The first thing that grabbed my attention from the Johnathan Siedel’s article , “Possesion and Exorcism in the Magical Texts of the Cairo Geniza was on the second page. He mentions an excerpt from a Roman text whose author states, “as a matter of fact, I saw [a demon] coming out, all black and smoky”. It is interesting to me how people interpret demons or how the imagine them leaving their victims body. This Roman says it was black and smoky, however not every individual may believe that this is what an evil spirit looks like or is.

On the following page, the author states that the “practitioners” reported cures, but they could have simply been rumors and became practiced in other parts of the world. This made me think that maybe a so-called exorcist had somewhat of a placebo effect on the possessed because of the word-of-mouth status of the practitioners. Since the era this article is talking about was a while back, a lot of people could have had dementia or other diseases that were not know then, but are known now. Because of how dependent culture was on religion and spirits, observers and the possessed could have only imagined the disease was the cause of spirits.

Another thing that caught my eye was that spirits could not only take control of humans, but of all living things. The example about Samael possessing the snake could have caused the bad connotation humans today put with snakes, however it was not the snake, it was really Samael. Later in that paragraph the author reiterates that the body the evil spirit is in is not accountable for the actions he takes. Therefore, the snake should not be frowned upon, but Samael. It is interesting to me that Jews put serpents in the category of evil when this article shows that they should believe that the snake had no control over the spirit that made him evil. However, I am not sure if this article is talking about the serpent from the Adam and Eve story or a different biblical story. Either way, it is interesting to me to play devil’s advocate and see both sides from a believer and non-believer.

The end of the Firestone reading about Ka’b was intriguing to me because of how controversial this man was perceived. The stories that he was mentioned in made me think that he was Jewish, and never converted over to Islam as the beginning of the section states. When Ka’b is speaking about how there is only one Friday of the year that is most important to Muslims although Abu Hurayra states how it is every Friday, Ka’b investigates by examining writing that those of Judaism would read to see if Abu was correct, not the scriptures that Abu reads. This gives me the inclination that Ka’b is more Jewish than Muslim. Abdullah ibn Salam gets very angry when he hears that Ka’b said this but is okay after he hears that Ka’b is now in agreement with Muhammad. I would think that Abdullah would stay very angry since Muhammad consulted the Torah, which is not something a Muslim would do. This showed me that there is a fine line of what is acceptable to do and what is considered disrespectful to the Islamic religion.

When Ka’b is looking for a place to put the Mosque he chooses it based on the direction to which one of Judaism would pray. Umar realized this, and just stated how Ka’b still had a more Jewish influence on his beliefs than he should. I feel that Ka’b was trying to influence his fellow Muslims to incorporate parts of Judaism into Islam, because he still believed in certain parts of his past religion before he converted. I wonder why Umar was so calm about Ka’b’s request. Was it because he accepted Ka’b’s personalized religion, or because he knew there was nothing he could do to change his mind?

I also thought that Ka’b might have been trying to be a mediator between the people of the two religions based on the story about him apologizing for what he said about the sun and the moon on the Day of Resurrection. Ka’b seemed very apologetic for saying something like this, but although the story is not of traditional Jewish beliefs, I think he was simply trying to open up the minds of his peers into thinking about what a Jewish person would consider to understand their religion, not to practice it. Maybe because Ka’b was Jewish he does not spite them for their continuous belief in their God, and now that he is Muslim, he sees the connections more clearly between the two religions and wants everyone else to see them to promote peace between the two types of believers.