Woman in the Spirit of Python: Acts 16:16

NRSV and many other translations, including that of Korean, render πνεθμα πυθωνα in Acts 16:16 as "spirit of divination." Yet, Pythones were the serpent or dragons that guarded the Dephic oracles.

Plutarch gives us a very interesting and illuminating remark on Pythones (Def. orac. 9): "Certainly it is foolish and childish in the extreme to imagine that the god himself after the manner of ventriloquists (who used to be called Eurycleis, but now Pythones) enters into the bodies of his prophets and prompts their utterances, employing their mouths and voices as instruments."

What a modern-looking critique of superstition!