É. Apor (ed.): Jubilee Volume of the Oriental Collection, 1951–1976. Papers Presented on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

A. FODOR: The Use of Psalms in Jewish and Christian Arabic Magig

67 A. FODOR THE USE OF PSALMS IN JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN ARABIC MAGIC It is well known that the sacred books of different religions have played a significant role in popular beliefs and practices. The Old and New Testaments and the Koran in their entirety or in some of their special passages have also had their part to perform in this respect.The use of Psalms for magic purposes gained a particular importance among Jews ana Christians alike. The subject of bibliomancy has been sufficiently treated by M.GRUNWALD and Kaufmann KOHLER in the 'Jewish Encyclopedia' [ 1] where a separate article by L. BLAU is also devoted to the topic of psalmonancy. [ 2J GRUNWALD himself has also dealt with the whole subject in a more detailed study [ 3] and in both places has enumerated the different uses of Psalms. As these studies clearly show, the numerous manuscripts of the works (termed "Shimmush Tehillim") on psalmomancy can be considered as more or less the same versions of one original work with slight differences in details. The frequently reprinted copies of the "Shimmush Tehillim" books also enjoyed wide popularity in Europe. [ 4] A Syriac manuscript of the last century published by C.KAYSER indicates that psalmomancy was also practised by Syrian Christians. [5] Concerning the date of the original work which was used by the nineteenth century copyist, KAYSER, on the evidence of the Arabic words occurring in the text, refers it back only to the age of Arabic domination. What can be assumed is that a "Shimmush Tehillim" must also have served as a prototype for the Syriac version. [6] The aim of the present paper is to widen the scope of investigation of the former studies by drawing a comparison between a Hebrew manuscript of a "Shimmush Tehillim" that can be found in the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and some Arabic works of the "Shimmush Tehillim" kind that have recently come to light. The Hebrew manuscript in question has so far passed unnoticed in the literature relating to this subject and is listed as A. 241 in the KAUFMANN collection. [ 7] The opportunity offered by the 25th Anniversary of the Oriental Collection and more