kingship in response to the threat of annihilation by Philistine power, they did so with great reluctance, and through the medium of an earlier institution, the prophetship. Abraham had been a prophet; Moses was the greatest of the prophets. It was the oldest office the Israelites had, and in their eyes an essential one since in a theocracy like theirs the medium through whom God issues his commands, the prophet, held a central place in society. The origins of the word, nabhi , are obscure; it may have meant ‘one who is called’ or ‘one who bubbles forth’. An important text in Samuel says, ‘He that is now called a nabhi was previously called a roeh ’ (seer). Prophets were certainly judged by their ability to predict. Such men were found everywhere in the ancient Near East. One of the great strands of ancient Egyptian history, from the early third millennium onward, is the role of oracles and prophecies. From Egypt it spread to the Phoenicians and thus to the Greeks. According to Plato’s Phaedrus , human reasoning was not necessary for prophecy since a man possessed by a god was a mere agent: his state was known as ‘enthusiasm’ or divine madness. The Israelite prophets likewise acted as mediums. In a state of trance or frenzy they related their divine visions in a sing-song chant, at times a scream. These states could be induced by music. Samuel describes the process himself: ‘thou shalt meet a company of prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp, before them; and they shall prophesy’. 151 Elisha, too, asked for music: ‘But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him.’ 152 But the prophets also used, and sometimes abused, incense, narcotics and alcohol, as Isaiah points out: ‘The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they have swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.’ 153
In Israelite society, however, the prophet was much more than a man who went into ecstasy and tried to predict the future. They performed all kinds of spiritual functions. They were religious judges, like Moses and Deborah. They formed colleges attached to shrines, like the one at Shiloh, where the tiny Samuel was deposited by hismother Hannah. There, he ‘ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod’—just like a priest, in fact. His mother brought him a new little priestly coat every year, ‘when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice’. 154 So at many shrines priests and guilds of prophets worked side by side, and there was no necessary conflict between them. But almost from the beginning the prophets set more store on the content as opposed to the forms of religion, thus inaugurating one of the great themes of Jewish, and indeed world, history. As Samuel put it himself: ‘Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.’ 155 They stood for the puritanical and fundamentalist elements in the religion, as opposed to the empty ceremonies and endless sacrifices of the priests. But just as the priests tended to slip into mechanistic religion, so the prophets might drift into sectarianism. Indeed Samuel, like Samson, belonged to the sect of the Nazarites, wild-looking men with uncut hair and few clothes. These sects might diverge into heresy or even into an entirely new religion. The Nazarites had much in common with the ultra-strict and ferocious Rechabites, who engaged in massacres of backsliders when opportunity offered. Such sects were the most extreme monotheists and iconoclasts. They tended to drift into semi-nomad life on the fringe of the desert, a featureless place conducive to strict monotheism. It was from such a background that the greatest of all Jewish sectarian heresies was to spring—Islam. 156
There were, then, multitudes of
In Israelite society, however, the prophet was much more than a man who went into ecstasy and tried to predict the future. They performed all kinds of spiritual functions. They were religious judges, like Moses and Deborah. They formed colleges attached to shrines, like the one at Shiloh, where the tiny Samuel was deposited by hismother Hannah. There, he ‘ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod’—just like a priest, in fact. His mother brought him a new little priestly coat every year, ‘when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice’. 154 So at many shrines priests and guilds of prophets worked side by side, and there was no necessary conflict between them. But almost from the beginning the prophets set more store on the content as opposed to the forms of religion, thus inaugurating one of the great themes of Jewish, and indeed world, history. As Samuel put it himself: ‘Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.’ 155 They stood for the puritanical and fundamentalist elements in the religion, as opposed to the empty ceremonies and endless sacrifices of the priests. But just as the priests tended to slip into mechanistic religion, so the prophets might drift into sectarianism. Indeed Samuel, like Samson, belonged to the sect of the Nazarites, wild-looking men with uncut hair and few clothes. These sects might diverge into heresy or even into an entirely new religion. The Nazarites had much in common with the ultra-strict and ferocious Rechabites, who engaged in massacres of backsliders when opportunity offered. Such sects were the most extreme monotheists and iconoclasts. They tended to drift into semi-nomad life on the fringe of the desert, a featureless place conducive to strict monotheism. It was from such a background that the greatest of all Jewish sectarian heresies was to spring—Islam. 156
There were, then, multitudes of
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