Yet again on the unique incantation bowl BM 135563.

AuthorMorgenstern, Matthew
PositionEssay

In a recent issue of this journal. (1) Theodore Kwasman and Christa Muller-Kessler (henceforth KMK) have redirected their attention to a Jewish Aramaic magic bowl that they published in 2000. (2) The bowl text was published independently by J. B. Sega1, (3) and then republished in a third edition by the present author. (4) The author's edition differed from that presented by KMK in both its readings and its interpretation. (5) It sought to propose a reading that required fewer theoretical emendations, (6) and the text was interpreted throughout as an "historiola" containing no allusion to a ritual as KMK had suggested. (7)

In their strongly worded article, they have addressed some of the responses to their original study and in most cases sought to justify their original interpretation. While several scholars are mentioned, the work of the present writer has merited particular attention and criticism; indeed, my name is mentioned no fewer than eighty-five times over the course of the ten pages of the article. The authors have scoured my publications in search of expressions and terminology that they dislike and presented their findings in detail. Many of them are irrelevant to the discussion of the bowl text at hand, and appear in contexts that do not relate to it in any way. The criticisms presented against my work are serious, and the conclusion suggests that it constitutes no less than "a dissolution of established scholarly practice" that threatens to "undermine the foundation not only of a proper and fair discussion but academic work in general" (p. 198).

In recent years, further parallels to the bowl text in question have come to light, and other evidence is forthcoming that may now be adduced to elucidate the meaning of the text. A new edition of BM 135563 is now in preparation by my colleague James Nathan Ford, and the information presented therein renders redundant some of the discussions that have taken place to date. Accordingly, the notes below do not address all of the topics mentioned in KMK's article, but only highlight some of the more problematic ones.

  1. KMK criticize my literary division of the BM text presented in Morgenstern 2004, and state: the reader is left in a quandary as to why sections F. F', and FF" are parallel. If Morgenstern's interpretation of the verbal forms is followed, sections F and F' cannot be parallel, since section F has asyndetic imperatives and F' perfect forms. The parallelism is only maintained when the verb forms are read as imperfect in F and F' as in our edition. F" is not parallel with F and F' at all. (p. 190) However, grammatical parallelism is only one type of parallelism. It is apparent from the lengthy citation presented in my note 6 that the parallelism is semantic: all three sections refer to the three processes of eating, drinking, and anointing, and employ the verbs [??] and [??].

  2. KMK take particular offense at my use of "transcribed" to describe their rendering in Latin script of the Aramaic bowl text (pp. 190ff.). While it is true that in linguistic writing a distinction is drawn between "transliteration" (letter-for-letter rendering) and "transcription" (phonetic or phonological representation in another script), in studies of ancient inscriptions both terms are often employed in the former sense, for example, of the Amman citadel inscription: "The inscription may be transcribed as follows" (from the pen of Frank Moore Cross); (8) and of Mandaic literature: "It was published, transcribed in Hebrew characters with German translation, by M. Lidzbarski in his Mundaische Liturgien where it is part of prayer 75" (Jonas Greenfield). (9) KMK write (p. 191): And it should be noted that Morgenstern has not rendered our "versions" into Hebrew script but has made an independent transliteration of the text. This is misleading, since in the original article, the statement "I have rendered their versions into the Hebrew script" was presented in a footnote to the heading of a section named "Previous Readings," which indeed presented their transliterations of the text.

  3. KMK state (p. 191): Morgenstern consistently uses the term "material" in place of "graphic." This usage is naturally, incorrect, since the two words are not interchangeable. They are apparently unaware of the widespread use of the term "material reading" in epigraphic and...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT