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  • From: "Elli Elliott" <revelli AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Sympathetic Magic in Paul
  • Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2006 14:28:19 -0600

I've done some work on the Anatolian popular religious context of Galatians in which curses figure prominently in the epigraphic evidence.  Some of that work is available in: Susan M. Elliott.  Cutting Too Close for Comfort: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in Its Anatolian Cultic Context. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, 248. London & New York: T. & T. Clark International / Continuum, 2003.  See especially Chapter 3 on "A Divine Judicial System."   
 
I see the use of curses as an element of a deity-enforced judicial system prevalent in certain parts of Anatolia.  I did not analyze them under the categories of sympathetic magic or witchcraft -- so this may not be what you are looking for.  In Anatolia, curses had a protective function made effective by calling upon divine enforcement to punish offenders.   I did some initial exploration of this in connection to Gal 3:10-14 in the dissertation on which the monograph is based.  I think that Christ, in Paul's view, is functioning as a protective curse to guard the entrance from the (cursed) domain ruled by Law/Flesh to the (blessed) domain ruled by Christ/Spirit. 

 

(My own approach to this is to look within the specific culture of Anatolia in the Greco-Roman era rather than to rely on cross-cultural modern anthropological categories as Neyrey does.)

 

I'd be interested to know what you're working on with this.

 

Elli

 

The Rev. Susan M. (Elli) Elliott, Ph.D.
Minister
First Congregational United Church of Christ
Fairmont, Minnesota

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "David A. Reed" <da.reed AT utoronto.ca>
To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2006 10:35 AM
Subject: [Corpus-Paul] Sympathetic Magic in Paul

>A question for all of you:  /Outside of Neyrey's brief chapter on
> witchcraft in Galatia, does anyone know of any articles and/or books
> written on the use of sympathetic magic in Paul, especially with
> reference to "Christ becoming a curse to save us from the curse of the
> law?"/
>
> David Reed
> Regis College, University of Toronto
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> Corpus-Paul mailing list
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