Sortilege and Its Practitioners in Late Antiquity: My Lots Are in Thy Hands

410 Pages·2018·1.9 MB·English

by  AnneMarie Luijendijk

My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity
Religions in the
Graeco-Roman World
Series Editors
David Frankfurter (Boston University)
Johannes Hahn (Universität Münster)
Frits G. Naerebout (University of Leiden)
Miguel John Versluys (University of Leiden)
VOLUME 188
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/rgrw
My Lots are in Thy Hands:
Sortilege and its Practitioners in
Late Antiquity
Edited by
AnneMarie Luijendijk
William E. Klingshirn
with the assistance of
Lance Jenott
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Dice from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, Roman period. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Gift of Egyptian Exploration Fund, 1897. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/547955. Image in
the public domain (CC0 1.0 Universal).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Luijendijk, AnneMarie, editor; Klingshirn, William E., editor
Title: My lots are in thy hands : sortilege and its practitioners in late
 antiquity / edited by AnneMarie Luijendijk, William E. Klingshirn.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
 references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018037417 (print) | LCCN 2018038496 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9789004385030 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004384101 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Choice by lot—History—To 1500. | Civilization, Ancient. |
 Divination in the Bible.
Classification: LCC BF1779.L6 (ebook) | LCC BF1779.L6 M9 2018 (print) |
 DDC 133.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037417
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0927-7633
isbn 978-90-04-38410-1 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-38503-0 (e-book)
Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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ego autem in te speravi Domine
dixi Deus meus es tu
in manibus tuis sortes meae
eripe me de manu inimicorum meorum
et a persequentibus me
Psalm 30.15–16 Vulg.
But I have put my trust in thee, O Lord:
I said, thou art my God.
My lots are in thy hands.
Deliver me out of the hands of my enemies;
and from them that persecute me.
Douay version
In manibus tuis sortes meae. Non in manibus hominum, sed in manibus tuis.
Quae sunt istae sortes? quare sortes? Audito nomine sortium, non debemus
sortilegos quaerere. Sors enim non aliquid mali est; sed res est in dubitatione
humana divinam indicans voluntatem.
Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 30, enarr. 2, serm. 2.13, CCSL 38: 211
“In your hands are my lots.” Not in human hands but in your hands. What are
these lots? Why lots? When we hear the word ‘lots’ we should not look for lot
diviners. For a lot is not something evil; rather, it is a thing that indicates God’s
will in the midst of human doubt.
∵

Contents
Preface ix
List of Figures x
List of Abbreviations xi
Notes on Contributors xv
Introduction 1
1 The Literature of Lot Divination 19
AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn
2 The Instruments of Lot Divination 60
William E. Klingshirn
3 Fateful Spasms: Palmomancy and Late Antique Lot Divination 78
Salvatore Costanza
4 Hermēneiai in Manuscripts of John’s Gospel: an Aid to Bibliomancy 101
Kevin Wilkinson
5 Hermeneutics and Divination: a Unique Syriac Biblical Manuscript
as an Oracle of Interpretation 124
Jeff W. Childers
6 Secondhand Homer 138
Michael Meerson
7 Sortes Biblicae Judaicae 154
Pieter W. van der Horst
8 The Sortes Barberinianae within the Tradition of Oracular Texts 173
Randall Stewart
9 Oxyrhynchus and Oracles in Late Antiquity 196
Alexander Kocar
viii Contents
10 Sortes, Scribality, and Syncretism: Ritual Experts and the Great Tradition
in Byzantine Egypt 211
David Frankfurter
11 Sortilege between Divine Ordeals and “Secular” Justice: Aspects of
Jurisdiction in (Ritual) Texts from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt 232
Franziska Naether
12 Freakonomika: Oracle as Economic Indicator in Roman Egypt 248
David M. Ratzan
13 “I Do Not Wish to Be Rich”: the ‘Barbarian’ Christian Tatian Responds
to Sortes 290
Laura Salah Nasrallah
14 “Only Do Not Be of Two Minds”: Doubt in Christian Lot Divination 309
AnneMarie Luijendijk
Bibliography 331
Index of Ancient Sources 375
Index of Modern Authors 383
Subject Index 390
Preface
This volume originated in a two-day symposium on sortilege in late antiquity
held at Princeton University in November, 2011. Sponsors of the conference
included, at Princeton, The David A. Gardner ‘69 Magic Project in the Council
of the Humanities, the Program in the Ancient World, the Program in Hellenic
Studies, and the Department of Religion, and at the Catholic University of
America, the Center for the Study of Early Christianity. The editors are grateful
to symposium participants and to Lorraine Fuhrmann, Mary Kay Bodnar,
and Jeffrey Guest in the Princeton Department of Religion for their help in
organizing the conference and making the poster. We especially thank Lance
Jenott, lecturer in Religious Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, for
his excellent work in editing the volume. Nathan C. Johnson expertly prepared
the indices, for which we express our gratitude.
We thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive feedback,
the board of the series Religions in the Graeco-Roman World for accepting it,
and the editors at Brill Publishers, especially Tessa Schild and Jarno Florusse.
It has been a pleasure to collaborate on this volume as editors and we have
appreciated each other’s expertise and collegiality.
We are also grateful to our families.
AnneMarie would like to thank her husband Jan Willem van der Werff and
their children Kees, Erik, Rosemarie and Annabel for their love and support.
And also her parents, Ary and Gerie (Geertje) Luijendijk-Hordijk, who met
through an act of lot divination. On her birthday, Geertje, an elementary
school teacher in Rotterdam, was invited by four students to their homes. In
order to choose whose house she would visit, Geertje took four matches, broke
one of them and then put them in her hand, leaving only the tops visible.
Jeanne Luijendijk drew the short match. At her house, Geertje met Jeanne’s
older brother Ary. It was love at first sight.
William thanks his wife Patricia and their (as it turned out, far more
empirically-minded) sons for indulging his interest in divination over the
years, and in particular for wide-ranging dinnertime conversations about the
subject. When both boys confirmed after completing elementary school that
they had been required to use the term “random number generating cubes”
for the instruments they used to study probability – “because dice are for
gambling” – they already knew from our discussions that dice had historically
been used for far more profound and transgressive purposes. Divination is all
about lived experience: it is important never to lose sight of that.
Figures
2.1 Denarius of M. Plaetorius Cestianus. Reverse. ANS 2002.46.415. Courtesy of the
American Numismatic Society. 60
2.2 Denarius of M. Plaetorius Cestianus. Obverse. ANS 2002.46.415. Courtesy of the
American Numismatic Society. 60
4.1 P.Monts.Roca 83 (P.Barc. 83), recto. ©Abadia de Montserrat. Used with
permission. 102
4.2 Paris, BnF Lat. 11553, fol. 131r. ©Bibliothèque nationale de France. Used with
permission. 103
4.3 Paris, BnF Lat. 11553, fol. 131r (detail from the left column of the page shown in
fig. 4.2). ©Bibliothèque nationale de France. Used with permission. 104
4.4 Paris, BnF Lat. 11553, fol. 89v (detail). ©Bibliothèque nationale de France. Used
with permission. 120
5.1 London BL Add MS 17119, f. 6v–7r. ©The British Library Board (Add. 17119
Syriac). Image used by permission of the British Library. 126
12.1 Responses to Question 20, SA. 275
12.2 Typology and Change in Distribution of Responses to question 20 from SA1
to SA2. 277
12.3 Scenarios for Question 20, SA1 and SA2. 282