Divination

In ancient Judah, death was a two-step journey: the body was laid in a tomb, and the spirit passed to She’ol. Ancestral spirits were believed to influence the fortunes of the living and could be consulted, as when Saul summons Samuel through the woman of Endor, who exclaims, “I see an ʾelohim coming up from the earth.” Biblical authors rejected these practices and replaced them, establishing communal ancestors entombed in the cave of Machpelah and asserting that YHWH Elohim alone can intervene to ensure fertility, land, and well-being.

Both namburbi anti-omen rituals (1^st millennium B.C.E.) and priestly Torah rituals were preserved in collections in multiple versions that show evidence of intertextuality and innovation. Were these rituals meant to be performed?

A hoard of 406 astragali (“knucklebones”), a bone that was used for divination in the ancient world, was discovered at Tel Abel Beth Maacah. Was this city, featured in the rebellion of Sheba against King David, a center for divination?

Rachel steals teraphim from her father Laban; Michal uses them to save her husband David from her father Saul; Micah includes them in the shrine he builds on his property. What are they and how do they function in these stories?

According to Deuteronomy, a false prophet who has no message from God, and advocates worshiping other gods, can still successfully perform miracles and predict the future.

In the Prophets, Israelite leaders such as Joshua, Saul, David, and Ahab use divination to help them make decisions, just as their ancient Near Eastern counterparts did. The Torah sidesteps the divinatory character of these objects and practices, and instead, emphasizes their ritual and religious character.

Understanding the practice of dream interpretation in the Joseph story by using the ANE interpretive traditions as background.

Ancient Near Eastern cultic rituals located the presence of gods and divine messages in nature.

The Urim veTumim have baffled traditional commentators through the ages and only more recently has modern scholarship shed partial light on what they were.