My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late AntiquityAnneMarie Luijendijk, William E. Klingshirn 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. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Chapter 1 The Literature of Lot Divination | 19 |
Chapter 2 The Instruments of Lot Divination | 60 |
Palmomancy and Late Antique Lot Divination | 78 |
an Aid to Bibliomancy | 101 |
a Unique Syriac Biblical Manuscript as an Oracle of Interpretation | 124 |
Chapter 6 Secondhand Homer | 138 |
Chapter 7 Sortes Biblicae Judaicae | 154 |
Ritual Experts and the Great Tradition in Byzantine Egypt | 211 |
Aspects of Jurisdiction in Ritual Texts from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt | 232 |
Oracle as Economic Indicator in Roman Egypt | 248 |
the Barbarian Christian Tatian Responds to Sortes | 290 |
Doubt in Christian Lot Divination | 309 |
| 331 | |
| 375 | |
| 383 | |
Chapter 8 The Sortes Barberinianae within the Tradition of Oracular Texts | 173 |
Chapter 9 Oxyrhynchus and Oracles in Late Antiquity | 196 |
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Common terms and phrases
Ancient biblical text bibliomancy Brill Byzantine century cleromancy client Codex Bezae codices consultation context coptes Coptic Costanza culture David Frankfurter decade dice Divination in Late divinatory divinatory texts doubt Early Christian edition Egyptian evidence example fake answers Forbidden Oracles fragments Gospel Gospel of John Greek hermēneiai Homer Homeromanteion Iamblichus ibid Iliad interpretation Jewish John Klingshirn Late Antique Egypt Late Antiquity Latin Leiden lot divination lot oracles lot texts Lots of Mary Ma'at magical Mantikę manuscript medieval Naether Nollé oracular texts Oxford Oxyrhynchus P.Oxy pagan palmomantic Papaconstantinou papyri Papyrology passage Philoxenus Plutarch practices prayer Princeton prognostication Psalm questions Randall Stewart Religion religious responses ritual Roman Egypt Roman Gaul Roman period scribal scribe shrine Sortes Astrampsychi Sortes Barberinianae Sortes Sanctorum Sortes Sangallenses sortilege sortition Studies Syriac Table of Correspondences Tatian textual ticket oracles tradition translation verses words δὲ εἰ ἐν καὶ τῆς τὸ τοῦ τῶν