Corpus of the Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Charles David Isbell is Director of Jewish Studies at Louisiana State University and rabbi at Temple Sinai in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He is the author of seven scholarly books and of more than one hundred scholarly articles in the fields of biblical and rabbinic studies.

Since the 1913 publication of James A. Montgomery's Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur, students of the bowls have used that book as the diving platform from which they enter a deep pool of studyIn the intervening years, the body of work on incantation (or magic) bowls has continued to grow. Bowls in several ancient languages have attracted the attention of scholars from a variety of countries and traditions. The result has been the publication of a considerable number of translations of additional texts and fragments.Focusing only on those bowls inscribed in Aramaic and even then, only on the seventy-two extant bowls which could be personally read in photographs or facsimiles, Charles Isbell has, in Corpus of the Aramaic Incantation Bowls, compiled an impressive volume of work.Including the complete original texts, full translations, and annotations, Isbell supplements the text with a glossary of all inscribed words, an index of personal names, and a list of quotations from scripture.