Donneechere's Views On Divination

Another critique for divination involves the assessment that the utterances of oracles were simply the manipulation of Greek officials. In his assessment of the role of religion in politics, Bonnechere explains how the Greeks were proactive in their relationships with the oracles. This is to say, they typically asked the oracles to approve or disapprove of a proposed solution rather than demand the gods (via the oracle) come up with their own. What is noteworthy about this is their pursuit of honesty in political decision-making. Their proactivity supports the fact that they did not consider these oracular consultations as a means of extortion or for a desired political end. Since the decisions in question had already been arrived at by consensus,
In a world in which the smallest error could prove fatal, man depended upon divination to act in a timely and effective manner. The origin of the notion that the oracles played a trivial role rests in the fact that cities, and the individuals within those cities, depended on oracles for a variety of matters concerning marriage, money, and livestock. What fails to be considered is the implication of the fact that divination was involved in all aspects of Greek life; this is more valuable to consider as opposed to the nature of the concerns of the Greeks. Divination supplied a sense of certainty by facilitating the decisions which had to be made in daily life. This is why prior to the Hellenistic period, divination played a pivotal role in social, cultural, political, and economic matters in Greek society. This paper sought to explore a variety of Greek institutions that contributed to the assimilation of Greek divination. As was noted, the practice itself was essential in the private sphere as well as the public sphere, which illuminates the universal human desire to foretell the future. Greek authors and Greek playwrights alike explored divination in their respective works, and this reinforced the essentiality of the practice in the life of the individual regardless of social status. Even philosophy (the pursuit of higher knowledge) recognized the role that divination played within Greek society as a prime doctrine. Separately, the assimilation of religion and politics underpinned a society embedded with Greek divination. In political practice, Greek divinatory texts served as a manual for codes of conduct. In reference to military campaigns, divination was involved in every step of the campaign itself. Next, when consulting the gods, solutions were proposed to rather than required from the gods; this accounts for the honesty of