Abstract

What was the perception of divination practices in the Jewish Middle Ages? Was it really admissible to foresee the future, or did it not instead encroach on contexts reserved for prophets alone? Apart from exceptional cases, in which the use of predictive practices was justified for cautionary purposes, a broad spectrum of Jewish philosophers shared the idea of the need to take a distance from messages that were without any foundation, and as such ended up creating an uneasy and misleading confusion with true prophesies - those certified in their authenticity by the fact that they came directly from above.