INTERPRETATION OF DIVINE SIGNS AS AN ACT OF POWER

The exegesis of divine signs is often treated as if it were a purely hermeneutical act. However, recognizing the cosmological dimension of the spoken and written word naturally forces us to reconsider the ontological and ritual dimensions of the interpretative process.

some cases, as one chain in a link of ritual acts. In Mesopotamia, for example, exegesis could be preceded by extispicy or other ritual means for provoking omens and followed by namburbu rituals when something went wrong or the omen portended ill (Maul 1994). Therefore, the exegesis of divine signs is cosmologically significant and constitutes a performative act of power.

Until one deciphers them, omens represent unbridled forms of divine power. While their meanings and consequences are unknown they remain liminal and potentially dangerous. The act of interpreting a sign seeks to limit that power by restricting the parameters of a sign’s interpretation.¹¹ A divine sign cannot now mean anything, but only one thing. Seen in this way, the act of interpretation — like the act of naming — constitutes a performative act of power; hence the importance of well-trained professionals and of secrecy in the transmission of texts of ritual power.

Moreover, the performative power vested in the interpreter is both cosmological and ideo­logical. It is cosmological in the sense that the interpreter takes as axiomatic the notion that the gods can and want to communicate their intentions through signs, and that the universe works according to certain principles that require only knowledge and expertise to decode. Insofar as the process of interpretation reflects a desire to demonstrate that such principles continue to function, it also registers and dispels ritual or mantic insecurities.¹² The Mesopotamian and Egyptian lists of omens that justify titling this essay “Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign,”¹³ not only demonstrate that virtually anything could be ominous when witnessed in the appropri­ate context, they also index a preoccupation with performative forms of control.^{14 *} To wit, all signs, no matter how bewildering or farfetched they might appear, not only can be explained, they must be explained.

Moreover, to understand the cosmological context of words of power within ancient inter­pretive contexts, it is important to recognize that acts of interpretation are also acts of divine judgment. In Mesopotamia, diviners use the word purussu “legal decision” or “verdict” to refer to an omen’s prediction. As Francesca Rochberg has shown, divinatory texts also share in common with legal codes the formula if x, then y.^[79]

SCOTTB. NOEGEL

In fact, Babylonian oracle questions (i.e., tamitu) specifically request judgments (i.e., dinu) from the god Shamash (Lambert 2007: 5-10). Therefore, within this performative juridi­cal context, all means of connecting protases to apodoses constitute vehicles for demonstrating and justifying divine judgment.^[80]

The cosmological underpinnings that connect interpretation, power, and judgment in Mesopotamia were no more present than during an extispicy, as Alan Lenzi tells us:

... only the diviner had the authority to set the king's plans before the gods via an extispicy and to read the judgment of the gods from the liver and other exta of the animal. In this very act. the diviner experienced the presence of the divine assembly itself, which had gathered about the victim to write their judgments in the organs of the animal (Lenzi 2008a: 55).

In Egypt there is a great deal of evidence for viewing the interpretation of divine signs as an act of judgment. The very concept of judgment is embedded in a cosmological system that distinguishes sharply between justice or cosmic order (i.e., m!^ct) and injustice or chaos (i.e., jsft). According to Egyptian belief, maat was bestowed upon Egypt by the creator god Atum. Therefore, rendering justice was a cosmological act. For this reason, judicial officials from the Fifth Dynasty onward also held the title “divine priest of maat” (hm-ntr m3⁽t) (Morenz 1973: 12-13). Moreover, since the interpretation of divine signs fell under the purview of the priests, it was they who often rendered judgment in legal matters.

... divine oracles were often supposed to resolve legal questions. In the New King­dom, cases were frequently heard within the temples or in their immediate vicinity. Moreover, in every town, priests sat side by side with officials of the Residence on judicial tribunals (Sauneron 2000: 104).

Potsherds discovered at Deir el-Medina also show that priests served as oracular media for obtaining divine judgments (MacDowell 1990: 107-41). Petitioners would inscribe their queries on the potsherds in the form of yes or no questions and the priests would consult the gods before pronouncing their verdicts.

In Israel, interpreting divine signs and judgment also were intimately connected. This is in part because the Israelites regarded Yahweh as both a king and a judge. So close is this connection that the pre-exilic prophetic oracles have been classified as Gerichtsrede “law­suit speeches” (Nielsen 1978). The conceptual tie between the interpreters of divine signs, cosmological power, and judgment continued long after the post-exilic period, as we know from Talmudic texts that discuss the rabbinic interpreters of divinely sent dreams. About the rabbinic interpreter, Philip Alexander remarks:

He wields enormous power — the power of performative speech. The dream creates a situation in which — like the act of blessing and cursing, or the act of pronouncing judgment in a court of law — speech can lead directly to physical results. And the dream-interpreter exercises this power in virtue of the knowledge and the tradition

use creates, by its mere utterance, a new legal situ­ation.” See also the comment of Mauss 1972: 122: “... all kinds of magical representations take the form of judgments, and all kinds of magical operations proceed from judgments, or at least from rational decisions.”

which he has received from hoary antiquity as to how dreams are to be understood (Alexander 1995: 237-38).¹⁷

Of course, as this statement also reveals, the power of the interpreter is as much ideologi­cal as cosmological.

Contributing to the ideological power of the interpreter is the role that deciphering divine signs plays in shaping behaviors and beliefs (Sweek 1996). By harnessing the performative power of words, interpreters determine an individual’s fate. Thus, the interpretation of signs also can function as a form of social control.²⁰

Therefore, we may understand the process of interpreting divine signs as a performative ritual act that empowers the interpreter while demonstrating and promoting his/her cosmologi­cal and ideological systems.