Mark (8:10), according to the best Greek manuscripts, referred to the same territory as “Dalmanutha.”—See DALMANUTHA.

No place called “Magadan” is today known in the region around the Sea of Galilee. However, some scholars believe that Magadan is the same as Magdala. Lending some support to this view is the fact that in Aramaic the letter “l” often replaces the “n” of Hebrew words. Thus Magadan could have been changed to Magdala. Others suggest that “Magdala” perhaps came to appear in more recent copies of the Greek text on account of an attempt to equate Magadan with Mejdel.

Magdala (possibly Magadan) is considered to be modern Mejdel, about two miles (3 kilometers) N of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. Located near the fork formed by the road running along the Sea of Galilee from Tiberias and the one coming down from the western hills, this site occupies a strategic position. Ruins of a relatively modern tower found there indicate that Mejdel once guarded the southern entrance to the Plain of Gennesaret. Both Mejdel and Magdala (a form of the Hebrew migh·dalʹ) mean “tower” or “fort.” This place is often suggested as the home of Mary Magdalene.

MAGBISH

(Magʹbish) [possibly, thick].

Either the name of a person or a place. Among those returning from Babylonian exile were 156 “sons of Magbish.” (Ezra 2:1, 30) Some tentatively identify Magbish with Khirbet el-Mahbiyeh, located about three miles (5 kilometers) SW of Adullam.

MAGDALENE, MARY

See MARY No. 3.

MAGDIEL

(Magʹdi·el) [God is excellence, or, perhaps, choice gift from God].

A descendant of Esau, and one of the sheiks of Edom. (Gen. 36:40-43; 1 Chron. 1:51, 54) Magdiel may have also been the name of a place and a tribe.—See TIMNA No. 3.

MAGGOT

The larval or wormlike stage of an insect just after leaving the egg. The term “maggot” is applied particularly to the fly larvae found in decaying vegetable or animal matter and in living tissues. The living or putrefying material provides heat for hatching the eggs and nourishment for the maggots.

Maggots have a legless, slender, segmented body that appears to be headless. However, with reference to the head, volume five of The Smithsonian Series, Insects, Their Ways and Means of Living, page 343, states: “The tapering end of the body is the head end, but the true head of the maggot is withdrawn entirely into the body. From the aperture where the head has disappeared, which serves the maggot as a mouth, two clawlike hooks project, and these hooks are both jaws and grasping organs to the maggot.”

The Scriptures allude to the parasitical nature of maggots and their subsisting on dead organic matter. (Job 7:5; 17:14; 21:26; 24:20; Isa. 14:11) The miraculous manna, if saved by the Israelites until the morning of the next day, gave off a repulsive odor and developed worms or maggots, except the manna stored up on the sixth day and saved over for the sabbath. (Ex. 16:20, 24) In mentioning the “maggot” in connection with Gehenna, Jesus evidently was alluding to the dump outside the city of Jerusalem where fires consumed the refuse and where worms or maggots subsisted on decaying matter near, but not in, the fire. (Mark 9:48; compare Isaiah 66:24.) The word “maggot” was employed by Bildad to denote someone of little account.—Job 25:6; see GEHENNA.

MAGIC AND SORCERY

Secret arts and uncanny powers presumably used to accomplish things beyond what are natural, and which are associated with spiritistic, occult powers. “Black” magic is said to consist of spells, special curses and “the evil eye” that bring harm to one’s enemies. “White” magic, on the other hand, is said by its practicers to produce good results by breaking the spells and canceling the curses. Among some ancient peoples “black” magic was forbidden under penalty of death. The Bible, however, goes a step farther and forbids every form of spiritistic magic. (Lev. 19:26; Deut. 18:9-14) By the use of magical formulas, said to be obtained through supernatural knowledge and wisdom, the practitioner attempts to influence people and alter future events. In this respect magic differs from divination, which attempts only to discover future events rather than influence or change them.—See DIVINATION.

Much of the concept of magic-working sorcery is based on the belief that evil spirits can be induced either to leave or to enter a person; that they can be tricked and deceived; that they can be captured or trapped in a piece of wood or a clay image. For example, by making magic paths of honey or other agreeable things it is thought that the demons can be led around at the will of the magician.

All such notions naturally gave rise to a crafty class of magic-practicing priests, who exercised great power over the lives of the people, extorting large payments from those under their influence on the pretense of possessing supernatural powers over and beyond those of the demons. They believed that these professional sorcerers could invoke the demons to obey, but that the demons had no power over the sorcerers.

These spiritistic practices, so-called “sciences,” were developed and used by the ancient Chaldeans of Babylonia. Sixteen centuries ago Epiphanius said that in his opinion it was ‘Nimrod who established the sciences of magic and astronomy.’ Isaiah, in the eighth century B.C.E., tells us that Babylon of his day was rife with sorceries of all sorts. (Isa. 47:12-15) More than a century later, in the days of Daniel, the magic-practicing priests were still a part of the Babylonian court. (Dan. 1:20; 2:2, 10, 27; 4:7; 5:11) This expression “magic-practicing priests” is a literal and explicit translation of the Hebrew.

The Babylonians had a great fear of physically deformed persons called warlocks and witches, in the belief that they were dispensers of “black” magic. The priests, on the other hand, were said to be masters of “white” magic. They believed that the same incantation that made a sick man well if spoken by a priest would kill the man if uttered by a warlock or witch.

As people scattered around the earth due to the confusion of languages at Babel, it is possible that they took with them some concept of such magical arts. (Gen. 11:8, 9) Today millions practice the magic of mantra, that is, the mystic formula, hymn or spellbinding prayer of popular Hinduism. Magic-practicing priests, witch doctors, medicine men and sorcerers of all sorts are found among primitive people the world over, as they were among the Egyptians of the eighteenth century B.C.E., in the days of Joseph. (Gen. 41:8, 24) Over two centuries after Joseph was sold into slavery, the magic-practicing priests of Egypt seemingly duplicated to an extent the first two miracles performed by Moses. (Ex. 7:11, 22; 8:7) But they were powerless when it came to producing gnats, having to admit that it was “the finger of God!” They were likewise helpless in preventing the plague of boils from afflicting themselves.—Ex. 8:18, 19; 9:11.

CONDEMNED BY THE BIBLE

The Bible is singularly different from the writings of other ancient people in that its references to uncanny powers and magical arts are all condemnatory. Nowhere does it recommend “white” magic to cancel spells of “black” magic. Rather, it urges faith, prayer and trust in Jehovah as the protection against unseen “wicked spirit forces” and all their related activities, including magical influences. (Eph. 6:11-18) In the Psalms the righteous pray for deliverance from evil; Jesus taught us to pray for deliverance “from the wicked one.” (Matt. 6:13) The Talmud and the Koran, on the other hand, give way to superstition and fear. The apocryphal book of Tobit contains absurd passages of magic-working sorcery.—Tobit 6:5, 8, 9, 19; 8:2, 3; 11:8-15; 12:3; see APOCRYPHA (Tobit).

The nation of Israel was, therefore, unlike their contemporaries in this respect, and in order that they might remain so, Jehovah gave his people some very explicit laws concerning those who were intimate with the occult powers. “You must not preserve a sorceress alive.” (Ex. 22:18) “You must not practice magic.” “As for a man or woman in whom there proves to be a mediumistic spirit or spirit of prediction, they should be put to death without fail.” (Lev. 19:26; 20:27) “There should not be found in you . . . a practicer of magic or anyone who looks for omens or a sorcerer, or one who binds others with a spell or anyone who consults a spirit medium.”—Deut. 18:10-14.

Jehovah’s prophet also declared that God would cut off all those who indulged in sorceries. (Mic. 5:12) Certain individuals such as Saul, Jezebel and Manasseh, who forsook Jehovah and turned to sorceries of one kind or another, are examples of the past not to be copied.—1 Sam. 28:7; 2 Ki. 9:22; 2 Chron. 33:1, 2, 6.

The Christian Greek Scriptures also tell of the prevalence of sorcerers throughout the Roman Empire in the days of Jesus and the apostles. On the island of Cyprus there was such a one named Bar-Jesus, whom Paul denounced as “full of every sort of fraud and every sort of villainy, . . . son of the Devil.” (Acts 13:6-11) There were others, however, such as Simon of Samaria who gave up their magic-working practices and embraced Christianity. (Acts 8:5, 9-13) On one occasion in Ephesus, “quite a number of those who practiced magical arts brought their books together and burned them up before everybody. And they calculated together the prices of them and found them worth fifty thousand pieces of silver [perhaps more than $8,000].” (Acts 19:18, 19) Writing to those in Galatia, the apostle Paul included spiritistic occultism among “the works of the flesh,” warning them “that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s kingdom.” (Gal. 5:19-21) Outside that glorious kingdom will be all those who persist in these Babylonish practices. (Rev. 21:8; 22:15) Together with Babylon the Great, so notorious for misleading the nations by her sorceries, they will all be destroyed.—Rev. 18:23; see POWER, POWERFUL WORKS.

MAGISTRATE

Under the government of Babylon police magistrates were civil officers in the jurisdictional districts who were learned in the law and exercised limited judicial authority. They were among the officials gathered to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s image of gold.—Dan. 3:2, 3.

In Roman colonies, the administration of government was in the hands of civil magistrates, generally known in Latin as duumviri. There could be three, four, usually five, or even ten or twelve making up the magisterial board. These had the duties of keeping order, administering finances, trying and judging law violators and ordering the execution of punishment. Sometimes their names and titles appear on coins issued by a city. Constables, or lictors, were assigned to them to carry out their orders.—See CONSTABLE.

The civil magistrates in the Roman colony of Philippi (Acts 16:12), without a trial, had Paul and Silas put into stocks. The next day, hearing that they were Roman citizens, the magistrates sent constables to release them. But Paul, in order to give public and legal vindication to the good news that he preached, demanded that the magistrates personally release them. The magistrates, fearing trouble with Rome over flogging Roman citizens, entreated Paul and Silas and released them.—Acts 16:19-39.

MAGOG

(Maʹgog).

A son of Japheth and grandson of Noah. His name appears among the family heads from whom the initial national groups were dispersed about the earth following the Flood.—Gen. 10:1, 2, 5; 1 Chron. 1:5.

The name thereafter occurs in Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning the stormlike attack by “Gog of the land of Magog” against Jehovah’s regathered people. It, therefore, appears to be used by the prophet to indicate a land or region in “the remotest parts of the north,” out of which Gog’s host comes forth, his plundering forces described as “riding on horses, a great congregation, even a numerous military force” employing sword and bow.—Ezek. 38:2-4, 8, 9, 13-16; 39:1-3, 6.

From the time of the Jewish historian Josephus the “land of Magog” has been suggested to relate to the fierce Scythian tribes found in NE Europe and Central Asia. Classical writers of Greek and Roman times described the Scythians as northern barbarians, rapacious and warlike, equipped with large cavalry forces, well armored, and skilled with the bow. While the name “Scythian” may originally derive from “Ashkenaz,” another descendant of Japheth (Gen. 10:2, 3), the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1959 ed., Vol. 20, p. 235) states that “throughout classical literature Scythia generally meant all regions to the north and northeast of the Black Sea, and a Scythian (Skuthes) any barbarian coming from those parts.” Other authorities likewise show that the term “Scythian” was used rather flexibly to embrace generally the nomadic tribes N of the Caucasus (the region between the Black and Caspian Seas), similar to the modern use of the term “Tartar.” Hence The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Vol. V, p. 14) comments: “The name ‘Scythians’ was among the ancients an elastic appellation, and so was the Hebrew ‘Magog.’”

SYMBOLIC USE

The fact that the definite location of the “land of Magog” is left uncertain and indeterminate to us in the Bible (as well as in secular history), along with the prophet’s reference to “the final part of the years” (Ezek. 38:8) and the fact that the described invasion is not known to have taken place literally upon Israel, provides the basis for viewing the prophecy as relating to a future time in the Biblical ‘time of the end.’ Thus many commentators see in it a forecast of the final attack of the world powers upon the kingdom of God, and the land of Magog as representing “the world as hostile to God’s people and kingdom.”—A New Standard Bible Dictionary by Jacobus, Lane and Zenos, p. 307.

As shown in the article on GOG (which see), the land of Magog manifestly has a symbolic significance. The fact that the term “Scythian,” with which Magog is usually associated, came to be used as a synonym for that which is brutal and degraded would logically seem to point to a fallen state or position of debasement, analogous to the position assigned to Satan and his angels following the war in heaven from which debased position he wrathfully wages “war with the remaining ones of [the woman’s] seed,” as described at Revelation 12:7-17.

The final appearance of the term “Magog” is at Revelation 20:8, and here the connection with God’s prime adversary, Satan the Devil, is plainly stated. However, the vision here differs in that it relates events to occur, not in the ‘time of the end,’ but at the close of the thousand-year reign of Christ Jesus and subsequent to the loosing of Satan from the abyss. Rather than a particular land or location, “Gog and Magog” here is used to describe those on earth who yield to the released Adversary’s influence and rebel against God’s rule as expressed through “the holy ones and the beloved city.”—Rev. 20:3, 7-10.