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