Porceleindoll, you asked, "And where would one draw the line of magic between good and bad? Magic is automatically labelled as evil, but is it really evil? It would seem to me that some miracles certainly appear to be magic."
This is a broad subject, and just my take on it, but from my reading on wicca when I was very interested in it as a teen, and what I know of other shamanistic religions, "magic" is the attempt to control the forces of nature through rituals and chants and make things happen. For example, walk in a bookstore and open up books on wicca and you'll see that there are many rituals that involve the burning of candles, doing this or that with herbs of various sorts, and chanting rhymes.
Contrary to popular Hollywood images, witches do not have some kind of magic "force" like a Star Wars thing, some impersonal deep nature force or whatever that they send out from their wands to make things morph, etc., but petition gods like Sofia the Goddess, and her consort the Horned God. Christians have traditionally identified the Horned God with the devil but I'm not sure this identification is accurate.
At any rate, magic is the supposed invoking of spiritual, supernatural powers from one's "gods" whether it be Sofia, the Horned God, Baal, Ashterah, Remphan, Chemosh, etc. The Hindu religion goes way back to its original roots in sacrifices and preisthood to appease the gods as well. So "magic" per se, in my understanding, is going through rituals, chants etc. to try to appease one's gods.
In fact, in many primitive cultures people aren't so concerned about appeasing the gods but really focus on appeasing the demons,who lurk supposedly everywhere ready to do evil, cause disease, etc. So they try to make the demons happy and keep sickness and trouble away. This happened with the demon-gods of Tibet. Of course, after the Tibetans converted to Buddhism, they then said that their demon-gods had also converted and were now that guardians of Buddhism in their land. I'm sure Buddha would have turned over in his grave to hear that one!
Judaism involved ritual and sacrifice as well, as you know from the Old Testament, so you could say that they were simply trying to appease a different God, El. Of course, in the tablets of Ugarit and other ancient Middle Eastern cities, El was recognized as the Creator God, the great and high god, father of Baal and Ashterah and Dagon and all the other gods, so El, the God of the Jews, was even recognized by the Canaanites as the most ancient, greatest god.
It just so happened that many people considered El to be distant and aloof, like he had done his bit after creating the world and supposedly creating all the other gods, but didn't really have a lot to do with the world and affairs of men after that. Like a deadbeat dad. So people wanted gods like Baal and Asherah who supposedly did practical, helpful stuff like controlling the weather, sending rain, and who were involved in fertility, etc. Rain falling on the earth was equated with semen of the gods. (Wow! Good thing Berg never got ahold of THAT doctrine!)
Even Jacob's wife, Rachel, tried a little folk magic to get pregnant. She wasn't a full-bloomed El worshiper yet, and in Genesis 30:14-15 she wanted some mandrakes which acording to superstition helped women get pregnant when they ate them.
The worship of Baal involved all kinds of rituals ... fun stuff like chanting and dancing all day and cutting yourself with lances till the blood gushed out. Like the prophets of Baal did on top of Mt. Carmel. But the funny thing was that Baal (who supposedly was the weather god, a god pictured with lightning) was a no-show and El, the God of Elijah and the Jews, sent fire from heaven, then a gully-washer.
So was petitioning El no less "magic" than the pagans petitioning their gods? Well, if El was/is the true God and the other gods were fallen spirits, demons, as Paul says, then there is a huge difference. It's what Ray was talking about as the difference between sources.
All religions in their early days required blood sacrifices, the pagans and the Jews, from Chemosh to El, and in Christianity, Jesus was the perfect final sacrifice of the Jewish religion, putting an end to the need for all futher sacrifices. This effectively did away with the need for ritual, since what else are you going to drag up and plunk down on the altar and put a knife to after the final, ultimate sacrifice to end all sacrifices has been made? Jesus ended ritual.
These are my rambling thoughts on the subject.