Jewish Exorcism Text Discovered

Physorg.com
The 150 word neatly written fragment - discovered by Dr Renate Smithuis from The University of Manchester - describes a ceremony to dispel the evil spirit of Nissim Ben Bunya from his widow, Qamar Bat Rahma.
Dr Smithuis thinks the Hebrew document was most likely written in the eighteenth century and probably originated from Egypt or Palestine.
The fragment provides what is likely to be unique evidence of the prayer ritual's actual use in a synagogue.
It is one of the 11,000 manuscript fragments held at The University of Manchester's John Rylands Library - rescued from a 1000-year old storeroom - or Genizah - at the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo.
The fragment contains the second part of a prayer ritual in which the husband - or husband-to-be - of a widow recites an exorcism prayer, to which the other men gathered in the synagogue respond with a similar prayer.

Contributed by Gandolf