The Nuances of Necromancy

Necromancy is a form of divination that allows a living person to contact the dead in order to access divine knowledge. This divinatory act is expressly prohibited in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The prohibition of necromancy in the Pentateuch provides the framework for how later references to necromancy are understood in the Hebrew Bible. The study of necromancy in the Hebrew Bible has primarily focused on ancestor worship or compared necromancy with other forms of divination in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East. In this thesis, I consider all sixteen references to necromancy canonically to answer the research question: What is the literary function of necromancy as a motif in the Hebrew Bible? To answer the research question, I examine the references for information they provide about necromancy as a practice. Then, I employ the method of intertextuality to read necromancy as a motif. The Hebrew Bible illustrates that necromancy is an effective but prohibited form of divination. It is prohibited because it circumvents Yahweh as the only source of divine knowledge for the Israelites. As a motif, necromancy effectively draws the reader’s attention to the disregard the Israelites had for the word of Yahweh. And the motif functions literarily to highlight the underlying Israelite belief that Yahweh and the dead spirits provided the same access to divine knowledge.