The Role of the Magician

The historian of religion will be especially interested in the kind of syncretism represented in the Greek magical papyri. This syncretism is more than a mixture of diverse elements from Egyptian, Greek, Babylonian, and Jewish religion, with a few sprinkles of Christianity. Despite the diversity of texts, there is in the whole corpus a tendency toward assimilation and uniformity.

In the hands of [the] magicians … the gods from the various cults gradually merged, and as their natures became blurred, they often changed into completely different deities. For these magicians, there was no longer any cultural difference between the Egyptian and the Greek gods, or between them and the Jewish god and the Jewish angels; and even Jesus was occasionally assimilated into this truly “ecumenical” religious syncretism of the Hellenistic world culture.