The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Evaluation

Barkay, Gabriel; Lundberg, Marilyn J.; Vaughn, Andrew G.; Zuckerman, Bruce

doi:10.2307/4150106

Cited by 23 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The ancient Jewish ritual texts of Roman Palestine were short texts inscribed on a small sheet of metal or written on papyrus, and then rolled up and put in a case which could be hung with a string around a neck or wrist (Kotansky 1991; Barkay et al 2004; Müller-Kessler et al 2007; Saar 2010). Most of the extant texts seem to have been created to heal or prevent illness.…”

Section: Amulets and Incantation Bowlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intermediary Beings in Late Antique Judaism: A History of Scholarship

Ronis

2015

Currents in Biblical Research

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Recent years have seen a steady rise in the scholarly interest in intermediary beings in Late Antique Judaism. The present article traces developments in the academic study of intermediary beings, and surveys scholarly approaches to angels, demons, and other intermediary beings in (1) rabbinic literature, (2) Late Antique Jewish liturgy, (3) Hekhalot literature, and (4) material artifacts such as metal amulets and clay bowls. It traces a shift from a nineteenth-century discomfort with intermediary beings and a concomitant suggestion that such beings are a foreign import and corruption, to a more recent interest in examining how intermediary beings functioned within a dynamic and transcultural Late Antique Jewish world. The article concludes by proposing new and continued areas of interest for scholars of Late Antique Judaism.

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Section: Amulets and Incantation Bowlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intermediary Beings in Late Antique Judaism: A History of Scholarship

Ronis

2015

Currents in Biblical Research

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“…Thus, for example, we may note how the ketef hinnom amulets provide the earliest extra-biblical evidence for the use of the Priestly Blessing of num. 6.24-27, and are in fact the earliest biblical textual evidence we now have (Barkay et al 2004), how the halbturn amulet sheds much light on the pronunciation and use of the Shema' formula in the Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora (as will be noted in a forthcoming study by e. eshel, h. eshel and a. Lange), and how the Jewish incantation bowls from Sassanian Babylonia contain citations of Mishnaic passages which now provide the earliest Mishnaic 'manuscripts' to which we have any access (Shaked 2005a: 4-5 and2005b: 5-6; Levene 2007). other bowls contain biblical verses not only in hebrew but also in aramaic, and thus provide the earliest textual evidence for the diffusion and transmission of the Targumim in Sassanian Babylonia (Greenfield 1992;Müller-kessler 2001;Shaked 2005a: 3), and some bowls-as well as some Palestinian aramaic amulets-contain hekhalot-like materials which shed much light on one of the earliest stages in the history of Jewish mysticism (naveh and Shaked 1993: 17-22;Shaked 1995;Lesses 1998: 351-62;davila 2001: 217-28).…”

Section: Why Study the Jewish Magical Tradition?mentioning

confidence: 88%

“…in this case, the process of identification is relatively simple, since one of the characteristic features of the Jewish magical tradition, at least from late antiquity onwards, is the existence of a written body of magical recipes, recipe books, and more 'literary' books of magic (such as Sepher Ha-Razim or the Sword of Moses, or the magical sections of Sepher Raziel). in the First Temple period most of the magical activity conducted by Jews apparently was both transmitted and performed in an oral fashion, and such written artifacts as the ketef hinnom amulets (Barkay et al 2004), or the use of writing in the sotah ceremony of num. 5.11-31, are mainly the exceptions which prove the rule.…”

Section: How Should We Study the Jewish Magical Tradition?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Prolegomena to the Study of the Jewish Magical Tradition

Bohak

2009

Currents in Biblical Research

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Recent years have seen a steady rise in the scholarly interest in Jewish magic. The present paper seeks to take stock of what has already been done, to explain how further study of Jewish magical texts and artifacts might make major contributions to the study of Judaism as a whole, and to provide a blueprint for further progress in this field. Its main claim is that the number of unedited and even uncharted primary sources for the study of Jewish magic is staggering, and that these sources must serve as the starting point for any serious study of the Jewish magical tradition from antiquity to the twenty-first century. Such a study must both compare the Jewish magical texts and practices of each historical period with those of the contemporaneous non-Jewish world, and thus trace processes of cross-cultural contacts and influences, and compare the Jewish magical texts and practices of one period with those of another, so as to detect processes of inner-Jewish continuity and transmission. Finally, such a study must flesh out the place of magical practices and practitioners within the Jewish society of different periods, and within different Jewish communities.

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“…The wealth of texts from the Negev (preserved because of dry weather conditions) can be supplemented by the military correspondence within the rich corpus from Lachish in the Shephelah [77] (the officer writing Lachish Ostracon 3 is seemingly offended by the suggestion that he is assisted by a scribe! ), as well as by religious/cultic [12] and administrative [11,13,14] texts from other Judahite sites.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The same sample set is analyzed below (note that at the time the current study was conducted, we still did not know that yet another ostracon from this set was double-sided [4,5]). Our algorithmic investigations estimated a minimal number of 4, 5 or 7 writers at Arad [6][7][8], possibly hinting at the existence of a Judahite educational system that trained personnel for the Judahite administration, including the military (see examples of non-military writing in [11][12][13][14]).…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Forensic document examination and algorithmic handwriting analysis of Judahite biblical period inscriptions reveal significant literacy level

Shaus

Gerber²,

Faigenbaum-Golovin

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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Arad is a well preserved desert fort on the southern frontier of the biblical kingdom of Judah. Excavation of the site yielded over 100 Hebrew ostraca (ink inscriptions on potsherds) dated to ca. 600 BCE, the eve of Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem. Due to the site's isolation, small size and texts that were written in a short time span, the Arad corpus holds important keys to understanding dissemination of literacy in Judah. Here we present the handwriting analysis of 18 Arad inscriptions, including more than 150 pair-wise assessments of writer's identity. The examination was performed by two new algorithmic handwriting analysis methods and independently by a professional forensic document examiner. To the best of our knowledge, no such large-scale pair-wise assessments of ancient documents by a forensic expert has previously been published. Comparison of forensic examination with algorithmic analysis is also unique. Our study demonstrates substantial agreement between the results of these independent methods of investigation. Remarkably, the forensic examination reveals a high probability of at least 12 writers within the analyzed corpus. This is a major increment over the previously published algorithmic estimations, which revealed 4-7 writers for the same assemblage. The high literacy rate detected within the small Arad stronghold, estimated (using broadly-accepted paleo-demographic coefficients) to have accommodated 20-30 soldiers, demonstrates widespread literacy in the late 7 th century BCE Judahite military and administration apparatuses, with the ability to compose biblical texts during this period a possible by-product.

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The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Evaluation

Cited by 23 publications

References 2 publications

Intermediary Beings in Late Antique Judaism: A History of Scholarship

Intermediary Beings in Late Antique Judaism: A History of Scholarship

Prolegomena to the Study of the Jewish Magical Tradition

Forensic document examination and algorithmic handwriting analysis of Judahite biblical period inscriptions reveal significant literacy level

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