My Lots Are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and Its Practitioners in Late Antiquity

Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-38410-1
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 188, 392 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 680 g

Reihe: Religions in the Graeco-Roman World

Sortilege—the making of decisions by casting lots—was widely practiced in the Mediterranean world during the period known as late antiquity, between the third and eighth centuries CE. In My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity, AnneMarie Luijendijk and William Klingshirn have collected fourteen essays that examine late antique lot divination, especially but not exclusively through texts preserved in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Employing the overlapping perspectives of religious studies, classics, anthropology, economics, and history, contributors study a variety of topics, including the hermeneutics and operations of divinatory texts, the importance of diviners and their instruments, and the place of faith and doubt in the search for hidden order in a seemingly random world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Luijendijk, Annemarie

E Klingshirn, William

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Bibelwissenschaften Neues Testament: Exegese, Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Kirchengeschichte Frühes Christentum, Patristik, Christliche Archäologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Sonstige Religionen: Kult, Riten, Feiertage, Zeremonien, Gebete
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

List of Figures

Abbreviations

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

1 The Literature of Lot Divination

AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn

2 The Instruments of Lot Divination

William E. Klingshirn

3 Fateful Spasms: Palmomancy and Late Antique Lot Divination

Salvatore Costanza

4 Hermeneiai in Manuscripts of John’s Gospel: an Aid to Bibliomancy

Kevin Wilkinson

5 Hermeneutics and Magic: a Unique Syriac Biblical Manuscript as an Oracle of Interpretation

Jeff W. Childers

6 Secondhand Homer

Michael Meerson

7 Sortes Biblicae Judaicae

Pieter W. van der Horst

8 The Sortes Barberinianae within the Tradition of Oracular Texts

Randall Stewart

9 Oxyrhynchus and Oracles in Late Antiquity

Alexander Kocar

10 Sortes, Scribality, and Syncretism: Ritual Experts and the Great Tradition in Byzantine Egypt

David Frankfurter

11 Sortilege between Divine Ordeals and “Secular” Justice: Aspects of Jurisdiction in (Ritual) Texts from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt

Franziska Naether

12 Freakonomika: Oracle as Economic Indicator in Roman Egypt

David M. Ratzan

13 “I Do Not Wish to Be Rich”: The ‘Barbarian’ Christian Tatian Responds to Sortes

Laura Salah Nasrallah

14 “Only Do Not Be of Two Minds”: Doubt in Christian Lot Divination

AnneMarie Luijendijk

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

AnneMarie Luijendijk, ThD (2005), Harvard University, is Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She researches early Christianity and late antique manuscript culture. Her publications include a new Coptic divinatory text: Forbidden Oracles: The Gospel of the Lots of Mary.

William Klingshirn, Ph.D. (1985), Stanford University, is Professor of Greek and Latin at the Catholic University of America. He has published numerous articles on divination in the Mediterranean world and is currently writing a book on diviners in late antiquity.

Contributors are: Jeff Childers, Salvatore Costanza, David Frankfurter, William E. Klingshirn, Alexander Kocar, AnneMarie Luijendijk, Michael Meerson, Franziska Naether, Laura S. Nasrallah, David M. Ratzan, Randall Stewart, Pieter W. van der Horst, Kevin W. Wilkinson