Harry Potter, Witchcraft & Christianity, part 2

The rain has come to Fresno. It’s time to hit the “reset” button. May the Lord continue to water and sustain His creation!

To begin, I owe apologies to the person who (long ago) posted a question about Harry Potter that I subsequently deleted. I interpreted it as an inflammatory response from an unknown visitor to my blog and therefore deleted the comment. Upon further clarification, this person clarified that the intent was to inquire rather than accuse. It’s an excellent issue to address. So with apologies, I now launch a few posts spurred by that excellent line of questioning.

I’ll start with a glance at magic in the Old Testament world. The definition of “magic” is a source of much discussion among Old Testament scholars. Differing definitions are what often get people mad at each other. While the Old Testament seems to clearly prohibit magic, some important figures in the OT practiced magic or did things that looked like magic. Let’s look at a few examples:

Deut 18 clearly banned the use of magic. This passage references a host of activities and roles. Many involve what may be described as animistic practices such as telling fortunes and communicating with the spirit world. King Saul followed this prohibition by banning all “mediums and wizards” from the land of Israel (1 Sam 28:3).

No one would have bothered to ban a practice that was already obsolete. I know this is a common-sense deduction, but think about it. If Saul banned witchcraft, this suggests that sorcery was actively being practiced in Israel prior Saul’s ban. So between the wilderness setting envisioned by Deut 18 and the establishment of the monarchy in 1 Sam, witchcraft was practiced in some form in Israel.

This brings up multiple questions that we can’t answer. Was witchcraft practiced by Hebrews? Or did non-Hebrews practice magic? Was this practice tolerated by Hebrews? Did the descendants of Abraham keep these practitioners in business?

A common interpretation is that the use of magic in the Old Testament world represents a primitive form of religion prior to Yahwism or a perversion of it. Another line of thought, however, is that magic underlies the thought world for all people in the Old Testament time period. According to an article in the Anchor Bible Dictionary by Joanne K. Kuemmerlin-McLean, many scholars of the Ancient Near East suggest that a belief in magic permeates all religious thought in Old Testament times. By magic, they seem to suggest a superstitious worldview that sees spirits as the primary causes of good and evil. In other words, the world out of which Israel emerged was heavily shaped not just by polytheism but also by deep superstitions. This often led to efforts to manipulate or control the spirit world in hopes of either reversing “curses” or staving them off, ergo magic. 

The Old Testament indicates a clear desire to break from the world of magic, but Saul’s own behavior demonstrates the difficulty of such a major change. Although 1 Sam 28:3 indicates that Saul had expelled "mediums and spiritists" (NIV), he went to see the witch of Endor. Why? Saul was desperate to control the chaos in his life and in his kingdom, and his earlier arrogance had shut off God as possible source of help. So Saul turned to the default mechanism of magic revealing that a ban on witchcraft was hardly equal to its eradication.