Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe by Ephraim Shoham-Steiner (review)

Abstract

unbinding of oaths, and the mitigation of divine wrath. As in the previous chapters, Ahuvia pays attention to how the genre shaped the depiction and conceptualization of angels, and uses angels as a lens through which to observe interactions and conversations among different registers of late antique Jewish society. She extends this approach in her conclusion to other (emergent) religions of late antiquity and situates her study of angels in Judaism within the wider world of Hellenic, Christian, Mandaean, Manichaean, Zoroastrian, and Islamic traditions. Overall, Ahuvia’s book provides a valuable survey of angels in late antique Judaism that demonstrates their centrality to Jewish life and thought in this formative period. The broad scope of the book does mean that occasional gaps appear in Ahuvia’s coverage, particularly in the chapter on the magic bowls, but this observation is hardly a criticism. A comprehensive survey of angels in our surviving Jewish sources would require a multivolume effort, and Ahuvia should be lauded for the diversity of textual products and cultural contexts that she brings to light in her study. To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, Ahuvia’s inclusion of magical texts in her book—alongside liturgical and mystical sources—proves “more numerous of windows” and “superior for doors.” Though the central narrative traced by her book revolves around the rabbis, her study offers a more representative view of late antique Jewish society than earlier studies that focused primarily on rabbinic sources; it also emphasizes how the rabbinization of Jewish society required accommodation to and appropriation of popular belief in angels. It is an important contribution to the broader study of how human cultures experience the world as filled and animated by different classes of beings.