Yitshak Sefati, senior lecturer of Bible and Assyriology at Bar-Ilan University, points out that in Deuteronomy , mekhashepha are mentioned in a list of those whose practices Yahweh considers to be abominations. This list includes necromancers, those who cast spells, those who summon spirits, and practitioners of divination, among others. While this does not make them sorcerers, it puts them in the same category.
This could be because they were associated with pagan practices, not because they practiced magic, Prof. Jeffers rebuts, adding that the political situation when Deuteronomy was written was different than at the time Exodus was written. It was during the period that Deuteronomy was written that prophets such as Josiah were actively attempting religious reforms, such as eliminating "God's wife," Asherah.
It was during that period that the meaning could have changed. Also, magic could not have been a total anathema to the Jewish people for the entirety of their history, because Jewish magical texts existed during the Palestinian, Babylonian and Cairo Genizah periods, as Prof Yuval Harari of Ben Gurion University of the Negev has noted.
Be that as it may, by the time we get to the Latin Vulgate Bible, mekhasheph was definitively translated as maleficos. This translation inspired the title of the witch-hunting manual Malleus Malificarum , "The Hammer of Witches. Even then, the question of supernatural power is not put to rest.
The late Rev. Donald J. As with any co-operation with the powers of darkness, we are robbed of our relational capacities. The subtleties of human character and personality are eroded.
We become insensitive to others and lose the ability to read interpersonal signals and see our sin with clarity. Control and manipulation might look like cleverness but ultimately it isolates and dehumanises. Even so, giving up control, and the exercise of covert power, is hard. The contrast between the biblical worldview and the world of witchcraft is well expressed in Psalm 91, which can be read as a celebration of the protective power of God over against demonic threats:.
For he will deliver you … from the deadly pestilence; he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
Psalm —4. We do not need to know the future, or control events, or fear death, because we have intimacy with God, who is the end of all things. Witchcraft, then, is a relational issue. It expresses our failure to enter into a relationship with God, to make discoveries about the spiritual and the material worlds in partnership with him, and to fully trust him with our lives and futures. Witchcraft robs us of spiritual reality. With a crooked finger, it points away from the speaking God who wants to be known, who always does everything that is necessary for us to enjoy a relationship with him — and who is not far from each one of us.
For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, give heed to soothsayers and to diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you so to do. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren — him you shall heed. This verse is to be understood against the historical background of the Exodus from Egypt, which is, in part, a liberation from the spirit of witchcraft associated with Egypt cf. Isaiah There is no middle ground.
It is the soothsayer or the Lord. This contrast plays out in the broader setting of Deuteronomy —19, which follows directly from the laws relating to the priesthood Deuteronomy —8.
This indicates that witchcraft is structurally opposed to the priesthood and the sacrificial rituals that would later be fulfilled in Christ. Amos Yet witchcraft is parasitic upon true priesthood; aping its forms with counterfeit spirituality, rituals and practitioners. God, who is Spirit John , has made us in his image Genesis as spiritual beings.
He wants us to enjoy and express our spiritual lives in ways that are creative and which enhance our humanity. He gives us, not a spirituality of death, but a spirituality of life. So instead of closing down avenues of knowledge and spirituality, the Bible opens them up in ways that are safe, so that they can be explored fully. It was common for kings in the Ancient Near East to seek oracular consultations ahead of major battles. Texts from Ugarit show that people believed it was possible to summon up a particular person.
The necromantic consultation is effective. The spirit of Samuel communicates with Saul and provides him with information verses 16—19 , including new information regarding David verse Yet Saul is unable to manipulate Samuel for his own ends. Samuel condemns the ritual verses 15—16 and comes with his own message from YHWH. And since the flipside of living in a technological world is that some Western materialists do in fact have a genuine interest in encountering the supernatural, the Bible also presents a challenge and a warning, especially for the next generation who will have to deal with a resurgence of witchcraft practices.
But there is a deeper level of application. We take our cue from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus showed that those who believed they were innocent of murder could nevertheless share the same underlying attitudes of a murderer Matthew — The same reasoning can apply in relation to witchcraft.
After all, we have seen that witchcraft expresses our desire to carve out a space where we can make things happen apart from God,[43] and that ultimately, the manipulation of spiritual powers for our own ends is a form of human pride, which seeks to replace God with ourselves. However, we are each guilty, at some level, of trying to manipulate people and events to bring about what we want, without trusting fully in God.
But when you become an expert spin-doctor , you will be known as the Prince of Darkness. I am not, of course, saying that subliminal advertising, for example, is witchcraft. What I am saying is that in our modern secular society we give in to the same attitudes that are manifest in witchcraft. In this way, there may be all sorts of ways in which we behave that have the same dynamic equivalent as witchcraft.
There is nothing inherently wrong with advertising, or television, or technology. Nor should we find a demon behind every MBA. But we do need to be alert to how some of the ways in which our society is organised lends itself, potentially, to parallels to witchcraft. In this sense, the Western world is steeped in witchcraft. It may even be the case that the most overt forms of witchcraft are not in fact the most evil.
The parallels to witchcraft may be the most controlling. In a genuine relationship you can know people and you can have intimacy, whereas in witchcraft, and in parallels to witchcraft, knowledge and control is a substitute for intimacy. The essence of a perverted relationship is getting information about someone else, and then working out what I want to do, so I get what I want. We get things done in hidden, subversive and manipulative ways, without trusting God or fully respecting the humanness of others.
They are parallels to witchcraft because they share the same attitude. They are part of the same paradigm, which is concerned with the exercise of covert power. In the mundane things of life, Screwtape is there.
In parts of Africa, for example, it means being much more open regarding the prevalence of witchcraft in society, including among African churches, whilst in the British context, for example, it means realising that, as we lose the protection of Christianity, we are in danger of re-entering an age of overt witchcraft. Unmasking witchcraft means exposing the spiritual insecurity that lies behind the attempts to create fear, the petty forms of control and the shallow manipulations.
John the Divine and, far above all else, the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead, in the power of an endless life — a gloriously unique event in the history of the present age, but the destiny of every Christian. We turn, unmasked, from fear, death and shadows to intimacy, life, and light. I am also grateful to Gemma Hooper for research assistance.
This paper is written in his personal capacity and does not represent the views of the University of Bristol. Jonathan previously worked for several years at the Jubilee Centre and is currently one of its Trustees. Brill, , p. So Sarah attempted to commit suicide. Sarah drove her car, waiting for it to fill with leaked carbon monoxide. The next thing she knew she woke up lying on the ground next to her car, where she breathed in enough fresh air to survive.
After her near-death experience, Sarah continued on a destructive trajectory. She drank every day and prayed to spirits on the beach every night. Having failed a second suicide attempt, Sarah began looking to college as a potential solution to her problems.
That fall, Sarah left for Mary Washington College with hope for what her new life at college would bring. When she arrived on campus, Sarah was placed in a room with two other girls, Kim and Stacy. Not long after meeting them, Sarah decided they were strange. For one, they had Bibles. And not only did they own them, they always seemed to be reading and bringing them wherever they went. Early in the school year, Kim and Stacy started hosting their freshmen InterVarsity Bible study in the dorm room, where the group would sit in a circle on the floor to discuss the Bible.
To Sarah, it was like an alien culture — one she tried to avoid every week. Meanwhile, her roommates persisted in inviting her to every InterVarsity event they attended, only to be turned down each time. And then one week, Sarah stuck around for Bible study. She kept a safe distance from the discussion circle, but she listened while pretending to study. I was seeing peace in their life. There was absolutely no peace in my life, but they had true peace.
At the InterVarsity meeting Sarah listened to a visiting pastor speak about biblical sacrifices. It became clear that her sacrifices and altars were a perversion of something much greater.
God was asking her to lay down her life as a sacrifice because he loved her, and in laying down her life, Sarah could have the new life she had been searching for.
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