Anton van Dale

Anton van Dale (Anthonie, Antonius) (8 November 1638, in Haarlem – 28 November 1708) was a Dutch Mennonite preacher, physician and writer on religious subjects, described by the contemporary theologian Jean Le Clerc as an enemy of superstition.[1] He was a critic of witch-hunting.[2]

His De oraculis veterum ethnicorum dissertationes (1683) was an influential work on oracles, which he argued against the supernatural and the role of the Devil[3] in the pagan oracular tradition. In this he was followed two decades later by Fontenelle, who wrote his Histoire des oracles as an adaptation and popularized version of van Dale's work.

Works
  • De oraculis veterum ethnicorum dissertationes (1683)
  • Dissertationes de origine ac progressu Idolatriae et Superstitionum, de vera ac falsa Prophetia, uti et de Divinationibus Idolatricis Judaeorum (1696)
  • Commentatio super Aristeam de LXX interpretibus (1705)
  • Dissertatio super Aristea de LXX interpretibus (1705)

Notes
  1. Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic (1995), p. 925.
  2. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Hilary Marland, Hans de Waardt, Illness and Healing Alternatives in Western Europe (1997), p. 74.
  3. The History of the Devil: The Abolition of Witch-Prosecution Archived 14 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine

References

Jonathan Irvine Israel (2001). "ch. 20 Fontanelle and the War of the Oracles". Radical enlightenment: philosophy and the making of modernity: 1650-1750. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 359–374. ISBN 0198206089.

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