recite hymns to him.3
Josephus’s amplified rendering of the biblical passage exemplifies the new spiritual climate in which he wrote. Cosmological shifts transformed a three-tiered hierarchical universe (heaven-earth-underworld) into a universe of concentric spheres, with earth at the center. The newer conception would minimize the direct interventions of the deity, now located at considerable remove, while ramifying the intermediary forces that occupied the nearly endless expanse that separated earth from the remote god.4 The elohim spirit who had overcome King Saul was now understood as a battery of daimones.
Thus spirit possession became more widespread, demonology more complex, and exorcism more magically sophisticated by the Second Temple period. The plethora of accounts of spirit possession and descriptions of exorcism in the literature of the period make this patently clear: from the New Testament and Apocrypha, to the Qumran texts, Josephus, and rabbinic literature.
Ancient Exorcism
The New Testament features scores of references to spirit possession, with an especially high concentration in the gospels of Luke and Mark. Lest we under-estimate the centrality of this phenomenon in early Christianity, note that Jesus’ mission on earth was summarized by Peter in Acts as “doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38). The Gospel of Mark concludes with a description of the signs that enable one to identify a true Christian, the first of which is the power to exorcise: “These are the signs that will be associated with believers: in my name they will cast out devils; they will have the gift of tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands and be unharmed should they drink deadly poison; they will lay their hands on the sick, who will recover” (Mark 16:17–18). Exorcistic prowess is the primary mark of the Christian according to this source.5
Although less prominent than in the New Testament, exorcism is referred to a number of times in rabbinic literature as well.6 A well-known example is the case of a Gentile who asked R. Yoḥanan ben Zakkai for an explanation of the customs associated with the Red Heifer, which seemed to him to be magical. The rabbi responded that the process of slaughtering the animal, burning it, collecting its ash, and using the ash to purify was analogous to the Gentile’s own customs for exorcising evil spirits.7
Meir Bar-Ilan has analyzed a number of rabbinic-era exorcisms recorded in talmudic and midrashic literature. Arguing that in antiquity there was no distinction between religious life and magic, as is commonly assumed by modern scholars, Bar-Ilan claims that exorcism was “an accepted popular practice.” It was performed not as a magical act but simply as a healing therapy, “like the war on germs that penetrate the body of modern man.”8 All three of Bar-Ilan’s examples of rabbinic exorcism, however, emphasize precisely its wondrous dimensions. The first, from a medieval source, deals with R. Ḥanina ben Dosa, who went down to a cave for ritual immersion. When Kutim (sectarians) sealed the cave with a large rock, spirits came to remove it, freeing R. Ḥanina. One of these spirits later victimized a girl in his village, and R. Ḥanina’s students called his attention to the girl’s sufferings. R. Ḥanina went to the girl and addressed the spirit: “Why do you distress a daughter of Abraham?” “Were you not the one who descended to the cave,” responded the spirit, “until my kindred spirits and I came and removed it [the stone]? And for the favor that I did you, this is how you treat me?” R. Ḥanina, a wonder-worker and healer in talmudic sources,9 then began a decree of exorcism upon the spirit, though the formula was not preserved in the account.10
Yet another talmudic story recounts R. Shimon ben Yoḥai’s successful exorcism of the Emperor’s daughter, which led to the rescinding of anti-Jewish legislation.11 R. Shimon, unlike the wonder-working Ḥanina, was a leading rabbinic figure known for his halakhic authority, as well as for his magical prowess. In this case, the demon actually collaborates with R. Shimon; the possession is a “setup” to allow R. Shimon to earn the favor of the Emperor by saving his daughter. This source, and its midrashic parallel,12 refer to the demon’s entering the belly of the girl, the whispering of incantations into her ear by the exorcist R. Shimon, and the breaking of glass in the Emperor’s house as a sign of the demon’s departure. According to Bar-Ilan, this case ex-emplifies the centrality of charismatic, shamanistic Jewish leadership in the ancient world.
Josephus provides one of the richest accounts of exorcism in ancient Judaism in his Antiquitates Judaicae, describing the exorcism of a demoniac by the Jew Eleazar before Vespasian and his court. As Josephus tells it, “Eleazar applied to the nostrils of the demon-possessed man his own ring, which had under its seal-stone one of the roots whose properties King Solomon had taught, and so drew the demon out through the sufferer’s nose. The man immediately fell to the ground, and Eleazar then adjured the demon never to return, calling the name of Solomon and reciting the charms that he had composed.”13 Josephus regarded demons as “spirits of the wicked which enter into men that are alive and kill them,” but which can be driven out by a certain root.14 It has been suggested that Eleazar was an Essene and that the Essenes were in possession of secret works, including one or more works on healing ascribed to King Solomon—perhaps to be identified with the work on healing hidden by Hezekiah.15
In the third century, Origen testified to the broad recognition in the ancient world that Jews and Jewish formulas were particularly powerful agents against demons. He was carrying on a trope that shot through Greek and Roman literature for centuries.16
In any event, it is clear that the Jews trace their genealogy back to the three fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their names are so powerful when linked with the name of God that the formula “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” is used not only by members of the Jewish nation in their prayers to God and when they exorcise daemons, but also by almost all those who deal in magic and spells. For in magical treatises it is often to be found that God is invoked by this formula, and that in spells against daemons His name is used in close connexion with the names of these men.17
Origen is mindful of the fact that the Jews remain the authorities in these matters. “We learn from the Hebrews,” he writes, “the history of the events mentioned in these formulae and the interpretation of the names, since in their traditional books and language they pride themselves on these things and explain them.”18 If, as Marcel Simon has suggested, “In the opinion of the ancients, magic was, as it were, congenital in Israel,” recent scholars have argued that the very concept of spirit possession is foreign to Greek thought in classical and Hellenistic times.19 A broad consensus in the ancient world to this effect is indirectly revealed by the many Jewish elements that found their way into both pagan and Christian exorcism rituals, as exemplified so well by the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM), a body of papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt dating from the second century B.C.E. to the fifth century C.E. The PGM contain a number of exorcism rituals featuring pronounced Jewish elements.20
Prominent among these exorcism techniques in the PGM are Hebrew magical names, references to the God of Israel and the Patriarchs, and to the saving acts of this mighty God.21 The following famous passage provides a good sense of the nature of these rituals.
A tested charm of Pibechis22 for those possessed by daimons: Take oil of unripe olives with the herb mastigia and the fruit pulp of the lotus, and boil them with colorless marjoram while saying, “IOEL … come out from NN.” The phylactery: On a tin lamella write / “IAEO …” and hang it on the patient. It is terrifying to every daimon, a thing he fears. After placing [the patient] opposite [to you], adjure ….
[The adjuration:] I adjure you by the God of the Hebrews, Jesus IABA … I adjure you by the one who appeared to Osrael in a shining pillar and a cloud by day, / who saved his people from the Pharaoh and brought upon Pharaoh the ten plagues because of his disobedience. I adjure you, every daimonic spirit, to tell whatever sort you may be, because
