The Phenomenon of Israelite Prophecy in Contemporary Scholarship

1. Introduction

The focus of this article is scholarship since the 1980s which treats the phenomenon of ancient Israelite prophecy, with an eye to the background of the contemporary approaches. This type of study constitutes one aspect of scholarship on the Hebrew Bible (HB) prophetic literature, a field marked by an enormous amount of research in the modern era. A phenomenological approach to Israelite prophecy has stood at the center of prophetic scholarship at least since the mid-1970s, with profound developments in the 1980s and 1990s (for recent surveys of the topic, see Deist 1989; Huffmon 1992; Schmitt 1992; Blenkinsopp 1995: 115-65; Gordon 1995; Gitay (ed.) 1997; Baker 1999; Hayes 1999; Nissinen 2004; Wilson 2004; Kelle 2006; Rooke 2006; De Jong 2007; Nissinen 2009; Petersen 2009a; Nissinen 2010; Stökl 2012). For an annotated bibliography of recent prophetic scholarship, see Sandy and O’Hare 2007.

At the time of its emergence in earnest, the phenomenological approach represented a major paradigm shift in the scholarly study of Israelite prophecy (see Deist 1989; Nissinen 2009). The classic historical-critical approach had dominated prophetic study throughout most of the twentieth century. As scholarship developed, however, new consideration of ancient Near Eastern texts and sociological and anthropological data led to the emergence of new perspectives. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the quest to study Israelite prophecy as an ancient phenomenon became established at the center of the field. Scholars proposed multiple models and analogies for prophets and prophecy. Rather than biographical and redactional interests or particular theological content, scholars focused on prophecy as an observable occurrence (‘phenomenon’) throughout the ancient world. They attempted to identify what prophets in general were, the social dynamics of how they functioned in their contexts, how they related to other elements in society and culture, what backgrounds and traditions shaped their identity and practice, and, perhaps most especially, what were the recognizable markers and definitional boundaries of so-called ‘prophetic’ activity and identity in a wide range of societies and cultures. Blenkinsopp (1995: 115-16) observes that scholars sought to identify a kind of Weberian ‘ideal type’—‘a construct based on abstraction and conceptualization that has the purpose of guiding inquiry back into the mass of available data’. Hence, alongside the issues mentioned above, topics about the essence of prophecy that formed the substance of research by the 1970s included (see Blenkinsopp 1996: 1; Gitay 1997: 1):

As a result of developments since the emergence of the phenomenological approach, current research on the phenomenon of ancient Israelite prophecy is marked by two major paradigms that stand alongside of and in tension with one another. The first remains socio-historical in nature and continues to approach Israelite prophecy as part of a wider, ancient social phenomenon. The second paradigm, discussed below, is literary in nature, treating prophecies as literary and ideological compositions.

The socio-historical paradigm extends the perspectives of the phenomenological approach that emerged in earnest in the 1970s and 1980s. Comparative, historical, sociological, and cross-cultural analysis leads scholars to focus on defining behaviors and social dynamics, with the conviction that prophetic-type figures from different cultures shared an essential commonality in identity, function, and practice as part of a larger phenomenon of prophecy in the ancient Near East. Since the 1980s, the primary formulation of this paradigm has identified Israelite prophecy as part of the specific phenomenon of intermediation, usually relying on oracular pronouncements and constituting a sub-type of divination, a general practice known in various forms throughout the ancient world (e.g., Huffmon 1992; Blenkinsopp 1996; Barstad 2000; Nissinen 2004; de Jong 2007; Stökl 2012). Nearly all of the recent introductory textbooks on the HB prophets reflect this definition of prophecy (see Petersen 2002; Hutton 2004; Sweeney 2005; Cook 2006; Leclerc 2007; Redditt 2008; Lundbom 2010).

One of the most vexing issues within this first paradigm is the relationship between the HB prophetic texts and the socio-historical realities of prophecy. This issue includes the recognition of the literary character of the prophetic books and the question of whether the HB texts provide accurate access to a real phenomenon of prophecy in ancient Israel. These concerns have given rise to a second paradigm in current study of the phenomenon of Israelite prophecy, especially since the 1990s. This paradigm is literary in nature. Scholars working within this paradigm challenge the long-standing assumption that the HB prophetic literature should be understood in terms of ancient prophetic activity (e.g., Auld 1983; Carroll 1983; Davies 1998; Ben Zvi 2003). They see the prophetic books as literary and ideological compositions produced by scribal literati in the postmonarchic period whose depictions of prophets and prophecy are late creations, and are part of a particular intellectual discourse. Israelite prophecy as we have access to it is a literary phenomenon that may or may not bear any relationship to the realities of prophecy throughout the ancient Near East.

These two current paradigms and the creative tension between them generate diverse understandings of prophetic identity and activity that cannot be subsumed under a single model. Current research features a sharpening distinction between ‘ancient Hebrew prophecy’ and ‘biblical/literary prophecy’. Additionally, research since the 1980s has included the reconsideration of some traditional questions surrounding Israelite prophecy, as well as the pursuit of previously unexplored lines of inquiry. Overall, present scholarship approaches Israelite prophecy not as a single phenomenon, but as a set of related phenomena, with only limited agreement about what Israelite prophecy was, or how it related to other ancient Near Eastern prophetic activity.

2. Backgrounds to Contemporary Study

3. Phenomenological Models and Analogies in the Twentieth Century

Along with the biblical terms and depictions, the paradigms of current study find their most immediate background in the models and analogies for Israelite prophets that were proposed throughout the twentieth century. Some of the early models and analogies depended upon older historical-critical perspectives and the biblical depictions (for a collection of several of the significant studies from Gunkel, Mowinckel, Weber, and others, see Petersen 1987). By the mid-twentieth century, however, the increasing use of comparative sociological and anthropological data and the study of the ancient Near Eastern prophetic texts solidified a phenomenological approach to Israelite prophecy that sought to understand it as part of a general social and religious practice in the ancient world. This approach operated with the conviction that behind the HB prophetic books stood not simply singular inspired persons, but a larger socio-historical phenomenon of prophecy. Hence, scholars became focused on developing heuristic models and analogies through comparative study that could provide conceptual clarity concerning the character, identity, and function of prophets. The models and analogies were both historical and typological in nature: ‘historical’ analogies being drawn from the same time period as Israel’s prophets, and ‘typological’ analogies being drawn from non-contemporary time periods (see Kelle 2006). The diversity of the portrayals of prophetic behavior in all available sources generated a wide range of models and analogies, and constitutes an ongoing problem for all such proposals (see Hayes 1999; Petersen 2009a: 625).

Several surveys of twentieth-century scholarship’s most common models and analogies are available (Petersen 1987, 1997, 2000; Hayes 1988: 29-39; Baker 1999; Kelle 2006) (for the development of models and analogies before the modern period, see Glatzer 1946; Hayes 1999: 311; Kelle 2006: 64). Petersen (1987; 2000; see also Kelle 2006) provides a useful thematic typology with rubrics to organize the models and analogies. His first rubric includes analogies for the phenomenon of prophecy that operate with the view that a prophet is someone who has ‘an intense experience of the deity’ (Petersen 2000: 33). The rubric encompasses the analogy of ‘ecstatics’, an analogy that focuses on the psychology and personal experiences of the prophets. It compares the prophets with religious persons from various cultures who underwent transnormal experiences such as frenzies or trances in order to receive or communicate messages from the deity (e.g., Gunkel 1903; Hölscher 1914; for discussion, see Petersen 1981: 25-26; Hayes 1999: 315-16). The ecstatics model fits into the larger scholarly trend throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of examining the relationship between prophecy and psychology (e.g., Delizsch 1869; Foster 1875; Kurtz 1904; see more recently Strawn and Strawn 2012). Gunkel was one of the earliest to propose that the prophets received their messages through ecstatic experiences, and Hölscher extended this notion by proposing that Israel adopted such ecstatic prophecy from its Canaanite environment.

The model of ecstatic prophets has received numerous reexaminations and largely fallen out of favor over the last century (e.g., see Parker 1978; Wilson 1979; Michaelson 1989). Early challenges often argued for the uniqueness of the Israelite prophets as those who had a rational consciousness that allowed them to participate in the divine pathos (Heschel 1962). Other scholars concluded that the ancient Near Eastern texts yield little, if any, explicit evidence for ecstatic behavior among prophets (Huffmon 1992; Petersen 1995). Additionally, developments within the fields of anthropology and psychology have raised ongoing questions about definitions of ‘ecstasy’, ‘trance’, and related terms, as well as efforts to distinguish more carefully between ‘ecstasy/trance’ as a kind of behavior and ‘possession’ as a means of communication (Overholt 1986: 333-34; Grabbe 1995: 108-12). Within the most recent prophetic scholarship, Stökl (2012) has reassessed ecstatic behavior in the ancient Near Eastern textual sources and argued that it belongs only to ‘lay’ rather than ‘professional’ prophets (see ‘4. Current Paradigm One’ below). Lay prophets were those (such as the muḫḫum in Mari texts) who had other primary roles and only occasionally engaged in prophetic activity.

Petersen’s (2000: 34) second rubric encompasses models that saw the prophet as one ‘who speaks or writes in a distinctive way’. Under this rubric falls the analogy of ‘poets’. As expressed in the key work of Herder (1833; see also Heschel 1962), this model emphasized the poetic nature of the prophetic literature, but also saw the prophets as something akin to European Romanticists: brave individualists or free spirits, who provided oppositional voices to the institutions of their day. Some scholars since the 1970s have further developed this approach, recently in connection with the emerging literary paradigm described below (e.g., Robertson 1977; Carroll 1983). Challenges to this model have consistently questioned the under-valuing of non-poetic material in the prophetic literature, and the adequacy of the individualistic and oppositional picture of the prophets within society (Clements 1976: 54-55; Wilson 2004).

The third rubric of Petersen’s (2000: 35) typology sees the prophet as one who ‘acts in a particular social setting’. This statement encompasses the model of ‘cultic functionaries’ for Israelite prophets. The roots of this model go back to the first part of the twentieth century, when older views of the prophets as individuals who stood oppositionally on the edge of society began to give way to an interest in the relationship of the prophets to the cult in ancient Israel and a sense that they were, in fact, integrally related to such societal institutions (see Hayes 1999: 316). Mowinckel (1921; see also Johnson 1962) led the way in arguing that the prophets did not simply use cultic forms of speech, but functioned within the realm of the temple and were often depicted as closely related to the priests (e.g., Jer. 23.11; 26.7, 16; 27.16; 35.4; Zech. 7.1-3). More specifically, within the general model of cultic functionary, some scholars proposed the role and office of the ‘covenant mediator’ as the definition of the phenomenon of Israelite prophecy: the prophets as functionaries who spoke at supposed covenant renewal ceremonies in Israel and whose preaching guarded and relied upon earlier covenant traditions (e.g., Von Rad 1965; Muilenburg 1967; Clements 1975). While some elements of ancient Near Eastern texts from Mari and Assyria bolstered portions of this model, scholarship in general has concluded that the cultic dimension was only an occasional or partial dimension of Israelite prophecy, and not its definitional or essential element (see recent summary in Petersen 2009a: 633-34).

Petersen’s (2000: 36) fourth rubric encompasses the analogy of ‘charismatics’, which returns to elements of the poets/individualists model: ‘The prophet possesses distinctive personal qualities, for example, charisma’. Weber (1964), for instance, saw prophets as individuals who had an extraordinary power and authority that attracted loyal bands of followers (perhaps the groups of prophets from some of the biblical depictions). They exercised this authority by working predominantly outside of and in opposition to traditional institutions. Predictably, criticism of this analogy has centered on its individualistic portrayal of prophecy over against institutions (see Blenkinsopp 1995: 117). Clements (1997) notes that charisma does not qualify as the defining element of Israelite prophecy, especially since the clearest sign of a prophet having such authority is that he achieved canonical status—something achieved by only a very few of those who presumably participated in the larger phenomenon of prophecy.

The fifth rubric of Petersen’s (2000: 37) typology, the ‘prophet is an intermediary’, encompasses several specific analogies that gained prominence in mid- to late twentieth-century scholarship. More significantly, the emergence of these analogies and the interpretation of evidence that undergirded them brought to fruition a major paradigm shift in research on Israelite prophecy by the 1970s and 1980s. As opposed to the classic historical-critical approach, these new perspectives solidified the approach to Israelite prophecy as part of an observable occurrence (‘phenomenon’) shared widely throughout the ancient world and marked by some general practices, functions, and social dynamics (Deist 1989). The foundation for this revised approach rested on comparative study of two particular sets of data: (1) cross-cultural sociological and anthropological data for ‘prophet-like’ figures in ancient and modern societies, which garnered new attention in the 1960s and 1970s, and (2) ancient Near Eastern prophetic texts, some of which were known already in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but only received widespread publication and sustained analysis in later decades (see Huffmon 1992; Nissinen 2003).

The first foundation of cross-cultural sociological and anthropological research on Israelite prophecy built upon the earlier use of these disciplines by scholars such as Hölscher (1914), which had departed from the notion of large-scale uniqueness for the Israelite prophets that had been prevalent in the late 1800s. This new research used anthropological field study data and selections of available texts to examine religious figures, such as shamans, spirit-mediums, and diviners, from other ancient and modern societies, such as Native American, African, and Indian. Data about the social identities, roles, and functions of these figures showed them to be ‘prophet-like’ individuals and allowed illuminating comparisons with Israelite prophets at the level of types and patterns. Rather than searching for correspondences in individual behaviors or the content of their messages, this study undertook a comparison on the level of social patterns and structures designed to illuminate the primary functions that might be shared by Israel’s prophets. Such analysis reached its heyday in the 1980s, particularly in the work of Wilson (1980), Buss (1980, 1981), Petersen (1981), Culley and Overholt (1981), and Overholt (1986, 1989). Wilson, for example, used cross-cultural parallels to foreground the issue of the prophets’ relationship to other social institutions within ancient Israel. He distinguished ‘central’ prophets, who operated in conjunction with institutions such as the temple and court, from ‘peripheral’ prophets, who stood outside of and in opposition to the central power structures, even as he separated the ‘Ephraimite or Northern’ prophetic tradition from the contemporaneous ‘Judean’ tradition (see also the distinction between urban and provincial Judean prophecy in Blenkinsopp 1996: 4). Similarly, Overholt compiled a ‘cross-cultural source book’ on prophecy that gathered texts related to ‘prophet-like individuals found among traditional peoples’ such as the Seneca Indians, African tribes, and the Pacific islanders (1986: vii, 4). Overholt compared the HB’s and other texts’ portrayals of the ‘making’ of such religious figures, their ‘behavioral characteristics’, and ‘social functions’. In his later work, Overholt (1989) developed these and other cross-cultural parallels and the light they shed on the dynamics of prophecy and its authorization within societies. Several works by Grabbe (1995, 2000, 2009, 2010) exemplify recent attempts to gather cross-cultural parallels and analogies for Israelite prophets. In one essay (2010), for instance, he presents eight potential cross-cultural parallels: Wana shamanship (Indonesia), Tenskwatawa (Ohio, USA), Dodo possession spirits of southern Niger, a spirit medium in Northern Uganda, Tromba spirits of northwest Madagascar, Hopi prophecy (American southwest), shamanism in the Mongol state, and Swahili possession cults. Grabbe sees these figures and movements as functional parallels only, in which one can identify similar types, behaviors, and themes to those found in the biblical prophets (on comparative themes, see Grabbe 2009).

Across the final decades of the twentieth century, the various sociological and anthropological studies gave rise to the conclusion that all of the religious figures being considered share the chief function of communicating messages or information from the divine or spirit world to the human world (e.g., Wilson 1980: 27-28; Overholt 1986: 9). As scholars compared the data for the Israelite prophets with that from these cross-cultural figures, this general function of intermediation seemed to be the underlying similarity. Beginning especially with Wilson (1980), ‘intermediary’ became the dominant label/analogy used to describe the overall nature of Israelite prophets (see also Overholt 1989: 4; Nissinen 2000: vii). An intermediary was a religious figure who stood between humans and the deity to transmit divine messages, and Israel’s prophets, it was argued, were part of that larger religious function known in different ways across various ancient and modern cultures.

The second foundation of comparative study that shaped the approaches under Petersen’s (2000: 37) rubric of ‘intermediaries’ was the analysis of ancient Near Eastern prophetic texts, especially those included in the collections from Mari and Assyria. Among numerous texts from throughout the ancient Near East that mention prophets and prophecy, only the Mari and Neo-Assyria corpora contain more than one or two references from a single context. As noted above, some of the ancient Near Eastern texts were already known in the late 1800s and early 1900s (see Hölscher 1914), but received widespread publication and analysis in the second half of the twentieth century (for the major publications of the Mari and Neo-Assyrian materials, see Durand 1988; Parpola 1997). For recent collections and studies of the relevant ancient Near Eastern texts, see Ringgren 1982; Huffmon 1992, 1997; Nissinen 1998, 2003, 2004; Köckert and Nissinen 2003; de Jong 2007; Petersen 2009a; Stökl 2012: 29-152.

Nissinen (2004: 25) has recently tabulated that the presently available ancient Near Eastern evidence consists of 140 individual texts, which comprise two basic kinds: (1) ‘oracles of deities in written form’ and (2) ‘references in documents of different kinds…that mention prophets, quote their sayings, or speak of their activities’ (for a collection of transcription and translations, see Nissinen 2003). The largest collection is the Mari texts from the eighteenth century bce, which consists of fifty letters, mostly addressed to the king, as well as some other documents (see Durand 1988; Huffmon 1992, 1997; Nissinen 2004). These prophets mainly address issues related to the king, especially concerning the kingdom’s political and religious life. The Neo-Assyrian corpus from Nineveh in the seventh century bce is the second largest. Parpola (1997) enumerates ten tablets with twenty-nine oracles addressed to Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, as well as more than twenty other texts of various kinds that mention or allude to prophets (see now Nissinen 1998; de Jong 2007; Lenzi 2008; Stökl 2012). Beyond the two largest collections, scholars have identified evidence for prophecy outside of the immediate area of Israel and Judah in individual texts from a variety of time frames and areas. These include letters, ritual texts, omens, and more, spanning the twenty-first to second centuries bce (see Nissinen 2004). These include proposed textual evidence from Ugarit (Wyatt 2007; cf. Stökl 2012: 18) and oracles of the goddess Kititum (Ishtar) at eighteenth-century Eshnunna, as well as debated cases such as two fourteenth-century plague prayers (Nissinen 2004: 27) and Zoroaster’s poetic dialogues (Gathas) with the creator god (Koch 1997; Gerstenberger 2009). From West Semitic sources within Syria-Palestine, scholars have primarily considered the Egyptian ‘Report of Wenamon’ set in Byblos (eleventh century bce), Zakkur Inscription from Hamath (early eighth century bce), Deir ‘Alla Inscription from the Transjordan (eighth century bce), and Amman Citadel Inscription of an oracle from Milkom (ninth century bce. See Ringgren (1982), Nissinen (2004) and Stökl (2012). Direct possible evidence for ancient Israelite prophets outside of the Bible has remained limited to two or three letters among the Lachish ostraca, with most scholars identifying references on ostraca 3.20 and 16.5, and some proposing an additional reference on ostracon 6.5 (see Blenkinsopp 1995: 123; Nissinen 2003: 212-18, 2004: 28, 2010: 7).

Within the study of comparative sources, one of the most active debates centers on the genre of texts known as ‘literary prophecies’ or ‘literary predictive texts’ and whether such texts constitute evidence for ancient Near Eastern prophecy (cf. Shupak 1989–90; Grabbe 1995; Nissinen 2003, 2004; Petersen 2009a; Radine 2010; Weeks 2010; Stökl 2012). Akkadian texts in this category include the Marduk Prophecy, Šulgi Prophecy, Uruk Prophecy, Dynastic Prophecy (Hallo 1997: I, 480-82). Egyptian texts in this category include the Sayings of Neferti, the Admonitions of Ipuwer, the Demotic Chronicle, and the Prophecy of the Lamb (Hallo 1997: I, 93-110). These compositions are oriented toward their own time, but depict this present as ‘the future time of the characters making the predictions’ (Weeks 2010: 38). The scholarly consensus traditionally rejected these texts as comparative sources for prophecy because, although they are predictive, they do not feature divine-human intermediation, and appear to be primarily literary compositions that do not reflect the kinds of ‘prophetic’ activities apparent in the Mari and Neo-Assyrian texts (e.g., Nissinen 2003, 2004; Stökl 2012: 14-15). The Sayings of Neferti, for example, do not connect the predictive message to communication from a deity, and most of the other texts lack any human intermediary who carries the predictive word. If one defines prophecy on the model of the Mari and Neo-Assyrian texts as divine communication to a human through another human primarily through oracular means, these texts do not seem to fit the phenomenon. This view has special significance for the question of whether prophecy existed in Egypt, since these literary predictive texts are the only potentially ‘prophetic’ Egyptian sources available (see Shupak 1989–90; Grabbe 1995: 86-94). By disqualifying the literary predictive texts, scholarship on the comparative ancient sources has traditionally concluded that Egypt was the one major exception to the existence of the social phenomenon of prophecy as intermediation in most cultures in the ancient Near East (e.g., Stökl 2012: 14-15).

Recently, however, some scholars have argued that the Akkadian and Egyptian literary predictive texts should be included in comparative sources for Israelite prophecy (Grabbe 1995; Radine 2010; Weeks 2010). This perspective has emerged partly out of a growing emphasis on the differences between the HB prophetic books, which are complex literary compositions with sophisticated poetry and artistry composed well after the time of the prophet(s) they describe, and the texts related to prophets from places such as Mari and Assyria, which are predominantly unpolished contemporary archives of prophetic words. From this starting point, some scholars have argued that the often discounted literary predictive texts make the best comparison for the prophetic compositions within the biblical literature (Radine 2010; Weeks 2010). The logical consequence of the use of the literary predictive texts, it is argued, is to question the assumed relationship between the biblical compositions and the social phenomenon of prophecy, and to emphasize the essential literary identity of Israelite prophecy (Grabbe 1995: 86-94; see below: 5. Current Paradigm Two). This view shifts the identification of prophecy away from the function of human intermediation to a set of literary expressions and conventions (see objections in Stökl 2012: 14-15).

Along with the question of the literary predictive texts, another debate over the nature of the sources, especially the more traditionally identified texts from places such as Mari and Assyria, has centered on the specific terms used to refer to figures engaging in ‘prophetic’ activity, and the comparison of those terms with vocabulary found in the HB (see the survey in Nissinen 2003). Terms such as muḫḫu(m) and āpilum in the Mari texts and raggimu in the Neo-Assyrian texts provided fertile ground for the study of prophecy’s relationship to cultic institutions and oracular inquiries. Stökl (2012) has recently reviewed the relevant terms and challenged previous theories that identified the muḫḫu(m) as professional prophets who engaged in ecstatic behavior, and the āpilum as ‘answerers’ to oracular inquiries rather than ‘spokespersons’ of divine messages.

Out of such discussions about sources, comparative study led scholars from the mid-twentieth century to a basic definition of prophecy that fits the rubric of intermediaries, and was thought to be shared across the various cultures and settings. As Huffmon (1992: 477) expressed it, ancient Near Eastern prophecy was ‘inspired speech at the initiative of a divine power, speech which is clear in itself and commonly directed to a third party’ (see also Grabbe 1995; Weippert 1997). This definition suggested that prophets throughout the ancient Near East were involved in various ways (both marginally and prominently, directly and indirectly) with the royal and cultic institutions of their day. At Mari, for example, some prophets engaged in criticism of the king, especially concerning cultic matters, and prophets at both Mari and Assyria occasionally addressed public audiences in order to influence behavior or opinion against the background of particular historical situations (Huffmon 1997: 18; Parpola 1997: xlv; Nissinen 2003). These characteristics seemed to many scholars to fit the impression of Judean prophets given by the sole Judean source outside the Bible in the Lachish otraca (see above). Even so, newer assessments of the ancient Near Eastern comparative data have increasingly recognized the need to seek more precise methodological principles for comparative study (see especially Nissinen 2010; Stökl 2012). This effort tries to take account of the diversity of the ancient Near Eastern materials—including both their similarities to and differences from the biblical texts—and the need to consider each representation of prophetic activity as a product of its own cultural setting (see Blenkinsopp 1995: 115; Nissinen 2003, 2010).

Overall, then, just like the sociological and anthropological data, the available ancient Near Eastern textual evidence suggests that there was an established practice of prophecy that centered, as Petersen’s (2000: 37) typology suggested, on intermediation (Nissinen 2004). In keeping with this rubric, two specific analogies emerged from comparative study in the last three decades and have remained operative. The analogy of prophets as ‘messengers’ found early expression in the work of Westermann (1967), who began with the conviction that the messenger speech and accompanying messenger formula were the primary form of prophetic discourse. Ross (1987) developed this analogy by drawing more directly upon the characteristics of royal messengers in the ancient Near East. On analogy with the king and royal court, the prophets located their authority in the one who sent them, and received their messages from the deity and divine council. Similarly, Holladay (1987) drew specifically upon Assyrian statecraft and diplomatic practices to offer the analogy of ‘royal heralds’. These heralds, Holladay posited, participated in the court’s deliberations and carried the word of the king out to other locations.

The final rubric of Petersen’s (2000: 38) typology, the ‘prophet has a distinctive message’, encompasses two analogies that emerged at different times in twentieth-century scholarship. Under the nineteenth-century influence of Wellausen, Duhm, and others, when the view of prophets shifted from ‘foretellers’ to ‘forthtellers’, an emphasis also emerged on morality as the defining characteristic of prophetic religion and preaching (see Hayes 1999; Wilson 2004). Scholars offered the model of ‘ethical monotheists’ to characterize the prophets. In this view, the Israelite prophets were bold champions of ethical religious practices, and stressed the individual and internal elements of religious experience. A similar analogy has its roots in an earlier generation, appearing immediately after the Protestant Reformation, but moving in a slightly different direction: prophets as ‘social reformers’. This analogy saw the prophets as challenging existing institutions related to religion, politics, and economics. Attention to this analogy highlighted again the differences between the biblical texts, in which prophets engage in significant social criticism of rulers and people, and the ancient Near Eastern sources, in which evidence for such criticism is limited. The ‘social reformers’ analogy gained new momentum in the mid-twentieth century due to the increasing prominence of cross-cultural sociological and anthropological study (e.g., Kapelrud 1961; Cohen 1979). In recent years, new formulations of this analogy have nuanced earlier, one-dimensional constructions that identified the victims of social injustice as peasants and subsistence farmers in villages, and proposed interpretations that question the dichotomy between cities and villages and highlight the plight of the working poor within the urban centers (Houston 2006, 2010). The major challenge to the social reformer analogy, however, has come from within German scholarship throughout the twentieth century (e.g., Schmidt 1973; Koch 1983). These scholars argued that the Israelite prophets first received a certain, yet non-rational, prediction of the future, and only then sought reasons in their societies to explain their vision of the future. At their essence, the prophets were not ‘cool-headed social critics’, but rather seers whose social criticism was secondary (Barton 2009: 74).

In spite of the vast diversity of twentieth-century models and analogies, the comparative study of cross-cultural sociological and anthropological data and the ancient Near Eastern prophetic texts solidified a phenomenological approach to Israelite prophecy (see Deist 1989). By the 1980s, this approach occupied center stage in prophetic study and led to the formulation of today’s major paradigms.

4. Current Paradigm One: Israelite Prophecy as a Socio-Historical Phenomenon

Since the 1980s, when approaching Israelite prophecy as part of a socio-historical phenomenon in ancient Near Eastern culture became established at the center of scholarship, the majority of research has developed this perspective into a now-dominant paradigm. Comparative sociological, anthropological, and textual analysis continues to provide the impetus for what is now the first of two major paradigms in prophetic study. The focus remains on shared behaviors, functions, and social dynamics, with the conviction that prophetic-type figures from Israel and Judah shared an essential commonality with those from elsewhere as part of a larger phenomenon of prophecy in the ancient world.

Some of the major contributors to the current articulations of this phenomenological paradigm include Huffmon (1992), Grabbe (1995), Blenkinsopp (1995, 1996), Weippert (1997), Nissinen (2000, 2003, 2009), Barstad (2000, 2009), de Jong (2007), and Stökl (2012). Many of their studies center on the use of ancient Near Eastern texts for understanding Israelite prophecy because they see such study as a way to overcome the lingering problem of dating, and the relationship among the various biblical and extrabiblical prophetic texts. Since it is difficult to date precisely the biblical prophetic texts, recent scholars increasingly ask ‘what kind of comparisons could be made without precise knowledge of the age and historical contexts of the texts’ (Nissinen 2010: 5). In the view of many interpreters, phenomenological comparisons provide the answer. Approaching the question of Israelite prophecy through comparative study of a phenomenon that crosses chronological and cultural lines alleviates the problem of dating. Although separated in some cases by several centuries and extensive processes of redaction, the HB and ancient Near Eastern prophetic texts share a common pattern visible at the phenomenological level (see Barstad 2009; Nissinen 2010).

In addition to the potential for dealing with the problem of dating, recent scholars find the phenomenological approach to Israelite prophecy able to deal with several questions that had plagued twentieth-century scholarship on the prophets, especially within the older historical-critical approaches. Deist (1989: 11) summarizes,

For instance, if the texts published under the prophets’ names contain very few real ‘prophetic words’, if the reconstruction of ‘oral tradition’ from literary texts is not really reliable, if the picture of a ‘prophet’ in Deuteronomistic texts differs fairly substantially from that in Chronistic texts…if the designation of the ‘classical prophets’ as ‘true prophets’ is to be ascribed to Deuteronomistic editors and not to the prophetic consciousness as such, what then was a prophet? (italics original)

For a significant number of scholars today, approaching Israelite prophecy as part of a larger cross-cultural, sociological phenomenon in the ancient world provides a way to navigate these issues and clarify the nature of Israelite prophets. The operative conviction is that although ‘no genetic relationship’ can be identified through phenomenological study, ‘[p]rophet-like individuals from different cultures share a certain “prophet-likeness”. This is the common ground on which they are compared’ (Stökl 2012: 6).

Within this paradigm, prophetic study since the 1980s has first and foremost strengthened the identification of the phenomenon of prophecy with the general social function of ‘intermediation’. Numerous contemporary scholars identify prophets as ‘intermediaries’—figures who reportedly function to receive a supernatural revelation, communicate it to persons and communities, and carry their concerns back to the deity (see Petersen 2009a: 624). As noted above, the identification of Israelite prophecy with the phenomenon of intermediation emerges especially from comparative sociological and anthropological studies of figures such as shamans, mediums, and diviners in ancient and modern societies (Wilson 1980, 2004; Petersen 1981; Overholt 1986, 1989). Overholt (1989), for example, surveys numerous cross-cultural examples of ‘prophet-like figures’ to advance the thesis that the social dynamics of intermediation involved not only the interaction between the deity and the prophet, but also the prophet and the audience in the context of certain social expectations. Hence, prophets worked within various channels of ‘feedback’, crafted their messages according to the society’s understanding of proper prophetic behavior, and received validation as a legitimate divine intermediary from their audience (Overholt 1989: 23). Increased comparative study of the ancient Near Eastern prophetic texts has also strengthened the idea that the intermediation of the divine is the common phenomenological denominator of biblical and ancient Near Eastern prophets. Nissinen, for instance, concludes that prophecy throughout the ancient Near East shared the primary function of mediating divine messages, and this definition is the only one comprehensive enough to account for all the evidence (see 1998, 2000, 2003; see also Petersen 2000). As the discussion of twentieth-century models and analogies has shown, scholars often debated whether certain aspects of prophecy such as the social and religious conditions of the activity, the personal qualities of the individuals, or the distinctive elements of the message constituted the defining essence of the phenomenon. By contrast, recent comparative study of the ancient Near Eastern texts suggests that these aspects were subordinate to the one ‘basic understanding of prophecy as a process of transmission’ (Nissinen 2003: 1).

Several works since the 1990s provide full articulations of Israelite prophecy’s connection with the phenomenon of intermediation. Weippert’s (1997: 197) definition of a ‘prophet’ has become standard:

[a] person who (a) through a cognitive experience (vision, an auditory experience, an audio-visual appearance, a dream or the like) becomes the subject of the revelation of a deity, or several deities and, in addition, (b) is conscious of being commissioned by the deity or several deities in question to convey the revelation in a verbal form (as a ‘prophecy’ or a ‘prophetic speech’) or through nonverbal communicative acts (‘symbolic acts’), to a third party who constitutes the actual addressee of the message (quoted in Petersen 2000: 39).

Similarly, Huffmon (1992: 477) defines prophecy as ‘inspired speech at the initiative of a divine power, speech which is clear in itself and commonly directed to a third party’. Grabbe (1995: 107) identifies a prophet as a ‘mediator who claims to receive messages directly from a divinity, by various means, and communicates these messages to recipients’. Nissinen (2004: 20) describes prophecy as ‘the activity of transmitting and interpreting the divine will’ (for similar definitions, see Barstad 1993; Blenkinsopp 1996; Crenshaw 2000; Petersen 2000; Kelle 2006; Stökl 2012). Petersen (2009a) attempts to refine and specify this definition for HB prophecy by arguing that the biblical texts present prophecy as a phenomenon of intermediation that arose especially at times of crisis and uncertainty when normal social relations and operations have been disrupted. Hence, Israelite prophecy was not limited to the monarchial period only, but was generated by contexts of crisis in the exilic and postexilic periods, as well (but cf. Blenkinsopp 1996: 154-57, and below, section 6c. ‘The Second Temple Period and the “End” of Prophecy’).

Some contemporary scholars have raised questions about the adequacy of certain elements of intermediation as the essential definition for the phenomenon of prophecy (e.g., the assessment of Weippert’s definition in Petersen 2000: 40). Some objections focus on whether the HB depictions actually reflect a primary function of intermediation for prophets (Balentine 1984), or whether Israelite prophets may have stood apart from a wider tradition of intermediation established among ancient Near Eastern prophets (Fenton 2001). Even so, the intermediary definition allows interpreters to take account of the great diversity in prophetic roles and functions depicted in the available evidence, but also to identify a general category that unites the various ‘prophetic’ figures and their observable actions (Petersen 2009a: 625). In this view, ‘prophet’ can designate those who mediate between the divine and human realms in some recognizably distinctive ways, but without necessarily being restricted to particular message content, institutional location, or personal/psychological qualities.

Alongside the primary identification of prophecy with the social phenomenon of intermediation, the current phenomenological paradigm identifies some distinctive elements that make ‘prophetic’ intermediation different from other kinds of intermediation that appear in biblical and extrabiblical texts (e.g., priestly practices). Foremost among these elements is the notion that prophecy is intermediation that occurs primarily through oral proclamation. The notion of prophets as ‘spokespersons’ who offer ‘inspired speech’ appears in many of the current definitions of the phenomenon (e.g., Huffmon 1992: 477; Weippert 1997: 197). Modern scholars recognize the presence of symbolic actions and other kinds of non-verbal behavior depicted in the biblical and extrabiblical texts, and some recent interpreters place more emphasis on the forms of prophetic communication that go beyond oral proclamation (see Petersen 1997, 2000). Nonetheless, a centerpiece of this first paradigm in current study is the conviction that ‘speaking’ in order to transmit divine messages was the ‘main characteristic’ of ancient prophets (Nissinen 2004: 19; see also Schmitt 1992: 482). For many interpreters, the HB texts seem to fit this conception well, as they predominantly depict the prophets as spokespersons associated with divine-human communication in the form of persuasive discourse and argumentation (Gitay 1981, 1996; Hayes 1988; Barton 1990; Nissinen 2004; Kelle 2005, 2006).

Alongside intermediation and oral proclamation, a third element in recent scholarship on Israelite prophecy as a socio-historical phenomenon constitutes the paradigm’s most burgeoning area of study. Several works since the 1980s reflect an emerging consensus that Israelite prophecy should be understood as a sub-type of the broader religious phenomenon of divination known throughout the ancient world. As Edelman (2009: 49 n. 6) recently summarized, ‘There has been a growing recognition that prophecy was one of many distinctive ways to determine the divine will and was an integral form of ancient Near Eastern divination’. In this sense, ‘divination’ refers most generally to institutions and practices designed to ascertain and make known the divine will through a variety of manipulative means, often featuring but not restricted to the use of physical objects and mechanical actions (see Grabbe 2010: 128; Nissinen 2010: 15). The seeds of this identification appeared already in Blenkinsopp’s classic statement, which linked early Israelite prophetic groups with local sanctuaries and the mediation of the divine will especially concerning warfare and the cult (1996: 32). Likewise, Koch (1983: 7) identified prophecy as one ‘trend among many in the manticism’ known throughout the ancient Near East. More recently, Cryer (1991, 1994) establishes links among ancient prophecy, magic, and divination. Overholt (1989: 141), however, provides the most explicit explanation that the identification of prophecy as a type of divination depends upon a phenomenological approach that focuses on the comparable functions of various religious intermediaries in society rather than their specific actions or content:

To speak of divination and prophecy as in some respects ‘different’ implies an emphasis on the observable activities of the bearers of these roles… To speak of them as the ‘same’ assumes that the most relevant point of comparison is the social function of intermediation/communication.

More recent articulations have strengthened prophecy’s identification as a type of divination. For example, Nissinen (2003: 1; see also 2004, 2010) defines prophecy as ‘another, yet distinctive branch, of the consultation of the divine that is generally called “divination”’, and Leclerc (2007: 36) identifies it as ‘part of a larger religious tradition that seeks to establish communication between divine beings and humans’. Most recently, Stökl (2012: 7, 10) surveys the ancient Near Eastern prophetic texts and concludes that prophecy, magic, and divination are ‘not as distinct as previously thought’, and prophecy represents a subcategory of the defining religious category of divination (see also Ellis 1989; Grabbe 1995: 139-55; Weippert 1997; Petersen 2000; Barstad 2002; Cancik-Kirschbaum 2003; Kitz 2003; de Jong 2007; Scurlock 2010). The effort to overcome traditional scholarly dichotomies that saw a substantial qualitative difference between prophecy and divination stands at the heart of these new approaches (see Nissinen 2004: 21; 2010: 17). The traditional tendency to sharply differentiate prophecy from divination owes much of its origins to the HB, which contains some acknowledgment that prophecy is a form of divination (1 Sam. 28.6; see Grabbe 1995: 139) and allows certain divinatory practices, but condemns most types of divination. The biblical texts use various terms whose meanings are not always clear to designate persons who practice divination (e.g., soothsayer, augur, sorcerer; see Overholt 1989: 118-25). They also describe several specific acts for seeking the divine will, including the use of Urim and Thummim (Num. 27.21; 1 Sam. 14.41), inquiring of an ephod (1 Sam. 23.9-12), and casting lots (Josh. 18.6-10). Handy (2007: 62-64) categorizes the different personnel alluded to in the texts into four categories: (1) professional, technical intermediaries (omen readers, professional court staff), (2) professional non-technical intermediaries (court prophets, ecstatics), (3) amateur technical intermediaries (‘sorcerers’ and omen readers outside the professional hierarchy), and (4) amateur non-technical intermediaries (‘prophets outside of the professional guilds and royal court’). He observes that only the amateur, non-technical prophets and professional technical diviners (such as priests using Urim and Thummim or lots) are characteristically accepted by the biblical writers.

In conjunction with the complex biblical assessments of different methods of divination, recent arguments for the identification of prophecy as a sub-type of ancient divination rely heavily upon evidence from ancient Near Eastern texts (see Weippert 1997; Nissinen 2004; Stökl 2012). From this perspective, many scholars add the specification that prophecy represents the particular sub-type of divination designated by a variety of labels in current studies: ‘non-inductive’, ‘intuitive’, ‘non-technical’, or ‘mediated’. Contemporary research increasingly takes divination as the general religious category and then distinguishes between non-technical/intuitive divination (prophecy) and technical/inductive divination (extispicy, haruspicy, astrology, etc.) (Koch 1983; Weippert 1997; Nissinen 2004, 2010; Leclerc 2007; de Jong 2007; Stökl 2012). Prophecy, then, is a type of divination in which knowledge of the divine will is received ‘intuitively’ (visions, auditions, dreams, observations, etc.) without the manipulation of physical objects or the need for technical training. As Nissinen (2010: 15) observes, technical, instrumental, or inductive divination in Mesopotamian society was practiced by ‘academics’ who specialized in astrology or examination of animal entrails, and were linked to ‘literary and scribal education’. By contrast, prophets were often linked to the social institutions of temples and the cult and did not rely on learned technical skills. Stökl (2012: 10) offers the most recent and nuanced articulation: he divides the general role of ‘diviner’ into ‘technical diviner’ and ‘intuitive diviner’ and further divides ‘intuitive diviner’ into ‘dreamer’ and ‘prophet’. Hence, a prophet is one specific kind of ‘intuitive diviner’ within the broad phenomenological category of ‘diviner’.

In conjunction with the identification of prophecy as intuitive/non-technical divination (as opposed to inductive/technical divination), Stökl (2012: 13, 37-38) has recently articulated a second key identification/distinction: ‘professional’ versus ‘lay’ prophets. He argues that this distinction within the socio-historical phenomenon of prophecy is essential for understanding the biblical and extrabiblical evidence (for challenges to this proposal, see de Jong 2007: 327-38; Gafney 2008: 69). In Stökl’s view, ‘professional’ prophets were those whose primary social function was to serve as a prophet, and ‘lay’ prophets were those who had another primary social role (e.g., a role in the cult or service to a wealthier citizen) but occasionally engaged in prophecy as intermediation primarily through oral proclamation. This distinction helps to clarify the various terms used to designate figures who engage in prophecy in both the biblical and extrabiblical texts, as well as the different behaviors with which they are associated. In the Mari texts, for instance, Stökl (2012: 14, 37) proposes that the figures labeled ‘muḫḫum’—who are most often associated with ecstatic behavior—were not professional prophets (unlike the āpilum), but were cultic officials who occasionally prophesied as ‘lay’ prophets. Hence, the ecstatic behaviors associated with them should not be seen as definitional for the phenomenon of prophecy. Likewise, most of the classical HB prophets were only ‘lay’ prophets, who had other primary social roles (e.g., priest). Therefore, they were not typically labeled with the Hebrew term navi^ɔ, which was the primary designation for professional prophets until the postexilic period, when it took on a broader connotation.

5. Current Paradigm Two: Israelite Prophecy as a Literary Phenomenon

As the approach to Israelite prophecy as a socio-historical phenomenon has continued to develop in recent years, prophetic scholarship since the 1990s especially has featured an increasing emphasis on the literary character of the HB prophetic books and the pressing question of whether these books provide accurate access to an actual phenomenon of prophecy in ancient Israel. These concerns have given rise to a second paradigm in current study of the phenomenon of Israelite prophecy (for general discussion, see Wilson 2004; Nissinen 2004, 2009). In general terms, scholars working within this paradigm identify the prophetic books as relatively late literary creations of scribes in the postmonarchic period, whose depictions of prophets and prophecy cannot be used reliably to recover the reality of prophecy in the ancient world in any meaningful or extensive way—whatever the forms of such reality may have been. In other words, the HB texts are the only extensive source for Israelite prophecy, and Israelite prophecy as we know it from these texts was created through a literary process. While not denying the possible reality of Israelite prophets and their activity, this second paradigm maintains that Israelite prophecy as we have access to it is first and foremost a literary/written/scribal phenomenon that is part of a larger ideological discourse among intellectuals in postmonarchic Judah, and does not bear any direct relationship to the realities of prophecy throughout the ancient Near East. The biblical prophetic books themselves constitute the phenomenon of Israelite prophecy, and they, rather than historical or social reconstructions of purported prophets and their activities, should be the object of study.

As this general description indicates, the primary background element that has given rise to the current literary paradigm is a renewed emphasis on the HB prophetic books as postmonarchic literary products of creative scribes, who fashioned new compositions designed to address their own historical and social circumstances. This view departs from traditional theories of the development of the prophetic books, which began with form and redaction criticisms’ focus on brief units (oral or written) supposedly originating with the prophets themselves. The traditional approaches espoused an evolutionary model in which the prophet’s original words passed through a longer or shorter history of collection and editing, overseen by the original prophet’s followers (‘disciples’), and eventually resulted in complex literary compositions whose developmental layers could still be discerned in the texts (see Gunkel 1925; Engnell 1970; Koch 1983: 165-68; Schmitt 1992; Blenkinsopp 1996; Crenshaw 2000; Barstad 2009; Troxel 2012). By contrast, scholars working within this second current paradigm identify the prophetic books as literary creations generated primarily by Persian-period literati, and not as the result of a transmission process that goes back to the historical prophets. Edelman (2009), for instance, suggests that scribes selected the prophetic personages mentioned in the books from a large corpus of materials, perhaps even archives from some historical prophets, and then developed various oracles, dreams, visions, etc. found within that corpus into compositions addressing their own time (see also Ben Zvi 2009a). Even the parts of the books usually identified as vestiges of older materials may, it is argued, more accurately represent the innovative work of the scribal creator of each canonical collection (Davies 2000; Edelman 2009). The upshot of these views is the conviction that, since the HB prophetic books are not archival preservations of prophetic words and activity, but are instead creative constructions of the past by scribes from a later era, they cannot serve as reliable sources for reconstructing the socio-historical phenomenon of ancient prophecy (Edelman and Ben Zvi 2009; Ben Zvi 2009a, 2009b). Rather, the study of Israelite prophecy must focus on the phenomenon of the biblical books themselves, in the final shape in which we have access to them.

A second background element that has given rise to today’s literary paradigm begins with the present form of the HB prophetic books and emphasizes their fundamental dissimilarity to the ancient Near Eastern prophetic texts. Several scholars note that the biggest difference between ancient Near Eastern and Israelite prophecy is the literature associated with each: ‘How is it that while the rest of the ancient Near East has left us isolated prophetic oracles, ancient Israel has left us books?’ (Troxel 2012: 10; see also Ben Zvi 2009b; Edelman 2009; Petersen 2009a: 628). Neo-Assyrian and Mari texts, for example, are predominantly reports of the prophecy of living individuals produced not long after their proclamation, but the HB texts are crafted literary compositions (Ben Zvi 2009a). For some current scholars, this difference constitutes further evidence that the biblical texts do not provide access to a socio-historical phenomenon of Israelite prophecy that stands behind the compositions, at least not in the same way that the ancient Near Eastern texts do (e.g., Ben Zvi 2009a, 2009b; Radine 2010; Weeks 2010; Troxel 2012).

Based on these background elements, the perspectives within this second current paradigm emerged in earnest in the 1980s and 1990s, with special attention to the book of Jeremiah. In a series of articles in JSOT (see now Davies 1996), Auld (1983) made one of the initial challenges to the historicity of the label ‘prophet’ attached to the biblical figures, suggesting instead that the biblical prophets are primarily literary creations of the postexilic period, and Carroll (1983) proposed that the prophets were originally poets who were only secondarily identified as ‘prophets’ who mediate the divine word. In response to some early critiques (Williamson 1983; Overholt 1990b), Auld (1990) and Carroll (1990) acknowledged that the biblical picture of prophecy generally fits with the ancient social phenomenon known from elsewhere, but maintained that this does not demonstrate the historicity of the biblical figures and their activities (see also Davies 1998; Auld 2003; but cf. Overholt 1990a; Barstad 1993). These early articulations advanced the primary argument that one cannot use the biblical texts in order to access whatever the reality of the phenomenon of Israelite prophecy was, and scholars should instead focus their concentration on the literary products themselves. Israelite prophecy, as far as it could be reconstructed reliably, was most directly a literary phenomenon.

In the years since these early formulations, new studies of the issue of orality and literacy in ancient Israel have played an increasingly prominent role for scholars working within this second paradigm. New investigations have focused on the nature of oral literature and culture, levels of literacy within the ancient Near East, and the relationship between oral and written literature (e.g., Niditch 1996; Young 1998a, 1998b; Schniedewind 2004; Carr 2005; Schaper 2005; Rollston 2010). Throughout the twentieth century, prophetic research included debates over the role of oral versus literary tradition in the production and preservation of prophetic words (e.g., Mowinckel 1946; Nielsen 1954; for a survey of works on oral literature in the second half of the twentieth century, see Overholt 1986: 314-29). By the year 2000, however, Ben Zvi (2000: 2) could assert that ‘questions of “writtenness” and “orality” stand at the heart of issues central to the study of the prophetic books in the Hebrew Bible, prophets and prophecy in ancient Israel, and Israelite history at large’ (see also Stulman and Kim 2010). Studies of orality and literacy have typically concluded that the transition from an oral to a written culture was gradual, with both oral and written literature co-existing and interacting for a long period (see Niditch 1996; Young 1998a, 1998b; Ben Zvi 2000; Schniedewind 2004; Rollston 2010). Even so, some recent studies have argued that, while Israel did have formal literary education for scribal elites from as early as the tenth or ninth centuries bce, literacy rates (i.e., the ability to read and write using a standardized system) among the general population outside of the professional scribal class were low (e.g., Ben Zvi and Floyd 2000; Rollston 2010; but cf. Millard 1995; Hess 2002; Schniedewind 2004). For many scholars working within this second, literary paradigm, these findings seem to undermine traditional assumptions that prophets or their followers wrote the prophetic books as records of oral proclamation, and to confirm the notion that the biblical prophetic texts are late, scribal productions that were accessible to a limited audience of trained literati (Ben Zvi and Floyd 2000; Ben Zvi 2000; Davies 2000; Troxel 2012; cf. Crenshaw 2000). For example, Ben Zvi (2000: 21; see also Culley 2000) explains the presence of elements resembling oral address in the prophetic books as products of the literary scribes’ being influenced by Israel’s traditionally oral culture, and by the scribes’ practice of reading aloud to non-literate audiences.

Since the year 2000, scholarship has yielded stronger and more developed articulations of all the elements of this second current paradigm of prophetic study. These works continue to question the link between the biblical depictions and the historical phenomena, and intensify the focus on the production of the prophetic books as creative compositions by scribes in the postmonarchic period. They share the perspective that identifies Israelite prophecy first and foremost as literature created by these literati, that is, as a literary, rather than a socio-historical phenomenon. Numerous works by Ben Zvi (2000, 2003, 2005, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c; Ben Zvi and Floyd 2000; Edelman and Ben Zvi 2009) exemplify these newer articulations by arguing that biblical prophecy developed as a written phenomenon detached from the social-historical roots of ancient Near Eastern prophecy. Persian-period scribes constructed the images of past prophets as part of a larger ideological discourse (see also Davies 2000; de Moor 2001; Sweeney 2005; Floyd 2006; Edelman 2009; Weeks 2010; de Jong 2011). In this view, the ‘authoritative prophetic book’ represents a concept that only developed in the postmonarchic setting and, though claiming association with a prophetic personage, it deliberately served to de-historicize the presentation of past prophets in order that their words could provide ‘social cohesion’ and ‘self-identity’ to a new community (Ben Zvi 2009a: 75; see also Ben Zvi 2003, 2005; Conrad 2003). Ben Zvi (2009c) also challenges the usual conclusion that the HB prophetic books developed as distinct, independent compositions, arguing instead that they developed in an integrative way as one social group in postmonarchic Judah read and re-read a shared set of ideas and images (see also Gerstenberger 2009). These insights from the second current paradigm have contributed to recent ‘Book of the Twelve’ approaches that regard the composition and content of the so-called Minor Prophets as a unified and coherent process and product (e.g., House 1990; Nogalski 1993a, 1993b; Redditt 2000, 2001, 2003, 2008; but cf. Ben Zvi 1996).

The perspectives within the literary paradigm of contemporary study have generated some significant critiques, often from the perspective of the socio-historical paradigm described above. Some scholars question the conclusion that purposeful scribal editing indicates a late, literary phenomenon by noting that the same kind of scribal selection, editing, and composition appears within a shorter time frame in the Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian prophetic texts (de Jong 2007: 436-37; Stökl 2012: 26, 218) . One Assyrian tablet (SAA 9 1) even seems to have been compiled from earlier sources that were reshaped at the accession of Ashurbanipal (Nissinen 2010: 9), and some of the recent studies on literacy suggest that ancient scribes were capable of significant literary activity as early as the ninth century bce (Rollston 2010: 134). Other scholars reassert the importance of the similarities between Israelite prophets and other ‘prophetic’ figures from the ancient Near East and elsewhere at the level of social functions and dynamics (Barstad 1993; 2000). Ultimately, however, the new approaches within this second paradigm foreground the question of whether Israelite prophecy is better understood as a ‘literary phenomenon rather than a social institution’ (Davies 2009: 69; see also Davies 2000; Nissinen 2009). In so doing, they leave interpreters to ponder how sharply one should distinguish between ancient Israelite/Hebrew prophecy and biblical/literary prophecy (see Conclusion).

6. Traditional Questions and New Lines of Inquiry

Within both socio-historical and literary approaches, contemporary study of the phenomenon of ancient Israelite prophecy since the 1980s has featured the reconsideration of some traditional questions and the pursuit of previously unexplored lines of inquiry. Both of these elements have emerged from insights gained within the two major paradigms described above. Not all of the reformulations and new lines of inquiry are novel, yet they now receive increased attention in ways not achieved in earlier periods.

7. Conclusion

Recent scholarship on the phenomenon of Israelite prophecy has addressed a wide range of questions and employed various methodological approaches that often reflect the changing trends within biblical studies in general. Now, in the opening decades of the twenty-first century, two major paradigms exist side by side in a creative tension. The first paradigm sees ancient Israelite prophecy as a social and historical phenomenon. It focuses on defining behaviors and social dynamics, with the conviction that prophetic-type figures from different cultures shared an essential commonality in identity, function, and practice as part of a larger phenomenon of prophecy in the ancient Near East. The second current paradigm presents ancient Israelite prophecy as an essentially literary phenomenon. It builds upon the recognition of the literary character of the prophetic books, as well as the pressing question of whether the HB texts provide accurate access to a real phenomenon of prophecy in ancient Israel. Scholars working within this paradigm approach the prophetic books as literary and ideological compositions produced by scribal literati in the postmonarchic period, making these depictions of prophets and prophecy late creations.

Presently, the socio-historical paradigm holds the central place in scholarship on the phenomenon of ancient Israelite prophecy. Especially prominent is the conclusion drawn from comparative study of ancient Near Eastern texts and sociological and anthropological models that Israelite prophecy in its essence was a kind of intermediation between the human and divine, and a sub-type of (non-technical) divination known in various forms throughout the ancient world. The increasing prominence of the second, literary paradigm, however, highlights several lingering challenges for future work within the first, socio-historical paradigm. Future study must continue to wrestle with the most basic question of the relationship between the literary texts and the external socio-historical phenomenon of prophecy (see Barstad 2000). Scholars seeking the external phenomenon must still begin with the available literary texts, confronting the apparent reality that the most adequate comparison concerning Israelite prophecy is at the literary level with other non-biblical texts, rather than with the activity that supposedly generated the texts (Nissinen 2010). Given these and other lingering challenges, Davies concludes that future research on ancient Israelite prophecy faces one overarching question: ‘Is biblical prophecy, then, a social phenomenon or a literary one? If both, what is the connection between ancient Israelite/Judaean intermediaries and the biblical prophetic literature?’ (1996: 14, emphasis original).

In response to these ongoing issues, a number of current scholars, especially those working within the first major paradigm, increasingly propose a guiding distinction that seems likely to mark future scholarship on the phenomenon of ancient Israelite prophecy. For instance, Nissinen (2004, 2009, 2010) proposes that future work must distinguish carefully between ‘Ancient Hebrew Prophecy’ and ‘Biblical Prophecy’. The former refers to the social and historical phenomenon present in ancient Israel, within which persons recognized as prophets mediated divine messages. The latter designates literary representations connected with canon formation that do not necessarily represent the ancient realities of the prophetic phenomenon. The use of this distinction acknowledges that written Israelite prophecy is now known only in creative, exegetical, and scribal reinterpretations from the Second Temple period, and these reinterpretations likely distort the picture of the preexilic social phenomenon (Nissinen 2004: 28-31). In contrast to some voices within today’s second, literary paradigm, however, this view suggests that interpreters need not define the phenomenon of ancient Israelite prophecy in terms of the HB literature, but can gain access to the socio-historical phenomenon hidden within these texts by using the comparative models derived from other ancient Near Eastern texts and sociological and anthropological data (Nissinen 2009). Still, future scholarship, as is presently the case, will likely feature differing views on the amount of connection between ‘ancient Hebrew’ and ‘biblical’ prophecy, and the level to which one must ‘disengage the texts from the phenomenon’ (Weeks 2010: 29).

Overall, the current state of research on the phenomenon of ancient Israelite prophecy indicates a level of complexity that resists any singular approach. Future scholars will perhaps benefit most by holding today’s various approaches and paradigms in a creative tension rather than seeking to establish one to the exclusion of the other. Moreover, the multiple dimensions, approaches, and paradigms that mark current study suggest that scholars should no longer conceive of ancient Israelite prophecy as a single phenomenon, but perhaps as a set of related phenomena that may include historical, social, anthropological, religious, and literary aspects. This approach opens the door for future study to employ cross-disciplinary and collaborative efforts in order to explore what the various ‘prophetic’ phenomena are and how, if at all, they may be related to one another.