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Jewish Liturgical Exorcism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Wilfred Lawrence Knox
Wilfred Lawrence Knox
Affiliation:
Oratory of the Good Shepherd, Cambridge, England
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Extract

Professor C. H. Dodd in The Apostolic Preaching and its Development has drawn attention to the importance of the “Kerygma” as a more or less formal statement of the Christian Gospel, lying behind the earliest Christian documents; it determines the structure of Mark, the speeches in Acts and the form of the Creeds. This conventional form seems to be derived from Judaism. A statement of the mighty works of God in creation and the history of mankind, more especially in the deliverance of his people from Egypt, is a recurring feature of Jewish literature in the post-exilic era; perhaps the most notable example is Ps. 136; cf. Nehemiah 9. 6 ff., Is. 63. 7 ff. Such a recital of the mighty works of God in delivering His people was obviously necessary if the religion of Israel was to be changed from a primitive Semitic tribal cult into a system of monotheism, centred on the national deity, identified with the one God of Heaven; it was specially necessary to find an aetiological myth for the principal festival of the Passover. The emphasis on this deliverance reflects the process by which vague legends of a migration from Egypt have been conflated with the return from Babylon to form the biblical picture of the Exodus.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , July 1938 , pp. 191 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1938

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References

1 For the methods in which the O. T. documents have been influenced by post-exilic conditions cf. S. A. Cook in Cambridge Ancient History III. 478 ff.

2 For the curious variations in Stephen's speech, Acts 7. 2 ff., cf. my St. Paul and the Church of Jerusalem, 43. Paul's speech at Antioch, Acts 13.16 ff. is another specimen; note the allusion to the hero of Benjamin, Paul's own tribe; this may rest on a reminiscence of Paul's actual method of exposition or a knowledge of general convention. Popular Palestinian Judaism as represented by Peter merely gives a summary of the prophets. Heb. 11.1 ff. shows the form dissolving into a general summary of the O. T. in which the original purpose has been forgotten.

3 Cf. for instance Justin Martyr Dial c. Tryph. 360 b ff.; for the liturgical form cf. Lietzmann Messe u. Herrenmahl 125.

4 The text is also printed in Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, 181 ff. (ed. 1908).

5 This may represent a Hellenistic colouring in the Epistle of St. James; on the other hand it may be due to the disappearance of the kerygmatic form of exorcism from orthodox Judaism in the face of Christian competition; cf. below.

6 Cf. Pap. Mag. Gr. XII. 174 where we find a Christian insertion in a heathen spell for ensuring escape from prison; the compiler knew the tradition of the Acts.

7 They are normally conflated with the Titans (cf. Abyden. ap. Eus. Pr. Ev., IX 14.1, Or. Sib. III. 98 ff.); Jos. Antt. I. 4. 2 (113 ff.) does not allude to giants, but makes Nimrod responsible for the Tower of Babel). Their destruction is usually ascribed to a great wind (Abydenus and Or. Sib. locc. citt.); but in Or. Sib. III. 199 they are punished in an unspecified manner by the sons of mighty Cronos. In Philo De Gigant. 13 (58. M. I. 270) the antediluvian giants of Gen. 6. 4 are associated with Nimrod and Abraham on the strength of this story, while Philo asserts in a rather controversial tone that the whole giant-story is an allegory, not a myth of the kind that heathen writers love. It seems that he has an uneasy consciousness of a tendency to conflate the Hebrew with the Orphic legend, of the type which the papyrus reveals in its statement that they were destroyed by thunderbolts. The reference to the giants is appropriate in an exorcism, since the giants are evil spirits on earth (I Enoch, 15. 8, cf. Strack-Billerbeck, IV. 1. 525).

8 Jubilees 2. 2, Rev. 7.1; the winds appear as angelic figures in the vision of Ezekiel in the frescoes of the synagogue at Doura (The Excavations at Doura-Europos, Sixth Season, 356). The language of Ezekiel 37. 9 shows the conceptions of “wind” and “spirit” implied in the text.

9 Nock, A Vision of Mandulis-Aion, Harvard Theological Studies, XVII. 1. 78 ff.

10 Cf. Nock, loc. cit., and Sasse in Theol. Worterb. zum N. T., 1. 208, who admits the possibility of this meaning here but not elsewhere in the N. T.

11 The interpretation of Eph. 2. 2 depends to some extent on the view of the authorship and purpose of the Epistle. For the view implied above cf. Goodspeed, The Meaning of Ephesians, p. 3 ff.

12 It would be tempting to see a connection between the four holy aeons and the four subordinate manifestations of the one supreme aeon identified with the sun (cf. Peterson, ΈΙΣ θΕΟΣ, 241 ff.). But it is not clear that this conception, even if it can be established for a later period, has influenced early Jewish-Christian literature in its use the term aeon for describing the spiritual rulers of the cosmos.

13 For undying fires cf. Frazer, The Golden Bough, The Magic Art, II. 260. Philo's treatment of the fire from heaven at the first sacrifice in the Tabernacle in De Vit. Moys. 2 (3). 18, (154, M. II. 158) shows how easily the thought could be adapted to Judaism. For the need of unpolluted fire in Greek cults cf. Nilsson, Griechische Feste, 173.

14 The name Iao and its various LXX equivalents are of course common in the papyri. But the papyri in general reveal a type of Jewish magic which is quite remote from orthodox Judaism, whereas the document we are considering is for the most part entirely orthodox.

15 Kroll, Gott u. Hölle 475, n. 1, sees in the passage an allusion to the motif of the divine descent into hell, possibly correctly.

16 Dieterich Abraxas 143 finds evidence for the Essenes here. Essenes are always an explanation of ignotum par ignotius. In any case they seem to have rejected the Temple cultus entirely (Josephus Antt. XVIII. 1. 5. (19) Philo Quod Omn. Prob. Lib. 12 (75, M. 88. 457) cf. Schürer Gesch. des jüd. Volk II. 663, n. 50. They would hardly do more than tolerate it because it was part of the Torah; its prominence in this document seems decisive against an Essene origin.

17 Talmud Abodah Zarah quoted by Strack-Billerbeck IV, 1. 532, f. and cf. the “insufflations” of Ezek. 37. 9, Jno. 20. 22.

18 Origen (c. Cels. 4. 33) says that the words are so potent that they are used not only by Jews but by all sorts of magicians; the papyri confirm him abundantly. Is it conceivable that the document under consideration is a deliberate attempt to provide a substitute for them on account of their heathen associations?

19 McGown, The Testament of Solomon, 98 ff. points out that Solomon disappears from Jewish magic from Talmudic times until the Middle Ages. I suspect that the Baraitha quoted above represents a suppression of the mixed form of Kerygmatic Exorcism and pure magic which appears in lines 3008-3045. If so, it is later than Josephus and had not become fully effective outside Palestine in the time of Justin Martyr and Origen. I am inclined to suggest that its abandonment was due to Christian criticism and Christian competition.