Vows, dedications and promissory oaths were an important category of language for people in the ancient Mediterranean. Using various formulae, people promised the gods (in the case of vows and dedications), or each other (in the case of oaths), that they would perform certain acts in the future, giving more than usual force to their words. The purpose of this article is to investigate the mechanics and hermeneutics of promises backed by divine power in the ancient Mediterranean.
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Moshe Blidstein (2018) studied this question.
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