1 4Q148 (4QPhylactère U): Another Amulet from Qumran? Ariel and Faina Feldman In his recent study of Second Temple Jewish magic, Gideon Bohak observes that “of all the artifacts which strike us by their apparent absence from the Jewish society of the Second Temple period, the absence of inscribed Jewish amulets is perhaps the most surprising.” 1 Indeed, there is a millennium long gap between the well-known Iron Age silver amulets from Ketef Hinnom and the written Jewish amulets of the Late Antiquity. 2 For Bohak, the glaring absence of Second Temple Jewish written amulets is even more intriguing given “the well-attested Jewish use of tephillin and mezuzot in the Second Temple period.” 3 In two recent studies we drew attention to two texts which may prove to be the “missing link” between the pre-exilic Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls and the later Jewish written amulets. 4 These two texts from the Judean Desert, one from Qumran, 4Q147, and another from Wadi Murabbaʻat, Mur 5, remained undeciphered for nearly 60 years. Written in miniature scripts, they have been tentatively classified by their editor, Józef T. Milik, as a tefillah and a mezuzah. However, our preliminary editions of the two suggest that they do not contain passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy common to tefillin and mezuzot. In fact, 4Q147 and Mur 5 yield otherwise unknown non-scriptural texts. The better preserved 4Q147 addresses God (frag. 1) and names angels, including Raphael, as carrying protective functions (frag. 2). The badly damaged Mur 5 alludes to the story of Exodus and evokes the language of Exod 15:26, “Y]HWH [is your] heal[er.” The use of angelic names, an allusion to Exod 15:26, both being common features of Jewish amulets from Late Antiquity, tiny scripts, and folding—all these led us to suggest that 4Q147 and Mur 5 are amulets. In this paper we discuss another text that Milik classified as a tefillin and left undeciphered, 4Q148 (4QPhylactère U). 5 Like several tefillin found at Qumran, this tiny opistograph was inscribed in a minuscule script with recto and verso at 90° to one another, carefully folded into a miniature package, and fastened. However, as in the case of 4Q147 and Mur 5, both old and new * We are grateful to Mr. Zach Poppen for improving the style of this paper. This study would not be possible without the assistance of Dr. Pnina Shor, Ms. Orit Rosengarten, and Ms. Yael Barschak of the IAA who provided us with all the new images of 4Q148. 1 Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 114. 2 The dating of the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls remains somewhat controversial, with the scholarly opinions ranging from the pre-exilic to Hellenistic times. For an overview and discussion, see Smoak, The Priestly Blessing in Inscription and Scripture, 13-16. We follow here the dating suggested in the recent re-edition of the two scrolls by Barkay et al., “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,” 42. The editors date them to the late 7th century or early 6th century BCE. Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 149-50, dates the earliest Hebrew and Aramaic Jewish amulets found during archaeological excavations to the 5th century BCE. Harari, Jewish Magic, remarks that Jewish amulets in Greek preceded them by “about two centuries” (229 and n. 65). One such earlier (and presumably Jewish) amulet, a lamella from the 3rd century CE containing a Greek transliteration of Deut 6:4 found at Halbturn, Austria, has been recently discussed in Eshel, Eshel, and Lange, “‘Hear, O Israel’ in Gold.” 3 Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 122-23. 4 Feldman and Feldman, “4Q147: An Amulet?”; Feldman and Feldman, “Is Mur 5 a Mezuzah?” 5 Milik, DJD 6:79.