Journal of Early Christian Studies

In this cross-cultural regional study of ritual healing, Megan Nutzman seeks "first, to delineate categories of ritual healing that transcended the boundaries of ethnic and religious groups, and second, to use these rituals as a lens to examine the rhetoric by which Jewish and Christian authors differentiated themselves from each other and from their Samaritan, gentile, and 'pagan' neighbors" (2). Palestine is an ideal candidate for such a study because it comprised distinctive religious populations and because its archaeological remains are substantial and well documented.

The first half of the book, treating objects and places, draws mainly on material and archaeological evidence. Chapters One and Two deal with two groups of amulets: gemstones and jewelry, with no or little text, and textual amulets, with scriptural extracts or longer incantations. Working against a background of published finds, Nutzman focuses on examples that illustrate the various ways amulets were produced or used across or within cultural boundaries: a reaper gemstone that, lacking a divine ascription, would have served people from any background; a ring appealing to Christ for help; and a pendant whose image of a much-suffering eye and acclamation to the "one god" is found in Jewish, Samaritan, Christian, and polytheistic versions. There is a different yield from Nutzman's treatment of textual amulets, which are analyzed in terms of type, biblical quotation, and language (Samaritan, Aramaic, Greek, bilingual). Samaritan amulets are distinctive in that they all quote scripture—and a limited set of verses at that. By contrast, only two-fifths of the Aramaic amulets quote scripture and almost none of the Greek ones do. Among textual amulets, those that combine cultural and linguistic idioms are especially intriguing, an indication of cultural permeability or reuse.

Chapters Three and Four investigate two different types of healing springs or pools: those that people from diverse cultural backgrounds would have used for both bathing and healing, and those that over time came to be associated with Christian activities. The bathing complex at Hammat Gader serves as a case study for the former. Numerous finds of lamps and coins, probably votive offerings, and the report of the Piacenza Pilgrim suggest that it was a site of incubation throughout the Roman period. Jewish presence there and at Hammat [End Page 393] Tiberias is indicated by synagogues built nearby, visited by non-locals who left inscriptions commemorating their stay. Whereas at Hammat Gader people from diverse backgrounds would have been able to observe one another, the visitors at two sites that passed from Jewish to Greco-Roman to Christian use may have been less cosmopolitan. Nutzman reviews in detail the successive phases of the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem (miqveh, sanctuary to Serapis or Serapis-Asklepios, church of St. Anne) and of two complexes close to one another northeast of Caesarea—Shuni, site of the Maioumas festival and therefore denounced by Christian authorities, and 'Ein Tzur, which survived longer, possibly as a Christian alternative.

The second half of the book draws primarily on literary evidence, going beyond Palestine to fill in gaps in the record there. Touching on a wide array of sources—Qumran texts, Jubilees, Josephus, the Sepher ha-Razim, the Testament of Solomon, Christian prayer collections and church orders, and Christian hagiography—Chapter Five constructs a composite picture of ritual specialists who healed by prescribed words and gestures, both "authorized" healers and "freelance" healers—a normative distinction that, the author argues, was more significant for boundary-keepers (an elite minority) than it was for most people. Chapter Six explores the workings of "charismatic" healers—gifted individuals who could heal by word or touch without following prescribed rituals—through four soundings: Jesus's miracles; numerous stories of Christian ascetics who brought healing in Jesus's name or from God through prayer; fewer anecdotes and stories in the Mishnah and the Talmud that, while recounted for other reasons, often (but not always...