Magic and Religion - Magic and Abrahamic Religion

Magic and Abrahamic Religion

Magic and Abrahamic religions have had a somewhat checkered past. The King James Version of the Bible included the famous translation "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18), and Saul is rebuked by God for seeking advice from a diviner who could contact spirits. On the other hand, seemingly magical signs are documented in the Bible: For example, both the staff of Pharaoh's sorcerers as well as the staff of Moses and Aaron could be turned into snakes (Exodus 7:8-13). However, as Scott Noegel points out, the critical difference between the magic of Pharaoh's magicians and the non-magic of Moses is in the means by which the staff becomes a snake. For the Pharaoh's magicians, they employed "their secret arts" whereas Moses merely throws down his staff to turn it into a snake. To an ancient Egyptian, the startling difference would have been that Moses neither employed secret arts nor magical words. In the Torah, Noegel points out that YHWH does not need magical rituals to act.

See also Numbers 21:5-9, in which Moses creates a Bronze Snake in order to heal the Israelites from snake bites. But see the Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 29a, which asserts that it was not the bronze serpent that healed the Israelites, but rather their seeing the snake and submitting themselves to God.

The words "witch" and "witchcraft" appear in some English versions of the Christian Holy Bible. One verse that is probably responsible for more deaths of suspected witches than any other passage from the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) is Exodus 22:18. In the King James Version, this reads: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." The precise meaning of the Hebrew word kashaph, here translated as 'witch' and in some other modern versions, 'sorceress', is uncertain. In the Septuagint it was translated as pharmakeia, meaning 'pharmacy', and on this basis, Reginald Scot claimed in the 16th century that 'witch' was an incorrect translation and poisoners were intended. His theory still holds some currency, but is not widely accepted, and in Daniel 2:2 kashaph is listed alongside other magic practitioners who could interpret dreams: magicians, astrologers and Chaldeans. It may be noted that gender the Hebrew word kashaph is in the masculine, and in modern Hebrew usage, kashaph is synonemous with a male sorcerer.

The Judeo-Christian abhorrence of witches was not peculiar to them. The pagan Roman Empire, Egyptian Empire and Babylonian Empires all developed laws against malevolent witchcraft. The ancient Code of Hammurabi specifically called for death to witches, and also proscribed false accusations of witchcraft:

If a man has laid a charge of witchcraft and has not justified it, he upon whom the witchcraft is laid shall go to the holy river; he shall plunge into the holy river and if the holy river overcome him, he who accused him shall take to himself his house.