Ancient Rabbinic Texts About Healing with Objects

Amulets are often intuitively assigned to the category of magic rather than medicine, but they occupy a middle ground between these two disciplines. (For more, see MAGICAL TEXTS AND ARTIFACTS.) Curiously, there is virtually no overlap between the amulets mentioned in the Talmud and the many talmudic-period incantation bowls from Mesopotamia (see Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Incantation Bowls). No magic bowls or similar texts have appeared in Roman Palestine at all.

The key issues that concerned the rabbis included whether amulets could be worn on the Sabbath and what constituted a valid, effective, or expert amulet. They asked similar questions about using magical knots and reciting verses over wounds, and the extent to which such practices were considered to be legitimate. Passages dealing with this theme are composed predominantly in Hebrew, as elsewhere reflecting practices in Roman Palestine, whereas those in Aramaic reflect local Babylonian practices. One passage from b. Berakhot discusses the abundance and ubiquity of demonic creatures in the world and ways to deal with them, which is relevant to the psychology of healing.