Prophecy in its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives.

• Author: Beckman, Gary
• Position: Brief Reviews of Books

Prophecy in its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives. Edited by Martii Nissinen. SBL Symposium Series, vol. 13. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2000. Pp. xii + 160. $29.95 (paper).

This small volume grew out of sessions of the "Prophecy in the Ancient Near East Group" held during the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in Lahti, Finland, on July 21, 1999, and presents a fair account of the current state of our knowledge of this intriguing topic. After a general introduction by Hans M. Barstad ("Comparare necesse est? Ancient Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy in a Comparative Perspective"), Lester L. Grabbe ("Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy from an Anthropological Perspective") applies insights from the social sciences to the phenomenon of divine messengers. Distinguishing between "spirit mediums," who simply serve as mouthpieces for para-human beings, and "shamans," who actively manipulate spirits, he judges that ancient Near Eastern prophets are best assigned to the former category (p. 18). He also points out difficulties in studying the activities of prophets known through literary texts subject to the rigors of lengthy tradition: How far does the speech attri buted to these figures correspond to their original words (p. 25)?

David L. Petersen ("Defining Prophecy and Prophetic Literature") compares the prophets attested for Old Babylonian Man, first-millennium Assyria, and biblical Israel and finds that their chief common characteristic was their function as intermediaries between humans and the divine (p. 39). Differences in social position, professional designation, and mode of work negate all other proposed similarities.

Herbert B. Huffmon's essay ("A Company of Prophets: Mari, Assyria, Israel") is an insightful discussion of the prophetic vocation in the three ancient Near Eastern societies for which we possess extensive information. He concludes that '[t]he Israelite prophets, individually and cumulatively, played a more important role in Israel than their counterparts in Man or Assyria" (p. 67). Perhaps, but to what extent is this verdict based upon the chance of documentation and discovery?

In "Mesopotamian Prophecy between Immanence and Transcendence: A Comparison of Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian...