The Aramaic Incantation Bowls and Talmudic Scholarship

Textual, Literary, and Historical Aspects

Abstract

Although the study of incantation bowls has made substantial progress in recent years, comparative research with the Babylonian Talmud remains in its early stages. This article demonstrates how an integrated reading of these two corpora, incantation bowls alongside Talmudic passages, can enrich scholarship across a range of fields, including magic and demonology, midrash and liturgy studies, the development of legal terminology, narrative traditions, rabbinic authority, and aspects of Talmudic redaction. Each of these disciplines has a well-established scholarly tradition. The incorporation of material from the incantation bowls may yield new insights and challenge widely held assumptions. The close linguistic and literary connections between the bowls and the Talmud reflect mutual influences and points of contact; more broadly, they reveal the complexity of Jewish society in Talmudic Babylonia .