Rhapsodomantik, mannakorn og tommelfingervers

Resumé

Divination and mantics play a decisive role in ancient as well as modern religiosity. Although the subjects are not an integral part of the current curriculums for theology and the study of religion, they are pivotal for understanding religion and religious practices, especially of the ancient world. In this paper, which is the first part of a larger research project on divination and mantics of early Christianity and ancient Judaism, I explore one particular form of mantics: rhapsodomantics, i.e. divination by means of Sacred Books that are either randomly opened or used in order to provide ‘slips’ upon which verses from the Books in question are written. The randomly chosen textual passage is secondarily interpreted and explained in terms of a divinely inspired guidance. In this manner the lot oracle provides access to the understanding of the divine world. The ritual consultance of lot oracles is simultaneously a way of domesticising the contingency and arbitrariness of life. By means of a ritually staged display of arbitrariness (the random drawing of lots), arbitrariness is mastered.

First – based on recent insights from the field of cognitive science (primarily Whitehouse and Boyer), semiotics, the tradition of sociology of knowledge and ritual studies – I discuss imagistic thought in contrast to doctrinaire modes of religiosity. Second, I scrutinize the ritual raison d’être for divination and mantics.

The second part of the paper presents an analysis of numerous texts exemplifying rhapsodomantics. In a recent book by the Swedish novelist P.O. Enquist Lewis Rejse, narrating the founding of the Pentecostal Church of Sweden, the ritual practice of using ‘Thumble verses’ and ‘Manna seeds’ plays a decisive role in the founding of the community. As a point of departure relevant excerpts from this book are discussed in order to travel back to the Märchenland of the ancient world. Numerous Greco-Roman, Jewish and Early Christian examples of rhapsodomantics are discussed and related to recent analyses by van der Horst and Potter.