I wonder if you get what you pay for when it comes to amulets? TB Shabbat 61

An amulet is an ornament or small piece of jewelry thought to give protection against evil, danger, or disease. During Second Temple times amulets were either herbal roots or something written usually versus from the Bible held in leather pouches. According to the Mishnah on TB Shabbat 60 “A man may not go out on Shabbat… with an amulet when it is not from an expert…” (Sefaria.org translation)

 Just like today we want to check the credentials of the doctor before we visit, people back then probably wanted an amulet written by a successful practitioner. Today’s daf TB Shabbat 61 discusses in detail who is an expert amulet practitioner and what is an effective amulet. After a lengthy discussion the Rav Pappa make these conclusions.

“Rav Pappa said: It is obvious to me in a case where three amulets were written for three people and effectively healed each three times that both the man who wrote them is proven an expert and the amulet is proven effective. Likewise, it is obvious to me that in the case of one who writes three amulets for three people and healed each one time, the man is proven to be an expert; however, the amulet is not proven effective. Similarly, if one wrote one amulet for three people and it healed them, the amulet is proven effective, while the man who wrote it is not thereby proven an expert.” (Sefaria.org translation)

Although I can say safely that most of us don’t believe in the power of amulets anymore, amulets were part and parcel of Jewish practice going all the back to the First Temple period. An amazing archaeological find of an amulet containing the Priestly benediction (Numbers 6:24-26) was discovered by a team under the supervision of Gabriel Barkay, who was then professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University. The significance of this fine is quite important.

“An important archaeological find of an amulet was found in 1979 at the archaeological site Ketef Hinnom  southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem, adjacent to St. Andrew's Church, now on the grounds of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. It is located where the Valley of Rephaim and the Valley of Hinnom meet, on the old road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

“The site consists of a series of rock-hewn burial chambers based on natural caverns. In 1979, two tiny silver scrolls, inscribed with portions of the well-known Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers and apparently once used as amulets, were found in one of the burial chambers. The delicate process of unrolling the scrolls while developing a method that would prevent them from disintegrating took three years. They contain what may be the oldest surviving texts from the Hebrew Bible, dating from the First Temple period around the late 7th to early 6th century BCE prior to the Babylonian Exile, and are now preserved at the Israel Museum.

“The 2004 team described the scrolls as ‘one of most significant discoveries ever made’ for biblical studies. Apart from their significance for our knowledge of the development of the Hebrew alphabet, the scrolls "preserve the earliest known citations of texts also found in the Hebrew Bible and ... the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh." The reference to Yahweh as ‘Rebuker of Evil,’ found in later incantations and amulets associated with Israel, is evidence that these artifacts were also amulets.

Dr. Wayne Pitard has stated that although evidence for the antiquity of the Priestly Blessing is now compelling, this does not necessarily mean that the Book of Numbers already existed at that time. Dr. James R. Davila has similarly pointed out that the idea that while the scrolls show that ‘some of the material found in the Five Books of Moses existed in the First Temple period’, the suggestion that they are "proof that the Five Books of Moses were in existence during the First Temple period’ (as described in an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz) is no ‘an overinterpretation of the evidence.’” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketef_Hinnom)