Which Gods if Any

Abstract

This chapter explores two important factors that led to differences in how Greek and Chinese interlocutors addressed mantic queries to divine powers, and argues that the relative absence of ‘gods’ in Chinese mantic practice (divination) had significant consequences for both cosmology and mantic practice itself. The first of these factors was different beliefs about the degree of direct divine involvement. Greek mantic practices consistently address gods directly, whereas some Chinese mantic methods are significantly grounded in cosmological contexts and calculations. The second was the Chinese belief in a systematic cosmos, which had no immediate Greek parallel. The chapter examines how Chinese ‘spirits’ (shen神‎) were addressed in mantic practice, despite this ‘cosmological turn’. It revisits two problems within the literature on this topic. One (the so-called ‘“question” question’), a controversy in the study of Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions, is whether we should understand ‘mantic questions’ as queries or requests. The other, a controversy in the study of Greek divination, is how Greek oracular responses were used by consultor states, especially the argument that the most important functions of oracles were political and rhetorical.