Ancient Jewish Bibliomancy

The increasing centrality of the Torah in Judaism in the post-exilic period led to a heightened sense of holiness of the Torah. In the Hebrew Bible, the Torah itself is not yet adorned with the epithet 'holy'. One sees this starting to happen only in the Hellenistic period. Not surprisingly, inspiration theories on the genesis of this Holy Scripture soon begin to make their appearance. And it is in exactly the same period that we also see the beginnings of the use of the Torah for bibliomantic purposes. Bibliomancy is the practice of using the Bible in order to get to know what God has in store for individuals or groups, not by reading the biblical text but by using it as a lot oracle.