Content area
Full Text
Ann Jeffers, Magic and divination in ancient Palestine and Syria, Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East, vol. 8, Leiden and New York, E J Brill, 1996, pp. xviii, 277, Nlg 146.00, $94.50 (90-04-10513-1).
This study of magic and divination in the ancient Near East focuses upon the communities of northwest Syria and is based primarily upon Old Testament, Ugaritic, Phoenician, and other Semitic sources, dating from the seventeenth to the eighth century BC. For medical historians, the magical and divinatory practices are avenues by which we can learn of early approaches to the maintenance of health and the reaction to disease and calamity, and it can be argued that in late antique and medieval society a larger proportion of the population probably used divination and magic than more "rational" Greek humoral medicine. In earlier centuries there were few options available for someone wishing to learn the prognosis and diagnosis of mental and physical illnesses, or to determine the well-being of someone who was absent, or to assure themselves of protection and good health. Divination was closely associated with medical prognosis, and makers of talismans were approached with problems ranging from illness to famine. The boundary between mantic practitioners, with associated magical practices, and doctors healing through food and drugs was very indistinct.
There have been numerous attempts by various historians and ethnographers to define what is meant by magic and divination, none of them entirely satisfactory or universally accepted. In general terms, however, divination is the prediction of future events or gaining information about things unseen, while magic is an invocation of a supernatural force to bring about changes in the course of events. As Jeffers and others have...