OF THE PAGAN ORACLES.
If it were well proved that the oracles of pagan antiquity were the
work of the evil spirit, we could give more real and palpable proofs
of the apparition of the demon among men than these boasted oracles,
which were given in almost every country in the world, among the
nations which passed for the wisest and most enlightened, as the
Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, Syrians, even the Hebrews, Greeks, and
Romans. Even the most barbarous people were not without their oracles.
In the pagan religion there was nothing esteemed more honorable, or
more complacently boasted of.
In all their great undertakings they had recourse to the oracle; by
that was decided the most important affairs between town and town, or
province and province. The manner in which the oracles were rendered
was not everywhere the same. It is said[180] the bull Apis, whose
worship was anciently established in Egypt, gave out his oracles on
his receiving food from the hand of him who consulted. If he received
it, say they, it was considered a good omen; if he refused it, this
was a bad augury. When this animal appeared in public, he was
accompanied by a troop of children, who sang hymns in his honor; after
which these boys were filled with sacred enthusiasm, and began to
predict future events. If the bull went quietly into his lodge, it was
a happy sign;[181] if he came out, it was the contrary. Such was the
blindness of the Egyptians.
There were other oracles also in Egypt:[182] as those of Mercury,
Apollo, Hercules, Diana, Minerva, Jupiter Ammon, &c., which last was
consulted by Alexander the Great. But Herodotus remarks that in his
time there were neither priests nor priestesses who uttered oracles.
They were derived from certain presages, which they drew by chance, or
from the movements of the statues of the gods, or from the first voice
which they heard after having consulted. Pausanias says[183] that he
who consults whispers in the ear of Mercury what he requires to know,
then he stops his ears, goes out of the temple, and the first words
which he hears from the first person he meets are held as the answer
of the god.
The Greeks acknowledge that they received from the Egyptians both the
names of their gods and their most ancient oracles; amongst others
that of Dodona, which was already much resorted to in the time of
Homer,[184] and which came from the oracle of Jupiter of Thebes: for
the Egyptian priests related that two priestesses of that god had been
carried off by Phoenician merchants, who had sold them, one into
Libya and the other into Greece.[185] Those of Dodona related that two
black doves had flown from Thebes of Egypt--that the one which had
stopped at Dodona had perched upon a beech-tree, and had declared in an
articulate voice that the gods willed that an oracle of Jupiter should
be established in this place; and that the other, having flown into
Lybia, had there formed or founded the oracle of Jupiter Ammon. These
origins are certainly very frivolous and very fabulous. The Oracle of
Delphi is more recent and more celebrated. Phemonoe was the first
priestess of Delphi, and began in the time of Acrisius, twenty-seven
years before Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus. She is said to have been the
inventress of hexameters.
But I think I can remark vestiges of oracles in Egypt, from the time
of the patriarch Joseph, and from the time of Moses. The Hebrews had
dwelt for 215 years in Egypt, and having multiplied there exceedingly,
had begun to form a separate people and a sort of republic. They had
imbibed a taste for the ceremonies, the superstitions, the customs,
and the idolatry of the Egyptians.
Joseph was considered the cleverest diviner and the greatest expounder
of dreams in Egypt. They believed that he derived his oracles from the
inspection of the liquor which he poured into his cup. Moses, to cure
the Hebrews of their leaning to the idolatry and superstitions of
Egypt, prescribed to them laws and ceremonies which favored his
design; the first, diametrically opposite to those of the Egyptians;
the second, bearing some resemblance to theirs in appearance, but
differing both in their aim and circumstances.
For instance, the Egyptians were accustomed to consult diviners,
magicians, interpreters of dreams, and augurs; all which things are
forbidden to the Hebrews by Moses, on pain of rigorous punishment; but
in order that they might have no room to complain that their religion
did not furnish them with the means of discovering future events and
hidden things, God, with condescension worthy of reverential
admiration, granted them the _Urim and Thummim_, or the Doctrine and
the Truth, with which the high-priest was invested according to the
ritual in the principal ceremonies of religion, and by means of which
he rendered oracles, and discovered the will of the Most High. When
the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle were constructed, the Lord,
consulted by Moses,[186] gave out his replies from between the two
cherubim which were placed upon the mercy-seat above the ark. All
which seems to insinuate that, from the time of the patriarch Joseph,
there had been oracles and diviners in Egypt, and that the Hebrews
consulted them.
God promised his people to raise up a prophet[187] among them, who
should declare to them his will: in fact, we see in almost all ages
among them, prophets inspired by God; and the true prophets reproached
them vehemently for their impiety, when instead of coming to the
prophets of the Lord, they went to consult strange oracles,[188] and
divinities equally powerless and unreal.
We have spoken before of the teraphim of Laban, of the idols or
pretended oracles of Micah and Gideon. King Saul, who, apparently by
the advice of Samuel, had exterminated diviners and magicians from the
land of Israel, desired in the last war to consult the Lord, who would
not reply to him. He then afterwards addressed himself to a witch, who
promised him she would evoke Samuel for him. She did, or feigned to do
so, for the thing offers many difficulties, into which we shall not
enter here.
The same Saul having consulted the Lord on another occasion, to know
whether he must pursue the Philistines whom he had just defeated, God
refused also to reply to him,[189] because his son Jonathan had tasted
some honey, not knowing that the king had forbidden his army to taste
anything whatever before his enemies were entirely overthrown.
The silence of the Lord on certain occasions, and his refusal to
answer sometimes when He was consulted, are an evident proof that He
usually replied, and that they were certain of receiving instructions
from Him, unless they raised an obstacle to it by some action which
was displeasing to Him.
Footnotes:
[180] Plin. lib. viii. c. 48.
[181] Herodot. lib. ix.
[182] _Vide_ Joan. Marsham, Saec. iv. pp. 62, 63.
[183] Pausan. lib. vii. p. 141.
[184] Homer, Iliad, xii. 2, 235.
[185] Herodot. lib. ii. c. 52, 55.
[186] Exod. xxv. 22.
[187] Deut. xviii. 13.
[188] 2 Kings i. 2, 3, 16, &c.
[189] 1 Sam. xiv. 24.