Overview on Ancient Religious Beliefs in the Gods

The belief in prophecies and curses along with the establishment of oracles was widesp pronounce throughout the ancient world, and this paper provides a brief overview of some of the variation of practices and belief among different ancient groups, focusing on the traditional cradle of civilization along with the classical world.

Before beginning such a survey, it is utilitarian to establish some basic definitions of the central terms utilize in this paper. It should be noted that these definitions are in circumstance basic ones and some variation necessarily existed among cultures and eras.

The concept of forecasting is related to a human ability to know what the gods own planned for the future. Such cognition came about in oecumenical came about through an individual's ability to see signs in the everyday, essential world that were hidden to others. Since in many ancient religions, the phenomena of genius were attributed to divine will, the gods were believed to speak to their subjects through natural events (Moscati, 1960, p. 124). Those who could see and read these signs, and who were willing to share their knowledge, became prophets.

Prophecies also sometimes came to the sleeping, for the gods could also sink directly to people through dreams - which were considered messages from the gods (Moscati, 1960, p. 59). And sometimes people entered trance-like states in which their bodies (although not their minds) mimicked sleep and could be heard by others to

Ashby, M.A. (1994). Egyptian proverbs. Miami: Cruzian.

Curses are much more(prenominal) active, for they summon the power of the gods into the service of humans, seeking divine payment against a human, thus compelling the gods into an active intervention into passing(a) human life. By some classical anthropological definitions, this crosses the line between magic and religion. In religion, humans can stick to share in divinity by acquiring knowledge usually left to the gods alone (as in prophesies or at oracles). In magic, humans can compel divine forces to last to meet human ends, as in curses (Aveni, 1994, p. 98).

McCall, H. (1990). Mesopotamian myths. Austin: University of Texas.

As is the case of prophesies, many of the curses that have come to be know to the modern world come to us through Hebrew tradition. A number of Moses's statements recorded in the Bible, for example, take the name of curses, and for Hebrews living at the dawn of the Christian era, excommunication (which is merely a form of formalized, serious curse) was a recognized penalty among the Jews. A distinction is drawn in the Mishnah, the compilation of Judaic scriptural law, between two degrees of excommunication; of these the milder involved extrusion from community life for 7 to 30 days, with the performance of repentance and the wearing of mourning. Twenty-four offenses leading to this penalty were enumerated, most of them of a civil nature. The heavier sentence was more formal, involving a ritual of horrible curses and lasting an indefinite time (Moscati, 1960, pp. 135-8).

Like the statements of oracles, the contents of prophesies vary dramatically from place to place and from era to era, reflecting the specific cultural, social, and ghostlike needs of a given people at a given time. But attempts at prophesying (or divination, which might be seen to be simply the practice of prophesying with certain props) were close to if not genuinely ubiquitous in the ancient world. In every form of prophes
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