Ancient Greek Oracles

Fortune tellers can tell exactly how the future will go, or can they? The fact is, no, they cannot tell how the future will go. In ancient Greece there was a sort of fortune teller called an oracle. Ancient Greek plays and stories are filled with oracles that were either ridiculously right, or terribly wrong. One of these plays is Oedipus Rex, and in this story an oracle gives an outrageous prophecy that comes to pass (Sophocles). The stories show crazy predictions, and are far from the more common generalities that the predecessors of these oracles give out. Fortune tellers are often right because people have strong feelings toward their forewarning, and these black and white feelings turn the simple prophecies into self-fulfilling ones.
In ancient Greece the oracle was chosen by the god specifically (Dietrich, p. 308). Other than that, very little is known about the beginnings of oracles. It is a common belief to think that the first god to have an oracle was Zeus. A woman supposedly stood on an altar to Zeus and worked as a mouth for Zeus to speak through. This woman would hear straight from Zeus, and tell people about what was going to happen in the future (Morell, pp. 103-104). Everyone has an opinion on whether or not fortune tellers should be trusted or not, and a main source of these opinions are on a religion. The ancient Greeks certainly believed in oracles. In the play Oedipus Rex, the main character, Oedipus, had his life dramatically changed when an oracle gave a disturbing prophecy about his future. His parents had so much faith in this oracle, in fact, that they were willing to kill the child to keep the prophecy from coming true (Sophocles). Many modern day religions are totally against fortune tellers and actually say that the act of going to one can be completely against the religion. One such religion that is completely against sooth sayers is Christianity. Many denominations of Christianity actually consider the fortune teller’s actions to be witchcraft and it to be a sin if a follower of Christ were to go to them (The Holy Bible, Deut:
From a logical standpoint, some people believe that it is impossible to tell the future, because it is constantly changing. It is changed based on decisions made by anyone that persoa n comes in contact with and by their own personal decisions. These people believe that there is not one definite future but an infinite amount of futures based upon every single choice that is made. If a person’s future is always changing, then a person would have an uncountable amount of possible futures based upon the choices they make that lead to more choices, etc. So the chances of the fortune teller choosing the correct future to predict from, if their powers were real, are not probable. This point of view has nothing to do with whether the fotune teller can tell the future or not, just the practicality of the