In the Bible, the sanctuary of the Temple. Jewish antiquity The sanctuary , or most holy place in the temple ; also, the temple itself. The holy of holies of the ancient Jewish Temple: 1 Kings , A prophetic response, often enigmatic or allegorical , so given. A shrine dedicated to some prophetic deity. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans,. The place where, or medium by which, deities were consulted. Part or all of this entry has been imported from the edition of Webster's Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain.
The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing. It became very popular due to its robustness and huge variety of platforms that it ran on.
In the mids, Oracle was a major promoter of the network computer, forming subsidiary Network Computer, Inc. Oracles like this one typically feature paradoxes, metaphors and images that are also the heart of poetic language. The reading of these prophecies, then, requires extraordinary diligence, a special sense for words and their meaning, and the willingness and capacity to look at the world in new and creative ways.
The exiled king Arcesilaus enquired at Delphi about the possibility of returning to Cyrene. The oracle foretold that his family would remain in power for eight generations, but added a personal message to the king:. As for yourself, when you return to your country, be gentle. If you find the oven full of jars, do not bake them but send them off with the wind.
But if you do heat the oven, enter not the land surrounded by water, for otherwise you will die, and the best of the bulls with you. After his return to Cyrene, Arcesilaus took great care to sidestep the prophecy but readily took revenge on his adversaries.
When some of them fled into a tower, he had wood stacked around it and set it on fire. Arcesilaus died soon after in the coastal town of Barca. Some oracles and the accounts told about them are not authentic.
Yet this does not mean we can simply dismiss this evidence as the stuff of literary fiction. Questions of authenticity are relevant to the social and political histories of the ancient world and the role of oracles within them.
The cultural historian and historians of religions also want to know: What kind of questions did the ancients put to the oracle, real or imaginary?
How far into the future did they look? And what religious beliefs, insights and general truths are contained in the stories told about the oracle? For the ancients, Delphi was as much a place of the real as the imaginary. It was a site to which one could travel and ask questions. But it was also — perhaps even more so — an imaginary site around which meaningful religious narratives could be spun. The evidence from another oracular site confirms this. At the Oracle of Zeus at Dodona, enquirers at the oracle wrote their questions onto lead tablets, which were then folded and submitted to the sanctuary.
Hundreds of these tablets have been found, giving very good insight into the questions asked at that oracle:.
And, somewhat more sensitively :. Lysanias asks Zeus Naios and Deona whether the child is not from him with which Annyla is pregnant. In their straightforwardness, these questions resemble those oracles from Delphi that were inscribed in stone right after the consultation and so less likely to be subject to embellishment.
Taken together, this evidence illustrates that in the main very simple questions were asked at oracles — relegating the elaborate tales of prediction and fulfilment to the realm of the imaginary. Note also that to answer these questions does not require great predictive capacities.
Nor do these questions really concern the deep future: mostly they reflect simple concerns of the day to day. Unfortunately, the Delphic oracle is no longer in business — at least, not of the oracular kind. However, the excavated site is now a booming tourist destination and well worth the visit. Every time has its own oracles. The legacy of Delphi lies not so much in fortune-tellers, soothsayers and horoscopes: the central and authoritative role of the oracle in the ancient world is reflected in more serious ways we try to anticipate the future.
We have an enduring desire to enquire into what is beyond the here and now, which manifests in our — frequently futile — attempts to control what comes next.
Economic forecasts try to model future expectations based on past experiences, but — much like ambiguous oracles — they are usually vague enough to allow for a way out if things go wrong: past returns do not indicate future gains….
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