As one with a degree in anthropology, there is no real hard or fast distinction between “religion” and “magic.” Often, “religion” is what I do while “magic” is what you do. An example of this can be seen in conservative commentaries on Genesis 30 and the practice of Jacob (you do know that if this was something Joseph Smith practiced, Evangelicals would use it as evidence of how early “Mormonism” was saturated with “occult” practices):
Rather than practicing magic, Jacob may have used his years of
shepherding experience cunningly to outwit Laban by manipulating normal
breeding patterns to produce stronger animals for himself. Joseph did not state
that he used his silver cup for divination, which is part of the ruse to
determine if his brothers had repented of their crime against him. Regardless
of these problems, the lack of explicit condemnations does not necessarily mean
the texts support these practices, nor does it in any way contradict the clear
prohibitions against divination and magic. (D. P. O’Mathúna,
“Divination, Magic,” in Dictionary of the
Old Testament: Pentateuch, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker [Downers
Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003], 194)
37–40 If
he is to increase his flock, Jacob’s challenge is to get monochrome animals to
produce spotted young. To that end, Jacob took shoots of various trees and
peeled them in such a way that there were white stripes on them, and these he
placed in the watering troughs. After the monochrome goats came to drink they
mated and brought forth spotted kids (surprise of surprises!). Further, he bred
variegated flocks with monochrome flocks (v. 40) to increase his flocks even
more.
How does Jacob manage to succeed? Do one-colored animals produce
bicolored young simply by looking at a bicolored object in their mating time?
This interpretation borders on sympathetic magic. Jacob’s rods function much as
do Rachel’s mandrakes. It is not the mandrakes that produce fertility, and it
is not Jacob’s white rods that produce the right kind of offspring for
Jacob—although perhaps that is what Jacob wanted Laban to think. It is God who
opened Sarah’s womb, and in 31:10–12 Jacob testifies that it was God, not
magic, that brought about the desired results.
The flock tended by Jacob had only monochrome animals in respect of
phenotype. As regards genotype, however, a third were pure monochromes
(homozygotes) and two-thirds were heterozygotes (who contained the gene of
spottedness). By crossing the heterozygotes among themselves, Jacob would
produce, according to the laws of heredity, twenty-five percent spotted sheep.
Thus he multiplies his flock. Jacob has displayed ingenuity; he has not
practiced deception. (Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis,
Chapters 18-50 [The New International Commentary on the Old Testament;
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995], 283-84)
Further Reading:
William J.
Hamblin, “That Old
Black Magic,” Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (1998)
by D. Michael Quinn, FARMS Review of Books 12, no. 2
(2000):
