Hebrew Prophecy Research Articles

Is Kant among the Prophets? Hebrew Prophecy and German Historical Thought, 1880–1920

AbstractThis article examines the interpretation of Hebrew prophecy by German Protestant scholars in the era of 1880–1920. It argues, first, that Old Testament interpreters valued the prophets since they presented God as the guiding force behind human history and, second, that these theologians cum philologians saw the prophetic conception of history as anticipating their own understanding of God in the world. The inquiry bases this argument on a reading of numerous exegetes, both leading lights and forgotten figures. Moreover, it traces this interpretative tendency across a range of sources, including specialist studies, theological monthlies, political and literary journals, popular works, public speeches, and pedagogical literature. Rather than leave the prophets in the past, these exegetes also ushered them into the present, employing their historical teachings to shore up the Christian faith. In doing so, they identified Hebrew prophecy with German Protestantism and in contrast to Judaism.

Ambiguities of Prophecy: Old Testament Rhetoric in the American Founding Era

AbstractScholars have long recognized the impact of Hebrew prophecy on the rhetoric of the American Founding era, but they have assumed it is all of one type, the American Jeremiad, a clarion call for political action. In fact, biblical rhetoric during this era mirrors three types of Old Testament prophecy formulated at three distinct moments in ancient Biblical history: before, during, and after the Babylonian Exile of 587 BCE. I refer to these as repentance, Jeremiad, and disappointment. I interpret sermons by three leading Protestant ministers in order to demonstrate that all three types of Hebraic prophecy were prevalent during this era, but only one of them, the Jeremiad, seeks to inspire political action; second, the Jeremiad was prominent only during the Revolutionary War. Before the war, and after the ratification of the Constitution, the two quietistic modes of prophecy, repentance, and disappointment, are more prevalent. I conclude by speculating about what the American founders might think of the contemporary rhetorical landscape, where the Jeremiad has become dominant, drowning out more moderate forms of biblical discourse.

Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives

Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives

"The Jenny and the Colt" in Matthew's Messianic Entry, Part 2: Matthew 21:7 as a Reading of Mark 11:7 in Light of Zechariah 9:9

Matthew's description of Jesus taking his mount in 21:7 as "and he sat on top of them" has been a crux interpretum for centuries. Some take it literally even though it is impossible for a human to sit on two donkeys at once. Others try to avoid the problem by referring the plural pronoun "them" to the coats the disciples placed on the donkeys instead. I contend that both readings are unsatisfactory, and I bring new evidence and arguments, including Matthew's plenary reading of Zech 9:9 set forth in part 1 of the study (see CBQ 81 [2019] 62-84), to argue that the plural pronoun functions for Matthew as a whole-for-part synecdoche, where the jenny and the colt constitute a conceptual whole such that when Jesus sits on top of "them," he takes his mount on the part that fulfills the Hebrew prophecy.

"The Jenny and the Colt" in Matthew's Messianic Entry, Part 1: Matthew 21:5 as a Reading of Zechariah 9:9 in Light of Mark 11:1-10

The presence of a female donkey (a jenny) in Matthew's account of the triumphal entry (Matt 21:1-9) has been perplexing because her presence is not mentioned in either of Matthew's sources, Mark 11:1-10 and Zech 9:9. Some scholars hold that the jenny comes from another tradition, but this does not make her presence a fulfillment of the prophecy. Others hold that Matthew broke the parallelism of Zech 9:9, where the humble Messiah is to ride into Jerusalem a (male) donkey, and on a colt, but this too does not account for a female donkey at the scene. In this article, I argue for a plenary reading of the Hebrew prophecy where Matthew sees the presence of the jenny fulfilled in Zechariah's characterization of the colt as a son of jennies.

The Phenomenon of Israelite Prophecy in Contemporary Scholarship

In the mid-twentieth century, the classic historical-critical approach to the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic books gave way to the study of Israelite prophecy as part of a social phenomenon known throughout the ancient Near East. Since the 1980s, research on the phenomenon of Israelite prophecy has been marked by two main paradigms. The first extends the basic phenomenological approach and identifies Israelite prophecy as a socio-historical phenomenon shared across various ancient cultures. Prophecy was a form of intermediation between the divine and human, and a sub-type of the larger religious practice of (non-technical) divination. The second paradigm questions the usefulness of the biblical texts for reconstructing the ancient realities of prophecy and suggests that Israelite prophecy was a literary phenomenon that emerged among scribes in postexilic Yehud. Within these paradigms, present research offers new insights on lines of inquiry, such as the relationship between prophecy and psychology, prophets in the Second Temple period, and female prophets and prophecy. Overall, scholarship reflects a sharpening distinction between ‘ancient Hebrew prophecy’ as a socio-historical phenomenon and ‘biblical prophecy’ as a literary/scribal phenomenon, and generally approaches Israelite prophecy not as a single phenomenon but as a set of related phenomena.

Thinking Authority Democratically

This essay explores Hebrew prophecy and its modern reworkings to develop an account of authority in democratic politics that contrasts with prevailing genres of political theory. At first, we use William Blake to reveal the poetic and democratic dimensions in the biblical prophecy typically associated with absolute truth and law as command. By using the examples of Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin, we then argue that critics of white supremacy draw on the genre of biblical prophecy to address dimensions of political life obscured by liberal language. Partly, they use prophecy to name the willful blindness of whites, to provoke acknowledgment of what whites know but disavow—their domination of others. Partly, prophetic speech-acts show how commitment, judgment, and aggression are needful in democratic politics. In these ways, critics of white supremacy demonstrate genuine authority as a democratic practice.

Hebrew Prophecy and the Foundations of Political Opposition

Political opposition, as institutionally provided for in the constitutional set-up of a democratic polity, implies pluralism, toleration and the guarantee of limited and contested government. Its modern roots can be traced to the era of puritan resistance to the English Crown in the seventeenth century and its theoretical justification in the Country Ideology of the seventeenth century. In that movement theorists liberally resorted to ancient Roman argument and to the example of the Hebrew prophets. Some modern studies of opposition attribute its origins to the Roman tribunate, which Rousseau inaccurately claimed was established to contain executive power without seeking any for itself. This characterization is better suited to the received tradition about the Hebrew prophets.

Tropical Latitude: Prophecy, Orality, and the Rhetoric of Tolerance in Jeremy Taylor's The Liberty of Prophesying

Tropical Latitude:Prophecy, Orality, and the Rhetoric of Tolerance in Jeremy Taylor's The Liberty of Prophesying John D. Schaeffer While Jeremy Taylor has long been regarded as the supreme master of baroque English prose, his status as a theologian, and especially as a defender of religious liberty, has rarely been discussed. His reputation as a prose stylist depends upon his treatises Holy Living and Holy Dying, as well as upon his sermons. His theology. and his politics are contained in The Liberty of Prophesying (1647), a work seldom read today.1 In this work, Taylor argues for a latitudinarian theology that would give broad freedom to dissenting preachers, and he addresses the question that plagued Britain until 1660: Who is in the church? His answer: Just about everybody. Taylor's latitudinarianism, and the religious tolerance it permitted, was grounded in an idea of reason drawn from rhetoric. Studies of the concept of reason in the seventeenth century have generally neglected the impact of rhetoric. Robert Hoopes's study of right reason in seventeenth-century England pays no attention to rhetoric. Hoopes's discussion of TLP focuses instead upon science, Platonism, and philosophical skepticism as formative influences.2 Barbara Shapiro shows how, in later seventeenth-century England, probability and certainty came to be defined against rhetoric: these terms came to have meanings derived [End Page 454] from science and were contrasted with the meanings they had in the rhetorical tradition.3 Taylor, however, stays firmly within the rhetorical tradition and develops his idea of reason in a series of rhetorical tropes that reveal his identification of religious dissent with prophecy. The tropes exploit the orality implicit in prophecy to counterbalance the visualism implied in a narrower concept of reason. Examining these tropes will show how Taylor articulates a more flexible, rhetorically-based idea of reason.4 Walter J. Ong has provided a theoretical framework for the study of orality in Renaissance prose. Ong has identified what he calls an "oral noetic," that is, kinds of knowledge that are particularly suited to, and derived from, a predominantly oral, as opposed to textual, experience of language. Ong describes this oral noetic as subjective rather than objective, communal rather than isolated, and situational rather than abstract.5 Ong derived this idea not only from his reading of ancient and Renaissance rhetoric, but also from his acquaintance with the thought of Martin Buber.6 Buber analyzed Hebrew prophecy in the context of orality, and his book, I and Thou, formulated an epistemology of orality whose main features Ong adopted. Thus, Ong's concept of an oral noetic was derived in part from Buber's reflections on Hebrew prophecy. The characteristics of such an oral noetic play a major role in Taylor's identification of religious dissent with prophecy and in his rhetorical concept of reason; these characteristics inform the interlocking tropes that express both this rhetorical concept and the tolerance it permits. Unraveling those tropes will reveal just how rhetorical Taylor's latitudinarianism is. The tolerance for which Taylor argues in TLP was not part of his theology when he was the king's chaplain and Laud's protégé, nor was [End Page 455] it part of his own ecclesiastical practice when he was a bishop in Ireland after the Restoration. As Frank L. Huntley points out, both before the Long Parliament and after the Restoration, Taylor was a fierce defender of Anglican prerogatives.7 However,Taylor published TLP when Parliament was enforcing Presbyterianism, and Hugh Ross Williamson notes that Taylor was presenting a formula that would allow for the "Reunion of Churches" under King Charles or Oliver Cromwell.8 Williamson adds that Taylor was writing as "a casuistical Erastian (not in the least as a prophet of liberty)."9 Despite this caveat,Taylor's work has enjoyed the reputation of being a persuasive defense of religious liberty. James Roberts said TLP "is among the most remarkable works of the century," and Herschel Baker called it "a noble testament of Protestant individualism," sentiments shared by many scholars and Anglican clergy.10 Just as Milton's Areopagitica has become a locus classicus for defenders of freedom of the press in spite of its many...

Does God Lie to His Prophets? The Story of Micaiah ben Imlah As a Test Case

The understanding of Hebrew prophecy has made great advances in modern biblical scholarship. To be sure, such is the diversity and complexity both of prophetic texts within the Hebrew canon and of contemporary methods of interpretation that many unresolved—perhaps irresolvable—issues remain. Yet recent hermeneutical debate, like the philological and historical work of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, can offer fresh lenses through which to read the text, in ways that at least sometimes may help make progress beyond seeming impasses. My purpose in this paper is to focus on one particular prophetic narrative, one which is often used as a case study: the story of Micaiah ben Imlah in 1 Kgs 22:1–38. I hope it may illustrate something of the kind of fresh understanding of a difficult prophetic text which is achievable.

Book Review: I. Biblical Studies: Mysterious Messengers: A Course on Hebrew Prophecy from Amos Onwards

Book Review: I. Biblical Studies: Mysterious Messengers: A Course on Hebrew Prophecy from Amos Onwards

Marlowe's Edward II and the Medieval Passion Play

Marlowe's Edward II and the Medieval Passion Play Patrick Ryan Christopher Marlowe's Edward II is distinguished by a grim naturalism extraordinary among Elizabethan chronicle plays. To dramatize the collapse ofEdward's monarchy, Marlowe opens the historical drama with frank depiction ofthe young king's passionate love for his favorite, Piers Gaveston. After Edward makes Gaveston "Lord High Chamberlain, Earl of Cornwall, King and Lord ofMan," jealous lords, pre-empted by the "base-born" royal minion, defy Edward in a series of outbursts and petty quarrels, which culminate in armed revolt, the murder of Gaveston, civil war, and decimation of the nobility before rebel barons defeat the royal army and capture Edward. Climaxing in the torture and covert assassination of the king, Edward II traces the disintegration of civil order in entirely natural causes—human weakness, cruelty , and lust for power. Marlowe's noble and royal characters, embroiled in their bloody contest of will, make no creditable appeals to divine providence. Further, the play lacks any type of supernatural manifestation characteristic ofcontemporaneous historical dramas such as Shakespeare's plays oí Henry VI, which stage witches, devils, and cosmological portents. Accordingly, literary historians conclude that Marlowe, in his naturalistic chronicle play, emphasizes the individual will to power as the primary cause of historical process in a world without divine providence and supernatural influence. Such readings characterize Edward II as a secular history play without significant religious dimension.1 However, with this characterization ofthe drama, critics overlook the complex panoply of Christian images that Marlowe deploys during the climactic scenes of the tragedy. As I show in this article , to dramatize the arrest, imprisonment, degradation, torture, and murder ofKing Edward, Marlowe embellishes these dramatic actions with verbal and visual images derived from conventional medieval and early Renaissance descriptions of Christ's Passion. Marlowe's suffering king—like Christ, according to medieval 465 466Comparative Drama exegesis largely suppressed by the Reformation—is covered with excrement, forced to drink from a channel, shaved, enclosed in a cesspool, and trodden underfoot. Many of the torments and degradations staged in Edward II are not part ofthe historical record, but Elizabethan chronicles do imply that King Edward's keepers subjected him to such abuses derived from Passion lore. The chroniclers give only brief report of Edward's sufferings in captivity, of his humiliations, torments, and agonizing death on the point of a red-hot spit; however, in his Chronicles of England the Elizabethan John Stowe, one of Marlowe's principal sources, translates excerpts from a medieval biography of Edward that describes his afflictions like those that Jesus suffered. As I show, Marlowe recognizes, in Stowe's and Raphael Holinshed's accounts of Edward's mistreatment, signal torments drawn from Passion narrative.2 In climactic scenes of Edward II, the playwright elaborates the chroniclers' cryptic accounts by adding physical and psychological assaults modeled on some that Jesus supposedly endured. Specifically, Marlowe rehearses symbolic degradations adapted from traditional lore of Christ's "secret Passion," a series of bizarre torments not recorded in the Gospels but which Jesus suffered after his arrest, according to medieval and Tudor exegesis of Hebrew prophecy.3 Throughout the climax of his tragedy, Marlowe deploys Christological imagery so deftly as to heighten and consummate the powerful naturalism that animates his earlier scenes. Indeed, in staging the torture and death of Edward, Marlowe probes aesthetic limits of emergent early modern drama with a theatrical style rooted in a late medieval realism developed by dramatists who historicized Christ's Passion and reenacted it in excruciating detail. In this article, I show how Marlowe, dramatizing the sufferings of Edward, forges a powerful theatrical naturalism from interrelated conventions of Tudor piety and religious drama.4 I After the tragic peripety, Edward's defeat and deposition, the focus of Marlowe's historical drama shifts from the king's struggles with his rebellious lords to his sufferings in captivity. During a transitional scene, Marlowe introduces Christian imagery with an emblematic stage picture.5 Hiding from victorious rebels, Edward and his loyal favorites, Spencer and Baldock, seek refuge from the monks of Neath Abbey. "Have you no doubt, my lord, have you no fear," the Abbot reassures Edward with a promise...

The burden of prophecy: poetic utterance in the prophets of the Old Testament

Albert examines the poetic and scriptural thinking of the Hebrew prophets and wisdom writers, focusing on the details of their thematic concentrations and on the posture they assume to orient themselves in their utterances.Homer, Confucius, the poets ofthe Confuciananthology, and the authors of the Zend Avesta and the Rig Veda are variously endowed with an authority empowered by the instituted religious thought of their times. Each writer, contends, rests firmlyin the reassurances provided bythe particular context.Cook argues, however, that the Hebrew prophet comes forward and presents himself as open to themomentary utterances of God. This Godis not primarily an imageor a symbol; the Hebrew Yahweh is a force thatmanifests Himself in developing history. In that dangerous situation, theprophet remains open directly to Godand gets a continually renewed verbal authority and power from that flow.Since, as demonstrates, the prophet is commenting on the constantly changing flow between God and people, every utterance is essentially a progress report rather than a finally poised formulation, even though the utterance is formulated in reference to the basic valuesof righteousness and the law and in measured analogy to such defining tribal experiences as theExodus. Radically distinct from other religiouspoetry, therefore, Hebrew prophecy rises fromand refers to a complex and specific occasion.Most poetry looks toward the past. Keats, LiPo, and Pindar, for example, all offer the profundity of a stocktaking. Thepoetry of the Hebrewprophet, however, is oriented toward the future.At worst, the prophet s perception and goal canlead to an informed readiness for the future; at best, they can lead to a restoration of the people's covenant with God. In any case, they will lead to a future whose features are compassed in the articulated vision.In The Burden of Prophecy, Cook explores the implications of these conditions as he examines the Old Testament books of the prophets and their successors: Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Zechariah, and Daniel.

Prophets or Projectors? Challenges to Credibility in Hebrew Prophecy

Prophets or Projectors? Challenges to Credibility in Hebrew Prophecy

Moses ben Abraham's "Chroniques de la Bible"

In the Royal Library in The Hague there is a little-known manuscript with illustrations of the prophecies of Daniel, probably executed in north-eastern France around 1300. The text is a French paraphrase of the Bible with special emphasis on the Books of Daniel and Maccabees, compiled by Moses ben Abraham, a Jew, for his patron William X of Auvergne. The express purpose of this work is to trace the lineage of noble clans and peoples to their Biblical origins, to speculate on struggles of ancient empires and marvels still to come. Despite the Christian reading the translator gives to Hebrew prophecy, there are discrepancies with the Latin Vulgate text which also come to light in the illustrations. It can be determined, on the basis of historical analysis, that the work in The Hague is a copy of an original made some fifty years earlier, and that it must have been the object of eschatological speculation and was therefore acutely topical for an audience entering a new century.

Ecstaticism in Hebrew prophecy and Christian glossolalia

Ecstaticism in Hebrew prophecy and Christian glossolalia

Religious premisses and logical technique in divinatory ritual

Divination is a relatively clear-cut configuration of ritual action which embodies fundamental constituents of religious and magical systems and is easily accessible to repeated observation. It is a pivotal institution in very many of these systems the world over, and the diviner is a key functionary in the cult activities associated with them. This has been well known since antiquity. Greek and Roman omens and oracles, Hebrew prophecy and Oriental astrology are well-known examples. But I do not want to discuss divination in general. What I have in mind is to give some account of the configuration and technique of divination, as I have witnessed and participated in it among the Tallensi of Northern Ghana, in concrete illustration of the thesis I shall put forward. To make my case, I must first indicate what I understand by the concept of ritual. Anthropologists are not all of one mind on this, as both Professor Turner’s and Dr Leach’s papers in our symposium demonstrate. In its colloquial sense the term has come to be widely used to include almost every kind of stylized or stereotyped verbal and motor behaviour that is habitual or customary in a given social environment. Journalists write of the 'ritual’ of cricket, of Parliament, of the law, of taking a university degree. More commonly and narrowly, the word is associated with such things as the Christian communion service, coronations, funerals, etc., etc. Among anthropologists the current vogue is to emphasize the ‘communication’ function of ritual.

The Acrostic of Nahum in the Jerusalem Liturgy

In the current discussions concerning the relationship of the prophetic message to the cultic traditions, the short book of Nahum scarcely receives attention proportionate to the significance of its peculiar form. Here is a strange book-one filled with fierce denunciations of Judah's enemy but strikingly wanting in many elements commonly ascribed to the Hebrew most particularly in any declaration of Judah's sin as seen in the light of covenant obligations. For this reason, Nahum has been classed among the prophets of weal, or numbered among the false prophets, or even denied the name prophet in any true sense whatever. Aage BENTZEN is one of the few scholars who have clearly seen that, whatever the original life situation of Nahum's poems against Nineveh, the book as a whole has in all likelihood been shaped into its present form for use as a liturgy for the celebration of Assyria's overthrow 1). This is a point of view which the present writer strongly endorses and which he considers essential for an understanding, not only of how the book got into its present form, but also of how it gained its place in the canon of Hebrew prophecy. The ancient translations of Nahum often reveal the failure of those

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN HEBREW PROPHECY.1

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN HEBREW PROPHECY.1 Get access HUGO GRESSMANN HUGO GRESSMANN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume os-XXVII, Issue 107, April 1926, Pages 241–254, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/os-XXVII.107.241 Published: 01 April 1926

The roots of Hebrew prophecy and Jewish apocalyptic

Judging from repetitious appearances of her marital arms in the painted line-endings, the Psalter-Hours John Rylands Library Latin MS 117 probably belonged to Jeanne of Flanders (c.1272–1333), daughter of Count Robert III of Flanders and in 1288 second wife to Enguerrand IV of Coucy. Yet the line-endings also contain some 1,800 diminutive painted escutcheons, many of which refer to other members of the local nobility active during the 1280s. This study, based on an exhaustive survey of the total heraldic and codicological evidence, suggests that the majority of the extant Psalter predated the Hours and that the two parts were combined after the 1288 marriage. The ‘completed’ manuscript bears witness to major events that unfolded in and around the Coucy barony over the course of the decade. It suggests a complex relationship between Jeanne of Flanders and a lesser member of the local nobility, a certain Marien of Moÿ, who may have served as her attendant.