In 1957, nineteen rolled metal amulets were found in the apse of a late antique synagogue near Kibbutz Nirim in southern Israel, near the border with Gaza. Of these nineteen amulets, three have been unrolled and the texts on them read. The best preserved is a bronze amulet that can be read nearly in its entirety:

Written in a combination of Aramaic and Hebrew, the amulet identifies Esther as the person for whom it was made. It also includes the name of her mother and the conditions from which Esther sought protection. The extant portion of the amulet concludes with a quotation from Exod 15 that promises God’s protection against disease. Each of these components are common on amulets from Palestine, and especially among the amulets that will be considered in Chapter 2. One of the things that makes this Nirim amulet particularly noteworthy, however, was its discovery in a secure archaeological context. Its deposition in a synagogue, together with its use of Aramaic, means that we can be reasonably certain that the user considered herself a Jew. The vast majority of amulets from Roman and late antique Palestine lack archaeological context, which means that, unlike the Nirim amulets, it is difficult to interrogate the religious or ethnic self-understanding of the practitioner who crafted the object and the person who originally used it. This is particularly true for the amulets with the inscription heis theos (“one god”) or its extended form heis theos ho nikōn ta kaka (“one god who conquers evil”). As I will argue below, the heis theos acclamation could have appealed to members of disparate communities.

The purpose of this chapter is twofold.