Anton van Dale (Anthonie, Antonius) (8 November 1638, in

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...

– 28 November 1708) was a Dutch

Mennonite Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radic ...

preacher A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach components such as a ...

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and writer on religious subjects, described by the contemporary theologian Jean Le Clerc as an enemy of

superstition A superstition is any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural, attributed to fate or magic, perceived supernatural influence, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and ...

. He was a critic of

witch-hunting A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. The classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America took place in the Early Modern perio ...

. His ''De oraculis veterum ethnicorum dissertationes'' (1683) was an influential work on

oracles An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

, which he argued against the supernatural and the role of the

Devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of t ...

The History of the Devil: The Abolition of Witch-Prosecution
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)

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dale, Anton Van 1638 births 1708 deaths Dutch Mennonites Dutch male writers Mennonite ministers People from Haarlem 17th-century Anabaptist ministers Mennonite theologians Mennonite writers