Magic and the Supernatural in Fourth-Century Syria (review)

Trzcionka's book, a revised version of her 2004 dissertation at the University of Adelaide, is a thoughtful contribution to the study of late antique rituals. After a short introductory chapter, Chapter 2 opens with the vexing problem of defining magic. Trzcionka rejects the usefulness of the term as a scholarly designation (as employed by Derek Collins and Gideon Bohak, among many others), noting the lack of a "conclusive solution" to the problems of definition. She warns against recycling ancient definitions of magic, calling the practice "troublesome." A more useful approach, analyzing ancient usages of the term, is not the focus of her study. Instead she opts to delineate the area of her interest as "people's communications with the supernatural for purposes of protection." This sweeping notion could include many rituals and a clearer explanation of the limits of the study would have been helpful for the reader. Trzcionka differentiates her work from previous studies by casting her net widely for the beliefs and cosmologies that help explain rituals. This is a key move and a very judicious one, although confusing when cast as distinguishing her work from that of Peter Brown and what she calls "structuralist-functionalist studies."

Chapter 2 articulates both the strengths of the overall study and its problems. Trzcionka is wise to avoid, for example, Derek Collin's recent attempt in Magic in the Ancient Greek World to shore up the well-refuted theories of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl with a dash of Stanley Tambiah, by which authors who do not agree with Collins's final clarification of what magic really is are simply labeled misguided and wrong. She also does not want to wade into fascinating but challenging work such as Christopher Lehrich's dense The Occult Mind: Magic in Theory and Practice, since issues of ritual efficacy are marginal to this sophisticated study. Committed to looking for much more close-to-the-ground explanations for once-marginalized rituals, she is surely correct that examining a broader social context is central to this endeavor. Nevertheless, the heavy hand of once-standard notions of "magic" casts a long shadow on the work. She avoids many standard rituals, despite the fact that many liturgical texts, for example, easily fit into the category of "communication with supernatural for protection." She also tends to slip into using the term "magic" (pp. 42 and 47). This core dilemma haunts the entire study, despite the many insightful and helpful comments regarding specific ritual practices.

Before Trzcionka turns to the analysis of specific practices, she outlines in Chapter 3 a brief history of Syria and Palestine in the fourth century in which she weaves together a precise (though by necessity somewhat cursory) summary that depends heavily on a subset of scholarship including, for example, M. L. W. Laistner's notion of increased religiosity and a vague notion of "Hellenization." It might have been more helpful to focus on the specific cultural themes from this period that she will use in later chapters, such as "limited good." These themes turn out to be central to her argument but are not fully articulated here.

The remaining chapters each outline a set of human-divine communications, relating them to specific cultural themes. Chapter 4 focuses on curses used in charioteer races and makes use of previous scholarship with varied success. For guidance on the question of the social role of curses, Trzcionka turns to Florent Heintz's notion of "magic workshops." Here she judiciously notes that if his approach is accepted, any "proposal made about the Christian realignment of supernatural behavior is invalidated" (p. 44). Here is a place where the reader is eager to hear more analysis, since she has opened up such a worthy avenue. Less successfully Trzcionka adopts Bronislaw Malinowski's analysis of curses as relating to chance and accident. This move incorporates the "structuralist-functionalist" approaches she claimed to abandon in the introductory chapter and seems to conflict with some of her other...