RT Book
T1 Ancient divination and experience
A2 Driediger-Murphy, Lindsay 1983-
A2 Eidinow, Esther 1970-
LA English
PP Oxford
PB Oxford University Press
YR 2019
ED First edition
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1679323326
AB This volume sets out to re-examine what ancient people - primarily those in ancient Greek and Roman communities, but also Mesopotamian and Chinese cultures - thought they were doing through divination, and what this can tell us about the religions and cultures in which divination was practised. The chapters, authored by a range of established experts and upcoming early-career scholars, engage with four shared questions: What kinds of gods do ancient forms of divination presuppose? What beliefs, anxieties, and hopes did divination seek to address? What were the limits of human 'control' of divination? What kinds of human-divine relationships did divination create/sustain? The volume as a whole seeks to move beyond functionalist approaches to divination in order to identify and elucidate previously understudied aspects of ancient divinatory experience and practice. Special attention is paid to the experiences of non-elites, the perception of divine presence, the ways in which divinatory techniques could surprise their users by yielding unexpected or unwanted results, the difficulties of interpretation with which divinatory experts were thought to contend, and the possibility that divination could not just ease, but also exacerbate, anxiety in0practitioners and consultants
NO "This volume is the result of a conference held in London, in July 2015, on the topic of divination in ancient cultures, with particular focus on Greece and Rome." - Introduction
CN D51-95
SN 0198844549
SN 9780198844549
K1 Divination
K1 Religion
K1 China
K1 Greece
K1 Iraq
K1 Rome (Empire)
K1 Greece : Religion
K1 Rome : Religion
K1 China : Religion
K1 Iraq : Religion
K1 Konferenzschrift : 2015 : London
DO 10.1093/oso/9780198844549.001.0001