Modern definitions of magic tend
to be functional and pragmatic, defining it unambitiously as manipulative
strategies for influencing the course of events by supernatural means. One no
longer distinguishes between magic and religion with the confidence of previous
generations. There are too many counterindications to any neat scheme so far
proposed, and we are now accustomed to seeing a common resort to the divine in
ways once considered antithetically magical and religious generally and in all
periods of Western history. One would hesitate to say that magical practices
and convictions were no longer common, even today. There is certainly no
shortage of evidence for magical practices in both Judaism and Christianity in
the early Common Era. One feels also the futility of attempting rigorously to
distinguish white and black magic, though in given instances it may be clear
whether the specified operation is designed to heal or harm. Magic has always
been a contested category, and is even so today. Debates over legitimate and
illegitimate access to supernatural power—and which power—are characteristic of
the Christian reception of the Tetragrammaton in all periods. (Robert J.
Wilkinson, Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God—From
the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century [Studies in the History of
Christian Traditions 179; Leiden: Brill, 2015], 175)
