Gender Roles in Greco-Roman Witchcraft - Jewish Tradition

Jewish Tradition

Jewish tradition too, has attempted to define certain practices as "magic". Some Talmudic teachers (and many Greeks and Romans) considered Jesus a magician, and magical books such as the Testament of Solomon and the Eighth Book of Moses were ascribed to Solomon and Moses in antiquity. The Wisdom of Solomon, a book considered apocryphal by many contemporary Jews and Christians (probably composed in the 1st century BCE) claims that

God… gave me true knowledge of things, as they are: an understanding of the structure of the world and the way in which elements work, the beginning and the end of eras and what lies in-between… the cycles of the years and the constellations… the thoughts of men… the power of spirits… the virtue of roots… I learned it all, secret or manifest.

Thus Solomon was seen as the greatest scientist, but also the greatest occultist of his time, learned in astrology, plant magic, daemonology, divination, and ta physika (science). These are the central aims of magic as an independent tradition - knowledge and power and control of the mysteries of the cosmos. Such aims can be viewed negatively or positively by ancient authors. The Jewish historian Josephus for example, writes that: "God gave him knowledge of the art that is used against daemons, in order to heal and benefit men". Elsewhere however, "…there was an Egyptian false prophet that did the Jews more mischief…for he was a cheat…" The idea of magic can thus be an idiom loosely defined in ancient thinking. But whether magic is viewed negatively or positively the substance of it as a practice can be drawn out. That is, that magic was a practice aimed at trying to locate and control the secret forces of the cosmos, and the sympathies and antipathies that were seen to make up these forces.