Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1 (review)

Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 206 Reviews these same students are human beings first and scholars second, we might do well to tell them to pick up a volume like Rogerson's on de Wene. Kent Harold Richards IliffSchool ofTheology Denver, CO 80210 HEBREW AND ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS FROM THE CAIRO GENIZAH: SELECTED TEXTS FROM TAYLORSCHECHTER BOX Kl. By Lawrence H. Schiffman and Michael D. Swartz. Semitic Texts and Studies 1. Pp. 183. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992. Cloth, $42.50. Recent years have witnessed great progress in the publication of various materials from the Cairo Genizah collections, in particular the major, Cambridge, collection under the able oversight of Dr. Stefan Reif. Interest in medieval Hebrew and Aramaic magical texts has also been noteworthy. The present volume stems from the intersection of these two trends. Fourteen of the better preserved magical texts (13 of them amulet texts, one an incantation "recipe") from T-S Box Kl are here published, in photo, transcription, and translation, along with description and commentary. (Three of the texts republished here were also published by J. Naveh and S. Shaked in Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic 1ncantations of Late Antiquity, Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985.) The first fifty pages constitute a complete introduction to the topic, with the following subheadings: Magic and the Problem of Definition, Jewish Magic and its Modem Study. Magical Texts in the Cairo Genizah. The Amulets and Earlier Jewish Magic. The Magic of the Amulets. Magicians and Their Clients. Literary Features. The texts are generally written in Arabizing Hebrew with varying amounts of Aramaic phraseology. but no systematic study of their language. ductus. or orthography is attempted. There is little that is particularly novel here. since the texts seem to have been selected because of their state of preservation rather than their content; thus we encounter the usual collection of magical names. symbols. and diagrams. The photographs are clear and the translations generally adequate. The commentary tends to concentrate a bit too much on the obvious and ignore the difficult. but that is a matter of taste. The reviewer would like to contribute the following minor observations: Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 207 Reviews P. 95 (TS K1.71 Verso): The editors read: nnD'R 10 1'''-cm RC?l1 ?P Tfl'IR which they render, "Who overturns the entire world which shatters from fear of Him" and annotate as follows: "I. ?po Emend to ?~. It is unlikely that ?P, 'voice', is intended.1,.,.,:ln'. Energic nun added to second person plural imperfect ending." Yet the third letter of the text is clearly $ade, and a final nun is perfectly normal in an Aramaic context, so why comment on it? On the other hand, the non-active voice of their translation and the double resh do need comment. P. 107 (re TS K1.100) maintains that "the bulk of our text is Aramaic," yet less than twenty percent of the text in question is not in Hebrew. P. 1081. 1 for "and in" read "command." P. 150 (TS Kl.l68 ) right side 3: [ ] IZlm il?~ restore not '0n, but rather 11Zln, and translate "gloom and darkness." Stephen A. Kaufman Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute ofReligion Cincinnati, OH 45220 FROM TEXT TO TRADITION: A HISTORY OF SECOND TEMPLE AND RABBINIC JUDAISM. By Lawrence H. Schiffman. pp. xvi + 299. Hoboken: Ktav Publishing House, 1991. Paper. This volume offers a concise narrative history of the Jewish people from the Persian period up to, but not including, the rise and spread of Islam, as a background for an interpretation of Judaism from its presumed emergence in the period of the Second Temple until its decisive formulation in the Babylonian Talmud as what has come to be called Rabbinic Judaism. It holds the narrative together by means of a series of chronological and genealogical charts that often record the names of a great many persons not mentioned in the narrative itself. An initial problem with this study is its title: From Text to Tradition to which the question, "What text?" may be addressed. It is not until p. 56 that "the canonization of the Hebrew Scripture" is discussed although Torah, that is, Pentateuch, does appear on p. 24 as a text...