Theology Inscribed, Buried and Cursed

Theft, jealousy, competition: Even in ancient times, mankind grappled with all of these problems. When things got really bad, they would put a curse on their adversary. To this end, they’d carve curses into lead tablets, roll them up and hide them in secret places where they believed dark forces to be at work. A stroke of luck for Professor Michael Hölscher, Head of the Chair of New Testament Exegesis at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, as this means that many such tablets have survived. Hölscher examines cursing as an everyday religious practice and shows that it has even entered biblical texts. Rubin, the science magazine of Ruhr University Bochum, features an article on his research. 

Dangerous ritual

“In the period between around 500 BC and 500 AD, cursing was part of everyday religious practice in the Roman Empire,” explains Michael Hölscher. “Since the ritual required the curse to be inscribed, for example on a thin sheet of lead, we can still reconstruct it today.” The tablets, which would sometimes come with bound or pierced clay dolls, were deposited in places where people believed the powers of the underworld to dwell: They were placed in the graves of those who had died an untimely death, buried near shrines and thrown into springs or the sea. “As long as the tablet remained in that one secret place, the curse was active,” explains Michael Hölscher. “Once it was dug up, the curse got lifted.” 

One book of the Bible that is of particular relevance to the reseacher is the Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament. It is believed to have been written in Asia Minor, now Turkey, at a time when the region was under Roman rule, and brought comfort and succor to the small, oppressed Christian minority. And indeed, it contains several references to the widespread practice of cursing, for example in the depiction of the fall of Babylon.