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Soroery and Soothsaying THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 6otariology 8
Apuleius stood trial for witchcraft about 150 A.D., and Conatantinian and Justinian legislation dealt with it.
The Hebrew religion took strong ground against sorcery from the beginning, though residuary traces from the former heathenism or reintroduction from surrounding sources occurred and had ¢. Among to be combated. The Hebrew word
Hebrews. keseph, which forms the basis of the common terms for sorcery, etc., in Hebrew has its Assyrian cognate, and its occurrence in the feminine indicates that women were the chief practisers of the art. Death was the penalty for the crime (Lev. xx. 27; I Sam. xxviii. 9, cf. xv. 23), it being a sin which ranks with idolatry. Pas sages like Isa. ii. 6 show the reimportation of the practise from the East and from Philistia; but the prophets inveigh against the degradation of the worship of Yahweh into a spirit cult. The height of prophetic religion was not maintained among the people, especially under Assyrian influence, sorcery resumed an unwonted away; and after monothe ism had come to its own, magical remainders and superstition furnished a background of demonic powers among which the imagination worked. Especially was belief in demons rife in the post exilic period, though their place was that of sub jection, not of equality with God, and did not affect the doctrine of his unity; the name of God was in voked as an avertive power. Yet this very fact was employed magically, the name of God and of the archangels, particularly the tetragrammaton, being used both orally and written and regarded as a powerful charm. So people fell into sorcery almost unconsciously, these means being used as a sort of holy magic to oppose the unholy magic of other kinds of sorcery. The Talmud treats often of the sorcerers referred to in the Old Testament, in terpreting their names generally arbitrarily; its general spirit is that of condemnation; though the methods of sorcery were to be studied, the better to combat them. Some of the great rabbis received instruction in the art, while men generally accepted sorcery as a fact; still the true Israelite was re garded as so under the protection of God that the art was powerless against him. The Cabala (q.v.) contributed to the degradation of religion from this source, as is so often the case with mystic Supersti tion (q.v.). The Haggada and Midrashic references to the superstition of the people are numerous, and around the person of Solomon stories gathered with reference to his mastery of the demons, whose help in building, e.g., he compelled. These legends were taken over by Islam, where the same general posi tion with regard to sorcery obtained as in Judaism. Mohammedan missionaries often sell sentences from the Koran as amulets, and indeed the entire book serves such a purpose to those who can not read it, being regarded as an avertive of evil and a means to insure good fortune.Christianity from its beginning has been no less uncompromisingly opposed to sorcery than Judaism; it has regarded these practises as a turning away from God and as dealing with ungodly powers. Jesus was himself suspected of using sorcery (Mark iii. 22; Luke xi. 15, etc.), to which aspersion he re-
plied by showing that this would be dividing the kingdom of evil against itself. The exorcists of
Ephesus used the name of Jesus in their g. In the work. The episode of Simon (Acts Christian viii. 9 sqq.) is instructive, while not Church. leas illustrative of the common estima-
tion is the episode of Elymas in Cyprus (Acts xiii.), who received the rebuke of Paul and severe punishment. A center of heathen sorcery at that time was Ephesus, where amulets with an ambiguous inscription and a representation of Diana were sold, and one of the triumphs of Christianity was the burning of, costly books dealing with the art (Acts xix. 19). Distinction was made then between the wonder-working of the apostles and ordinary magic (II Cor. xii.12), though that might be misunderstood as simple magic (Acts v.15, xix. 12) and the real connection lost, the conception passing to the shadow and the napkins, etc., from the persons of the apostles. So on the confines of Christianity belief in magic showed itself in the materializing of the means of grace after heathen-magical methods of thought, in the magical use of " the word of power " and like ceremonies. Of course, a more spiritual and more nearly religious conception inheres in Christian surroundings, the.divine powers being supposed to work under ethical conditions. The Christian ritual and cultus were affected by the magical remains which inhered in the life of the peoples converted to this faith or which came in through contact with heathen peoples, though such ideas were always attacked by the Church. In the early Church, Gnosticism was a breeding-point for these conceptions and practises. In the Middle Ages the belief in witches had its rise in the old German faith in spirits. Even those who combated the effects of this heathen heritage showed themselves under the spell of surviving superstitions, and the inquisitors manifested more of gruesome zeal than of wisdom in their measures. These errors were due, however, rather to the condition of the natural, mental, and juristic sciences than to theology. New forma constantly arise, an example of which is Spiritism (q.v.), in which direct opposition to Biblical commands is discernible. Another example of this same class of novelties is the so-called crystal-gar zing, while the various phenomena, of spiritualism, hypnotism, somnambulism, and the like illustrate the older sorcery in its connection with soothsaying (see MAGIC). Hardly less dangerous are the plienomena of suggestion, even in its relation to the medical profession, though it is brought into connection with the Bible and prayer. These illustrations show that danger of lapse into sorcery is not altogether a thing of the past. See SUPERSTITION.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Much of the literature under COMPARATIVE RELIGION; MAGIC; SHAMANISM; -SUPERSTITION; and WITCHCRAFT will be found pertinent. Consult further: W. Mannhart, Zauberglaube and Geheimurissen im Spiel der Jahrhurtderle, Leipsic, 1890; J. Dieaenbach, Beaeasenheit, Zauberei and Hezenfabeln, Frankfort, 1893; F. Dela croix, Lea ProcAs de sorcelLerie au xviii. aikcle, Paris, 1894; J. Regnault. La Sorcellerie, Paris, 1897; T. Witton Davies, Magic. Divination, and Demonology among the Hebrews and their Neighbours, Edinburgh, 1898; E. Pauls, Zaubenveaen and Hexenwahn am Niederrhein, D~7aseldorf, 1898; I. Bertrand, La Sorcellerie, Paris, 1899; E. Gilbert,
