Reading God’s Will?: Function and Status of Oracle Interpreters in Ancient Jewish and Greek Texts

There is a rising scholarly consensus that consulting the divine will did not altogether cease in the Second Temple period. Rather, it took different forms, and one was consulting the divine will via existing texts. Meanwhile, the identity of such interpreters remains unclear. This paper explores th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Dead Sea discoveries
Subtitles:The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Hellenistic Context
Main Author: Tervanotko, Hanna (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2017
In: Dead Sea discoveries
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Old Testament / Prophecy / Early Judaism / Interpretation of / Herodotus ca. 485 v. Chr.-424 v. Chr. / Greece (Antiquity) / Oracle
RelBib Classification:BE Greco-Roman religions
HB Old Testament
HD Early Judaism
Further subjects:B Interpretation of prophets oracles divination Second Temple Judaism ancient Greece Herodotus
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:There is a rising scholarly consensus that consulting the divine will did not altogether cease in the Second Temple period. Rather, it took different forms, and one was consulting the divine will via existing texts. Meanwhile, the identity of such interpreters remains unclear. This paper explores the possible identities of interpreters by comparing the figures that interpret Jewish oracles with the chresmologoi that appear in ancient Greek compositions. Such a comparison provides new insights into the divinatory use of written oracles. The interpreters of the Jewish and Greek texts operated at least partly in similar ways. While their methods of interrogating the oracles are somewhat alike, Jewish interpreters enjoyed a status similar to that of prophetic figures, whereas Greek interpreters operated more independently and without a similarly evident divine mandate.
ISSN:1568-5179
Contains:Enthalten in: Dead Sea discoveries
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685179-12341446