The Bible for the Curious - A Brief Encounter - Philip R. Davies†
11. Divination: Prophecy & Apocalyptic
The Bible for the Curious - A Brief Encounter - Philip R. Davies†
Philip R. Davies† [+]
University of Sheffield, (Emeritus)
Philip R. Davies, who died in 2018, was Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield. Educated at Oxford and St Andrews, Scotland, he edited, authored or co-authored 37 books on the Dead Sea Scrolls and various aspects of interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, including In Search of Ancient Israel (1992), Whose Bible Is It Anyway? (1995), Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures (1998), The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2002) and Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical History (2008). He was co-founder of Sheffield Academic Press and former President of the British Society for Old Testament Study and European Association of Biblical Studies.
Description
The authors and readers of both the Old and the New Testaments lived in what is often called a ‘prescientific’ age, when the factors that determined much of human life—disease, famine, war, childbirth, the weather—were believed to depend on the activity of supernatural agents: gods, demons, spirits. These could be manipulated by various rites of intercession, appeasement or gratitude.