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The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East


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Necromancy (1)

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04 Religious and philosophical literature and poetry



05 Scientific knowledge and scholarly lore


Keywords
necromancy
oracles
Period
Neo-Assyrian Empire
Channel
Old Testament


Text
In Sumerian, Hittite, Ugaritic, and Akkadian the word apu (in its Akkadian form) means a hole in the ground through which one may communicate with the dead, and it plays a part in Neo-Assyrian rituals, being sometimes supplied with the determinative that denotes a divinity. Hebrew ˁōb (1 Samuel 28:7) is cognate with apu, and refers to a spirit in necromancy when the woman of Endor conjures up the ghost of Samuel at Saul’s request. Isaiah 29:4 uses the word to mean a ghost, and Leviticus 20:27 in banning magicians uses it in the sense of a necromancer. Obtaining oracles through necromancy using figurines of ancestors or numinous fissures in the ground seems therefore to have been a widespread practice from early times in the ancient Near East.


Bibliography

Dalley 1998, 68Dalley, Stephanie. “The Influence of Mesopotamia upon Israel and the Bible.” In: S. Dalley (ed.). The Legacy of Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998, 57-83.
Hoffner 1967, 385-401Hoffner, Harry. “Second Millennium Antecedents to the Hebrew 'ob.” Journal of Biblical Literature 86 (1967) 385-401. [JSTOR (requires subscription)]

Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Isaiah 29:4
Leviticus 20:27
1 Samuel 28:7

Stephanie Dalley


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000615.php


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