Signs and Meanings: Divination and the Production of Knowledge in Jewish Antiquity

Signs and Meanings explores the range of divinatory techniques that appear in Jewish texts of the Greco-Roman era, from lot oracles and death oracles to human physiognomy and use of the Scriptures. Pushing back against the view of divination as irrational and superstitious, Hanna Tervanotko looks beyond the Hebrew Bible to a broader range of ancient Jewish texts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and the pseudepigrapha, and draws on anthropological frameworks that consider divination as a know...