DIVINATION
835
DIVINATION
lia Uoody divination. A still more hideous mode filiation is mentioned of the ancient Britons, who d ctzt down at a blow of the sword one of their u& sacrifices, in order to observe the postore of ill, liis convulsions, flow of the blood, etc., and so er tbeir predictions according to the rule of their stors. This is the only instance mentioned in >tiire of this superstition. The liver was the most •T-tant part of the sacrifice for divining purposes emid. Onmrocr, ii, 74 ; Cicero, De Die, ii, 18). See
One of the remaining isolated terms of divination e Scriptures is D'^IDKn, hoMmf, " the charmers," ii occurs in Isa. zix, 8, in a passage descriptive le idolatiy and superstition of Bgypt. It is de- 1 bj- Gesenins and Meier Arom a root Id^K, ato^, to Arab, o^, which signifies to uUer a dull mur- mff sound, Heier defines the noun in question by muren or Htpers. If so, we have here a class of ventziloquists already described. But the Sept ts another turn to the word, rendering by aydXfxa- as ify coming after Q'^b'^^Krt, gods, it meant their les, Herodotus (ii, 88).tellB us the Egyptians pos- ed nuiny oracles besides that of Latona at Buto, ch -vras most esteemed of all. He adds that " the le of delivering the oracles (al fiayrrfiai) varied at different shrines." See above. . In Dan. ii, 2, four classes of diviners are mention- two of these are described above ; of the others, JTSH, ashshaphim' (Chald. T^Bl^K, fai Dan. ii, 27), robably allied by derivation with the word C)^?^, Ktsh^eph'y which we have already described (Meier 9 *'qTSK=t]03*'). The noun Hfi^K, athpah' (a ver), from the same root, suggests the notion of xcUmaU and covering. This, the probable meaning tar term, suits very well with the idea of divina- i, though it ill accords with the A. Y., which, in all eight passages in Daniel where it is found, renders atrolcgers. Divination by the 9tar» is not implied ;he originaL The Sept. in every place except one d that is doubtftil, see Trommii Concord, ii, 1) trana- » S) VK by fioyot, and the Vulg. generally by mo- . This suggests the association of the D'^B V K with magicmt of Matt ii, 1 (Dutripon, Concord. Biblic, n*. p. 824). This, added to the fiact that t3'^B;z?K is lerally coupled with the chariwnmim and the Chal- tns, probably influenced our translators in their »ice of the English word. The original, however, much less spedfic. Some philologists have imag- d the word eo^oe is no other than C)I2?M with the t letter dropped, and have also connected it with t Persian topki. Such a derivation would rather nt to occult arts and cabaUstic divination. See
TBOLOOBB.
3. The expression used by Daniel in i, 20— D'^filS'nnn B^KH, har<:hartumtnim^ harcufukc^phim'y **the moi' icBM (and) the astrologers^—is an atyndetony tor ler places prove the second to be i| different class •m the first (see above). The close conjunction of d Q'^Bttit with the chartunumn indicates their par- ipation of the qualities of the latter, the upoypofi^ Tf ic, or sacred scribes of both Egypt and Babylon, er whom Daniel was appointed rob or master. In p learned Dittertatio D. MUlii de Chariwnmim aUitve '^tntalium magU (Ugolini The$, xxiii, 529, 588) near- all the accomplishments of the divining art are at- ibuted to this influential caste, beginning with the nfthliac mysteries. The horoscope, which was much use by these ycve^Xuucoi, brings us back to (utroHo- \ which (though not implied in the designation ^B^K) was no doubt a part of their wisdom. 6ese- 'Qs, in Thet. and Lex., derives the word chartummim
from O^n, du^rety **a graving tool,** and (on the an^ thority of Creuser, SymboHk u. Mytkologky 1, 245; and Jablonski, Proleg, m Panth. jEgypt, p. 91, etc) connects the arts of the diartHmmim with the saa^d hieroglyph' ical writings. Not less probably, from such a deriva- tion, these diviners might be connected with the sys- tem of ta&emane, so rife in the East, and in Egypt in ancient tunes. See Amulet. The talisman (Arabic tiUcan, Greelc rlXcer/m) is defined (in Freytag, Lex, Arab, s. V. iii, 64) to be ** a magical image upon which, under a certain horoscope, are engrtwed mystic charac- ters, as charms against enchantment or fascination.** Talismans, among other uses, are buried with treas- ures to prevent them from being discovered. Thus this divination appears as a counterpart against an- other species (in rhabdomancy) which was used for the discovery of treasure. Equally varied are the gifts ascribed to the charUmunim in the translations of the Sept and Vulg. In eleven of the fifteen occurrences of the word (all descriptive of the magicians of Egypt and Babylon), iiraotdSc and imcantator are used in these versions; ^cLpfuucoQ and venejiau in two; and in the'remaining two iWTT"!^ c^d %nUrpre$, Accord- ing to Jablonski, the name is derived from an Egyp- tian word Cheriom = thamnaturgut, wonder-worker. (For other conjectures, see Kalisch, Gen, p. 647 ; Hei- degger, HitL Pair, xx, 28.) Of course it must have the same derivation in Dan. i, 20, and therefore cannot be from the Chaldee i>Aar<2amafu2= skilled in science (Jahn, Bibl, ArA, § 402). If their divination was con- nected with drawn figures, it is paralleled by the Per- sian i?Um}mi/(Calmet); the modem Egyptian Zdvrgeh^ a table of letters ascribed to Idris or Enoch (Lane, i, 354), the renowned Chinese y-King, lines discovered by Fouhi on the back of a tortoise, which explain ev- erything, and on which 1450 learned commentaries have been written (Hue's China^ i, 128 sq.) ; and the JamassUj or marlu on paper, of Japan (Kempfer*s Hist, ch. xv). See Magician.