Review: Christian Divination in Late Antiquity, by Robert Wiśniewski

Robert Wiśniewski’s Christian Divination in Late Antiquity is a compelling analysis of the methods by which late antique Christians sought to know the future in the fourth through the sixth centuries. Following an introduction and a chapter on the historical and legal contexts for the emergence of Christian divinatory practices, each of the remaining six chapters is devoted to a distinct type of prognostication: prophecy, bibliomancy, how-to manuals, lots, interrogation of demoniacs, and incubation. Each chapter lays out evidence to support Wiśniewski’s two major theses. First, he gives the lie to the dominant view “that Christian divinatory practices were based on the commonly known and readily accessible pagan models” (251). Christian foretelling was not simply a reshuffling of pagan usage; one did not grow directly from the other. Second, Wiśniewski examines the “remarkably close relationship between divination and holy places, people and objects…[which were] seen as vectors of the divine...