Prophetic Utterance Research Articles

Mission from the Margins

Mission from the Margins

The Impossibility of Talking about God

The Impossibility of Talking about God Michael Graetz (bio) Our teacher, Rabbi Artson, has skillfully and convincingly presented the case for abandoning the classic "overlay," in his terms, of Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions imposed upon the raw text of the Bible. He also implies, without stating it specifically, that the raw text of the Bible is created out of religious experiences. So it is possible that the religious experiences of our ancestors who created the texts of the Bible are also overlaid with conceptions that they did not hold—witness the cognate ideas, languages, and metaphors of the ancient Near East present in the Tanakh, as demonstrated through biblical scholarship. The idea itself, however, is extremely revolutionary, in the most literal meaning of that word, for ideas held to be central and true for hundreds of years are now seen as false to the very tradition they supposedly presented to the world. Indeed, one of Rabbi Artson's central points is that the idea of a static, unchangeable, all-powerful and all-knowing God does not square at all with the God of the Bible. Instead we are asked to take seriously the dynamic, changing, powerful (but not all-powerful), and knowing (but not all-knowing God) of the Bible. This is akin to the approach of our teacher, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel z"l, who took the prophets seriously at their word, rather than interpreting all prophetic utterances as "merely metaphor" or simply exhortation. I would like to make two comments about Rabbi Artson's masterful essay. One has to do with the need to go further, and the other has to do [End Page 116] with the subsequent traditions of rabbinic Judaism, and how they fit in to this new conception of God. We are, as the paper shows clearly, always in tension between ideas and language that we grew up with, learned in Hebrew School, and encounter around us daily, on the one hand, and the ideas and language of scholarly academic learning and philosophical and theological inquiry, on the other. Our basic use of the word "God" leans heavily on all of those inherited modes, from kindergarten on. I doubt if any kindergarten even hints at a documentary hypothesis for the origin of the Bible or utilizes a curriculum that reflects Maimonidean rationality to its core. And yet, we somehow think that these "new" ways of thinking and talking about religion are available to all people. Furthermore, if we are totally honest with ourselves, we know firmly, true and certain, that it is impossible to talk about God. We have no knowledge or understanding of God. Yet we talk as if we knew, as if there were some verifiable evidence. Worse than that, we talk as if we could give true explanations of God's thoughts, intentions, and actions. We are seduced by texts, traditions, and the feeling of law as solid and of divine origin. How can we get out of this dilemma? Is there any justification for God-talk, given our intellectual understanding that whatever we say can be neither proven nor disproven—that is, that it is clearly and perfectly untrue? (For a brilliant attempt to grapple with this dilemma, see Rabbi Martin S. Cohen's book, Sefer Ikkarim le-Zemaneinu, published in Beersheva by the Mercaz Shiluv in 2000.) The poet Yehudah Amichai has many phrases of theological import. Indeed, perhaps we learn more about theology from poets than from anyone else. In one of his last poems he writes: Open, closed, open.Before a person is bornEverything in the universe is open without him.During his life everything is closed within his life.When he dies everything is again open.Open, closed, open, that is the whole person. Amichai points to the paradox of solipsism as the only possible truth, and to the human ability to believe in and even trust, the ultimate meaning of belief: that there are real things outside of us, beyond our closed selves. [End Page 117] Intellect and emotion may be at odds. We are programmed to recognize the transcendent, but destined to know the limits of intellect. So, for the transcendent, we can only...

Prophecy and Dissonance: A Reassessment of Research Testing the Festinger Theory

In the fifty years since publication of Festinger's When Prophecy Fails (1956), scholars have reduced the reliability of this study to one statement, namely, that Festinger holds true if, and only if, failed prophecy results in believers actively proselytizing others. This essay takes a different tack. Rather than offer yet another modification to the Festinger thesis, it is the purpose of this essay to suggest additional lines of inquiry that have heretofore been overlooked. After an assessment of a small but representative sample of the research that Festinger has inspired, this essay will outline three alternative research trajectories that interested scholars might fruitfully follow, each related to the original focus of Festinger on prophecy and dissonance. First, dissonance seeking consonance might account for why people join prophetic movements. Second, the resolution of cognitive dissonance might be the occasion for a prophetic utterance rather than the result of a failed prophecy. Third, the existence of multiple prophets within a movement and the rivalries that result appear to heighten dissonance, sometimes undermining the confidence of committed followers.

E. T. A. HOFFMANN AND THE ETHEREAL TECHNOLOGIES OF ‘NATURE MUSIC’

ABSTRACTIn 1814, E. T. A. Hoffmann published his short story, Die Automate. The story concerns the dealings of two friends and a fortune-telling automaton, the Turk, whose prophetic utterances seem to reveal a supernatural and psychic ability. Although the story first appeared in the Allegemeine musikalische Zeitung, it has been mostly overlooked by music scholars. In addition to the lengthy passages dealing with artificial intelligence, the story includes an extensive discussion of music performance and music instruments. The instruments they discuss – machines capable of bringing forth the voice of nature – perhaps appear as fantastical creations of Hoffmann’s imagination. However, he refers to real instruments that played an established role in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century musical culture. This period saw the frenzied production of many novel and bizarre instruments such as the euphon, aiuton, aenomochord, xänorphica and the harmonichord. Though these instruments are all but forgotten today, they testify to a widespread preoccupation with timbre and instrumental sonority. The consolidation of the orchestra as a concept, musical body and institution in the eighteenth century went hand in hand with the notion that individual instrumental sonorities had distinct expressive characters. By the early nineteenth century, this idea manifested itself in two distinct traditions: an orchestral one, in which composers increasingly took advantage of the ever-growing palette of instruments, giving rise to the modern concept of orchestration and the romantic symphony, and an instrument-oriented one, in which musicians, scientists and inventors attempted to capture ‘ideal sonorities’ (usually timbres resembling the human voice) in specially designed instruments. These creations offer a missing link between idealist aesthetics of the period and musical practice. Though ultimately ephemeral, they represent a kind of ‘absolute’ music that was founded purely in ethereal sonorities rather than in musical formalism.

Anti-Charismatic Bias in the Chinese Union Version of the Bible

In this article, Robert Menzies asserts that the translators of the Chinese Union Version of the New Testament deviated from their guiding principles when they translated the verb prophesy (πρoητeω). They did not translate the verb consistently nor did they render it literally. The Union Version translators generally translate references to predictive prophecy with the phrase yu yan (to prophesy) or shuo yu yan (to utter a prophecy). Yet they translate references to prophetic utterances in the early church, particularly those texts in 1 Corinthians 12-14 that might have a bearing on the practice of the contemporary church, with phrases associated with preaching, such as zuo xian zhi jiang dao (to preach prophetically). Menzies argues that this tendency to identify prophecy with preaching is reductionistic and misleading. It arbitrarily dismisses predicative prophecy as a valid dimension of πρoητeω in several instances and it incorrectly narrows the semantic range of the verb, which normally denotes spontaneous, Spirit-inspired utterances, to the exposition of Scripture. Menzies concludes that the translators of the Union Version have unconsciously foisted Calvin's view of prophecy as preaching onto the biblical text.

Word of Tree and Whisper of Stone: El's Oracle to King Keret (Kirta), and the Problem of the Mechanics of Its Utterance

AbstractThis paper argues that the complex sequence in KTU 1.15 ii 13-16, in the Keret story from Ugarit, contains a royal birth oracle which is modelled on real-life practice; furthermore, the circumstances and mechanism of its utterance are suggested by KTU 1.3 iii 19-31 and parallels in the Baal cycle, formulaic passages describing how communication between heaven and earth was believed to be effected. These passages in turn are elucidated by reference to biblical traditions concerning sacred trees and stones as media for prophetic utterance, particularly when an oracle was actively sought in royal and quasi-royal situations. The Ugaritic material is thus shown to provide the first evidence of a form of prophecy from Ugarit, bound to the cult, and comparable to evidence found from Mari, Assyria and the West Semitic world.

The Metaphor of Talion

The Metaphor of Talion Betty Rojtman Translated by Johnathan Stavsky Literary theories have accustomed us to welcome the opaqueness of the sign. Poetic discourse, which for modern sensibility has become the focal point of the very question of language, emblematically maintains the "absolutely pure" ambiguity of its symbols and the autonomy of its signifying forms (Barthes 1987:71). Essentially untranslatable, the poetic text resists1 the menace of interpretation that attempts to track it down like quarry. It eludes our nets, to re-emerge as an untiring enigma. The Bible in the Jewish tradition is, conversely, a source of religious legislation, a code that governs human existence in all its details. It therefore calls for a univocal reading in order to guarantee uniform conduct. In this sense, it is thought to partake in the values of signification that semiotics has taught us to assign to the domain of prose and everyday language: readability, trans-parence, referentiality. This "transitive language is the one which seeks to transform reality immediately, not to double it: 'practical' utterances linked to acts, to techniques, to behavior, invocatory utterances linked to rites, since rites too are presumed to open nature" (Barthes 1972: 268; emphasis added). At the same time, the Bible is also a Text, a sacred and prophetic utterance. As such, it assumes the parameters of a literary work, thus operating in an evasive, sibylline, and infinitely plural way. This ambivalence justifies one's wondering about the status of the Bible in traditional Jewish exegesis, a unique source of inspirati praxis now Revelation, divided between the literality of daily life and poetic literariness.2 [End Page 1] That which has come to be known as the talion law, along with its two-thousand-year-old trail of passions and misconceptions, may serve as a touchstone for this analysis, inasmuch as it can serve as a focus for the question of the letter in the polemical context that can highlight the stakes involved 3: If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. (Exodus 21:22-25) The Hebrew exegetic tradition has been held by the West to be a hermeneutic of the letter. This view is based on the rhetorical and classical sense of literariness, which leads us away from poetic intransitivity and to the impoverishing univocality of prose: "the literal sense is that which holds to words taken by the letter, to words understood according to their usage in ordinary language: consequently, it is that which presents itself immediately to the minds of those who speak the language" (Fontanier 1968: 57; translation J.S.). Here Fontanier confounds the literal sense of a word with its immediate legibility. According to this logic, the "Pharisee" literality clings strictly to a narrow primary meaning, which "kills" both the openness of language and the freedom of thought: an implicit osmosis necessarily sets in between the hermeneutic practice and its governing ideology, and the quarrel of language, where the "literal" and the "figurative" lock horns, [End Page 2] echoes a more general opposition between two types of societies and two different attitudes towards the juridical system and penal codes. "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth": this verse is understood as a declaration of principle whose rigor encapsulates both the tautness of the letter and the inexorability of the law. Literal interpretation, such as is attributed to the Hebrew tradition of reading, would draw a parity equation that plays on both the meanings of the words and objects in the world; it postulates an equivalence of the signifier and the signified (the word "eye" signifies one's eye) and an equivalence of eyes that allows one to substitute the eye of the culprit for that of the victim. Unreceptive to allegory, the Pharisee who takes the text "at the letter" can be...

Die biblische Urgeschichte in der Aufklarung: Johann Gottfried Herders Interpretation der Genesis als Antwort auf die Religionskritik David Humes (review)

by Christoph Bultmann. Beitrage zur historischen Theologie, 110. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999. 219 pp. 140 DM.This volume is the published version of the author's Habilitationsschrift (inaugural dissertation) as accepted by the University of Gottingen in 1997. Johann Gottfried Herder's interpretation of Genesis is an important work of Old Testament theological exegesis during the Enlightenment. Its background lies in the biblical research of humanism and contrasts with David Hume's criticism of religion. Herder's Alteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (1774-76) attempted to link exegesis and apologetics in a contemporary yet formally individual manner. He considered the biblical story of creation as the poetry of nature, adopting a central stance between natural religion and revealed religion. Bultmann anchors Herder's work firmly against the background of his early writings on poetry and literature, establishing humanistic exegesis as the context for this interpretation of Genesis.The Introduction considers Herder's place in the history of Old Testament scholarship, with particular reference to Vom Geist der Ebraischen Poesie (1782-83), the first volume of which might be considered as a reworking of Alteste Urkunde. Bultmann claims that, in Herder, Enlightenment Old Testament scholarship had a representative who both understood and could master critical approaches. He underlines the importance of Herder's hermeneutical interest in anthropology. For Herder, origins are a philosophical problem rather than a theological one, and he seeks a solution in his interpretation of Genesis 1 as primeval poetry. The main thrust of Bultmann's work is the contrasting of Herder's interpretation of Genesis with Hume's criticism of religion. Bultmann endeavours to correct the common misunderstanding of Herder as merely an aesthetic critic of the Bible.The context of Herder's work on Genesis is divided into three parts, represented by the first three chapters of the book.Chapter I considers Herder's early manuscripts on the origin of poetry, specifically the Fragmente einer Abhandlung uber die Ode (1765) and the Versuch einer Geschichte der lyrischen Dichtkunst (1766). The relationship between poetry and religion is at the heart of the problem of origins. The chapter then reviews the hermeneutic of ancient poetry and theological criticism in Herder's Fragmente uber die neuere deutsche Literatur (1766-67). It then examines poetology and hermeneutics as portrayed in the second edition of the Fragmente and the Kritische Walder (1768), with specific reference to Herder's reception of Lessing's Laokoon. The chapter concludes with an examination of Uber die Ersten Urkunden des Menschlichen Geschlechts. Einige Anmerkungen (1768-69), in which Herder examines Genesis 1-11 as oriental poetry.Chapter II considers Genesis and History, commenting on the reaction of biblical scholarship to Hugo Grotius, as well as the work of Brian Walton, Richard Simon, and Abraham Calov. It then examines Genesis and Science with reference to the work of Thomas Burnet, Shaftesbury, Simon Patrick, and Theodor Christoph Lilienthal. The chapter then moves to a review of Genesis in scholarly commentaries, with reference to Jean le Clerc and Augustin Calmet, before concluding with a section on Genesis and Poetry with reference first to Robert Lowth, for whom poetry was the natural expression of prophetic utterance, and finally to Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem.Chapter III reviews Hume's religion-critical rebuttal of biblical tradition, with consideration of Hume's essays in general and of his Natural History of Religion (1757) in particular. …

Prophecy and the Performance of Metaphor

In 1975 the movement known as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal held its annual conference in Rome for the first time. In this symbolically charged setting, "prophecy" was uttered by prophets from The Word of God, the largest and most highly organized of charismatic covenant communities. These Rome prophecies were deemed a direct message from God and revealed that the role of the Charismatic Renewal was to protect the church. The prominent metaphor in subsequent prophetic utterances was that of the alliance of covenant communities as a "bulwark" for the church against the apocalyptic onslaught of the forces of darkness.

Core of the Core: A Phantasmagoria in Translation

T HESE NOTES TOWARDS subplot I have been tracking, through series of phantom translations at the heart of what is frequently dubbed the core curriculum, begin with something of transposition of T. S. Eliot's 1951 essay and the Christian World. Call it Homer and the Jewish World. Eliot, it will be recalled, begins with the Fourth Eclogue, in which Virgil congratulates his friend Pollio on the birth of his son in terms (the Virgin, the Golden Age, the Great Year, the parallels with Isaiah) that seem to anticipate the coming of Christ, and suggests that this is indeed what may be happening: a prophet need not understand the meaning of his prophetic utterance. He concludes: if there is such thing as inspiration-and we do go on using the word-then it is something which escapes historical research (137). Our point of departure will be to take liberty similar to that taken by Eliot, returning from the New to the Old, or, in Harold Bloom's coinage, from the Belated Testament to the Original one, in order to chart parallel between The Odyssey and Exodus which strikes me as far more stunning than the Virgilian parallel forged by the Church Fathers (3). This link has not been registered, I believe, in part because the Old episode is particularly troublesome in and of itself, let alone in its congruence with passage from the Greek. That troublesomeness

Henry James’s Apprenticeship by W.R. Martin and Warren U. Ober

offer a special instance of prophetic utterance. “The Lamb,” for exam­ ple, clearly portrays the adamic power of naming (though also, I suspect, the arguably “socio-political” mode of catechizing). Children are especially vulnerable to coercive and exploitative impositions from the socio-political sphere. The term “imposition,” a key word in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and elsewhere in Blake, becomes an important dimension of Esterhammer ’s theory in her analysis of the prophecies. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, for example, Blake’s Isaiah claims the authority to impose upon his audience, and hence to effect changes in individuals and in society, through his sense of a “firm perswasion” and the voice of “honest indigna­ tion.” Blake’s sense of “imposition” enriches Esterhammer’s description of the tensions between the poet-prophet and society. In the final chapter on Jersualem, text and theory merge in a critical state­ ment that affirms, in a provocative reading of the final line of the poem, the authority of the visionary poet: “Jerusalem, as a social and spiritual entity, is brought into existence by the verbal pronouncement of the visionary poet” (216). The culminating integration of text and theory achieved in the final chapter leads me to comment on the structure of the entire book. Esterham­ mer’s study enacts the process of vision through its carefully orchestrated dialectic structure. The book also consists of seven chapters, the paradig­ matic number of vision. Esterhammer’s use of the structure and number of vision may show her debt to Northrop Frye, who used similar techniques and who is clearly an important influence on her work. If these assumptions are correct, then one can conclude with a metaphoric comparison of her work to the visionary prospects it examines: the way up the hill of vision in Esterhammer’s study is instructive, and the view of Jerusalem at the top is superb. d a v id g a y / University of Alberta W.R. Martin and Warren U. Ober, Henry James’s Apprenticeship (Toronto: P.D. Meany, 1994). xiv, 213. 2 illustr. $45.00 cloth. The task undertaken here by W.R. Martin and Warren U Ober may initially seem fairly clear and straightforward, but, as soon becomes evident, it is by no means without difficulty. They attempt not only to offer an analysis of each of the thirty-eight tales written in the first fifteen years of James’s career but also to show how these tales prepared for the writing of James’s first masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady. The most immediate problem is how to cope with those tales that James himself decided not to include in the New York Edition of his work. One, 349 “A Tragedy of Error,” was never even acknowledged by James as his (14); another, “Professor Fargo,” has been dismissed by Leon Edel as “one of James’s recurrent potboilers” (112); still another, “Rose-Agathe,” is cer­ tainly not done any injustice by Edel’s description of it as a “trifle.” 1 And there are other tales — many others — that could slow down the metabolism of any critical intelligence stubbornly plodding toward what would soon ap­ pear, with every additional page of dullness, as an impossibly distant finish line. What fortifies the reader for the journey is the sudden, and seemingly inexplicable, appearance of tales that are head and shoulders above the rest, tales like “The Madonna of the Future,” “Madame de Mauves,” and “An International Episode.” And, miraculously, towering above all these is the nouvelle that has gathered about it the mantle of greatness, “Daisy Miller.” But how does one trace the lines of development that accurately delineate this evolution? James himself obliquely hints that the nature of such a progression can indeed be traced. For James writes, in two separate passages quoted by Martin and Ober, that he was “ ‘the fond observer of the footsteps of genius’ ” (3), and that he would “ ‘follow in the footsteps’ of Stendhal and Balzac” (159); Leon Edel adds that, in James’s journey through Europe, James himself “knew ... there were moments when he distinctly felt as if he were following in the footsteps of Nathaniel Hawthorne.” 2...

Canon and Charisma in the Book of Deuteronomy

This chapter proposes to look at the way in which the book of Deuteronomy sets forth the place and role of both inscripturated word and prophetic utterance. The author's Pentecostal perspective on Spirit and Word obviously parallels and is certainly informing his perceptions on the Deuteronomy passages. The two revelatory channels, those of canonical writing and charismatic speech, are both explicitly set forth in the book of Deuteronomy and projected forward into Israel's future life. By lifting up the unique phenomenon of Yahweh's nearness, Deuteronomy 4.7 not only points in the direction of prophetic utterance but also begins to illuminate its distinctive role in Israel's revelatory experience. The chapter summarizes that from the Horeb testimony of Deuteronomy 4-5, it is clear that Israel's having of a 'god so near' (as Yahweh is through his ongoing, dynamic prophetic utterance) is an urgent theological concern in Deuteronomy. Keywords: ancient Israel; book of Deuteronomy; canonical word; Horeb testimony; Pentecostalism; prophetic utterance; Yahweh's revelation

On Prophecy and Politics: Some Pragmatic Reflections

Prophecy is inescapably controversial; tension is always in the air. Prophetic utterance, no doubt properly, is apt to make many historians irritable and uncomfortable. Preoccupied with the past, the last thing they want to be saddled with is any responsibility for discerning the future or even seeking to make sense of the present. When Hugh Trevor-Roper, as he then was, attacked the writings of Arnold Toynbee in a savage article in Encounter in 1957, the gravamen of his charge was that Toynbee was not a historian at all, but a prophet, and, for good measure, a false one at that. Decent historians should not bother with the ten volumes of A Study of History because they were not history. The charges, in detail, may well have been justified, but the asperity went deeper. The caste of mind of historians, if they were truly professional, should make ‘prophetic history’ an impossibility. Prophets were indifferent to ‘facts’, or cavalier in their treatment of them, in pursuit of a grand vision. Historians, on the other hand, were obsessively fussy about details and were relatively unconcerned about grand theory. Indeed, historiography had ‘come of age’ precisely to the extent that it emancipated itself from prophecy.

The Role of the Catholic Mission in the Development of Vernacular Literature in Eastern Nigeria

In what has now become a prophetic utterance, Ida C. Ward wrote in 1939 that the development of an Igbo literature would be held up if some specific problems connected with the language were not solved.1 She was referring particularly to the existence of a baffling great number of Igbo dialects, and a lack of uniformity in the orthography used in reducing them to a written form. Forty-six years after her observation, none of these problems has been conclusively solved, and the development of an Igbo literature has not yet come out of the foundation stage. Apart from the Hausa and Yoruba, the Igbo constitute the largest ethnic group in Nigeria. Their progressive bent and intellectual achievements have already received a worldwide acknowledgment. Yet, unfortunately, their language has yet to achieve that special honour. In an attempt to discover what had gone wrong, a consensus of opinions seems to point to the irony in the psychology of the Igbos themselves-a people who, in the past, loved every knowledge, except the knowledge of their language. Parents sent their children to school to learn English, and would not have anything to do with the vernacular. In their case, the observation of some members at the International Mission Conference at Le

Ambiguous Voices and Beauties in Calderón's Eco y Narciso and Their Tragic Consequences

The dramatic action of Calderón's Eco y Narciso revolves around a prophecy, in which the seer Tiresias predicts Narciso's downfall. Although the main characters of the play believe that they fully understand the terms of the prophecy and try to prevent Narciso's doom, their attempts are unsuccessful, and the hero meets his predicted tragic fate. Tiresias' prophetic utterance, a key element of characterization, structure, theme, and plot of this comedia , highlights the importance of communicative patterns in Eco y Narciso . The deceivingly straightforward language of the prophecy proves to be more ambiguous than any character initially assumes. The enigmatic signs of «voice» and «beauty,» the basic components of the prophecy, defy attempts to determine their absolute meaning. The action of Eco y Narciso exposes the ambiguous nature of these signs and precludes definitive interpretations of the elusive prophecy. This ambiguity underscores the thematic and artistic richness of Calderón's mythological comedia . (DD)

The Utilitarianism of Dalhousie and the Material Improvement of India

In his final minute in March 1856, just on the eve of his departure from India, Lord Dalhousie, while reviewing the last eight years of his administration, describes the railways, electric telegraph and uniform postage which he introduced into India as the ‘three great engines of social improvement’. Posterity certainly knows how correct Dalhousie's description was, but under this prophetic utterance of Dalhousie flows a subtle current of philosophy which few scholars working on the Dalhousie era have been able to detect and interpret. That philosophy was the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and his faithful and able lieutenant, James Mill. In hisHistory of British India, which Mill undertook before 1808 and published in London in 1817, Mill had questioned the values of Indian society and suggested its reform on Benthamite principles. The key to progress in India, Mill also pointed out, lay in the introduction of Western science and knowledge. It is surprising that Daihousie, though a staunch Tory, subscribed to this view of Bentham and Mill about India and as a result ‘the natural alliance of the Scientific Benthamite administrator and the authoritative Tory gentlemen’ which ‘was never fully achieved in England’ was ‘achieved only in India’.

Prophetic ‘I’-Sayings and the Jesus tradition: The importance of testing prophetic utterances within early Christianity

The Church drew no distinction between such utterances by Christian prophets (ascribed to the ascended Christ) and the sayings of Jesus in the tradition, for the reason that even the dominical sayings in the tradition were not the pronouncements of a past authority, but sayings of the risen Lord, who is always a contemporary for the Church.

Synoptic Parousia Parables and the Apocalypse

In the continuing discussion of the possible role of Christian prophets in the formation of the tradition of the words of Jesus, reference continues to be made to the relevance or irrelevance of the words of the exalted Christ transmitted by the prophet John in the Apocalypse. They remain the only un-disputed example from the first century of prophetic utterances made in the name of Christ in the first person, and for advocates of the creative activity of the Christian prophets they are therefore invaluable evidence that such utterances could be made. Their use as evidence for the role of prophecy in the formation of the Synoptic tradition involves, admittedly, additional assumptions not easily demonstrable. We must suppose that John's prophecy is typical of the content of early Christian prophecy in general, and also that this late first-century work is faithfully representative of the earlier prophets whom alone we can suppose to have been responsible for originating logia which actually entered the Synoptic tradition. The uniqueness of John's prophetic status vis-à-vis that of the church prophets has been cogently argued by D. Hill, and it seems that at least we cannot infer otherwise un-attested characteristics of early Christian prophecy in general from the contents of the Apocalypse alone. In any case the Apocalypse is surely untypical in being a lengthy and closely integrated literary composition, with its own distinctive stylistic traits. Partly for this reason the words of Christ reported in it are for the most part quite unsuitable for transference to the lips of the Jesus of the Synoptic tradition, at least without substantial adaptation.

Tiv Proverbs as a Means of Social Control

IntroductionOf all the verbal art forms employed by the Tiv, such as singing, story-telling, and proverbs, the last are the most consistently used in everyday situations. Elders today often converse by means of proverbs to prevent young listeners from understanding what they are talking about, for many youngsters have not learned the use of proverbs because they have been to school or away from home for extended periods and have thus lost touch with ‘archaic’ usages.Proverbs are employed in a variety of situations: to control activities without the use of force, as devices for shaming, for getting out of difficult situations without losing face, as a means of praise, in prophetic utterances, and as general explanations for that sphere of Tiv environment which is beyond comprehension, especially illness or ‘acts of God’.

Reverend Hanock Msokera Phiri and the Establishment in Nyasaland of the African Methodist Episcopal Church

1. From the Malawi National Archives, Zomba, Malawi [Zomba: Miss. 12/10]; from the section on the African Methodist Episcopal Church Mission [AME], p. 1. Cited as a prophetic utterance attributed to Richard Alien, founder and first Bishop of the A.M.E. 2. Dr. Benjamin Rush, as cited in Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black (Baltimore, 1969), 423-424. 3. Richard Gray, The Two Nations (London, 1960), 145. 4. Letter from Dr. H. K. Banda to Rev. H. M. Phiri, sent from London, July 2, 1946. Letter seen through courtesy of Rev. Phiri. 5. Zomba: Miss. 12/10. This file comprises an Historical Survey of Native Controlled Missions Operating in Nyasaland, prepared for the Nyasaland Police in December 1940. For a list of the most important of these missions and a brief overall description, see R. J. Macdonald, A History of African Education in Nyasaland, 1875-1945 (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1969), Appendix M, 624-626.