Truth and Illusion

Themelios, 2019

Despite a number of recent proposals, scholars have yet to reach a consensus regarding what the New Testament prophets were actually doing when they prophesied. In this essay, I attempt to make a contribution to New Testament studies by working towards a definition of New Testament prophecy. I proceed in three steps. First, I survey five different views on the nature of New Testament prophecy. Second, I analyze relevant texts from the New Testament to answer the question: what kind of an activity was New Testament prophecy? Third, I evaluate the arguments made for both limited prophetic authority and full prophetic authority. On the basis of the study, I conclude that prophetic activity in the New testament (1) is a human act of intelligible communication that (2) is rooted in spontaneous, divine revelation and (3) is empowered by the Holy Spirit, so that prophecy (4) consists in human speech or writing that can be attributed to the members of the Godhead and (5) that always carries complete divine authority.

The Master's Perspective on Difficult Passages, 1998

Old Testament Essays 27.2, 2014

Recent research on the formation of the canon of the OT suggests that it is crucial to understand how theological presuppositions concerning divine revelation linked to Moses made the Torah to be authoritative for subsequent traditions of revelation such as the prophets. The early post exilic redefinition of the prophet (Deut 18:15-22) is linked to the introductory rejection of a comprehensive list of divinatory practices (Deut 18:9-14). Diverging depictions of Balaam as diviner and soothsayer are briefly discussed to illustrate the development from an appreciated diviner of divine will (Num 22-24) to a detestable soothsayer who cursed the people of God (Deut 23 & Josh 13 & 24). Finally, some thought is given to how the development from "divination" to "revelation" influenced the process of canon formation in the period after the Babylonian exile. A INTRODUCTION If "revelation" is understood as the "knowledge of God ascribed to a communication of God," then one has reached (or even gone beyond?) the margins of human reason and understanding. 2 Despite the initial word of caution this contribution wants to look more closely at the word pair "Law and Prophets" and it wants to reflect on what effect this combination (Law and Prophets) had on its audience after the Babylonian Exile. To be even more specific: to what extent did the word pair redefine the supposed communication that took place between the Divine, the mediator of the communication (diviner or prophet) and its audience? 3 1 It discusses a theological topic, "revelation," in view of the use of the related concepts of "Law and Prophets" in the OT to honour Prof Herrie van Rooy's valuable research on OT Theology, Deuteronomy, Prophetic Literature and Psalms over many decades. 2 Dale Patrick, The Rhetoric of Revelation in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress , 1999), 7. See also: Paul S Chung, "Revelation and Scripture," in Global Dictionary of Theology. (ed. William A. Dyrness & Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen; Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2008) 758-767. 3 Does religious communication only persuade by making use of rhetorical techniques (consciously or inadvertently) or does persuasion emanate from what takes place between the (divine) speaker and the one being communicated too? According to JL

As OUR UNDERSTANDING of biblical prophecy has increased, there is a growing sense that the custom is linked to the broader religious phenomenon of divination. 1 The difficulty, however, lies in establishing a model that illustrates the nature of this connection. Since prophecy involves human beings, there has been a tendency to treat the procedure in isolation. This has usually, but not always, resulted in comparative studies limited to an examination of similar activities in other cultures , most especially those of Mari, Emar, Ebla, and now Neo-Assyria. 2 I would like to express my gratitude to Professors William W. Hallo and David Noel Freedman for their comments on this article. 1 Among the few scholars who have explicitly acknowledged that prophecy is a form of divination are J.-M. de

This paper explores a distinct aspect of the relationship in biblical prophecy between the sense of sight and the speaking of prophetic utterances. It focuses specifically on those situations in which the prophet’s visual experience has an inspirational function, serving as the raw material from which is drawn an expansive and/or interpretive prophetic speech. Three distinct types of this scenario are considered. The first deals with instances where ordinary physical sight is conceived as playing a key role in the nature of the resultant prophetic utterance, as in Balaam’s encounter with the Moabite king Balaq (Numbers 23–24). The second involves those situations in which the prophet verbalizes the content of his vision in response to the question “What do you see?,” and then recounts an interpretation that springs from some aspect of this description: either a particular quality (e.g. the south-facing pot in Jer 1:13–14); a pun on the actual vocalization of the object glimpsed (e.g. the qayiṣ “summer fruit” of Amos 8:1—compare qēṣ “end” in the following verse); or the metaphorical significance of the vision as a whole (Zechariah, passim). The third category consists of situations in which the prophet speaks in response to a visual prompt that is not physically immediate to the viewer, and thus is envisioned or imagined only in the mind’s eye of the prophet, such as Ezekiel’s prophecies to the mountains of Israel, but uttered in Babylonia (Ezekiel 6 and 36). While these scenarios demonstrate the centrality of the visual component of biblical prophecy, at the same time its significance in these contexts is suppressed, since the prophetic message is properly laid out for its audience only through the verbalization that follows. Thus the evidence suggests that the utterance of artfully interpretive speech, rather than the experience of oracular vision, is the true prophetic gift. On the other hand, however, by tracing the diachronic development of the relationship between prophetic sight and inspired speech, we may posit that over time, increasing emphasis was placed on the prophets’ visionary talents, over against their oratorial capability. This hypothesis in turn permits us to examine how the biblical attestations of this phenomenon are to be situated within the larger world of ancient Near Eastern prophecy generally.

When did prophecy end? Or did it? Divine disclosure is received through the medium of the prophet, but who was the last prophet and what was the " last " scripture? Muslims, Christians, and Jews agree that there must be a termination to the prophetic experience, but while all may agree to the event of a prophetic finale, religious thinkers desperately dispute the details. Based on qurʾanic discourse in relation to preceding and subsequent scriptures and tradition, this presentation offers a theory of religious emergence and the revolutionary challenge it represents to the authority of established religions.