ABSTRACT

This chapter shows that anthropological studies of oracles to illustrate the scale of the gap made by the abolition of oracles. An oracle is part of a cybernetic system. The experience of misfortune interacts with the possibility of consultation, which interacts continuously with the possibility of action, which is probably in the form of sacrifice. The feedback structures how disaster is perceived. It becomes blameworthy, a failure in the duty of a kinsman, not to ascertain the causes and the action to be taken. When all the possible forms of private divination were eliminated, there remained the theoretical possibility of priestly divination. It was performed with the two small objects called Urim and Thummim. In Exodus the Lord tells Moses how to make the ‘breastpiece of judgement’. The oracle might have had a prepackaged text connecting insult to the Name and the penalty of stoning.