MAGICAL PRACTICES AND DISCOURSES OF MAGIC IN EARLY CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS: JESUS, PETER, AND PAUL Shaily Shashikant Patel A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies (Ancient Mediterranean Religions). Chapel Hill 2017 Approved by: Bart D. Ehrman Zlatko Pleše Randall Styers Jessica A. Boon James B. Rives ©2017 Shaily Shashikant Patel ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Shaily Shashikant Patel: Magical Practices and Discourses of Magic in Early Christian Traditions: Jesus, Peter, and Paul (Under the direction of Bart D. Ehrman) This project represents a methodological intervention in the study of magic in early Christianity. Modern scholars have overwhelmingly adopted post-Enlightenment, exclusively discursive understandings of magic with which to approach ancient evidence. That is to say, contemporary historians believe that the ancient Christians crafted magic in the charge against theological opponents. As a result, magic was a concept empty of all content until it was levied against others. In contrast, the following study attempts to show that while magic was a discursive category in the ancient Graeco-Roman world, certain practices attendant to this discourse demonstrated relative stability. Some activities were more likely to convey the charge of magic than others. Practices like reanimation-necromancy and love spells tended to be associated with magic more often than practices like healing or exorcism. These areas of dynamism and fixity have wide-ranging implications for the study of early Christian magic. Rather than understanding early Christians as either participating in magic or not, the following project shows how Christians crafted their distinctive magical tradition along two indices: the narration of magical practices and the subsequent interpretation of these practices. Since Christians overwhelmingly adopted magical practices that engendered discursive flexibility (rather than those practices that remained fixed as magic in the Graeco-Roman imagination), they were able to characterize their own practices as “non-magic” and put the resultant discourses to a number of theological ends: announcing the coming Kingdom of God, affecting iii rapprochement between Petrine and Pauline factions of Christianity, and “othering” those practices and ideologies antithetical to nascent orthodoxy. By placing an equal emphasis on magical practices as well as meta-discourses of magic, this study returns conceptual variability to ancient magic, demonstrating that it was a thoroughly polyvalent theological expedient that Christians adopted for myriad ends apart from delineating insiders from outsiders. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank the members of my committee for being keen and thoughtful readers, and for providing feedback on this stage of the project as well as inspiring avenues for further refinement. Jessica A. Boon, Randall Styers, James B. Rives, Zlatko Pleše, and Bart D. Ehrman are all as giving as they are brilliant. I want especially to thank Jessica Boon, whose guidance and mentorship were instrumental in the final stages of this project. Sometimes, the most meaningful learning is done outside the classroom. In this regard, I wish also to thank Juliane Hammer, who is the very best of academia, intellectually nonpareil yet warm and collaborative. Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše have been, for me, an ideal advising team. Bart Ehrman has been uncommonly generous with his time and knowledge. Never have my concerns been too insignificant to warrant his careful attention. Never has he allowed me to flounder – pushing me when I needed motivation and encouraging me when I needed support. Every piece of work I submitted was read with his trademark meticulousness and good humor — from full dissertation drafts to brief abstracts. It is a rare thing to encounter such a combination of humanity and intelligence in one scholar, but I find that yet again, my adviser has set the standard. Zlatko Pleše is a searing intellect whose encyclopedic knowledge of antiquity and modern critical theory is both intimidating and inspiring. Like Bart Ehrman, he is exceedingly big-hearted, spending hours conversing about theory and the ways in which we moderns make meaning out of ancient evidence. Many of our informal conversations directly influenced the direction of this project. v Zlatko Pleše is also deeply understanding of human foibles and has never held mine against me. He is quite a rarity in the academic world, in many ways. I have been fortunate in that my colleagues at UNC-Chapel were always willing to engage with me and converse about the implications of history-writing in a broader sense. I am deeply grateful to the joint UNC-Duke Christianity in Antiquity Colloquium for providing incisive feedback on earlier iterations of various parts of this project. Luke Drake, Travis Proctor, Jason Staples, Julie Kelto Lillis, Erin Galgay Walsh, Candace Buckner, and Jason Combs have been invaluable interlocutors. Jason Combs, especially, has read far too many drafts of far too much of my work; he remains the best colleague ever. Brian Coussens, Stephanie Gaskill, Tim Smith, and Sara Biondi Smith have been my bedrock. Without their encouragement, both intellectual and personal, I doubt I could have finished this project. From writing sessions to movie nights to late-night conference preparations and early morning breakfasts, they have been present for every aspect of my program and I am indebted to them more than I can say here. Perhaps it is among them that I learned the most important thing in my graduate career: one cannot go it alone. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................... x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................ xi INTRODUCTION: ARTICULATING THE UNCERTAIN: MAGIC AND THE STUDY OF GRAECO-ROMAN MAGIC ..................................................................................... 1 Part I. History of Scholarship.............................................................................................. 4 Part 1A. Anthropology and the Study of Magic ................................................................. 5 Part IB. Formative Christianity and the Study of Magic, the Early Works ...................... 14 Part IC. Modern Magic: Recent Scholarship on Formative Christianity and Magic ................................................................................................................................ 22 Part II. Chapter Summaries ............................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER 1: A NEW MAGIC: SUPERNATURAL POWER IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD ...................................................................................................... 41 Part I. Old Magic: Magic in the Graeco-Roman World .................................................... 46 Part II. Many Magics: ‘Magic’ in Ancient Sources .......................................................... 60 Part IIA. Early Greek Magic ............................................................................................. 63 Part IIB. Magic Emergent during the Principate .............................................................. 71 Part IIC. Practical Magic ................................................................................................... 81 Part IID. Magic in the Ancient Imagination ..................................................................... 86 Part III. New Magic: Methodological Reconfigurations .................................................. 87 Part IIIA. Less Ambiguous Practices ................................................................................ 90 Part IIIB. Ambiguous Practices ........................................................................................ 96 CHAPTER 2: JESUS THE MAGICIAN: MAGIC AND ESCHATOLOGY IN THE LUCAN IMAGINATION .................................................................................................... 99 vii Part I. A Tradition Purified of Magic? ............................................................................ 105 Part II. Jesus, Magician and More Than ......................................................................... 120 Part IIA. The Predominance of Lucan Exorcisms .......................................................... 122 Part IIB. Magic and Message .......................................................................................... 126 Part IIC. The Kingdom of God and The Kingdom of Satan ........................................... 128 Part III. The Beelzebul Controversy ............................................................................... 139 Part IV. Magic and Eschatology: The Purpose of Luke’s Discourse of the Supernatural .................................................................................................................... 149 CHAPTER 3: MAGIC AND MIRACLE: DISCURSIVE DISTINCTION AND NARRATIVE COHESION IN THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES ........................................... 151 Part I. Magic in Luke, Magic in Acts .............................................................................. 154 Part II. Acts and the Apostles: A Different Magic.........................................................