judah D. Eisenstein, Oṣar Midrašim, 2 vols. (New York: Reznick Menschel & Co., 1928), 2:542–547 (Baraita di-Shmuel), and Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer, Battei midrašot, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1955), 2:7–37 (Baraita de-mazzalot). Schwarz added ‫ לא‬before ‫ על דברי חכמים‬and before ‫על דברי תורה‬, which does not seem necessary, since it does not affect the meaning of the sentence.

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3 28 If Simeon consults Chaldeans, but is not afraid of their answers, and listens to their advice,29 but did not ask them, should we say that (5) they are both guilty? Or say that Simeon’s guilt is greater than Levi’s? Or is only Simeon guilty while Levi is innocent? We cannot clear Simeon from his culpability and, considering the question, we find that Levi—who was afraid of the words and listened to their advice but did not ask them—is exempt from any charge, because of the words of our sages of blessed memory, who said: Rabbi Akiva had a daughter. Chaldeans said to him “on the day when she gets married a snake will bite her, and she will die.” He was very worried about it.30 We cannot say that Rabbi Akiva consulted Chaldeans, for (10) our sages of blessed memory did not say it. God forbid that Rabbi Akiva transgressed the words of the sages; rather, the Chaldeans spoke to him although he did not ask. As he was very worried, we see that one be afraid of the words of Chaldeans [and so one is allowed to listen to them]. Likewise, we say that one listen to their advice because of Naḥman ben Isaac’s mother, to whom the Chaldeans said “your son will be a thief.” She did not allow his head to be uncovered and said “cover your head.”31 As she listened to their advice, she asked to cover his head and the sages did not admonish her. You will understand from this that 28 29 30

31

The ban only concerns taking the initiative to consult Chaldeans. We follow Schwarz’ addition (‫ )לוי‬of the manuscript. The text alluded to in this discussion about Simeon and Levi is one from the tb Šabbat (156a and 156b), from which Bar Ḥiyya took the quotation included in his Letter. Several rabbis are discussing how the fact of being born on a particular day of the week or at a particular hour influences character and fate. In any of these cases, the native’s character is determined by one of the seven planets ruling that particular day of the week or that particular hour in which the birth took place. In this context, the well-known discussion about Israel being or not being under the influence of the stars is introduced; the rabbis refer to several examples regarding this question. For the popular folkloristic motif of the bride or groom fated to die in the bridal chamber and the symbolism of the snake in wedding contexts, see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, “Talmudic Astrology: Bavli Šabbat 156a–b,”Hebrew Union College Annual 78 (2007): 109–148, at 133 and the bibliography quoted there. See tb Šabbat 156b. The fragment is based on the belief that if the son covers his head, the influence of the star does not reach him, and it is therefore ineffective. See Rubenstein, “Talmudic Astrology,” 135–136: “we must explain that the Sage was indeed free from planetary influence as long as he covered his head, and only his failure to continue to perform that miṣvah made him susceptible to his destiny. Or we might explain that his constant vigilance in covering his head restricted his stealing to this one anomalous act, and he did not become a habitual thief as predicted. Both explanations demonstrate again that, as

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one listen to the Chaldeans’ advice. It is clear to us that our sages of blessed memory warned only against consulting (15) Chaldeans. However, the one who is afraid of their answers and listens to their advice [Chaldeans’] has no part in this [i.e., the guilt of the consultation]. 4 Let us now inquire whether their warning against consulting Chaldeans is because there is some idolatry or some offense to Heaven in the knowledge with which they busy themselves. they warned against consulting because the knowledge entailed by it infringes the law. Or perhaps they warned not against the consultation, but against the specific manner of the consultation , for, in their search for knowledge, they [the Chaldeans] ask questions that in some way transgress the law and it is as if they [those who consult Chaldeans] actually share with in this . vi. 1 In order to overcome (20) this problem, we will investigate the words of the Chaldeans and their science until it becomes clear whether it involves transgression of the law or not. In the words of our sages of blessed memory we find regarding the words of the Chaldeans, who informed Rabbi Naḥman’s mother that her son would be a thief.32 They are similar to the words of those who study the positions of the stars [astrologers], when they state that one born under a certain zodiac sign or one whose ruling planet is a certain planet will be a thief, or rich, or wise. 2 Thus, we find that the words of our sages of blessed memory are not according to the language of the Chaldeans, but according to the broadest sense written in Rabbi Joshua (25) ben Levi’s notebook. For instance: One born under the sun will be this way. One born under Venus will be this other way. One born under Mars will be a man who makes blood flow. Rabbi Ashe said “a thief, a surgeon/bloodletter, a butcher, or a circumciser.” Rava said: “I under

32

with Abraham, so with his descendants: the fate of Jews is not determined exclusively by the stars.” tb Šabbat 156b.

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Mars .” Abaye answered him: “Sir, you also punish and kill.”33 Their words are similar to the words of Chaldeans and the words of astrologers.34 3 An issue that Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, Rava, and Abaye dealt with—and each of them provided a strong reason—is how we can say that there is a transgression of the law in this question. However, we see from this [the words of the rabbis] that our sages of blessed memory engaged in (30) astrology, taught it, and did not abstain from it. As the words of the Chaldeans are similar to the words in this respect, we can say that there is no transgression in the occupation of the Chaldeans, unless it is because they [the Chaldeans] inquired in these questions in a way that transgresses the law. For this reason, our sages of blessed memory warned against consulting them [the Chaldeans]. vii. 1 We will clarify this question in a different way. Let us say that the words of those who busy themselves with astrology and the procedures of their art look like Abraham, our father.35 For our sages of blessed memory said: Abraham said before God: “Lord (35) of our universe, I consulted my horoscope and I cannot conceive a son.” answered him: “Get away from your horoscope,36 for Israel does not have a star. Why do you think this? Because 33 34

35 36

Abbreviated quotation from tb Šabbat 156b. We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )חכמי‬of the manuscript (‫)נמי‬. Cf. the description of the individuals born under the rule of each of the seven planets, each of the twelve zodiac signs, and in the different days of the week in Richard J.H. Gottheil, “A Further Fragment on Astrology from the Genizah,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 49 (1929): 291– 302, especially 295–302. According to certain Talmudic passages, Abraham was originally an astrologer; see tb Yoma 28b and tb Bava batra 16b. This word is written in two slightly different forms in the text, ʾisṭagninut and ʾiṣṭagninut. The word, also related to ʾisṭagninin/ʾiṣṭagninin (“astrologers”), might come from the Greek στέγω (“to cover, defend, avert, keep closed”) and its derivative στεγνός (“covered”); see Robert S.P. Beekes and Lucien van Beek, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2 vols. (London: Brill, 2010), 2:1393; and Avraham Even-Shoshan, Milon Even-Shoshan (The Even-Shoshan Dictionary) 6 vols. (Jerusalem: Ha-milon he-ḥadaš, 2010 [2003]) 1: 112. Cf. Samuel Krauss, Griechische und Lateinische Lehnwörter in Talmud, Midrasch und Targum, 2 vols. (Berlin: Olms, 1899), 2:118–119. Marcus Jastrow relates the root to the Latin loanword ‫( סגנון‬mean-

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Jupiter rises in the west? I will move it and put it in the east.” So it is written: “Who makes Jupiter rise in the east?” (Isa 41:2).37 2 From this fact [Abraham’s relationship to astrology], we conclude that there is nothing illicit in the astrology that concerns the horoscope of any man and investigates the events that are going to happen to him because of the position of the planets and the zodiac signs (p. 27) at his birth, for it is like the science with which Abraham, our father, busied himself. Alternatively, one could also say that it is a science different , because what Abraham, our father, said—I consulted and I saw that I cannot bear a son—38 is like the astrologers’ words when they analyze peoples’ horoscopes. Abraham, our father, knew the Glory of his Creator when he was three years old,39 and God, blessed be He, said about him: After listening to My voice, Abraham (5) kept My service, My commandments, My laws, and My teachings (Gen 26:5). So nobody can say that he concerned himself with something shameful or something that transgresses the law. Rather, one must say that anything similar to what Abraham, our father, concerned himself with is licit.40 Thus, we say that astrology is licit. Regarding the discipline of the Chaldeans, we say that while it looks like astrology, there is no guilt in it [astrology] because of that similarity. This is the first conclusion that emerges from this story [Abraham’s]. 3 According to , it seems that astrology (10) is a true science and it is proper to rely on it and to study it; for God, blessed be He, told Abraham, our father: Get away from your horoscope, for Israel does not have a star. He did not say: Abandon astrology, for it is not a science, its proofs are not true, and it is not

37 38 39 40

ing here “astrologer”); see Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Bavli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature, 3 vols. (London-New York: Luzac-Putnam’s Sons, 1903), 1:89–90. According to Ernest Klein, the actual etymology remains uncertain; see A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 50. Quoted from tb Šabbat 156a and 156b. tb Šabbat 156a. tb Nedarim 32a. We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )שהיה‬of the manuscript (‫)שהוה‬.

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proper to learn . He could have said all this to him, if it were not proper to rely on and to study this science. Because of all this, astrology is called a science, its proofs are true, and it is proper to teach and to study it [this is the second conclusion]. 4 A third conclusion that can emerge is the star, for Israel does not have a star. This means that the righteous (15) ones of Israel can nullify the stellar decrees that act upon them, by their righteousness (ṣedaqah) and their prayers. The other nations of the world cannot do this, as they said: Rabbi Joḥanan said: “How do we know that Israel does not have a star?” From what is written here: “The Lord said: you will not learn the behavior of the gentile nations and you will not fear the signs of heaven as they fear them. Gentiles fear but Israel does not” (Jer 10:2).41 viii. 1 They said that Israel does not have a star, for the whole world was created for Israel.42 If Israel had not been given the Torah, the whole universe, which consists of the heavens [i.e., the heavenly spheres], the planets, and the constellations,43 would have returned to chaos. (20) So if the spheres, the planets, and the constellations exist for the sake of Israel, how can they rule over Israel? Israel’s strength and merits, which support the universe, are greater than the power of the stars.44 For this reason [because Israel’s strength is greater than the power of the stars], they said that Israel does not have a star, for the horoscope does not have power to maintain its signs and testimonies on Israel. But the righteous of Israel, by the power of their merits, can nullify the influence of the stars that act upon them. So it is written: Righteousness releases from death (Prov 10:2 and 11:4).

41 42 43 44

tb Šabbat 156a. See tb Šabbat 156a. Cf. Midraš Šir ha-širim rabbah 7.8; Pesiqtaʿ rabbati 28 and Midraš Teḥillim 137.3. We follow Schwarz’ addition (‫ )וכוכבים ומזלות‬to complete the text. Also quoted at the beginning of the fifth chapter of Bar Ḥiyya’s Sefer megillat ha-megalleh.

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2 Although they said that Israel does not have a star, they said that stars testify about Israel, as it is written. Rabbi Ḥanina said: A star makes one rich, a star makes one wise, and Israel has a star.45 (25) There is no disagreement between Rabbi Ḥanina’s words and Rabbi Joḥanan’s, Rav’s, Rabbi Judah’s, Samuel’s, and Rabbi Akiva’s words, who all said that Israel does not have a star. The meaning of Rabbi Ḥanina’s words is that Israel has a star that makes them rich and wise, or poor and stupid. But Israel’s merit nullifies the testimony of the stars acting upon them. Israel, therefore, has and does not have a star, for the stars do not testify about Israel, and testimony does not remain depending on Israel’s behavior and merit. ix. 1 If God, blessed be He, wishes to nullify the stellar decrees acting upon Israel, He does not nullify the stellar influence indicating (30) the decree, but the decree is nullified ,46 because neither stars nor zodiac signs rule Israel. If God wishes to remove the stellar decrees from the nations of the world, He first removes the influence of the star controlling that decree and nullifies its rule.47 Afterwards, He establishes His plan for that nation. 2 Thus we find that God decided to extend King Hezekiah’s life beyond what the testimony of the stars had established at his birth. According to Isaiah’s prophecy to him: You shall die, you shall not live (2 Kings 20:1 and Isa 38:1). But we see that He neither removed the influence of the star, (35) nor nullified the rule of the horoscope. He said: I will add to your years fifteen more (Isa 38:5).

45 46 47

tb Šabbat 156a. See the previous chapter of the Letter (viii). We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )ומבטל‬of the manuscript (‫)ובטל‬.

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3 Likewise, regarding Rabbi Akiva’s daughter, whom God, blessed be He, released from death, Rabbi Akiva did not say that God, blessed be He, removed the rule of the horoscope, but he taught righteousness releases from death, and Israel does not have a star.48 4 There is not a case like this [Akiva’s, i.e., Israel’s] among the nations of the world, but when the decree came (p. 28) upon the peoples of the flood, they said: He removed a star from Kimah and brought the flood upon the world,49 for the flood would not have come upon the world if He had not nullified the influence of the stars. He removed a star from Kimah, which is in the sign of Taurus. He did not remove a star from another zodiac sign, for the flood took place in the month of ʾIyyar, when Kimah rises in the east, or in Marḥešwan, when Kimah sets in the west.50 The opinion of our sages about the time of the flood is divided between these two months. (5) Kimah controls rain and thunders in its rising or setting in these two months and indicates the abundance or shortage in every year, according to the opinion of all those who study astrology. The flood took place on the days when Kimah rules. For this reason, they said: He removed a star from Kimah and brought the flood. If the flood took place in ʾIyyar, He removed a star from Kimah, which rose then. If it took place in Marḥešwan, He removed set .51 5 is to indicate that God, blessed be He, nullifies only the influence of the star that rules a future event at a certain moment in order to bring it about or to remove it from among the nations of the world. However, (10) He does not remove the influence of the star from Israel, for stars do not rule Israel. 6 God, blessed be He, made known these two questions through Abraham’s example: the power of Israel, which does not have a star, and the influence 48 49 50 51

See tb Šabbat 156b. See tb Roš ha-šanah 11b and tb Beraḵot 59a. See Seder ʿolam rabbah ch. 4. Cf. tb Roš ha-šanah 11b.

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of the stars on the nations of the world. For He says to him: Jupiter is in the west? I will remove it and put it in the east.52 He mentioned these two questions because many nations who are under the rule of the stars emerged from Abraham our father. God said to him about them: Jupiter is in the west? I will remove it and put it in the east.53 He nullified the influence of the stars , for Israel does not have a star.54 Therefore said to Him: That Ishmael might live (15) before You (Gen 17:18), for You nullified the influence of the stars affecting him. He said: So it will be, and added: I will establish My covenant with Isaac (Gen 17:21), whose strength is greater than the influence of the stars,55 and through Isaac your seed shall be named (Gen 21:12), and his seed [Isaac’s] shall be lasting and the stars shall have no influence on his seed.56 x.

1 From the case of Abraham,57 our father, we have seen that astrology is licit [first conclusion], for Abraham, our father, busied himself with it or with something similar to it. 2 We have seen that it is a true science [second conclusion], for God, blessed be He, did not nullify the testimony (20) of the stars affecting Abraham, but He exchanged position and placed Jupiter in the east. 3 We saw that the stars rule all the nations of the world and the testimony of the stars rules them and remains with them [third conclusion]. If God, blessed be

52 53 54 55 56 57

tb Šabbat 156b. tb Šabbat 156b. tb Šabbat 156a. We keep Schwarz’ deletion of ‫אקים את יצחק‬, which is in ms Warsaw 282 and is clearly a mistake. We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )יהיה‬of the manuscript (‫)יקרה‬. We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )ממעשה‬of the manuscript (‫)מעשה‬.

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He, wishes to nullify it,58 He removes the influence of the stars and nullifies their judgment, as Rav said:59 Jupiter is in the west? I will remove it and put it in the east.60 4 We realized that the heavenly host does not have power to rule Israel [fourth conclusion]. 5 We also drew a fifth conclusion, namely, that one can deduce from astrology. said: One member of my house [Eliezer] will be my heir (Gen 15:3). But he did not see this, he only saw (25) that he did not have a son. As he saw this, he concluded: one member of my house will succeed me (Gen 15:3). This is like the sage who told a man: Your son shall be the son of adultery. The man answered: How have you known this and through which science? The sage replied: I saw that all the women you will marry shall be barren, but I saw that you shall have children. Thus I understood that your children shall be children of adultery. This is something that one deduces with this science [astrology]. 6 From all that goes before, it is clear that it is proper to study and rely on astrology [sixth conclusion]. xi. 1 However, (30) as someone may think that the astrology about which we have spoken so far is the science of the Chaldeans,61 against consulting whom our sages warned, we will investigate the distinction between the two.

58 59 60 61

We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )לבטלה‬of the manuscript (‫)לבטל‬. We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )רב‬of the manuscript (‫)רבא‬. tb Šabbat 156b. We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )עד‬of the manuscript (‫)צד‬.

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2 We say that astrology can62 report any future event in a general way (klalo), and cannot effectively report its particularity (praṭo) [i.e., its specific details], its hidden characteristics (ṭeviʿut ʿeino), or its real essence (gufo). If astrology indicates that this man shall own lands and vineyards, nevertheless it cannot anticipate that you shall buy a particular person’s land, that you shall own a vineyard situated in a particular place, with specific conditions, or that you shall purchase their (35) business. 3 Astrology does not have power to add to this or to make it in a different way, for it only sees the influence of the star and the testimony that indicates in the sky. It does not see the hidden characteristics in the earth, but its type (mino) and its generality (klalo). This is something clear and considered true within the reach of everyone who knows this science [astrology]. 4 However, the Chaldean method is not like this. Instead they testify about what is specific (ʿeṣem) to the thing and its real essence (gufo), as they said: Josephwho-honors-Shabbats had among his neighbors a very rich gentile. (p. 29) The Chaldeans told him [the gentile]: “Joseph-who-honors-Shabbats will consume all of your wealth.”63 They informed him of the name of the man who would consume his wealth; this is different from what astrologers do.64 Astrologers knew that the gentile would lose his property, but they did not know that so-and-so would consume it, as the Chaldeans said: -who-honors-Shabbats will consume them.65 5 Likewise, what they said: The Chaldeans told Rabbi Naḥman’s mother,66 “your son shall be a thief,” thus she did not allow him to have his head uncovered.67 is not according to the procedure of astrologers, for they (5) could see he

62 63 64 65 66 67

We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )נותנת‬of the manuscript (‫)כוחות‬. tb Šabbat 119a. We keep Schwarz’ addition (‫ )כן‬to complete the text in the manuscript. tb Šabbat 119a. We keep Schwarz’ addition (‫ )אמרו‬to complete the text in the manuscript. tb Šabbat 156b.

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would be a thief, but they could not know if covering his head would help him . This procedure [i.e., covering his head] is not something one can deduce , as we explained above, for covering the head has nothing to do with theft in any aspect at all.68 6 When the Chaldeans informed Rabbi Akiva of the snake that would bite his daughter,69 this was not according to the procedure of astrology either, for astrologers are not able to indicate the place of death. If they see a field, they say in so-and-so’s field or in so-and-so’s garden. For this reason, we say that the power of the Chaldeans and the power of astrology are not alike.70 7 They also said: Samuel and Ablat were sitting while some persons went (10) to a lake. Ablat said : “That man goes but shall not return.”71 About this question, astrology can indicate that a certain event will happen to him in the way and at what time. So they referred to Ablat by his own name,72 because he was an astrologer, but they did not say about him “the Chaldeans said,” as they did about Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Naḥman’s mother. 8 It seems to us that astrology is not the practice of Chaldeans, rather the Chaldeans went further into the details than astrology does. For this reason, we will say about the Chaldean practice, by which they inquire into the future, that they do not behave (15) as astrologers do when they inquire into it [the future].

68

69 70 71

72

It looks like covering his head is something that the mother did motu proprio. However, according to the Talmudic text, it seems that the Chaldeans knew that covering his head was going to work, despite this being neither a standard procedure nor something that they could deduce from astrology. According to tb Šabbat 156b, she removed her hair-pin and stuck it in the wall, so that she inadvertently killed the poisonous snake that was in the wall’s crevice and saved her life. We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )אמרנו‬of the manuscript (‫)אמרו‬. tb Šabbat 156b. See also Giuseppe Veltri, Magie und Halakha: Ansätze zu einem empirischen Wissenschaftsbegriff im spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Judentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 173–174. Bar Ḥiyya calls him “Ablat the astrologer” in xv.5.

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9 If we explain the sciences and the practices that depend on the zodiac signs and the stars, what they are, and in how many ways men are interested in astrology and busy themselves with it concerning the influence of the stars, you shall deduce whether what concerns the Chaldeans depends on these sciences [astronomy and astrology] or not. xii. 1 We will say that the first science of the stars [astronomy] investigates the form of the Earth and the heavens, and their geometrical representation, in order to provide evidence and proofs that they are circles, like the geometrical image of the sphere, that the Earth rests still in the center (20) of the heavens and the sky revolves around it and circles it from east to west; to investigate the shapes of the planets and their dwellings in their spheres, and that each sphere is within another;73 to know the way of their motions from east to west, their positions to the north or to the south of the celestial equator and the ecliptic; if they are close to or far from the Earth; to calculate all their motions; to know the position of any planet in the zodiac, if it is visible to the north or to the south of the ecliptic, if it is close to or far from the Earth,74 if it is direct or retrograde in its path, and everything concerning this, which I (25) need not explain further. 2 This science [astronomy] is the highest of the sciences of the stars. The holy sages of Israel and all the sages of the gentile nations investigated and taught it and took pride in disclosing its secret. There is no disagreement between the sages of Israel and the sages of the gentile nations about this science, except in a few questions. xiii. 1 The second science [astrology], which depends on the science [astronomy], is the knowledge about the rule [of the stars], and the influence 73 74

We correct (‫ )והאופן‬Schwarz’ text, who follows the reading in ms Warsaw 282 (‫)והדוכן‬, which is clearly a mistake of the copyist. This phrase looks like an unnecessary repetition of the same phrase written two lines above.

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conferred on the planets and the zodiac signs in their circumvolutions around the Earth, what influence gave to each planet in each zodiac sign, how (30) this influence changes according to the change of the path of the star in its sphere—when it is in the north or in the south , when it comes closer to the Earth or goes away from it, when it is direct in its path or retrograde, and influences the Earth,75 everything that is on it, any man at his birth, and the events that happen to him. 2 All this according to what the sages of this art [astrology] conveyed and tested, either what the most ancients of them transmitted by tradition or the spirit of God, or what the most recent accumulated by experience during their lifes.76 The sages of Israel studied this science, for we have found an allusion to it among their words. The one born under Saturn shall be so-and-so. The one born under Jupiter shall be so-and-so,77 as (35) it is explained with their words much more than here in the Baraitot written in their [his] name [i.e., Samuel].78

75

76

77 78

Schwarz completed the word that is not completely legible in the manuscript and read ‫ומשתכל‬. As only the first three characters are legible, it can be completed in different ways, for instance, ‫ומשפיע‬. The two words are from the semantic field of astrology; however, mašpiʿa seems to fit the context better. We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )האחרונים‬of the manuscript (‫)הארונים‬. The use of this word makes sense in a sentence where Bar Ḥiyya is putting side by side the contribution of the ancient astrologers (‫)קדמוניהם‬, tradition and divine inspiration, and of the most recent of them (‫)האחרונים‬, experience. Three channels are mentioned here for the transmission of astrology: tradition, divine inspiration, and experience. Experience (Heb. nissayon and Ar. tajriba), which is essential in astrological practice, must include the observations of past astrologers, given that a single lifetime does not allow observing the recurrence of the longest planetary cycles and taking note of their influences; cf. Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett (ed. and transl.), The Great Introduction to Astrology by Abū Maʿšar, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 1:128–133 (Arabic text and English translation of book i, chapter 5, sections 25b–31). For the role of experience in the fields of applied sciences including astrology, see Yitzhaq Tzvi Langermann, “From My Notebooks. On Tajriba/Nissayon (“Experience”): Texts in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and Arabic,” Aleph Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 14, 2 (2014): 147–176. Abbreviated quotation of tb Šabbat 156a. Baraita di-Shmuel ch. 9 and Baraita de-mazzalot ch. 15.

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3 There is no important disagreement between them [the sages of Israel] and the sages of the gentile nations regarding the rule of the stars, except for whether their influence is non-conditional in practice.79 The wicked sages of the gentile nations of the world have no (p. 30) fear of Heaven and they say that the influence of the stars is absolute and complete, and that they [the stars] are able to cause benefit and harm of their own free will and knowingly, and that their decree is permanent and without condition. 4 By contrast, the faithful sages of Israel, whom God strengthened with the fear of Heaven in His creation and sanctified with His Torah, received the science from the holy spirit and from the teaching of the prophets. say that the influence of the stars and the zodiac signs is not complete and that they are not allowed either to cause benefit or harm knowingly and of their own free will. Rather, everything depends on word and commandment, and every (5) time God, blessed be He, wishes, He removes the rule and modifies their decree. This is the difference between the sages of Israel and the sages of the nations concerning this art. xiv. 1 Our sages of blessed memory praised these two sciences [astronomy and astrology], investigated them, and busied themselves with them, for they were required to both of them. Anyone who knows how to calculate tequfot and mazzalot80 should calculate them in order to confirm what was said: This is your wisdom and your knowledge before the nations (Deut 4:6).81

79 80 81

We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫—)בהכרעת‬meaning here “ rule”—of the manuscript (‫)בהרבאת‬. tb Šabbat 75a. This dictum is attributed to Bar Qappara (Palestine, second-third centuries), and Rabbi Joḥanan refers it in this sugya of the Babylonian Talmud. See Bar Qappara (tb Šabbat 75a): “Everyone who knows how to calculate the tequfot and mazzalot and does not calculate (them)—Scripture says about him (Isa 5:12): And they

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2 You cannot assert that their saying to calculate tequfot and mazzalot82 (10) refers to the calculation of the four seasons of the year that the Jewish calendar conveys by tradition, for this is an easy task and does not entail any great calculation, nor any additional knowledge; all the nations of the world are able to calculate them [the seasons]. 3 If you say that the calculation of tequfot and mazzalot is to calculate the positions in the zodiac signs of any of the seven planets, tequfot referring to the calculation of the sun mazzalot referring to the calculation of the planets, we say: If the calculation of tequfot by the sages of Israel, by which the festivals and the years are determined,83 is calculation of the stars, what wisdom is there in this calculation if one does not care for the advantage to the Earth? 4 However, he [Bar Qappara] says: As the sun revolves in its sphere, (15) so does each star revolve in its own sphere. As the sun has four periods in its cycle, which are the four annual seasons, when it changes its motion and its position with respect to the Earth, likewise, every planet has four points in its cycle where it changes the path of its position and motion. These four points are for the planet like the days of the revolution of its orb. , it was enough for them [the sages of Israel] to say only to calculate tequfot, but as they said tequfot and mazzalot, we know

82 83

do not look at the work of the Lord and the doing of his hands they did not see”; a similar dictum circulated for Rav: “Who knows how to calculate the tequfot and mazzalot and does not calculate —one does not talk to him”; and the one quoted by Bar Ḥiyya attributed to R. Joḥanan. Leicht explains that the different forms of this dictum are evidence of “the attempts made at that time to fix the length of the tropical solar year and, concomitantly, to make a precise calculation of the length of the four seasons defined by the equinoxes”; see Leicht, “The Planets, the Jews and the Beginnings of Jewish Astrology,” 275–276. tb Šabbat 75a. We do not follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )בהם‬of the manuscript (‫)שבהם‬.

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that tequfot refers to the calculation of the positions of the stars84 and mazzalot refers to the calculation of their decrees, which are visible on the Earth. Thus we call mazzalot (fortunes) the testimonies (20) and decrees of the stars. We name mazzal ṭov (good luck/good fortune) the good among them, while we name the which is not good mazzal raʿ (bad luck/bad fortune). There is proof of this in what is written: For this is your wisdom and your knowledge before the gentile nations (Deut 4:6).85 The calculation of the positions of the stars is not a science to Israel with respect to the gentile nations,86 but most nations are better at this calculation than Israel. The wisdom and knowledge of Israel in the eyes of the nations is precisely that their righteousness [Israel’s people’s] nullifies the stellar decree acting upon them [Israel’s people]. However, the stellar decree acting upon the gentiles remains and is not nullified, unless God, blessed be He, diverts the influence of the star and weakens it. Nevertheless, the influence (25) of the star is not weakened for Israel, for the star does not rule Israel. xv. 1 If two similar horoscopes, one with the stars for a gentile and the other for Israel, falls into the hands of one of the sages of the gentile nations, eventually he will find that Israel will be saved from the unfavorable decrees in his horoscope, while the evil gentile will fall under all of them. Because of this, the sages of the nations are very amazed and terrified, and they realize the great dignity of Israel. 2 There is another great difference between Israel and the gentile nations: If a favorable decree is coming for both Israel and the gentile nations, and God, blessed be He, wishes to nullify it in the case of the gentiles, He removes the influence of the star (30) and nullifies it [the influence]. When He removes the 84 85 86

The expression mahalaḵot ha-koḵavim in ḥešbon mahalaḵot ha-koḵavim is the same expression that Bar Ḥiyya has used before exclusively to denote astrology. Cf. tb Šabbat 75a. We keep Schwarz’ deletion (‫ )הכוכבים‬in the text of the manuscript, which fits the meaning intended in the text.

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influence of the star, the decree acting upon both Israel and upon the nations is nullified at once, for the star has no power left to cause harm or benefit. But if God, blessed be He, wishes to nullify acting upon Israel, He does not weaken the influence of the star, for its decree does not rule Israel.87 As its influence is not weakened, its decree acting upon the gentiles remains. About this, Scripture says: For what great nation has a god as close to them as Adonai, our Lord, whenever we call upon Him? (Deut 4:7). He says your wisdom shall be before the nations (Deut 4:6), who shall see the stellar decrees acting upon you nullified only by calling upon God,88 while acting upon them [the gentile nations] shall not be nullified. 3 (35) You shall be given evidence of the wisdom of Israel in this. Everybody studying the stars saw Hezekiah king of Judea and that his reign would not last more than fourteen years. However, his righteousness and prayer doubled the days of his rule by the stellar decrees;89 those who study horoscopes know honor this . 4 Likewise, it was foretold to Ahaziah, son of Ahab, king of Judea, that he would recover from his illnesses. The priests of Baalzebub, the god of Ekron, also predicted this, for he asked to consult other gods, and he was given a judgment : He shall not leave the bed on which he will lie because he is going to die (2Kings 1:2, 1:4, 1:6). You (p. 31) cannot say that this decree was established for him before consulting Baalzebub. If so, what power did the prophet have to let us know that he was going to die? Rather his consultation caused his death. He was told: As you sent messengers to ask Baalzebub, the god of Ekron for this reason 87

88 89

As Bar Ḥiyya has said previously that Jews called the good influence mazzal tov and the bad one mazzal raʿ, we keep his translation; mazzal denotes here “stellar decree” or “stellar influence.” We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )תיראו‬of the manuscript (‫)יראו‬. See 2 Kings 20:6 and Isa 38:5.

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the very bed you are lying, you shall die (2Kings 1:16). If he had not sent , the decree would not have been given to him. 5 Thus, Rabbi Akiva, whom the Chaldeans frightened [because his daughter was going to die], when the decree was nullified,90 did not say that the words of the Chaldeans (5) were false, but that righteousness releases from death (Prov 10:2).91 Likewise, Samuel, when the words of Ablat, the astrologer, did not come true, did not say that he was a liar, but he said righteousness releases from death (Prov 10:2).92 xvi. 1 For this reason, everybody who knows how to calculate tequfot and mazzalot is required to calculate them. If he sees a good testimony, he will not trust it, but he will be mindful and will take care lest sin causes . If he sees an unfavorable testimony, he will do repentance and pray to God; perhaps he may be found righteous before Him and He will nullify the decree acting upon him. 2 You see that one knowing this occupation is required to rely on it in order to strengthen (10) his faith93 and fear of Heaven, to constantly increase his prayer and righteousness. 3 Thus, what our sages of blessed memory said—one who knows how to calculate tequfot [the cycles of the stars] and mazzalot94 [their decrees]—refers to the calculation of the positions of the stars [astronomy] and the explanation of their unfavorable decrees [astrology]. It was necessary to mention the

90 91 92 93 94

We follow Schwarz’ addition (‫ )הגזרה‬to the text in the manuscript. tb Šabbat 156b. tb Šabbat 156b. Schwarz modifies the reading of the manuscript and suggests ‫ אמונתו‬instead of ‫;אומנותו‬ we follow his correction. tb Šabbat 75a.

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tequfot and the mazzalot [the cycles and the decrees], because the value of the stars and their testimonies is known only through their positions. Among the sciences of the stars, these [astronomy and astrology] are the two sciences devoted to fear of Heaven that Israel is required to learn and to busy herself with. xvii. 1 There are other sciences depending on the stars with which most gentile nations busy themselves. However, (15) no child of Israel is allowed to engage in them, for they have to do with idolatry and scorn the fear of Heaven. For all the nations that thought the stars act and cause harm knowingly and of their own free will increased evil and haughtiness to the point that it seemed to them that their worship and offering were effective with them [the stars]. 2 Many thought that an impure spirit descended upon them from the stars, to listen to them, to advise them, and to show them how to worship them. Then these evils misled the people of their generation; they made images and idols to worship them [the stars], they taught them [the people] the way of their worship [the stars’] and established the rules of the wicked religion (20) that they practiced with their rites, which established for them the way of their worship. These false prophets or Baal prophets are called in Arabic waḍiʿī al-waṣāyā ( َ‫ضعي الو َصايا‬ ِ ‫و َا‬, “the makers of the commandments/regulations”)95 in Hebrew “the founders of observances” (meyassedei ha-nimusim). Their disciples, who follow their depraved precepts, are called al-atbāʿ (‫الأتـ ْبـاع‬, “the followers”), in Hebrew “those who go after the evil” (ha-nimšaḵim aḥarei ha-rešaʿ). Each gentile nation that worships idols a different who conveys96 to them this impious custom, and a large number of people who follow him [the founder] are called a religious sect. 95

96

Or wadiʿī al-nawāmīs (“the founders of religions”) according to Sela’s correction of the original text; see Shlomo Sela, “Abraham Bar Hiyya’s Astrological Work and Thought,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 12 (2006): 128–158, at 150. We do follow Schwartz’s modification (‫)וצאיא‬ in the reading of the manuscript (‫)ואמיא‬. It is necessary to read ‫ מוסר‬rather than ‫מסור‬, which is the reading in ms Warsaw 282 and in Schwarz’ text.

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3 In addition to these, there is another sect that is called in Arabic mustanzil bi ’l-quwah (‫ست َن ْز ِل باِ لق ُو َة‬ ْ ُ ‫م‬, “he who makes the power descend”),97 in Hebrew (25) “those who make the powers flow” (mazzilei ha-koḥot). These sinners waited until they decided, in their souls, when they wanted the power to flow in its dwelling [the planet’s] by means of one of the beautiful objects (ha-manot ha-yafot) that they devised as destined for the planet that was in the sky. They burned incense for that planet, or offered it those things proper to offer at that moment according to their thought. By this, they made the power of the planet descend to Earth, so that it carried out their will and answered their questions. These two evil sects really practice idolatry and kneel before another god. They (30) and all those acting like them shall be cursed. 4 We find a third sect, ābāʾ al-ṭilasmāt (‫سمات‬ ْ َ ‫ٓاباء الط ِل‬, “the masters of talismans”),98 in Hebrew “the makers of talismans” (baʿalei ha-temunot, lit. “the masters of images”). They studied the positions of the planets, and investigated the order of their motion, in which of the constellation in the visible sky they revolved, the one that seemed to those who studied the form of this world. As soon as they saw which constellation, which part of the zodiac, which side of the sphere, northern or southern, this planet revolved in, they made a form like it [the constellation] from the metal appropriate to it [the constellation]. If the planet is one of the benefics, it (35) strengthens the power of this constellation. But if it is one of the malefic planets, it nullifies it [that power]. These people knew when the power of the species existing in this world grows weak or strong. Many talismans have remained until now that are the work of these wicked persons.

97 98

We follow Schwarz’ modification (‫ )מוסתנזל‬in the reading of the manuscript (ms Warsaw 282 gives ‫)מוסתגל‬. This expression might intend the most common expression ‫سمات‬ ْ َ ‫صحاب الط ِل‬ ْ ‫( أ‬ʾaṣḥāb alṭilasmāt); see Sela, “Abraham Bar Hiyya’s Astrological Work and Thought,” 151. We follow Schwarz’ modification (‫ )אבא‬of the manuscript (‫)האבא‬.

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5 Next, there is a fourth sect that, through its practices, knew, from the positions of the planets, which moment and which day were auspicious for reaping all sort of herbs, harvesting any seed, collecting honey, picking (p. 32) olive trees, harvesting vineyards and sorts of fruits, and chopping and gathering wood. They knew what is harvested every day, what its nature is, and for what purpose it is efficacious. Everything was kept secret. When it was needed, they gathered all the secret species, what was proper to gather at that moment to carry out their work, to increase the strength of a thing, and to weaken the power of another. These activities,99 both when they harvested in the field and when they gathered to do , (5) with a spell, for they cast spells using sacrilegious and demonic names. This sect is called in Arabic aṣḥāb al-ḥiyal (‫صحاب الحيِ َل‬ ْ ‫أ‬, “the masters of subterfuges”), in the holy language “the masters of relationships” (baʿalei haṣedadin); they are also called in Arabic aṣḥāb al-asḥār (‫صحاب الأْسحار‬ ْ ‫أ‬, “the masters of spells”). xviii. 1 The science and art of all these sects depended on the positions of the stars but do not accord with the fear of Heaven.100 It seems to me that these four sects are all mentioned in the Book of Daniel, in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar the impious, as it is written: The king commanded to bring the ḥarṭummim, the ʾaššafim, the meḵašfim, and the kasdim to explain to him (10) his dreams (Dan 2:2). These the four whose practices we have explained. Let the ḥarṭummim be those who are called the of relationships; the ʾaššafim those who make powers flow; the meḵašfim, the makers of talismans; and the kasdim, those who go after . 2 We find that these four are mentioned in Aramaic in the Book of Daniel, as it is written: Then came in the ḥarṭumayyaʾ, ʾašfayyaʾ, kasdaiaʾ, and gazrayyaʾ (Dan 4:4). It is also written: Your father, the king, made master of ḥarṭummin, ʾašfin, kasdaʾin, and gazrin (Dan 5:11). As is known, the ḥarṭummin, ʾašfin, and

99 100

We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )ומעשיהם‬of the manuscript (‫)ולמעשיהם‬. We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )ואומנתם‬of the manuscript (‫)ואמונתם‬.

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kasdim that are mentioned the first time in the holy language [in Dan 2:2] are the ḥarṭumayyaʾ, ʾašfayyaʾ, and kasdaiaʾ mentioned the second time (15) in Aramaic [in Dan 4:4 and 5:11], but the meḵašfim of the holy language can be the gazrayyaʾ in Aramaic, for their occupation [meḵašfim’s] does not entail speaking about future events, the occupation of the four mentioned in Aramaic does. Alternatively, the gazrayyaʾ are those who study the stars [lit. zodiac signs]; they are called gazrayyaʾ, because, in their opinion as regards any testimony of the stars, their decree remains and is without condition. They [the gazrayyaʾ] are allowed to make astrological judgments that remain; for this reason they are called gazrayyaʾ.101 3 I like this view [that meḵašfim and gazrayyaʾ are not the same group], for says in the first dream of Nebuchadnezzar: For as much as no king, lord, or ruler (20) has ever asked such things of a ḥarṭum, ʾašaf, or kasdaiaʾ (Dan 2:10). He mentioned three of the four whom Nebuchadnezzar calls, and omitted the meḵašfim, for their way of informing is not so [they do not speak about the future, while the other three do]. Their art [meḵašfim’s] consists in indicating when the strength of everything on the Earth grows strong or weak. For this reason, Daniel did not mention them [meḵašfim] when he spoke to Nebuchadnezzar:102 The mystery that the king has asked no ḥakimin, ʾašfin, ḥarṭummin, or gazrin can explain it to him (Dan 2:27).103 did not mention the meḵašfim, for their practice lies neither in disclosing secrets, nor in speaking about the future. But he mentioned the gazrin, who study (25) the positions of the planets in the zodiac signs, for their occupation lies in speaking about the future, which is obscure to the rest of men. The kasdim did not mention them [the meḵašfim] before Nebuchadnezzar, they mentioned the ḥarṭum, ʾašaf, and the kasdai [in Dan 2:10], for they were not among those gathered before the king at that moment.104 Thus Daniel omitted the meḵašfim [in Dan 2:27]105 and did not mention them among the

101 102 103 104 105

The Hebrew root g-z-r means “to cut, to decree.” We are following Schwarz’ correction (‫ )לנבוכדנצר‬of the manuscript (‫)נבוכדנצר‬. We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ חכימין‬and ‫ )חרטמין‬of the manuscript (‫ חרטומים‬and ‫כשדאין‬, respectively). We keep Schwarz’ addition (‫ )היו‬to the text of the manuscript. We have corrected Schwarz’ edition and the text of ms Warsaw 282; they both have ‫הכשדים‬ here, but the word intended is ‫המכשפים‬, according to the explanation.

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ḥaḵamim, ʾašfin, ḥarṭummin, and gazrin, for they [meḵašfim] were disciples of the ʾaššafim and followed them.106 They soiled themselves with idolatry more than the ʾaššafim; for this reason he [Daniel] took care not to mention them. In another passage, the ḥarṭummim are omitted according to what is written:107 The king asked aloud (30) to bring the ʾašfin, kasdaiaʾ, and gazrayyaʾ (Dan 5:7). did not mention among them the ḥarṭummim, for it is not appropriate to ask them about a matter that is as deep in wisdom and knowledge as written on the lime of the wall of the palace (Dan 5:5).108 4 We have seen that Scripture omits the three [ʾašfin, ḥarṭummim, and gazrin] in the passage in which they were not necessary, and mention only the meḵašfim, as it is written: Pharaoh called the ḥaḵamim and the meḵašfim (Exod 7:11). He called the ḥaḵamim, who were the meḵašfim. As soon as he [Pharaoh] saw the rod become a snake, he immediately called the meḵašfim, who knew the moments at which the strengths of everything existing on the Earth are increased, (35) in order to see at that moment through the positions of the planets what power the form of the snake, the trees, or the rods had, to do the same thing [i.e., to transform something into something else]. The meḵašfim were stupid and said that the snake only had the power to bite and that it was powerless at that moment.109 5 The science of the kišuf that depends on the positions of the planets does not have power in relation to this. However, the ḥarṭummim, whose occupation is something kept hidden with them since past times, rushed to act. As the meḵašfim did not admonish them [the ḥarṭummim], (p. 33) they [the meḵašfim] were considered as being part of the former [the ḥarṭummim], as it is written: The ḥarṭummim from Egypt also acted with their spells (Exod 7:11).110 He could say the ḥarṭummim from Egypt acted, but as he said they also, we learn that Scripture

106 107 108 109 110

Dan 2:27 does not mention either meḵašfim or kasdim, but does mention gazrin, and Dan 2:2 mentions all of them except for the gazrin. We keep Schwarz’ correction (‫ )נחסרו‬of the manuscript (‫)נחסר‬. Cf. M. Gaster, Chronicles of Jerahmeel (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1899), 208 (§ 67). We keep Schwarz’ addition (‫ )אין לו‬to the text of the manuscript. We have corrected Schwarz’ reading; instead of ‫ בלטיהם‬we read ‫בלהטיהם‬.

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includes among them the meḵašfim, for they [the meḵašfim] did not admonish them [the ḥarṭummim]. xix. 1 From here, we see that of all the plagues that God, blessed be He, sent upon the Egyptians in Egypt, none of them could be according to the positions of the planets. (5) This was to make the nations of the world know the deficiency of their science with respect to God’s power. 2 Likewise, you say that any decree that God, blessed be He, determines concerning the impious nations of the world, He establishes it only if the testimony111 of the stars does not indicate this decree. If prophecy considered the testimony of the stars, what would it be that the prophet was announcing to us? 3 The truth is that prophecy is not like the testimony of the zodiac signs and the planets, so that all the sages of the nations look wrong, foolish, and frightened before God’s decrees, as soon as they see that the decrees and their interpretations are not fulfilled. So it (10) says: Where are your sages? Let them tell you now and let them know what the Lord of the heavenly hosts has planned concerning Egypt (Isa 19:12), to teach you that the experts could see through astrology the decree that has determined to bring upon Egypt.112 However, their science draws decrees that vary with respect to God’s decree, as it is written: The wisest counselors of Pharaoh are a senseless counsel (Isa 19:11). 4 Scripture does not intend to show the mendacity of the Egyptian sages, but to report His power, which nullifies the stellar influences and removes their rule 111 112

We keep Schwarz’ addition (‫ )עדות‬to the text of the manuscript. Contrary to what he said before, that God establishes His decree only if the testimony of the stars does not indicate it, Bar Ḥiyya says now that the divine decree is visible in the stars so that the nations of the world can read it and see that this decree can change. Astrological judgments vary with respect to God’s decree; they forecast what God has established before.

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[the stars’], so that the sages become idiots in their own sight, as it is written: He turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolish (Isa 44:25). No (15) one can understand this amazing power, unless he is an expert in astrology. The moment he sees the stellar decree nullified because of the righteousness of the righteous and the sin of the sinners, fear of Heaven and faith increase. 5 You see from this that this science [astrology] increases the fear of Heaven and the knowledge of God, and makes visible God’s miracles and His power. 6 However, the remaining four sciences of the stars that we have mentioned do not act in this way. Thus it is forbidden to busy oneself with them, for they aim at idolatry and scorn fear of Heaven. xx. 1 (20) There are other, similar, practices and, as it is not appropriate to call them science, they are called art and artifice. Scripture calls them, or most of them, divination (qesamim), as it is written: “For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination; he qilqal ba-ḥiṣṣim, consulted the terafim, and looked at the liver” (Ezek 21:26). These three arts practiced by means of ḥiṣṣim, terafim, and a liver are called divination (qesem), which is a single category that encompasses them all. 2 The ḥiṣṣim mentioned there can be like a sharp arrow (Prov 25:18), go find the arrows (1Sam 20:21), which are arrows for the bow, and the king of Babylon performed divination (meqassem) (25) through them. Ḥiṣṣim could also mean small stones as in he has broken my teeth with gravel (Lam 3:15), and afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel (Prov 20:17); the divination would be through stones. Likewise, we have found that the Arabs who were in the lands of Kedar,113 a people whose practice was to cast stones on the

113

We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )הערביים‬of the manuscript (‫)התרפים‬.

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earth,114 knew through this means what way to take and what to do. Qilqal baḥiṣṣim (“he cast stones”) may refer to this practice. 3 The terafim were forms and images, such as glass mirrors of different shapes, into which they looked when they consulted to do something, in order to know whether it would be favorable or unfavorable; (30) they relied on what they saw in the surface. In these lands [in the Iberian Peninsula], you find something similar to the terafim. For instance, those who look at a glass full of water placed against something red. They look at it and do not remove their eyes from it until they see within the water in the glass the form of the thing about which they inquire. It is the same with the one who consults nails, a shoulder-blade, and an egg painted with a certain translucent and shiny substance, like resin or olive oil. All of them are consultation of the terafim, for the terafim means the essence (toref ) of the thing, which is its contents and its image. In this way its translation [of the Hebrew terafim] is (35) ṣalmanaia’ [in Onkelos Gen 31:19], and our Rabbi Saadia explained it as “forms” and “images.” 4 (p. 34) It is good that man refrains from any of the practices that the king of Babylon consulted, for they are called divination (qesem) and the Torah forbids divination (qesamim), as it is written: There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through fire, one who uses divination (qosem qesamim), a meʿonen, a menaḥeš, a meḵašef, or a ḥover ḥever, a šoʾel ʾov or yiddeʿoni, or a doreš ʾel ha-metim (Deut 18:10–11). You say that all these practices are called divination (qesamim), and what is said, one who uses divination (qosem qesamim), is a general category and its particular types are meʿonen, (5) menaḥeš, meḵašef, and the rest. You must say that when you have the particular type (praṭ), the general category (klal), and the particular type, you only judge the particular type.115 Then you understand that the Torah only forbids the forms of divination (qesamim) mentioned in this passage of Scripture, and this 114 115

We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )אומנתם‬of the manuscript (‫)אמונתם‬. Sixth exegetical rule (kelal u-peraṭ u-kelal, i.e. “particular, general, and particular”) of the Baraita de-Rabbi Išmaʿel. See, for instance, tb Nazir 35b.

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is the lenient approach while the other is the stringent.116 The proof for you that qesamim is a general category and not a specific practice is that it says šoʾel ʾov or yiddeʿoni (Deut 18:11), and it calls consultation (šeʾilah) the act of šoʾel ʾov. However in another place it says now divine (qasemi) for me through a ʾov (be-ʾov) (1 Sam 28:8) and does not say consult (šaʾali), to teach that any of the forbidden practices in this passage are considered divination (qesem) . (10) Another proof is that you find explained in the words of our sages of blessed memory meʿonen, menaheš, and all those mentioned in these texts, the work of every one of them, and what is specific about their practice, but they [the sages] did not explain among them one who divines (qosem qesamim), for it comprises all of them. Our sages of blessed memory said: There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through fire. There is mention of his son or his daughter; why should his grandson or his granddaughter be included?117 it is said: he gave of his seed to Molech (Lev 20:4). 5 They said as regards meʿonen: Rabbi Akiva says that he [a meʿonen] is one who calculates moments and hours and says: “Today is a favorable day to travel,” “tomorrow shall be favorable to purchase,” “the eve of the seventh year is favorable for wheat,” or “pull up beans (15) before they shall be useless.”118 These who calculate moments and hours rely on their own experiences, which they carry out on the days according to their assumption. They forecast neither through astrology nor through the positions of the planets, for astrology does not give any stringent

116

117 118

According to tb Megillah 22a. Only specific forms mentioned in Scripture are forbidden (lenient halakhic opinion or maqil), but not the whole category that contains them (stringent halakhic opinion or maḥmir). These two halakhic technical terms (maqil and maḥmir) are used several times throughout the Letter; see, for instance, xxii.1. tb Sanhedrin 64b. tb Sanhedrin 65b. Cf. Tosefta, Šabbat 7, 12: “Who is an enchanter (meʿonen)? One who says: My staff has fallen from my hand. My bread has fallen from my mouth. Mr. So-and-So has called me from behind me. A raven has called to me. A dog has barked at me. A snake has passed at my right and a fox at my left. A deer has crossed the road before me. Do not begin with me, for it is dawn, it is new moon, it is the end of Sabbath,” quoted in Giuseppe Veltri, “The ‘Other’ Physicians: The Amorites of the Rabbis and the Magi of Pliny,” Korot: The Israel Journal of the History of Medicine and Science 13 (1998–1999): 37–54, at 48.

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interpretation to any specific day of the week.119 If a particular day of a particular week is appropriate to some business, it can also be120 appropriate to the business in another week,121 but it can be risky. In this way, the eve of the seventh year not be favorable for wheat, because do not follow a single rule for all business. The meʿonen, according to Rabbi Akiva’s words, establishes122 a single rule for days and years. (20) We say123 that the meʿonen does not follow in his art the way of astrology and the way of the science in the world, neither according to Rabbi Akiva’s words, who says one who calculates moments and hours, nor according to the sages’ words who say one who holds sight (ʾoḥazei einayim, “one who tricks the eye”), nor according to Rabbi Ishmael’s words,124 who said one who applies seven kinds of male on the eye [to perform witchcraft].125 6 They said: Menaḥeš is one who says “a piece of bread has fallen from his mouth,” “his rod has fallen from his hand,”126 “a gazelle has crossed his way,” “a snake from his right,” or “a fox from his left.”127 And also: Our sages taught “you shall not take auguries (tenaḥašu) as those who take them (hamenaḥašim) through a rat or through birds.”128 These are those who speak about (25) the events in the world through the signs to be found in stars, animals, and birds.129 119

120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

It is highly significant that Bar Ḥiyya uses the halakhic technical term ḥumraʾ in the semantic field of astrology and astrological decrees. Ḥumraʾ (stringency) and qullaʾ (leniency) are two opposite sensibilities in halakhah and custom as regards the degree of latitude with which halakhic indications must be dealt. As we have already seen in the Letter (iv.10), ḥumra implies a stringent interpretation of the halakhah, whereas qullaʾ inclines toward understanding halakhah in a more permissive way. We are following Schwarz’ correction (‫ )יכול יהיה‬of the reading in the manuscript (‫)או אינו‬. We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )לדבר‬of the manuscript (‫)לדברים‬. According to Schwarz’ correction (‫ )מנהיג‬of the manuscript (‫)ננהיג‬. We are following Schwarz’ correction (‫ )נאמר‬of the manuscript (‫)אמרו‬. In tb Sanhedrin 65b, it is Rabbi Simeon who refers to this. Bar Ḥiyya is quoting other versions extant in manuscript, in which Rabbi Ishmael is the one speaking. All these quotations come from the tb Sanhedrin 65b, already mentioned in the text. We keep Schwarz’ addition (‫ )נפלה מפיו מקלו‬to the text of the manuscript. tb Sanhedrin 65b. tb Sanhedrin 66a. In this case, Bar Ḥiyya is again following a different reading of the Talmudic text (tb Sanhedrin 66a), one that reads stars instead of fishes (cf. Sifra, Kedošim 6), a textual variant. All this is divination in “the ways of the Amorites.” See Yuval Harari, Jewish Magic before

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This art [divination through the signs from stars, animals, and birds] is common among mariners and farmers. For instance, those who say if the moon of the first or the second night is surrounded by a blackish halo, it is a sign that rains will come that month, and they will be in proportion to130 the blackness of the halo. If the sun rises and the air around it is red, the winds will get rough on the side where the red color is visible. Likewise, they say the same about each of the seven planets and (30) the most brilliant among the fixed stars. For instance, those who say that the voice of a raven by night or the voice of a cock at the beginning of the night indicates rain, and the rat whose voice is heard and moves at the same time indicates cold weather.131 These signs are like of one who takes auguries (menaḥeš) from birds or stars. 7 They said a meḵašef is one who performs a act (maʾaseh),132 but one who holds the sight (ha-ʾoḥez ʾet ha-ʿeinayim) does not .133 The occupation of the kešafim above mentioned is knowing when the moments that have power are happening in the world . The occupation of the ḥarṭummim, who gather herbs and trees at certain specific moments, is also a act, but those who hold the sight is not .

130

131

132 133

the Rise of Kabbalah (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017), 424 n. 201. “The ways of the Amorites” are interpreted as “pagan laws” in the early halakhic Midrash, the Sifra and in the Babylonian Talmud; see Giuseppe Veltri, “The Rabbis and Pliny the Elder: Jewish and Greco-Roman Attitudes toward Magic and Empirical Knowledge,” Poetics Today 19 (1998): 63–89 (at 67–68). We keep Schwarz’ reading (‫ )ומענין‬rather than the spelling (‫ )ומענן‬in ms Warsaw 282. Although we are dealing with rains, the amount of the rain is here not related to any “cloud” (‫ )ומענן‬but is rather “related to” (‫ )ומענין‬the blackness of the halo of the moon, which is the omen that Bar Ḥiyya is explaining. For this kind of prognostica in the Hebrew tradition, see ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana ebr. 290, fols. 3b and 4b (Spain, fourteenth century), which contains prognostications related to the raven; see Reimund Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 154–155. tb Sanhedrin 67a. tb Sanhedrin 65b. According to the Mishnah, the sorcerer is liable to be punished by death but someone who just performs tricks is not, see tb Sanhedrin 65a.

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8 (35) They said ḥover ḥever: this applies as much to one who charms great beings as to one who charms small beings, even snakes and scorpions.134 In addition they said: one who consults a ʾov is one who speaks through vertebrae and through the joints of his hands; one who consults a yiddeʿoni is one who places a certain bone within his mouth and speaks through it.135 (p. 35) They said doreš ʾel ha-metim is one who deprives himself from food in order to be possessed by an impure spirit (ruaḥ tumeʾah).136 xxi. 1 Our sages of blessed memory reported on all the diviners (qosemim).137 They explained the proceedings of their art and noted that it is forbidden to perform any of them [mentioned in Scripture], as was said: You shall not learn to perform (Deut 18:9), but you shall learn in order to understand and become learned.138 From this, they deduce that it is forbidden to consult them, for it is written: For who performs these things is an abomination God (Deut 18:12), (5) you will be whole-hearted with the Lord, your God (Deut 18:13). Thus they concluded that one should not consult them, as it is said: Where does it come from that you shall not consult Chaldeans? From the words: You shall be whole-hearted with the Lord, your God (Deut 18:13). 2 You will find that our sages of blessed memory explained all these practices that one is forbidden to devote oneself to and practice in the same passage where they warn against inquiring through them and consulting them [Chaldeans]. Anyone who busies himself with the arts whose practice is forbidden, namely, ḥarṭummim, ʾaššafim, kasdim, meḵašfim, and all (10) the diviners (qosemim)

134 135 136 137 138

See tb Kritot 3b and tb Sanhedrin 65a. See tb Sanhedrin 65b. For the meaning of necromancer, see Veltri, Magie und Halakha, 72–80. Cf. Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:7, ty Sanhedrin 7:7, and Tosefta Sanhedrin 10:6. See tb Sanhedrin 65b. We follow Schwarz’ correction (‫ )מהקוסמים‬of the manuscript (‫)ממקומה‬. See tb Šabbat 75a.

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[mentioned in Scripture], is called a Chaldean. They are called Chaldeans (ḵaldiim) because the people of Babylon and in the land of Sumer concerned themselves with all these sciences. It is known that the inhabitants of these lands were Arameans, as it is written: The Chaldeans spoke Aramaic to the king (Dan 2:4), for they spoke the language [Aramaic] of the people [Arameans] to which they belonged: The children of ʾAram, ‘Uṣ, Ḥul, Geter, and Maš (Gen 10:23), and neither Chaldeans nor kasdim are mentioned among them. The inhabitants of the land of Sumer are called Chaldeans, and they are called kasdim, suranim, and also by other names. The general name for all of them is false prophets, and afterwards, Chaldeans. From this name, (15) the language of the rabbis is called the Chaldean language. Kasdim were from the royal family in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, the impious. They appointed the worship of their idol and became priests in its temple. For this reason, those who make the powers of the stars flow (mazzilei koḥot ha-koḵavim) are called kasdim, for they were priests in the temple of idols.139 Chaldeans are the other people of land who concerned themselves with the remaining sciences. Kasdim was one of their families [Chaldeans’] and any kasdi was called Chaldean, but not every Chaldean was called kasdi. As our sages of blessed memory said not to consult Chaldeans,140 they included within them (20) the kasdim,141 who made powers flow, and anyone who concerned himself with the remaining sciences that inquire about the future. Their words were as if they had said: One must not consult meḵašfim, Chaldeans, meʿonnim, or any practitioner of similar sciences , for Chaldeans concerned themselves with all of them.142

139 140 141 142

Bar Ḥiyya previously identified (xviii.1) “those who make the powers flow” with the ʾaššafim of the Book of Daniel. tb Pesaḥim 113b. We are following Schwarz’ correction (‫ )כנסו‬of the reading in the manuscript (‫)וקנסו‬. This paragraph of the Letter is now bringing together all the forms of divination that are forbidden for Jews, those that are sciences (the four sects with Arabic names) and those that are not (the divinatory practices mentioned in Scripture). As regards the latter, he refers explicitly only to meʿonim, one of the forms of qesem, but all of the forms of qesem mentioned in Scripture are intended and belong in the class “consultation of Chaldeans,” which is forbidden.

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xxii. 1 it is very clear for us : You shall not consult Chaldeans, and it has been revealed what science is proper to learn and to practice, and what is allowed to be learned but not to practice. According to this, it seems that one who puts into practice the appropriate sciences, (25) if his intention keeps the fear of Heaven, can be called pious (ḥasid). Most people call him foolishly pious (ḥasid šoṭeh).143 However, if he behaves permissively as regards the bans but stringently as regards the proper thing,144 as we see today, people who behave permissively either with those consulting terafim or with those meqalqelei ḥiṣṣim (shaking arrows/casting stones), while they behave stringently with those interested in astrology, we do not call this man foolishly pious, for he turns aside from the way and deviates; he should be called guilty and a transgressor.145 2 With all the reasons that we have written above, we have enough to prove that he who holds a stringent halakhic opinion against the bridegroom, because of whom [the objector] we have ended up (30) here [writing this Letter], behaves too stringently, and bans something about which there is no ban, despite it being known and clear that all his acts [the bridegroom’s] are with fear of Heaven and for honoring God.146

143

144 145

146

See tb Sotah 21b, where Rabbi Joshua says that a ḥasid šoṭeh is one of those “who bring destruction upon the world” because, on account of his rigid observance of the Law, refrains from saving his fellow from death. We are following Schwarz’ correction (‫ באסורות‬and ‫ )בראויות‬of the manuscript (‫באיסורו‬ and ‫בראיות‬, respectively). This is a highly interesting statement of Bar Ḥiyya, which clearly shows that contemporary Jews were practicing different forms of divination (in addition to astrology, the motive of the Letter). Here starts the rhymed epilogue that closes the Letter.

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xxiii. 1 We learned all the words we wrote above from his mouth [Bar Barzillai’s], and from his waters we have drawn.147 // Any science known by man on the Earth, he [Bar Barzillai] is as familiar with it as he is with the streets of Nehardea.148 // 2 If my letter is good for him, if he [Bar Barzillai] is righteous in God’s sight, he will do well before Him. // He will see that these my words are good and appropriate // to uncover his thought [Bar Barzillai’s] to us. We will be honored when he lets us know his kind words.149 // May he not let us remain in doubt, walking in darkness, // for the teaching of truth and the teaching (35) of the right path is the measure of the sages and the way of clever and perfect men. // All of us who listen to his words should be grateful and praise his //150 many graces and excellences, his humility and modesty. If he [Bar Barzillai] considers that these my words are an error and derangement, words of vanity and delirium, // and that neither repeating nor arguing about them is appropriate, may he increase his kindness for me, fulfill (p. 36) his righteousness, and open his hand // to show how words deviate and why we do not have to rely on them.151 // As soon as I hear his reasons, I will acknowledge my guilt, and say: I repent, I repent,152 and read about myself: Is not my help in me? (Job 6:13).

147 148

149 150 151 152

According to Schwarz (35 n. 7), Bar Ḥiyya is referring to the Commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah written by Judah bar Barzillai. This is a reference to tb Beraḵot 58b, where the amora Samuel (Babylon, third century) states that he is as familiar with the heavenly paths as with the streets of Nehardea, his town. This amora is also credited with the rule that connects the luck of the tequfah with the planetary hour in which its beginning falls and with the rules concerning the days of the week and bloodletting. We are following Schwarz’ correction (‫ )יכבדנו‬of the manuscript (‫)ויכבדנו‬. We are not following Schwarz’ correction (‫ )וכל‬of the manuscript (‫)כל‬. We keep Schwarz’ addition (‫ )דברי‬to the manuscript. This sentence is found in tb Eruvim 52a and 64a, tb Pesaḥim 39a, etc.

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However, if he neither is cordial nor listens to my speech, asking himself one of the two questions I have asked him,153 and tells me: I do not accept your words and I do not care about refuting what they claim.154 I reply to him: (5) God forbids that I justify you; until I die I will not put my integrity away from me (Job 27:5). 3 If I made a mistake in these things and with my statements, I apologize before my elders; // may no one blame me for anything that I have said. God knows, and He is a witness // before Whom anything hidden is revealed,155 that I did not come to teach, instruct, or stand out—God forbids—, or to challenge; // rather my intention has been to purify my soul. Perhaps I shall be judged blameless, // for I have been studying the science of the stars from my youth until today. I have busied myself with it, inquired into it, and taught // it; I have seen myself acquiring wisdom (10) and knowledge without sin or blame. // But now, when I have seen that righteous and humble sages who are expert and distinguished do not agree with my view, I reject my occupation. // I say to myself: In the days of my childhood and youth I was judged benevolently according to the dignity that I reached before // princes and the king, but, now, in the days of old age, I am discredited by it [my occupation, i.e., astrology]. // It is good for me to seek its decrees [astrology’s] and report its profit until I anger those who hate and have spoken to harm it, // speaking of its blame and ignominy. Maybe their words have the strength to persuade me to follow (15) them. //

153

154 155

The two questions alluded to here are those expressed in the Letter in xxiii.2: “to show the ways from which words deviate and for what reason we do not have to rely on them,” i.e., Bar Ḥiyya is asking of Bar Barzillai whether his statement is wrong or right, and, if it is wrong, why it is so. We are following Schwarz’ correction (‫ )איני‬of the manuscript (‫)אני‬. According to Deut 29:28: ‫ַה ִנְּסָתּר ֹת ַליה ָוה ֱאֹלֵהינוּ ְוַה ִנּ ְגֹלת ָלנוּ וְּלָב ֵנינוּ‬, “The hidden things belong to God our Lord and the things that have been revealed belong to us and our children.”

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Now you, my teachers, masters of wisdom (tusiyyah) and the Torah,156 sages who support the law and justice, who have power to master // science and rule , do not put a stumbling block before a blind man,157 and show me the way that is the royal road, I will walk, // for all Israel is a guarantor of each other.158 Its fat [Israel’s] should splash with its oil those who are lean, // he who sees well guide the blind, and he who is quenched satisfy with water those who are thirsty, // until the days come when every one of us will be glad (20) with his part and will attain his wish and longing. // May the God of the heavens give us the right to attain that moment, and may He fulfill in us what is written: No man will any longer teach // his neighbor or his brother saying “know the Lord,” for everybody will know Me, from the least to the greatest of them, the Lord says, for I will forgive // their blame and will remember their sin no more (Jer 31:33). // The letter is finished. Praise and glory to God. //

156 157 158

According to Schwarz the expression ‫ רבותי‬is not clear in the manuscript. We have checked it (ms Warsaw 282, fol. 12a) and we confirm Schwarz’ reading. According to Lev 19:14. tb Šavuot 39a.

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ms Amsterdam Ets Haim 47 A 27, fols. 36–37 (Sefer goralot ha-ḥol copied by David Franco Mendes in Amsterdam in 1735, paper, square and Sephardic cursive scripts). Note the sixteen geomantic figures on the right side of both pages. reproduced by kind permission of ets haim, livraria montezinos, amsterdam

chapter 8

Maimonides on Magic, Astral Magic, and Experimental Science Dov Schwartz

Maimonides’ conception of magic and the cult of images relies on a naïve perception of concrete reality.1 He attested that he had read, examined, and inspected many sources on idolatry in search for final answers on matters of halakhic rulings or the reasons for the commandments. The evidence available to Maimonides showed that the Sabian religion—founded on idolatry and on Hermetic trends that included astral magic—was widespread in Harran during the ninth and tenth centuries.2 Maimonides relied on sources such as The

1 This chapter sums up some of my previous works on this matter, such as chapter three of my book The Many Faces of Maimonides (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018) and has been translated from the Hebrew by Batya Stein. Maimonides’ approach to magic and astrology has been of interest to many scholars: see, for example, Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 2:205–213; Harvey Spencer Lewis, “Maimonides on Superstition,” Jewish Quarterly Review (old series) 17 (1905): 474–488; and Leon Nemoy, “Maimonides’ Opposition to Magic in Light of the Writings of Jacob al-Qirqisani,” Ha-Rofe ha-ʿIvri 27, 1–2 (1954): 102–109 (in Hebrew). See also Yitzhak Heinemann, The Reasons for the Commandments in the Tradition (Jerusalem: wzo, 1966), 91–92 (in Hebrew); Isadore Twersky, “Halakhah and Science: Perspectives on the Epistemology of Maimonides,” Annual of Jewish Law 14–15 (1988–1989), 135–140 (in Hebrew); Bezalel Safran, “Maimonides’ Attitude to Magic and to Related Types of Thinking,” in Porat Yosef: Studies Presented to Rabbi Dr. Joseph Safran, ed. Bezalel Safran and Eliyahu Safran (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1992); Yitzhak Tzvi Langermann, “Maimonides’ Repudiation of Astrology,”Maimonidean Studies 2 (1991): 123–158; Gad Freudenthal, “Maimonides’ Stance on Astrology in Context: Cosmology, Physics, Medicine, and Providence,” in Moses Maimonides: Physician, Scientist and Philosopher, ed. Fred Rosner and Samuel S. Kottek (Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1993), 77–90; Marc Shapiro, “Maimonidean Halakhah and Superstition,”Maimonidean Studies 4 (2000), 61– 108; Dov Schwartz, Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2005), ch. 2; Dov Schwartz, Amulets, Properties, and Rationalism in Medieval Jewish Thought (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2004) (in Hebrew); Yuval Harari, Jewish Magic before the Kabbalah, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017). See also Dov Schwartz, “Astral Magic and Specific Properties (Segullot) in Medieval Jewish Thought: Non Aristotelian Science and Theology,” in Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, ed. Gad Freudenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011), 301–319. 2 In Part iii of The Guide of the Perplexed this approach is presented systematically, but it also appears in other Maimonidean writings, see, for example, Sarah Stroumsa, “The Sabians

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Book of Nabatean Agriculture by Ibn Waḥshiyya to obtain details as precise as possible on the character of this idolatrous cult.3 He pointed to Harran as a focus for the preservation of idolatry over centuries and approached the views prevailing in this center as representing a continuous ritual of idolatrous worship from antiquity until his times making the Sabians, as it were, a paradigm of Biblical idolaters. This anachronistic view also shaped Maimonides’ hermeneutical, halakhic, and conceptual teachings in his Commentary to the Mishnah, in the Mishneh Torah, and in the Guide of the Perplexed. Maimonides’ conceptual and halakhic view of idolatry and magic has been discussed at length. His halakhic attitude toward witchcraft, as is well known, was clearly negative, and his conceptual view of it can be summed up as a denial of its reality and effect, an approach that compelled him to present the sorcerer as a juggler and a swindler (a “trickster”).4 Maimonides, however, did acknowledge non-Aristotelian scientific paradigms, and pharmacology is a good example. The many references to magic in his halakhic and philosophical ideas suggest complexity and diversity. Since Maimonides forbids magic altogether and denies its reality, scholars did not draw any distinctions between different techniques of magic in his thought. However, in this chapter, I want to argue that: (1) Maimonides differentiated between “professional” and “folkloristic” magic. (2) He rejected both but saw “professional” magic, meaning astral magic, as his main challenge. (3) He was willing to make use of experiential science as long as it was not connected to astral magic. (4) Evidence for these three arguments is found in both his philosophical and halakhic works.

of Harran and the Sabians of Maimonides: On Maimonides’ Theory of the History of Religions,” Sefunot: Studies and Sources on the History of the Jewish Communities in the East (new series) 7 (1999): 277–295 (in Hebrew); and Sarah Stroumsa, “‘Ravings’: Maimonides’ Concept of Pseudo-Science,” Aleph Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 1 (2001): 141–163. 3 See, for example, Daniil A. Khvolson, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1856), vol. 2; Daniil A. Khvolson, Über die Überreste der altbabylonischen Literatur in arabischen Übersetzungen: Mémoires des Savants étrangers (St. Petersbourg: Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1859 [reprint Amsterdam 1968]); Jan Hjärpe, Analyse critique des traditions arabes sur les sabéens harraniens (Uppsala: Skriv, 1972); and Michel Tardieu, “Sabiens Coraniques et ‘Sabiens’ de Harran,” Journal Asiatique 274 (1986): 1–44. 4 For a consideration of some magic performances as just tricks, see Chapter Seven of this book, 252–253.

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Two Kinds of Magic

In both his halakhic writings and in the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides mentions various forms of magic: divination, necromancy, black magic, and so forth. Moreover, he frankly admits that he acquired his familiarity with the various forms of magic from reading the most authoritative theoretical sources.5 But Maimonides does not perceive these forms of magic in isolation. In his view, the various forms of magic that he discusses, rather than independent disciplines, are intertwined with astrological considerations.6 In other words: Maimonides sees astral magic alone as his challenge and the object of his discussion. He writes in the Guide of the Perplexed: In all magical operations it is indispensable that the stars should be observed. I mean, they [magicians] deem that a certain plant should be assigned to the portion of a certain star; similarly they assign every animal and every mineral to a star. They likewise deem that the operations performed by the magicians are various species of worship offered to a certain star, which, being pleased with that operation or speech or fumigation, does for us what we wish.7

5 In his epistle on astrology, Maimonides writes as follows: “And I also read all the matters of idolatry; it seems to me that there is not a single work in the world concerning this matter translated into the Arabic language from other languages whose subject matter I have not read and understood and penetrated completely,” quoted in Alexander Marx, “The Correspondence between the Rabbis of Southern France and Maimonides about Astrology,”Hebrew Union College Annual 3 (1926): 311–358, at 351. At the end of Guide of the Perplexed, 3.29, Maimonides mentions these sources in greater detail, referring particularly to writings on Hermetic talismanic magic; see Thorndike, A History of Magic, 2:211 and 2:214–228. Maimonides’ frankness is extremely interesting in light of his explicit remarks in the Code, Laws of Idolatry 2:2: “Many books have been written by the pagans concerning their worship, the essence of their worship and its acts and laws, and the Holy One blessed be He commanded us not to read any of these books at all.” This issue thus reveals something of Maimonides’ ideals of leadership, as well as the difference between the ethos of a leader and that of the masses. See Lewis, “Maimonides on Superstition,” 479. 6 For the intertwining of magic and astrology in medieval sources, see Chapter Seven of this book on the Chaldean question, 224–227, 233–235, and 243–248. 7 Guide 3:37 [542]; all quotations hereafter (page numbers indicated in square brackets) are from the English translation, Shlomo Pines (transl.), The Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). When Maimonides describes the customs of the “Sabians” in regard to “one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer” (Deut 18:11), he first places all of them in an astrological context: “In conformity with these opinions, the Sabians set up statues for the planets, golden statues for the sun and silver ones for the moon, and distributed the minerals and

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Maimonides’ vehement opposition to astral magic, which is firmly rooted in religious law, is strongly reminiscent of the official condemnation of such activity voiced in several church edicts in the early Middle Ages.8 Maimonides, however, does not discuss magic as one homogenous unit. In Guide 3:37, he divides those forms of magic whose validity he denies into three separate groups: (1) practices deriving from the use of powers inherent in existing objects, inanimate or animate; (2) the performance of these practices at certain prescribed times (“by determination of the time”); (3) practices deriving from the use of powers inherent in human actions, such as the burning of incense. Further to these distinctions, Maimonides divides magical practices into two categories: (1) those that possess all three of the above-mentioned characteristics; or (2) those based on only one characteristic out of the three. Is this distinction purely formal, or is there some qualitative difference between the two categories? Maimonides does seem to draw a qualitative distinction between the two, as he associates those practices based on only one characteristic with women, whom he holds in contempt and considers as possessing limited intellectual capacity, while practices based on all three characteristics are not limited in that regard.9

the climes between the planets, saying that one particular planet was the deity of one particular clime” (Guide 3.29 [516]). In The Book of the Commandments, Maimonides compares magic to astrology: “This is where the masses of men are in error. When some of the predictions come true, they think that these practices really reveal the future; and they persist in this error, until they come to believe that some of these practices are the cause of the events which follow, just as astrologers are wont to think. The art of astrology is, indeed, akin to this [practice of divination] in that both are means of stimulating the faculty of imagination”; see Charles B. Chavel (transl.), The Commandments: Sefer ha-Mitzvoth of Maimonides (London and New York: Soncino Press, 1967), Negative Commandment 31, 2:30 (with modifications). Maimonides’ consistent opposition to magic was thus an outcome of his attitude to astrology. 8 See Valerie Irene Jane Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 92–99. 9 “With regard to most of these magical practices, they pose the condition that those who perform them should necessarily be women … And they recount many such fables and ravings. And you will never find them posing some condition other than that they should be performed by women” (Guide 3:37 [541–542]). The examples given by Maimonides illustrate one characteristic only, namely, the star (the sun), and not determination of the time. It is clear from this why Maimonides, explaining in this chapter the cult of passing one’s son and daughter through fire, emphasizes that women have “feeble intellects.” Maimonides uses the term ʿaql, which indicates cognition in its fullest sense, through the abstraction of form. See Solomon Munk and Isachar Yoel (eds.), Dalālat al-hāʾīrin, (Jerusalem: Azriel, 1931), 400 (line 14). See also Abraham Nuriel, “Remarks on Maimonides’ Epistemology,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed. Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel (Dordrecht: Martin Nijhoff Publishers,

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Let us now examine Maimonides’ description of a magical practice that includes all three characteristics: For instance they [the magicians] say: This or that quantity of the leaves of a certain plant shall be taken while the moon is under a certain sign of the zodiac in the East or in one of the other cardinal points; also a definite quantity shall be taken from the horns or the excrement or the hair or the blood of a certain animal while the sun is, for example, in the middle of the sky [i.e., the meridian] or at some other determined place; furthermore, a certain mineral or several minerals shall be taken and cast while a certain sign is in the ascendant and the stars in a certain position; then you shall speak and say these and these things and shall fumigate the castmetal form with these leaves and similar things—whereupon a certain thing will come about.10

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1986), 38–40. If we apply the rule formulated by Maimonides, that magical actions are rooted in astral phenomena, the ritual of passing children through fire serves the function of appeasing the stars’ wrath by offering a “ransom,” but it lacks the specific characteristics of bringing down spirituality, which requires intellectual knowledge, as will be noted below. Incidentally, the systematic association of magic with women appears in Sefer ha-tamar, attributed to Abū Aflaḥ. In a special chapter devoted to the issue, he explains that since women are lacking in intellect, their material disposition (that is, presumably, their imagination) is affected by the actions of magic; in males, however, the intellect and its powers do not allow for such a disposition. The reason for women’s success in magic is described as follows: “And all this is due to their inferior discrimination in the science of being [meṣiʾut, meaning nature] and their inclination toward weakness of the intellect [evidently, in the missing source: ʿaql] and the weakness of the arguments”; see Gershom Scholem, Sefer ha-Tamar: Das Buch von der Palme des Abū Aflaḥ aus Syracus (Hannover: Heinz Lafaire, 1927), 29 and 197 (line 13), 198 (line 19), 200 (lines 4–5), and so forth. See also Shlomo Pines, “Le Sefer ha-Tamar et les Maggidim des Kabbalistes,” in Hommage à Georges Vajda. Études d’histoire et de pensée juives, ed. G. Nahon and Ch. Touati (Louvain: Peeters, 1980), 333–363, at 337 [reprint in Studies in the History of Jewish Thought, ed. Warren Zev Harvey and Moshe Idel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 596–625]. Guide 3:37 [541]. Compare Maimonides’ remarks in his Commentary to the Mishnah, ʿAvodah zarah 3:1: “People of this type think that when the sun is in a certain degree among the degrees of the zodiac, whatever it may be, they make a talisman for that sign, similar to the form which they attribute to that degree, and that there will be revealed to them in reality powers belonging to that same image and the actions attributed to it; and they burn incense to that same talisman and pray to it and praise it whenever the sun enters that particular degree, and all this is one of the species of talismans.” See also Joseph ben David Qafih (ed.), Maimonides, Sefer Mishneh Torah, First Edition according toYemen Manuscripts with a Comprehensive Commentary (Kiryat Ono: Mekhon Mishnat ha-Rambam, 1984).

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The words tatakallamu wa-taqūlu kadha (also in Arabic),11 translated here in the second person masculine, “you shall speak and say these and these things,” seem to refer to the magician. It seems more likely, however, that they should be understood in the third person feminine, thus referring to the astral form itself, which breaks into speech and reveals various secrets. Given this reading, the emphasis upon the second person at the beginning of the subordinate clause (wa-ʾanta tubaḵḵiru bi-tilka al-ʾawrāq also in Arabic) is readily understood as describing the action of the magician while the form is speaking. In other words: the magical practice consists in preparing some kind of image or form at the time of a specific astral configuration. Induced by incense, the astral form answers questions (masāʾil), suggests a suitable time for action (iḵtiyārāt), predicts the future, and even helps to bring about the realization of its own predictions. Such efforts to bring down spirituality (ruhāniyyāt) emerge not as popular practice but as the domain of learned astrologers,12 who knew how to direct

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Cited according to Munk and Joel, Dalālat al-hāʾīrin, 396 line 18. See quotation from Suhrawardī (concerning the hearing of a voice) in Pines, “Le Sefer Ha-Tamar,” 358. The literature of astral magic frequently describes ceremonies in which an image is formed of a person, to whom the magician addresses questions and requests, actually speaking to the image; see, for instance, Picatrix, ms München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 214, fols. 85r, 86r, and so forth. It was in light of these traditions that fourteenth-century literature interpreted the terafim. Needless to say, Maimonides had considerable respect for astronomy—the basis of professional astrology—as follows from his epistle on astrology. See Leo Strauss, “Note on Maimonides’ Letter on Astrology,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983), 206. Moreover, Maimonides conceded that astrologers, magicians, and stargazers possessed a certain knowledge of the future, in a limited, statistical manner. This view is implied by his comparison of them to prophets, whose knowledge of the future is not cumulative, but absolute and perfect. Hence, the more learned the astrologer, the greater the probability that he will foresee a considerable part of the events of the future; see Maimonides’ Introduction to the Commentary to the Mishnah, and his Code, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 10:3. Note, however, that in Sefer ha-miṣvot Maimonides attributes the use of amulets to women: “You must know that this practice … men bedecking themselves with women’s adornments—… is sometimes for purposes of idol-worship, as is explained in the books devoted to that subject. It is also a common practice to stipulate, in connection with the making of certain talismans, that if the maker is a man, he should wear woman’s apparel and adorn himself with gold, pearls, and the like, and if the maker is a woman, she should wear armor and gird on weapons. This is well known to those who are expert in this matter,” in The Commandments: Sefer ha-mitzvot (negative commandment 40, 2:39). But this kind of magical practice lacks the condition of the precise astral configuration. In addition, the woman here is not necessarily the initiator of the magical act but rather its instrument or basis. Talismanic magic is hardly mentioned at all in The Book of the Commandments, with the exception of the

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their intentions to a specific astral configuration and were well versed in the metallurgical characteristics of different minerals and metals. It is thus clear why Maimonides specifically attributed the second category of sorcery to popular magic, linking it specifically with women. Moreover, an examination of Maimonides’ commentary to ʿAvodah zarah (in his Commentary to the Mishnah) reveals that he does not discuss popular forms of magic but expends most of his energy and reasoning in refuting the induction of spirituality by talismanic means. The distinction between the two kinds of magic is likewise implied in Maimonides’ commentary to tractate Ḥullin, where he draws a distinction between two types of idolater: One consists of those who are well versed in idolatrous practice—that is, the calculation of the sign that is in the ascendant at the time of the act, and the bringing down of spirituality by it, and all the other delusions and foolish things that soil the intellect and are imagined by those of this type. And the second type are those who worship those man-made images as they have learned to do, without any knowledge of how they were made or for what purpose they were made, except for the stories of their sages alone—and such are the majority of idolaters.13 While the first type involves bringing down the spiritual powers of the stars at a time determined by the astral configuration, the second is restricted to worship of the image without any astrological motivation, as is typical of the unlearned masses. Indeed, only the first type is at all related to the intellect, which is therefore contaminated by involvement with it. The second type has no intellectual aspect. Hence, Maimonides states further on that this type is not true idolatry, for those who practice it “are maintaining the custom of their ancestors”; the intellectual and halakhic challenge is thus primarily to discount the former type. It follows that Maimonides’ distinction between the two types of magic is deliberate and reasoned. In other words, there are good grounds

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above passage. We might also mention that women (especially older women) were perceived in magic literature too as the bearers of distorted magical-astral traditions; see e.g., Pines, “Le Sefer Ha-Tamar,” 337 and 338. Maimonides, Commentary to the Mishnah, Ḥullin 1:1. See Yosef ha-Levi Faur, Studies on Maimonides’ Code (The Book of Knowledge) (Jerusalem, Mosad Harav Kook, 1978), 228– 229 (in Hebrew). On ruhāniyyāt (spirituality) in Muslim and Jewish magic, see Shlomo Pines, “On the Term Ruḥaniyyut and Its Source, and on the Teaching of Judah ha-Levi,” Tarbiz 57 (1988): 511–534 (in Hebrew). See also Moshe Idel, “Perceptions of the Kabbalah in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1 (1991): 83–104.

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for the thesis that Maimonides drew a distinction between magic based upon detailed, meticulous astrological calculations, on the one hand, and the popular magic of the ignorant masses, on the other; between “learned” magic and “primitive magic.”14 While he was undoubtedly concerned to reject and refute both types, which the masses held in considerable respect, he saw his major intellectual and polemical challenge in contending with the former category of astral magic, which is based upon knowledge. What were the sources of Maimonides’ information about the bringing down of spirituality? This question is highly relevant in regard to Maimonides, who, in contrast to his predecessors, took the trouble (in Guide 3.29) to disclose his sources at some length. These include Eastern sources,15 Hermetic

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In this respect, Maimonides differs from Naḥmanides, who, for example, includes the various kinds of magic in one group; see Charles B. Chavel (transl.), Nachmanides, Commentary on the Torah (New York: Shiloh Publishing House, 1973), on Lev 16:8 and Deut 18:9. See also José Faur, In the Shadow of History (Albany: suny Press, 1992), 13–14; José Faur, “Two Forms of Jewish Spirituality,” Shofar 3 (1992): 5–46; and Yitzhak Tzvi Langermann, “Acceptance and Devaluation: Naḥmanides’ Attitude towards Science,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1 (1992): 223–245. Maimonides mentions, for instance, “the book of Tumtum,” which also includes matters of talismanic magic. This is a work of Hermetic character, and the following tradition concerning the reason of the sacrifices is cited in its name in Guide 3:46 [582]: “Not as is the case in the cults of the idolaters who sacrifice lions, bears, and other wild animals, as is mentioned in the book of Tumtum.” A similar tradition is mentioned regarding the reason for the red heifer, which was taken in substitution for the red lion as related in the books of the “idolaters,” in order to avert the danger involved in hunting lions. This tradition appears at the beginning of the fourteenth century in the writings of David ibn Bilia; see Dov Schwartz, “Epigrams (Siyyurin) of R. David ibn Bilia,” Kiryat Sefer 63 (1990–1991): 637–654 (at 641) (in Hebrew). Likewise, it appears in the teachings of the rationalists of Provence in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and in the following sources: (1) a letter of Kalonymus ben Kalonymus to Joseph ibn Kaspi; see Joseph Perles (ed.), Kalonymos ben Kalonymos Sendschreiben an Joseph Kaspi (München: T. Ackermann, 1879), 6. (2) Bet Yaʿakov, Jacob Farissol’s commentary to The Kuzari (ms Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Or. Qu. 653 [Steinschneider 124], fol. 52r): “And this is the very reason for the divine commandment concerning the red heifer, even if Rabbi Moses [Maimonides] did not explain it thus in the reasons for the commandments in the Guide of the Perplexed. And the reason is the following, as is found in the books of India: that at a certain time of year they would take a red lion, which they would burn, and whoever was involved with it would become unclean, and with its ashes they would purify the impure and the menstruant women, which is the gravest impurity for them.” This passage also appears in another work from the circle of Farissol, Hešeq Solomon by Solomon ben Judah of Lunel (ms Bodleian Library 2383, fol. 65r), and the interpretation is described there as “the true reason.” The text of Ibn Bilia, Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, Jacob Farissol, and Solomon ben Judah is parallel to a well-known text concerning the primordial Enoch or Hermes, see Moshe Idel, “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretation of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance,” in Jewish Thought

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sources,16 and Sabian sources from Mesopotamia, particularly The Book of Nabatean Agriculture by Ibn Waḥshiyya, which includes “the actions of talismans, practices with a view to causing spirits to descend, demons, and ghouls living in deserts.”17 This work reflects typical Sabian views, such as the astrological characteristics of the stars,18 the spirituality they emanate, and the magical possibilities for assimilating such spirituality.19 In this respect, Ibn Waḥshiyya’s work presents typically Hermetic elements, such as a detailed description of the cult of effigies and images of the planet Saturn.20 Other authors of this circle who were active during the ninth and tenth centuries and whose writings are likely to have been known to Maimonides include Abū Maʿshar, who established a link between Hermetic tradition and Babylo-

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in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 203–205. Maimonides, then, was familiar with the “book of Tumtum,” which shows clear Hermetic tendencies. The work is also mentioned in the Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldūn as a work by “Timtim the Indian” concerning “the figures of the zodiac and the stars” (Muqaddima, vi.27). This work, to the best of my knowledge, has not yet been translated into Hebrew. For a bibliography of this book, see Moritz Steinschneider, Zur pseudepigraphischen Literatur des Mittelalters insbesondere der geheimen Wissenschaften aus hebraischen und arabischen Quellen (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1965) 83; and Franz Rosenthal (ed. and transl.), The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, 3 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), 3:156 n. 748. For example, Maimonides mentions, without elaborating further, “a book attributed to Hermes.” On Abraham ibn Ezra’s references to Hermetic literature see Shlomo Sela, Abraham ibn Ezra and the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 184–185. Maimonides also mentions a book by al-Ustumāḵus, attributed elsewhere to Aristotle, as in the chronicles of Jirjis al-Makīn composed around 1260, and Picatrix, see Hellmut Ritter and Martin Plessner (transl.), Picatrix von Pseudo-Magriti: Das Ziel des Wiesen (London: Warburg Institute, 1962), ch. 6. See also Pines, “Le Sefer Ha-Tamar,” 336. Guide, 3:37. For a list of manuscripts of Ibn Waḥshiyya’s The Book of Nabatean Agriculture, see Khvolson, Über die Überreste der altbabylonischen Literatur in arabischen Übersetzungen, 8–40. For a description of the contents of the book, see 440–446. For a facsimile edition of this book, see Fuat Sezgin (facsimile ed.), The Book of Nabatean Agriculture—Al-filāhā al-nabatīya, Translated by Abū Bakr Ibn Waḥshīya Reproduced from ms 1989 Ahmet iii Collection, Topkapi Sarayi Library, Istanbul (Frankfurt am Mein: Institut für Geschichte der Arabe-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, 1984). On talismanic magic, see Khvolson, Über die Überreste, 442–443. On these concepts in Nabatean literature in general, see Khvolson, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, 2:30 et passim; and Hjärpe, Analyse critique des traditions arabes; and Tardieu, “Sabiens Coraniques et ‘Sabiens’ de Harran.” See Khvolson, Über die Überreste, 732–734; and Muḥammad Fatḥ Allāh Badrān (ed.), AlShahrastani, Kitāb al-milal wa ’l-nihal, 2 vols. (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Azhar, 1951 and 1955), 1:117. Khvolson, Über die Überreste, 443.

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nian doctrines,21 Thābit ben Qurra al-Ḥarrānī, and possibly also Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥassan al-Hātim.22 All of these to one degree or another accepted the magic and Hermetic views of the Sabians, and Maimonides’ description cited above, of how to bring spirituality down to an effigy at a given time and astral configuration conforms to their doctrines.23 Maimonides may also have been familiar with the Sabian material underlying the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, which are replete with similar descriptions.24 According to Khvolson’s studies of the Book of Nabatean Agriculture, Ibn Waḥshiyya did not distinguish between different kinds of magic on the basis of their intellectual value. The same holds true for the other classic and Muslim magic sources that Maimonides might have used. For instance, a careful examination of the fifty-second Epistle of the Brethren of Purity, which deals with sorcery, reveals no clear distinction between bringing down spirituality in a definite astral configuration and other, non-astral, forms of magic. Maimonides, however, did postulate such a distinction between precise, calculated astral magic, such as the bringing down of spirituality, and “ordinary” sorcery. In this respect, his view corresponds to that of such works as Picatrix. Can Maimonides’ explicit distinction between these two types of magic be traced in later medieval Jewish thought as well? In the late thirteenth century, when almost all Jewish philosophical activity in Spain took place in a Christian environment, several Jewish rationalist thinkers rejected popular forms of magic, such as practical kabbalah, while also accepting astral magic as a real science.25 This development may be exemplified by a description—in positive terms—of magic activity similar to that portrayed by Maimonides, indeed involving all three of his characteristics. This description appears in a wellknown text from a totally different cultural background, cited by Samuel ibn 21 22 23 24

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See David Pingree (ed. and transl.), The Thousands of Abū Maʿshar (London: University of London, 1968), 17–18. See Kristen Lippincott and David Pingree, “Ibn al-Hātim on the Talismans of the Lunar Mansion,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987): 57–81. For similar practices referred to in Bar Ḥiyya’s Letter to Judah bar Barzillai, see Chapter Seven of this book, 243–244. See Henry Corbin, “Rituel sabéen et exégèse ismaelienne du rituel,” Eranos Jahrbuch 19 (1950): 181–246; Yves Marquet, “Sabéens et Ihwan al-Safa,” Studia Islamica 24 (1966): 35– 80; and 25 (1967): 35–80; and Pines, “On the Term Ruḥaniyyut,” 515–518. One such instance is Shem Tov ibn Shaprut and his circle; see Norman E. Frimer and Dov Schwartz, The Life and Thought of Shem Tov ibn Shaprut (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi and the Hebrew University, 1992), 56–166 (in Hebrew). Ibn Shaprut’s attitude toward the popular belief in demons is characteristic: while completely rejecting this belief in itself, he is prepared to recognize it within an astrological framework, according to which the demons are spiritual powers drawn down from the stars.

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Zarza in the name of David ibn Bilia, in which the terafim are described as a form of bringing down spiritual forces.26 The text, written at the beginning of the fourteenth century in Portugal, describes terafim as an instrument for the induction of pneumatic powers, clearly reflecting the cult described above. In sum: the first category of magic as defined by Maimonides in Guide 3.37, that is, magical practices that call simultaneously upon the factors of time, place, and astral influence, alludes to the bringing down of spiritual forces by a talismanic intermediary. In the debate over philosophy that erupted at the end of the thirteenth century and culminated in the ban imposed by Rabbi Solomon ben Adret (Rashba) and his court, the rationalists were indeed characterized by intense involvement with magic of the former type, while popular magic (oaths, demons, and the like) was completely rejected by these same intellectual circles.

2

Experiential Knowledge and Astral Magic

The distinctions between various levels of magic and the particular prominence of astral magic also figure in Maimonides’ treatment of the doctrine of segullot, although in a different manner. According to this doctrine, the visible activities of the forms constitute only a small part of the possibilities embodied in their essence. There is a wondrous world of regularity in the hidden forms, such as the efficacy of remedies in pharmacology or the action of magnetic forces, which cannot be explained by means of Aristotelian causality. These special properties, known as segullot (singular: segullah; Arabic: ḵāṣṣa), can only be discovered through experience, and hence scholars 26

Cited by Samuel ibn Zarza in Sefer Meqor Hayyim (Mantua, 1559, fols. 121b–c). See Nehemiah Aloni, “David ibn Bilia and His Works,” in Areshet: Sefer šanah šel ʾiggud soferim datiim, ed. Yitzhak Werfel (Jerusalem: Hoṣaʿat ha-sefarim ha-ʾEreṣ ha-ʾišraelit, 1944), 377– 386, at 382 (in Hebrew). For a similar description from a text that evidently belongs to the same circle, see Moshe Idel, “An Astral-Magical Pneumatic Anthropoid,”Incognita 2 (1991): 9–31 (at 12–14). Incidentally, the burning of incense does not figure in this text. Burning incense was a common technique in early and later works of astrology and magic, both Muslim and Christian; following are several examples: Mordechai Margaliot (ed.), Sefer ha-razim (Jerusalem: American Academy of Jewish Sciences, 1967), 97; Hermann Gollancz (ed.), Mafteaḥ Solomon (facsimile) (Jerusalem: [n.p.], 1970) 15r–v; Sefer ha-levanah, cited in Charles B. Chavel (ed.), Naḥmanides, Commentary to the Torah, 5 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1960), 2:427 (on Deut 18:9, in Hebrew); and Rabbenu Bahya, Commentary to the Torah, ad locum. Selected passages appear in Fabrizio Lelli, “Le versioni ebraiche di un testo ermetico: Il Sefer ha-levanah,” Henoch 12 (1990): 383–407, at 159–161. The full text of Sefer ha-levanah was first published by Albert W. Greenup (London: [n.p.], 1912).

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dealing with them are sometimes called “the masters of experience.” The term experience is used here in the meaning of experimenta, referring to “events that were indeterminate or purely contingent, and hence could be known only by experiencing.”27 In one of his medical works (Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates), Maimonides explains the action of medicinal herbs in terms of three levels (“powers”): (1) the primary action of the remedy, such as its cooling, warming, or drying action; (2) the secondary action of the remedy, such as its softening or hardening action; both of these levels reflect the remedy’s action through its matter; (3) the action of the remedy through its form, that is, its segullot. Maimonides describes this third level of activity as follows: Those actions which the remedy performs in our bodies through its forma specifica, by which that body becomes a substance, are what the physicians call segullot. And Galen used to say regarding this type of action that it acts through its being a substance. And the fact is that it effects its action through its forma specifica, by which that body becomes a substance, but not as an action due to its quality. And these are also called “the third powers,” such as the laxative power of laxative remedies, or that induce vomiting, or the property of a drug to kill or save the person who drinks it or is stung by some poisonous creature. All these actions derive from form, not from matter.28 The action of the segullot cannot be attributed exclusively to the primary opposites (dry, wet, hot, cold) and their combinations; it may be discovered only through experience. Thus, their efficacy stems from their formae [their forms], that is, from the essences of the objects concerned and from their powers. As a physician, Maimonides could only acknowledge that certain medicinal

27 28

William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 56. Sussman Muntner (ed.), Maimonides, Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates (Hebrew translation by Moses ibn Tibbon) (Jerusalem, Mosad Harav Kook, 1961), 13. See Joshua O. Leibowitz and S. Marcus, “Sefer Hanisyonot”: The Book of Medical Experiences Attributed to Abraham ibn Ezra (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984), 18; Yitzhak Tzvi Langermann, “Gersonides on the Magnet and the Heat of the Sun,” in Studies on Gersonides: A Fourteenth-Century Jewish Philosopher-Scientist, ed. Gad Freudenthal (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 269–275; and Schwartz, Astral Magic, 53–54, 59–60. The distinction between effects due to quality and effects due to form was common in the Middle Ages; see, for example, Isaac Abravanel—Commentary on the Torah, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: B’nei Arbel, 1964), 3:175 (on Deut 18:9, in Hebrew).

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herbs were efficacious by virtue of such special properties, although he could not explain the phenomenon in the framework of the Aristotelian scientific paradigm to which he subscribed. He devoted a special section in his Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates (Chapter 22) to various segullot, quoting extensively from Muslim medical literature on the subject. For example, concerning a remedy for healing epilepsy, he writes: “and this has already been tried and tested.”29 In other words, he acknowledges the pharmacological efficacy of such remedies although it cannot be derived in any logical way from the material structure of the object. As to the possible connection between segullot and magic, particularly in the context of the halakhic concept of “the ways of the Amorite,” Maimonides writes in the Guide of the Perplexed: In order to keep people away from all magical practices, it has been prohibited to observe any of their [the idolaters’] usages … I mean all that is said to be useful, but is not required by speculation concerning nature, and takes its course, in their opinion, in accordance with occult properties.30 This is the meaning of its dictum: “And ye shall not walk in the customs (ḥuqqot) of the nation” (Lev 20:23), these being those that are called by , may their memory be blessed, ways of the Amorite. For they are branches of magical practices, inasmuch as they are things not required by reasoning concerning nature and lead to magical practices that of necessity seek support in astrological notions. Accordingly the matter is turned into a glorification and a worship of the stars. They say explicitly: “All that pertains to medicine does not pertain to the ways of the Amorite” (tb Šabbat 67a). They mean by this that all that is required by speculation concerning nature is permitted, whereas other practices are 29

30

Sussman Muntner (ed.), Pirqei Moshe (Aphorisms of Moses in the medieval Hebrew version of Nathan ha-Meʾati, 13th century) (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1961), 270 (18) and 272 (35). This example is also adduced in Maimonides’ Guide 3:37. Note the presence of the expression “to test/tested” referred to divinatory practices and in divinatory contexts in Chapters One, 30 and 38; Three, 115 and 133; Seven, 237; and Eight, 273 of this book. In the source, al-ḵawāṣ (Munk and Joel, Dalālat al-hāʾīrin, 398 line 10), meaning “special property.” The word is derived from ḵaṣ, that is, “special” or “unique.” Ibn Tibbon in his translation therefore added the synonymous term ha-koḥot ha-meyuḥadot, as the term equivalent to segullah would be koaḥ (pl. koḥot, meaning something hidden in the forms of matter). Moreover, we have already explicitly stated that segullot are designated kohot, meaning “forces” (see above). This being so, it would appear that Qafih’s sharp comment in his translation is totally inappropriate; see Joseph ben David Qafih, Maimonides—Moreh Nevuḵim, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1972), 3:594 n. 32. Note that al-Ḥarizi, in his Hebrew translation of Maimonides’s Guide, translated al-ḵawāṣ simply as koḥot.

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forbidden … For it is allowed to use all remedies similar to these that experience has shown to be valid even if reasoning (qiyās) does not require them.31 In this passage, Maimonides presents two clear criteria for distinguishing the action of magic from that of segullot. A magical act must have two characteristics: (1) it may be associated with astrology (“seek support in astrological notions”); (2) it cannot be included within the framework of the laws of nature, whether theoretical or experiential. The action of a segullah, on the other hand, has nothing to do with astrology, and is moreover confirmed by experience. Hence, Maimonides classifies the action of segullot as processes that take place in the material world but are not subject to logical reasoning and do not derive from the qualities of the object. This classification should be understood in light of Maimonides’ well-known statement: “All that Aristotle states about that which is beneath the sphere of the moon is in accordance with [logical] reasoning.”32 And Maimonides goes on to stipulate three conditions by virtue of which a physical process becomes a logical inference: (1) “things that have a known cause,” (2) “that follow one upon the other,” (3) “concerning which it is clear and manifest at what points wisdom and natural providence are effective.” These conditions cannot account for segullot, since their mode of operation and their underlying basis are not known to the observer. Nevertheless, some of the processes associated with segullot belong to natural philosophy, even though they are not subject to the methods of “demonstration” or “reasoning” and do not follow from the basic material properties of the object. Since the effect of segullot is attributed to the form of the object, it is not independent of causality. Accordingly, it may be considered within the framework of physical causality and laws and is therefore distinct from acts of magic, which fall under the rubric of “accident” rather than “natural law.” A segullah thus represents a law of nature, but one whose mode of operation cannot be inferred from Aristotelian physics. Notably, Maimonides does not consider the possible existence of a segullah relying on experience but associated with astrology. 31

32

Guide 3.37 [543 and 544]. On the permission to use medicinal remedies, see Maimonides’ ruling in Code, Laws of Sabbath, 19:13. See Shlomo Yosef Zevin (ed.), Encyclopedia Talmudit, vol. 7 (Jerusalem: Yad ha-Rav Herzog, 1977), 706–712. Guide 2.24 [326]. See William Moses Feldman, “Maimonides as Physician and Scientist,” in Moses Maimonides, ed. Isidore Epstein (London: Soncino Press, 1935) 130–132. See also the extensive study by Joel Kraemer, “Maimonides on Aristotle and the Scientific Method,” in Shlomo Pines Jubilee Volume: On the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed. Moshe Idel, Warren Zeev Harvey, and Eliezer Schweid (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 1990), 193–224, especially 215–216 (in Hebrew).

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One point needs clarification here: What is the criterion for the definition of segullot derived from “natural philosophy”? In other words: how can one distinguish between genuine segullot and segullot which halakhah would classify as belonging to “the ways of the Amorite”? According to the passage cited above from Guide 3.37, Maimonides bases the legitimacy of the segullah on the degree of experience involved in its discovery (“all that experience has shown to be valid”). If the results of the action in question are repeatedly confirmed by experience, it is both effective (from the medical viewpoint) and permissible (from the halakhic viewpoint). If the action is not firmly rooted in experience, it is not effective and is therefore forbidden, because it is likely to be interpreted as deriving from astral influence. Hence, Maimonides explicitly stipulates: “all that experience has shown to be valid.”33 He is willing to admit the existence of processes not open to description in Aristotelian science, provided they are subject to empirical verification. This reliance on empirical observation is in fact similar to Aristotle’s method in his biological works. In addition, Maimonides is prepared to exclude the properties of medicinal herbs from the definition of “the ways of the Amorite,” as he does not consider such properties to involve any astrological coloring.34 On the other hand, any association of such remedies with the motions of the stars labels them, in point of both medical efficacy and halakhah, as “idolatry,” which Maimonides brands as unreal and nonsensical. Any segullah unconfirmed by experience is halakhically forbidden, because it cannot be included within the framework of physical reality. In sum, Maimonides recognizes the reality of segullot, provided that two conditions are met: the properties in question are confirmed by experience, and their action may be explained without any reference to astrology. For instance, Maimonides’ explained the precept of orlah (the prohibition on eating the fruit of a tree during the first three years of its growth) as aimed against magical methods to hasten the production of fruit in trees. While such attempts

33

34

Millot ha-higayon, ch. 8, cited according to Israel Efros, Maimonides’ Treatise on Logic (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1938), 40, lines 16–17; see Millot ha-higayon, ch. 14 (61, line 9). The example given there by Maimonides is the beneficial action of the drug scammonia (mentioned in Aphorisms of Moses, ch. 20). See also Pirqei Moshe, 229 (13) for the processes of digestion and excretion. In the above quotation: “that of necessity seek support in astrological notions.” On the profound philosophical and scientific motives for Maimonides’ condemnation of astrology as idolatrous see Langermann, “Maimonides’ Repudiation,” 146–151. Thorndike, while realizing Maimonides’ “retreat” from a total rejection of magic in medical matters, overlooked the fact that he removed segullot from the realm of astrology; see Thorndike, A History of Magic, 2:209.

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are indeed categorized as segullot, they are prohibited because they fail to meet the above two conditions: first, despite popular belief (“… what they thought,” in Maimonides’ terminology), their efficacy is not verified; second, these attempts employ a “method … of the same character as the talismans” in conjunction, moreover, with “the sun’s entering into a certain degree [of the zodiac],” that is, a certain astral configuration.35 Maimonides thus draws a sharp distinction between astral magic and segullot. In so doing he is not only expressing his objection to “learned” magic, and a fortiori “primitive” magic, but also clearly demarcating the borderline between the imaginary and the real, and between the forbidden and the permitted.

3

Philosophy and the Law

In what follows, I will point to a specific issue to show how the philosophical foundations of Maimonides’ thought shape his halakhic doctrine and enable its understanding as a coherent and developing process. Specifically, I present a structural and substantial puzzlement about the Mishneh Torah, and its resolution according to Maimonides’ view of magic. The last two laws in Chapter Three of the “Laws Concerning Idolatry” are puzzling regarding both their contents and their order. Maimonides’ famous translator, exegete, and advocate, Yoseph Qafih, had already noted at the beginning and at the end of his discussion on them that these laws “are unclear to many”36 and that “interpretations have proliferated on this obscure issue.”37 Following are the laws: 10. It is forbidden to make figures for purposes of ornaments,38 even if they are not idolatrous, as it is said, “Ye shall not make with Me gods of gold and silver”39 (Exod 20:23); that is to say, figures of gold and silver which only serve as ornaments; so that those likely to err shall not 35

36 37 38

39

Fourteenth century exegetes of Abraham ibn Ezra’s circle interpreted Biblical passages in light of the possibility of hastening the ripening of fruits; see Dov Schwartz, “Worship of God or of Star? The Controversy of Rabbi Abraham al-Tabib and Rabbi Solomon Franco,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 1 (1996): 219 (in Hebrew). Qafih, Maimonides, Sefer mishneh Torah, 399. Qafih, Maimonides, Sefer mishneh Torah, 403. This formulation appears also in Qafih, Maimonides, Sefer Mishneh Tora, and also below. On the aesthetic dimension of this prohibition, see Menachem Kellner (ed.), The Pursuit of the Ideal: Jewish Writings of Steven Schwarzschild (Albany, NY: suny Press, 1990), 110–112. In several manuscripts, the phrase “gods of gold and silver” is missing.

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err and imagine that these figures serve idolatrous purposes. The prohibition of making ornamental figures only applies to representation of the human form. Hence, a figure of a human being must not be made in wood, clay or stone; provided that the figure is in high relief like sculptures and figures in palaces and the like places; and whoever makes such is punished with stripes. But if a figure in in bas-relief or painted, such as pictures on boards and tablets, or woven in tapestry—it is permitted. 11. If a signet ring has a human figure on it, and the figure in highrelief, it is forbidden to wear the ring, but it may be used as a seal. If the figure is in bas-relief, the ring may be worn but may not be used for sealing, because the impression it would make would be in high-relief. It is also forbidden to make figures of the sun, moon, stars, constellations, or angels,40 for it is said, “Ye shall not make with Me” (Exod 20:20); that is, “ye shall not make figures representing My ministers that minister before Me on high”;41 and such figures may not be made even on tablets. Figures of quadrupeds and of other animals—with the exception of Man,—and of trees and plants, etc., may be made, even if the figures are in relief.42 I will briefly present several difficulties in the understanding of these two laws that have already been widely explored in the rabbinic literature, beginning with Maimonides’ contemporaries. I will then show that there was no room for these difficulties to begin with. Ostensibly, the distinction between the two laws is clear: since Law 9 had dealt with the prohibition on making figures to be used in idolatrous worship, Laws 10 and 11 deal with the prohibition on making such figures for ornamental purposes. In other words, the two alternatives before Maimonides were either worship or ornamentation, and as Rabbi Menaḥem ben Solomon Meiri has

40

41 42

See Menachem Kellner, Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006), 265–285. Marc Shapiro views this as an expression of the masses’ belief in angels as actual beings; see Marc B. Shapiro, Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2008), 146. I present a different approach below. tb ʿAvodah zarah 43a, and a parallel version in tb Roš ha-šanah 24b. Moses Hyamson (transl.), Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: The Book of Knowledge (Jerusalem: Boys Town, 1962). Note that the talisman, that is, the figure meant to attract the powers of the stars, was usually made on a tablet or a board. The distinction was apparently one between an engraving and a high-relief.

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already defined in his novellae, “for ornamentation, that is, not intended for worship.”43 But this distinction raises several difficulties, which commentators had already noted: 1) The prohibition on making figures in the middle of Law 11 is entirely superfluous since Maimonides had already noted many times, explicitly and by inference, that making figures that could be used for idolatrous purposes, even if they are not worshipped, is forbidden.44 2) Law 10 opens by categorically stating that making figures for ornamentation purposes is forbidden, but immediately after it becomes clear that what is forbidden is only the making of human figures. The opening of this law is thus puzzling. 3) The laws rely on a series of statements by Abaye in tb ʿAvodah zarah 43a– b: a) The Torah only forbids making figures of God’s serving ministers. b) The Torah only forbids making a figure of the four faces together. c) You shall not make Me .45 d) The Torah only prohibits making figures of the ministers in the higher firmament. e) in the lowest firmament are also . The tosafists as well as Rabbi Nissim Girondi (Ran) and other exegetes commenting ad locum clarified that, in these statements, Abaye is not retreating from one to the next, and Joseph Qafih’s premise was that Maimonides did not accept their view.46 But even without accepting their view, it is still clear that making specific astronomical figures for ornamental purposes is forbidden. Why, then, forbid only the making of human figures as Maimonides did in Law 10? 4) In Law 11, Maimonides draws a distinction between a human figure, which is forbidden only when made in high relief, and the figures of stars, which

43 44

45

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Abraham Sofer (ed.), Menaḥem ben Solomon Meiri, Beit ha-beḥirah ʿal-maseḵet ʿAvodah zarah (Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Talmud ha-yišraeli ha-šalem, 1964), 153. For example: “If one acquires an idol for himself, he is punished with stripes, even though he did not make it with his own hand and did not worship it, as it is said: Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image nor any manner of likeness (Exod 20:4)” (Laws Concerning Idolatry, 3:9). In ch. 1 of the same text, Maimonides recurrently notes that idolatrous worship resorts to figures. See Ephraim Ephraim Urbach, “The Laws Concerning Idolatry and the Archeological and Historical Reality in the Second and Third Centuries,” in The World of the Sages: Collected Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988) (in Hebrew), 125–178. Qafih, Maimonides, Sefer mishneh Torah, 401.

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are forbidden both in high-relief and engraved. In a gloss on this ruling, Rabbi Abraham of Posquières wrote, “and I do not know why, and how he learns this.” In order to show that there is no room for any of these queries, I will briefly present two elements of Maimonides’ view of magic. Talmudic and midrashic literature had already established a connection between idolatry and magic,47 and the two are indeed linked in Maimonides’ teachings. For example, in The Guide of the Perplexed iii:37, he discusses them together. The clarification of the puzzling laws in the Mishneh Torah is thus anchored in the systematic development of Maimonides’ view on magic in his various works. This approach assumes that, between ornamentation and worship, there is another use for the figures and effigies—the “learned” use implemented, for example, in healing through the use of amulets that rely on the stars. Such use requires some measure of astrological and medical knowledge. Maimonides view of magic, as we have seen above, is based on two assumptions: 1) Both historically and methodologically, magic relies on astrology. 2) Folk magic differs from “learned” or “professional” magic. Maimonides was aware that the Andalusian Jewish sages who had preceded him had recognized the efficacy of “learned” magic. Rabbi Moses ibn Ezra, Rabbi Judah ha-Levi, Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, and others both hinted and explicitly stated that this technique is real and effective.48 Abraham ibn Ezra referred briefly to astral magic in his professional astrological writings as well. Maimonides, however, did not agree with them. Indeed, he was extremely critical of them and, in his commentary on ʿAvodah zarah, wrote as follows on the use of talismans: And even good and pious men of our Torah think that these things are true but that they are forbidden only because of the Torah. And they do not know that these are empty and false things, against which the Torah has warned us just as it has warned us against falsehood.49

47 48

49

See, for example, Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), 97–99 (in Hebrew). See, for example, Moshe Idel, “Hermeticism and Judaism,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, ed. Ingrid Merkel and Allen Debus (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1988), 59–76; Shlomo Pines, “On the Term Ruḥaniyyut,” 511–540; and Schwartz, Studies on Astral Magic, ch. 1. Qafih, Maimonides, Sefer mishneh Torah, 357 (on Avodah zarah 4:7, in Hebrew). On Mai-

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For Maimonides, drawing down spirituality for healing or other purposes is not a feasible option, even though many Andalusian thinkers did support it. Maimonides may well have fought against Andalusian tradition, which ascribed theological and hermeneutical value to the making of figures for healing and for other “scientific” purposes. His aim was to expose the pointlessness and futility of “learned” astral magic.

4

Solving the Difficulties

The various difficulties noted above in the two laws and in their structure can now be resolved as follows: 1) The relationship between the two laws: Law 10 deals with the making of figures for ornamental purposes, whereas Law 11 deals with their making for “scientific” or “learned” purposes. Law 11, for example, forbids making a figure of a constellation for healing purposes. 2) The opening of Law 10. Maimonides assumed as a given that forms are made to be used, above all, to bring down forces from the supernal world. He had already attested that he had applied himself to the study of idolatry and magic,50 and had found that, historically and socially, the forms made and worshipped are, above all, the forms of stars. The opening of Law 10, then, takes for granted the making of forms symbolizing stars and Maimonides adds that they should not be made for ornamental purposes. By contrast, making forms of earthly entities lacking any association with astrology is allowed. Maimonides, therefore, immediately expresses reservations and states that making a human form for ornamentation purposes, even though it is an earthly form unconnected to stars, is forbidden, relying on his approach that all idolatry is somehow related to the stars. Again, he holds this as a self-evident historical fact and explanations would be superfluous. The prohibition on the making of heavenly forms is thus sweeping, and Law 10 should be read as follows:

50

monides’ respect for the Andalusian sages, see Dov Schwartz, “The Figure of Judah ha-Levi as Emerging from Maimonides’ Guide i:71,” Daat 61 (2007): 23–40 (in Hebrew). In the “Letter to the Rabbis of Montpelier on Astrology”; see Marx, “The Correspondence between the Rabbis of Southern France and Maimonides about Astrology,” 351. For the Hebrew original of this letter, see Itzhak Shailat (ed.), The Letters and Essays of Moses Maimonides, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Shailat Publishing-Maʿalei adumim, 1995), 2:481. Maimonides’ ruling in Laws of Idolatry 2:2, which forbids reading books on idolatry, is discussed in several publications (see n. 1 of this chapter).

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It is forbidden to make figures for purposes of ornaments, even if they are not idolatrous … so that those likely to err shall not err and imagine that these figures serve idolatrous purposes. , and the prohibition of making ornamental figures only applies to representation of the human form. 3) The correspondence with the talmudic source. Maimonides obviously objected to the view of Rabbi Nissim Girondi and the tosafists that Abaye had not retreated from one to the next statement and, in that sense, he adhered to the literal meaning of the talmudic text. According to Maimonides, as noted, making supernal forms is definitely forbidden and there are no grounds for creating a hierarchy of them (“higher firmament” and “lower firmament”). Law 11 introduces an innovation: contrary to the seal, which can be made if it is not in high relief, the making of supernal figures is forbidden, be they in high relief or engraved in some board. One reason is that supernal elements are generally perceived as engraved because most of them are invisible. Maimonides clarified several times in The Guide that the angels are the separate intellects driving the spheres that, as we know, are made of invisible transparent material (the fifth element).51 Making their forms for healing or for any other purpose, even when engraved, is therefore forbidden, because the supernal reality and the scientific milieu support this. Maimonides then begins with the seal in order to clarify that making any supernal forms is unequivocally prohibited.

51

Qafih noted this as a possibility: “Perhaps he holds that, because the ministering angels have no body, and because the sun, moon, stars and constellations do not appear in high relief, and even in the sphere they are not in high-relief but engraved within it, it makes no difference whether they are in high relief or engraved”; see Qafih, Maimonides, Sefer mishneh Torah, 402. The view that the heavenly world is engraved appears in other thirteenth-century and early fourteenth-century circles. See, for example, Zvi Hacohen Zashrakovsky (ed.), Hiddušei talmidei Rabbenu Yona al maseḵet ʿAvodah zarah (New York: [private edition], 1956), 83 (in Hebrew). Menaḥem ben Solomon Meiri writes: “But concerning a constellation, we hold it does not matter whether it is engraved or in high relief since, in their place, they are not seen in high relief” (Meiri, Beit ha-beḥirah, 150–151). Talismans were the most precious, of stones or metals; see Eli Davis and David A. Frenkel, The Hebrew Amulet: Biblical-Medical-General (Jerusalem: Institute for Jewish Studies, 1995) (in Hebrew).

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Maimonides’ statements in the “Laws Concerning Idolatry” 3:10–11, then, are structured and in perfect order. I conclude by addressing an additional aspect of these laws and the development of Maimonides’ halakhic thought. Mishnah ʿAvodah zarah 3:3 reads: “If one finds a vessel and on it a drawing of the sun or a drawing of the moon, or a drawing of a dragon, he should cast them into the Dead Sea.” Writing on it in his Commentary to the Mishnah, Maimonides notes: “A drawing of the sun or a drawing of the moon” does not mean that one will find a circle and say, this is the sun, or a semicircle and say, this is the moon. Makers of “talismans” ascribe figures to the stars and say that the figure of Saturn is that of a very old black man, and the figure of Venus is that of a beautiful young girl decked in gold, and the figure of the sun is that of a crowned king sitting in a chariot, and so they ascribe to all the stars and constellations many figures, and they engage in a fierce dispute concerning these figures because they are falsehoods, and the falsehood about a thing tends to grow and spread. And when it says “a drawing of the sun or a drawing of the moon” it means, when he finds the figure ascribed to the sun and the figure ascribed to the moon, according to whatever view.52 And the “dragon” is the figure of a man with fins and many scales on his back between his fins like fish scales, and this figure was highly respected among them because they used to ascribe it to a part of the sphere ( juzʾ al-falak), and a man who is said to be knowledgeable on these matters told me that this is the figure of the moon teli,53 and that it is made in such-and-such a manner, and at such-and-such a time, and has such-andsuch an effect. And I asked him about the book where this is mentioned 52 53

In the original, maḏhab, which could also be translated as “system” or “way.” In the original, jawzahr, referring to the intersection of the sun’s and the moon’s orbits. On the source of the term, see Shlomo Pines, “Points of Similarity Between the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Sefirot in the ‘Sefer Yezira’ and a Text of Pseudo-Clementine ‘Homilies’: the Implications of this Resemblance,” Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities: Proceedings 7, 3 (1989): 63–142, at 142 [reprint in Studies in the History of Jewish Thought, ed. Warren Zev Harvey and Moshe Idel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997)]. The teli and the solar and lunar eclipses taking place in its surroundings had astrological implications. See, for example, Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano (ed. and transl.), Abū Maʿšar, The Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1994), 54 (l. 17). See also Abraham ibn Ezra’s commentary on Numbers 1:19; Joel 3:4, in Uriel Simon, Abraham ibn Ezra’s Two Commentaries on the Minor Prophets: An Annotated Critical Edition. Hosea, Joel, Amos (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1989), 164 (in Hebrew). It is interesting that Maimonides viewed the making of a teli figure as an innovation, although it was an ancient astrological topos.

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because I had never seen such a figure, and he claimed that his rabbi and teacher had told him about this figure among all the other secrets he had told him.54 Already in his Commentary to the Mishnah, then, Maimonides points to an urge to elucidate magic astral traditions. He certainly encountered a problem in this mishnah, where the first two examples (sun, moon) attest to figures related to the supernal world, whereas the third (dragon) is seemingly different and not related to heaven. Clearly, then, Maimonides knew from the start that the “dragon” denoted a teli, but could not find in his surroundings amulets engraved with the figure or the symbol of a teli. He therefore inquired and found that such a tradition had indeed existed in the past.55 The Commentary to the Mishnah thus gives a reason for the distinction between a human figure and the other earthly forms in the Laws Concerning Idolatry (3:10), even though this interpretation deals with the finding of figures while the Mishneh Torah law deals with their making. The common denominator of all the astrological figures that Maimonides presented in his Commentary to the Mishnah is a human figure in different manifestations (an old man, a young girl, a king, and so forth).56 The human figure thus serves as a symbol of heavenly bodies. The mythological dragon is also described as a human figure, which the two magic traditions that Maimonides cites place in the supernal realm. The human figure is thus part of the heavenly figures because astrologers used it in their amulets, and the Mishneh Torah therefore categorically forbids their making for ornamental purposes. In the Mishneh Torah, Laws Concerning Idolatry (7:8), Maimonides copied the text of the Mishnah almost literally: If one finds articles bearing the figure of the sun, moon, or dragon, whether they are gold or silver vessels or robes of scarlet embroidered

54 55

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Qafih, Maimonides, Sefer mishneh Torah, 350–351 (ʿAvodah zarah 3:3). Maimonides does not negate the tradition that he had heard from “a man who is said to be knowledgeable on these matters” a suitable explanation of the “dragon”; see Qafih, Maimonides, Sefer mishneh Torah, 351 n. 10. On the human image in Greek-Muslim magic literature, see, for example, Moshe Idel, “An Astral-Magical Pneumatic Anthropoid”; and Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany, NY: suny Press, 1990), 86–88. The Hebrew translation of Idel’s volume was enlarged by the author and includes an appendix entitled “A Magic-Astral-Spiritual Golem,” 258–270; see Moshe Idel, Golem: Masorot magiyot u-mistiyot ba-yahadut ʿal yeṣirat ʾadam melaḵuti (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1996).

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with any such figure, or earrings or finger rings so engraved, they are forbidden to be used. Other articles with those figures are permitted, the presumption being that the figures are ornamental. Other figures than those enumerated, or any vessels, are presumed to be ornamental, and the vessels may be used. Maimonides never mentioned the symbolic human figures he discusses in the Commentary to the Mishnah. Hence, it seems plausible that, by the time he came to write the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides had changed his mind and forbade amulets with engravings of heavenly bodies as well, even when made for ornamental purpose.57

5

Summary

My inquiry here related to the broader issue of the encounter between the visual, the aesthetic, the scientific or semi-scientific, and the halakhic. This clarification is one component of the reservations in the attitude toward the visual and the artistic.58 From many perspectives, it is part of Maimonides’ suspicious attitude toward art in general, and toward sculpture, painting, and music in particular.59 In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides aimed for a comprehensive and systematic formulation of the prohibition on the making of figures, and he therefore banned their making both for ornamental purposes and for a specific need (healing). Furthermore: when he later came to write the Mishneh Torah, he seemingly expanded the prohibition in two ways: 1) Making figures: All human figures were categorically forbidden and not only those that idolaters tended to use, meaning human figures symbolizing heavenly bodies. Nevertheless, Maimonides refrained from imposing further restrictions and from forbidding engraved human figures as well. Rabbi Abraham of Posquières’ gloss grapples with this specific difficulty. 2) Finding figures: The prohibition applied not only to symbolic human figures but also to figures of heavenly bodies as such. The rulings on the find-

57 58 59

Qafih tried to claim that Maimonides did not change his mind and prohibited only human forms; see Qafih, Maimonides, Sefer mishneh Torah, 469. For an overview of this subject, see Kalman P. Bland, The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Denials of the Visual (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). See, for example, Dov Schwartz, Music in Jewish Thought (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2013), Index (under Maimonides).

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ing of figures reflect the plausibility that they had previously been used for worship. The surrounding reality persuaded Maimonides to expand the prohibition of forbidden amulets to heavenly figures as well, which in the past he had tended to allow. Maimonides’ adoption of a stricter stance in the Mishneh Torah vis-à-vis the one he had endorsed in the Commentary to the Mishnah becomes clear in light of his claim in the Letter on Astrology, stating there was hardly a single work concerning idolatry he had not read and understood. In his youth, Maimonides probably became familiar with the amulets and effigies widespread in his Spanish surroundings. The Commentary to the Mishnah and the Mishneh Torah, as we know, were written in the cultural transition from Spain to Egypt. Maimonides was curious and craved knowledge, particularly when matters touched on the war he had declared on idolatry. Upon his arrival in Egypt, he became acquainted with the astral magic means available in his new environment and possibly with further testimonies of Sabianism, broadening his knowledge of the actual reality. Delving into the idolatrous astral magic corpus seemingly led him to conclude that the prohibitions should be more sweeping than he had previously assumed. Be that as it may, the order and the contents of the two laws in the Mishneh Torah can be seen as deliberately and rigorously structured. Maimonidean halakhah is thus to be understood in accordance with Maimonidean philosophy.

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chapter 9

On the Various Faces of Hebrew Physiognomy as a Prognostic Art in the Middle Ages Joseph Ziegler

This essay aims to refine our understanding of the place and character of physiognomy in the world of Medieval Hebrew knowledge. It starts with a survey of sources, primary and secondary, which suggest that Greco-Roman learned physiognomy became increasingly non-mantic and was thought to be largely detached from the divinatory arts and practices. It then moves on to look at the long story of the pre-modern Hebrew physiognomic tradition, which has been systematically analysed as part of the divinatory arts and practices. Finally, it looks briefly at three textual foci: the codicological evidence, which suggests a clear link between physiognomic manuals and practical texts of medical prognosis among Medieval Jewry; the integration of physiognomic knowledge into literature, which suggests its more general integration into broader spheres of life as early as the second half of the twelfth century; and the infiltration of physiognomic thinking into encyclopedias in the fourteenth century.

1

Physiognomy and Prognosis

Was pre-modern physiognomy a prognostic art? Judging by how pre-modern Latin texts defined the action of the physiognomic sign, the answer should surprisingly be negative. A systematic survey of the verbs following the physiognomic signs in medieval learned Latin physiognomic discourse yields a rich harvest: significare, demonstrare, signare, denuntiare, nuntiare, designare, ostendere, iudicare, definire, inclinare, minari, testari, connotare, all suggesting that the writers of physiognomic treatises perceived themselves engaged in a demonstrative art that allowed the physiognomer to determine a person’s inner qualities as they are at the moment of the examination, and not to predict his actual behavior in the future. Conspicuously missing from the list above is the verb prognosticare, to prognosticate, in the sense of foretell, predict, or forecast (as well as synonymous verbs such as divinare, providere, previdere, or prescire). In the 215 folios of Reductorium phisonomie, a monumental compendium summarizing the state of the science of physiognomy towards the

© Joseph Ziegler, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445703_011

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end of the first third of the fifteenth century, composed by Rolandus Scriptoris of Lisbon in c. 1430, the verb appears twice accompanying physiognomic signs, but in both cases the prediction relates to a medical condition: in the discussion of the colors of the body extreme pallor normally predicts a lack of blood (penuria sanguinis semper pronosticat), and fingernails falling off often predict the eruption of leprosy (multociens casus unguium est pronosticum lepre).1 In the remaining hundreds of cases the signs signify, demonstrate, mark, announce, denote, inscribe, indicate, judge, determine, show, imply, or threaten a behavioral pattern, which the physiognomer deciphers scientifically through his mastering of the relevant authoritative knowledge. Arguably, in Latin, Arabic, or Hebrew astrology and other forms of divination, for the most part the verb prognosticare or its equivalents are not used either, and one might even claim that this Latin verb became largely associated with the practice of medicine, so its absence in non-medical texts proves nothing. Furthermore, one should not limit prognostication/divination to the practice of predicting the future alone, but also to the practice of uncovering hidden or secret information. Therefore, the insight drawn from the linguistic observation above could be deemed unconvincing. But two recent collections of articles on divination and mantic arts in the Middle Ages avoid including physiognomy in their survey.2 They discuss a whole series of prognostic techniques particularly in medicine and astrology, without mentioning physiognomy as part of the broader picture. On the other hand, some scholars of medieval magic, astrology and other prognostic arts still tend to incorporate physiognomy, which they define as “divination by means of physical features of an individual,”3 in their grand narratives of the history of the mantic arts. So is medieval physiognomy a divinatory art by definition? Greco-Roman physiognomy, the main source of Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew physiognomies in the Middle Ages, and in contradistinction to its Mesopotamian equivalents, was from the beginning largely not a technique for divining the future but a device to reveal the examined person’s character. Its focus was on nature and mores, not on prediction.4 But as has been shown, with respect 1 ms Lisbon, Biblioteca da Ajuda 52-xiii-18, fol. 40r and 166r. 2 Stefano Rapisarda and Erik Niblaeus (eds.), Dialogues among Books in Medieval Western Magic and Divination (Florence: sismel—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014); and Alexander Fidora (ed.), Die mantische Künste und die Epistemologie prognostischer Wissenschaften im Mittelalter (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2013). 3 Anne Lawrence-Mathers and Carolina Escobar-Vargas, Magic and Medical Society (London: Routledge, 2018), xxii and 28. 4 Tamsyn S. Barton, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomy, and Medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 100; Mladen Popović, Read-

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to medical prognosis, in a period when the boundaries between science and divination were fluid and negotiable, divining was intertwined with the strategies of detection that constituted the medical examination and the rhetorical modes that engulfed it.5 So vestiges of divination were embedded in ancient medicine and can be occasionally detected in medieval physiognomic texts as well. For example, the first original physiognomic manual in Latin, Michael Scotus’ Liber physonomie of c. 1230, presents the physiognomic knowledge he reveals to the emperor as secretissima scientia nature,6 and sprays his text with occasional predictive observations. For example, sneezing patterns could predict one’s fortune or approaching death, and could crucially indicate whether to sign a commercial deal or abandon it (ch. 40). Observation of the female breasts could predict the outcome of pregnancy (chs. 10–12). A larger, fuller, and harder left breast indicates the birth of a girl, while these signs on the other breast predict the birth of a boy. If a right breast which had been hard, thus indicating a male pregnancy, turns soft the foetus is ill. Changes in the density of the breasts predict a painful birth for the woman and a probable death of the foetus before or right after the birth. When a twin birth is forthcoming and two boys are expected, both breasts will grow equally and the woman will maintain

ing the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), 69–71. The main Greco-Roman physiognomic texts that framed the Western physiognomic tradition were the Physiognomonics (or Physiognomonika), an epitome of the work of two Peripatetic authors of the third century bce following up Aristotle’s interests and believed throughout the Middle Ages to be Aristotelian but consigned by modern research to the ranks of “Pseudo-Aristotle”; and Polemon of Laodicea’s De physiognomonia liber, possibly written in Greek around 133–136ce See the edition of Ps.-Aristotle, Physiognomy (ed. by Simon Swain) in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, ed. Simon Swain et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 637–661; and Hoyland, “The Leiden Polemon,” 329– 463 (edition). 5 Barton, Power and Knowledge, 138–143. 6 Oleg Voskoboynikov (ed.), Michel Scot, Liber particularis. Liber physonomie (Florence: sismel—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2019), 271: “Nunc incipit Liber physonomie quem compilavit M. Scottus ad preces domini F. Rome imperatoris. Scientia cuius est preciosa et multum tenenda in secreto, pro eo quod est magne efficatie, continens secreta artis nature que sufficiunt omni astrologo. Et cum hec pars Libri physonomie constet ex tribus partibus, hoc est prohemium … O nobilis imperator, vir gratiosus in mundo quasi omnium gratiarum et donorum, ex grandi amore tibi notifico secretissimam scientiam nature que potest consolatio appellari et que non multum dicitur gentibus ydiotis nec etiam est dicenda.” See also Joseph Ziegler, “The Beginning of Medieval Physiognomy: The Case of Michael Scotus,” in Kulturtransfer und Hofgesellschaft im Mittelalter: Wissenskultur am sizilianischen und kastilischen Hof im 13. Jahrhundert, ed. G. Grebner and J. Fried (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), 299– 319.

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a lean and well colored face. When one boy and one girl are expected, the right breast is harder, and the woman’s face is lean and well colored on the right side but emaciated and pale on the left side. An inspection of the umbilical cord after the first birth will reveal the number of future male offspring. The number of the knots (nodi) on the cord indicates the maximal number of potential pregnancies of males. If there is no knot, the woman can have no more boys and the fault is hers, not her husband’s (ch. 14).7 Another example of the intertwining of physiognomy and divination comes from a short, anonymous, and significantly diffused (some 20 mss) physiognomic manual from the thirteenth century, known to scholars as Auctoris incerti de physiognomonia libellus. It is the first Latin physiognomic treatise that organically contains astrological chapters which precede the 13 chapters depicting the bodily organs and their physiognomic meanings.8 The introduction to the treatise opens with praise for the elegance of physiognomy, introduces the etymology of the word (phisis and gnomos; natura and divinacio, i.e. nature and prognostication), and maintains that such prognostication (diuinacio) from external forms (per formas exteriores) happens in astrology (sciencia mathematica), and is regularly performed in medicine from internal movements such as the pulse (per interiores motus ut per pulsum), or through internal and essential colors, such as the colors of the urine (per interiores essencie colores, ut per urinas). But he adamantly argues that knowledge of nature (cognicio nature) through the external lineament on the surface of the body (exterius lineamentum in superficie), i.e. physiognomy, is more subtle (exact) and manifest (unmistakable) (subtilior and manifestior).9 An individual may have physical features spread around specific organs which are wholly inconsistent with the astral signs, and may hinder certain knowledge. Consequently, the planetary signs do not always suffice to afford an easy and reliable analysis. Astrology in

7 At least some of the signs are taken from Abū Maʿšar’s midwives’ predictions (obstetricum vaticinia) in his Liber introductorii maioris ad scientiam judiciorum astrorum, Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett (ed. and transl.), The Great Introduction to Astrology by Abū Maʿšar, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 1:64–65 (i, 2.21), e.g., that the lumps and knots on the umbilical cord indicate the number of children to be born, in the translation by Hermann of Carinthia, book 1, chapter 1. 8 Roger A. Pack, “Auctoris incerti de physiognomonia libellus,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 41 (1974): 113–138 (text at 126–138). For a middle English translation of the text which appears as the concluding section of The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy, see Jeanne Krochalis and Edward Peters (ed. and transl.), The World of Piers Plowman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), 219–228 (based on ms Cambridge University Library Ll. 4.14, which also contains the Piers Plowman). 9 Pack, “Auctoris incerti de physiognomonia libellus,” 126 (ch. 1).

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itself is necessary but not enough to ensure a solid foundation for knowledge of humans (cognicio hominum), hence the need for physiognomic knowledge. And in the introduction to his influential six-book Chyromantie ac physionomie anastasis, Bartolomeo Della Rocca Cocles (d. 1504) praises the need to know the future in advance (ventura prescire) in order to avoid or better prepare oneself for future vicissitudes. He introduces physiognomy as the third modus iudicandi or pronosticandi, after astrologia siue astronomia and followed by thirteen other modes of prognostication. Throughout his long text he constantly presents celestial influence next to natural complexion as the sole causal variables explaining why natural character (mores naturales) inheres in us and is changeable only with great difficulty.10 For him physiognomy is about prognostication, just like astrology. Consequently, astrology is subsumed into his physiognomic discourse. So learned Latin physiognomy from the thirteenth century onwards preserved some vestiges of a divinatory art that linked it to astrological prognostication. But at the heart of the thirteenth-century revival of physiognomy was intense awareness of the power of material nature over all aspects of human existence. Relying on Galenic medical theory, well rooted in Aristotelian natural philosophy, and loyal to the essentially non-mantic nature of Greco-Roman physiognomy, this physiognomy provided a concentrated dose of somatic explanations for every behavioral pattern, and assigned nature a dominant role in determining human behavior over its widest scope. In so doing, it gave its practitioners the keys to decode, expose, and rationally explain the origins and causes of every kind of behavior (moral, cognitive, intellectual, religious, emotional, political, social, or sexual), but not to predict it.11 10

11

“Difficile est enim mores naturales immutare, qui scilicet insunt ex complexione naturali et influentia celi.” Bartolomeo Della Rocca Cocles, Chyromantie ac physionomie anastasis: cum approbatione Magistri Alexandri de Achillinis (Bologna: Per Joannem Antonium Platonidem Benedictorum, 1504), book 1, ch. 1. On Cocles, see Giovanni Gentile, Giovanni Treccani, et al., Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 92 vols. so far (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1925–), 6:302–306; Paola Zambelli, “Aut diabolus aut Achillinus. Fisionomia, astrologia e demonologia nel metodo di un aristotelico,”Rinascimento (new series) 18 (1978): 59–86, at 79–86; and Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 5:50–65. Jole Agrimi, Ingeniosa scientia nature: Studi sulla fisiognomica medievale (Florence: sismel—Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2002); Joseph Ziegler, “Phisonomia est lex nature: On the Nature of Character and Behaviour in Late Medieval Physiognomy,” in La nature comme source de la morale au Moyen Âge, ed. M. van der Lugt (Florence: sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014), 359–381; and Lisa Devriese, The Body as a Mirror of the Soul: An Inquiry into the Reception of the Physiognomonica in the Middle Ages (PhD dissertation, ku Leuven, 2018).

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Greco-Roman physiognomy did not undertake to predict the future but to profile character, behavioral patterns, and personality traits for practical and rhetorical purposes. This observation also applies to all Latin medieval physiognomic texts from 1200 onwards. Overall, the physiognomic tradition in pre1500 Europe was largely evidential,12 fused into high-level scholastic discourse and studies, and practiced by academic physicians and natural philosophers. From the thirteenth century onwards, at various learning centers from Paris to Cracow and Erfurt some of the best scholars—natural philosophers and physicians alike—pored over the physiognomic texts, reflected on them, and fully integrated them into high-level academic discourse. Some reworked debates were incorporated into encyclopedias, thus contributing to the diffusion of this scientific discourse beyond the classroom. Physiognomy is not a divinatory art, but a science which facilitates knowing natural inclinations, maintained the compiler of the Kalendrier des bergiers of 1491 (a vernacular compilation of miscellaneous knowledge directed at an urban, bourgeois readership to be adhered to in order to live joyfully and healthily in accordance with the seasons).13 The virtuous wise man (“l’ homme saige, prudent et vertueux”) will use this knowledge to combat and avoid his evil inclinations, so his actual behavior (“meuers”) does not necessarily follow what the signs demonstrate. It is one of the sources that led Jean-Patrice Boudet to label physiognomy, in his panoramic study of late medieval astrology, divination, and magic, a borderline body of knowledge lying between divination and natural philosophy, hence well outside the field of the divinatory sciences which were exposed to ecclesiastical condemnations and later censorship.14

12

13

14

For the distinction evidential / non-evidential in medieval forms of knowledge see now Stefano Rapisarda, “The Specific Rationality of Western Medieval Divination,” International Journal of Divination and Prognostication 2, forthcoming. Pierre Champion (introd.), Le compost et kalendrier des bergiers (Paris: Editions de quatre chemins, 1926), fols. 12r–14v [facsimile of Guy Marchant, 1493]: “Phizonomie … est une science que bergiers scavent pour cognoistre l’ inclinacion naturelle, bonne ou mauluaise, des hommes et femmes …” Jean-Patrice Boudet. Entre science et nigromance. Astrologie, divination et magie dans l’ Occident médiéval (xiie–xve siècle) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006), 114–117 and 340. See also Paola Zambelli, The ‘Speculum Astronomiae’ and Its Enigma: Astrology, Theology and Science in Albertus Magnus and his Contemporaries (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic, 1992), 272 for chapter 17 of Speculum astronomiae, which contemplated that one should not relegate chiromancy to the necromantic arts that should be put aside, because it is a part of physiognomy that is tightly connected to astrology.

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Divination in the Long History of Pre-modern Hebrew Physiognomy

Yet the long story of pre-modern Hebrew physiognomy usually links it entirely to the practice of divination, thereby relegating physiognomic thinking and practices among pre-modern Jews exclusively to esoteric and mystical circles.15 From Qumran to medieval and early modern kabbalah, Hebrew physiognomic texts appeared in a recurrent context: that of a prognosticating tool that improved the selection process of new members joining an esoteric sect. In what follows I will briefly survey in chronological order the main Hebrew texts averring physiognomic thinking and responsible for the stress on its mantic aspects in modern historiography. For a more nuanced picture that would create perhaps a less homogeneous story, the interested reader should delve into the literature in the notes. In the case of the Second-Temple community at Qumran, physiognomic knowledge was imported among other scientific ideas largely of Babylonian origin, and consequently was closer to the Babylonian physiognomic model, which was divinatory in nature, unlike non-divinatory Greek physiognomy that mainly inferred character from physiognomic signs.16 In the particular context

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Ron Margolin, “Physiognomy and Chiromancy: From Prediction and Diagnosis to Healing and Human Correction (Zohar 2, 70a–78a; Tiqqunei Zohar, Tiqqun 70),” Teʿuda 21–22 (2007): 199–245 (in Hebrew); Gershom Scholem, “Physiognomy of the Face,” in Sefer Assaf: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Simha Assaf, ed. U. Cassuto, J. Klausner, and Y. Gutman (Jerusalem: Ha-Rav Kook Institute, 1952–1953), 459–495 (in Hebrew), reprinted as “Hakarat panim ve-sidrei sirṭuṭim (Physiognomy and Chiromancy),” in Devils, Demons and Souls: Essays on Demonology by Gershom Scholem, ed. E. Liebes (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2004), 246–301 (in Hebrew); and Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 b.c.–a.d. 135), rev. ed. G. Vermes, F. Millar, and M. Goodman, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1986), 3/1: 366–369. Jonathan Ben-Dov, “Ideals of Science: The Infrastructure of Scientific Activity in Apocalyptic Literature and in the Yahad,” in Ancient Jewish Sciences and the History of Knowledge in Second Temple Literature, ed. J. Ben-Dov and S.L. Sanders (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 109–152; John M. Allegro (ed.), Qumran Cave 4 (4Q158–4Q186) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 88–91; Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 1:380–384; Mladen Popović, “4Q186. 4QZodiacal Physiognomy. A Full Edition,” in The Mermaid and the Partridge: Essays from the Copenhagen Conference on Revising Texts from Cave Four, ed. George Brooke and Jesper Høgenhaven (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 221–258; Mladen Popović, Reading the Human Body; Philip S. Alexander, “Physiognomy, Initiation, and Rank in Qumran Community,” in Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger, and P. Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 1:385–394; and Jacob Licht, “Legs as Signs of Election,” Tarbiz 35 (1966): 18–26 (in Hebrew).

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of the first-century Qumranites, largely fragmentary and multi-lingual texts show that physiognomic criteria along with a person’s zodiac sign may have served to determine fitness for membership in the “House of Light” where the righteous among Israel should dwell. More practically, as part of the admission procedure, sect members determined the character of one wishing to join them by observing the person’s height, size, shape of his thighs and feet, appearance of his teeth, hair, eyes, and beard, and signs on his fingers and toes. They also analysed the candidate’s voice, and taking astrological considerations into account they sketched the moral and spiritual qualities determining his merit for membership in the sect. In such texts, astrological information concerning the horoscope under which a type of person was born appear after the physiognomic description of the person’s body. Thus, from one’s physiognomy an observer may gather astrological knowledge such as the ascendant (zodiac sign on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth).17 A wave of Jewish physiognomic treatises after Qumran arose among Merkavah and Hekhalot mystics, who in their esoteric and revelatory texts left ample evidence of chiromantic and metoposcopic practices. These texts, dating from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, clearly show that Merkavah mystics speculated minutely about what could be learnt from a man’s body concerning his moral quality, social and economic status, health, family, and future lot in general. This interest is apparent in actual texts, and as in Qumran may indicate that physiognomic criteria served to test the qualities of applicants to join the mystics’ ranks or to display the mystics’ superior modes of knowledge. These criteria were linked to a variety of facial and bodily signs (including the male genitalia), but greatest significance was attached to the lines and lettered signs on palms and forehead, amounting to a fully developed chiromantic and metoposcopic technique and body of knowledge. The texts maintain that one’s fate also depends on the constellation of the stars at one’s birth, evince a significant prophetic or divinatory function, and are concerned more with a man’s luck and fortune than with his inner moral qualities or the identification of his character.18 The primary text in this connection is Hakarat panim le-Rabbi Yišmaʿel (“The Physiognomy of Rabbi Yishmael”).19 Beyond this physiognomy,

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For divinatory practices in Qumran, see Chapter Two of this book, 49–53. Ithamar Gruenwald, “Physiognomy, Chiromancy and Metoposcopy,” in Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 2014 [2nd rev. ed.]), 249–254. Scholem, “Physiognomy of the Face,” 480–487, reprinted as “Hakarat panim ve-sidrei sirṭuṭim,” in Devils, Demons and Souls, 278–288. For an annotated German translation see Gershom Scholem, “Ein Fragment zur Physiognomik und Chiromantik aus der Tradition

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a few published fragments from the Cairo Genizah of around the year 1000 attest to the rich somatomantic tradition in Hekhalot mystics and teach how to distinguish the wicked from the pious in the physical world, using mainly chiromantic and metoposcopic practices, heavily backed by astrology for divination (including predictions of impending sickness and the prospects of recovery).20 Other fragments expand the prognosis to the duration of man’s life, the age when he is expected to start learning the Scripture, and the prospects of his success in study, business, and marriage.21 The most extensive treatment of physiognomy (ḥoḵmat ha-parṣuf ), metoposcopy (sirṭuṭei ha-meṣaḥ), and chiromancy (sirṭuṭei kaf ha-yad) in Jewish thought prior to the sixteenth century is found in the Zoharic corpus. Though dated to the thirteenth century this corpus evinces direct continuities with Hekhalot literature or Merkavah circles. Like its precursor Hekhalot physiognomy, Zohar physiognomy was employed to distinguish the true character of a man, but also to prognosticate his action in the future. Physiognomy, metoposcopy, and chiromancy thus became essential for kabbalistic divinatory practices.22

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der spätantiken jüdischen Esoterik,” in Liber amicorum: Studies in Honour of Professor Dr. C.J. Bleeker, ed. C.J. Bleeker (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 175–193, at 182–193. Peter Schäfer, “Ein neues Fragment zur Metoposkopie und Chiromantik,” in Hekhalot Studien (Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), 84–95, at 88–95 (for a German translation of the text). See also Michael Meerson, “Physiognomy and Somatomancy: The Ways that Never Crossed,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. R.S. Boustan, K. Herrmann, R. Leicht, A.Y. Reed, and G. Veltri, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1:563–585, at 574–576 (for an extended discussion of the text in English); and Peter Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism (Albany, NY: suny Press, 1992), 137–138. Ithamar Gruenwald, “Further Jewish Physiognomic and Chiromantic Fragments,” Tarbiz 40 (1970/1971): 301–319, at 306–317 (in Hebrew). A combined edition with a full English translation of Gruenwald’s and Schäfer’s fragments is now available in Reimund Leicht and Joseph Yahalom, “Sefer zeh Sefer ṭoledot Adam: An Unknown Esoteric Midrash on Genesis 5:1 from the Geonic Period,” Ginzei Qedem 4 (2008): 9–82, at 42–58 (in Hebrew). Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004 [1939]), 216; Daniel C. Matt (transl.), The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, 4 vols. (Stanford ca, 2007), 4:392–421 (Zohar Yitro 2: 71a–78a); Yehuda Liebes, “Hakarat panim ba-Qabbalah” (Physiognomy in Kabbalah), Peʿamim 104 (2005): 21–40 (in Hebrew). For a concise summary of physiognomy, metoposcopy, and chiromancy in Zoharic literature see Joseph Ziegler, “Jewish Physiognomic Treatises,” in A Handbook of Ancient and Medieval Jewish Magic, ed. S. Bhayro and O.-P. Saar (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

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Qumran and Merkavah physiognomies were all diagnostic, divinatory, and mantic—maintaining one way or another that the efficacy of this art in deciphering character lay in religious intuition, in the ability to link to the divine intellect, and not only in mastering the physiognomic technique. By contrast, the Zohar’s physiognomy opened new paths and options for its adepts, highlighting the capacity of this knowledge to diagnose character traits and to trigger self-healing processes, internal and natural change and correction. “The wise who recognize those features, providing remedy for people and healing their souls—happy are they in this world and happy are they in the world that is coming.”23 So unlike its ancient and early medieval precursors in mystical Jewish circles from Qumran to Merkavah, Zohar physiognomy emphasized its adherents’ power to cure, correct, and protect the tainted soul through repentance, education, and good deeds. In this respect, Zoharic physiognomy was well attuned to the current Latin physiognomic discourse which based this science’s religious legitimacy on the notion that the inclinations uncovered by physiognomic signs could and should be curbed, or even averted by reason, philosophy, or self-control. And most recently, Irmi Dubrau, who had studied the physiognomic traditions among Ḥasidei Ashkenaz (circles of pietists who were active in the twelfth and the early thirteenth centuries), convincingly showed that vestiges of physiognomic knowledge and thinking are interwoven throughout their works of interpretation in ways that are typical of their scholarship method to extract the secrets of the Torah, and are embedded in the central issues of their esoteric teachings.24 They used facial and bodily signs for the divination of the future, and employed a variety of physiognomic techniques for predicting the future, including chiromancy, metoposcopy, the signs of limb quivering and itching or friction, and the signs of body shadows. These Jewish pietists preserved older traditions which were derived from the Hekhalot literature and the Responsa of the Geonim, but they may have also been influenced by the growing physiognomic consciousness engulfing the Christian environment in which they were living. With sixteenth-century kabbalistic physiognomy, kabbalah scholars teach us, we reach the essential stage at which Jewish physiognomy was uplifted to the status of a doctrine possessing higher religious meaning. Kabbalistic physiognomy does not stop with deciphering character through bodily signs, but

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Matt, Zohar, 4:421 (Zohar 2: 78b); and Margolin, “Physiognomy and Chiromancy.” Irmi D. Dubrau, Physiognomy in the Esoteric Treatises of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz (PhD dissertation, University of Haifa, 2017) (in Hebrew).

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seeks to transcend the physical body to attain the divine sphere. Sixteenthcentury Zohar commentators stressed physiognomy’s divine origins, and drew attention to the gulf separating the external, ordinary human physiognomy (found commonly among the gentiles) from the internal kabbalistic physiognomy. They promulgated the idea that Moses, as the master of all prophets, was also the father of physiognomy, who divulged this wisdom to the Zohar sages. Zohar physiognomy received a new boost in the writings of the preeminent Safed kabbalist Isaac Luria (called “ha-Ari of Safed,” 1534–1572), who in the rich biographic and hagiographic literature about him was known to have identified physiognomically and metoposcopically his followers’ sins, vicissitudes, and transformations.25 Physiognomy was an integral part of his practice of kabbalah and access to its most secret parts, according to a tradition his pupils spread. Curiously, the long history of Islamic physiognomy ( firāsa) transmits a similar story. It is beyond the scope of this essay to give a full picture of the place of physiognomy in the Islamic scientific culture. But most scholars of Islamic physiognomy stress the fundamentally intuitive aspect of physiognomy, and its strongly mystical dimension.26 This particular characteristic of Islamic physiognomy is linked to a series of Quranic verses and the “Prophet’s medicine,” suggesting that believers and sinners may be recognized through signs on their bodies (Quʾrān 2:273, 15:75, 47:30, 48:29). These verses render physiognomy a divine light that illuminates the elect, like the sun that illuminates the sensible world. The true believer could thus acquire a physiognomic talent by means of 25

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Lawrence Fine, “Purifying the Body in the Name of the Soul: The Problem of the Body in Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective, ed. H. Eilberg-Schwartz (New York: suny Press, 1992), 117–142; Lawrence Fine, “The Art of Metoposcopy: A Study in Isaac Luria’s Charismatic Knowledge,” in Essential Papers on Kabbalah, ed. L. Fine (New York: NYU Press, 1995), 315–337 [repr. of Association for Jewish Studies Review 10 (1986): 79–101]; Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 153–164; Liebes, “Hakarat panim ba-Qabbalah”; and Meir Benayahu, The toledot ha-Ari and Luria’s “Manner of Life” (Hahanhagoth) (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1967), 156–157, 167–168, and 249–251 (in Hebrew). Youssef Mourad, La physiognomonie arabe et la Kitāb al-firāsa de Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1939); Toufic Fahd, La divination arabe: Études réligieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif de l’Islam (Paris: Sindbad, 1987), 369–429; Robert Hoyland, “Physiognomy in Islam,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 30 (2005): 361–402; and Robert Hoyland, “The Islamic Background to Polemon’s Treatise,” in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul. Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, ed. Simon Swain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 227–280, at 257– 261. See also the introduction in Antonella Ghersetti (ed.), Il Kitāb Aristātalīs al-falasūf fī ’l-firāsa nella traduzione di Ḥunayn ben Isḥak (Rome: Herder, 1999), iii–xvi.

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mere belief, not only by learning or through practice. The essential concept in physiognomy of moving from the outer form (ẓāhir) to the inner nature (bātin) was immensely important in Islamic theological discourse. It was therefore natural that firāsa as a tool for discerning the inward state from an outward sign would attract spiritual and religious uses—something absent in the GrecoRoman textual tradition. The physiognomic insight became only one of several that, with God’s aid, would allow its practitioner to gain secret knowledge of hidden or unknown future things, adding a distinctive divinatory and predictive dimension to that art. It is difficult to draw direct lines from the historiography of Islamic physiognomy to that of Jewish physiognomy, so I will remain within the internal dynamics characterizing the latter. The significant presence of various forms of physiognomic consciousness in Zoharic and post-Zoharic texts and among various mystical groups in pre-modern Judaism from the Qumranites to the kabbalists has led to a skewed understanding of Hebrew physiognomy by modern historians of Jewish thought and science, who stressed its mantic character and transposed it entirely to the realm of esoteric magic. This error is characteristic of early-modern thinkers, and not only of their modern interpreters. It is plausible to assume that the powerful divinatory and prognostic element in kabbalistic physiognomy (including its sub-disciplines of chiromancy and metoposcopy) fortified the image of the Jewish sage engaged in these divinatory arts as someone who opens the gates to his Christian counterparts to obtain this arcane and magical knowledge. For example, in chapter 16 (entitled “The iudgement of certaine lines seene in the forehead” and following the chapter dedicated to the physiognomy of the forehead) of his profusely illustrated treatise on physiognomy, Contemplation of Mankinde from 1571, the Elizabethan writer and translator Thomas Hill claimed that Bartolomeo Della Rocca Cocles, his main source for the physiognomic matter in the book, learned metoposcopy from a “skilfull Jewe”:27 The Physiognomer [Cocles] reporteth, that there came unto his understanding and knowledge, a certain skilfull Jewe, which coulde by Arte Physiognomate and pronounce great matters by the onelye sight of the face, but especially the foreheade: in divining matters past, and to come. He also coulde utter of riches, honours, and calamities: yea of the fortune 27

Francis R. Johnson, “Thomas Hill: An Elizabethan Huxley,” The Huntington Library Quarterly 7, 4 (1944): 329–351; and John Considine, “Hill, Thomas [pseud. Didymus Mountaine],” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available online at http://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13303, accessed 20 July, 2019.

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and infortune, both of the Father and Mother, and many other matters besides. The same skill when he desired of ye Jew (by earnest suite to learne) he utterly refused, and denied this request of his: so that forced he was to use sundrie questions and disputations with him: by which at the length he perceived and founde, that this person was wholly ignorant of physiognomy, so well Metaphorical, as of the members, and planets: saving onley by certain lynes, which at the last through his industrie and labour conceyved. And in these (sayth the Physiognomer) have I found and learned a singuler practise, & an infallible or most certaine truth, which I attained by a long time of practise …28 But this anecdote was pure invention by Hill, because nowhere in his Chyromantie ac physionomie Anastasis of 1504 does Cocles mention this encounter or evince any “Jewish connection” relevant to his story of physiognomy, chiromancy, or metoposcopy. Hill was probably echoing here a common notion in Elizabethan England linking Jews to kabbalistic mysticism and esoteric techniques of divination.29

3

A Non-mantic Face of Medieval Hebrew Physiognomy?

Still, medieval Jewish interest in physiognomy was not only an internal Jewish phenomenon developed and cherished in mystical circles down the ages. Kabbalistic physiognomy was prognostic indeed. However, from the second half of the twelfth century new and external trajectories of physiognomic knowledge emerged: medical encyclopedias and mirrors of princes, which contained physiognomic sections and became available to Jewish readers just like their gentile counterparts. Exemplary in this respect, and as far as we know the earliest incorporation of physiognomic material into Hebrew medieval literature, is Sefer šaʿašuʿim (“Book of Delights”) by the physician Joseph ben Meir ibn Zabara of Barcelona (c. 1140–c. 1200).30 Ibn Zabara was one of several 28

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Thomas Hill, The contemplation of mankind, containing a singular discourse after the art of physiognomie (London: [Henry Denham for] William Seres, dwelling at the west ende of Paules Church, at the signe of the Hedgehogge, 1571), 39v–40r. I am grateful to Averyl Dietering (University of California, Davis), who drew my attention to this passage. Martin Porter, Windows of the Soul: The Art of Physiognomy in European Culture 1470–1780 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), passim. Israel Davidson (ed.), Joseph ben Meir ibn Zabara, Sepher Shaʿashuʿim: A Book of Mediaeval Lore, (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1914), lxxxii–lxxxvi (on physiognomy) and 17–20 (text); Moses Hadas (transl.), Joseph ben Meir Zabara, The Book

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twelfth-century Hebrew writers to adopt the Arabic style of rhymed prose, which includes proverbs, anecdotes, folktales, and natural questions on various scientific themes (astrology, meteorology, physics, arithmetic, geometry, medicine, physiognomy). He evidently wished to impress the reader that he was versed in all these sciences; the inclusion of physiognomy perhaps attests to its widespread popularity in Iberian Jewish culture of the second half of the twelfth century, well beyond mystical circles. This satirical book—a compilation of witty anecdotes, tales, proverbs, and fables (borrowed largely from Arabic sources, but some from Latin compilations such as the Gesta Romanorum)—is framed around a core plot of a pious learned person enticed by Enan the Demon to leave his country in search of condign recognition of his wisdom in foreign lands. These stories (many of which reflect medieval attitudes to nature, women, and morality) are interwoven with Ibn Zabara’s tale of wandering. At first, Ibn Zabara tries to avoid the temptation and openly confesses to the enticer that his advice and company are to be avoided because of ominous physiognomic signs that Enan is fraudulent, cunning, deceptive, evil, angry, and worst of all ill-witted, as evinced by his tall and thin stature. Ibn Zabara used (directly or indirectly) the physiognomic information in book ii of Abu Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyā al Rāzī’s (Rhazes’) Kitāb al-Manṣūrī fī ’lṭibb (“Almansur’s Book of Health”), dedicated by al-Rāzī in 903 to a local Iranian prince, governor of Rayy. Ibn Zabara hides from the reader his reliance on alRāzī, and instead attributes his knowledge to Plato.31 Since no physiognomic text is known to have been composed by Plato, whose thought evinces an antiphysiognomical strain, this attribution was likely a rhetorical device to enhance the author’s authoritative position. Al-Rāzī’s medical encyclopedia was translated in Toledo into Latin as Liber medicinalis almansoris by Gerard of Cremona before 1187 and quickly acquired a position of authority and great popularity among physicians and learned laypeople alike. Book ii, which is devoted to physiognomy, was a major source for medieval physiognomers throughout the Middle Ages.32 Kitāb al-Manṣūrī was translated into Hebrew in the middle of

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of Delight (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960 [1932]), 54–55; and Judith Dishon, The Book of Delight Composed by Joseph ben Meir ibn Zabara (Jerusalem: Reuven Mass, 1985), 20–22 (in Hebrew) [new edition, The Physician and the Demon: A Critical Edition of the Book of Delight by Joseph ibn Zabara (Jerusalem: Haberman Institute for Literary Research, 2017), 99–103]. Martin Plessner, “Arabic Parallels to Joseph Zabara’s Sefer šaʿašuʿim,” Tarbiz 33 (1963/4): 167–180 (at 168–175) (in Hebrew). The attribution of the physiognomic section in Sefer šaʿašuʿim to Plato is in Davidson, Ibn Zabara, Sepher shaʿashuʿim, 17; and Dishon, The Physician and the Demon, 100 (‫)… אפלטון החכם אמר בספר חכמת הפרצוף‬. Richardus Förster (ed.), Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1893), 2:163–179.

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the thirteenth century by Shem Tov Ben Isaac (Sefer Almansur).33 Ibn Zabara’s debt to al-Rāzī extends Jewish interest in physiognomy well beyond the mystical arena. It shows that in the late twelfth-century Iberian context Jews were at least as quick as their Latin neighbors to use al-Rāzī’s medical encyclopedia for non-medical purposes; and that medical texts and non-divinatory contexts are part of pre-modern Jews’ physiognomy. But far more significant than al-Rāzī as a vehicle of non-divinatory physiognomic knowledge among Jews (as among Christians) was the physiognomic section in Secret of Secrets. In Appendix 4 of his seminal article Gershom Scholem transcribed a single folio from an early fourteenth-century collection of early kabbalistic texts, possibly associated with Moses of Leon himself.34 The text vindicates the secret of physiognomy (sod hakarat ha-panim) by clearly hinting at Zoharic physiognomy, but also by referring to a physiognomy book composed by Aristotle for his student Alexander. The author states that the book and the physiognomy in it are true, because the book was copied from the books of the early prophets who knew the secrets and composition of human organs. That man (Aristotle) attributed this wisdom to himself, as if he invented it, but in fact he stole all his wisdoms from the prophets.35 Clearly the author appropriates the Secret of Secrets physiognomy as Jewish knowledge, thus legitimizing the use of this book and the knowledge it contains by Jews in general. Furthermore, one of the physiognomic discussions within the Zoharic corpus—printed in parallel columns and continued in the later Zohar ḥadaš (“New Zohar”)—is entitled Raza de-Razin (“Secret of Secrets”), attributed to 33

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Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (Graz: Akademische Druck-u.Verlagsanstalt, 1956 [1893]), 725–726; Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2007), 163–164; and Gerrit Bos, Guido Mensching, Julia Zwink (ed.), Medical Glossaries in the Hebrew Traditions: Shem Tov ben Isaac, Sefer Almansur: with a supplement on the Romance and Latin terminology (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 5. ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Urb. ebr. 50 (Spain or Provence, first half of the 15th century), preserves the only complete copy of the translation extant and the only one with the translator’s preface, available online https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Urb.ebr .50, accessed 10 November, 2020. I am grateful to Gerrit Bos who alerted me to this openly available digital version of the manuscript. Scholem, “Physiognomy of the Face,” in Sefer Assaf, 492–495; and “Hakarat panim ve-sidrei sirṭuṭim,” in Devils, Demons and Souls, 298–300. For the long history of the attempt to convert Aristotle to render the study of Greek philosophy more palatable for Jews and reclaim his thought as part of Jewish heritage and tradition, see Abraham Melamed, The Myth of the Jewish Origins of Science and Philosophy (Jerusalem: University of Haifa Press and Magnes Press, 2010), 178–219 (in Hebrew), and Abraham Melamed, “The Myth of the Jewish Origins of Philosophy in the Renaissance: From Aristotle to Plato,” Jewish History 26 (2012): 41–59.

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King Solomon, and transmitted under the name of Rabbi Shimon. This title possibly derives from the Secretum secretorum, which contained a physiognomic discussion.36 The origin of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum whose eighth book is devoted to physiognomy, is veiled in obscurity. All known versions go back to an Arabic original, Kitāb sirr al-ʾasrār. The work itself claims in the proem to have been translated from Greek into Syriac and then into Arabic by Yahya ibn al-Biṭrīq, a well-known ninth-century translator. The Hebrew translation of the treatise directly from the shorter Arabic version has been wrongly ascribed to the early thirteenth-century poet Judah al-Ḥarizi.37 Today it is placed in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century (based on a linguistic analysis of the Hebrew terminology, the codicological history of the text, and dated quotations from it in other Hebrew texts, all emerging not before the fourteenth century), hence relevant for the history of Hebrew physiognomic texts only from that century onwards.38 In the West, the text became available in Latin from the 1230s onwards.39 From c. 1300 onwards the physiognomic section of Secretum secretorum became a major vehicle for non-divinatory, semi-learned physiognomy among both Hebrew and Latin readers. More specifically, and as attested by the recur-

36 37

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Matt, Zohar, 4:419 (Zohar 2, 78a). Moses Gaster, “The Hebrew Version of the ‘Secretum Secretorum’,” in Studies and Texts in Folklore, Magic, Mediaeval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha and Samaritan Archaeology, 3 vols. (London: Maggs Bros., 1925–1928), 2:742–813 (at 799–803 an English translation of book 11 devoted to physiognomy); and 3:246–278 (at 268–272 the non-critical Hebrew text based on the collation of four fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts, the oldest of which dates to 1382). This problematic edition should be used cautiously. Steven J. Williams, The Secret of Secrets: The Scholarly Career of a Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin Middle Ages (Ann Arbor mi: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 60; Amitai I. Spitzer, “The Hebrew Translations of Sod ha-sodot and Its Place in the Transmission of Sirr al asrār,” in Pseudo-Aristotle ‘The Secret of Secrets’: Sources and Influences, ed. W.F. Ryan and Ch. Schmitt (London: The Warburg Institute, 1982), 34–54; Giulio Busi, “La tradizione ebraica del Secretum secretorum,” in Autori classici in lingue del vicino e medio oriente, ed. G. Fiaccadori (Rome: Istituto poligrafico e zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1990), 165–170; Mahmoud Manzalaoui, “The Pseudo-Aristotelian Kitāb sirr al-asrār. Facts and Problems,” Oriens 23/24 (1974): 147–257 (at 244–245 and at 221–223 on physiognomy in the short and long version of Secretum secretorum); and Wout Jac. van Bekkum, “Alexander the Great in Medieval Hebrew Literature,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986): 218–226, at 225. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:183–222; and Secretum secretorum cum glossis et notulis, tractatus brevis et utilis ad declarandum quedam dicta fratris Rogeri, in Robert Steele (ed.), Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi fasc. v, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1920), 164–172.

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rent pattern in manuscripts, the physiognomic section of the Secretum circulated independently, often as part of a medically oriented compendium, and surrounded by other standard prognostic treatises useful for the physician (on the pulse, on urine, phlebotomy, medical semiotics of all sorts, or on astral medicine). Clearly, physiognomy had become part of the prognostic kit of the medical practitioner or the interested layman who employed a series of tools of medical semiotics, including physiognomic signs. The medical context of premodern Jewish interest in physiognomy was as common as among their Latin counterparts. This should broaden our understanding of the role of this science among medieval Jews well beyond esoteric circles, into routine medical practice.40 From the second half of the thirteenth century and almost parallel to the surge of grand European encyclopedic projects such as Alexander Nequam’s De naturis rerum, Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum maius, Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum, or Bartholomeus Anglicus’ De proprietatibus rerum, the literary genre of encyclopedias became a vehicle for the orderly dissemination of physiognomic knowledge, as part of basic and standard scientific education for a learned person who attended Jewish schools.41 A physiognomic interest is clearly evident in the encyclopedia of Gershom ben Solomon of Arles, Šaʿar ha-šamayim, composed possibly in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Book 9 of the treatise, on the organs, is replete with physiognomic observations determined by an absolute preference for the intermediate position in each case.42 40

41 42

Joseph Ziegler, “Médecine et physiognomonie du xive au début du xvie siècle,” Médiévale 45 (2004): 87–105. See, for example, the three following manuscripts (all of Italian provenance) which contain a physiognomic section (‫ )שער בהכרת הפרצוף‬based on the Secretum secretorum physiognomy in a context of medical prognostics and therapeutics: ms Moscow, Russian State Library Günzburg 766, fols. 305r–313v (dated in 1516); ms Cambridge University Library Dd. 10.68, fols. 195r–196v (early 15th c.); and ms Bibliothèque nationale de France hebr. 1191, fols. 198v–205v (in the lower register of a chiromantic manual; 16th c.). See Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen, 252–254 for the influence of Secret of Secrets in the Hebrew tradition. Indispensable is The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy, ed. Steven Harvey (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000). Frédéric Simon Bodenheimer (ed.), Rabbi Gershom ben Shlomo d’Arles, Šaʿar ha-šamayim (Jerusalem: K. Sepher, 1953). For example, chapters 87–89, 258 (on the eyes): “The Philosopher writes in the beginning of the book On Animals (Aristotle, History of Animals i.10, 492a7, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 1: 783)—that man has either big, small, or intermediate eyes. The last indicate goodness of reason and of character; the others are bad and indicate the contrary. Protruding eyes indicate clearness of thought and bad character. Eyes which are sunken in indicate good observation, the intermediate ones, good character. Some eyes are widely open, others almost closed, others intermediate. The widely open eyes indi-

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But a more significant pool of physiognomic knowledge is the exhaustive practical encyclopedia of c. 1360 entitled Sefer ševilei ʾemunah (“Paths of Faith”) and compiled by Meir ben Isaac Aldabi of Toledo (1310–1360). It was dedicated to a wide variety of scientific and religious subjects, such as God and his attributes, creation, astronomy, creation of man and embryology, anatomy and physiology, regimen of the body, the soul, religious observances, the Oral Law, reward and punishment, Messianic redemption, and the world to come. It was to a great extent based on Gershom ben Solomon’s Šaʿar ha-šamayim and was heavily criticized by Moritz Steinschneider as a “composition [that] exceeds the amount of unattributed borrowing permitted to a medieval author without being considered a plagiarist.”43 The question of Aldabi’s originality or lack of it is important but irrelevant for this essay. As regards his use of physiognomy, he certainly does not blindly follow Gershom ben Solomon but adds substantial information based on a variety of sources. As a pool of physiognomic knowledge, Ševilei ʾemunah, which had a significant diffusion (through at least ten manuscripts which normally included parts 3–4 or 2–4 of the treatise), constitutes an important stage in the long history of Hebrew physiognomy. It is divided into ten netivot (paths), the fourth of which, dedicated to the human body, discusses generation and the character and function of every organ (‫)איך נוצר האדם בבטן אמו ותכונת כל אבר וטעמו‬. The text follows systematically all the bodily organs (external and internal) from head to toe, and fuses into the physiological and medical discourses a series of common physiognomic observations linking the individual organs to behavioral patterns and clearly relying on standard physiognomic manuals; following Ibn Zabara, Aldabi attributes these to Plato.44 For the physiognomic content of his encyclopedia Aldabi doubtless uses the physiognomic information in the Hebrew translation of the Secret of Secrets, and he also quotes some of Ibn Zabara’s physiognomic maxims. But his main source for physiognomic knowledge was al-Rāzī’s Kitāb al-Manṣūrī which he quotes not from Shem Tov Ben Isaac’s translation. Both texts, Secretum secretorum and Kitāb al-Manṣūrī, were among

43

44

cate stupidity and impudence, the closed ones, sleepiness and neglect of business, and the intermediate ones, good observation at any time”; or chapters 133 and 264 (on the ears): “Ears of intermediate size indicate good (understanding), whilst big ears indicate stupidity.” See also James T. Robinson, “Gershom ben Solomon’s Šaʿar ha-šamayim: Its Sources and Use of Sources,” in The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias, 248–274. Charles H. Manekin, “Steinschneider on the Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias: An Annotated Translation from Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters,” in The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias, 465–509 (on Aldabi at 507–509 and 511–517). See the appendix at the end of this essay. Steinschneider in Manekin, “Steinschneider on the Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias,” 509 n. 113.

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the standard authoritative texts at the foundation of Latin and Arabic scientific physiognomic discourse. By using them, Aldabi avers an integration of Hebrew physiognomy into this scientific tradition. Aldabi’s text had significant diffusion long after the fourteenth century: some fifteen printed editions (the latest in 1990) have succeeded the first of 1559, thus rendering it relevant for our knowledge of the reception of Sephardic medieval learning in Ashkenaz.45

4

Conclusion

It has been suggested that compilations like Ševilei ʾemunah were intended to enable students in the Spanish Talmudic schools to acquire a minimal amount of philosophic-scientific knowledge. That physiognomy was an integral part of this basic philosophical knowledge, and harmoniously fused into medical and anatomical discourse surrounding the human body, invites us to broaden our notion of physiognomy as a prognostic art among medieval Jews. Intricate physiognomic thinking and practices were indeed shared by mystics who turned it into a powerful prognostic and mantic tool. But at the same time physiognomic manuals were part of a practical prognostic-kit offered as a standard tool for practitioners (as attested by the presence of Secretum secretorum physiognomy in medical compendia). The latter were also diagnosing mental, moral, and intellectual constitutions and possibly predicting behavioral patterns. Physiognomy was also incorporated into encyclopedic literature as part of general knowledge about the human body, stretching even farther the notion of physiognomy as a prognostic art. As Ševilei ʾemunah is a Sephardic text, we need more examples from Iberia and from Ashkenaz before we can pronounce a general pluralistic Jewish attitude to physiognomy as a prognostic art. But the examples in this essay suggest that non-mantic physiognomic knowledge, borrowed from common and current physiognomic manuals through nonkabbalistic channels, was part of Jewish scientific thinking and practice at least from the fourteenth century. It is impossible at this stage firmly to establish that Hebrew physiognomy was directly indebted to the main Greco-Roman physiognomic texts, but the clear traces of Greco-Roman physiognomy (transmitted via Secretum secretorum or al-Rāzī’s Liber almansoris) in the Hebrew texts dis45

Meir ben Isaac Aldabi, Sefer ševilei ʾemunah (Paths of Faith) (Trento: Riva di Trento, 1559); Plessner, “Arabic Parallels,” 74–75. See also Resianne Fontaine, “An Unexpected Source of Meir Aldabi’s Shevile Emunah,” Zutot 4, 1 (2004): 96–100; and Dov Schwartz, “Towards the Study of the Sources of Rabbi Meir Aldabi’s Ševilei ha-ʾemunah,” Sinai 114 (1993/4): 72–77 (in Hebrew).

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cussed above should encourage the student of Hebrew physiognomy to place it in the chain of ancient and medieval (non-Jewish) authorities rather than only in that of the internal Jewish tradition.46 The vestiges of Hebrew physiognomic thinking in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Catalonia, which anchored in natural philosophy and not only in internal traditions of Jewish magic, suggest that Meir Aldabi’s approach to physiognomy may not have been unique.47

Appendix: (Physiognomy in Meir ben Isaac Aldabi’s Ševilei ʾEmunah, Path iv)48 .(1.‫ )דף מ״ה עמ׳ א‬.‫ השביל הראשון בראש כולו מבית ומחוץ‬/ ‫שערות הראש‬ The hair of the head / the first track on the whole head from within and without. ‫ והשער הרך יורה על מורך הלב וקור‬.‫השער הגס יורה על חוזק הלב ובריאות המוח‬ 49… ‫ צהיבות השער יורה על השטות וריבוי הכעס‬.‫המוח ומיעוט התבונה‬

Rough hair indicates the power of the heart [courage] and the health of the brain. Soft hair indicates softness of the heart, coldness of the brain, and little wisdom. Yellowness of the hair indicates foolishness and excessive anger. .(2.‫ דף מ״ז עמ׳ ב‬,‫המוח שבראש )השביל הראשון‬

46

47

48 49

See, for example, Meerson, “Physiognomy and Somatomancy,” 1:563–585, which suggests a certain affinity between the Greek and Latin physiognomic manuals and the Jewish somatomantic texts from Qumran to the Zohar. Hannah Davidson, “The Mind-Body Connection: Physiognomy and the Evil Eye in the Writing of Nachmanides and Nissim Gerondi,” Sefunot, Studies and Sources on the History of the Jewish Communities in the East (new series) 10 (2016/2017): 287–311, at 290–297 (in Hebrew). Based on the Trento first edition (1559). Gaster, Secretum secretorum 3:269, 87 and 88: .‫השיער הגס יורה על חיזוק הלב ובריאות המוח‬ ‫והשיער הרך יורה על מורך הלב וקור המוח ומיעוט התבונה … השיער הצהוב יורה על השטות‬ ‫וריבוי הכעס ומהירותו‬. Al-Rāzī, Liber almansoris, in ms Biblioteca ApostolicaVaticana Urb. ebr. 50, fol. 23v: ‫השער הרך מורה על מורך הלב והעב על הגבורה‬. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:150: “Mollis capillus timiditatem indicat; asper capillus fortitudinem significat.” The Latin version of Secretum secretorum speaks of the link between red hair (not yellow or fair) and irascibility.

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The Brain in the Head. ‫כתב אפלאטון מי שצמחו >צ״ל מצחו< עגול נוטה אל פאת פניו הוא רוגז כל דבריו‬ ‫ ואם הוא קטן יהיה כסיל ואם הוא‬.‫ ואם הוא ישר בלא עיקובה הוא בעל מריבה‬.‫ועניניו‬ 50.‫גדול יהיה עצל‬

Plato wrote: The one whose forehead is round and inclines to the side of his face is prone to anger in every word and deed. And if it is smooth without a wrinkle, he is quarrelsome. If it is small he will be foolish, and if large he will be lazy. .(2.‫ דף מ״ז עמ׳ ב‬,‫הגבות )השביל הראשון‬ The Brows. ‫ ואם הם‬.‫כתב אפלאטון מי שגבות עיניו רבות השער דברו כבד והוא בעל יגון וצער‬ 51.‫ יהיר וגס רוח‬,‫ארוכות יהא זד‬

Plato wrote: The one whose eyebrows are thick, his speech is heavy and he is a man of grief and sorrow. And if they are long, he is arrogant and shameless. .(1.‫ דף מ״ט עמ׳ ב‬,‫העיניים )השביל הראשון‬ 50

51

Davidson, Ibn Zabara, Sepher shaʿashuʿim, 18; and Dishon, The Physician and the Demon, 101: ‫ הוא רגז מאד בכל דבריו ועניניו‬,‫ומי שמצחו עגול נוטה אל פאת פניו‬. Al-Rāzī, Liber almansoris in ms Biblioteca ApostolicaVaticana Urb. ebr. 50, fol. 24v: ‫מי שמצחו שטוח אין תלמים בו‬ ‫ ומי שמצחו‬.‫ ומי שיהיה זעום המצח נוטה אל האמצע הוא כעסן‬.‫מורה שהוא בעל מרובה וקטטה‬ ‫ ומי שמצחו רב התלמים מורה שבעליו‬.‫ ואם יהיה כביר יורה שהוא עצל‬.‫קטן מורה שהוא סכל‬ ‫יהיר‬. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:167–168: “Cuius frons plana est rugas non habens, litigiosus est et commovens rixas. Cuius frons est rugosa ad medium sui declinans, irascibilis est. Qui parvam habet frontem, stolidus est. Qui vero magnam habet frontem est piger.” Davidson, Ibn Zabara, Sepher shaʿashuʿim, 18; and Dishon, The Physician and the Demon, 100: ‫ דברו כבד והוא בעל יגון וצער‬,‫ומי שגבות עיניו רבות השער‬. Al-Rāzī, Liber almansoris, in ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Urb. ebr. 50, fol. 24v: ‫מי שגבות עיניו רבי השער מורה‬ ‫ וכשיהיו ארוכים נמתחים אל הצדעים מורה שבעליהם‬.‫שבעליהם רב האנחה והאניכור והאבלות‬ ‫ וכן מי שגבות עיניו נוטים למול האף למטה ואל מול הצדע כלפי מעלה מורה שהוא‬.‫נבוך וחושק‬ ‫ בהול‬,‫יהיר‬. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:167: “Qui in superciliis pilorum habet multitudinem, multarum est cogitationum et multae tristitiae atque eius loquela foeda est et crassa. Cuius supercilia longa sunt, arrogans est et inverecundus. Cuius supercilia inferius descendunt a parte naris et superius elevantur a parte timporis, inverecundus est et hebes.”

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The Eyes. ‫כתב אפלאטון מי שעיניו שוקעו>ת< ולנוע ולהביט ממהרות הוא ערום ומתנכל ובעל‬ ‫ ומי שעיניו‬.‫ עצל ואינו נאמן בדבר‬,‫ ואם הם גדולות ובולטות הוא קנאי ועז פנים‬.‫מריבות‬ 52.‫ממוצעים והם שוקעים מקיץ ומבין ואוהב נאמן‬

Plato wrote: The one whose eyes are sunken and move quickly is crafty, plotting, and quarrelsome. And if they are large and protruding he is envious and impertinent, lazy and unfaithful. And the one whose eyes are of medium size and sunken is alert and wise, and a loyal friend. .(1.‫ דף נ עמ׳ ב‬,‫האזניים )השביל הראשון‬ The Ears. ‫ ואם הם‬.‫כתב אפלאטון מי שאזניו גדולות יהיה כסיל אמנ>ם< הוא מבין ויאריך ימים‬ 53.‫קטנים יהיה בהפך ושוטה‬

Plato wrote: The one whose ears are large is foolish though he will have understanding and will be long-living. And if they are small he will be, on the contrary, stupid. .(2-1.‫ דף נ״א עמ׳ א‬,‫הנחירים )השביל הראשון‬ 52

53

Davidson, Ibn Zabara, Sepher shaʿashuʿim, 18; and Dishon, The Physician and the Demon, 100: ‫ הוא ערום ומתנכל ובעל תחבולות‬,‫ומי שעיניו שוקעות ולראות ולהביט מבהלות‬. Al-Rāzī, Liber almansoris, in ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Urb. ebr. 50, fol. 23v–24v: ‫מי שעיניו‬ ‫ מי שעיניו בולטים‬.‫ ומי שעיניו עקומים יורה שהוא בעל תחבולה וערום‬.‫גדולים יורה שהנו עצל‬ .‫הוא זר צווח ופתי … מי שיפרף עיניו במהירות ויניעם גם כן במהירות וחדות הוא חד הראות‬ ‫יורה שהוא רמאי ומלסטם הבריות‬. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:164: “Cuius oculi sunt magni, piger est. Cuius quoque oculi in profundo sunt, callidus est et deceptor … Cuius oculi cito mobiles sunt et acute cernentes, deceptor est et callidus atque latro.” Gaster, Secretum secretorum, 3:269, 83–84: ‫ומי שעיניו גדולות ובולטות הוא קנאי ועז‬ ,‫ עצל ואינו נאמן בדבר … ומי שעיניו ממוצעים והם שוקעים והם כחולות ושחורות הוא מקיץ‬,‫פנים‬ ‫ נאמן‬,‫ אוהב‬,‫… מבין‬ Davidson, Ibn Zabara, Sepher shaʿashuʿim, 19; and Dishon, The Physician and the Demon, 101: ‫ומי שאזניו גדולות הוא כסיל ובעל נבלות‬. Al-Rāzī, Liber almansoris, in Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:169: “Cuius aures magnae sunt, stolidus est et longae vitae” (missing from the Hebrew translation). Gaster, Secretum secretorum, 3:270, 95: ‫מי‬ ‫ גנב‬,‫ ומי שאזניו קטנות הוא שוטה‬.‫שאזניו גדולות הוא כסיל אלא שהוא מבין‬. Steele, Secretum secretorum, 169: “Et qui habet auriculas magnas est valde fatuus, excepto quod erit bone memorie et retentionis. Qui habet aures valde parvas, est stolidus, luxuriosus” (cf. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:208).

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The Nostrils. ‫כת>ב< אפלאטון מי שקצה נחיריו דק וקצר יורה שהו>א< אוהב ריב ומסה ואם דק‬ ‫ ואם‬.‫ ואם הוא עב הרבה הוא סכל‬.‫ ואם הוא קצר הוא רשע‬.‫וארוך הוא קל שוטה וסכל‬ ‫ ואם הוא ממוצע באורך ובגסות ונוטה בקצהו‬.‫יהיה נקב הנחיריים צר יורה שהוא כעסן‬ 54.‫אל הרקיקות הוא אות על השכל ועל התבונה‬

Plato wrote: The one whose tip of the nostrils is thin and short indicates that he is a lover of quarrels and disputes; if it is thin and long, he is stupid and light-minded. And if it is short, he is evil. And if it is very thick, he is a fool. And if the aperture of his nostrils is narrow, this indicates that he is prone to anger. And if it is moderate in length and breadth tending towards subtlety at its extremity it is a sign of intelligence and wisdom. .(2.‫ דף נ״א עמ׳ ב‬,‫השנים )השביל הראשון‬ The Teeth. ‫ וקוצר בשרם מורה עם‬.‫כתב אפלאטון פירוד השנים ודקותם מורה על חולשת הגוף‬ 55.‫קור המזג ולחותו‬

Plato wrote: Gaps between the teeth and their thinness indicate bodily weakness. The shortness of their flesh [i.e., their gum] indicates cold and moist complexion. .(1.‫ב‬2-.‫ דף נ״ב עמ׳ א‬,‫הלשון )השביל הראשון‬ 54

55

Davidson, Ibn Zabara, Sepher shaʿashuʿim, 18; and Dishon, The Physician and the Demon, 101: ‫ הוא בעל אף ואיש מדון וריבים‬,‫ומי שקצת אפו דק ונקביו גדולים ורחבים‬. Al-Rāzī, Liber almansoris, in ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Urb. ebr. 50, fol. 24v: ‫מי שעוקץ אפו דק‬ ‫ ומי שעוקץ אפו דק ארוך‬.‫ ואם יהיה עב מלא מורה שהוא מעט ההבנה‬.‫מורה שהוא אוהב מריבה‬ ‫ ומי שנקבי אפו חזקי‬.‫ ומי שאפו נמרח מורה שהוא תאב אל המשגל‬.‫מורה שהוא נמהר שוטה‬ ‫הפתוח מורה שבעליו הוא כעסן‬. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:167: “Cuius narium extremitas est subtilis, homo est diligens lites. Cuius nares magnae sunt et crassae, paucae sapientiae homo est. Cuius narium extremitas longa est et subtilis, festinus est et stultus atque levis. Cuius nares latae sunt, luxuriosus est. Cuius narium foramina valde sunt aperta, irascibilis est.” Gaster, Secretum secretorum in, 3:270, 90: ‫ויהיה ממוצע‬ ‫הגסות נוטה בקצהו אל הדקיקות הוא אות על השכל ועל התבונה‬. Al-Rāzī, Liber almansoris, in ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Urb. ebr. 50, fol. 24v: ‫מי‬ ‫שהוא חלוש השיניים עם דקותם ופרידתם מורה שהוא חלוש הבניין‬. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:168: “Cuius dentes debiles sunt et rari et minuti, totum eius corpus est debile …”

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The Tongue. ‫ ואם הו>א< עב‬.ם< יהיה מבין ומחשב הדברי>ם‬ ‫ אם פניו קטנים מאד יהיה רע ובליעל‬.‫ ואם הלחיי>ם< עבים יהיה גס רוח‬.‫יהיה עצל וכסיל‬ ‫ ואם הם עגולים מאד יהיה‬.‫ ואם הם ארוכים הוא זד יהיר‬.‫ובעל מרמה וגובה דעת הבריות‬ ‫ ואם לחייו נפוחין וורידי צוארו עצים‬.‫ ואם הם מכוערין לא יתכן להיות לו לב טוב‬.‫סכל‬ 56.‫]עבים?[ מתמלאי>ם< יהיה בעל אף וחמה‬

Plato wrote: The one whose face is slender will be understanding and thoughtful. And if it is fat, he will be lazy and foolish. And if his cheeks are thick, he will be of a rude nature. If his face is very small, he will be an evil person, a scoundrel, fraudster, and deceiver. If it is long, he is evil and arrogant. If it is very round, he will be foolish. If it is ugly, he cannot be good-hearted. And if his cheeks are puffed and the veins in his neck are thick, he is prone to anger and irascible. ‫המרה‬

The Bile. .(2.‫השביל השני באיברי הגוף הפנימיים )דף נ״ו עמ׳ א‬ The Second Track On the Internal Organs of the Body. .‫וכתב אפלאטון מי שמררתו קטנה יאריך ימים‬

56

Al-Rāzī, Liber almansoris, in ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Urb. ebr. 50, fol. 24v: ‫מי‬ .‫ ומי שלסתותיו רבות הבשר מורה שהוא עב הטבע‬.‫שפניו מלאים בשר מורה שהוא עצל ופתי‬ ‫ ומי שפניו עגולים מורה שהוא‬.‫ואם יהיה כחוש הפנים מורה שהוא ישים על ליבו ענייני העולם‬ ‫ ומי שפניו קטנים מורה שהוא קל וערום מחליק‬.‫ ומי שפניו גדולים מורה שהוא עצל‬.‫פתי וחסר לב‬ ‫ ומי‬.‫ ומי שפניו ארוכים מורה שהוא זד‬.‫ ומי שפניו קצרים אי אפשר שיהיה יפה המידות‬.‫הלשון‬ ‫שצדעיו נפוחים וורידי צוארו מלאים מורה שהוא כעסן‬. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:168–169: “Cuius facies carnosa est, piger est et stultus. Cuius maxillarum caro crassa est, crassae est naturae. Qui subtilem habet faciem, multarum est cogitationum. Cuius facies vehementer rotunda est, stultus existit … Cuius facies est valde parva, malus est et calidus et adulator. Cuius facies est deformis, mores habere bonos non potest nisi raro … Qui timpora habet inflata et venas et arterias crassas, irascibilis est.” Secretum secretorum is not the direct source here; nevertheless see Gaster, Secretum secretorum, 3:270, 94 for some similarities: ‫ ומי שפניו רזים‬.‫מי שפניו מרובה בשר ולחייו נפוחים גס הטבע‬ ‫ ומי שצעדיו נפוחים‬.‫ ומי שפניו ארוכים הוא עז פנים‬.‫ רמאי גונב דעת הבריות‬,‫ומכורכמים הוא רע‬ ‫ורידיו ממולאים הוא כעסן‬.

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Plato wrote: The one whose gallbladder is small will be long-living. .(1.‫ דף ס״ג עמ׳ ב‬,‫הרחם )השביל השני‬ The Womb ‫כתב אפלאטון שהנקבה בכל דבר נפש חלשה ועור חלק וממהרת לכעוס ולהתפתות‬ ‫ולהשתוקק ובעלת קולית ומרמה וזדון וראשה קטן ופניה רכים וצוארה רקיק חגורה צר‬ ‫וכתפיה ופחות צלעות וגדול ירך ורב בשר בברכים ורקיק>ים< השוקי>ם< ורגל קטן‬ .‫וכף קטן והי>א< לעול>ם< רעת מעללים מן הזכר בכל מיני המיזוג‬

Plato wrote: that the female is weak in all matters related to the soul, her skin is soft, she is prone to anger, to temptation, and to lustful desire, and given to deceit and to malice. Her head is small, her face is soft, her neck is thin, her waist and shoulders are narrow, her ribs are smaller, her thighs are big, fleshy in the knees, and thin legs, and a small foot, and her hand is small. She will act worse than the male under all circumstances. ‫הצואר‬

The Neck. .(2.‫השביל השלישי באברי הגוף החיצוניים )דף ס״ג עמ׳ ב‬ The Third Track on the External Organs of the Body. ‫ ואם הוא ארוך יהיה חלש‬.‫כתב אפלאטון מי שצוארו קצר הוא רמאי ולכל איש אויב וצר‬ 57.‫ ואם הוא חזק ועב יהיה בעל אף ורוצח‬.‫ושוטה‬

Plato wrote: Whose neck is short is deceitful and enemy to all. And if it is long, he will be weak and foolish. And if it is strong and thick he will be irascible and a murderer. 57

Davidson, Ibn Zabara, Sepher shaʿashuʿim, 19; and Dishon, The Physician and the Demon, 101: ‫ הוא רמאי ולכל איש אויב וצר‬,‫ומי שצוארו קצר‬. Al-Rāzī, Liber almansoris, in ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Urb. ebr. 50, fol. 25r: ‫מי שצוארו קצר מאוד מורה שהוא רמאי‬ ‫ מי שצוארו דק מורה שהוא צווח שוטה רך‬.‫ מי שצוארו עב חזק מורה שהוא כעסן נמהר‬.‫ערום‬ ‫הלבב‬. Förster, Scriptores Physiognomonici Graeci et Latini, 2:170: “Qui collum habet curtum, callidus est et ingeniosus, cuius collum est longum et gracile, stolidus est et garrulus atque timidus. Qui crassum habet collum durum ac forte, iracundus est et festinus.” Gaster, Secretum secretorum, 3:271, 98: ‫ ומי שצווארו ארוך‬.‫ שקרו‬,‫מי שצווארו קצר מאוד הוא רמאי‬ ‫ אוכל הרבה‬,‫ רך לבב … ומי שצווארו ארוך ועבה הוא כסיל‬,‫ שוטה‬,‫דקיק הוא קלוני‬.

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chapter 10

Inscriptio characterum: Solomonic Magic and Paleography With an Appendix on the Making of the Grimoire by Nicholas Pickwoad Charles Burnett

Scribantur auro purissimo et atramento rubeo1

∵ This chapter draws attention to elements concerning writing materials and the manufacture of books that are found in medieval Latin works of magic. These elements are especially characteristic of certain Latin works attributed to Solomon and have an obvious or purported Hebrew origin. The emphasis is not so much on the magical procedures as such, but on the materials mentioned—writing instruments, inks, skins of different animals, and other objects written upon—and the chapter ends with the detailed description of how to make a book in which the spirits themselves can write their magical messages.2

1 Florence Biblioteca nazionale ii. iii. 214, fol. 28r. I am grateful for the help of Josefina Rodríguez Arribas, Gideon Bohak, Odile Dapsens, Sophie Page, Liana Saif, Gal Sofer, Geert Jan van Gelder, Hanna Vorholt, Nicolas Weill-Parot, the anonymous reviewers, and especially Nicholas Pickwoad, who has contributed the appendix. May their names be written in the purest gold and red ink! 2 In recent years Medieval Latin magical texts have been the subject of several important books and articles, of which the most relevant here are Nicolas Weill-Parot, Les “images astrologiques” au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002); and Benoît Grévin and Julien Véronèse, “Les ‘caractères’ magiques au Moyen Age (xiie–xive siècle),” Bibliothèque de l’ Ecole des chartes 162 (2004): 305–379. The present chapter is a complement to my “Remarques paléographiques et philologiques sur les noms d’anges et d’esprits dans les traités de magie traduits de l’ arabe en latin,” in Les anges et la magie au moyen âge, ed. Jean-Patrice Boudet, Henri Bresc, and Benoît Grévin = Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome (Rome: École française de Rome, 2002), 657–668, which deals with the transmission of the spoken words of power.

© Charles Burnett, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445703_012

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In the Speculum astronomiae, written in the mid-thirteenth century, the science of magical talismans (necromanticae imagines) is divided into two kinds. According to the unidentified author, whom we may call the Magister Speculi, the first is “abominable” (abominabilis) and requires suffumigations and invocations; the second is “less unsuitable” (minus incommodus), but nevertheless “detestable” (detestabilis), and is effected by “the writing of characters (inscriptio characterum) which have to be exorcised through certain names.”3 He then gives a brief list of the texts belonging to each of these categories.4 He concludes by saying that “May this kind (the detestable kind) also be far from us; for it is suspected that something lies hidden under the names of an unknown language which is contrary to the honor of the catholic faith.”5 Most of the texts relating to the abominable variety are attributed to Hermes or Apollonius. The main authority, however, for the texts in the detestable list is Solomon. It would be tempting to consider the texts in the first list as deriving from ancient Greek magic, as transmitted via the Arabs, and the second as belonging to Hebrew magic. The situation is not so simple as this, since several of the texts of the second category have also acquired Islamic and even Christian elements in the course of their transmission. Two of them, however— The Seven Names from the Book of Muḥammad, and The Book of Instruction by Raziel—are clearly of ultimately Hebrew origin.6

3 Speculum astronomiae, in Paola Zambelli, The Speculum Astronomiae and its Enigma: Astrology, Theology, and Science in Albertus Magnus and his Contemporaries (Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Springer, 1992), 240: “Est et alius modus aliquantulum minus incommodus, detestabilis tamen, qui fit per inscriptionem characterum per quaedam nomina exorcizandorum.” The Magister Speculi’s “characteres” here are the symbols in which the magical “nomina” are written. 4 A longer list of texts in which the two kinds are not distinguished is given, Speculum astronomiae, 242–247. It is not my intention to explore the viability of the Magister Speculi’s division here. 5 Speculum astronomiae, 240: “Hic modus etiam a nobis longe sit: suspectus enim est ne saltem sub ignotae linguae nominibus aliquod lateat quod sit contra fidei catholicae honestatem.” 6 The dates of these translations have not yet been established with certainty; the first references to them are from the 1230s. For the Hebrew elements of The Seven Names see n. 19 of this chapter. The Book of Raziel refers to a collection of texts which has a complex history in Hebrew and in its partial Latin translation; see Reimund Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 187–294 (on one version of the Hebrew text and its relation to a Latin version), and 331–341 (on the version translated from Latin into Hebrew); and Bill Rebiger and Peter Schäfer, Sefer ha-razim I und ii, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) (these Hebrew texts are the source of book 6 and part of book 4 in the Latin Liber Raziel translated under the aegis of Alfonso x). See also Sophie Page, “Uplifting Souls: The Liber de essentia spirituum and

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What is more distinctive of the detestable kind is their focus on written names, which conforms to the description of the common theme of these texts as “the writing of characters” (inscriptio characterum), and which contrasts to the first kind in which the words of power are usually spoken out loud (invocatio). The writing of the names brings us into the realm of paleography, and what I would like to explore in this chapter are the references to the practical aspects of writing and the production of books that we find in these texts, as a supplement to the study of the paleography and codicology of the period in which they were written and read. The short list of works falling under the Magister Speculi’s “detestable” category is as follows:7 1) The four rings of Solomon. 2) The nine candariae. 3) The three figures of the spirits who are called the princes of the four regions of the world. 4) The Almandal of Solomon. 5) The sigil for those suffering from demon possession. (At this point the author adds “Amplius”—“moreover”—and what follows are all lists of names—nomina) 6) The seven names from the book of Muḥammad. 7) Another fifteen names from the same . 8) The names from the book of instruction (liber institutionis), which is called of Raziel, of the earth, the sea, the air and fire, winds, the cardines of the world; also of the signs and the planets and their angels, according to the fact that each takes different names in the triplicities of the day and the night.8

the Liber Razielis,” in Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices,Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Claire Fanger (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 79–112 (without reference to ms Florence, Biblioteca nazionale ii. iii. 214) and, most recently, Julien Véronèse, “Solomonic Magic,” in The Routledge History of Medieval Magic, ed. Sophie Page and Catherine Rider (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 187–200. 7 See Weill-Parot, Les “images astrologiques,” 52–60, where a paragraph is devoted to each of the following works, identifying them in manuscripts, including ms Florence, Biblioteca nazionale ii. iii. 214 (see below). 8 The longer list (Speculum astronomiae, 244–247) includes the incipits of all these works, and assigns the first five to Solomon, nos 6 and 7 to “Mahometh” and 8 to Raziel, omitting the contents of the book of Raziel and adding a book “on the Head of Saturn … whose author I do not know” (De capite Saturni … cuius auctorem ignoro).

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Fortunately, most of the texts in this “detestable” category survive in the compendious magical manuscript of the fifteenth century, Florence, Biblioteca nazionale, ii. iii. 214.9 The text which gives the simplest form of magic based on writing is The Fifteen Names on fols. 41r–42r of the Florence manuscript, in which the only procedure used is the writing of the powerful names on different materials. There are no suffumigations or invocations here, only the writing of nomina. The work begins with a description of the source of the names which are to be written. In their original imposition by God only two are specifically referred to as being written (nos. 8 and 12), while two of them are spoken (nos. 9 and 11), and the rest could have been written or spoken: These are the fifteen secret names which the philosophers found in the four major books, namely in the law of Moses, in the Gospels, in the Psalms of David, and in the book of Muḥammad. (1) God gave the first of these names to Enoch who was called Hermes; through this name He took him up to heaven. (2) The second name He gave to Noah. (3) The third, to Moses, who drew a stream from a stone with this name. (4) The fourth, God gave to Lot, who dwelt among the Sodomites and with this name two angels descended to destroy Sodom. (5) The fifth, to Isaiah the prophet. (6) The sixth, to Abraham the patriarch. (7) The seventh, to Joseph. (8) The eighth, to Moses; when it was written on his rod, his rod immediately was turned into a serpent. (9) The ninth, to Moses, and with this name he prayed, and his hand became white. (10) The tenth similarly was given to Moses, and with this name the sea opened up to the children of Israel. (11) The eleventh God gave to Joshua son of Nun, and with it he prayed that the Sun should stand still, and it stood still. (12) The twelfth was given to Solomon the son of King David; this name was written on the stone of his ring and with it he dominated the demons and all the birds. (13) The thirteenth was given to Jesus, son of Mary (partially erased), if he is, as some

9 For a description of this manuscript and its contents see Julien Véronèse, L’Almandal et l’ Almadel latins au Moyen Age (Florence: sismel 2012), 69–72. This is evidently a clean copy of a manuscript or manuscripts written at the latest in the early thirteenth century. Each of the texts in this manuscript is discussed in David Pingree, “Learned Magic in the Time of Frederick ii,” Micrologus 2 (1994): 39–56 (at 49–53). The Fifteen Names and The Seven Names are unique to this manuscript. Note that in my quotations from this manuscript I have used angle brackets < > to indicate editorial additions, square brackets [ ] for editorial deletions, parentheses () for the realisation of abbreviations (where they are not obvious), and oblique slashes \ / to indicate additions by the scribe.

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assert, (lacuna),10 it is thus, and with it he revived the dead and cured lepers and everyone else from disease. (14–15) The fourteenth and fifteenth God gave to Muḥammad. These are the names which God first revealed to Adam, and with these names He descended from heaven to Earth. Whoever, therefore, has and knows these names ought to be confident in God, and in these and their strengths. And these are the names: (a space of 7–8 lines has been left blank). Whoever desires to know the effect of these names first must fast and give alms to the poor out of love for the Creator, and distance himself from every evil.11 When the author, however, describes the magical use of these names, they are always written. He describes the object on which each name has to be written, the astrologically propitious time of the writing, and what should be done with the object that has been written on.12 10

11

12

It is curious that the only name erased is “Jesus, son of Mary” and that the words that “some assert” include a lacuna that makes it impossible to know what was asserted. This could reflect the scruple of a Christian reader. Fol. 41r: “Haec sunt nomina secreta .xv. que phylosophi in quatuor libris principalibus invenerunt, scilicet in lege Moysi et Evangelio et Psalmis David et in Libro Machumet. Primum horum nominum dedit Deus Enoc, qui Hermes vocabatur, et per hoc nomen eum in celum sustulit. Secundum nomen dedit Noe. Tertium, Moysi, qui cum hoc nomine de petra flumen extraxit. Quartum dedit Deus Lot[h], qui Sodomis morabatur et cum hoc duo angeli descenderunt in Sodome ruinam. .v., Ysaie prophete. .vi. Habrae patriarche. .vii. Yosephe. .viii. Moysi, qui cum virga eius scriberetur, statim virga in serpentem fuit conversa. .viiii. Moysi, et cum hoc nomine oravit et facta est manus alba. .x. similiter datum est Moysi, et cum hoc nomine apertum est mare filiis Israel. .xi.m dedit Deus Iosue filio Nun (Num ms), et cum eo oravit ut sol staret, et stetit. .xii.m datum est Salomoni filio David regis, et erat hoc nomen scriptum in lapide anuli sui et cum eo dominabatur demonibus et omnibus avibus. .xiii.m datum est Yeso (?) filio Marie (Y.f.M. partially erased), si est ut quidam asserunt quam vix (?) (lacuna ca. 5 litterarum) sit sic, et cum eo suscitabat mortuos et sanabat leprosos et alios egro omnes. .xiiii.m et .xv.m dedit Deus Mu\h/amet. Hec sunt nomina que Deus Ad[d]e homini primo ostendit, et cum /41v/ his nominibus descendit de celo ad terram. Quicumque ergo hec nomina habuerit et sciverit, in Deo et in illis et in eorum virtutibus confidere debet. Et hec sunt nomina (lacuna 7 aut 8 linearum). Quicumque istorum nominum effectum desiderat cognoscere, primum necesse est ieiunare, et amore Creatoris elemosinas pauperibus erogare, et ab omni malo se alienum constituere.” The immediate source of the Old and New Testament references is likely to be the Quʾrān, where, for example, the turning of Moses’ rod into a serpent (not followed by the reverse procedure) is mentioned (Quʾrān 7 (al-Aʿraf), 106/107, 27 (al-Naml), 12 and 20 (Ta Ha), 20, in contrast to Exodus, 4.2–3), and the whitening of Moses’ hand is regarded as a blessing rather than a temporary attack of leprosy (Quʾrān 7 (al-Aʿraf), 107/108, 27 (alNaml), 12 and 20 (Ta Ha), 22, in contrast to Exodus 4, 6). Compare the reflections on the ritualistic components of divination in Chapter One, 23; Chapter Three, 107–109; and Chapter Five, 182 of this book.

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Thus, the first name is to be written on a gold folium, which, when fitted into the belt of the client, enables him to approach men in authority without fear. The second name is written on a sword, so that no one will resist the client, and a woman in labor will be freed from her pains. The third name is written on a knife, whose touch cures those suffering from violence, affected by magic, suffering narcolepsy or wounded by a wild animal. The fourth name, written on a silver lamina with ben oil,13 makes the wearer fall in love. The fifth, written on a hard, white stone, when buried, prevents demons, ghosts, scorpions and thieves from entering the house. The sixth, written on a lead lamina, affects with illness the person whose name is written on it. The seventh, written on a white glass vase, causes an angel to appear in the vase, showing you what you want . The eighth, written on an iron lamina together with a picture of a cat, keeps mice away. The ninth, written on a bronze rod, when placed in water, will attract a multitude of fish. The tenth, written on an unbaked (but only dried) potsherd (testa), will expel blood or leeches. The eleventh, written on a black stone, gets rid of flies. The twelfth, written on a tin lamina, when folded and fitted to the neck of any beast, will free it from every ill. The thirteenth, written on a piece of wood, will cure any beast or woman in labor. The fourteenth, written on the stone of a silver ring, will compel anyone to whom it is shown, to submit to the wearer; and if a woman is touched with it, she will follow the wearer to his place. The fifteenth is written on a copper lamina; when white wax is pressed on the sigil and a runaway slave is named, he will return. The procedure for the first name may be used as an example: He should take a gold folium and write the first name on it on the day and hour belonging to the Sun,14 when Leo is in the ascendant and the Sun is in its house or in one of its dignities. Then he should fit that folium to the belt of the client, and then he (the client) will stand confidently in front of important people in every case, provided that he wears it with cleanliness and devotion.15

13

14 15

Ben oil comes from the tropical ben tree and, among other things, increases sexual potency; see Efraim Lev and Zohar Amar, Practical ‘Materia Medica’ of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean According to the Cairo Genizah (Leiden and Boston: Brill 2008), 356. For the planetary rulers of the days and their allotted hours, see Appendix 1 in Chapter Six of this book, 208. F. 41v: “… folium aur\e/um habeat et nomen primum in eo scribat in die Solis et eius hora, Leone horoscopo, Sole in domo sua morante aut in aliqua dignitate. Deinde folium istud

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The inscriptions are on objects rather than on customary writing materials. Since the names are not given, we cannot be sure that they were written in an unknown language, though we might suspect that they are, and for that reason the copyist was careful not to reproduce them (just as he, or a later reader, did not want the name of Jesus to be sullied by its presence in a magical text). In all cases the names are written rather than spoken out loud. No spirits, demons or jinns are summoned with these names and thus this text avoids coming under the category of “abominable” magical talismans. Nevertheless, the solidity of the substances on which the names are written suggests the making of talismans (a three-dimensional support) rather than a two-dimensional support such as parchment or paper. The situation is rather different in the text that immediately precedes The Fifteen Names, both in the Magister Speculi’s list and in the Florence manuscript: namely The Seven Names from the Book of Muḥammad (Septem nomina ex libro Muhameth), found on fols. 38r–41r of the manuscript. For this book introduces prayers and suffumigations. The author of this work is not the prophet Muḥammad (as the Magister Speculi seems to have thought), but rather a whole series of authors who seem to have originally followed each other in the typical Arabic isnād (the chain of authorities on which a tradition is based).16 The work begins as follows: Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Māʾmūn said that Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Ibrahīm said that Abū Bakr ibn Mujāhid said that Abū ’l-Ḥakīm(?) AbdulRaḥmān ibn Abdullāh(?) said that Abū Bakr Maḥmūd ibn Bashīr17 said:

16 17

in cingulo intendentis aptetur, et deinde ante magnos viros confidenter per omni causa (sic!) stet et hanc tamen h(abeat) cum munditia et religione.” I.e. author a following author b following author c … (often ending with the prophet Muḥammad) said …. For identification of the Latin transcriptions of the Arabic names, see Pingree, “Learned Magic,” 46 (my transcription differs a little from Pingree’s). I owe to Geert Jan van Gelder the information that there was a grandson or great-grandson of the caliph al-Maʾmūn called Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Faḍl ibn al-Maʾmūn (two entries “Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Faḍl ibn al-Maʾmūn,” with different kunyas (teknonyms) in the Tārīḵ Baghdād aw madīnat al-salām of Abī Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī), and that Abū Bakr ibn Mujāhid wrote the Kitāb al-Sabʿah, “the Book of the Seven,” referring to the Seven “Readings” or versions of the Quʾrān that became canonical (the sevenness makes it appropriate that he should be mentioned here). I have changed the “and … said” between each name to “that … said,” which is the only way to make sense of the repeated dixit.

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These are the seven secret names of God, corresponding to the seven days which all time runs through, and there are seven circles, each of which bears one of the angels who praise the Creator every day with the name given to it. Thus, God made seven heavens and seven earths and seven seas, and He arranged the other creatures through the number seven by the operation of His wonderful power, and thus He attributed one sacred and blessed name to each of the seven days. He gave the first and greatest name to the Sabbath, through which the Lord gave the Law on Mount Sinai to Moses and showed it to him in the most secret scriptures, and Moses operated through it on everything that he wanted. And with this name Moses prayed in the early morning and evening, every single day. Whoever knows this sacred name or has it with him, should adore the Creator devotedly. Nor should he touch it in an unclean state, otherwise he will be struck by an angel before the day of death. Whoever wishes to operate anything which pertains to the Sabbath, should write that name secretly on the skin of a gazelle, when his body and clothing are clean, and it will be suffumigated with costus and myrrh. On that day he should distance himself from all food, except bread and water, and preserve the sacred name and thus, wherever he stays or enters, he will be safe.18

18

Fol. 38r: “Dixit Muhamet filius Alhascen [et] filius Amoemen quod (et ms) dixit Abubelver Hamet filius Habrae quod (et ms) dixit Abubecher filius Mugehic quod (et ms) dixit Abulacha Abdiram(en) filius Abduc quod (et ms) dixit Abubeluer Mauhmet filius Bosit: quod hec sunt nomina Dei .vii. secreta secundum numerum .vii. dierum per omne tempus discurrit, et sunt .vii. circuli super quorum singulum angelus unus constitutus est, qui cottidie Creatorem laudant cum nomine sibi deputato. Et sic fecit Deus .vii. celos et .vii. terras et .vii. maria; et ceteras creaturas per septenarium numerum disposuit sua mirabili virtute operante et sic unicuique .vii. dierum unum nomen secretum et benedictum attribuit. Diei ergo Sabbati primum nomen et maximum concessit, per quod dominus legem in monte Synay Moysi dedidit et in scripturis secretioribus ei ostendit, et operabatur per illud Moyses in omni quod volebat. Et cum hoc nomine orabat Moyses sumo mane et vespere per unumquemque diem. Quicumque hoc nomen /38v/ sanctum sciverit vel secum habuerit, devote Creatorem adorare debet nec eum inmundus tangat; sin autem ante diem mortis ab angelo percutietur. Quicumque aliquid operare voluerit, quod scilicet [nomine] diei sabbati pertinuerit, scribat illud nomen secrete, corpore et habitu mundo, in pergameno algacel et fumigabitur de costo et thure, sed in die ab omni cibo se alienum constituat exceptis pane et aqua, et servet nomen sanctum et sic ubicumque manserit vel intraverit securus existat.”

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This text was probably translated by the same person as translated The Fifteen Names.19 But the role of writing here is different: it is closer to normal scribal practice; the writing is usually on parchment of various kinds, and the ink that is to be used is sometimes specified. First the procedure for using each name is prescribed: 1) Saturday’s name is written on the skin of a gazelle (in pergameno algacel). 2) Sunday’s name is written on unbaked potter’s clay (in argilla non cocta) or an unbaked potsherd (testa non cocta), and is subsequently washed off. 3) Monday’s name is written on the skin of a gazelle (in pergameno algacel) with ink made of alum and saffron (cum tincta de seue20 facta et cafaram). 4) Tuesday’s name is written on very thin clean parchment (in pergameno tenuissimo mundo) with the blood of a dove (cum sanguine columbe). 5) Wednesday’s name is written on clean parchment (in pergameno mundo). 6) Thursday’s name is written on the skin of suenes (in pelle de suenes/ suenos). 7) The seventh name is written on parchment of arciginim21 (in pergameno de arciginim). These names must now be exorcised by a series of further names,22 which requires fasting, wearing clean clothes, praying to God, burning incense (suffumigation) and, above all, more writing. Here is an excerpt from the instructions for exorcising the first name (that of Saturday):

19

20 21

22

Both authors use the term “tema” and the phrases “ab … se alienum” and “potentia Creatoris.” Gideon Bohak and Gal Sofer have pointed out to me that a Hebrew origin may lie under the intermediate Arabic text, considering the importance of the names of the weekday angels, which are Hebrew (see below), the names of winds, triplicities (meaning here groups of three consecutive months), and individual months, and the presence of Hebrew formulae (in corrupt transcriptions) among the prayers and invocations. This is most likely šabb (“alum”), which was a basic ingredient of iron-gall ink; see Adam Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 133. Suenes/suenos and arciginim have not been identified, unless the former is related to the Hebrew ṣon = small animal (e.g., sheep or goats). I owe this suggestion to Odile Dapsens. Fol. 39r: “Hic est exorzismus primi nominis cum quo illud nomen exorzizari debet.” This must be the process that the Magister Speculi describes as “the writing of characters (inscriptio characterum) which have to be exorcised through certain names,” which characterizes the whole of the “detestable” species of talismanic science (see above, 312).

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When this prayer has been made and written on that carta23 together with the proper name , the proper name of the theme (subject) must be spoken and written on the carta. But this must be known: before this name is written, the performer (actor) must fast for three days, with clean body and clothing, being careful not to act sinfully, and, after the invocation has been written, these rings must be written . And whoever writes this sacred name with complete cleanliness and fasting, should then name disciples24 of the present triplicity, and the Sun and winds which pertain to this triplicity, and he should fumigate the written name with sandal fruit and wood, and he should pray to the Creator through this name concerning everything that he wishes. But he should beware lest anyone else should have it or know it, unless that person uses it justly. And when he writes the names of the winds, they should be written in their place, and the names of the stars and the proper name of the theme and the names of the angels of the present triplicity in their place. And afterwards the aforementioned name should be exorcised with this exorcism, and he (the client) should have this sacred carta with him and he (the king) will humble himself to that person whom you (?) seek, i.e. for whose case you made the carta (the client).25 It is only with the instructions for the second name that we begin to be provided with the “exotic” names that are used to exorcise that name:

23 24 25

“Carta” can be parchment or paper, perhaps following the Arabic qirṭās, which could also be used for both parchment and paper; see Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts, 193. This term should refer to some kind of angel or spiritual servant associated with the season. Fol. 39r: “Hac oratione invocata et in carta ista scripta, cum nomine proprio nomen proprium tematis dicendum est et in carta scribendum. Hoc autem sciendum: quod, antequam hoc nomen scribatur, actor tribus diebus corpore et habitu mundus ieiunet, cavendo ne causa peccati faciat, et post invocationem scriptam hii annuli scribendi erunt. Et quicumque hoc nomen sanctum scribit, munditia et ieunio completis, tunc nominet discipulos triplicitatis presentis et solem et ventos qui huic triplicitati pertinent, et fumigent nomen scriptum cum fructibus (fructium ms) sandali et sandalo, et invocabit Creatorem per hoc nomen de omni eo quod voluerit. Sed cavendum ne aliquis illud habeat nec sciat nisi iuste illud tractaverit. Et cum scribit nomina ventorum in loco suo, scribantur et nomina stellarum et nomen proprium tematis et nomina angelorum triplicitatis presentis in loco suo. Et postea nomen prefatum cum hoc exorzismo exorzizari debeat, et cartam hanc secum habere debet et humiliabit se illi quem queris, id est pro cuius causa cartam fecisti.”

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This is the exorcism of the second name: Agion (lacuna), Karonie, Ascfelau (+ 26 more names).26 After another prayer, the client is told to write the names on a carta, place it in a vial and carry that vial with him in the folds of his clothes, so that he/she can approach any king without fear, and provoke someone to fall in love with him/her. At the end of the text the names of the winds and of the planets in the triplicities (seasons) are given and, finally, the names of the angels of the weekdays, starting from Sunday (prima feria) are added, which are corruptions of the respective Hebrew angel names: Rosiael, Gabriael, Sumuael, Michael, Szadsiael, Dimuael, and Kiszdsiael.27 On two occasions the “ink” with which the name is written is mentioned: Name 4: This name should be written with the best saffron, musk and aloes-wood (debet scribi hoc nomen de zafaran optimo et musco et alood28). Name 7: Write this name with the ointment from pearls and camphor (Scribe hoc nomen cum uncto de elgule,29 id est margaritis (-as ms), et cafor,30 id est camfora). The writing of names is at the heart of this magical text. Elaborate preparation for their writing is required and both the writing material and the kind of ink that is used are significant. The third book I would like to turn to is the text which is probably referred to as Quatuor annuli Salomonis (“The Four Rings of Solomon”) in the Speculum astronomiae, but is without a title in the Florence manuscript (it starts on fol. 26v and breaks off incomplete on fol. 29v).31 This contains the most elab26 27

28 29 30 31

Fol. 39r: “Hic est exorcismus secundi nominis: agion, (lacuna) karonie ascfelau …” Fol. 41r. These are the names found in Hebrew texts: Raphael, Gabriel, Samael, Michael, Ṣadkiel, Anael, Qafṣiel/Qaṣfiel (I owe this list to Gideon Bohak). Almost the same names, but in another order, are found in the Sefer ha-yašar, Irina Wandrey (ed.), “Das Buch des Gewandes” und “Das Buch des Aufrechten” (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 238, described as “the names of the Angels which are set over the hours and the whole day”—one for each planet name; Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition. A Study in Folk Religion (New York: Atheneum, 1979 [1939]), 98. The Arabic words zaʿfarān, misk, and al-ʿūd are retained in transliteration. Possibly al-luʾluʾ the Arabic for “pearl.” A powder was made from pearls; see Lev and Amar, Practical ‘Materia Medica’, 234. Arabic kāfūr. Texts called “the four rings of Solomon,” contain different materials. The only ones that

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orate of the magical procedures so far, and gives the most paleographical and codicological detail. It begins with the words: Here begins the treatise of the disciples of Solomon, namely Fortunatus, Eleazar, Macarus, and Toz Graecus, and it is about the eutuntam and the ydea of Solomon: how any exorciser can arrive at the summit of such a height.32 The ydea33 of Solomon is described in the following way: Similarly, one should have the consecrated ydea of Solomon, written on the skin of a black or wild goat, just as is found in the book of Solomon. The skin also should be hairy and round (?), and it should be written on with clean gold or red ink, and the four heads of the four kings should be designed and painted there, wonderfully crowned with clean gold.34 The instructions for making the crown of Solomon follow: One must know that the crown must be made with all diligence and cleanliness from carta, linen cloth, and red silk—the carta below, the cloth in the middle, and the silk on top. The four gospels should be written on it. The Book of Generation should be written backwards, in such a way as on both sides of the cartula is written: “In the beginning was the Word”; in the middle of the cartula, the Gospel of the Lion (Mark); on the right,

32

33 34

begin with the same words as in the Florence manuscript are ms Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica 114, s. xv, 47–70 and ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Pal. lat. 1196, s. xiii–xiv, fols. 1v–2r. See Pingree, “Learned Magic,” 45; Jean-Patrice Boudet, Entre science et nigromance. Astrologie, divination et magie dans l’Occident médiéval (xiie–xve siècle) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006), 145–148; and Véronèse, L’Almandal, 70 and 120. Fol. 26v: “Incipit tractatus discipulorum Salomonis, scilicet Fortunati, Eleazari, Macari et Toz Greci, et est super eutuntam et super ydeam Salomonis qualiter quilibet exorzizator ad tanti celsitudinis culmen accedere valeat.” The sense of “eutuntam” (with various spellings) is obscure. The use of “idea,” normally reserved for the Platonic forms, is curious here. Fol. 27r: “Similiter debet habere yd[e]eam Salomonis consecratam, scriptam in pelle caprioli nigri vel silvestris, designatam quemadmodum in libro Salomonis reperitur. Debet etiam pellis illa esse pillosa et rotunda et scribatur auro mundo vel atramento (detrimento ms) rubeo; quatuor capita quatuor regum sint ibi designata et picta mirabiliter coronata auro mundo.” The “book of Solomon” to which reference is made has not been identified.

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the Gospel of the Calf (Luke); on the left “In the days of Herod the king there was …” (the beginning of the gospel of Luke).35 More writing follows on the elaborate head-dress of the Master—consisting of the crown, the pentalum, and horns (which appear to be growing from the Master’s skull), surrounded by cartule (little sheets of paper or parchment) with writing on them: When the crown or mitre has been finished, a cartula is placed on its outside on top of the horn up to the aforementioned pentalum. The first exorcism is written on the forehead of the Master, beginning in this way: “I conjure you, abovementioned powers.” On top of horn there will be a pentalum36 with the four above-written names. But another cartula is placed at the back; it should stretch from the horn to the aforementioned neck. On this should be written the Arabic prayer which begins “Arandule.” But on top of this cartula a pentalum should be designed with its names. These two aforementioned cartule, which are placed before and behind the crown or mitre, should be written on with the purest gold and red ink. They should be from those cartule with which the book of the secret talismans should be made, and this aforementioned crown, as has been said, should be placed in a sweetsmelling place, until the gloves have been made.37

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36

37

Fol. 27v: “Sciendum est quod cum omni diligentia et munditia componi debet sic corona (tcilice (?) ms) facta scilicet ex carta et panno lineo et sirico rubeo, carta inferius, panum medio, siricum superius. Scribantur in ea quatuor evangelia. Liber generationis scribantur retro, ita ut in ambabus partibus cartule In principio erat verbum, in medietate cartule evangelium Leonis, in dextra, evangelium Vituli, in sinistra scilicet Fuit in diebus Erodis regis.” Etc. For the expansion of this word, see Grévin and Véronèse, “Les ‘caractères’ magiques,” 330, who describe it as: “un signe mystérieux qui ne se divise pas, comme son nom pourrait le laisser supposer, en cinq parties ou en cinq branches, mais qui adopte la disposition générale d’ une croix aux extrémités de laquelle se surimposent des motifs étranges.” Fol. 27v: “Peracta igitur corona sive mitra, ponatur exterius cartula in summitate cornu usque ad pentalum /28r/ predictum super frontem magistri in qua scribatur primus exorzismus cuius inceptio est hoc: Coniuro vos, superadicte potestates. In summitate cornu erit pentalum cum quatuor nominibus suprascriptis. Alia vero cartula ponatur retro; simul teneat a cornu usque ad cervicem predictam, in qua scribatur oratio Arabica que incipit Arandule. In summitate vero istius cartule designatur pentalum cum suis nominibus. Hec cartule predicte que ponuntur ante et retro corone vel mitre scribantur auro purissimo et atramento rubeo. Et sit de illis cartulis quibus liber ym(aginum) secretarum debet fieri. Et hec predicta corona, ut dictum est, reponatur in loco odorifero

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But the most detailed instructions in regard to manuscript preparation and writing occurs in the following section, about the making of five books of talismans: Now one must deal with the five books of talismans. Know that these five books of the magical art must be included in one volume, and there are seven quaternions made from the seven calves named.38 First of all, we are told how the parchment is prepared: The cartule should made in this way: one skin should be placed in lime on a Sunday before sunrise, whilst this is said: “In the name of King Eymodus and all his companions, may it go well for the consecration of the book!” The person who places should not sign himself on that day, nor should he enter a church, nor should he wish anyone well until the following Thursday. On that Thursday in the morning at the crack of dawn the skin should be taken out of the lime , with these words: “In the name of King Amaymon and all his companions, may it go well for the consecration!” Then he should go to running water, and the skin should be washed and scraped before sunrise, whilst this is said: “Amaymon, Panon, Egyn, Oriens, whom I know to be suitable and most ready in this art, may you now be powerful in this work.” Then he should go to a courtyard (?) before the Sun rises. The cartula should be stretched in a circle of a new hoop (?) with cords which have been woven by a virgin or by virgins. Then, when the Sun rises, he should begin to scrape the cartula with a new sharp knife < > that consecration, saying nine times: “I conjure you, King of the East, through the king that is to come and through the most sacred name of the Tetragrammaton, to consecrate this piece of virgin carta with your name and your honor, so that what is written on it will be strong enough for the consecration of the book.” But the circle, the knife, and the cords by which one operates on one will not be used on any

38

donec cirotece facte fuerint.” The gloves and the candariae are the subject of the next two sections of the text. Fol. 28v: “Nunc de .v. ymaginum (ymaginibus ms) libris tractandum est. Sciendum quod isti quinque libri artis magice in unum volumen debent componi et sunt .vii. quaterni de .vii. vitulis nominatis.” The calves do not appear to have been mentioned before in this manuscript. The quaternions would seem to be individual folia (one from each calf) rather than gatherings of eight folia; they are equivalent to the cartule below.

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other. Then that skin should be left next to the courtyard (?) in a secret place so that it is seen by nobody until the morning. One should do the same thing concerning the other cartule, up to seven. And whoever does this should beware against uncleanliness, evils, and bad words.39 After exorcising the book and describing how one might speak to Satan (“Sathana”), the cover of the book is described: And the books should be put together in such a way that their offices (purpose) appear on the outside, and there should be labels out of white silk, and its (the volume’s) boards should be made of cypress, Lebanon, or boxwood (buxus), and it is covered with red leather, then with two silk which are yellow (?) and red. It is made firm with three keys (clasps) of clean gold or purified best-quality white bronze. At the head or end of this book must be left nine or seven cartule which are not written on, so that the spirits can write on them if necessary, or if ordered by the Master. If there are nine they should be put in such an order: four at the beginning—i.e., the head of the book—five at the end. On the penultimate of the cartule which belong to the Master, should be drawn the four kings without their crowns, bound by chains. On that page should be drawn the Master with his crown or mitre on his head, and he should hold a rod in his left hand, but the aforesaid chain in his right hand, with which the spirits seem to be bound, and

39

Fol. 28v: (continuation of passage in n. 38) “Set cartule sic fiant: mittatur pellis una in calce in die dominico ante solis ortum, ita dicendo: In nomine Eymodi regis et omnium sociorum eius valeat ad consecrationem libri. Qui mittit, non signet se illo die, neque intret in ecclesiam neque salutet aliquem usque in futura die Iovis. Et ipsa die Iovis in mane in prima aurora extrahatur pellis illa de calce, sic dicendo: In nomine Amaymonis regis et omnium sociorum eius ad consecrationem valeat. Tunc vadat in aquam curentem et lavetur et excorietur pellis illa ante solis ortum, ita dicendo: Amaymon, Panon, Egyn, Oriens quos ydoneos et promptissimos in hac arte cognovi, nunc in isto opere valeatis. Deinde vadat ad quadruvium antequam sol[is] oriatur; ipsa cartula extendatur in circulo de anello novo cum cordulis (cordibus ms) que sint filate a virgine vel a virginibus. Tunc cum sol oritur incipiat cartulam illam excoriari [et] cum novacula nova, < > consecrationem istam, novies dicendo: ‘Coniuro te, Oriens Rex, per venturum regem et per sanctissimum nomen illius tetragramaton, ut hoc frust[r]um carte virginis tuo nomine tuoque honore consecres, ut quod in ea scriptum fuerit ad consecrationem libri valeat.’ Sed circulus et novacula et cordule quibus operantur in una non operantur in alia. Tunc dimittatur illa pellis iuxta quadruvium in aliquo secreto loco, ut a nemine videatur usque ad mane. Et sic ordine recto de aliis cartulis faciat usque ad .vii. Et qui fecerit hoc, caveat ab inmunditiis et malis et turpibus sermonibus.”

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the name of the present Master should be written over the same figure. Having done this diligently, it (the volume) should be placed in a sweetsmelling place and kept very clean, together with the other consecrated things.40 Can anything be drawn from this information? The materials mentioned suggest an Oriental origin for these texts. The boards are to be made from cypress wood or the wood from Lebanon (cedar wood?), rather than oak or pine. Gazelle skin is used for parchment, rather than sheep or cow.41 Arabic books were bound in red leather,42 and covered in silk.43 This may be the earliest description of making a grimoire.44 These are not the only Solomonic texts in which writing and the making of books are dominant. A whole section of the Liber Razielis in the Alfonsine translation of mid-thirteenth-century Spain45 gives an angel’s instructions to

40

41

42 43 44 45

Fol. 28v: “Et ita componantur libri ut officia eorum appareant deforis. Et sint signa de serico albo, et tabule ipsius /29r/ sint de cipresso vel de libano aut de busso, et cohoperiatur de corio rubeo, deinde duobus siricis (ciricis ms) trinis (?) et rubeis. Et firmetur cum tribus clavibus de auro mundo seu ere albo optimo purificato. Et in capite vel in fine istius libri debent dimiti .viiii. vel .vii. cartule non scripte, ut possunt spiritus in ei[u]s scribere si opus fuerit, vel si a magistro iniunctum sit. Et taliter dimittantur (in margine: quod si .9. sunt dimittantur) .iiii. a principio, scilicet in capite; .v. in fine. Et in penultima illarum cartularum que a magistro sunt, designentur quatuor reges absque coronis, catenis ligati. in illa pagina designetur magister cum corona seu mitra in capite, et in sinistra manu teneat virgam, in dextra vero predictam catenam, cum qua spiritus videntur ligari. Et scribatur nomen presentis magistri super eiusdem figure (sic!). Hiis diligenter expletis, in loco odorifero reponatur et mundissime custodiatur cum aliis rebus consecratis.” Gazelle skin was the preferred material for writing spells in Jewish love magic; see OrtalPaz Saar, Jewish Love Magic: From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 96–100. But, according to Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts, 195: “raqq ghazal (“gazelle’s hide”) may mean simply an exceptionally fine skin, similar to vellum and obtained from stillborn kids.” That gazelle skin was known in the West, however, is indicated by the Calendar of Cordoba, which says that “we make parchment from fawn and gazelle skin (from May) until the end of July,” ed. Charles Pellat, Le Calendrier de Cordoue (Leiden: Brill, 1961), 90–91. François Déroche, Islamic Codicology (London: Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2015), 265. Déroche, Islamic Codicology, 267–268. For more details see Appendix. It is not mentioned in Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). See n. 6 of this chapter. The section occurs in ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana reg. lat. 1300, fols. 12r–13v, which has not been edited (I owe this reference and a copy of the relevant pages of the manuscript to Odile Dapsens).

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Solomon on what kind of writing support to use, on how to make the ink, and how to make the reed-pen, when writing the sacred names of the semiphoras.46 A Hebrew source for this section has not been identified. Nevertheless, the emphasis on writing in this text and the other Latin Solomonic texts discussed here is likely to reflect the character of the works originally written in Hebrew. Elliot Wolfson has pointed out that writing has the primary position in Hebrew magic, whether it be of angel names, of words in unknown languages, or of images or figures.47 This survey has demonstrated how literary this kind of magic can be. In the first text surveyed (The Fifteen Names) writing powerful names on different materials is the only procedure used. In The Seven Names from the Book of Muḥammad, names are written in different inks on different kinds of parchment, or on a potsherd, and other ceremonies accompany the writing of these names. In The Four Rings of Solomon the writing is even more elaborate, and consists as much of designs as of names. Moreover, a whole ceremony for making a magical book is described in detail. In all cases the names are written rather than spoken out loud (though prayers often accompany their writing). The power of the written word in the context of Solomonic magic can be as strong as the power of the spoken word in other branches of magic, and the strength is increased if both the spoken and the written word are employed together.

Appendix: The Making of the Grimoire – By Nicholas Pickwoad Beneath the magical elements of The Four Rings of Solomon lie references to the materials and processes of making books (pp. 324–326 above) which can be related to what is known of medieval bookmaking in the countries border46

47

Among the instructions are that the writing support should be from a calf or from silk, (cotton) cloth, virgin goats or lambs, or small deer. The ink should be made of gallnuts, mixed white wine and gum (-arabic), vitriol, mastic, frankincense, and saffron, and when this mixture has been sieved and left for three days, civet perfume, musk, ambergris, balsam, myrrh, and aloes-wood should be added. Blood from a vulture, turtle-dove or white goose, and ground sapphire, emerald, ruby, and topaz will make it more perfect and noble. The pen is to be made of a freshly-cut green cane. The ink recipe does not appear in the otherwise comprehensive Monique Zerdoun Bat-Yehouda, Les Encres noires au moyen âge (Paris: cnrs, 1983), and would repay further study. For the most up-to-date article on ink recipes in Arabic see Lucia Raggetti, “Inks as Instruments of Writing Ibn al-Ǧazarī’s Book on the Art of Penmanship,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 10 (2019): 201–239. Elliot R. Wolfson, “Phantasmagoria: The Image of the Image in Jewish Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 4, 1 (2001): 78–120 (especially 101–104 and 109–112).

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ing the Mediterranean, particularly the eastern Mediterranean. The text covers both the preparation of parchment for writing on and the choice of materials to be used for the subsequent binding of the book, and although the references are very brief, and at times hard, if not impossible, to understand, enough can be gleaned from the text to give at least a partial picture of what is meant at a technical level. The four days (before sunrise on Sunday to the crack of dawn on Thursday) allowed in the timetable for immersion in lime liquors for the initial preparation of the pelt would be enough, especially in a Mediterranean context (a longer time would be needed in northern Europe), to soften the fat material and glands on the flesh side of the pelt and dissolve the epidermal layer around the hairs and the hair pockets on the hair-side of the pelt sufficiently to allow the unwanted material, especially the hair, to be removed from the skin in a scraping process known as scudding.48 The earliest recipe for the lime-unhairing of pelts is found in a tenth-century copy of a late eighth-century Arabic text.49 The use of controlled putrefaction of the skin (sweating) and the introduction of bacteria and enzymes (bating) for unhairing was typical of the Jewish tradition of parchment making for Torah scrolls, and it is notable that the accounts of parchment given by the soferim (scribes) and later by Maimonides make no mention of the use of lime in its preparation.50 The use of lime is also mentioned in ms Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare 490, of the eighth century, and the Schedula diversarum artium by Theophilus Presbyter of the early twelfth century.51 The scudding process is described in the manuscript as taking place near running water for the purpose of washing away the unwanted material, which is further removed by “scraping” (not cutting or slicing). In more recent times, this would be done using a curved, double-handled blade with the skin draped over a “beam,” a solid support, sometimes of lime-stone or marble, about two metres long and curved across its short dimension to allow good, even contact between the blade and the skin. Once the unwanted hair and other material had been removed from the corium layer of the skin, it was ready to be stretched on a circular wooden frame or hoop (circulus de anello). The skin would be 48

49 50 51

I am indebted to Jiří Vnouček, conservator of manuscripts at the Royal Library of Denmark, Copenhagen, for taking time away from his other work and finishing his PhD on the manufacture of parchment to comment on the technical details given in the text of The Four Rings of Solomon. Anthony Cains, “The Vellum of the Book of Kells,” The Paper Conservator 16 (1992): 50–61, at 53. Ronald Reed, Ancient Skins, Parchments and Leathers (London and New York: Seminar Press, 1972). Reed, Ancient Skins, 133–134.

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attached to the hoop by lengths of thin cord (cum cordulis), often by means of looping the cord under and around protrusions in the skin created by pushing small pebbles into the other side of the skin around its edges, and then tying the outer ends of the cords to the hoop. As the skin dried it would contract, pulling it flat as it dried under tension, one of the defining characteristics of parchment. As the skin dried on the hoop, it would be further worked with a sharp knife (novacula) which was used not so much to scrape the skin, as to separate and remove the outer layers of the skin. The knife blade was traditionally round or half round (lunar and demi-lunar) in profile, and it could be that the verb excoriari should be taken to mean this separating action. The skin is then left to dry in a courtyard (quadruvium), presumably indicating a well-ventilated but protected space, where the skins could safely be left. The preferred choice of animal, the gazelle (in pergameno algacel), is one of the “clean” animals as listed in Leviticus 11:1–23 and Deuteronomy 14:3–2052 and is small enough to provide a thin skin suitable for the leaves of a book, though as a wild animal, likely to produce a rather stiff skin.53 The same problem would be found with the skins of the wild goat (in pelle caprioli nigri vel silvestris), which is also identified as a clean animal in rabbinic law.54 What animals are meant by the skins of suenes and arciginim remains a mystery. As both animals are relatively small, the four days specified for immersion in the lime liquors would be sufficient. The mention of calf skin (de. vii. vitulis nominatis) is a little surprising, as the skins, being generally larger and thicker, would have needed more time in the lime liquors than four days, unless, perhaps, they were taken from extremely young animals. Once the parchment was made and written on, the process of bookbinding could start, and this is covered in a very perfunctory way in the manuscript. There is no reference to the sewing of the book block, but the choice of either cedar or boxwood for the boards of the binding reflects what is known of early bindings of the Eastern Mediterranean. Cedar wood was used for book boards on at least one early Coptic codex,55 and boxwood has been identified as the wood used for two of the very early multi-quire Coptic codices that have survived.56 Cedar-wood boards have also been identified on Ethiopian

52 53 54 55 56

Reed, Ancient Skins, 101. Information from Jiří Vnouček. Reed, Ancient Skins, 101. J.A. Szirmai, The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1999), 26. Szirmai, Archaeology, 23.

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manuscripts.57 The use of cedar wood and boxwood has, so far as I know, not been identified on European books. The boards on the St. Cuthbert Gospel, which is structurally and decoratively closely related to Coptic bindings, are almost certainly of birch, or possibly lime wood,58 and the boards of the Cadmug Gospels, the Book of Armagh, and the Stowe Missal are all of oak. In later centuries, beech and oak have provided the vast majority of European book boards. The nature of the skin used to cover the book (de corio rubeo) is difficult to determine with confidence. Many medieval European bindings were covered with white alum-tawed skins (technically not leather, which is tanned, but the word corium does not define the treatment or the skin, but only the corium layer of the skin, under the epidermis, which is what the parchment maker, tanner, or tawyer would normally process), and these skins were often stained with a red or pink dye. Alum-tawed skins were used in the Greek world in the late middle ages, though, from the evidence of early bindings in St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai, not very often. Most surviving medieval bindings from the countries bordering the eastern Mediterranean are covered in tanned goat or sheep skin. The high quality native tanned and dyed skins from subSaharan Africa, where many of the best quality skins have always come, were often dyed a brick-red color, or sometimes a brighter red, and may be the skins that are referred to here. High quality red tanned goatskins were certainly used to cover books in Constantinople in the late medieval period.59 The two layers (duobus siricis, ciricis in ms) of yellow (?) and red silk (trinis(?) et rubeis) placed over the animal-skin primary covering probably refer to a secondary cover, sometimes referred to as a chemise, of the sort often used on medieval European books, and the use of two layers could represent two layers of textile placed back to back, the inner one being a lining to the outer, and sewn together around the edges. The reference to three fastenings and the materials from which they were to be made is not entirely clear (Et firmetur cum tribus clavibus de auro mundo seu ere albo optimo purificato). Early Coptic bindings from the monastery of St. Michael in the Desert near Hamuli and the early Islamic bindings (from the ninth to the thirteenth century) found in the Grand Mosque of Kairouan have fastenings which consist of edge pins or pegs in the right board and there 57 58

59

Szirmai, Archaeology, 48. Nicholas Pickwoad, “Binding,” in Claire Breay and Bernard Meehan (eds.), The St Cuthbert Gospel: Studies on the Insular Manuscript of the Gospel of John (London: British Library, 2015), 49–50. For instance, ms Mount Sinai, Monastery of St. Catherine Greek 418.

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must have been corresponding pin clasps to fit over the pegs attached to the left board, but none of the latter has survived.60 Some of the Hamuli codices have one or two peg-type fastenings at head or tail and up to three on the foreedge.61 In the later Greek tradition, which uses similar fastenings, such edge pins are often found at head and tail, which would easily allow for three fastenings, with one on each outer edge of the boards. Whether, however, this is the type of fastening referred to by the word claves is a matter for conjecture. The actual use of pure gold as a material for any sort of fastening seems unlikely, as the metal would be too soft to last in such use. White bronze, however, would work perfectly well, and bronze pegs have been found in several of the bindings referred to above, as well as silver, though bone and iron were also used.

60 61

Szirmai, Archaeology, 32 and 52, respectively. Szirmai, Archaeology, 41.

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ms London British Library Add. 11639, fol. 115r (right hand in a chiromantic explanation). Hebrew codex known as “the Northern French Miscellany” or earlier as “the British Museum Miscellany” that constitutes a miscellany of Biblical, legal, poetic, calendrical, and other texts. It is one of the most lavishly illustrated surviving Jewish manuscripts made in northern Europe (parchment, last quarter of thirteenth or first quarter of fourteenth century, French Ashkenazi square and semi-cursive scripts). image by permission of the british library

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Bibliography Manuscript and Archival Sources Qumran / Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q208 (4QAstronomical Enocha ar) 4Q209 (4QAstronomical Enochb ar) 4Q318 (4QZodiology and Brontology = 4QZodiac Calendar and Brontologion)

Manuscripts Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica 114 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Or. Qu. 653 Or. Oct. 2254 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library Add. 667.1 Add. 1224.4 Dd. 10.68 Or. 557 Taylor Schechter Collection Additional Series 108.184 Additional Series 143.325 Additional Series 172.181 Additional Series Arabic 50.117 Arabic 11.17 Arabic 31.107 Arabic 43.232 Arabic 43.95 Arabic 43.99 Arabic 51.41 Box K 1.28 Box K 1.33 Box K 1.59 Box K 1.75 Box K 1.101 Box K 1.111 Box K 21.78 Miscellaneous Boxes 6.156 Miscellaneous Boxes 8.75

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Index of Quotations and Citations of Biblical, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran, and Rabbinic Texts The entries included in the Index of Quotations and Citations cover all the chapters of the book and include their footnotes.

1

Biblical

Genesis (Gen) 5:1 10:23 15:3 15:5 17:5 17:18 17:21 21:12 24:49 26:5 31:34 37:5–9 41 41:14–36 44:5 45

181 255 233 170n28 48n7 232 232 232 109n28 228 165n12 165n12 165n12 133n107 165n12 165n12

Exodus (Exod) 7:11 19:1 20:4 20:20 20:23 33:16 34:6

247 170 278n44 277 276 120n71, 121, 129 114n43 115, 122

Leviticus (Lev) 11:1–23 16:8 19:14 19:31 20:4 20:23

329 268n14 259n157 173n38 251 273

Numbers (Num) 1:19 12:6–8 32:22 Deuteronomy (Deut) 4:6 4:7 13:1–2 14:3–20 18:9 18:9–22 18:10–11 18:11 18:12 18:13 29:28

282n53 109n28, 114n47, 115, 123 and n84 222

238, 240, 241 241 129 329 254, 268n14, 271n26, 272n28 165n11 164, 250 251, 263n7 173n38, 254 164, 254 258n155

Joshua (Josh) 21:4

162

1 Samuel (1Sam) 6:7–14 9:21 19:13 20:21 28:6 28:8

165n12 162 165n12 249 165n12 251

2 Kings (2Kings) 1:2 1:4 1:6 1:16 20:1 20:6

241 241 241 242 230 241n89

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378

index of quotations and citations

1Chronicles (1 Chron) 10:13–14 165n12 Job (Job) 4:12–16 6:13 22:2 22:3 25:4 27:5 34:9 35:3 Psalms (Ps) 16:5 19:9 25:14 32:10 34:15 89:53 91:1 104:4 107:33 116:6 116:13–14 119 119:15 119:18 119:104 139

165n12 257 116n59 117 116n60, 117 258 116n59 116n59

175n47, 183 187 183 180 218, 223 183 109n28 136 136 219 32 167 170 167, 184 170 116n57, 117n62, 125

Proverbs (Prov) 8:4 10:2 11:4 20:17 22:20 25:18

120n72, 121, 130 41n89, 229, 242 41n89, 229 249 170 249

Ecclesiastes (Eccles) 9:11

36, 41n90

Isaiah (Isa) 3:1–3 5:12 19:3 19:11 19:12

165n12 238n81 165n11 248 248

20:3 37:16 38:1 38:5 40:12 41:2 44:25 57:3

129 114n38, 115, 122, 123 230 230, 241n89 136 228 249 165n11

Jeremiah (Jer) 10:2 31:33

229 259

Lamentations (Lam) 3:15

249

Ezekiel (Ezek) 1:1 21:26 21:26–28

109n28, 136 249 165n12

Daniel (Dan) 1:4 1:17 2:1 2:2 2:4 2:5 2:10 2:10–11 2:13 2:17 2:17–19 2:18 2:19 2:19–22 2:20 2:20–22 2:21 2:20–23 2:23 2:27 2:27–28 2:29–45

124 124 and n86 132 133, 245, 246, 247n106 255 108, 123n85, 133n108, 136 246 133n107 133 133, 136 132 123n85, 133, 136 133, 135 109n28 123 116n53, 117, 123 and n84, 132 117n61, 118n63, 123, 124, 131, 134 123, 136 123 and n85, 133n108, 136 246, 247n106 124 124n86

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379

index of quotations and citations 2:30 2:31–45 4:4 5:5 5:7 5:11 8:2 8:15 9:3 10:2–3 10:4 10:11 10:16 Amos (Amos) 3:7 3:8

2

165n12

Hosea (Hosea) 7:10

162

Joel (Joel) 3:4

282n53

Micah (Micah) 2:12

158

Nahum (Nahum) 1:4

136

Revelations (Revelations) 10:10 34

136 50, 69, 70 65 74n103 74 74 53 86n139 54n30 86n139 54n30

76:13–77:4 78:6–8, 78:10 78:17–79:2 79:3–5 82:4 82:9–13 Jubilees (Jub) 12:16–17 15:7

54 54 54 54 54 64n68 54

48 48n7

Qumran

4Q186 4Q201 4Q202 4Q204–4Q212, 4Q208

4Q209

183 109n28

Jonah (Jonah) 1:7

Pseudepigrapha

1Enoch 13:7–10 72–82 72:6 72:6–7a 72:6–8 72:25b–7 73 73:4 73:4–8 73:5–8 73:6–7

3

126 123n85 245, 246 247 247 245, 246 136 136 136 136 136 114n48, 115, 123 136

47 and n4 53n29 53n29 53n29 46, 49–50, 52–54 and n33, 61–66 and n68 and n74, 72n101, 73–80 and n107, 84–87, 89 4Q211 46, 48–50 and n10, 4Q299 52, 54 and n30 and 4Q318 n33, 61 and n56, 62n57, 62–64 and n68, 65

and n70, 66n73 and n74, 67, 68n77 and n78, 70–71, 72n101, 73–81 and n106, n111, n118, 84–86 and n139, 87–91, 94–95, 97 and n155, 99, 100 70 47 and n6 46 and n3, 49–50, 55–60 and n47, 61, 64, 73–75, 79, 87

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380

index of quotations and citations

4Q415 47n5 4Q416 47 and n5 4Q417 47 and n5 4Q418 47n5 4Q561 47n4 4QAstronomical Enocha-b ar (see 4Q208–209) 4QAstronomical Enochd ar (see 4Q211) 4QBrontologion ar (see 4Q318)

4

4QInstructionb c (see 4Q416–4Q417) 4QMysteriesa (see 4Q299) 4QPhysiognomic Horoscope (see 4Q561) 4QZodiac Calendar (see 4Q318) 4QZodiacal Physiognomy (see 4Q186) 11QJubilees (see 11Q12) 11Q12 48 and n8

Rabbinic

Talmud Bavli Avodah zarah 5a 181n70 Avodah zarah 43a 277n41 Avodah zarah 43a–b 278 Bava batra 16b 227n35 Bava batra 160b–161a 120n69 Bava kamma 82a 220n9 Bava meṣia 85 181n70 Beraḵot 55a–57b 141, 146 Beraḵot 55b 104n11, 141n5, 169n27 Beraḵot 56a 141n5, 169 Beraḵot 57b 104n11, 169n24 and n27 Beraḵot 58b 204, 257n148 Beraḵot 59a 231n49 Eruvim 52a 257n152 Eruvim 64a 257n152 Giṭṭin 56a 169n23 Giṭṭin 67b 169n22 Giṭṭin 81b 120n69 Ḥagigah 15a 169n23 Ḥullin 13a 172n37 Ḥullin 95a–b 169n23 Ḥullin 95b 170 Kritot 3b 254n134 Megillah 7a 170n30 Nazir 35b 250n115 Nedarim 32a 48n7, 228n39 Pesaḥim 39a 257n152 Pesaḥim 113b 173n38, 193, 206, 222n19, 255n140 Roš ha-šanah 11b 231n49 and n51 Roš ha-šanah 19b 53n27 Roš ha-šanah 24b 277n41

Šabbat 67a Šabbat 75a

Šabbat 116a Šabbat 119a Šabbat 129b Šabbat 156a

Šabbat 156b

Sanhedrin 12a Sanhedrin 64b Sanhedrin 65a Sanhedrin 65b

Sanhedrin 66a Sanhedrin 67a Sanhedrin 100b Šavuot 39a Yoma 28b Talmud Yerushalmi Maʿaser šeni 4:12 Šabbat 6:10 Sanhedrin 7:7

273 238–239n80–82, 240n85, 242n94, 254n138 172n37 234n63 and n65 219n7, 222n20 195n7, 225n30, 228n37, and n38, 229n41, 230n45, 232n54, 237n77 173n38, 225n30– 31, 226n32, 227n33, 228n37, 231n48, 232n52 and n53, 233n60, 234n67, 235n69 and n71, 242n91 and n92 53n27 251n117 253n133, 254n134 251n118, 252n124, n125, and n127, 253n133, 254n135, and 136 252n128–129 253n132 172n37 259n158 227n35

170n28 169n23 254n135

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381

index of quotations and citations Midrash Genesis Rabbah 24:2 181n70 Genesis Rabbah 44:12 48n7 Deuteronomy Rabbah, Niṣavim 117 170n30 Esther Rabbah 7:13 169n23 Lamentations Rabbah 1:52 170n28 Sanhedrin 7:7 254n135 Sifre Rabbah, Deut 171 165n12 Šir ha-širim rabbah 7.8 229n42 Tehillim 137.3 229n42 Mishnah Avodah zarah 3:3 Ḥagigah 2:1 Roš ha-šanah 1–3 Yoma 2:1

282, 283n54 38n74 26n22 35n63

Pesiqtaʿ rabbati 28

229n42

Targum Onkelos Gen 31:19

250

Seder ʿolam rabbah 4

231n50

Sifra Kedošim 6

252n129

Tosefta Ḥullin 2:6 Šabbat 7,12 Sanhedrin 10:6

172n37 251n118 254n135

Baraita di-Shmuel 7 9

204n24 223n26, 237n78

Baraita de-mazzalot 12 15

204n24 223n26, 237n78

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Index of Names (People, Places, and Texts) The names and terms included in the Index of Names and the Index of Subjects cover all the chapters of the books, with the exception of their footnotes and the Introductory Essay and its footnotes. 1Enoch, see Book of Enoch, Ethiopic 1Enoch 72–82, see Book of the Luminaries 2Enoch, see Book of Enoch, Slavonic Abaye (the amora) 169, 227, 278, 281 ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī 157 Ablat (the astrologer) 235, 242 Abraham (the patriarch) 174, 195, 227, 231– 233, 314 Abraham bar Ḥiyya 192–207, 217, 222, 236, 257–258 Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi 175 Abraham ibn Ezra 144, 182, 185, 279 Abraham of Posquières 279, 284 Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥassan al-Hātim 270 Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Ibrahīm 317 Abū Bakr ibn Mujāhid 317 Abū Bakr Maḥmūd ibn Bashīr 317 Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī 299 Abū ’l-Ḥakīm(?) Abdul-Raḥmān ibn Abdullāh(?) 317 Abū Maʿshar 269 Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdullāh ibn Qutaybah al-Dīnawarī 157 Abū Sahl ʿĪsā al-Jurjānī 146 Abū Ṭāhir ibn Ghannām 157–158 Abyssinians 153 Adam 181, 315 Ahaziah (son of Ahab, king of Judea) 241 Aldabi, see Meir ben Isaac Aldabi of Toledo Alexander (Aristotle’s student) 300 Alexander Nequam 302 Alexandria 32 Almagest 82 Almandal of Solomon 313 Almoli, see Solomon Almoli Amka 154 Amorite, ways of the 273, 275 Anatolia 36 Apollo 33, 41 Apollonius 312

ʿĀraba 155 ʾAram 255 Arameans 255 Aramaic ‘Astronomical Book’ 70, 73 ʾArbaʿah turim 179 Aristotle 274, 275, 300 Aristotelian/non- 262, 271, 273–275, 290 Pseudo Aristotle 290 Armenians 155 Artaxerxes i 58 Artemidorus Daldianus 141, 156 Aryeh Levin 162, 188 Asaph the Physician 31 Asclepius 31 Ashkenaz 304 Ashkenazi 105, 143, 181 Ashkenazic Pietists, see Ḥasidei Askenaz Asia Minor 156 Assyrian Dream Book 140 Auctoris incerti de physiognomonia libellus 289 Azulai, see Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai Baʿal Shem Tov 187 Baalbek 155 Baʿalei tosafot 105 Baalzebub (god of Ekron) 241 Babylon 249, 250, 255 Babylonia 102, 105 Babylonian 27, 51–53, 58, 60, 70–71, 74, 76, 81–88, 269–270, 292 Babylonian Talmud 141, 157, 169, 206 Balaam 174 Banias 155 Bar Barzillai, see Judah bar Barzillai haBargeloni Bar Ḥadya 169 Bar Qappara 239 Baraita di-Shmuel 206 Baraitot 204, 237 Barcelona, Jewish community of- 192–194, 198–199

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index of names (people, places, and texts) Bartholomeus Anglicus 302 Bartolomeo Della Rocca Cocles 290, 297–298 Baysān 154 Ben Adret, see Solomon ben Adret Ben Qurra, see Thābit ben Qurra al-Ḥarrānī Berbers 155 Bible (as a tool for divination) 161–163, 169, 174, 177, 184–186, 188 Birḵat ha-mapil 109 Birḵei Yosef 185 al-Biṭrīq, see Yaḥyā ibn al-Biṭrīq Book of Armagh 330 Book of Daniel 102, 123, 132, 134, 136–137, 143, 245–246 Book of Enoch Ethiopic- (= 1 Enoch) 50, 53–54, 65, 69– 75, 86–87, 136 Slavonic- (= 2 Enoch) 69 Book of Generation 322 Book of Instruction by Raziel (Liber institutionis) 312–313 Book of Job 124 Book of Jubilees, see Scroll 11Q12 Book of the Luminaries (1 Enoch 72–82) 54, 62, 67, 69–71, 75, 87 Book of Muḥammad 312–314, 317, 327 Book of Nabatean Agriculture 262, 269, 270 Book of Raziel, see Liber Razielis Book of Twitches 30, 31 al-Bukhāʾrī, see Muḥammad ibn Ismaʿil alJuʿfi al-Bukhāʾrī Bustanai (son of David, the Patriarch) 30 Byzantines 155 Byzantine 49, 61, 143 Cadmug Gospels 330 Cairene, Jewish community 110, 134 Cairo, see Fusṭāṭ (Old Cairo) Cairo Genizah 22, 24–25, 28–30, 32, 36, 40, 101–102, 106–112, 122, 124–125, 127–129, 132, 134, 137, 140, 145–146, 157–158, 174, 294 Cambridge University Library 112 Canaan 165 Caro, see Joseph Caro Castro, see Jacob Castro Chaldean 355 = any form of magic and qesem forbidden in Scripture 254–255

383

meaning of- 193 -method 234 Chaldeans 225–227, 234–236, 242, 255 answer of- 224–226 ask- 225 consult- / consulting- 197, 200, 209, 217, 222–226, 254–256 consultation of- 193–194, 203, 209, 222– 224, 206 deeds of the- 223 discipline of- 228 fear/be afraid of their answers/words 225 false prophets 255 -go further into the details than astrology does 234 -know how to change the future 234 listen to their answers/advice 225 occupation of- 227 science of- 233 Chester Beatty collection 141 Christianity 28, 104 Chyromantie ac physionomie Anastasis 290, 298 Cocles, see Bartolomeo Della Rocca Cocles Codex Sinaiticus 34 Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates 272, 273 Commentary on the Sefer yeṣirah -by Judah bar Barzillai 202, 204, 206 -by Saadia Gaon 204, 250 Commentary to the Mishnah 262, 267, 282– 285 Constantinople 113, 144, 330 Contemplation of Mankinde 297 Copts 155 Cracow 180, 291 Damascus 155 Daniel (the Prophet) 123–124, 132–136, 164, 245–247 Daniel’s Prayer 124, 132 David (King Solomon’s father), see King David David ibn Bilia 271 De natura rerum 302 De naturis rerum 302 De proprietatibus rerum 302 Dead Sea scrolls 26, 47–49, 56, 70, 169

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384

index of names (people, places, and texts)

Derbend 155 Egypt 23, 44, 102, 105, 153, 247–248, 285 Egyptians 34, 248 Ekron 241 Eleazar of Worms 178 Elijah ben Solomon of Smyrna (Elijah haCohen = Elijah of Smyrna) 186–187 Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, see Elijah of Vilna Elijah ha-Kohen, see Elijah ben Solomon of Smyrna Elijah of Vilna (= Vilna Gaon = Gaon of Vilna = Elijah ben Solomon Zalman) 161–163, 185–189 Elul 26, 56, 58 Enan the Demon 299 Enoch 54, 62, 70, 314 Enūma Anu Enlil 64 Epistles of the Brethren of Purity 270 Erfurt 291 Essenes 169 Ethiopians 153 Ethiopic ‘Astronomical Book’ 50, 74 Flavius Josephus 168 Frank, see Tzvi Pesaḥ Frank Franks 155 Fusṭāṭ (Old Cairo) 106, 111–112, 124 Galen 272 Galenicmedical theory 290 Gaon of Vilna, see Elijah of Vilna Gaon Rabbi Elijah, see Elijah of Vilna Gehuṣṭariʾel 121, 130–132 Gerard of Cremona 299 Gershom ben Solomon of Arles 302–303 Geter 255 Goralot Aḥitofel 32 Goralot ʾurim ve-tummim 29, 31, 35, 43, 184 Gospel of the Calf (Luke) 323 Gospel of the Lion (Mark) 322 Gospel of the Lots of Mary 23, 34, 28 Gospels 314, 322 gr''a, see Elijah of Vilna Guide of the Perplexed 262–264, 268, 271, 273, 275, 279, 281

Ḥai ben Sherira Gaon 140, 143–144, 146, 156–158, 173–174 Ḥai Gaon, see Ḥai ben Sherira Gaon Hakarat panim le-Rabbi Yishmaʿel 293 Ḥalfon ben Manasseh 30 Hamuli 330–331 al-Ḥarizi, see Judah al-Ḥarizi Harran 261–262 Ḥasidei Ashkenaz 105, 178, 295 Hasidism 187–188 Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai 185–187 Ḥayyim šaʿal 186 Ḥayyim Vital 176 Hebron 154 Hekhalot 110, 174, 293–295 Hekhalot rabbati 38 Hermes 33, 41, 312, 314 Hezekiah (king of Judea), see King Hezekiah Hiddekel (river) 136 Hill, see Thomas Hill Hipparchus 82–83 Hippocrates 31 House of Light 293 Ḥul 255 Iberian Peninsula 250 ʿIblin 155 Ibn ʿAbdūllah, see Jābir ibn ʿAbdūllah Ibn Bilia, see David ibn Bilia Ibn Ezra (see Abraham ibn Ezra) (see Moshe ibn Ezra) Ibn Sīrīn, see Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn Ibn Waḥshiyya 262, 269–270 Ibn Zabara, see Joseph ben Meir ibn Zabara of Barcelona Ibn Zarza, see Samuel ibn Zarza Ifriqiya 105 India 31 Indians 155 Iraq 155, 157 Isaac (Abraham’s son) 174, 232 Isaac ben Samuel of Acre 175 Isaac Luria 176, 185, 296 Isaac Polgar 196 Isaiah (the prophet) 230, 314 Ishmael (Abraham’s son) 232 Ishmaelites 32

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index of names (people, places, and texts) Israel 26–27, 30, 33, 106, 115, 122, 129, 162, 195, 222–224, 229–233, 236–243, 259, 293, 314 behavior and merit of- 230 great dignity of- 240 -has / does not have a star 227–232 knowledge distinctive of- 240 -nullifies the stellar decree / the testimony of the stars 210, 230, 240–242 -can nullify stellar decrees 195, 229–230 -obliged to calculate tequfot and mazzalot 238 righteousness of- 240, 242 specific wisdom of- 195 status vis-à-vis the influence of the stars / the stellar influence 195, 231, 248 strength and merits of- 229 wisdom of- 123 Isserles, see Moses Isserles Italy 72, 143 Jābir ibn ʿAbdūllah 127 Jacob (son of Isaac) 174 Jacob Castro 180 Jacob of Marvège 174 Jawr 154 Jericho 154 Jerusalem 89, 93, 154, 162 Jesus (son of Mary) 314, 317 Jifār 153 Joḥanan, see Rabbi Joḥanan Jordan 154 Joseph (son of Jacob) 141, 164, 314 Joseph ben Meir ibn Zabara of Barcelona 298 Joseph Caro 176, 179–180 Joseph-who-honors-Shabbats 234 Joshua (son of Nun) 314 Judah (son of Jacob) 165 Judah al-Ḥarizi 301 Judah bar Barzillai ha-Bargeloni 192–207, 218, 257 Judah ha-Levi 279 Judaism, legal frame of- 196 Kairouan Grand Mosque 330 Kalendrier des bergiers 291 Karaite 157

385

Kasr 155 Kedar 249 Kimah 231 King David 170, 314, 330 King Hezekiah 230, 241 King Solomon 30, 155, 300–301, 311–314, 322 Kislev 56, 89–90, 99–100 Kitāb al-Manṣūrī (Kitāb al-Manṣūrī fī ʼl-ṭibb) 299, 303 Kitāb sirr al-ʿasrār 301 Lamed-Heh Convoy 161–162 Letter of Aristeas 31 Letter on Astrology (Maimonides) 285 Letter to Judah bar Barzillai 192, 194, 198, 217–259 Levin, see Aryeh Levin Liber almansoris (= Liber medicinalis almansoris) 299, 305 Liber Institutionis, see Book of Instrution by Raziel Liber physonomie 288 Liber Razielis 326 Lithuania 161, 187 Lithuanian rabbinic elite- 188 Jewish culture 161 Lot (son of Haran) 314 Luria, see Isaac Luria Macedonia 31 macedonian 31 Magister Speculi 312–313, 317 Maimonides 178–179, 186, 196, 261–265, 328 al-Māʾmūn, see Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Māʾmūn Mappah 179 Margoliot, see Meir Margoliot Mari 102 Maš 255 Mefašer ḥelmin 144 Meir ben Isaac Aldabi of Toledo 303–305 Meir Margoliot 187 Meiri, see Menaḥem ben Solomon Meiri Menaḥem ben Solomon Meiri 277 Menasseh ben Israel 158 Merkavah 38 -circle 294 -mystic 293

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386

index of names (people, places, and texts)

Meton of Athens 51 Michael Scotus 288 Mishnah 26, 31, 283 Mishneh Torah 262, 276, 279, 283–285 Moses (the prophet) 115, 123, 165, 296, 314, 318 -father of physiognomy 296 Moses ibn Ezra 279 Moses Isserles 180 Mount of Galilee 155 Moses of Leon 300 Mount Sinai 318, 330 ms British Library Or. 5563 G.22 146 ms Cambridge University Library Add. 1224.4 143 ms Cambridge University Library Add. 667.1 143 ms Cambridge University Library Or. 557 143 ms Cambridge University Library ts Ar. 11.17 146 ms Cambridge University Library ts Ar. 31.107 147 ms Cambridge University Library ts Ar. 43.232 147 ms Cambridge University Library ts Ar. 43.95 146 ms Cambridge University Library ts Ar. 43.99 147 ms Cambridge University Library ts Ar. 51.41 147 ms Cambridge University Library ts as 143.325 122–123, 126, 130 ms Cambridge University Library ts as 172.181 147 ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.111 102, 112, 122–123, 125, 128, 131–133, 137 ms Cambridge University Library ts K 1.131 32 ms Cambridge University Library ts Misc. 6.156 147 ms Cambridge University Library ts Misc. 8.75 147 ms Cambridge University Library ts ns 322.39 147 ms Florence, Biblioteca nazionale ii. iii. 214 314 ms Frankfurt Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek heb. oct. 35 143, 148

ms London, Montefiore Library 484 192, 197–199, 202, 217 ms Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare 490 328 ms Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek clm 849 128, 131 ms Warsaw, Zydowski Instytut Historyczny 240 143 ms Warsaw Zydowski Instytut Historyczny 282 192, 197–198, 202, 217 Muḥammad (the prophet) 313–315, 317 Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Māʾmūn 317 Muḥammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Juʿfi al-Bukhārī 127 Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn 145 mul.apin 57, 69–70, 72 Naḥman ben Isaac 225, 234–235 Naḥmanides 181, 185 National Library of Israel 143 Nawa 155 Nebuchadnezzar 123–124, 132–133, 135–136, 245–246, 255 Nehardea 204, 257 New-Moon (festival) 25–26 Nisan 25, 56, 60–61, 80, 85–87, 91–93, 96–98 Nisannu 80 Nissim Girondi 278, 281 Noah (son of Lamekh) 30–31, 314 Oneirokritika 141 Oriens (a spirit or angelic creature) 131–132, 324 Palestine 26, 29, 105, 153 Palmyra 155 Paris 291 Pehuṣaṭariʾal 121, 130–132 Pentateuch 181–182, 184–186, 188 Persians 155 Pharaoh 247–248 Picatrix 270 Pitron ḥalomot 143–144, 148, 151 Plato 299, 303, 306–310 Polgar, see Isaac Polgar Portugal 271 Pseudo-Ḥai 143–144, 156–157 Ptolemy 31, 82–83 Pumbedita 157

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index of names (people, places, and texts) Qeriʾat shemaʿ ʿal-ha-miṭah 109 Qumran 24, 27, 46, 48, 50, 52–53, 60–61, 71– 72, 84, 88–91, 93–94, 96, 168, 292–293, 295 Qumranites 293, 297 Rabbi Akiva 225, 230–231, 235, 242, 251– 252 Rabbi Ashe 226 Rabbi Ḥanina 230 Rabbi Joḥanan 169, 229, 230 Rabbi Judah (Babylonian Talmud) 230 Rabbi Naḥman, see Naḥman ben Isaac Rabbi Shimon 301 Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi 226–227 Ragshiel (Master of dreams) 175 Rav 170, 230, 233 Rava 169, 226–227 Rayy 299 Raza de-Razin 300 Reductorium phisonomie 286 Responsa of the Geonim 295 of Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai 186 Rhazes, see Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī Rīf 153 Rolandus Scriptoris of Lisbon 287 Saadiah ben Yosef Gaon 204, 250 Saadia Gaon, see Saadia ben Yosef Gaon Šaʿar ha-šamayim 302–303 Sabbath 318 Sabianism 285 Sabians 262, 270 Safed 296 Ṣaḥib al-šurṭa 198, 218 Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 127 salāt al-istiḵāra 127 Salonika 142 Samuel (the amora) 170, 177, 204, 219, 222, 224, 230, 235, 237, 242 Samuel ben Ḥofni Gaon 144 Samuel ibn Zarza 270–271 Sanhedrin 26 Satan 325 Saturn 202, 211, 218–220, 237, 269, 282 Sayings of the Fathers 31 Schedula diversarum artium 328

387

Scroll 4QAstronomical Enocha ar, see scroll 4Q208 Scroll 4QAstronomical Enochb ar, see scroll 4Q209 Scroll 4QAstronomical Enochd ar, see scroll 4Q211 Scroll 4QBrontologion ar, see scroll 4Q318 Scroll 4QZodiac Calendar, see scroll 4Q318 Scroll 4QZodiacal Physiognomy, see scroll 4Q186 Scroll 11Q Jubilees, see scroll 11Q12 Scroll 4Q186 47 Scroll 4Q208 46, 48–50, 52–54, 61–66, 73– 74, 76–80, 84–87, 89 Scroll 4Q209 46, 48–50, 52–54, 61–67, 70, 73–77, 79–81, 84–91, 94–95, 98–99 Scroll 4Q211 70 Scroll 4Q318 26, 46, 49–50, 55, 57–59, 60– 61, 65–65, 70–71, 73–74, 79, 87 Scroll 11Q12 48 Second Temple -astrology 48 -divination 134, 137 -physiognomy 292 -Judaism 48, 50 -period 32, 134, 137, 185, 292 Secretum secretorum 30, 302–305 Šeʾelot u-tešuvot min ha-šamayyim 179 Sefarad 194, 207 Sefer Almansur 300 Sefer ha-ʿittim 198 Sefer ha-mešiv 175 Sefer ha-razim 29, 126, 134–137 Sefer ha-refuʾot shel ʾAsaf ha-rofe 31 Sefer Raziel 206 Sefer šaʿašuʿim (Book of Delights) 298 Sefer ševilei ʾemunah (Paths of Faith) 303– 305 Sefer ʾurim ve-tummim 38 Septuagint 31 Ševeṭ musar 185–186 Shem (son of Noah) 30–31 Shem Tov Ben Isaac 300, 303 Shepherd of Hermas 34 Šimušei sarim 182 Slavonic Enoch (= 2Enoch), see Book of Enoch, Slavonic Soddei razayyaʾ 178 Sodom 314

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388

index of names (people, places, and texts)

Solomon (King), see King Solomon Solomon (son of David), see King Solomon Solomonic 326–327 Solomon Almoli 142, 144, 156 Solomon ben Adret 271 Somniale Danielis 143 Sortes Astrampsychi 28 Sortes Sanctorum 28 Šošan soddot 181 Spain 270, 285, 326 Speculum astronomiae 312, 321 Speculum maius 302 St. Catherine’s (monastery) 330 St. Cuthbert Gospel 330 St. Michael in the Desert (monastery) 330 Stowe Missal 330 Sudanese 153 Šulḥan ʾarukh 176, 179–180, 185–186 Sumer 255 suranim 255 Talmud 21, 44, 142 and 203 (Babylonian), 143, 163, 173, 177, 206, 279 Babylonian- 141, 157, 169 talmudic (either Babylonian or Palestinian or both) 42, 172, 204–205, 207, 281, 304 talmudic (Babylonian) 146, 170, 177, 202, 207 Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection 102, 112 Tefilat ha-ʿamidah 109 Teli 283 as the northern or the southern lunar nodes 202, 282 Temple 33, 183, 306 Tetragrammaton 130, 182, 324 Tevet 56, 74, 80–81, 86, 88–90, 93–98 Thābit ben Qurra al-Ḥarrānī 270

The Fifteen Names 314, 327 The Four Rings of Solomon 321, 327 The Seven Names from the Book of Muhammad 312, 317, 327 Theophilus Presbyter 328 Thomas Hill 297–298 Thomas of Cantimpré 302 Tiberias 32, 154 Tishri 26, 56 Torah 31–32, 164, 167, 187–190, 223–224, 229, 238, 250, 255, 259, 278–279, 295, 328 oral- 31 - for divination / foretelling / prognostication / revelation 121, 129, 161–164, 167, 170, 178–180, 183–190 take counsel from- 185–186, 188 Tzvi Pesaḥ Frank 162 ʾUlay (river) 136 Uriel (archangel) 54 ʾUrim ve-Tummim 187 ʿUṣ 255 Vilna Gaon, see Elijah of Vilna Vincent of Beauvais 302 Vital, see Ḥayyim Vital Wisdom of the Chaldeans 206 Xerxes 58 Yaḥyā ibn al-Biṭrīq 301 Yemen 143 yemenites 143, 182 Zohar commentators / sages 296 corpus 294, 297, 300

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Index of Subjects abstention preparatory- 44 act (v.) -(stars) 229, 230 -(stars) of their own free will and knowingly /knowingly and of their own free will 223, 238, 243 act (n.) / action -derived from form 272 -of divination / divinatory- 21, 107, 183 -with fear of Heaven 256 -not firmly rooted in experience 275 -in the future 294 human- 43, 264 idolatrous- 267 magic- / magical- 107, 253, 266, 274 -of the magician 266 -of magnetic forces 271 -of medicinal herbs 272 -performing- three times 23 physical- 42 of the physiognomic sign 286 primary- of the remedy 272 -of the remedy through its form 272 remedy’s- through its matter 272 ritual- 23, 44, 102, 133 secondary- of the remedy 272 -of the segullot 272, 274–275 -of social significance 23 -of šoʾel ʾov 251 a suitable time for- 266 -of talismans 269 -through its being a substance 272 -through its forma specifica 272 written- 23 activity magic- 270 adjuration 108–109 -of the angels 108 -formula 136 amulet 34, 106, 279, 283–285 forbidden- 285 angel 101, 107–108, 112, 119, 129–130, 132, 134, 178, 277, 281, 314, 316, 318, 321, 326– 327 archangel (chief-angel) 54, 131

-ruling the planet 206, 313 -of the triplicity 320 -of the weekday 321 angelic -creature 131–132 -figure 136 -knowledge 53 -master of dreams 175 answer Chaldean’s- 224–226 lot- 28–30, 35–43 oneiric- 102, 109, 111, 123, 129, 133, 158, 189 prophetic- (= oneiric) 173–175 apparition human-like- 136 non human-like- 111 art / craft 196, 245–246, 249, 252 -of astrology 227, 237–238 demonstrative- 286 divinatory- /-of divination 253–254, 286–287, 290–291, 297 magical- 324 mantic- 287 non-stellar- 195 physiognomic- 295, 297 whose practice is forbidden- 254 prognostic- 286–287, 304 ascendant 71, 209, 221, 265, 267, 293, 316 ʾašfayyaʾ/ʾaššafim / ašfin 245–247, 254 aspect astrological- 204–205 astragalos / astragaloi 36, 41 astrolabe 200 astrologer -cannot change the future 234–235 -can forecast God’s decree 248 -not able to indicate the place of death 235 -cannot prognosticate specific details 234–235 -can understand the special status of Israel vis-à-vis the stars 248 astrology 46, 48, 166, 176, 178, 209, 211, 223, 274–275, 279–280, 287, 289–291, 294, 299

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390 Abraham practiced- 48, 195, 227–228, 232 ambiguous position of- 196 apology / defend- / defense of- 194–195, 203, 222 -as art / craft, see art / craft, astrology Arabic- 204–205 Babylonian astronomy-astrology 81 believe in- 194, 206 beyond the reach of- 196 -is calculation of mazzalot 239–240 conservative Jewish- 204 -is not consultation of Chaldeans / the Chaldean science 223 decree of- 209, 211 definition of- 236 detractor of/opponent of- 199, 206 electional- 192–193, 202, 205–206, 221 engage (v.) in- 227, 238 excel in- 195 Hellenistic horoscopic- 71 Hellenistic weather- 50 historical- 194 horary- 203, 221 -increases the fear of Heaven / -knowledge of God 249 -does not infringe the law / -is legitimate / licit 194–195, 203, 224, 228, 232 legitimate (the status of-) / legitimacy 194, 199, 224 -makes visible God’s miracles and powers 249 Mesopotamian- 91 practice of- / study and practice of- 194– 196, 233 practice (v.)- 227, 238, 242 Qumran- 26, 46–47, 49 rabbinic- 226–227 required to practice- / calculate / engage /rely / learn 195, 238, 242, 243 Talmudic- 205 -is a true / true and reliable science / veracity of- 228, 232–233 validity of- 195 astronomy -is calculation of tequfot 239, 242 definition of- 209, 211, 236 -is the highest of the sciences of the stars; 236

index of subjects attitude -of mind (of the user) 122 attribute divine- 113, 122, 126, 303 attributing -old prophecies to current situations 169 augur 164, 252–253 augury 163, 172 authority halakhic- 198, 207 practitioner’s- 23 religious- 21, 193, 201 auto-induce (-a dream) 102 avatar prophetic- 173 ban (n.) -about consulting Chaldeans 206, 223– 226, 256 -on making figures 284 -on philosophy 271 barrier -between the divine and the human 43 -between the diviner and the answer 42 beech 330 behavior ascetic- 136 ritual- 137 being -numinous 102 bibliomancy 161–163, 166–167, 170–171, 177– 180, 188–189, 191 binary-system (yes-or-no answers) 111 blood -of a dove 319 bloodletting 148, 150–154, 219–220, 222, 226 body clean- 318, 320 heavenly- 48, 283–284 bone 36, 254, 331 bookmaking 327 born -under (a planet) 203, 226–227, 237 bring/draw down -spiritual forces /-spiritual powers of the stars 267, 271 -spirituality 266–270, 280

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index of subjects bronze 316 white- 325, 331 burn / burning -candles 161 -of incense 244, 264, 319 calculate tequfot and mazzalot (see tequfot and mazzalot) calculation 28, 57, 98, 219, 268 -of the ascendant 267 calendrical- 77, 239 -of the positions of the planets (except for the sun) (= calculation of mazzalot) 239 -of the positions of the stars (not a science specific to Israel) 239–240, 242 -of the position of the sun (= calculation of tequfot) 239 calendar 354-day lunar- 51, 65 360-day (zodiac)- 57, 59 364-day (solar)- 56, 65, 75 365-day ideal- 55, 60, 79–80 administrative- 57 Aramaic- 46, 48–50, 53, 55, 69, 84, 87 Aramaic synchronistic- 74, 86 Babylonian- 52, 58 Babylonian- computation 74 Babylonian standard- 51 -based astrological ephemeris 48 formulaic- 55 Hebrew- 58, 74, 76, 80, 85–86, 88–91, 93–97, 99, 239 ideal- 49, 85–86 ideal Babylonian- 58 ideal zodiac- 89 Islamic lunar- 59 Julian- 89–90, 93–94 lunar- 77, 80 luni-solar- 57, 88 luni-solar Mesopotamian civil or cultic57 luni-solar stellar ideal- 85 perpetual Aramaic- 88 present-day Hebrew- 52, 58, 76, 88, 96– 97 rabbinical reforms of- 58 real lunar 57

391 schematic- 57, 84, 93 schematic zodiac- 61 solar- 80 synchronistic- / synchronized- 49, 61– 66, 73, 79, 85 zodiac- 59 camphor 321 candaria 313 cardines -of the horoscope (angles of the horoscope) 204–205, 265 -of the world 313 carta (written on) 320–321, 324 cartouche magical- 130 cast / casting -dice 28 -of fingers 35 -lots 28, 172, 179, 181–184 -spells 164, 245 -stones 249–250, 256 catalogue -of magical and divinatory practices 194–195 causality Aristotelian- 271 physical- 274 cause / causing -spirits to descend 269 cedar 329–330 -of Lebanon 325–326 ceremony 24, 26, 162, 221, 327 character (man’s) 35, 291–295 decipher- 295 natural- 287, 290 -traits 295 character (writing) 312–313 charity (see also righteousness) 41 charm (n) 23 charm (v) 254 chemise (of a book) 330 cherub 115, 182 chiromancy 294–295, 297–298 choice of / choose -animal 329 -the hour 192–193, 197, 200, 202, 218– 224, 251–252, 256, 316 -materials 328

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392 -a question from a list 29–30 -wood 329 circle esoteric- 292, 302 mystical- 292 mystical Jewish- 295, 298–299 clay 277 unbaked potter’s- (written on) 319 client 22–24, 29, 31, 34–44, 316, 320– 321 illiterate or lay- 35 private- 34 clothing 318–323 clean- 318, 320 codicology 313 complexion. 308 natural- 290 condemn / condemnation /condemnatory 166, 196, 206, 264, 291 conditioning psychological- 112 configuration astral- 266–267, 270, 276 conjunction (of the sun and moon) 64, 66, 70, 76, 86, 92 conjuration -of angels 107 constellation 178, 209, 229, 231, 244, 277, 280, 282 -of the stars at one’s birth 293 zodiac- 82–83 consult -astrologers 176, 180 -Baalzebub 241 -a book 42, 170, 177 - Chaldeans 197, 200, 209, 217, 222–227, 233, 254–255 -a diviner 23 -an egg 250 -an expert 42 -a ferry boat 170 -ghosts or familiar spirits 164 -other gods 241 -lots (goralot) 176, 186 -meḵašfim 255 -meʿonnim 255 -nails 250 -an oracle 32, 38 -a ʾov 254

index of subjects -qosemim 254 -a shoulder-blade 250 -soothsayers 180 -terafim (= qesem) 249–250, 256 -Torah 185 -ʾurim and tummim 183 -a yiddeʿoni 254 consultation of -Baalzebub 241 -biblical books (Torah) 182, 188, 190 -books of divination 34, 168 - Chaldeans 193–194, 203, 209, 222, 224, 226 Hasidic systems of- 188 -an oracle 32, 42 -ʾurim and tummim 164 contaminate 42, 267 control (v.) 27, 175, 183, 220, 230, 231 controversy 187, 192–193, 199, 201–202 conversation / conversational 35, 39, 43 conversion -of foreign mantic practices 189 convey (hidden knowledge) 102 cord 329 umbilical- 289 -woven by a virgin 324 correspondence (between sign and meaning) 141 costus 318 court 26, 133, 135 Hasidic- 188 credence 173, 179 crescent first- (= first lunar crescent) 51, 63, 68, 76, 80, 85–87, 92–93, 96 criticism 196 crown / mitre 323, 325 -of Solomon 322 cult 271 -of effigies and images 269 idolatrous- 262 -of images 261 custom -of their ancestors 267 impious- 243 Jewish- 165 mantic- 168 -of the nation 273 customer 24

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index of subjects cycle luni-solar- 48 Metonic- 51, 76, 85, 88, 89, 96–98 nineteen-year- 50–53, 57–58, 60–61, 79– 80, 84–89, 91, 94, 96–97 -of the stars 242–243 -of the sun 239 cypress 325–326 data astrological- (horoscopic) 58, 193, 197, 200, 205 brontological- 26 calendrical / astronomical- 62–63, 65, 71, 74, 76, 77, 81, 84–86, 88–89, 91, 93– 94, 97 debate 191, 291 (over philosophy) 271 decan 88, 90 decipher 170, 287, 295 decision-making 162, 188–189, 201 decree astrological- 209, 242–243, 248, 258 divine / God’s- 238, 248 -of the evil 219 favorable / unfavorable- 240–242 -of heaven 41 modify (God the stellar)- 210, 238 nullify the stellar- 210, 229–230, 240, 242 -of the stars permanent and without condition 238, 246 stellar- 195, 211, 230–231, 241–242, 248– 249 deity 43 demon 101, 269, 271, 299, 313–314, 316–317 diagnose 295 dignity (astrological) 316 discourse -of questions and answers 35 dispute (n.) 68, 199, 282, 308 divert (God) -the influence of the star 240 divination astral- 46, 48 -by Biblical verses displayed, heard, recited 29, 39, 121, 129–130, 158, 162– 163, 169–170, 173–176, 178, 180, 182, 185, 189

393 collective Jewish- 27 esoteric techniques of- 298 -event 22–25, 33, 42–45 forms of- 163–165, 171–172, 188–190, 250, 287 Greco-Roman- 21–24, 28, 61, 170–171, 286–287, 290–291, 297, 304 -inseparable from statecraft 28 Jewish- 21–22, 24–25, 102 ancient Jewish- 21–22, 24 Jewish oneiric- 101–113 lamp- 103 lot- 180 means of- 161, 167, 172–173, 180, 189– 190 -by means of Biblical verses recited 169, 173, 178, 180 -by means of physical features 387 methods of- 163, 166, 168, 172 nocturnal- 135 oneiric- 101, 104 -by random numerical selection 28 social dynamics of- 28 sought / unsought- 170 -spell 33–34 private- 34 privatized- 28, 103 prohibited idolatrous- 166, 195–196, 243–245, 249–254 -by the Torah 161–163, 167–170, 173–182 (see also Pentateuchal lottery) -through the chance hearing of given verses 169 trance- 43 diviner 21, 23–24, 28, 35, 39, 42–44, 129, 135, 164, 169, 175, 183–184, 188, 254 expert- 35 literate- 34 pious- 188 divine / foretell / predict / know / report / determine (the future) 102, 162, 166, 169, 178–179, 188, 234, 246, 252, 266, 286– 287, 290–291, 294–295 doctrine -of the Two Spirits 27 doctrine/practice Hermetic / magic / occult- 22, 107, 113, 195–196, 261, 263, 264–266, 268–271, 273, 275, 283, 297, 311, 322, 324

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394 dodekatemoria (Kalendartexte) 60–61 dominate (a planet a horoscope/nativity) 209, 223 (see also rule -a planet) doreš ʾel ha-metim (a form of qesem) 250, 254 dragon 283 drawing of a- 282 drama social- 23 draw/ drawing down, see bring dream -behavior 101 divinatory- 102 elusive nature of- 111 epiphany- 102 -incubation 103 -interpretation 23, 140, 142–145, 156, 173 -omina 143 prophetic- 104, 173–174 ritual- 107–108, 111 -symbols 140–141, 144 -visions 140–141 dream-request 101–113, 123, 173–176, 189 Islamic and/or Christian- 103–104, 113, 126–128 non-Jewish- 107, 111, 113, 127–128, 131–132, 137 dream symbol -codification 140 dualism good/evil, Jewish/non-Jewish, and pure/impure- 111 duration -of man’s life 294 ecliptic 71–72, 82–83, 209, 236–237 effectiveness 23, 39 -of the healers and practitioners 24 efficacy 168, 183, 271–273, 275–276, 295 -of magic 279 -of ritual (based on writing) 33 effigy 270 election -of the day 222 -of the hour 197, 200, 202–203, 206, 256 electiones 218–219, 221 element fifth- 281

index of subjects empire Christian- 27 enchantment 173 encounter (n.) face-to-face- 37 interpersonal dimension- 42 ritual- 22 -with diviners 21, 35, 42 -with a numinous being /divine being / non-human entity 102, 107, 111 encyclopedia 286, 291, 302–303 medical- 298–300 engraved -human figures 279, 281, 283, 284 enterprise esoteric- 44 entity divine / non-human- 102, 107, 111, 129– 130, 134 supernatural- 43 ephemeris astrological- 48 zodiac- 49, 55–79 equator celestial- 82, 209, 236 equinox / equinoxes 50, 72, 81, 83, 88 autumnal- 82, 84 precession of- 82–83 spring- / vernal- 65, 74, 80, 82–87, 91–93, 96–97 eutuntam -of Solomon 322 event divinatory- 22, 24, 42–44 exorcism 320–321, 323 experience 237, 251, 271–272, 274–275 -as experimentum 272 oneiric- 101, 104, 111 experimenta 272 expert 42, 106, 133, 178, 189, 201, 248–249 ritual- 44 expertise lateral- 43 magical- 44 practitioner’s- 23 to test- 133 vertical- 43

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395

index of subjects fast / fasting 23, 173, 315, 319–320 fasten / fastening 330–331 fate 26–27, 40, 175, 183, 293 figure angelic / heavenly / supernal- 136, 281, 283–285 astrological- 283 astronomical- 278 -in bas-relief or painted 277 -of a constellation 280, 282 -of a dragon 282–283 drawing of- 325 -of the four faces together 278 -of God’s serving ministers 278 -of gold and/or silver 276, 282, 283 -of heavenly bodies 283–284 -in high relief 277–279, 281 human- / -of a human being 136, 277– 278, 281, 283–284 make / making of- 276–278, 280–281, 283–284 -of the ministers in the higher firmament / in the lowest firmament / in the lower firmament 278, 281 -of the moon teli 282, 283 non-supernal- 281 ornamental- 277–278, 280–281, 283, 284 -of quadrupeds and of other animals 277 -of Saturn 282 -of stars 278, 282 -of the sun, moon, stars, constellations, or angels 277, 280, 282–283, 284 -of trees and plants 277 -of Venus 282 firmament higher- 278, 281 lower / lowest- 278, 281 flood 231 folium gold- 316 force bring down- 280 magnetic- 271 spiritual- 271 supernatural- 44 forecast 50, 209, 242, 248, 251, 286 foretell / foretelling 48, 209, 286

-the future / -what is to come 102, 166– 168, 188 -specific details 234 form (= essence) 272, 274 hidden- 271 form (= figure) 280 astral- 266 -of earthly entities 280, 283 earthly unconnected to stars- 280, 283 engraved- 281 heavenly- 280 human- 277, 280–281 -of stars 280 supernal- 281 forma specifica 272 formulae magical- 30, 108 fortune 37, 240, 288, 293, 297 bad- 240 good- 37, 240 ‘founders of observances’ (sect practicing a non-licit science) 209, 243, 249 freelancer 34 fumigate / suffumigate 265, 318, 320 fumigation / suffumigation 263, 312, 314, 317, 319 function linear zig-zag- 70 prophetic or divinatory- 293 future anticipate- 196, 234 change- 234–235 divine- 162, 287 eschatological- 27 inquire into- 235, 255 knowledge of- 196 speak about- 246, 252 gazrayyaʾ 245–247 -different from meḵašfim (who do not speak about the future) 246 -identical to gazrin 245 gematria 175, 181 ghoul 269 glove 323 goal magical-divinatory- 107 gold clean- 322, 325

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396 pure / purest- 323, 331 goral (lot) / goralot (lots) 28–33, 35–36, 38–40, 43, 162–163, 171–172, 175–177, 179–180, 186 -ha-Torah 163, 177, 180 grid 39, 42–43 grimoire 29–30, 326–327 ḥadīth 127 ḥaḵamim (ḥaḵimin) 246–247 -identical to meḵašfim 247 halakhah 178, 189–190, 275 conflict with- 193 Maimonidean- 285 handbook 28, 140, 143 esoteric- 30 magical- 29 ḥarṭumayyaʾ 245–246 -did not act together with the meḵašfim 247 -identical to ḥarṭummim (ḥarṭummin) 245 ḥasidim versus mitnagdim 186–188 head-dress (of the Master) 323 healing 22–23, 32, 273, 279–281, 284, 295 Heaven fear of- 195, 224, 238, 242–243, 245, 249, 256 heavenly -gate 50, 65–66, 68–69, 72, 74, 77, 79, 85 -journey 55, 62 heavens 229 center of- 236 description of- 236 motion of- 205 seven- 318 hemerology 81, 166 hero Biblical- 185 cultural- 189 hidden 102, 117, 123, 127, 134, 136, 162, 234, 247, 258, 271, 287, 297, 312 hold the sight (trick the eye, not a magic act) 252–253 hoop 324, 328–329 horizon 69, 71–73, 76, 92, 209–211, 293 horn 26, 265, 323 horoscope 48, 205–206, 227–231, 240–241 Babylonian- 58

index of subjects -of any man / person / individual 91, 203, 210, 228, 293 -of the moment 206 signs and testimonies of- 229 house (= astrological place) 205–206 angular- 205 cadent- 204–205 cardinal- 204 motion of- 205–206 succedent- 204–205 house (= domicile of a planet) 316 hour 203, 218, 251–253 astrological judgment of- 204 auspicious / not auspicious- 219, 221, 223–224 dangerous- 218–219 different- act in different ways 223 even-numbered / odd-numbered- 193, 202–206, 209, 218–222, 224 -good to 223 Jupiter’s- 210, 223 Mars’- 210, 218, 220–221 planetary- 203, 205–206, 208 quality of- 202, 221 rule a planet an- 211 ruling planet of- 211 Saturn’s- 211, 218, 220 separate- (odd-numbered hour) 204, 211 suitable / not suitable / unsuitable- 219, 221, 223 Sun’s- 316 -when a zodiac sign rises / sets 223 ḥover ḥever (a form of qesem) 250, 254 idolater 262, 267, 273, 284 idolatry 195–196, 209–211, 226, 243–244, 247, 249, 261–262, 275–276, 279–283, 285 true- 267 illicit/not licit 195, 206, 228, 232, 236, 243– 245, 254 image 21, 136, 236, 243–244, 250–251, 261, 266–267, 269, 327 imagery symbolic- 155 incantation 30 incense 244, 264, 266, 319 inclination 295 evil- 291

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397

index of subjects natural- 291 incubation Classical dream- 103 induction -of pneumatic powers 271 -of spirituality 267 inference 278 logical- 274 influence -absolute and complete 238 astral/ stellar- / -of stars / of zodiac signs 195, 210–211, 229, 230–238, 240–241, 248, 271, 275 celestial- 290 -not complete 238 conditional / non-conditional- 195, 238 -conferred on the stars (conditionally by God) 223 of hours- 203 -permanent and without condition 238 ink 311, 319, 321, 327 -made of alum and saffron 319 red- 322–323 inquire -about / into the future 235, 255 -of astrologers 180 -of the dead 164 -of the ʾurim and tummim 32 inquirer 29–30, 35, 39–40, 174, 181 insight (into a third party’s thought, will, and dream) 137 inspiration divine- 31, 167, 237 institution divination- 23 public divinatory- 28 instrument astronomical- 72 -of divination 28 -for the induction of pneumatic powers 271 writing- 311 intellect 267 divine- 295 separate- (driving a sphere) 281 interaction (between diviner and client) 24 intercalation 52, 56–60, 84 intermediary 43

talismanic 271 internalization 189 interplay -of the individual and community 25 interpret / interpreting -dream 112, 133, 143 -the form of the moon 26 -ominous symbols 140 -sign 101, 180, 189 interpretation 29, 155, 167, 169, 173, 175, 187, 204, 248, 252 dream- / -of the dreams 23, 102, 108, 130, 132–133, 135, 140, 142–145, 156, 169, 173– 174 intuitive- (of Biblical verses by various means) 189 interpreter dream- 141, 144–145 intuition religious- 295 invocation 108, 131, 312, 314, 320 -of God 122–123, 130 isnād (the chain of authorities on which a tradition is based) 317 istiḵāra 103, 126–127 Jews Babylonian- 27 Palestinian- 27 jinn 317 kabbalah 292, 295–296 -of divine names 181, 184 -of names 184 practical- 106, 181, 270 kabbalist 185, 189, 296–297 Kalendartexte, see dodekatemoria kasdaiaʾ 245–247 -identical to kasdim and kasdaʾin 245– 246 -one of the Chaldeans’ families 255 -from the royal family in the time of Nebuchadnezzar 255 ḵāṣṣa 271 kešafim (performer of a magic act) 253 knife (written on) 316 -blade 329 new sharp- 324, 329 sharp- 329

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398 knowledge esoteric-

index of subjects

31

lamina copper- (written on) 316 iron- (written on) 316 lead- (written on) 316 silver- (written on) 316 tin- (written on) 316 law 167, 178, 197, 222, 224, 226–228, 259, 264, 276, 283, 285 Jewish- 179, 193 -of Moses 314, 318 -of nature / natural- 274 oral- 303 -of prophecy 165 rabbinic- 329 leather 330 red- 325–326 legacy 156 cross-cultural- 140 Islamic- 145 legitimacy 157, 161, 163, 165, 199, 275 halakhic- 180, 187 religious- 295 legitimation 167 lenient / permissive 251, 256 lime 247, 328 -liquors 328–329 -solution 324 -stone 328 -wood 330 liminality (of the oneiric experience) 101 linen -cloth 322 listen / listening to 243 -the angel 112 -the Chaldeans’ advice / answers 224–226 -children reciting verses 169 intentional or unintentional- 163 longitude (of any fixed star) 82, 83, 89 look at the liver (qesem) 249 lore astrological- 205 Graeco-Egyptian magical- 135 Jewish divinatory- 137 lot Pentateuchal- / of the Pentateuch / of the Torah 163, 177, 180, 182, 184–188

-of the Gaon of Vilna (= lot of the Gaon Rabbi Elijah = lot of the gr''a) 161– 163, 185–189 lottery -book 177, 182–185, 189 non-Biblical -book 182, 184 Pentateuchal / Torah- 184–185, 188–189 luck 240, 293 lunar disk visibility of- 63, 67 magic 22, 25, 44, 80, 106, 110, 172, 189, 194, 254, 261–262, 267, 271, 273–274, 276, 279–280, 291, 316 ancient Greek- 312 astral- 195–196, 206, 261–264, 268, 270– 271, 276, 279–280, 283, 285 astral/liturgical- 206 -based upon astrological calculations (learned magic) 268, 279–280 -based on writing 44, 107, 314 black- 263 esoteric- 297 folk- / folkloristic- 279 forms of / branches of- 171, 178–179, 263– 264, 267, 270–271, 273, 314, 327 Hebrew- 312, 327 idolatrous astral- 285 Jewish- 110, 305 learned- 268, 276, 279–280 linguistic- 107–108 non-astral form of- 270 oneiric- 104 popular / popular form of- 267, 270, 268 primitive- 268, 276 professional- 262, 279 ritual- 104 -and segullot 271–276 Solomonic- 311, 327 magician 43–44, 263, 265–266 ‘make the powers of the stars flow’ (sect practicing a non-licit stellar science) 211, 244–245, 249, 255 ‘makers of talismans’ (sect practicing a nonlicit stellar science) 210, 244–245, 249, 282 making -decision 162, 188

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index of subjects decision- 189 manticism 179 forbidden- 164, 166 Jewish- 164 manual bibliomantic- 29 divination- 21, 23–25, 28–29, 42 dream- 143, 145 magical- 30, 33 medical- 31 palmomancy- 30 -as part of the ritual 33 physiognomy- 23, 286, 288–289, 303– 304 marginality -of the practitioner 44 master -of experience 272 ‘masters of sympathetic relationships’ (sect practicing a non-licit stellar science) 210, 245, 249 materiality 44 mean talismanic- 267 mediation 36, 44 medicine 287–289, 299 astral- 302 Prophet’s- 296 -as unrelated to the ways of the Amorite 273 (see also magic, -and segullot) medium 42, 169, 187 meḵašef 250, 253 -a form of qesem 250 - performs a magic act 253 meḵašfim 245–248, 254–255 -acted together with the ḥarṭummim 247 -identical to ‘the makers of talismans’ and ḥaḵamim 247 -do not speak about future events 246 -were disciples of the ʾaššafim and followed them 247 menaḥeš (a form of qesem) 250–253 -speaks about the future through signs in stars, animals, and birds 252 -takes auguries from birds or stars 253 meʿonen (a form of qesem) 250–252 -applies seven kinds of male semen on the eye (according to Rabbi Ishmael) 252

399 -calculates moments and hours (according to Rabbi Akiva) 251–252 -forecast neither through astrology nor through the positions of the planets 251–252 -holds the sight / tricks the eye (according to the sages’ words) 252 meqalqelei ḥiṣṣim / qilqal ba-ḥiṣṣim (= shaking arrows / casting stones) 249–250, 256 message divine / non-human- 43, 101–102, 129, 311 metoposcopy 294–298 mind 37, 40, 42, 111, 122 client’s state of- 37 mitnagdim 186–189 mitre, see crown month full- 63 hollow- 63 intercalary- 52–53, 58, 63, 88 lunar- 48, 51–53, 63–65, 66–67, 74–75 solar / zodiac- 65–67, 71, 88, 99 synodic- 55, 60, 64, 76 moon 202, 221, 253, 265, 274, 277, 283 drawing of- 282 new- 25–27, 87, 170 motion daily- (of the heavens) 205 -of the houses 205 -of the planets 236, 244 -of the sky 205 -of the stars 209, 275 motivation astrological- 267 musk 321 myrrh 318 mystic 44, 292–295, 297–300, 304 mysticism 30, 298 kabbalistic- 298 naḥaš (augury) 172 name angelic- 109, 130, 206 divine- 109, 122–123, 173, 175, 181, 184 magical- 109 magical use of- 312–315, 318, 320, 324, 326–327

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400 sacrilegious and demonic- 245 secret- of God 318 narration dream- 141, 155 narrative 24–25, 31, 55, 287 nasi 198, 218 nativity 210, 223 nation gentile- 195, 229, 236, 238, 240–241, 243, 248, 254 -of the world 31, 229–232, 236, 238–239, 241, 243, 248, 273 nature composite- of dream books 145, 156 -of the correspondence between sign and meaning 141 discursive- of answers 35 -of divinatory events 42, 44 -of dreams 141 elusive- of dreams 111 formulaic- of dream books 155 inner- versus outer form 297 laws of- 274 ominous- of dreams 158 transactional- of the divinatory practice 22 necromancy 263 nevuʾah (prophecy) 172 nineteen-year cycle 50, 60–61, 79–81, 84– 100 Babylonian / Mesopotamian- 51–52, 57–58 Metonic- 51, 76, 85, 88–89, 96–98 nomina 313–322 norm ascetic- 107, 136 notion astrological- 273–274 -of physiognomy 304 -of wisdom 134 nullify (God) -the influence of a star / the stellar influences 210, 231–232, 240, 248 (God) -the judgment of the stars 233 (God) -the rule (of the stars) 210, 230, 232–233 (God does not) -the rule of the horoscope 210, 230 (God) -the stellar decrees 230, 240–241

index of subjects (God) -the testimony of the stars 233 (God does not) -the testimony of the stars 232 (Israel) -the stellar decrees 195, 210, 229–230, 240–242, 249 (Israel) -the testimony of the stars 210, 230 (makers of talismans) -the power of the malefic planet 244 oak 326, 330 oath 271 objection to -astrology 193, 196, 199, 201, 207, 217 -learned magic 276 objector 193–203, 206–207, 222–223, 256 obligation -to practice astrology 242 offense to Heaven 226 oil 259 ben- 316 olive- 250 omen 166, 175, 178 Akkadian lunar- 26 astrological- 49 divinatory- 179 lunar- 24–27 Palestinian Aramaic lunar- 24 omina 196 good / bad- 111 dream- 143 omniscience divine / God’s- 124–125 open / opening -a book in times of trouble (in the manner of a lot) 186 -the Pentateuch (to find a lot by computation) 181–182 -the Torah / the Bible (to see which verse turns up) 161–163, 180, 185 -Torah scrolls (to determine the future by lot) 179 operation chance- 42 magical- 263 mathematical- 44 mental- 42 opposite primary- (dry, wet, hot, cold) 272

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index of subjects oracle 32, 35, 37, 40, 42 Anatolian dice- 39 astragalos- 41 Greek dice- 36 public- 26, 29 -rite 33 spoken- 33 temple- 34 to test- 38–39 verifiability of- 39 -in written form 33 order natural- 196 orlah 275 paleography 84, 146, 313 palmomancy (body tremors) 30 paper 108–109, 112, 146–147, 317, 323 paradigm Aristotelian scientific- 262, 273 parchment 317, 319, 323–324, 326–330 -of arciginim (written on) 319 clean- (written on) 319 very thin clean- (written on) 319 pattern behavioral- 287, 290–291, 303–304 pearl 321 peg (= pin) 330–331 pentaculum 323 perception oneiric- (of codified signs) 111 performance (in divination) 23–24, 104, 106, 110, 135 (in magic) 24, 264 period astrological- 26 preparatory- 107 Second Temple- 32, 134, 137 Talmudic- 172 permissibility 186 persona -of the diviner 43 personality -trait 291 phase lunar / moon’s- 66, 76, 88, 94 philosopher 146, 314 natural- 291

401 philosophy 271, 276, 285, 295 natural- 274–275, 290–291, 305 phylacteria 103 physiognomer 286–287, 297–299 physiognomy diagnostic- 295, 304 divinatory / non-divinatory- 23, 27, 286– 287, 289–291, 295 Greco-Roman- 286–287, 290–291, 304 Greek- 292 Hebrew / Jewish- 292–305 Hekhalot- 294 Islamic- 296–297 kabbalistic- 294, 296–298 Latin- 290, 301 mantic / non-mantic- 286–287, 290, 292, 295, 297–298, 304 ordinary human- 296 prognostic- 286, 289–290 Qumran and Merkavah- 295 secret of- 300 Zohar / Zoharic- 295–296, 300 pietism magical- 183, 189 mantic- 161, 188–191 piety magical- 110 pin, see peg piyyut 25, 110, 136 planet benefic / malefic- 209–210, 219–220, 244 direct / retrograde- 209, 236–237 domicile of- 203 -dominate / rule a horoscope 209, 211 horoscopic position of- 206 position of- 193, 200, 205–206, 209–210, 221–222, 224, 228, 236, 239, 244–248, 251 ruling- (the day) 211, 218–219 ruling- assigned to (the hour) 203, 211, 219–220 suitable / unsuitable- 218–219 plea 108–109, 123, 126–129, 133 point cardinal- (of the horizon) 83, 265 cardinal- (of the year) 82–84 polarization negative-positive- 151

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402 politics -of omens 27 portability (of books of lots) 34 position of -the gate 77 -the heavenly bodies in the sky 48 -any planet in any zodiac sign 49–50, 53, 58, 60, 81, 83, 85–90, 93–94, 97–98, 205–206, 222 -the zodiac signs (in a horoscope) 71, 203, 205–206, 210, 228 potsherd 327 unbaked- (written on) 319 unbaked but only dried- (written on) 316 power -of astrology 234–235 -of the Chaldeans 235 -of clairvoyance 38 -of God’s 248–249, 318 Israel’s- / -of Israel 229–231 -inherent in existing objects, inanimate or animate 264 -inherent in human actions 264 -of material nature 290 -of the omen 178 -of a planet to cause benefit or to harm of their own free will and knowingly 244, 247 pneumatic / spiritual- 267, 271 -of the prophet 241 -of speech 107 -of the species 244 -of the spoken word 327 -of the written word 327 -of stars 229, 223, 233, 241, 244, 255, 267 supernatural- (of the ṣadiq) 188 -of supernatural force 44 words of- 313 practice (n.) accommodated- 194 astrological- 48–49, 194, 202, 206, 242 -of astrology 233 Chaldean- 197, 201, 206, 223, 235, 254 -of Chaldeans 235 chiromantic- 293–294 controversial- 207 divinatory- / -of divination 21–22, 42, 134, 164, 183, 194–195, 217, 250–251, 286, 292

index of subjects electional- 193, 206 forbidden- 196, 249, 251, 254, 256 forbidden divinatory- (mentioned in the Bible and the Talmud) 163 -forbidden in Scripture 249, 254 -of goralot (lots) 177 Hasidic- 188 idolatrous- 267 kabbalistic divinatory- 294, 296 knowledge- 23, 44 legitimacy of- / legitimate 163, 165, 180, 189, 191 magical- 264–266, 271, 273 magical and divinatory- 194–195 mantic- 164, 172–173, 184, 189, 191 medical- 24, 302 -of medicine 287 metoposcopic- 293–294 physiognomic- 304 popular- 24, 266 ritual- 22 scribal- 319 Talmudic- 203 practice (v.) -astral-liturgical magic 206 -astrology 194–196, 227–228, 242 -astronomy and astrology 238 -deeds of the Chaldeans 223 -idolatry / not true idolatry 244, 267 -qesamim mentioned in Scripture 254 -a wicked religion 243 practitioner 21, 23–24, 29, 31, 34, 43–44, 87, 255, 290, 297, 302, 304 praxis magical- 107, 113 prayer recipe- 130 predestination 48 predict / predicting -the future (see divine the future) prediction 50, 168–169, 266, 287, 294 priest 32, 183, 255 -of Baalzebub 241 Egyptian- 44 princes mirror of- 298 princes (of the four regions of the world = spirits) 313

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403

index of subjects procedure 24, 30, 33, 35, 39, 43–44, 133, 161, 227, 234–235, 311, 314, 316, 319, 322, 327 process -of calculation 28 geomantic- 39 interactive- 22 Judaization- 166 -of ramdomization 29, 42–43 segullot as- 274 self-healing- 295 product finished- 106, 108–109, 111, 137 production -of books 145, 313 prognosis 286, 294 medical- 286, 288 prognostic / prognostication 50, 153, 164, 166–167, 287, 289–290, 292 legitimate methods of- 166 prognosticate 286, 294 -general features (astrologers) 234 -specific details (Chaldeans) 234 prohibition 164–165, 176 Biblical- (against sorcery) 178 -concerning astrology 176 -concerning divination 176 -on consulting lots 186 -of forbidden amulets 285 -on making figures 272–275, 277–278, 281, 284 -on making heavenly forms 280 property special- (= segullah) 271, 273 prophecy 164–165, 172–173, 176, 183, 230 minor- 169 one sixtieth of- 169 -unlike the testimony of the zodiac signs and the planets 248 prophet 32, 102, 115, 121, 124, 129, 133– 134, 164, 168–169, 183, 238, 241, 296, 300 Baal- 243 false- 129, 243, 255 -prophesy what the stars do not indicate 248 propitious 193, 202, 315 protasis / apodosis 111, 151

-structure 50 pseudepigraphy 157 purification 168 purpose apotropaic- 34 astrological- 87–88 divinatory- / -of divination 101, 163, 170, 185 healing- 280 idolatrous- 276–278, 281 mantic- 175, 180, 184 ornamentation- /-of ornaments / ornamental- 276–278, 280–281, 283– 284, 276, 281 scientific / learned- 280–281 pursuit mantic- 175 qesem (divination) forms of- 250–252, 254 -licit to learn but not licit to practic 249–251 -by looking at the liver 249 -by means of ḥiṣṣim 249 -by means of terafim 250 -single category that encompasses all forms of divination 254 qesem (magic) 172 qiduš yereḥim (sanctification of the moons) 25 qilqal ba-ḥiṣṣim (divination by arrows or small stones, a form of qesem) 249– 250 qosem qesamim (a general category) 250– 251 quality inner moral- 293 quarter -of the day / night 202–203, 205 quaternion 324 questioner 35, 40–42 quire 113, 147, 329 randomization method of- 35, 39 -procedure 35 process of- 29, 42 result from- 43 rationalist 270–271

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404 reality physical- 275 supernal- 281 reasoning 273–274 recipe 30, 228 divinatory- 134, 136 Genizah- 102, 108, 110–111, 132, 134, 137 magical- 113, 135–136 -for receiving a revelatory dream 104 -for sheʾelat ḥalom 102, 106–107, 111–113, 122, 126–127, 129–131 (Judaeo-Arabic), 127, 128 (Latin-), 132–133, 137 reed-pen 327 regiment (of the firmament) 121, 131 rejection -of divination 166, 190 religion Sabian- 261 remove (God) -the influence of a star 210, 230–231, 233, 240–241 -the rule of the stars 238, 248–249 -the rule of the zodiac sign / horoscope 210, 231 -a star 231–232 reservation 191, 280, 284 resin or olive oil (= terafim) 250 responsum 178, 186, 192, 200 restriction (alimentary / dressing / sexual) 107, 136 reveal (v.) -a dream 133 -the foundation of a question 183 -hidden and deep things 117, 162, 258 -hidden knowledge 134, 136 -information about events already in the past 178 -a person’s character 287 -secrets 266 revelation 136, 175–176 -of the angelic master of dreams 175 -of new concealed knowledge 167 -of the future 190 oneiric- 108, 123–124, 129, 132–133, 135, 137, 175 -of secrets 189 revolution (of a planet) -in its orb 210, 239 revolve (any planet)

index of subjects -in its sphere 210, 239, 244 righteousness (see also charity) 229, 231, 240–242, 249, 257 ring engraved- 284 signet- 277 silver- 316 the stone of- 314 -of Solomon 313–314, 321, 327 rise -(a star) in the east 210, 228, 231 -(a zodiac sign) above the eastern horizon 71, 203, 210, 265, 293 ritual 21, 33–34, 39, 44, 107, 137, 262 -ablution 148 -act / action 23, 44, 102, 133 -based on writing 33 -behavior 137 divination- / -for divination 35, 135 -dream 107–108, 111 -dynamics 112 -maturity 112 multi-stage- 103, 135 -sleep 107–108, 111 stage of- 39 rod 314, 325 bronze- (written on) 316 rule (n.) -for each activity controlled by a planet 220 astrological- 202, 222 -of electional astrology 193 -of the horoscope 230–231 -of a planet upon the hours 211, 220 -of a planet upon a specific aspect of life or activity 211 -of the spheres, planets and stars 211, 236, 238 -of stars upon peoples 230 -of a stellar decree 211 to be under the- (of the stars) 232 rule (v.) - (God) the stars 223 -(a planet / star) an aspect of life or an activity 211, 220, 231 -(a planet / star) an hour / an hour or a day 68, 211, 219, 220–222, 231 -(a planet) the birth/nativity of a person/ child 211, 223

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index of subjects -(a planet) a specific stellar decree 211 -(the zodiac sign, planet, star, stellar decree, or testimony of the stars) a people 211, 230–233, 240–241 ruler planetary- 205–206, 219 ṣaddiq 162, 187–188 saffron 319, 321 salāt al-istiḵāra 127 ṣalmanaiaʾ 250 (see also terafim) sanctification -of the new moon / of the moon 25 sandal 320 science Arabic- 245 Aristotelian- 275 -based in the stars 195 Chaldean- (= idolatry) 209, 226, 228, 233, 235 compulsory- 242 deficiency of the Gentile- 248 divinatory- 291 experimental / experiential- 261–262 Greco-Roman- 84 -that increases the fear of Heaven and the knowledge of god (astrology) 249 -of the kišuf 247 -to be learned but not to practice 256 legitimate / licit / illicit / forbidden / appropriate- 203, 228, 236, 243–245, 249, 256 -of magical talismans 312 occult- 196 -of physiognomy 286, 291, 295, 302 -proper to learn and practice 256 real- 270 reliable- 228 true- 195, 228, 232 -of the stars / stellar- (= astronomy and astrology) 204, 209, 211, 224, 229, 234, 236–238, 240, 243, 249, 258 scraping 328 scudding 328 seal (n.) 148, 277, 281 seal (v.) 277 season -of the year 59, 76, 83, 117, 211, 239, 291, 321

405 secret 37–38, 44, 117, 183, 283 -of astrologers 203 -of casting a lot (with a book) 181 -of cosmology and astronomy 54 disclose / reveal- 236, 246, 266 -of God 178, 183 - of physiognomy 300 -of a question 183 revelation of- 189 -of the sciences of the stars 236 -of the Torah 295 sect 27, 209–211, 243–245, 293 esoteric- 292 Hasidic- 188 seer 183 segullah 106, 271–276 action of- 272, 274 -allowed by halakhah 275 definition of- 275 doctrine of- 271 effect of- 274 legitimacy of- 275 -not relaying on experience and associated with astrology 274 - as “ways of the Amorite” 275 -unconfirmed by experience 275 šeʾilah be-haqiṣ 107 šeʾilat ḥalom 101–113, 115, 122–137, 158 selenodromion 49 semiphoras 327 set (v.) -a star / planet in the west 67–69, 71, 73, 77, 79, 99, 211, 223, 231 setting public- 135 spatial- (indoor / outdoor / aquatic location) 136 -of a star 66–68, 71, 76–77, 203, 211, 231 sigil 313, 316 sign 26, 101, 121, 129–130, 141, 166, 173, 175, 178, 180, 211, 229, 288, 291 astral- 289 bad- 26, 111 -from the Biblical verse 189 bodily- 293, 295 coded / codified- 111 facial and bodily- 293, 295, 296 -of heaven 229 lettered- on palms and forehead 293

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406 lucky- 178 mantic- 169 physiognomic- 286–287, 292, 295, 299, 302 oneiric- 102, 112 outward- 297 person’s zodiac- 293 planetary- 289 pre-coded- 102, 111 -from stars, animals, and birds 252–253 -of the Torah 183–184 zodiac- 48–49, 55, 57–60, 64–65, 69, 71–75, 77, 79–83, 86–88, 94, 99, 203, 205–206, 223, 226, 228, 230–231, 236– 239, 246, 248, 265, 267, 293, 313 fixed- 205 mutable or changeable- 205 tropical / cardinal- 81, 205 silk 326 yellow- 325, 330 red- 322, 325, 330 white- 325 sinner 197, 222, 249, 296 skin -of arciginim 329 -of a black or wild goat 322, 329 calf- 329 controlled putrefaction of- 328 cow- 326 -of different animals 311 -of a gazelle (written on) 318–319, 326 -placed in lime solution 324 sheep- 34, 326, 330 -of suenes (written on) 319, 329 tanned goat- 330 unhaired- 328 washed and scraped- 324 white alum-tawed- 330 sky middle of- (the meridian) 265 sleep ritual- 107–108, 111 sleep/dream ritual- 107–108, 111 smelling sweet- 323, 326 šoʾel 35 -yiddeʿoni (a form of qesem) 250–251, 254

index of subjects -ʾov (a form of qesem) 250–251, 254 solstice 50, 65, 72, 81–83, 88 summer- 51, 82, 84 winter- 75, 80–82, 84–86, 88–91, 93–94, 96 soothsayer 164, 180 sorcerer 164, 262 sorcery 171, 178, 267, 270 sortes 23, 33, 28, 33, 35, 39, 171 early Christian- 23, 29 Greco-Roman- 29 Jewish- 36 systems of- 43 -tradition 41 sortilege (= lots) 29 sortium libri 171 source Arabic- 168 authoritative- 132 authoritative theoretical- 263 Babylonian- 60 Christian- 103 classical- 28 cuneiform- 81 Eastern- 267 Genizah- 107–108 Hebrew- 327 Hellenistic- 57 Hellenistic-Mesopotamian- 60 Hermetic- 267–268 Islamic / Muslim - 103, 270 Jewish- 101, 106, 109, 111, 189, 204, 207 non-Jewish- 111 outsider / insider 105, 111 Qumran- 168 rabbinic- 194 Sabian- 269 Seleucid- 81 Talmudic- 42, 173, 202, 207, 281 speculation 273 spell 245, 247 to cast a- 164, 245 divination- 33–34 sphere 210–211, 229, 236–237, 239, 244, 274, 281–282 divine- 296 heavenly- 229 starry- 82 spirit 27, 43, 269, 311, 313, 317, 325

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407

index of subjects -creature 132 familiar- 164 -of God 237 holy- 238 impure- 243, 254 spirituality 271 assimilate- 269 bringing down / drawing down- 266– 268, 270, 280 -emanate 269 induction of- 267 standpoint emic- (= insider perspective) 110 star fixed- 53, 82–83, 209, 253 God rules- 223 Israel has a- 227–232 -testify about Israel 230 state liminal- 169 status social- (of the clients) 39, 293 stone 249, 277, 314 black- (written on) 316 cast- 249–250, 256 -disk 72 hard, white- (written on) 316 lime- 328 -pillar 36 -of a silver ring 316 written on- 314 stringent 251 -approach 223, 251 -halakhic / legal opinion 207, 223–224, 256 -interpretation 251–252 stringency 223 suffumigate (see fumigate) suffumigation (see fumigation) sundial 72 Greco-Roman- 71 Hellenistic- 72 zodiac- 72 supplication 131, 174, 182–183 Christian- 128 Islamic- 128 sword (written on) 316 symbol 151, 155–156 dream- 140, 144 -of heavenly bodies 283

ominous- 140 -sequence 146 -of a teli 283 symbolism mantic- 173 synagogue 35, 174, 221 tables 39 astronomical / astrological- 50, 60, 71, 88, 200 talisman 244, 276, 282, 324 action of- 269 magical- 312, 317 making of- 317 secret- 323 use of- 279 technique 43, 48, 88, 101, 107–108, 112, 161– 163, 166, 169, 175, 181, 184–185, 187, 189–190, 195, 279 Biblical mantic- 164 chiromantic- 293 -combined with other divinatory methods 163 -of divining the future 287 divination / divinatory- / -of divination 27, 102–105, 137, 161, 163, 166, 169, 171, 188, 298 -for dream request / šeʾilat ḥalom 102– 103, 110, 123, 126, 133 -of flipping through Biblical texts 189 foreign- 134 Gaon’s- 188 Hasidic- 188 lay- 162 -of magic 262 magical- 102, 110 magical-divinatory- 124 mantic- 168, 172–173, 189 metoposcopic- 293 oneiric- 105–106, 109, 113, 124, 128, 134 -of opening the Bible 163 -of a Pentateuchal lot 186 physiognomic- 27, 295 -for predicting the future 166 prognostic- 287 -of re-reading the Bible 169 rabbinic- 162 scrying- 135 teli 202, 282–283

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408 tequfot and mazzalot (calculate) 243 -means astronomy and astrology, respectively 238–240 -required to calculate them 238, 242 terafim 249, 271 consult / consultation of- 249–250, 256 testify (a star) -about a specific matter / person 230 testimony / decree of the stars 211, 240, 246, 248 benefic / good- (= mazzal ṭov = good luck/fortune) 240, 242 malefic / not good / unfavorable- (= mazzal raʿ = bad luck/fortune) 211, 240, 242 -of a star / stars / planet / zodiac sign 230, 232, 234, 246, 248 textuality 33 thunder (n.) 26, 50, 87 thunder (v.) 26–27, 50, 231 time/s astrologically propitious- 315 -determined by the astral configuration 267, 270 nine- 324 prescribed- 264 seven- 161, 182 suitable- 219, 266 three- 23, 32, 130, 181 tool -of augury 163 -for discerning the inward state from an outward sign 297 -for divination 162, 184, 188 -for foretelling the future 188 mantic- 180, 304 -of medical semiotics 302 prognostication- 292 -for prognostication 167 -for the revelation of the future 190 tosafists 278, 281 French- 207 French / German- 207 trade (n.) esoteric- 34 trade (v.) -secrets and techniques 44 tradent esoteric Jewish- 31

index of subjects tradition 237, 239, 295–296, 317, 331 Abrahamic- 128 Andalusian- 280 divinatory oneiric- 134 dream interpretation- 102 Greek- 331 Hebrew physiognomic- 286 Hermetic- 269 internal- 305 internal Jewish- 305 Islamic- 103 Israel’s divination- 33 istiḵāra- 126 Jewish- 134, 140, 162–164, 166, 189–190, 328 -apocaliptic and divinatory 137 -divinatory 137 non- 137 magic- 283 magic astral- 283 oral- 186 physiognomic- 291, 295 prophetic and apocaliptic- 136 rabbinic- 164, 187 scientific- 304 Second Temple period- 134 Semitic- 70 somatomantic- 294 sortes- 41 transgress -the law 226 -the words of the sages 222, 225, 227– 228 -the Torah 32 trangression 226–227 -of the law 226–227 transgressor 200, 256 -of the law 197, 222, 226–227 tribunal -above 219–220 -below 219–220 triplicity -of the day and the night 313 (three months = a season) 320 tummim, see ʾurim and tummim unit textual- 155 ʾurim, see ʾurim and tummim

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409

index of subjects ʾurim and tummim 28, 31–33, 164, 183, 187 use of -amulets 279 -astrology 192, 206 -bibliomancy 191 -a divinatory recipe 134 -divine attributes 113 -experiential science 262 -lottery 184 -oneiric magic 104 -peculiar ritual actions 23 -physical lots 172 -physiognomy 303 -powers inherent in human actions 264 -powers inherent in objects 264 -prayers 110 -šeʾilat ḥalom 106, 158 -signs or omens 165 -Scripture / Torah / Pentateuch / Bible as a tool for divination / prognostication 162, 167, 178, 180, 184–185, 189–190 -spittle, nakedness, fasting and so on 23 -talismans 279 -the Torah as a prophetic medium 187 -verbal utterances and charms 23 -the zodiac in the calendar 53 use (v.) -astrology 199 -children in divinatory practice 42 -chiromantic and metoposcopic practices 294 -gematria 181 -Hasidic writings (to arrive at decisions through a lot) 188 -sacrilegous and demonic names 245 utterance verbal- 23 validity 39, 195, 264 vase white glass- (written on) 316 verifiability -of the oracle 39 verification empirical- 275 verse (Biblical) 39, 109, 110, 113, 121, 129–130, 158, 162–164, 169, 173–176, 178, 180–182, 184–185, 189 vial 321

violation 178, 180, 190 vision 109, 115, 136, 148, 155–156, 176, 178 cultivation of- 42 dream- 140 -of the night 123, 133 oneiric- 132–123 symbolic dream- 141 voice 34, 178 authorial- 36 -from the beyond 43 candidate’s- 293 -of a cock 253 divine- 169 -of the practitioner 24 -of a rat 253 -of a raven 253 water a glass full of- 250 -of this herb 223 placed in- 316 running- 324, 328 within- 250 wear -amulets and miniature books of scriptures 34 -clean clothes 319 -the fourteenth name written on the stone of a silver ring 316 -the fourth name written on a silver lamina with ben oil 316 -a ring 277 weather astrology Hellenistic- 50 weirdness coefficient of- 44 will 244 divine- 182–183 human- 43 free- 238, 243 -of the questioner or diviner 42 winds 253, 313, 320–321 wisdom 31, 38, 40, 47, 167, 218, 239, 247, 258, 274, 296, 299–300, 305, 308 Chaldean- 206 Daniel’s own- 124 God’s- 123 good- 218 a great secret from- 38

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410 -of Israel / Israel’s- 195, 238, 240–241 masters of- 259 notion of- 134 universal- 31 witchcraft 252, 262 wizard 31 wonder (n. = sign) 121, 129, 167, 184 -associated with the revelation of new concealed knowledge 167 -indicating the activity of false prophets and diviners 129 wood 172, 245, 277, 329 aloes- 321 birch- 330 box- 325, 329–330 cedar- 325–326, 329–330 cypress- 326 -from Lebanon 326 lime- 330 sandal- 320 written on- 316 words -of Abraham, our Father 227 -of the astrologers 226–228 -of the Chaldeans 225–227, 242 diviner’s- 42 expansion of- 175 -of God’s prophets 121, 129, 169 master of- 36 -of power 313 -of the rabbis 195, 226–227 -of the sages 200, 222, 224–226, 237, 251–252 -of the Torah 224 -in unknown languages 327 world Byzantine- 61 -that is coming / to come 295, 303 divine- 42 early-Christian- 101 form of this- 244 four regions of / cardines of- 313 Greco-Roman- 21, 23, 170 Greek- 41, 330 Hasidic- 187 material- 274 natural order of the- 196 non-human- 101 physical- 294

index of subjects sensible- 296 supernal- 280, 283 worship (n.) 243, 255, 277–279, 285 -of the image 267 -of the stars 263, 273 worship (v.) 243 -forms 280 -idols 243 -man-made images 267 -stars 243 writing automatic- 109 -of characters 312–313 the culture of- 33 -as the domain of ritual experts 44 -instruments 311 -as a knowledge practice 23, 44 magic based on- 314 -materials 311, 317, 321 -of names / nomina 313–314, 321, 327 -of powerful names 314, 327 practical aspects of- 313 rituals based on- 33 role of- 319 -in magic and divination 44 -the sacred names of the semiphoras 327 -support to use 327 time of- 315 written -actions 23 -backwards 322 -on a black stone 316 -on a bronze rod 316 -on carta 320 -with clean gold or red ink 322 -on a copper lamina 316 -on the forehead of the Master 323 -on a gold folium 316 -on a hard, white stone 316 -in Hebrew 327 -in Hebrew and Aramaic 113 -on an iron lamina 316 -on a knife 316 -on a lead lamina 316 -legacy 140 -on Moses’ rod 314 -names 313–331 -on parchment of arciginim 319

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index of subjects -on clean parchment 319 -on very thin clean parchment 319 -in Persian 182 -on a piece of wood 316 - with the purest gold and red ink 323 -in the sacred tongue 30 -with the best saffron, musk, and aloeswood 321 -with sandal fruit and wood 320 -on a silver lamina 316 -on the skin of a black or wild goat 322 -on the skin of a gazelle 319 -on the skin of suenes 319 -rather than spoken out loud 317, 327 -on the stone of a silver ring 316

-on a sword 316 -on a tin lamina 316 -on an unbaked postherd 316, 319 -on an unbaked potter’s clay 319 -in an unknown language 317 -on a white glass vase 316 ydea of Solomon 322 yiddeʿoni (a form of qesem) 250–251, 254 zodiac sign 48–49, 55–60, 64–65, 69, 71, 77, 79, 80–83, 86–88, 94, 203, 205–206, 210–211, 223, 226, 228, 230–231, 236– 239, 246, 248, 293

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