Bible Review

Alois Musil, The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins (New York: American Geographical Society, 1928), p. 411.

Dan Levene, A Corpus of Magic Bowls: Incantation Texts in Jewish Aramaic from Late Antiquity (New York: Kegan Paul, 2003).

Berachot 6a, 51a; Pesaḥ 110a–112b.

b. Giṭṭin 68b.

Josephus Antiquities 8.45-49.

For an introduction, see Jack M. Sasson, ed., Civilizations of the Ancient Near East (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995), pp. 1,777-1,785, 1,865-1,867, 1,889-1,904, 1,960. See also the famous anti-demonic amulet from Arslan Tash in Syria, for which the most recent treatment is B.W. Conclin, “Arslan Tash I and other Vestiges of a Particular Syrian Incantatory Thread,” Biblica 84 (2003) pp. 89–101.

See Robin M. Jensen, “Dining in Heaven,” BR, October, 1998; and Understanding Early Christian Art (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 52–59.

For more on the messianic banquet theme, see my article on that subject in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. The substance of that article is also reproduced in Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist, pp. 166–171.