The story of Jonah, in its general outlines, is probably one of the best known in the Bible. Jonah was an Israelite prophet commanded by God to go to the people of Nineveh in Assyria to warn them that their wickedness had doomed them to divine punishment. For reasons explained at the end of the story, Jonah decided to disobey, and fled to the city of Joppa (modern Tel Aviv-Yafo). Here he boarded a ship bound for Tarshish, identified by modern scholars as southern Spain. As Herman Melville has a preacher tell it in Moby Dick (1851): With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah… flouts at God, by seeking…
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Religion in the Coptic Magical Papyri VIII: The Bible and Magic
In our first post on Christianity in magic, we discussed AMS 9, a large book filled with amuletic texts. Among these were the first verses (incipits) of five texts from the Bible – the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and Psalm 90 (Western Psalm 91). As we noted then, these were intended to be copied onto smaller objects and worn as a way to protect the body from sickness, demonic attacks, and misfortune. This week, we’ll discuss the use of the Bible in “magical” practice in a little more detail. This discussion will draw extensively upon a recently published study of such practices, Scriptural Incipits on Amulets from…
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Religion in the Coptic Magical Papyri VII: Monks and Magic
Two weeks ago we discussed a book of amulets which showed how “magical” practices could be entirely Christian, and we noted that the book’s format suggested it might even have been produced by monks. The idea that monks played a prominent role in the practice of magic in late antique Egypt has been promoted recently by David Frankfurter, whose book Christianizing Egypt argues that most of the surviving magical texts that we have were copied by monks. We do indeed have several texts which seem to come from monasteries or monastic cells, although many more have no clear provenance, and, as we saw in the case of the ancient town…
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Why Magic? Some Reflections on Terminology in the Study of Ancient Ritual
In our first blog post, we tried to briefly describe what we meant by “Coptic magical papyri”, a simple phrase which contains hidden complexities. We recently received a message from one of our readers, who, while supportive, questioned the usefulness of the word “magic” in the study of the ancient Mediterranean. Since we share many of her concerns, we decided that it might be useful to discuss the term “magic” in more detail, and explain why we have decided to use it, despite our misgivings. This post will not discuss in detail the terms for “magic” in late antique Egypt, or modern theories of magic; we’re saving those topics for…
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Religion in the Magical Papyri VI: Christianity and Magic
In our previous posts we have discussed “pagan” and “gnostic” influences in Coptic language magic, so readers would be forgiven for thinking that all such texts are full of Greek, Egyptian and Sethian deities. The bulk of our manuscripts, however, date to between the fifth and eleventh centuries CE, a period for most of which the majority of Egyptians were, at least nominally, adherents to some form of orthodox Christianity. Christianity was the dominant worldview, and the magical texts therefore reflect this, and seem to adhere to some kind of Christianity, even if they are not always strictly orthodox. But what does this “Christian magic” look like? AMS 9 is…
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Religion in Coptic Magic V: Magic and Gnostic Ritual
Last week we introduced Sethian Gnosticism, used to refer to a particular body of Gnostic texts, so-called by scholars because of their shared features, in particularly the importance of Seth as a revealer and saviour. This body of texts is also called “Classic Gnostic”, since it contains many of the features typically associated with “Gnostic” systems.* In our last post we also looked at how some of the figures which occur in the Sethian system – such as the luminary Davithe – also show up in magical texts. In most cases, we suggested, this is a result of shared cultural background rather than the dependence of Sethian or magical texts…
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Religion in the Coptic Magical Papyri IV: Sethian Gnosticism and Magical Texts
Gnosticism is one of the major areas of research within Coptic Studies, and yet, like magic, it is a controversial concept, deconstructed by its specialists to the extent that most scholars use the term “gnosticism” in scare quotes, or avoid it altogether. Yet studies of Gnosticism continue to appear, perhaps demonstrating that, despite its problems, the term still has some usefulness. In this post we will use “gnostic” and related terms as shorthands, but it is worth remembering that these are problematic labels, which may not have been those used by those we would call “gnostics”. Readers of this blog may already know that “gnostic” comes from the Greek word…
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A Coptic Magical Christmas
In Coptic, Christmas is p-houmise m-pe-Khristos (ⲡϩⲟⲩⲙⲓⲥⲉ ⲙⲡⲉⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ), “Christ’s Birthday”, and in the modern Coptic Orthodox Church it has been celebrated from at least 433 CE on the twenty-ninth of the month of Khoiak. In the old Julian calendar this corresponded to the twenty-fifth of December, but since the calendar reforms of Pope Gregory in 1582, Coptic Christmas corresponds to the seventh of January in the now-dominant Gregorian calendar. In orthodox Christianity, Christmas represents one of the most important moments in history, when God became man, and was born through a virgin. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are a few Coptic magical texts that attempt to draw upon the power of this…
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Religion in the Coptic Magical Papyri III: Manichaeans and Magic
In one of the earliest surviving Coptic letters, a man named Makarios wrote to his son: My son, my beloved one who is greatly honoured by me: the child of righteousness; the one whose good reputation is in my mouth at every moment, whose testimony remains in my heart; (whose) name is sweet in my mouth, my beloved son Matheos. P. Kell. Kopt. 19 ro ll.1-4 A good Christian, he continues by imparting some paternal advice: Do not earn fault or mockery by your… conduct. Study your Psalms, in Greek or Coptic, (every) day. P. Kell. Kopt. 19 ro ll.12-14 But what might be surprising to us is that although…
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Religion in the Coptic Magical Papyri II: Greek Gods in Coptic Magic
In the fifth century – the period when Christianity was settling in as the dominant religion of Egypt – Shenoute of Atripe (ca. 347-465 CE), head of a monastic federation in Upper Egypt, gave a sermon in which he attacked heretics, pagans and the orthodox Christians who fraternised with them. The sermon is known as The Lord Thundered, and it lives up to its name. Shenoute speaks of the wrath of God which will descend upon the pagans, and asks rhetorically how their false gods will save them: Where is Zeus, or his son Ares: the one who took the form of a wild boar to show his impurity? And…