In Paul's Letters, and in particular in 1 Corinthians, prophecy as an early Christian phenomenon is understood as a divinely appointed speech act which addresses people in the interest of edifying the church 1 Cor , As such, early Christian prophecy counts among spiritual gifts Rom ; 1 Cor , 4 and prophets rank second to apostles in Paul's view of the church 1 Cor Yet in view of all this Pauline versatility regarding prophecy, the question is how we should read prophecy and the prophetic in Paul's Letters contextually.
That is, discussions of the broader contexts of Early Judaism and emerging Christianity diverge remarkably on the Nachleben of the biblical tradition of prophecy and its significance in the Second Temple period.
On the one hand, scholarship regarding the alleged "cessation of prophecy" in early Judaism emphasizes the discontinuity in succession of biblical prophets since the time of Ezra onwards, and the lack of evidence for the appearance of prophets in later times. Mk 9;; Lk , and authority cf.
Mk , as well as prophetic expectations related to the early Jesus-movement as illustrated in the Gospels and Acts. The workings and reception of prophecy are not only determined by a process of sender, message, prophet, and recipients in the immediate literary setting of a text. A larger communal setting also plays a pivotal role in understanding prophecy. So far scholarship has focused much attention on the prophetic self-understanding of Paul as apostle, 8 and on intertextuality with prophetic literature, in particular Isaiah.
My contextual reading of relevant sections in 1 Cor will aim to answer the following questions:. Cook , and a prolific prophetism in emerging Christianity, as noted above, impact the understanding of prophecy in Paul's Corinthian correspondence?
Which sense of "prophecy" does Paul have in mind in his discussion of spiritual gifts 1 Cor and how does this relate to ideas about prophecy at the time? What does prophetic performance do in the communal setting of the Corinthian audience, as inferred from 1 Cor ?
It is the working hypothesis of this article that the imagined worlds of Judaism, Jewish Hellenism, the larger missionary Jesus-movement, and the Greek environment all mattered to Paul's Corinthian audience in greater or lesser degrees, in regard to his apostolic instructions and theological discourses. In 1 Cor , Israel's biblical past is invoked by Paul, who gives a typological interpretation of the biblical narrative on Israel's wanderings in the wilderness 11 for instruction against the Corinthians' overconfidence in face of temptations to idol worship.
This issue of idol worship is reiterated at the beginning of 1 Corr Just before considering spiritual gifts, among which is prophecy, Paul warns the Corinthian audience against pagan backgrounds of idolatry amongst themselves 1 Cor Therefore, Judaism and Jewish Hellenism, 15 the early church and the Greek environment are all contexts which need to be taken into account in the study of prophecy and the prophetic as aspects of Paul's theology in 1 Cor The outline of the structure of this essay is as follows.
I will consecutively highlight:. Cook in see note 5 and the first question to be answered above ;. In my evaluation and conclusions, I aim to answer questions on the communal settings of prophecy in 1 Cor against the broader contexts noted above.
Contexts of prophecy in Biblical and early Jewish tradition. The phenomenon of prophecy has a longstanding background in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East, 16 where oracles of salvation as well as of doom could be mediated as divine messages by prophetic figures to individuals or groups. Yet in the traditional view of biblical prophecy, the "classical prophecy" of Israel is seen as belonging to the monarchical period, followed by a decline in the post-exilic period. The question of the so-called "cessation of prophecy" in early Second Temple Judaism, during the Persian period, has recently been addressed by L.
Stephen Cook, who concluded that "Second Temple Jews did, on the whole, tend to believe that prophecy had ceased in the Persian period". In this line of thought, early Christian prophetism would constitute a return of prophecy as a phenomenon of inspired mediation of a divine message rather than a direct continuation of prophecy from the Hebrew Bible onwards into the time of Jesus.
In studies since the s, various types of discontinuity have further been noted with regard to prophecy, not so much in terms of "cessation" but of transition. The following types of transition have been suggested in previous scholarship regarding the Second Temple period:. In these scholarly views, a disjunction with as well as elaborations on the prophetic heritage of ancient Israel may tentatively be discerned in Second Temple Judaism.
Since Paul wrote his Letters by the time of the late Second Temple period, I will now turn to early Jewish ideas about prophecy in order to highlight contexts of thought about prophecy in ancient Judaism preceding and contemporaneous with emerging Christianity. Next to being sent by God to proclaim the word of God, the following features of prophecy recur across the works of various authors of early Jewish literature:.
The texts to which this section now turns for illustration concern the Dead Sea Scrolls from Israel and the writings of Flavius Josephus as evidence of Jewish Hellenism. The Dead Sea Scrolls roughly cover the time-span from the second century B. On the other hand, parabiblical expansions on prophetic books, such as Pseudo-Ezekiel and the Apocryphon of Jeremiah from Qumran cave 4, 24 illustrate permeable textual boundaries in literary elaboration on the Prophets. These literary matters are not considered in Cook's book on the "cessation of prophecy".
Jewish Hellenism: Evidence from Josephus. As for Jewish Hellenism, we may briefly consider prophecy in Flavius Josephus, whose writings date to the end of the first century C. Crucial evidence for the "cessation" hypothesis regarding Josephus is his statement about the "failure of the exact succession of the prophets" from the time of Artaxerxes onwards Ag.
First, one should carefully distinguish the end of the line of biblical prophets with the scriptural status of their writings from the ongoing phenomena of prophecy and prophetic inspiration in Josephus' works. Josephus attributes the gift of prophecy to John Hyrcanus J. Cook also surveys prophetic phenomena in Josephus. A second caveat concerns the consideration of Josephus' works for evidence on "false prophecy". Perhaps 70 C. It may suffice to note the different perspectives on false prophets in, for instance, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus respectively.
In fact, Josephus relates the cause of the Jewish war against Rome to a fatal misjudgement of prophetic oracles about rulership in the East J. On a final note, the terminus post quem holds a fortiori for a post C. Thus in 2 Baruch Yet prophets are described as "sleeping" and the people are only left with the Mighty One and his Law, under the circumstance that "we have left our land, and Zion has been taken away from us" 2 Baruch Prophecy and prophetism in emerging Christianity.
The study of prophecy and prophetism in emerging Christianity yields a relatively divided picture. On the one hand, New Testament writings provide abundant indications of prophecy and prophets at the origins of Christianity. For instance, the Synoptic Gospels include popular ideas about Jesus as a prophet, like one of the prophets of old Mk ; cf. Lk as well as about John the Baptist as a real prophet Mk , next to the distinct expectation of restoration through the return of Elijah Mk supported by the scribes.
Luke's infancy narrative further mentions Zechariah's act of prophesying who considers John as prophet of the Most High Lk According to the narrative of Acts, prophets, and among them Agabus, were part of the missionary Jesus-movement's contacts between Jerusalem and Antioch Acts , , In Acts , it is Agabus, who prophetically forewarns Paul about dangers involved in his return to Jerusalem. Beyond these examples from the Gospels and Acts, many more passages could be adduced to illustrate the existence of prophets and prophecy in the early church.
Yet on the other hand, Christian prophecy was characterized by D. Aune as a "relatively unstable and unstructured institution within early Christianity". Luz situated a crisis of early Christian prophecy in the third generation of Christianity, by the end of the first century C. What then should we think about prophecy at the origins of emerging Christianity?
In his comments on offices in the early church, U. Schnelle has taken the citation of Joel about the outpouring of the Spirit applied to "the latter days" in Acts as evidence for early Christian prophetic convictions. That is, the Jerusalem church was convinced that "the time of the cessation of prophecy was over and that the Spirit of God was now at work again".
Another way of probing the significance of prophecy at the origins of emerging Christianity is to evaluate its role in Christianity's earliest documents, Paul's Letters, to which I will now turn. Prophecy in the Pauline letters. In Paul's theology, promises about the Christ as Son of God from the line of David have been mediated beforehand "through his prophets in the holy scriptures" Rom and find their fulfilment in the gospel of God Rom As such, biblical prophecy precedes the apostleship as literary model Rom All three figure in Paul's theological discourse on Israel in Romans It is beyond the focus of this essay to consider intertextuality with biblical prophecy more broadly.
Previous scholarship has recurrently pointed out intertextuality with biblical prophets in passages about Paul's calling and self-understanding as an apostle, such as in Romans and Galatians At any rate, in 1 Corinthians, Paul recurrently quotes from the book of Isaiah. Next to biblical prophecy, we need to consider settings of early Christian prophecy in Paul's Letters briefly, before turning to 1 Corinthians, in particular to sections in 1 Cor Prophetic speech is part of Paul's concerns from his earliest correspondence, his first letter to the Thessalonians, onwards.
Thus, in 1 Thessalonians , Paul includes the following advice in his concluding exhortation:. This statement correlates the presence of the Spirit with the gift of prophesying, 42 but also makes the critical point of testing everything.
Analogously, prophecy and the ability to distinguish between spirits are consecutively coupled in 1 Cor as complementary gifts, 43 somehow as various kinds of tongues and the interpretation of tongues are coupled in the same verse. Further, 1 Cor correlates prophetic speech with weighing what is said. Even though OT prophecy is distinct from early Christian prophecy in Paul's theology, the two may also be found correlated in his Letters. While scholarship is divided between maximal and minimal identifications of early Christian forms of prophetic speech in Paul's Letters, 44 1 Cor and Rom are most recurrently identified as such.
Both passages are surrounded by citations of biblical prophecy, both from the book of Isaiah, Isa in 1 Cor , followed by Hos in 1 Cor , and Isa a with Isa in Rom The revelation of a mystery which Paul voices in his eschatological visions with exegetical reference to biblical prophecy was not unknown to ancient Judaism.
With regard to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the contemporizing exegesis of the prophets of old as a "prophetic experience" has been framed "revelatory exegesis" in a recent study by A.
Early Christian prophecy ranks prominently among Pauline lists of spiritual gifts, as we may infer from Rom and from 1 Cor as well as When prophecy is mentioned as the first "gift according to the grace given to us" in Rom RSV , its character as a gift has been recurrently interpreted as inspired speech.
I will return to some of these homiletic functions, when considering sections in 1 Cor Toward rereading 1 Corinthians Turning to 1 Cor for relevant passages on prophecy, it should be noted that this larger section has long been recognised as key evidence about early Christian prophecy. The literary unity of 1 Cor as a larger section regarding divine gifts of the Spirit has recently been underscored by Soeng Yu Li, who considers prophecy as major paradigm in Paul's exposition on these gifts for a future-oriented faith community.
Paul also mentions the interpretation of "spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit" 1 Cor , RSV , when speaking about the secret and hidden wisdom of God 1 Cor Yet the constraints which the apostle meets when corresponding with his Corinthian audience are disunity, dissensions and factionalism 1 Cor This prevents Paul from addressing them as "spiritual people" and leaves them for the moment as people of flesh 1 Cor With this overall setting of 1 Cor within 1 Corinthians at large in mind, I now discuss aspects of prophecy in 1 Cor , , , and a, with a view to contextual reading.
Throughout this variety of spiritual things and the variety of modalities gifts, ministries, workings in 1 Cor , Paul stresses their service to the common good 1 Cor Prior to the year , Augustine was much more sympathetic to a divinatory view of divine providence than in his later years.
In a sermon he delivered in the early s, shortly before his ordination as bishop in , he surveyed the modes of divine communication in what looks very much like a classification of the forms of Christian divination: Now there are many ways in which God speaks with us. At times he speaks through an instrument, as through a codex of the divine scriptures per codicem divinarum scripturarum.
He speaks through a heavenly body, as he spoke to the Magi through a star per stellam …He speaks through a lot per sortem , just as he spoke concerning the choice of Matthias in place of Judas. He speaks through the human soul per animam humanam , as through a prophet per prophetam. He speaks through an angel per angelum , just as we understand him to have spoken to certain patriarchs and prophets and apostles.
He speaks through a creature per…creaturam endowed with speech and sound, just as we read and believe of voices produced from the heavens, although no one is visible to the eye. The scriptures, the stars, lots, prophecies, dreams, ecstatic revelations—all of these had a claim to be Christian forms of divination, and they differed, as Augustine believed, not so much in kind from pagan divination, as in degree.
For the demons could reveal hidden information and even make predictions, as he admitted, that sometimes were true. His De divinatione daemonum , written in the early fifth century, explains how that could be, for example because demonic bodies were very light and fast. But they are far below the height of prophecy that God effects through the holy angels and prophets. Origen appears to have held a similar position. But if indeed the Jews had no consolation in the form of knowledge of the future, then being led by the human appetite for knowledge of the future, they would not have paid any attention to their own prophets on the grounds that they had nothing divine in themselves, and would not have accepted a prophet after Moses, nor recorded their words.
Rather, they would on their own have changed to the divinations and oracles of the nations, or would have tried to establish some such thing also among themselves. What he predicted and how he predicted were the same. Our final example is drawn from the preface to an anonymous commentary on Jeremiah.
The third and fourth types, as Ps. The third type includes a natural kind that belongs to animals, such as the fact that ants know when winter is approaching, and an artificial kind, such as the predictions made by physicians, advisers, and ship captains.
The first two types, on the other hand, labeled as spiritual and diabolic, are both prophetic, as the text says, or, as we might say, divinatory. The spiritual kind, he says, is mainly practiced by those who are holy, although sometimes not, as in the case of the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar Daniel 2 and Pharaoh Genesis 41 , and the prophecies of Balaam Numbers 22—24; —9; , 16 , and Caiaphas John — Spiritual prophecy is also said to occur not only when the prophets are asked, as it is with pagans, but also on their own.
And spiritual prophecy has as its purpose a reform of character and repentance, unlike pagan prophecy, which is mainly about property, diseases, and wars. Furthermore, while pagan prophecy requires instruments, special places, and proper times, and pagan prophets speak for money, spiritual prophecy is free of all of this. As its name indicates, it is operated by servants of the devil. It responds to questions, requires special conditions, and costs money.
But despite being far inferior to spiritual prophecy, demonic prophecy was still classified as prophecy. It was not so different that it needed a different name. In the second century CE the dream interpreter Artemidorus had classified diviners along a similar spectrum. Those who cast horoscopes received a less robust endorsement.
At the other end of the spectrum were necromancers and those who divined from knucklebones, sieves, and other common objects. But even so, Artemidorus did not apply a different name to such figures.
Rather, he attacked them precisely because they appeared as diviners to others, and therefore constituted a threat to his own profession. And in that way, the category of prophecy replaced the category of divination. If we were to examine, instead of the Christian prescriptions discussed here, the actual divinatory practices in which Christians engaged, we would find a very high level of continuity between classical and early Christian methods of divination.
A few kinds would have been impossible for Christians—for instance, those requiring animal sacrifice or performed through or at the shrine of a pagan divinity—but most kinds were not, including both the inspired types that could include prophecy and dreams and technical varieties such as astrology.
Contemporary historical and theological evaluations of ancient Christian views of divination and prophecy should be at least as willing as our sources to describe the performance of many forms of divination or prophecy as Christian. Doing so would allow us to examine the division between prophecy and divination as a subject of ancient debate and disagreement, but not necessarily as a meaningful or reliable template for modern scholarship.
Rahlfs and R. Hanhart, ed. Ivar A. Specialty Products. Catalogs, Flyers and Price Lists. Open Access. Open Access for Authors. Open Access and Research Funding. Open Access for Librarians. Open Access for Academic Societies. About us. Stay updated. Corporate Social Responsiblity. Investor Relations. Review a Brill Book. The prominence of prophets such as TB Joshua of Nigeria and Immanuel Makandiwa of Zimbabwe has triggered debates on the nature of prophets and prophecy.
Through a socio-historical and reception historical analysis, this article contends that there are two major characteristics of prophets, that is, the ability to make accurate predictions and the ability to confound nature and normalcy by manifesting unrivalled power through healing and other activities. These characteristics are observable in the activities of Zimbabwean prophets both pioneers such as Masowe, Marange, Mutendi and contemporary ones like Makandiwa.
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