What do you think?
Rate this book
Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World (Oriental Institute Seminars)
The concept of sign, a portent observed in the physical world, which indicates future events, is found in all ancient cultures, but was first developed in ancient Mesopotamian texts. This branch of Babylonian scientific knowledge extensively influenced other parts of the world, and similar texts written in Aramaic, Sanscrit, Sogdian, and other languages. The seminar will investigate how much do we know about the Babylonian theory and hermeneutics of omens, and the scope of their possible influences on other cultures and regions.
- GenresHistory
Paperback
First published February 9, 2010
3 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 15, 2021
Super interesting look at how ancient cultures practiced soothsaying.
Research book
Research book
August 12, 2019
It is worth remembering that the city of Babylon is built on top of the Abzu, a large underground body of water in Mesopotamian cosmic geography, source and residence of all these divinities, but that in the world that is to come there will be no sea, "a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more" (Rev 21.1).
This collection of essays, the first by the editor known for his The Origin of the Watchers, first pages 1-5, "On the Beginnings and Continuities of Omen Sciences in the Ancient World," seems authoritative on sources and practices of divination, consistent too and quotable for the larger subject, which anyway is the world order, not lightly undertaken or proved. This first essay neatly introduces many concepts to follow in the later, which you find as you read, but are grateful for the heads up.
The "will of supernatural agents and future events" has first written evidence in 3000 B.C. Mesopotamia but after a millennium of writing...word lists, knowledge texts, compendia of ominous phenomena to interpret the whole universe. This is the book Clif High appeals to in his causal universe. Here it is all divine will. What this will is and how to defeat it is our subtext.
Appeals made to divine councils for change of omen background IEnoch's appeal for the Watchers. Release rituals, Namburbi, mantic exegesis, omen compendia, knowledge texts considered scientific handbooks, which again seems the inspiration to Pentagon, DARPA and Rand illicit experiments in hybrid forms inspirited by mischwesen, these issue from before the writing to make a Babylonian Diviner's manual in the Pentagon a Babylonian theory of signs, which interpreted means desire to use them for war whether in heaven, liver or lung, what amount to raven croaks, fire crackles, door creaks, dust clouds and the moon. So it seems as if they have contacted the Chaldean wandering diviners and learned the modern analogy of his hepatoscopy or pattern recognition for divination, whether oil on water, flour and vinegar, coin tosses, stick falls, stellar alignments, clouds, tea leaves, cracks in the ground. A theology of signs becomes an ontology of signs, predicted also by any aberrant event, even the plane in the Pentagon. Annus thinks these constitute raw data for the study of the history of the mind and functioning of the brain. It is also study of cosmic prison system.
This means to approve this writing but why does Annus cite 3Enoch three times, 7, 9, 12, to prove anything when that late text, 5th century AD, cannot be considered with the same authority as the Second Temple IEnoch or the other sources given? It strikes the mind as a reach as odd as saying a wandering Chaldean diviner met Plato on his deathbed (11) as an instance of the transmission of these ideas to the Greek. The section beginning at (7) of a Babylonian Theory of Signs, of left and right, positive and negative smack of a how to do it grimoire. And there is an odd sentence in the summary to the effect that "Even if not all Babylonian theories of signs make sense to a modern mind "etically," it may not be wrong to assume that they certainly did "emically" to the participants of that culture" (13) an odd apology of negatives. It may not be wrong to assume? Well what is right to assume? Not given. This suggestion of empathy for his subject would not include chomping on a bone where his subject the Aztec. Further at the end he wants to nudge aside the superiority of monotheism "preconceived" in many textbooks when that has long occurred, unless he means how all these Mesopotamian scholars notice the satiric holding up to scorn of the polytheistic:
Gane's “Composite Beings in Neo-Babylonian Art,”
Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel by Alan Lenzi, Kilmer (1987) who posits posited Mesopotamian apkallus as the model for the biblical Nephilim, Annus himself On the Origin of Watchers, Kvanvig's Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading,
Monstrous Appetites: Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature by Matthew Goff, and other sources involved in the work paper Mischwesen @ https://insightstatutes.blogspot.com/... give some accounts of these.
This collection of essays, the first by the editor known for his The Origin of the Watchers, first pages 1-5, "On the Beginnings and Continuities of Omen Sciences in the Ancient World," seems authoritative on sources and practices of divination, consistent too and quotable for the larger subject, which anyway is the world order, not lightly undertaken or proved. This first essay neatly introduces many concepts to follow in the later, which you find as you read, but are grateful for the heads up.
The "will of supernatural agents and future events" has first written evidence in 3000 B.C. Mesopotamia but after a millennium of writing...word lists, knowledge texts, compendia of ominous phenomena to interpret the whole universe. This is the book Clif High appeals to in his causal universe. Here it is all divine will. What this will is and how to defeat it is our subtext.
Appeals made to divine councils for change of omen background IEnoch's appeal for the Watchers. Release rituals, Namburbi, mantic exegesis, omen compendia, knowledge texts considered scientific handbooks, which again seems the inspiration to Pentagon, DARPA and Rand illicit experiments in hybrid forms inspirited by mischwesen, these issue from before the writing to make a Babylonian Diviner's manual in the Pentagon a Babylonian theory of signs, which interpreted means desire to use them for war whether in heaven, liver or lung, what amount to raven croaks, fire crackles, door creaks, dust clouds and the moon. So it seems as if they have contacted the Chaldean wandering diviners and learned the modern analogy of his hepatoscopy or pattern recognition for divination, whether oil on water, flour and vinegar, coin tosses, stick falls, stellar alignments, clouds, tea leaves, cracks in the ground. A theology of signs becomes an ontology of signs, predicted also by any aberrant event, even the plane in the Pentagon. Annus thinks these constitute raw data for the study of the history of the mind and functioning of the brain. It is also study of cosmic prison system.
This means to approve this writing but why does Annus cite 3Enoch three times, 7, 9, 12, to prove anything when that late text, 5th century AD, cannot be considered with the same authority as the Second Temple IEnoch or the other sources given? It strikes the mind as a reach as odd as saying a wandering Chaldean diviner met Plato on his deathbed (11) as an instance of the transmission of these ideas to the Greek. The section beginning at (7) of a Babylonian Theory of Signs, of left and right, positive and negative smack of a how to do it grimoire. And there is an odd sentence in the summary to the effect that "Even if not all Babylonian theories of signs make sense to a modern mind "etically," it may not be wrong to assume that they certainly did "emically" to the participants of that culture" (13) an odd apology of negatives. It may not be wrong to assume? Well what is right to assume? Not given. This suggestion of empathy for his subject would not include chomping on a bone where his subject the Aztec. Further at the end he wants to nudge aside the superiority of monotheism "preconceived" in many textbooks when that has long occurred, unless he means how all these Mesopotamian scholars notice the satiric holding up to scorn of the polytheistic:
Gane's “Composite Beings in Neo-Babylonian Art,”
Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel by Alan Lenzi, Kilmer (1987) who posits posited Mesopotamian apkallus as the model for the biblical Nephilim, Annus himself On the Origin of Watchers, Kvanvig's Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading,
Monstrous Appetites: Giants, Cannibalism, and Insatiable Eating in Enochic Literature by Matthew Goff, and other sources involved in the work paper Mischwesen @ https://insightstatutes.blogspot.com/... give some accounts of these.
January 21, 2016
Collected essays are thoughtful and interesting, but lots of repetition between essays.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews