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Loading...In my previous post I began to explain who the prophets of Scripture are, what they stand for, and what their message is. In my experience, most people — even most Bible readers — don’t actually know. The general idea appears to be that prophets were all about predicting the coming of Jesus and the end of the world. Nope. Just read them and see.
Here I can give some broad historical information about the prophets to get the ball rolling. I am taking this discussion from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press), slightly edited.
The Narrative Prophets: Elijah and Elisha
The earliest major prophets of the Old Testament (after Moses) show up in the narratives of the collection of books scholars call the Deuteronomistic History (the historical books that come right after the Pentateuch: Joshua through 2 Kings which tell about the establishment and early centuries of the nation of Israel). These prophets are not known to have left anything in writing (in contrast to the “classical prophets” of the Hebrew Bible; that is, the “Latter Prophets” that we will be discussing in a moment). As a rule they are individuals called by God to speak words of judgment against the nation, its rulers, and/or its religious leadership—including “false prophets.” These “narrative prophets” are empowered to deliver a message from God, and proof of their power comes in the fact that they can do miracles. The two best known are Elijah and his successor Elisha. Their stories can be found in 1 Kings 17–2 Kings 13.
Elijah first appears during the rule of the wicked king Ahab of Israel, who sponsored and participated in the worship of the Canaanite deity Baal. According to the Deuteronomistic Historian, Ahab “did more to provoke the anger of the LORD, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel before him” (1 Kings 16:33). Elijah comes on the scene out of the blue and announces that there will now be a drought. And there is a drought. It soon becomes clear why this has happened. As Elijah later tells Ahab, it is “because you have forsaken the commandments of the LORD and followed the Baals” (1 Kings 17:18). Here we have a prophet confronting a leader of the people over an issue of religious allegiance. It is a story that will get played out time and again in the Hebrew Bible.
Just as Yahweh has his prophets, so too does the Canaanite god, Baal, whom the apostates of Israel often choose to
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My favorite “narrative prophet” story: Elisha in 2 Kings 3. An Israel-Judah-Edom alliance plans war against Moab. They *hire* Elisha to forecast if the outcome will be favorable. The answer is “Yes” after Elisha uses music to induce a prophetic trance. After some initial success, the alliance is routed when Moab’s king appeals to their god (by sacrificing the king’s son!). So ultimately Elisha got it wrong — a false prophet (Dt 18:20-22). Lots of interesting tidbits: about prophecy-for-hire as a profession, about the actual process of making a prophecy, about the efficacy of human sacrifice (even to other gods). Not sure what the “lesson” is here.
Dr. E, I am just finishing William Dever’s book Has Archaeology Buried the Bible? and I find it a gem, fascinating, informative, and covering the OT, which I have read little of.
Highly recommended for those inclined to branch out a bit.
TomTerrific, I’m halfway through William Dever’s book Has Archaeology Buried the Bible as well. Excellent.
What happened to German biblical scholars and theologians during the Nazi era? I saw reference to something by Martin Noth that came out in 1943. He apparently served in the army but was able to publish in the middle of the war.
Well, there was a huge range of political view. Some were completely anti-Nazi. And some were Nazis. Including some of the most famous. If you’re interested, you might look up the work of Susanna Heschel.
Do you think the prophets may have been associated with or represented the artistic community of Israel? They often wrote poetically, and are sometimes associated with music, as in 1 Samuel 10:5. Even today artists often represent the social conscience of a society; think of how our music and film have addressed and influenced issues like war and racism. Ezekiel’s demonstrations like lying on his side for 390 days and cooking his food over dung seems like performance art to me, to convey his message. So there’s poetry, music and acting all associated with prophets.
Interesting idea. But I’m not sure we know of artistic communities back then. Not like Taos… But yes, most of their books are poetic.
Thank you. Of course, when Elijah was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, we all know that he was really abducted by aliens. Only kidding 🙂.
My take is that he was careless with matches and was consumed by fire. 🙂
Mark Twain has a wonderful version (and “explanation”) of the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, as related on one of his ocean voyages by a certain Captain Hurricane Jones. Twain noted that the captain “was of the ‘advanced’ school of thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a rather severe satirist on modern scientific religionists.” The captain’s story is available here: https://www.mtwain.com/The_Captain's_Story/0.html
Strange how a people who’s history is filled with prophets and prophecy, how no prophet ever appeared to warn them about the holocaust. One would think that to be a significant danger. Do prophets. ( of all religious stripes) stop working at a point in history?
Oh, I think there were lots of people warning about the holocaust. The writing was clearly on the wall. The incredible *extent* of it probably could not have been easily imagined though.
When the prophets lived, most people in the world lived under a belief system inspired by Eastern traditions such as Hinduism which had a living understanding of man’s inner origin, and part of a unity but still a soul in this present existence or “pure consciousness”. Time was/is here a relative concept that modern science now agrees on.
Since I have lost a lot of faith in the literal meaning of the Bible, it has led me to a different view, that it can express an even deeper and spiritual meaning. Let’s say that the later multi-layered understanding of the Bible existed in the ancient world, as what they later (early middle ages) called Prades(Jewish exegesis), one of the layers is what they call “Sod” which point to understand the message in a spiritual sense . This suggests that the OT/Prophets points to a more spiritual understanding namely about the spiritual fall and its return. Then the story is not so different from the religion(s) of their neighbors in the east (the Hindi area), or other philosopies which was emerging at that time. And, from my perspective, it also seems to me that there partly included a messianic factor/rescuer/savior/guide.
If so, on such a premise, might open for a possibility that the prophets were not talking about linear time predictions, but rather prophecies in time, but not time as we know it, but rather as a measure of spiritual evolvement/awareness.
Hi Bart, Have a few questions about Paul.
1. If Paul converted to Christianity about five years after Jesus’s death how many Christians were there for him to persecute at that time? Doesn’t seem like there would be that many.
2. We have seven undisputed letters of Paul in the New Testament. He must have written much more than that because of how long his ministry lasted. Why do you think we only have this small handful of his real letters?
Yeah, not many. A hundred? Two hundred? He only needed to meet two or three of them though to go on the attack! 2. Yup, he must have written masses more, over his thirty-year ministry, in which he founded and knew of lots of churches. Even if he wrote just two letters a year to each of them, the output would have been remarkable. Oh BOY I wish we knew why more weren’t preserved….
Do you think there’s any credence to the idea that visionary prophets—maybe particularly Ezekiel—encountered hallucinogenic mushrooms growing in hospitable places in the desert (animal dung + river water or dew + pervading warmth) and their experiences were in part a result of those effects? I call out Ezekiel because he always seems to be near a river witnessing something cosmic and geometric and compellingly inexplicable, but same question for Moses or any of them.
No, I really don’t. THere are lots and lots of people who have all sorts of visions without hallucinogenic assistance.
Dr Ehrman,
1. Who was the Last Jewish Prophet/Navi as per OT?
2. Why they stopped coming?
3. The awaited Messiah of Jewish people could be classified as classical non-narrative Navi?
1. The OT doesn’t say. 2. It doesn’t say. 3. Yes; the classification, though, is a modern scholarly one, not one that they used in antiquity.
This is all very interesting, and a subject I have never really given any real thought to from a historical perspective. I wonder, when did this shift in thinking (or given meaning) to prophets and prophecy occur in our history? Is the thinking that “prophets predict the future” only a modern day interpretation of the text? Or was this the thinking of the earliest Christians as they misinterpreted the Hebrew Bible? What was Jesus’s view on the meaning of the word prophecy as far as we can tell?
This way of reading the prophets goes all the way back to the very beginnings of Christianity. Non-Christian Jews too read Scripture as principally referring to their own day rather than the day of the authors (we know this among other things from some of the commentaris among the Dead Sea Scrolls). So Christinas were not inventing a new mode of interpretation, but applying it in light of their own beliefs.
Hi,
I’m new to your blog and after reading this post, it left me waiting for the next one. I’m excited to read your understanding of Isaiah. My son is a born-again Christian believer and he just loves the book of Isaiah. So I’m forced to wait for more from you on this matter. 🙂 I have been told that Isaiah was foretelling of Josiah, a very righteous King. However, according to my son, he was not righteous enough. I also mentioned that the Aramaic\Hebrew word Alma, meaning young lady was translated into Virgin, which Isaiah would never have said.
I’m hoping that your next post will begin to clarify this matter, so my son can understand a different perspective. Do you have to have a book that goes into this subject in detail? I will purchase it.
Thank you. Ron Jockers
Ah, right: bit issues! I won’t be dealing with them in this thread, but I’ve done so on the blog before a number of times. Just do some word searches, e.g., for Isaiah; and Virgin; and Alma; and 7:14. You’ll find them!
There were lots of people warning about the holocaust once Hitler and his regime assumed power, but what about 20 to 30 years earlier? Why wouldn’t a prophet appear at that time?
I’m not really sure what you’re asking. I guess we don’t have any way to answer a question like that.
I’ve been reading The Bible Unearthed by Finkelstein and Silberman. Their analysis of the the development of literacy in ancient Israel has enormous ramifications on how and when the Biblical texts were written. Could it be that a reason we don’t have a Book of Elijah or Elisha is that writing had yet to develop in Israel to the extent that would make literary texts possible? We know in Jesus’ time that literacy was rare, but literacy existed and in very sophisticated forms. In the case of 9th century Israel, literacy was not only rare, but evidently still developing, at least in the southern Levantine highlands and in the Hebrew language in particular. Pretty hard to know, and lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. But there seems to be a trend in the archaeological record that enough literacy existed in the 9th century Israel to support a state with a centralized economy and a military capable of expanding territory, but not to support the writing of literary texts. Any comments on that?
It’s a great book. There would have been writing already in Elijah’s day — some of the sources of the Pentateuch, e.g., are dated much earlier. But most peole were not literate and that’s certainly one reason we have so few books.
So it’s a great book, but you reject its challenge to the conventional dating of Biblical texts. If it’s not too much of a digression from your purpose–reviewing the prophetic tradition that the historical Jesus was heir to–what did you like about the book?
I was impressed by its challenge to the existence of a united monarchy under David/Solomon in the 10th century. I first learned about the Pentateuchal sources from Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible. He considers J to be written in 10th C Judah, based on taking the Deuteronomic history at face value. Archaeology would suggest J comes from late 8th at the very earliest. The stories of Elijah (mid 9th) come from D (2nd half of 7th). The dating of that is well-supported by archaeology.
Again, I know this is a digression from your stated purpose. Thanks for this blog. It is not easy getting contact with prominent scholars, at least for amateurs like me.
The use and mis-use of the Prophets has always struck me as a perfect example of Buffet Christianity – sifting through to find whatever you want to support. Need an ‘end-time’, there it is. I remember going through my Nostradamus phase when Al Stewart released ‘Past, Present, and Future’. Just one more example. He predicted everything! Ok, not really.
Prophets: I start my speculation on this kind of ‘why did they do that?’ from the premise that we human beings are human beings and always have been (‘always’ say, from when we began to write things down, but probably even from when we only had mouth-to-ear ‘recording’). I don’t buy ‘they were different back then’ explanations often used to explain away the bible’s messages (especially the bad or wrong messages). Our human nature is and was human nature.
SO – I think the prophets of yore were people just like the know-alls and conmen among us. Today they’d go into marketing, religion or politics. And a few of them still today go into telling people what’s going to happen (mostly bad things) and call themselves ‘prophets.’ Most of us get a more ordinary job and do a days work and pay taxes. Those few go into story-telling and – without evidence – try and influence people into doing weird things, mostly for personal gain (material or influence). In short, my theory is ‘look to human nature, not for intricate explanations!’ . . 🙂