DIVINATION, MAGIC & OCCULTIC ACTIVITY...

[kava]

...in the bible? evidently so.

Occultic techniques in the Hebrew Scriptures:

There are a number of instances in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) where respected biblical leaders were involved with various black magic, divination and occultic activities as a normal part of their daily activities -- apparently without any condemnations from God:

Comments

hmmm....

[parasomnic]

Dude, this information is sketchy at best. I would take it all with a very large grain of salt. Logical fallacies abound, chiefly, the assumption that all prophetic behavior described in the Bible is automatically equatable with occultism. Besides, most of the passages quoted are taken out of context.

Geoff

Re: hmmm....

[kava]

i thought the same, however, what's illogical exactly? i mean... it's the bible: not exaclty the outstanding resource for logic and reason. as far as the occult practices go, they are accurate in their descriptions. i'd say to take a portion of text out of context, one would first understand it's intentional context initially. even christianity itself was seeded with lond-standing occultic practices. christianity has more pagan roots than it does judaic. it would make sense that this would be reflected throughout the scriptures. even judaism has it's own claim in occultic practices that reaches back to early egyptian periods.

Re: hmmm....

[parasomnic]

Sorry about the slow reply.... I don't check in often enough... When I speak of "logic" I'm speaking of actual thinking processes, not the logic of specific passages in Scripture. For example, what are occultic or pagan practices? We have to define those terms before we start stating how they are applied. I don't think we can accurately define those terms outside of the context of Christianity. I would suggest that if Christianity didn't exist, "occult" would have no meaning for us

[ericisrad]

Actually, "pharmakos", where we get our current word for "pharmacy" doesn't simply mean poisoners. As Derrida talked about in a famous essay (only written in the last 30 years or so -- see here), pharmakos actually means either "cure" or "poison." Or it can be translated into "drugs", which is probably the more accurate term here, along with "poisoners." It could possibly mean "druggies who get high for spiritual reasons," especially in the context of that passage. ...in short, parasomnic's words above are right: this is rather sketchy at best.

And, to argue that Christianity has more pagan roots (I assume you're referring to the Greek influence in the beginning) than it does Judaic is, in my opinion, to misread the spirit of what Christianity is all about (viz. the reconciling of all creation, whether pagan, Jew, stoic, or whatever, to God)...but, I guess that is another conversation :)

Peace,

Eric