Holy Spit and Magic Spells: Religion, Magic and the Body in Late Ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
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HOLY SPIT AND MAGIC SPELLS: RELIGION, MAGIC AND THE BODY IN LATE ANCIENT JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Adam Collins Bursi May 2015 © 2015 Adam Collins Bursi HOLY SPIT AND MAGIC SPELLS: RELIGION, MAGIC AND THE BODY IN LATE ANCIENT JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM Adam Collins Bursi, Ph. D. Cornell University 2015 This dissertation examines the ways that bodies are used in defining the boundaries between pious ‘religion’ and illicit ‘magic’ in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic literatures of the fifth to ninth centuries of the Common Era. Drawing upon narratives and legal discussions both of exceptional bodies (of martyrs, saints, rabbis, and prophets) and of average laypeople’s bodies, this dissertation suggests that ritual usage of the body functions in these literatures as a site for the rhetorical construction of religious identity through the differentiation of acceptable bodily practices from those defined as unacceptably sectarian or ‘magical.’ By reading discussions of ‘magical’ bodies and bodily rituals, we see that late ancient ideas of the body’s inherent power simultaneously enforced and violated the constructed boundaries between religious communities. Devoting particular attention to the usage of spittle and hair in discussions of magic and the power of the body, this project illustrates that the body was an important yet paradoxical site for the performance of religious identity and for the construction of religious difference in late antiquity. While late ancient sources draw upon the discourse of ‘magic’ to define as illicit those bodily performances understood as problematic and insufficiently ‘orthodox,’ these same bodily articulations or pieces (such as spittle and hair) might also be called upon to display ritual authority and concentrations of power in certain individuals. Spitting could signal holiness and healing, but could also be marked as an act of sectarian practice or sorcery. Hair could be a source of divine blessing, or a material for sorcerous cursing. The different valences ascribed to spittle and hair display the ambiguity of these distinctions between religion and magic in late antiquity, as well as the power placed in even these most effluvial bodily parts. Late ancient sources map a variety of discursive categories onto these bodily pieces and the distinctions between religion and magic, or orthodoxy and heresy, often hinge on variant usages of these corporeal items. The efforts to define the proper usages of the body—including even spittle and hair—highlight the late ancient image of the body as standing on the edge of religion and magic, holiness and heresy, health and illness, power and weakness. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Adam Collins Bursi was born in Memphis, Tennessee, where he attentended Lausanne Collegiate School. In 2007, he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio with a major in Classics and a minor in Religious Studies. He began studying in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University in 2008. While a graduate student at Cornell, he worked as an Editorial Assistant for Dr. Kim Haines-Eitzen during the completion of her book The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity, published in 2012. Adam served as a Teaching Assistant for many Near Eastern Studies courses at Cornell and designed and taught three Freshman Writing Seminars: “Many New Testaments: Early Christian Texts, Manuscripts, and their Arguments”; “Pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims: Being Religious in Late Antiquity”; and “Early Islamic History in Modern Fiction.” He has presented his research at several national and regional conferences, including the American Academy of Religion – Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, the Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society, the American Academy of Religion Eastern International Regional Meeting, and the Marco Manuscript Workshop. In 2015-2016, he will be a Haslam Postdoctoral Fellow at the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. iii To my parents, Charlotte Collins Bursi and Frank Michael Bursi. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My first and most immediate thanks go to my adviser and committee chair at Cornell University, Kim Haines-Eitzen, without whose academic expertise and humane kindness I would never have made it to this point. Most graduate students do not have the benefit of an adviser who is nearly as generous with her own time and energy as Kim has always been for me. Kim has performed the advisory miracle of giving me the freedom to pursue my own interests while gently pushing me to get the work done that needed to get done. She has been a constant source of encouragement, thoughtful comments, and healthy advice. This project and my graduate work more generally would have been impossible without her. I will always be grateful for everything that she has given me and I am thrilled to have her as my Doktormutter. Secondly, I would like wholeheartedly to thank the faculty and staff of the Department of Near Eastern Studies, especially my other committee members, Ross Brann and David S. Powers, and Shawkat Toorawa. Never have I questioned my decision to study in this department, as my experience in NES has been wonderful beyond anything I could have hoped. My classes and discussions with Professors Brann, Powers, and Toorawa have been foundational for the work that underlies this and all of my future academic projects. Additionally, the tireless work of departmental administrators Chris Capalongo and Julie Graham has enabled my life and work to progress smoothly over the last seven years. I feel extremely lucky to have been among such great people in the Near Eastern Studies department, and I want to thank all of them. Finally, I thank my friends and family for all of the support they have given me over the years and during the time of this project in particular. I am lucky to have such great life friends as Alex Pollack, Chris Thomsen, and Michael Widener, the humor and kindness of each of whom make my life much more joyful than it would otherwise be. My NES graduate colleagues Dustin Nash, Sarah Pearce, and Hamza Mahmood Zafer have been great interlocuters and friends and I feel very priviledged to know them as they move on to exciting scholarly careers. Friends at Cornell like Julie Balazs and Linda Ösp Heimisdóttir were there for me through many happy v and hard times. I don’t know if I would have ever thought a project on spit and hair would have seemed feasible if not for the enthusiastic conversations I had at Gimme Coffee with my good friend and fellow graduate student Kristen Streahle. Most importantly, my parents have made all things possible for me and I would never have gotten here, or anywhere, without their knowledge, support, patience, and love. This project is dedicated to them. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch ....................................................................................................................... iii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................... viii Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Intersections between Religion, Magic, and the Body in Late Antiquity ................... 12 Chapter 2: The Spitting Image of Holiness: Miraculous Bodily Fluids in Hagiography, Sīra, and Ḥadīth ........................................................................................................................................... 49 Chapter 3: Spells and Spit: Healing Rituals in Rabbinic and Early Islamic Texts ..................... 103 Chapter 4: Splitting Hairs: The Paradox of the Prophetic Body ................................................. 179 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 248 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 254 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers EI 2 Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition EI 3 Encyclopedia of Islam, Third Edition EJ Encyclopedia Judaica GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies HTR Harvard Theological Review ILS Islamic Law and Society JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JQS Journal of Qur’anic Studies JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period JSS Journal of Semitic Studies JSQ Jewish Studies Quarterly NPNF A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church PG Patrologiae cursus completus, Series graeca (ed. J.-P. Migne) PL Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina (ed. J.-P. Migne) PO Patrologia Orientalis SLAEI Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam viii Introduction In the Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ of Maʿmar b. Rāshid (d. 153/770), a story appears describing an unusual event in the lives of two