"The Devil's Tabernacle" is the first book to examine in depth
the intellectual and cultural impact of the oracles of pagan
antiquity on modern European thought. Anthony Ossa-Richardson shows
how the study of the oracles influenced, and was influenced by,
some of the most significant developments in early modernity, such
as the Christian humanist recovery of ancient religion,
confessional polemics, Deist and libertine challenges to religion,
antiquarianism and early archaeology, Romantic historiography, and
spiritualism. Ossa-Richardson examines the different views of the
oracles since the Renaissance--that they were the work of the
devil, or natural causes, or the fraud of priests, or finally an
organic element of ancient Greek society. The range of discussion
on the subject, as he demonstrates, is considerably more complex
than has been realized before: hundreds of scholars, theologians,
and critics commented on the oracles, drawing on a huge variety of
intellectual contexts to frame their beliefs.
In a central chapter, Ossa-Richardson interrogates the landmark
dispute on the oracles between Bernard de Fontenelle and
Jean-Francois Baltus, challenging Whiggish assumptions about the
mechanics of debate on the cusp of the Enlightenment. With
erudition and an eye for detail, he argues that, on both sides of
the controversy, to speak of the ancient oracles in early modernity
was to speak of one's own historical identity as a Christian."
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