Actually I ‘believe’ in the Discworld witches because their characters are described in a nuanced way. They are neither completely good, nor completely bad.
I find it harder to ‘believe’ in the witches mentioned in the Bible because they are depicted as being uniformly bad – and that seems unlikely.
I tend to agree with Fluffy in thinking that witches in the past would have been the midwives, nurses, herbalists and counsellors of the day - and not just because of Discworld!
The word Pharmakeia is found in old Greek versions of the Bible and is taken to connote witchcraft but it also means the use of drugs. There would certainly have been a blurring of the distinction between magic and medicine back in those days.
There’s an interesting passage from Acts 19 describing conversions to Christianity.
Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.
If this ‘Fahrenheit 451-esque’ destruction of books really happened, and it does seem a plausible scenario, then it was an act of cultural vandalism.
Did everyone whose books were burned really hand them over willingly?
I think that, whatever the contents and apparent change in significance to the owners, the books should have been preserved for posterity so that future generations might know something of the ideas of these so-called practitioners of magic through the writings in their own books.