Prophet: Religious Messengers, Voices, and Roles

A great variety of ancient Near Eastern texts contain or are divinations or prophecies. Many of them served to legitimize a dynasty as God-ordained (vaticinia ex eventu). Some trace themselves back to a revelatory experience and pass on a message from God to specific addressees. The speakers are usually located in the environment of the royal court and central state cults. They are usually concerned with the salvation and welfare of the respective rulers and are never directly addressed to the entire nation or peoples. They occasionally criticize individual aspects of cult practices, but massive prophecies of doom, criticism of kings, their politics, and social criticism are absent. Therefore, one classifies these documents as court and salvation prophecy.

The approximately 30 letters from Mari (ca. 1800 B.C.), preserved on tablets, tell of men and women who received messages from the weather and vegetation gods Dagān, Hadad, and others without their intervention, for example in a dream vision or audition before an image of the gods in the temple, and who delivered these messages to the king as "envoys," sometimes uninvited, sometimes on request. Their messages contained promises of divine assistance for their own, calamities for foreign peoples. Only negligence in the cult was criticized.

The travelogue of the Egyptian Wenamun (ca. 1100 B.C.) tells of a Phoenician who, during a sacrificial celebration, inadvertently became ecstatically excited, received a message from God and delivered it to the prince of Byblos, whereupon the latter received Wenamun, who was waiting in the harbor.

The inscription of the Zakir of Hamath (ca. 800 BC) in Syria testifies to a request of the king in a siege situation to his patron god Baalshamem, the "Lord of Heaven". The latter had answered through the mediation of "seers" and promised the king salvation from his enemies. This too is considered a form of intuitive prophecy of salvation, whereas otherwise the inductive form was more common. Whether this is a parallel to the "Memorandum of Isaiah" (Is 7 EU) is disputed.

Wall inscriptions in Tell Der 'Alla, East Jordan, testify to a "vision" of a seer named Balaam, who is also known in the Bible (Numbers 22-24 EU).

Intuitive prophecy was not strictly distinguished from general manticism in antiquity. Oracles in particular were at times widespread in the Mediterranean and Near East. Givers or transmitters were often permanently employed at the court or place of worship, as at Delphi, and responded to ritual questioning. In ancient Rome, the reading of the future from celestial signs, the flight of birds, the entrails of sacrificial animals ("liver show") by pontifices, haruspices, and flamines was part of the state cult. Thereby the actual mission of a god and the concreteness of the message were missing above all.

Dating from the 7th century BC are some 30 clay tablets containing Neo-Assyrian oracular sayings by named temple officials and craftsmen. They are direct addresses of God to specific addressees and point to historical events. They do not follow any sacrificial show or stargazing, but present themselves as direct divine commands. In terms of content, they proclaim salvation to the king, long life and the continuation of his dynasty, and rebuke cultic negligence.

In early Christianity John the Baptist was considered the last and most important of the prophets of Israel. According to Mk 6,4 EU Jesus of Nazareth once also called himself a prophet and according to Mk 8,28 EU he was understood as a prophet by many of his contemporaries. Among the early Christians prophets were next to the apostles almost equal authorities of the Christian churches (1 Cor 12,28 EU).

In the Old Testament there are a total of 18 books of so-called prophets. The four "major" prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, the other "minor" prophets, whose shorter writings are summarized in the Book of the Twelve Prophets. To these must be added the Lamentations of Jeremiah and the Book of Baruch, which is classed in the genre of apocalyptic. In addition, some important prophets, such as Samuel, Elijah, or Elisha, also appear in the books of history. Because no independent books have been handed down from them, they do not belong to the "prophets of the Scriptures".

Since the controversy in the early church over Montanism, prophecy receded as a mark of Christian communities. Later prophetic movements in Christianity were often marginalized and persecuted as heresies. In the Reformation period, Calvinism in particular developed a three-office doctrine (Jesus Christ as priest, king - Messiah - and prophet). From the years 1550 to 1700, 350 persons are known to have appeared as prophets in Lutheran areas and were often recognized as such.

Only the ecumenical movement on the Protestant side and the Roman Catholic social doctrine derived from prophetic traditions of the Bible in the 20th century a prophetic "(guardian) office" of the church.

According to the New Testament, prophecy will then cease, "But when that which is perfect shall come." 1 Cor 13:8 LUT