What is the difference between prophecy and divination

It will be argued that it makes a difference whether the mediator between the Divine and the audience is a diviner or a prophet and that this change in the mediation of the communication allowed the synthesis between Law and Prophets and thus enabled a crucial phase in the development of the OT.

In most cultures two basic forms of divination are usually found: the first being the type that allows direct access to privileged knowledge by means of dreams or different modes of ecstatic experience; while the second type interprets signs as the expression of divine will. Across the ANE and in the OT a whole range of divinatory methods were employed when religious specialists interpreted types of signs that included the following: 8.

Martti Nissinen formulated a brief but lucid definition of prophecy in ANE that is also of value when engaging with the modes of prophecy presumed by the OT: "Prophecy.

Due to the overlapping of purpose and practice it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between divination and prophecy and it is the contention of this contribution that prophecy was eventually redefined to put more daylight between divination and prophecy This redefinition of prophecy and the greater juxtaposition with divination seems to be triggered by a growing emphasis on revelation in the OT.

It has been observed that Assyrian and Babylonian texts concerned with divination and prophecy do not state that diviners or prophets provided divinely inspired interpretations - in fact in the neo-Assyrian period "competing interpretation were of such concern that the kings began to work out their own explanations. There are several instances in the OT where knowledge of the will of the Lord was sought by means of divinatory practices, such as the use of the Urim and Thummim in Lev , but in a collection of different divinatory practices are strongly rejected.

In vv. Prophecy is now modelled on Moses, from the tribe of Levi and the brother of Aaron the first priest, who becomes the spokesperson of the Lord and "subject to the regulation of Torah. It is striking that "physical and relational proximity of Moses and Yhwhis an important theme in Deuteronomy" and that Moses is the ultimate prophet due to his face-to-face relationship with Yhwhaccording to Deut The book of Deuteronomy considers the Torah to be "all-important as a means of knowing Yhwh's will for Israel" and that "sets up various types of offices of divination that serve as a foil to the discussion about prophecy that follows" in Ever since the Enlightenment the concept of "revelation" has been scrutinised extensively and cannot be presupposed as a given anymore.

The attempts to establish coherence between revelation and human understanding as well as human rationality have become one of the major items on the agenda of current theological reflection. Stephen Sykes is correct when he observes that "Revelation is not a supernaturally guaranteed premise for theology but a disputed part of theology itself. As a religious concept "revelation" has strong roots in the Judeo-Chris-tian tradition and as such aims to describe essential elements of biblical religion, but it is by no means unique within the ANE.

A good example can be found in the Psalter - in the first strophe vv. Horst Dietrich Preuss provides a brief but insightful description of revelation in the OT:.

Balaam is used in this contribution as an example of how the religious aspects related to revelation interact and change due to different interpretive frameworks. In response to contradicting evaluations of Balaam in the OT, scholarly opinion has not yet reached consensus about explaining the diverging depictions of the enigmatic seer or diviner.

The Tell Deir 'Alla texts were discovered in near the Jabbok River in the Transjordan area and became well known for containing a description of a seer or diviner called Balaam "who was visited by the gods at night and saw a disturbing vision concerning punishment, resulting in the loss of fertility and life on earth. Despite different reconstructions of the very fragmented plaster texts some agreement has been reached that the texts were written in a language similar to biblical Hebrew but that the dating of the texts vary from the eight century B.

According to Num , Balaam was a non-Israelite seer who obeyed the God of Israel and blessed Israel in four separate oracles despite the Moabite king Balak's request to curse them. Dennis Olson divides Num in the following sections: The non-Israelite Balaam each time responds to the requests by Balak in a most pious manner: "Whatever the Lord says, that is what I must do.

In both the narrative scenes as well as the oracles of Balaam the theme of "seeing" or "not seeing" is repeated again and again.

A climax is reached in this regard when the seer is unable to see the messenger or angel of the Lord standing in front of him.

Balaam is hired by Balak in Deut to curse Israel but God turns the curse into a blessing and according to Horst Seebass this account amounts to "a negative epexegesis of the ass episode in Who was Balaam and what function did he perform? According to Num he practised a form of mantism while Josh uses the concep or "soothsayer" in a pejorative way to describe Balaam as a person who practised divination and who received money from the Moabite leaders for doing so.

The different traditions about Balaam in the OT can be explained by a change in the definition of a true or model prophet as reflected in Deut This supposed juxtaposition of an acceptable seer and unacceptable exorcist does not explain why the exorcist mode of divination still allowed an encounter between God and Balaam resulting in Yhwhmaking a revelation to Balaam 44 Such an event where a diviner or exorcist would function as the spokesperson of Yhwhwould be unthinkable in Deuteronomy and the narratives influenced by Deuteronomic theological presuppositions 45 This redefinition of a prophet in Deut impacted on the evolving understanding of revelation and will be further investigated by scrutinising the dialectic between Law and Prophets.

Louis Feldman established that there was a growing interest in Balaam in Hellenistic times: 47 in the HB lines mention Balaam, in the Septuagint lines and Philo of Alexandria devotes no less than lines to Balaam - all of them negative references to him being a "soothsayer," "sophist" and even a "wizard" that was consumed by "inane wickedness"! Although the relationship between Law and Prophets can be investigated in different ways, special attention will be given to the perspective developed by Eckart Otto who focused on the numerous implications of the impact of scribal scholarship on the canonical formation of the Torah and the Prophets as part of his extensive study on the book of Deuteronomy.

The Pentateuch interpreted Moses as the first scribe who wrote down most of the legal sections of the Torah and who interpreted the laws given at Mount Sinai. According to Otto the written Torah "took over the function of representing God's revelation to Israel" and in the postexilic period the predominantly oral pre-exilic prophecy became literary prophecy employing the same scribal techniques as the authors and editors of the Pentateuch.

The postexilic authors of the Pentateuch were convinced that the "face to face" revelation between God and Moses had ended with the death of Moses and that the only revelation possible was through the interpretation of the Torah. Although the expression "law and prophets" does not occur in the OT as such, attention will be given to the expression "Moses and the Prophets" because its use in the prophetic literature elucidates the relationship between the Law and the Prophets. It is surprising that there are only four references to Moses in all the prophetic material and there are also two references to Moses in the late post-Exilic book of Daniel, in ch.

In Isa 59 the two references to Moses form part of a prophetic prayer during which events that took place during the Exodus are alluded to and it is affirmed that the "holy spirit" of the Lord was upon Moses and that "his glorious arm" was next to Moses - metaphors indicating the holy and mighty divine presence that accompanied Moses.

Jeremiah 60 forms part of the description of a drought that starts in ch. The reference to Moses as leader during the Exodus in Micah 63 forms part of a courtroom scene during which the Lord reminds his people about his gracious acts in the past, such as the Exodus, as part of his case against Israel.

It is of interest to note that this is the only reference to Miriam in the prophetic literature and reminiscent of the postexilic Num Another reference to Moses as a "servant" of the Lord can be found in Mal 64 English where it linked to an exhortation communicated to those who wait for the coming of the Day of the Lord.

The focus falls on the torah of Moses as the servant of the Lord and is amplified by relating it to the decrees and laws or instructions given at Horeb Sinai by God. In the very next verse mention is made of the "prophet Elijah" and this creates an interesting link with Moses the mediator of torah and model prophet with one of the most important prophets of the OT.

Daniel 9 is well known due to the reinterpretation by the angel Gabriel of the enigmatic prophecy in Jer , 12 and of the seventy weeks of years. The focus in this contribution is, however, on the two references to Moses and the law, as well as the mode of revelation that was presupposed by the author of this chapter. The visions in Dan 7 to 12 consist of four literary components: "Chapters 7 and 8 are symbolic visions in the prophetic tradition" and both of these visions are "interpreted to Daniel by an angel.

Christophe Nihan draws attention to the fact that Moses is not explicitly referred to as a prophet in the prophetic literature, although his association with Samuel in Jer might allude to that.

Recent research has considered the possibility that the "Hasmonean role in the shaping of a solidified Hebrew corpus of Torah and Prophets occurred as part of the broader Hasmonean response to the Hellenistic crisis.

Most of the references to Moses and the Torah in the prophetic books can be dated in the period after the Babylonian exile, especially during the Persian period, and form part of the last redaction of the Nebi'im during the process of canon formation. The reinterpretation of the office of the prophet in Deuteronomy 18 as illustrated by the diverging traditions about Balaam, resulted in a much sharper distinction between divination and prophecy.

This distinction impacted on many sections of the prophetic literature and enabled a strong link with Mosaic Torah and other legal instruction reflected in the phrase "law and prophets.

The dialectic between Torah and Prophets does not suggest that prophetic circles consisted of mere unimaginative recyclers of existing tradition. The redefinition of prophets and prophecy stimulated the development from divination to revelation and amounted to a hermeneutical innovation that had far reaching implications for theological reflection in the early Jewish communities and for the formation of the emerging canon of authoritative religious texts in particular.

Every phase of the communication from the p. Unless ancient prophets themselves wrote the records of their performances and this, as a rule, was not expected to be the case, as I have argued elsewhere , reports on the prophets and their messages were written down by others.

There are many answers to the questions of how and why this happened, depending on the function and the purpose of the act of writing in each case. Nothing ended up in written form by accident, and the purpose of a text principally determined what was and what was not written down.

Recording a prophecy may as such have given the reason for the authoring of a text, especially if the text mainly consists of the words belonging to a divine message or gives an account on what a prophetic character had said or done.

In many cases, however, it is evident that the text is not written primarily for the purpose of informing the reader about prophets or prophecies, and the evidence of prophecy comes, rather, as an unintended by-product of a text mainly informing on other matters. Other texts, again, may lay much emphasis on prophecies as part of a narrative context which is a literary construction rather than a report of a prophetic performance that actually took place in real history.

The idea of genre is not a modern invention; genres existed before their conceptualization by modern scholarship. However, emic genres constructed by ancient writers for their purposes should not be straightforwardly equated with the etic genres we construct for our purposes.

In other words: the genre expectations of authors and the readers do not necessarily correspond to each other, especially if the production and reception of a text are separated by a historical and cultural gap. Our genre p. The question of genre is essentially related to the question what can be known. The choice of the genre defines what is included and excluded in a given text; hence genre functions as a decisive filter between the reader and the historical reality.

Prophets and prophecy feature in different kinds of texts which do not answer the same questions, and the information obtainable from each text is dependent on its purpose and genre. Understanding the purpose of the text by recognizing its genre defines the quality of information obtainable from each text and sets limits to the expectations of what can be known.

Chapter 2 attempts to look at the ancient Eastern Mediterranean prophetic phenomenon through the keyholes provided by the fragmentary collection of the written sources at our disposal. All information we have is based on the interpretation of prophecy by other people in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes. This inevitably raises questions concerning their reliability and viability when it comes to their use as documents of the phenomenon of prophecy in the ancient Near East and in Greece: Does the available set of sources sufficiently and reliably represent the different forms and manifestations of ancient Eastern Mediterranean prophecy?

Why are some aspects of this phenomenon so well documented while others remain obscure? Why have so few prophecies been deposited in archives, and whose interests have thereby been served? Are the prophetic utterances transmitted so that they reflect the actual proclamation in concrete situations? If not, what is the role of the transmitters, interpreters, and editors of the prophetic words? Could it be that in some cases written prophecies are not based on actual prophetic performances at all?

Is it possible to reconstruct the very words of the prophets themselves, or is the whole concept of ipsissima verba an anachronistic application of the late notions of originality, authorship, and literal inspiration?

It may turn out that the sources documenting ancient Eastern Mediterranean prophecy very often do not give a satisfactory answer to all these questions. As Seth Sanders writes:. They are intergral parts of their societies and cannot exist without social guidance and support. Smith Smith : emphasis original. Bahrani : 71—4.

Smend : 91—; Schmid Sasson ; Ellis : —3. On the other hand, it is duly recognized, e. For the history of research, see Weippert : —30; Parpola : xiii—xiv. Huffmon; for a full bibliography until , see Parpola : cix—cxii. Fontenrose : and Parke : Recently, Kai Trampedach : 20—1 has expressed doubts about the comparability of Greek and Mesopotamian divination, at least when it comes to mutual influences.

West ; with regard to prophecy, see the more recent contributions of de Jong ; Ustinova ; Beerden ; Marinatos ; M. Flower : —30; Lange , , ; Hagedorn ; Huffmon Schmitt : 1—17; de Jong : —18, : —7; Kitz ; Cancik-Kirschbaum ; Pongratz-Leisten : —68; Barstad : 87—9.

Public representations also trigger mental representations. Bowden : For self-appointed diviners, see Beerden 55—9. Flower : Flower : — Schmitt Some definitions of divination exclude the second type, which is another way of reinforcing this division e.

Beerden Plato, Timaeus [ Tim. Flower : 84— See Anthonioz : 74— For a written canon as a divinatory apparatus, see J. Smith : 36—52; cf. Davies Geller ; Ben-Dov and Horowitz ; Albani Koch : 24—9. A class is polythetic if and only if A each member of the class has a large but unspecified number of a set of characteristics occurring in the class as a whole, B each of those characteristics is possessed by a large number of those members, and if fully polythetic C no one of those characteristics is possessed by every member of the class.

Petersen Hollmann : —1; Maurizio Maul Flower ; Kajava ed. Lampinen : Herodotus 6. Herodotus 2. Herodotus 8.

Lampinen : 64—5, 69, following Parke : —1. Ferrary a, following Robert : Stackert : 55—69; T. The only occurrence without any divinatory connotation is when Saul raves in his house haunted by an evil spirit 1 Sam.

Fischer ; 64—94; Rapp ; of Deborah Judg. Dietrich Prophet Elijah even writes a letter to Jehoram, king of Israel 2 Chr. Amit : The strict contrapositioning of the prophet like Moses with other diviners in Deut. Where in the past theology often claimed a uniform prophetical tradition, a unifying monotheistic movement and a unique message in the Old Testament, comparative religion of Israel has shown a rather great diversity of prophetical personalities, practitioners, genres and practices.

Aejmelaeus ; Stipp ; Bogaert ; the reversed order is argued for by G. Fischer Mark variant reading ; see Grabbe The verb is mostly used for prophetic performances, but sometimes also for other people going out of their wits, e. Note the Old Akkadian masc. The identification with one deity does not necessarily imply that the activity of the prophet in question is restricted to one temple only.

Durand a: —3, — Durand —3, — For the gender aspect of prophesying, see Chapter 8 in this volume. Blum a ; b ; c ; Weippert a : — I ysr [. The name Balaam, son of Beor is fully readable on lines 2—4. I am indebted to Johanna Pajuniemi for drawing my attention to these Egyptian specialists. Smith : 21 emphasis original. Flower : —30; Bremmer : —51; Hagedorn ; Huffmon ; Wyatt Bremmer : — Wenn er ein Ding vor sich sieht, so sieht er auch Gleichheit. Und wie soll ich nun das, was mir das eine Ding zeigt, aud den Fall der zwei anwenden?

Smith : Kindt : Hardwick : 5. Smith : 35; cf. This leads to a methodological muddle and falsifies results. For a study on the transition from oral to written prophecy, see also Schmid ; van der Toorn For qualifications of this definition, see, e. For a similar understanding of Greek prophecy, see Motte How to publish with Brill.

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Description Staff View Search Full Text Description Summary: The article discusses how divination is considered as a pagan counterpart of prophecy, and explores implications for discipleship in the Vietnam as animism continues to be prevalent there.

Topics discussed include occurrences of divination in the Bible; ways in which continuation of prophecy in Israel provides a backdrop for the expectations of the coming Messiah Jesus Christ; and Biblical divination and prophecy in the Bible with respect to Vietnamese culture. Published: Vietnamese Evangelicals and Pentecostalism: the politics of divine intervention by: Le, Vince, et al.