According to this page, Exodus 22:18 originally said “Thou shall not suffer a poisoner to live,” but King James I, because of his phobia of witches (he believed a pair tried to kill him and his wife by causing a storm to sink their ship), had it changed to “witch” when he had the KJV Bible published.
I was curious to see if this deliberate mistranslation (if this page is telling the truth) had been corrected in subsequent versions of the Bible, but all the versions at http://bible.gospelcom.net/ say witch. So then I looked for the Tanach on-line to see what the original text says, but the only English version I could find also said witch.
Did King James alter Exodus 22:18 to fit his prejudices or is Ms. Powell mistaken?
Geez, I have to learn to preview–a whole chunk of the first paragraph is missing. The site is called The Witching Hours and the url for the home page is http://shanmonster.bla-bla.com/witch/
The translation “witch” (or “sorcerer,” the word “witch” is, these days, applied specifically to women and has come to include nature-worshipping pagans…the verse refers to actual practicioners of sorcery, of either sex) is correct.
The Hebrew word used is “MeKhashefah.” The root of this is “Kh-Sh-F”, which, in Hebrew, means a certain form of magic (there are about ten different forms of magic named, and forbidden, in the Torah).
Revised Standard Version says: "You shall not permit a sorceress to live."
The Jerome’s Latin Vulgate has it as: ** maleficos non patieris vivere**. That is pretty close to witch.
In the Greek concordance to Galatians 5:20 the word “pharmakeia” occurs, being translated in the KJV as “witchcraft”. Clearly, this particular word for witchcraft does have something to do with drugs (or poisons), with the idea presumably being that practitioners of black magic use various potions and what not. Note, however, that this doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the Hebrew word found in Exodus 22:18, or O.T. conceptions of witchcraft/sorcery in general–in the story of the “witch of Endor” in 1 Samuel 28 the emphasis seems to be on keeping “familiar spirits”, not on using potions or drugs–and note also that the New Testament doesn’t always use “pharmakeia” for witchcraft or sorcery–in Acts 13:6, for example, the word “magos” is used to mean sorcerer.
An excellent discussion of what the Bible means by “witchcraft” can be found at http://www.religioustolerance.org/wic_bibl.htm. As cmkeller already stated, the Bible forbids a number of specific kinds of magic practices, not just “witchcraft” in general. The article lists the following:
An Englishman named Reginald Scot made this argument in 1584, in a remarkable book called The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Scot was surely one of history’s great ignorance-fighters. He set out to prove that “witches” could not possibly be guilty of the crimes of which they were accused, and proceeded to pick apart the logical holes in classical and contemporary witchcraft cases. His book also includes detailed descriptions of the sleight-of-hand tricks contemporary magicians used to simulate supernatural phenomena; imagine a sixteenth-century James Randi.
I don’t know whether he was the first to argue that these Bible verses refer to poisoning rather than what we would understand as witchcraft, but he was certainly one of the first. He was a fascinating guy, in any case, and deserves to be better known.
While I appreciate that modern Wiccans don’t go around and cast destructive spells on people (although as a staunch materialist I don’t think it would make much difference if they did) I’m not sure that would get them off the hook as far as Biblical prohibitions on witchcraft. As the ReligiousTolerance.org site about the Bible and Wicca/Witchcraft notes, “The Bible contains many religiously intolerant passages”. I suspect that the idea that witches or sorcerers cast harmful spells was only part of the rationale behind the prohibition on those practices; they were also prohibited because they were seen as involving appeals to false gods or attempts to usurp the powers of God. So, even “positive healing magic” would probably have gotten you stoned.
