Types of prophecy
- Key People:
- Moses
- Muhammad
- Isaiah
- Jeremiah
- St. John the Baptist
- Related Topics:
- divination
- Sibyl
- false prophecy
- missionary prophet
- Tages
Types of prophecy can be classified on the basis of inspiration, behaviour, and office. Divinatory prophets include seers, oracle givers, soothsayers, and diviners, all of whom predict the future or tell the divine will in oracular statements by means of instruments, dreams, telepathy, clairvoyance, or visions received in the frenzied state of ecstasy. Predictions and foretellings, however, may also be the result of inspiration or of common sense by the intelligent observation of situations and events, albeit interpreted from a religious point of view.
Of broad importance to the religious community is the cult prophet, or priest-prophet. Under the mandate of the cult, the priest-prophet (who may be an ordinary priest) is part of the priestly staff of a sanctuary, and his duty is to pronounce the divine oracular word at the appropriate point in a liturgy. As such, he is an “institutional” prophet. The difference between a cult prophet and a prophet in the classical sense is that the latter has always experienced a divine call, whereas the cult prophet, pronouncing the word of the deity under cultic mandate, repeats his messages at a special moment in the ritual. Because of the timeless character of cultic activity, however, every time he prophesies, his message is regarded as new.
Missionary (or apostolic) prophets are those who maintain that the religious truth revealed to them is unique to themselves alone. Such prophets acquire a following of disciples who accept that their teachings reveal the true religion. The result of that kind of prophetic action may lead to a new religion, as in the cases of Zarathustra, Jesus, and Muhammad. The founders of many modern religious sects also should be included in this type.
Another type of prophet is of the reformative or revolutionary kind (looking to the past and the future), closely related to the restorative or purificatory type (looking to the past as the ideal). The best examples are the classical prophets from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament); e.g., Amos and Jeremiah. Many of those so-called literary prophets were working to reform the religion of Yahweh, attempting to free it from its Canaanite heritage and accretions. In the Arab world Muhammad is included in this category. The social sympathy found among such prophets is rooted in their religious conscience. What may have been preached as religious reform, therefore, often took on the form of social reform. This kind of prophecy is also found in India and Africa, where prophets in modern times have arisen to restore or purify the old tribal religious forms, as well as the customs and laws that had their sources in the older precolonial religious life. Many of those movements became revolutionary not only by force of logic but also by force of social and political pressure (see eschatology).
Though there may be several categories of prophecy according to scholars, no sharp line of demarcation differentiates among these different types. Any given prophet may be both predictive and missionary, ecstatic as well as reformative.
Prophecy in the ancient Middle East and Israel
The ancient Middle East
In ancient Egypt, charismatic prophecy apparently was not commonplace, if it occurred at all, though institutional prophecy was of the greatest importance because life was regarded as depending upon what the gods said. Some ancient texts contain what has sometimes been regarded as prophetic utterances, but those are more often considered to be the product of wise men who were well acquainted with Egyptian traditions and history. Among Egyptian sages, historical events were thought to follow a pattern, which could be observed and the laws of which could be discerned. Thus, times of hardship were always thought to be followed by times of prosperity, and predictions were made accordingly.
In Egyptian mantic (divinatory) texts there are prophetic sayings, but the particular concerns of those texts are more political than religious. Some are fictitious, and many are considered to have been prophesied after the event has already taken place. The papyrus text “The Protests of the Eloquent Peasant” is considered by some authorities as a prophecy, since the peasant is forced to deliver speeches, saying: “Not shall the one be silent whom thou hast forced to speak.” That compulsion to speak in the name of the divine is called by some scholars the “prophetical condition.”
In a Hittite text, King Mursilis II (reigned c. 1334–c. 1306 bce) mentions the presence of prophets, but there is no information about the type of prophecy. More informative are texts from Mari (Tall al-Ḥarīrī, 18th century bce) in northwest Mesopotamia, where some striking parallels to Hebrew prophecy have been discovered. The Mari prophets—believed to be inspired—spoke the word of the god Dagon just as Israelite prophets spoke the word of Yahweh.
In Mari the two key words for prophet are muḫḫum (“ecstatic,” “frenzied one”) and āpilum (“one who responds”). Both may be connected with the cult, but there are incidents indicating that the muḫḫum was not bound to the cultic setting but received his message in a direct revelation from his god. The āpilum usually acted within a group of fellow prophets. Many of their sayings are political in nature, but there are also oracles that deal with the king’s duty to protect the poor and needy, indicating that an ethical dimension was present among the Mari prophets. The messages could also contain admonitions, threats, reproofs, accusations, and predictions of either disaster or good fortune.
The Mari texts are important in the history of prophecy because they reveal that inspired prophecy in the ancient Middle East dates back 1,000 years before Amos and Hosea (8th century bce) in Israel. From Mesopotamia there is evidence of the maḫḫu, the frenzied one, known in Sumerian texts as the lú-gub-ba. Mention also is made of some prophets who spoke to Assyrian kings, and their message is sometimes introduced with the clause “Do not fear.” Omina (omens) texts containing promises or predictions are also known. In one of the maqlu (“oath”) texts, in which an āšipu priest is being sent forth by his god, the deity first asks “Whom shall I send?”
The baru (a divinatory or astrological priest) declared the divine will through signs and omens, and thus is considered by some to have been a prophet. Though he might possibly have had visions, he was not in actuality an ecstatic. The art of divination became very elaborate in the course of time and required a long period of training.
The ancient Iranian prophet and religious reformer Zarathustra (also known by his Greek name Zoroaster; died c. 551 bce), whose teachings gave rise to the religion that bears his name (Zoroastrianism), is one of the least well-known figures associated with the founding of a religion because of the character of the existing textual materials and because some scholars have argued that he is a mythical figure. He may have been, however, an ecstatic priest-singer, or zaotar, who used special techniques (especially intoxication) to achieve a trance. Zarathustra found the priests and cult of his day offensive and opposed them. He preached the coming of the kingdom of the god Ahura Mazdā (Ormazd), who is claimed to have revealed to Zarathustra the sacred writings, the Avesta. In the Yasna (a section of the Avesta), Zarathustra refers to himself as a Saoshyans (“Saviour”). Messianic prophecies of the end of the world are found in Zoroastrian literature, but those are more a literary product than actual prophetic utterance.
Prophets were a common phenomenon in Syria-Palestine. In an Egyptian text (11th century bce), Wen-Amon (a temple official at Karnak) was sent by the pharaoh to Gebal (Byblos) to procure timber. While Wen-Amon was there, a young noble of that city was seized by his god and in frenzy gave a message to the king of Gebal that the request of Wen-Amon should be honoured. In another instance, an Aramaic inscription from Syria records that the god Baal-shemain told King Zakir (8th century bce) through seers and diviners that he would save the king from his enemies. Those chapters reveal the close connection between sacrificial rites and divine inspiration. In the Hebrew Bible, verses 22 through 24 of the Book of Numbers mention the Mesopotamian prophet Balaam (who may have been a maḫḫu) from Pethor, whom the Moabite king Balak had asked to curse the invading Israelites. In the Book of Jeremiah, it is said that prophets, diviners, and soothsayers were in the neighbouring countries of Judah: in Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon (27:9). Since so little is known about those prophets, the question of the uniqueness of Hebrew prophecy is difficult to assess (see also Middle Eastern religion).