Revelation, Narrative, and Cognition: Oracle Stories as Epiphanic Tales in Ancient Greece

This article compares and contrasts the representation of epiphany and inspired divination in Greek literature. Narrative provides a way to compare epiphanic and oracular tales, and to investigate the cognitive processes at their cores. Both oracular tales and epiphanic tales not only contain similar themes, topoi, and narrative structures, but also revolve around common problems of cognition and human knowledge of the supernatural. This suggests that oracular tales constitute a form of epiphanic tale. Cognitive analysis ultimately reveals that epiphanic and oracular tales accentuate different aspects of the same challenges individuals face when trying to make sense of the supernatural.