WHERE ARE THE PROPHETS TODAY?

 Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

You think prophets are gone? Not so in some Christian groups. I recently learned that Ellen G. White (d.1915), the co-founder of the Seven Day Adventists, was regarded as a “prophetess.” Bishop D.T. Tonne of the Elijah Prophet of Fire Ministries International is identified online as a “prophet.” Similarly, Russell M. Nelson Sr. is the 17^th and current president as well as the prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Who is a prophet? A prophet by definition is a mouthpiece of God, a human medium capable of receiving and transmitting a verbal message from the divine. Prophecy is an ancient phenomenon in the Near East, where we find a number of references to people who claimed that they received the word of God and shared this message with other people. They went by different names, including: muhhu in Babylonia, apilu in Mari (of Syria) and navi in ancient Israel. Some of them were simple diviners, others acted as social critics. Some were attached to sanctuaries, others roamed alone. They were men and women. Their language is at times banal but often impressive. They spoke up at temples but also in the market places.

Examples are plentiful: an unknown prophet of Akkad looked forward to the day when “the country will live safely….the people will have abundance” (ANET, 606). The Jewish prophet Amos (8^th cent. BCE), preached in the northern kingdom of Israel: “Seek good and not evil that you may live…Hate evil and love good and establish justice in the gate” (5:14-15, JPS). Micah (8^th cent. BCE) expressed his hope in Jerusalem that people “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war” (4: 3, JPS). First Isaiah (8^th cent. BCE) looked forward to the day when God “will hold up a signal to the nations and assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth” (11: 12, JPS).

Ancient prophets usually shared their messages verbally and, later on, scribes turned them into written texts, often ex post facto.

In the New Testament, both John the Baptist (Mat 11:9-11) and Jesus (Acts 3:22) are called prophets.  In the Quran, Mohammad is viewed as one. Even though Mohammad accepted Jesus and the biblical prophets as legitimate, Christians do not view Muhammad as a prophet and Jews do not consider Mohammad or Jesus as prophets.

How does one know if a prophet is legitimate or not? In Jewish history, not everyone was accepted as a legitimate prophet. Many were in fact declared false. The book of Deuteronomy, for example, tells us that “if a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the oracle does not come true, that oracle was not spoken by the Lord” (Deut.18:22). That prophet is false. During the reign of King Jehoshaphat of Judah (870-846 BCE), “a lying spirit (fell) in the mouth of the prophets” (I K 22: 23). The prophet Ezekiel attacked “the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit.” (13:3-4). In the NT, Jesus warns of false prophets “who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7: 15).

During the medieval times, the concept of prophecy came under heavy criticism among major Jewish philosophers, because divine revelation was becoming more and more problematic and philosophically untenable. Thus, for instance, even though Saadia Gaon (d. 942) of Egypt defended the old concept of prophecy as verbal revelation from God, others, like Abraham Ibn Ezra (d.1167) of Tudela, Spain  and Moses Maimonides (d.1204) of Cordoba, Spain argued that when the prophets spoke up, they used their own reason and imaginative powers.  

We do not know when prophecy ended in ancient Israel. According to the Talmud, “After the last prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi died (about 5^th cent. BCE), the Divine Spirit of prophetic revelation departed from the Jewish people, and they were still utilizing a Divine Voice, which they heard as an echo of prophecy” (Yoma 9b). On the other hand, Seder Olam Rabba ,30, a rabbinic text that deals with chronology, places it at the time of Alexander the Great (d.323 BCE). The Jewish historian Josephus (1^st cent CE) still speaks of “false prophets” during the Roman period (Wars 6/5/2). It must have been a slow process.

Today, for all practical purposes, we live in a post-prophetic era. Except for very few examples in the Christian world today (see above), no human being is given the title of “prophet” anymore. Today, it is almost impossible to ascertain who has received “the word of God,” and how. Now, at best, we talk about wise people or charismatic individuals who can speak with a commanding voice on major social, political  and religious issues, not because they received verbal messages from the divinity but because of the forceful arguments they can muster when they speak up. We pay attention to them and often follow their teachings. They are our modern teachers and guides.