-
Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler, Prayer, Magic,
and the Stars in the Ancientand Late Antique WorldPrayer, Magic,
and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World by Scott
Noegel,; JoelWalker,; Brannon Wheeler,Review by: HansDieterBetzThe
Journal of Religion, Vol. 85, No. 2 (April 2005), pp.
347-350Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/430564 .Accessed: 14/07/2012
10:31
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new
formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact [email protected].
.
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to TheJournal of Religion.
http://www.jstor.org
-
Book Reviews
347
analyzes some of the newly developed key philosophical terms
informing Guosthought. Among the more important of these is the
complex notion of traces,ji, literally footprints, referring to the
mental content or models which arehanded down from the past, and
which inform such things as the teachings ofthe Sages, laws, rites,
music, and even notions of the self. Ziporyn elucidatesGuos ideas
about traces, explaining Guos claims that they compel imitationand
thus falsification, produce systems of valuation, and cause people
to losetrack of their own ziran or spontaneity. Conversely, sages,
or those who do notadhere to traces, are described as vanishing
into things directly without ob-struction by mental models and
their associated valuations. Guo characterizesthis superior mode of
action by the term duhua, which Ziporyn translates
aslone-transformation. In the latter parts of the book, Ziporyn
relies on hisearlier explications of Guos terms to carry out his
detailed study of Guosphilosophy as a whole.
Without pursuing a detailed analysis of the many vistas of Guos
thought somarvelously explored by Ziporyn, this book provides an
engaging study ofpostWarring States Daoist philosophical thought
and demonstrates the rich-ness of one Chinese thinkers engagement
with that tradition. Ziporyns book,nonetheless, is very difficult
to read at times for three reasons. First, in partbecause Ziporyn
is so aware of the intricacies of Guos thought, he gives re-peated
explanations of each of Guos major terms at every turning point
ofthe study. Second, Ziporyn deals with Guos thought as an almost
timelessentity, virtually without any regard to the historical
environment in which Guowrote. Finally, Ziporyn pays only scant
attention to the Zhuangzi writings anddoes not seem to take Guos
commentarial approach to the Zhuangzi as a cen-tral issue in
interpreting Guos text. For these reasons, Ziporyns work de-mands a
tremendous amount of previous knowledge on the part of the
readerand could result in his book not receiving the kind of
attention it would oth-erwise deserve.THOMAS MICHAEL, George
Washington University.
NOEGEL, SCOTT; WALKER, JOEL; and WHEELER, BRANNON, eds. Prayer,
Magic, andthe Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World.
University Park: University ofPennsylvania Press, 2003. xi255 pp.
$22.50 (paper).
This volume originated at an international conference held at
the Universityof Washington, March 35, 2000. While the title of the
book indicates the widerange covered, thirteen substantial
investigations of specialized topics aregrouped under four major
headings, to which the editors have added a richlyannotated
introduction (117).
Part 1 presents the keynote address by Jonathan Z. Smith,
entitled Here,There, and Anywhere (2136). As he points out, the
phenomena of magicare found in a vast array of different forms,
times, and places. But rather thandisputing sweeping definitions,
theories, and methodologies, the better way toobtain insights is by
specific probes such as the volume contains.
Part 2 (Prayer, Magic, and Ritual) begins with Ian Moyers
examination ofa crucial text attributed to a Greek scholar of
botany, Thessalos of Tralles(Thessalos of Tralles and Cultural
Exchange, 3956), who travels to Egypt tolearn about the secrets of
plants from Egyptian priests. Under Moyers guid-ance the tale,
fragmentary as it is, opens up the multiple intricacies
involved
-
The Journal of Religion
348
in the relationship between Thessalos and the priest who finally
agrees to re-veal to him the mysteries of his religion. This
transaction amounts to a culturalexchange at various levels, among
them the transformation of religion intoa commodity called magic.
Marvin Meyer pursues pertinent questions in con-nection with this
earlier work on the Coptic Prayer of Mary, a version of whichbecame
part of a parchment codex, in his study, The Prayer of Mary in
theMagical Book of Mary and the Angels (P. Heid. Inv. Kopt. 685;
pp. 5767).This text raises the question, what is prayer, and what
is magical prayer? Heconcludes that this question can best be
answered on a case-by-case basis.There are several prayers of Mary,
some of which became magical by way ofritual usage or inclusion
with other material. Cultural contexts are as deter-minative as
language and ritual usage. At least in ancient Coptic
Christianitymagical prayers can be as religiously serious as
nonmagical ones. As earlierEgyptian religion continues to exert
influence, later Christian prayer and mag-ical prayer may be
indistinguishable. That does not mean, however, that allCoptic
prayers follow the same path or that Christian prayers in other
culturalcontexts should be judged in the same way. Gideon Bohak
analyzes the some-times obsessive tendency in research on magical
words (voces magicae) to lookfor Hebrew origins (Hebrew, Hebrew
Everywhere? Notes on the Interpreta-tion of Voces Magicae, 6982).
This study critically assesses the methodologicalpresuppositions,
redirects such research and raises further pertinent
questions.Michael G. Morony reviews the current studies on the
famous magical bowlsand their Aramaic, Syriac, and Mandaean
inscriptions (Magic and Society inLate Sasanian Iraq, 83107). The
central issue here is the ritual function ofthese bowls in the
religious life of the communities involved.
Part 3 turns to another important area, Dreams and Divination.
Kasia Szpa-kowska discusses the topic of The Open Portal: Dreams
and Divine Power inPharaonic Egypt (11124). While in the Old
Kingdom communication withthe deities was a privilege of the
Pharaoh only, in the New Kingdom dreamvisions, dream books, and
letters to the dead became the common peoplesvenues for directly
encountering the gods as well as the dead. The growingpopularity of
dream visions then flows into the broad stream of later
ancientdream divination. Peter Strucks illuminating study, entitled
Viscera and theDivine: Dreams as the Divinatory Bridge between the
Corporeal and the In-corporeal (12536), focuses on the impact of
dreams on the inner life of thehuman body. Selected examples show
that dream divination functions in dif-ferent ways during
therapeutic incubation in the cult of Asclepius, in Hippo-cratic
medicine (On Regimen), and in Platos philosophy (Timaeus).
Incubationreports show that Asclepius appears in dream visions to
reveal healing proce-dures, while in Hippocratic medicine the
internal world of the body mirrorsuniversal cosmology, so that
human illnesses are presumed curable throughthe bodys own natural
forces. According to Plato, the divine forces of thecosmos exert
their power in the body through the indwelling immortal soul.Jacco
Dieleman examines the influence of Hellenistic astronomy and
astrologyon Egyptian religion in the Ptolemaic era, Stars and the
Egyptian Priesthoodin the Graeco-Roman Period (13753). He compares
the description of anEgyptian procession by Clement of Alexandria
(Stromateis VI, 4, 3536), inwhich a priest called horoskopos
marches along, with a biographical inscriptionfor a priest named
Harkhebi (second century BCE), and a bilingual Demoticand Greek
papyrus from the Roman period (PDM xiv.93114). These metic-ulously
interpreted texts demonstrate how, on the one hand, the priestly
office
-
Book Reviews
349
and ritual continue in the older tradition, while, on the other
hand, they areadapted to the newer Hellenistic astronomy and
astrology. Complex culturaland linguistic transformations simply
occur, apparently without distress. Mi-chael D. Swartzs essay,
Divination and Its Discontents: Finding and Question-ing Meaning in
Ancient and Medieval Judaism (15566), explores the rela-tionship
between forms of divination and scriptural exegesis.
Historically,Judaism has a long tradition of various forms of
divination, but it also knowsof forbidden magic (the so-called ways
of the Amorites); moreover, the rabbisperceive a tension between
divinatory techniques and textual scholarship. Rab-binic
hermeneutic of reading the Torah as the world is in conflict with
divi-nation techniques that read the cosmos as a book. How to
resolve this conflictby corresponding validation is the aim of
special divination books.
Part 4 (The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars) finally turns to
astrology in itsvarious forms. Francesca Rochbergs description of
ancient Mesopotamian ce-lestial divination is lucid and insightful,
Heaven and Earth: Divine-HumanRelations in Mesopotamian Celestial
Divination (16985). The interplay be-tween mythology, rituals, and
celestial order establishes a kind of flexible sys-tem that
accommodates priesthood, social-political hierarchy, and
scientificcosmology. Understandably, this unified worldview was
able to impress Graeco-Roman philosophy and religion. Mark S.
Smiths essay concerns itself with theso-called West Semitic
religion, Astral Religion and the Representation of Di-vinity: The
Cases of Ugarit and Judah (187206). Reporting on a rather eso-teric
debate among specialists, Smith pursues the theory that an earlier
astralreligion was subsequently displaced by the development of
divine families ofgods (El, Yahwe, Baal). Nicola Denzeys paper, A
New Star on the Horizon:Astral Christologies and Stellar Debates in
Early Christian Discourse (20721),focuses on the account of the
star of Bethlehem (Matt. 2:110) in the discus-sions among the
second- to fourth-century church fathers. As the
canonicalScriptures reject astrology, the story of the star of
Bethlehem seems to providean opening for astrological explanations,
implying that Christs birth is subjectto astral fatalism.
Counteracting christologies argue by identifying Christ withthe
appearing star. As the lord of the universe the new star is in
control of theentire astral world, and his reign is not that of
fate but has transformed theentire cosmic world into a salvation
order. The final essay by Radcliffe G. Ed-monds III, At the Seizure
of the Moon: The Absence of the Moon in theMithras Liturgy (22339),
makes two important observations. In the MithrasLiturgy, the
favorable time for beginning the magicians ascension through
thecelestial spheres to meet the god Helios Mithras is set at the
seizure of themoon, that is, at the time of the new moon when it is
absent from the heaven(PGM IV.75162). While during his ascension
the magician encounters allkinds of hostile astral forces, the moon
is absent. This first leads the authorto a second observation: the
distribution of sun spells and moon spellswithin the corpus of
spells in the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris as a whole.His
suggestive thesis is that the papyrus is arranged in such a way
that spellsinvoking the beneficial sun are found in the earlier
parts, while the spellsinvoking the hostile moon are put toward the
end. Since no previous work hasbeen done on the composition of the
entire papyrus, the authors thesis wouldrequire a fuller
investigation of the redactors overarching cosmology.
Taken as a whole, the volume impresses through the scholarly
quality of theessays. Each in its own way, the studies are based on
primary and secondary
-
The Journal of Religion
350
sources, and they contribute original insights as well. A useful
index concludesthis valuable volume.HANS DIETER BETZ, University of
Chicago.
WHEELER, BRANNON M. Prophets in the Quran: An Introduction to
the Quran andMuslim Exegesis. Comparative Islamic Studies. London:
Continuum, 2002.vii391 pp. $105.00 (cloth); $49.95 (paper).
In a field in which the publication of a book on the Quran in
Oxford Univer-sity Press Very Short Introduction series attracts
scholarly attention (The Ko-ran: A Very Short Introduction [Oxford,
2000]), Brannon Wheelers book on theprophets in the Quran and
Muslim exegeses is most welcome. Wheeler hasprovided an important
service by compiling and translating from Arabic animpressive
selection of quranic, exegetical, historical, and hagiographical
textsthat help explain Muslim understandings of prophethood. This,
however, isonly part of the motivation behind Wheelers
translations. The other is tofacilitate and encourage the
comparative study of scripture and its interpre-tation in the
development of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim understandings oftheir
respective traditions. Indeed Wheeler identifies an opportunity [in
hiswork] to ask how the Bible and its interpretation defines
Christianity and Ju-daism, and how this is challenged by Muslim
appropriation of both the Bibleand its interpretation for Islams
own self-definition (14).
Despite the above aim, there are no Jewish or Christians texts
on prophetsin this book; Wheeler seems to assume readers
familiarity with these sources.There is also no analysis of the
translated texts. For biblical accounts and anal-ysis of Quran
exegesis, readers have to follow the suggestions for further
read-ing on Quranic Studies, Stories of the Prophets, Bible and
Ancient World,Judaism, and Christianity provided at the end of the
book, which includeWheelers own analysis of the topic in Moses in
the Quran and Islamic Exegesis(London, 2002). Here readers only
have a pithy fourteen-page introduction toquranic studies and
exegesis to guide them through the translated sources.
The book is divided into thirty-one chapters dealing with
prophetic figuresmentioned or alluded to in the Quran. Among them
are well-known figures,such as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad,
lesser-known figures, such asElisha, Salih, and Dhu al-Kifl, and
some figures whose prophetic status is dis-puted, such as Khidr, or
who are not prophets themselves but are importantto stories of
prophets, such as Dhu al-Qarnayn and the People of the Well.With
the exception of the chapter on Daniel where the Quran is not
cited,within each chapter, quranic verses related to the figure(s)
in question arecited followed by selected passages from
interpretive works. The selectionsfrom interpretive works are
attributed to individual authorities rather than tobooks. This
makes it difficult to trace the selections back to the original
textsand for reviewers to spot-check the translations. The few
translations I was ableto check in the chapters on Moses were
generally accurate. and the translationsas a whole are very
readable.
The lack of citation to books also leads to confusion regarding
the historicalcontext of some of the exegetical texts. Exegeses
attributed to individuals suchas Ali b. Abi Talib (died 660) and
Hasan al-Basri (died 728) are given withoutany reference to the
original text in which they were cited. This conceals theactual
work being cited, and there is always the question of whether what
an
