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What unites different divinatory practices is their function in guiding decision-making.
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By
Professor of Old Testament Studies
‘Herrschaftswissen’ and Prophetic Divination
Divination, in its different forms, is one of the key constituents of what Walter Burkert calls the 鈥淣ear Eastern-Mediterranean 办辞颈苍锚 of forms and traditions鈥攚ith local variants, intercultural infiltrations, and some continuous change of trends and fashions.鈥1 Even prophets should be seen as further representatives of the institution of divination, the purpose of which is to make the people, kings, and other rulers in particular, conversant with divine knowledge in a variety of ways.2 Throughout the ancient Eastern Mediterranean, political leadership was divinely sanctioned; all important decisions had to be subjected to the divine will, and the diviners were the professionals who were believed to be able to find it out.
In prophecy, the divine word is allegedly received intuitively, typically in an altered state of consciousness, and this is clearly sets prophecy apart from astrology or extispicy, which are based on observations of physical objects and their scholarly interpretation. This difference is visible also in the social location of diviners of different kind. In Assyria and Babylonia, 鈥渁cademics鈥 such as haruspices, astrologers, and exorcists assumed social roles different from prophets who were not affiliated with literary and scribal education but rather belonged to the context of worship.3 Also in Greece, diviners appeared in various social roles and positions. There is a marked difference between the seer performing divinatory rites before battle, the chresmologue sharing his knowledge of oracles in a Greek city, and the Delphic Pythia living a cloistered life under the aegis of Apollo.4
What unites different divinatory practices is their function in guiding decision-making in the society by means of revealing the divine will. Michael Flower鈥檚 statement concerning Greek diviners can well be generalized:鈥渋f looked at from the point of view of their social function, both the inspired prophet and the learned diviner fulfill the same role in society as intermediaries in the process of communication between the human and divine spheres. Both diviner and prophet are recognized by others in their community as individuals who are qualified to perform this particular social function.鈥5 This function implies much more than mere fortune-telling or predicting the future. Prophets, like other diviners, acted as instruments of divine encouragement and warning, and they were typically consulted in situations of war and crises. Two random examples from less-discussed but important text materials will suffice to demonstrate this.
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A telling example of a divinatory consultation at war involving a prophet is the most recently found document of prophecy, an outlay of copper found among the clay tablets recently discovered at Ziyaret Tepe (ancient Tu拧h坍an) and dating from the year 611 BCE, that is, from the very last days of the Assyrian empire after the fall of Nineveh.6 Just before the battle against the invading Babylonian army, both an augur (d膩gil is蹋s蹋奴ri) and a prophet (尘补丑坍丑坍没) have been paid for their services. The substantial amount of six minas of copper given to the prophet is noteworthy regardless of whether he ever survived the fall of the city to be able to enjoy his riches. Furthermore, the use of two distinctive methods of divination deserves attention: the city in distress needed every divine instruction they could get, and augury may have been used to verify the message delivered by the prophet.7
Another example of the use of prophecy in a different kind of crisis situation can be taken from Claros. Several cities hit by the so-called Antonine Plague that broke out in Asia Minor in 166 CE enquired of the oracle of Claros about the divine will concerning this disastrous disease.8 Among them was Pergamon that, 鈥渁ccording to the resolution of the council and the people of the metropolis of Asia鈥 had sent a delegation to Claros and received an oracle that, while referring extensively to Pergamon鈥檚 local mythology, gives detailed instructions of the rituals with the help of which the pestilence would withdraw from Pergamon 鈥渢o the land of strangers.鈥 This oracle was then engraved on stone plates and put on display in market places and sanctuaries of Pergamon.9
Neither of these two examples presents a case where a king appears as the recipient of the divine word; in Tu拧h坍an, the Assyrian power structures had already collapsed, and in Claros, the enquirer is the city of Pergamon. However, the imperial background of divination is evident in both cases, prophecy at Tu拧h坍an continuing the Neo-Assyrian tradition of royal worship of I拧tar, and Pergamon boasting about recognition as the first city ever to have been elevated to the status of 苍别艒办辞谤辞蝉 (鈥渢he custodian of the temple鈥), a title firmly belonging to the Roman imperial cult.10 Even though the king, hence, was not the only employer of diviners and prophets, the societal function of divination is fundamentally associated with the prevailing power structure, whether the institution of kingship as especially in the ancient Near East, or the city state structure of the Greek world. Both in Greece and the Near East, it can be amply demonstrated that what was believed to be divine knowledge actually influenced the decision-making by virtue of the supreme authority assigned to the divine world; on the other hand, however, it was ultimately the power structure itself that defined and authorized the acceptable sources of divine knowledge.11
The model according to which the divinatory process of communication was understood depends on the underlying theological and political structures. In Greece where the oracular god, especially in the case of inspired prophecy, more often than not was Apollo transmitting divine knowledge from Zeus through the prophet to the enquirers, the position of the addressee鈥攚hether a king, a city council, or a private individual鈥攚as less marked than in the Near East where the idea of (semi-)divine kingship was a widespread tradition. In the Mesopotamian setting, the king was 鈥渢he hub between the social and the cosmic order, and the ideal king was charged with implementing the requirements of civil society as well as securing the cult of and communication with the gods.鈥12 The position of the Near Eastern king as the link between the divine and human worlds made him the prime recipient of prophetic and other oracles; the prophetic word was 鈥渙nly one element in the mix that resulted in particular royal decisions.鈥13 Divination in general was the medium through which the king was kept informed of the divine favors and obligations and the origin and legitimacy of his rule; this is what Beate Pongratz-Leisten aptly calls by the German term Herrschaftswissen (perhaps translatable in English as 鈥渟overeign knowledge,鈥 or 鈥渒nowledge as a means of control鈥).14 It is through prophets especially that the king becomes conversant with 鈥渢he secrets of the gods,鈥15 that is, the decisions of the heavenly council usually proclaimed by the goddess I拧tar.
The prophets function as intermediaries and channels of communication for the divine knowledge necessary for the king and country to live in safety and receive divine advice in times of crisis and uncertainty. Different political structures notwithstanding, the same is true for Greek divination, even though the institution of kingship in Greece played a different and less central role in the divine鈥揾uman communication.
Much of this is easily observable also in the Hebrew Bible where prophets appear as proclaiming the word of Yahweh to kings and authorities, often in political or religious crises; if not more, this shows that the authors and editors of the prophetic and historical books of the Hebrew Bible were well aware of the function of prophecy as Herrschaftswissen. A telling example of this is the decisive role of the prophetess Huldah in introducing the 鈥淏ook of the Law鈥 (sefer hat-t么r芒) as the constitution of the religious reform of King Josiah as reported by the Deuteronomists in 2 Kings 22:14鈥20.16 Moreover, prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as several prophets mentioned in the Deuteronomistic History, not to forget the Chronicles, are repeatedly brought to a direct contact with the kings鈥攎ore, in fact, than is observable in any prophetic document from Mesopotamia. Whether we in each individual case have to make do with a historical description of actual events or, as in most cases, a late reconstruction, all this points to the conclusion, first, that prophecy as an institution had an important divinatory function in the politics of the Judaean kings when the kingdom still existed, and secondly, that this function of prophecy was remembered long after the collapse of the institution of kingship in Jerusalem. For ideological reasons, and in contrast to Mesopotamian and Greek sources, the Hebrew Bible is relatively silent about the significance of other kinds of divination, such as, extispicy, lot-casting, exorcism, or necromancy, but what we have is enough to demonstrate that these, too, were practiced in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.17 Indeed, the biblica elevation of prophecy is the flip-side of the condemnation of other forms of divination associated with idolatry by most biblical writers.
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The clearest difference between the biblical and non-biblical prophecy has often been seen in the minor role or total lack of prophetical criticism in the Near Eastern world (Greece has not played any significant part in this discussion). The prophets in Mari and Assyria, so goes the argument, never proclaim against king and country; unlike the biblical prophets, they are not found making common cause with the poor and underprivileged on ethical and theological grounds. To demonstrate this view, I quote a paragraph from one of the contemporary introductions to the Hebrew Bible, in which the historical connection between the ancient Near Eastern and Israelite prophecy is duly acknowledged, but a fundamental difference is also found:
Against the background of the ancient Near Eastern prophecy, the profile of the individual Israelite opposition prophets becomes high. Comparable radical conflicts between the prophets and the king or the kingdom have not been found so far. The few cases of explicit criticism aim at cultic matters, not at societal or ethical concerns. The massive proclamation of doom, which is distinctive of the pre-exilic (writing) prophets of Israel, is likewise absent. The prophets in the ancient Near East, unlike in Israel, never demonstrate their concern for the people.18
This view is not without foundation, and it is based on recent studies on ancient Near Eastern prophecy, first and foremost on those written by Manfred Weippert and myself.19 However, in the light of the present knowledge of prophetical sources from the ancient Near East, this image of prophecy is no longer fully acceptable. It is true that the plain and direct criticism of Amos and his ilk has few parallels in non-biblical prophetic sources. The social dimensions of the prophecies related to temples, their worship and personnel, notwithstanding, outspoken demands for social justice are rather a rarity in the ancient Near Eastern prophetical documents. Therefore, the role of social criticism in non-biblical prophecy has been considered marginal at the best.20 Nevertheless, there is enough evidence of the critical potential of prophecy in the available documentation throughout the ancient Eastern Mediterranean.
As we have seen above, the Assyrian king had ritual duties belonging to his role as a priest (拧补苍驳没). By the same token, he was the 鈥減erfect man鈥 (et蹋lu gitm膩lu),21 who represented the people under his dominion, if not all mankind, in front of the gods. As the guarantor of the world order, he had to be the first one to comply with divine ordinances. Any imperfection in this respect inflamed divine anger, about which he had to be warned in good time. This was one of the foremost reasons why prophets and other diviners were at the king鈥檚 disposal.22 The prophets鈥攁t least in principle鈥攈ad no personal authority and their eventual criticism did not express their personal opinions. As members of the divinatory apparatus, and especially as mouthpieces of gods, the prophets were able to exhort, warn, and even criticize the king and make direct demands on him鈥攕omething that an Assyrian citizen, or even the king鈥檚 nearest advisor, could not even begin to imagine. In this position, if the prophets did their service for the king (or for the temple) properly, they could not just deliver oracles of salvation. The Assyrian prophets were in a better position than other diviners to criticize the king also because they were probably not directly employed by the palace but rather by temples of I拧tar highly respected by the kings. Moreover, prophets could perform in public, while the results of technical divination were highly classified information.23
Cultic matters can be the subject of critical prophetic voices, and here I will give examples of socio-political criticism. In fact, the critical potential can be found not only in biblical but also in Near Eastern prophecy, and it may have found more prophetic expressions in reality that the scanty evidence at our disposal is able to demonstrate. Thanks to the increasing amount of source material available to us today, we are now in a better position than before to demonstrate how this critical potential is materialized in prophetical sources from both Mari and Assyria.24
The existing evidence of prophetic criticism may appear to us less significant from social and religious points of view. In general, however, the observance of the ritual and social duties cannot be separated from the king鈥檚 righteousness in other matters.25 Both at Mari and in Assyria, the prophetic demands for cultic perfection and social justice were theologically based on the divinely sanctioned position of the king between the gods and his people. Therefore, the criticism of the prophets should not be bagatellized, even though it may appear to us as pedantic or indifferent from the ethical point of view.26 Seemingly minor demands may reflect bigger concerns.
Ideological Foundation
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The elementary affiliation between the institutions of prophecy and kingship is amply documented in the Near Eastern sources available to us. Prophets evidently belonged to the divinatory apparatus consulted by ancient Near Eastern rulers, not necessarily forming a part of the court personnel but rather associated with temples and other cult places. Almost all ancient Near Eastern prophetic oracles are addressed to a king, dealing with royal issues and concerns. Three kings appear as the recipients of prophetic messages in the majority of the extant texts: Zimri-Lim of Mari and Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal of Assyria. Other kings to whom prophecies are addressed include Ibalpiel of E拧nunna,27 I拧me-Dagan of Ekallatum,28 Hammurabi of Babylon,29 Zakkur of Hamath,30 Hamiyata of Masuwari (Til Barsip),31 and an anonymous ruler of Byblos.32
The fragmentary set of ancient Near Eastern sources available provides us only with a rather short list of kings receiving prophetic messages. This may give the impression that the prophets, for most of the time, did not play a significant role, at least when it comes to royal issues. There may be some truth in this impression, but it must be balanced against the provenance of the extant oracles, the lion鈥檚 share of which comes from two major archives, Mari and Nineveh. Taken together, the bits and pieces of our documentation attest to a geographically and chronologically widespread institution that was readily available to kings in Mesopotamia and in the West Semitic world. In the Old Babylonian period, for instance, Zimri-Lim of Mari was not the only king to be addressed by prophets. A couple of letters quoting prophecies from the time of his predecessor, Yasmah坍-Addu, have been preserved.33 His rival and ally Ibalpiel of E拧nunna received prophetic oracles,34 and the letters from Mari inform us of prophecies uttered in different places, from Aleppo to Babylon.35 In one of the letters, Zimri-Lim is informed about a prophet proclaiming at the gate of the palace of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, an oracle of doom addressed to I拧me-Dagan, brother of Yasmah坍-Addu and king of Ekallatum who was in asylum with Hammurabi.36 Of the few West Semitic prophetic documents, only the Zakkur stele says explicitly that the king of Hamath had received prophetic oracles, but even other texts, such as the Mesha stele37 and the Amman citadel inscription,38 may be quoted as indirect evidence of the kings of Moab and Ammon receiving prophetic oracles.39
The institutional affiliation between prophecy and kingship is quite natural when seen in the context of kingship and divination in general: they were one of the media through which the king was kept informed of the divine favors and obligations and the origin and legitimacy of his rule. This was the ideological foundation of the activity of the diviners and the basis of their acknowledgment by the royal court. Not every prophet was regarded as mouthpiece of the god, but the words pronounced by those prophets who enjoyed such a status were appreciated accordingly.
Since the prophets did not address the king as themselves but in the name of the deity, they spoke to the king as the gods do, unencumbered by the courtly phraseology that other diviners were obliged to use in their letters. Prophetic messages begin with formulas like the 鈥淲ord of I拧tar of Arbela鈥 (abat Iss膩r拧a Arbail).40 That the word for鈥渨ord,鈥 amatu (Neo-Assyrian abutu), also means an鈥渙rder鈥漮r鈥渄ecision鈥41 is no semantical coincidence but carries the idea that the word of I拧tar goes back to the ordinance of the divine council. From this position, the prophets were entitled to address the king in different ways鈥攏ot always favorably, as is most often the case, but also in a critical tone, as we shall see below. To use traditional forms of critical categories, the ancient Near Eastern prophecies do not just include Heilsworte (鈥渙racles of salvation鈥) but also Mahnworte (鈥渙racles of admonition鈥) and Gerichtsworte (鈥渙racles of doom鈥); in other words, the prophecies communicate words of support and instruction as well as those of warning, indictment, and judgment.42 Even though only a relatively small number of Near Eastern sources represent the categories of indictment and judgment, they should not be overlooked. The distribution of these categories in the extant documents does not necessarily reflect the actual variety of prophetic proclamation.
Communication between Prophets and Kings
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As important as the prophets were regarded by the ancient Near Eastern kings, or at least some of them, there are only a few records of direct contact between kings and prophets. We may assume that Esarhaddon was there when the prophecies concerning his kingship were spoken on the occasion of his own enthronement ritual.43 One Neo-Assyrian letter in particular gives a hint at royal-prophetic encounters, namely the letter of the well-known Babylonian astrologer Bel-u拧ezib to King Esarhaddon. Bel-u拧ezib, who belonged to Esarhaddon鈥檚 inner circle of scholars, wonders why the king, immediately following his enthronement, has summoned 鈥渕ale and female prophets鈥 (raggim膩nu raggim膩tu) instead of him, in spite of all the services he has done for Esarhaddon during the civil war preceding his rise to power.44
This reference is unique in the ancient Near Eastern sources, and the tone in which Bel-u拧ezib writes about the matter expresses his astonishment and professional jealousy, as if it was exceptional indeed for prophets to be honored with the king鈥檚 summons. It is not entirely certain that we have to do with a face to face rendezvous of the prophets with the king. The 鈥渟ummoning鈥 (r膿拧u na拧没) primarily means employing: the life of a scholar was dependent on the king鈥檚 use of his services and Bel-u拧ezib is furious because Esarhaddon, right at the beginning of his rule, has made use of the prophets鈥 services before consulting the skilled and loyal Babylonian astrologer.
The Mari archives do not report face-to-face encounters of prophets and the king; at best, the prophet may proclaim at the gate of the palace, as does the anonymous prophet of Marduk in Babylon, delivering a message to the I拧me-Dagan, king of Ekallatum who was in asylum with Hammurapi, king of Babylon.45 From the existing sources one gets the impression that while King Zimri-Lim maintained close contact with practitioners of extispicy,46 he was informed about prophecies mostly by go-betweens.47 This may not be the whole truth, however, since the gratuities received by prophets and documented in several administrative texts may have involved an audience in the palace.48 Moreover, the king was supposed to attend the ritual of I拧tar, including the prophetic performances that belonged to the ritual procedure.49 The evidence is too meager to allow conclusions about how often direct encounters between the prophets and the king took place at Mari, but they should not be excluded either. The lack of direct evidence may be partly due to the nature of the encounter: face-to-face encounters between the king and the prophets have probably not left any written traces.50
That the kings heard prophets speaking, perhaps on a regular basis, does not, however, mean that they had personal contacts with prophets in the same way they communicated with their trusted astrologers, haruspices, and exorcists. The available documentation makes it clear that prophets delivered messages from deities to kings and prophecies were appreciated as divine words. However, the kings are not found in direct consultations with them, nor do the prophets feature as advisors to the king in the sameway as the scholars, whose relationship with the king is often a personal one, and many of whom鈥攗nlike the prophets鈥攁re familiar to us as persons, thanks to their intensive correspondence with the kings.51 Among the Near Eastern prophets, there is no one who would stand out as a personality of whom we know anything but some basic data like the name, the domicile, and the title.
The words of the prophets were usually conveyed to Zimri-Lim by the priests of the temples where the prophets were active, by officials from different parts of the kingdom, and by the women of the court, especially by Queen 艩ibtu and other royal ladies such as Inib-拧ina, Zimri-Lim鈥檚 sister, and Addu-duri, his mother.52 The role of royal women in the prophetic process of communication at Mari and in Assyria was significant, and they seem to have served as an important link between non-male prophets and the king. Three out of four personal names of female prophets and the assinnus at Mari known to us are transmitted by female writers.53 Even in Assyria, oracles to Naqia, Queen Mother of Assyria, in which the name of the prophet is extant, are spoken by female prophets.54 All this indicates that the royal women were in closer contact with non-male prophets than the male persons of the court.
Also in Assyria, the kings carried on intensive correspondence with technical diviners and priests55 but not with prophets. The process of the transmission of prophetic messages was different from Mari, however. In Assyria, prophecies were apparently not so often reported in letters of court officials; rather, they were transmitted to the king in reports limited to the oracle proper. In some cases, these reports were deposited in the royal archives.56 This implies a high esteem of prophecies which seem to have been considered to be on par with astrological and extispicy reports.57
Both the oracles proper and the references to them in the royal inscriptions make it plain that the Assyrian kings, at least Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, like Zimri-Lim, received prophecies during their military campaigns. There may have been prophets even at the front,58 but prophecies uttered elsewhere and transmitted to the king by a third party are better documented. The best examples of this are the pertinent letters of Queen 艩ibtu of Mari59 and the Assyrian prophecies formally addressed to Naqia, the king鈥檚 mother.60
The fact that Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal were the only Neo-Assyrian kings not only to record prophetic oracles in their archives but to even mention them in their inscriptions, is probably indicative of their special predilection for prophecy.61 That these kings seem to have been more inclined than their predecessors to lend their ears to prophets does not, however, warrant the conclusion that prophecy was a West Semitic import that only sporadically reached Mesopotamian courts.62 The available source material clearly demonstrates that there were prophets all the time in different parts of the Near East, but it is not enough to indicate how much their political relevance and their role among the diviners varied depending on the king, country, and period of time. In any case, the question arises whether Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal really were the only ones to promote prophecy to the extent that their words were not only filed in the archives but also quoted by the scribes who authored the inscriptions of these two kings.63
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The existing sources indeed give the impression that the activity of prophets, while certainly not restricted to this period only, enjoyed a higher social esteem during the reign of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal than ever before in Assyria. The extant documents from the time of the previous Sargonid kings include no mention of prophets, neither do any documents from earlier periods provide us with information about their existence, save a couple of Middle and Neo-Assyrian decrees of expenditures in which prophets are listed among recipients of food rations.64 If this argument from silence is consistent with the reality, it may be assumed that while the prophets were there all the time, the kings valued them differently in different times.
However, there is more than one side to the matter. The overwhelming majority of the material in the Assyrian archives derives from the reigns of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, while the percentage of the sources from the time of earlier Sargonid kings is modest indeed. In fact, the archives of Nineveh and Mari are by far the most abundant Mesopotamian archives altogether, and it may not be a pure coincidence that it is precisely in these two sets of sources that the extant Mesopotamian prophecies are to be found. The fact that these huge archives include just a few prophetic documents from the decades prior to their destruction, indicates that if prophetic reports were written and even stored up, they were normally not meant for long-time preservation.65 Hence, the small quantity of prophecy in the existing sources is not an accurate indicator of the significance of prophecy any more than the total lack of letters addressed to Sennacherib implies that he had no correspondence.66
While the relative silence of the sources yields only ambiguous interpretations, two arguments remain in favor of the special appreciation of prophecy by the kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. First, only Esarhaddon apparently had prophecies recopied and compiled in collections, preserving them consciously for posterity. Second, the inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, and Sennacherib in all their comprehensiveness make no mention of the prophets. While the Sargonid kings in general鈥攁nd not only Esarhaddon, traditionally regarded as especially鈥渟uperstitious鈥濃攕howed a remarkable interest in omens of different kinds,67 it is clearly observable that Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal refer to divination, including prophecy, more than any of their predecessors in their inscriptions. But even under their rule, the scholars鈥攈aruspices, astrologers, exorcists鈥攁re better represented in the sources than the prophets.
Critical Issues
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The ancient Near Eastern texts provide us with a few examples demonstrating that the king could be addressed in an outspokenly critical tone in prophetic messages. In this essay, I shall discuss texts dealing with the duty of the king to bring about a rightful order (尘墨拧补谤耻尘) in the country.
The Mesopotamian kings could demonstrate their righteousness by promulgating an exemption, (补苍)诲耻谤腻谤耻尘.68 This is what Zimri-Lim is urged to doat Mari by a prophet (腻辫颈濒耻尘) of the god 艩ama拧, who proclaims several demands to the king in the name of the god.69 It is implied in the letter that Zimri-Lim has recently defeated some enemies. Now the god orders the king to send a throne as well as his daughter to the temple of 艩ama拧at Sippar. He should also deliver theasakkum, a portion consecrated to Adad of Aleppo, and give Dagan a present about which another prophet has already spoken. The presents to the principal deities of Mari, Aleppo, and the Babylonian Sippar not only demonstrate the鈥渨ide geographical range of the cultic activity,鈥70 they also symbolize Zimri-Lim鈥檚 divinely sanctioned claim for power鈥 from the rising of the sun to its setting.鈥滷urthermore, Zimri-Lim should send a sword of bronze, and whatever else he has vowed, to King Nergal von H坍ub拧alum, who stood at his side. All these items are presented as favors Zimri-Lim should return after a victorious war to those who have provided him help, human or divine.
艩ama拧has different plans with King Hammurabi of Kurd芒, who has not shown loyalty:71
Another matter: thus says 艩ama拧: 鈥淗ammurabi, king Kurd芒, has [talked d]eceitfully with you, and he is contriving a scheme. Your hand will [capture him] and in [his] land you will promu[lgate] an exemption. Now, the land in [its entirety] is given to your hand. When you take con[trol] over the city and promulgate the exemption, [it sho]ws that your kingship is etern[al].鈥
Hammurapi of Kurd芒 is not yet defeated; hence we have to do with a genuine prophetic promise, according to which Zimri-Lim will dethrone him. The motivation for the 补苍诲耻谤腻谤耻尘 would have been that Zimri-Lim, at the outset of his reign in Kurd芒, establishes justice and order, proving himself a righteous king. Moreover, the prophecy reflects the political hopes for an expansion of Zimri-Lim鈥檚 rule. These hopes turned out to be forlorn, however, since Zimri-Lim was never able to occupy Kurd芒.72
A similar demand, combined with a critical attitude towards the king, can be found in the two letters of Nur-Sin. The longer and probably younger of the letters (*1) is one of the first documents from Mari, in which prophecy was discovered. It was published in 195073 and completed in 1984;74 an up-to-date edition was provided by Jean-Marie Durand in 2002.75
Nur-Sin was the representative of Zimri-Lim in Alah坍tum, a city that Durand has identified with Alalakh.76 Alah坍tum was situated inside the kingdom of Yamh坍ad, the capital of which was Aleppo, but it had been given into the possession of Zimri-Lim by King Hammurapi of Yamh坍ad, the son of his father-in-law.77 The subject matter of the letter is a sacrificial gift (zukrum)78 to be given to the god Adad of Aleppo, and the delivery of an estate (苍颈丑坍濒补迟耻尘)79 to Adad of Kallassu, a place in the vicinity of Alah坍tum. Nur-Sin claims to have written to the king about this matter five times already, obviously without result. Now he tries to convince the king with an oracle (迟锚谤迟耻尘) of Adad, lord of Kallassu, proclaimed by prophets (腻辫颈濒奴). Adad reminds the king that it was he who had restored Zimri-Lim to his ancestral throne, threatening to take away what he had given, if the king fails to deliver the estate. If Zimri-Lim, however, will fulfill his desire, he will give him the land from the rising of the sun to its setting. Nur-Sin adds to this that the estate in question was identified by a prophet with Alah坍tum.
Apparently, Nur-Sin is uneasy about quoting such an uncompromising demand to Zimri-Lim, but he does it on the plea that when he still resided in Mari, he would communicate to the king every prophetic oracle that had come to his knowledge. Even now in Alah坍tum, he will not give any reason to the king to blame him for neglecting this duty. At last, he pleads an oracle of Adad of Aleppo:
[More]over, a prophet of Adad, lord of Aleppo, came [with Abu]-h坍alim and spoke to me as follows: 鈥淲rite to your lord the following: 鈥楢m I not Adad, lord of Aleppo, who raised you in my lap and restored you to your ancestral throne? I do not demand anything from you. When a wronged man or wo[man] cries out to you, be there and judge their case. This only I have demanded from you. If you do what I have written to you and heed my word, I will give you the land from the r[isi]ng of the sun to its setting, [your] land [greatly in]creased!鈥 This is what the pr[ophet of] Adad, lord of Aleppo, said in the presence of Abu-h坍alim. My lord should know this.80
Adad of Aleppo presents himself here as Zimri-Lim鈥檚 father, who helped him to recapture the throne of his earthly father Yah坍dun-Lim after the interregnum of Yasmah坍-Adad, a puppet of 艩am拧i-Adad, the Amorite king of Assyria. This may sound peculiar in the mouth of Adad of Aleppo, who was not one of the domestic gods at Mari. However, Adad鈥檚 self-presentation is well-founded with regard to the historical circumstances and the political ties between Mari and Yamh坍ad.81 Yarim-Lim, king of Yamh坍ad and Zimri-Lim鈥檚 father-in-law, had assisted him in coming to power at Mari,82 and Hammurabi, Yarim-Lim鈥檚 successor, had given him the city of Alah坍tum, which the god now lays claim to.
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The contents of the oracles of the both manifestations of Adad (*1, lines 14鈥28 and 49鈥59), the biblical parallels of which are generally acknowledged,83 are essentially similar. They allegedly derive from several prophets, but may have been formulated by Nur-Sin himself. The main difference between the two oracles is the special emphasis of the latter on the fair judgment of the case of the wronged ones.84 Since Nur-Sin does not specify who the wronged people might be in concrete terms, this oracle has often been interpreted as a general demand for justice. Recently, however, Jean-Marie Durand has been able to demonstrate with new evidence that when Zimri-Lim gained possession of Alah坍tum, the landowners had to leave the city, whereas the鈥渨orking class鈥 (lit. 尘腻谤脓腻濒颈尘 鈥減eople of the city鈥) stayed in the service of the new landlord.85 One can only imagine what kind of a catastrophe this had been for the landowners of Alah坍tum, even though it is not criticized elsewhere in the correspondence of Nur-Sin. On the other hand, Ga拧era, the queen mother Aleppo, had raised objections against Zimri-Lim鈥檚 misuse of power in Alah坍tum. Even though Nur-Sin and other representatives of Zimri-Lim repudiate her accusations, it seems that all this caused dissatisfaction with Zimri-Lim鈥檚 management in Alah坍tum.86
Finding himself between the devil and the deep blue sea, Nur-Sin makes his sixth attempt to convince the king, this time with a moral argument of prophetic origin. He is, however, careful enough not to make any suggestions of his own; he just quotes the prophetic words and shifts the responsibility of interpretation to the king himself, who has to read between lines who the wronged people are.
The basic ideology of the demand transmitted by Nur-Sin becomes conceivable in comparison with another letter of his.87 This letter is already acknowledged as the oldest attestation of the ancient Near Eastern chaosmotif,88 but it also illustrates the royal ideology as the context of prophecy. Nur-Sin quotes here a prophetic oracle, which is not only the subject matter of the letter, but also the reason for its writing:
Speak to my lord: Thus Nur-Sin, your servant:
Abiya, prophet of Adad, the Lord of Alep[po], came to me and said:鈥淭hus says Adad:鈥業 have given the whole country to Yah坍dun-Lim. Thanks to my weapons, he did not meet his equal. He, however, abandoned my cause, so I g[av]e to艩am拧i-Adad the land I had given to him. [ . . . ]艩am拧i-Adad [ . . . ]
(Break)
. . . let me re[st]ore you! I restored you to the th[rone of your father鈥檚 house], andthe weapon[s] with which I fought with Sea I handed you. I anointed you with the oil of my luminosity, nobody will offer resistance to you.
Now hear a single word of mine: If anyone who cries out to you for judgment,saying:鈥淚 have been wr[ong]ed,鈥漛e there to decide his case, an[swer him fai]rly.[Th]is is what I desire from you.
If you go [off] to the war, never do so [wi]thout consulting an oracle. [W]hen [I]become manifest in [my] oracle, go to the war. If it does [not] happen, do [not] go out of the city gate.鈥
鈥漈his is what the prophet said to me. No[w I have sent the hair of the prophet] anda fri[nge of his garment to my lord].
Jack M. Sasson has argued convincingly89 that the oracle quoted here, presumably going back to an actual prophetic performance, served as a model for Nur-Sin when he formulated the oracle of Adad of Aleppo in the letter *1. The oracle has a well-balanced structure, based on the chronological scheme before鈥攏ow鈥攁fter.90 It first reminds him of how he became the king of Mari and underlines that this could only have happened with the help of Adad, who was the city god of Aleppo. In concrete terms this refers to the historical fact that Zimri-Lim could not have replaced 艩am拧i-Adad on the throne of Mari without the help of his father-in-law, King Yarim-Lim of Aleppo. Now he is the anointed king,91 and the mythical weapons used in the combat against the powers of chaos92 are given to him as a token of the legitimacy of his rule.93 The god now demands from him the fair judgment of the people under his jurisdiction on the one hand, and consulting oracles as a sign of his allegiance to the divine world on the other. In other words, he was under the double obligation to do justice on earth and to be observant to the divine word. The relation of the earthly kingship to the divine and the position of the king between the human and the divine worlds as the protector of the cosmic order could not be expressed more clearly.94 Even the role of prophecy in the propagation of this ideology becomes obvious.
The prophecy of Abiya seems like a coronation oracle,95 even though the letter is certainly written later; all letters of Nur-Sin that we have at our disposal are written from Aleppo, and even earlier when Nur-Sin still resided in Mari, Zimri-Lim was already the king. In addition, the attached hair and the garment fringe indicate that Nur-Sin quotes a recently delivered oracle rather than an old prophecy, perhaps drawn from written sources. Nevertheless, it is clear that the oracle refers to the basic duties Zimri-Lim was burdened with when he ascended the throne. As such, the prophecy is a purebred specimen of an oracle of salvation. However, its ideological and moralistic overtones include a potential for criticism. A prophecy like this enables even the king鈥檚 official to remind him of his royal duties and, implicitly, also of his negligence in this respect.
In addition, as Herbert B. Huffmon has emphasized, the royal obligation to do justice to the oppressed is expressed in the oracle of Adad in a way similar to the slightly younger epilogue of the Code of Hammurabi.96 The same ideal can be found already in the Laws of Ur-Nammu (2111鈥2094 BCE);97 in fact, it is one of the most prominent duties of the Mesopotamian kings altogether. The prophecy of Abiya demonstrates that the correspondence between prophecy and law is not a purely biblical idea.
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The two letters of Nur-Sin, written in the eighteenth century BCE, are the only ancient Near Eastern prophetic documents that are quite explicit about the demand for social justice. The ideological motivation for this kind of prophetic proclamation is, however, by no means restricted to Mari but reflects the Mesopotamian royal ideology in general. The extant Assyrian prophecies, admittedly, do not include respective demands, but from this it cannot be concluded that social justice was indifferent to the prophets or even to the Assyrian king himself. The beau ideal of the king all over Mesopotamia was that of 拧ar kitti u m墨拧ari 鈥渒ing of justice and righteousness,鈥 and to live up this ideal, the king must have a special concern for the poor and disenfranchised.98 This is amply demonstrated from the Laws of Ur-Nammu and the Code of Hammurabi through the Neo-Babylonian Advice to a Prince99 down to the literary predictive texts from the Hellenistic period.100 The Neo-Assyrian kings were certainly no exception to this rule, and there is no reason why the Neo-Assyrian prophets would not have reminded the king of his royal obligations and his eventual indifference to them, all the more since no sharp distinction should be made between the鈥渃ultic鈥漚nd the social obligations of the king. That this kind of criticism is not attested in the Neo-Assyrian prophecies preserved to us may be due to the reason why they were filed in the archives, that is, the legitimacy of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal as chosen kings, who had a special relationship with the goddess I拧tar鈥攁nd with her prophets.101 The eventual manifestations of prophetical criticism cannot be expected to have served this purpose.
Even the sparse and somewhat uneven evidence of prophetical criticism from Mari and Assyria demonstrates that the prophets indeed were in the position to criticize the king and to reproach him for neglecting his duties. The prophetical criticism that has found its way to the written documents often rises from concrete concerns of the temples and the king鈥檚 officials. Nevertheless, it is motivated by the theology of kingship, according to which every king was obliged to fulfill the beau ideal of the just and righteous king. Consequently, the criticism is usually aimed at the king鈥檚 comportment and decisions in individual cases, but not against his person or legitimacy.102 In the documents available to us, the critical potential of prophecy is never materialized as an all-encompassing prophecy of doom against kingship as an institution or the own society as a whole; rather, prophecy of doom is proclaimed only to foreign kings and people.103
Prophecy of doom is not unheard of in the ancient Near East. The overwhelming biblical evidence notwithstanding, it is represented by the prophetic vision of a cosmic catastrophe in the plaster text of Deir鈥楢lla, which bears a notable resemblance to the biblical prophecy of doom.104 In general, however, this kind of prophecy is not spoken to the own king or people but to the enemies and foreign powers. At Mari, prophecies were uttered against the kings and people of E拧nunna,105 Elam,106 Ekallatum,107 and Babylon,108 as well as the Yaminite tribes,109 and in Assyria, against Elam,110 Ellipi,111 and the Cimmerians.112
Prophecies against the ruling king of the own country are rare in the extrabiblical sources, although there are two Neo-Assyrian texts demonstrating that prophecy against the king was indeed possible and sometimes uttered quite explicitly. Since I have discussed these texts in depth previously elsewhere,113 a brief reference to them will do in this context.
The so called Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon concerning the succession of his son Assurbanipal and concluded in 672 BCE (*102) includes elaborate lists of people that may be suspected of intrigues against the king. From our point of view it is significant that it mentions also professionals of divination among those who may say an 鈥渆vil, improper, ugly word which is not seemly nor good to Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate.鈥 Not only the technical diviners are pointed out (搂6:79), but also people called raggimu, 尘补丑丑没 and 拧膩鈥檌lu amat ili, that is, specialists in non-technical divinatory methods.114
The Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon takes it for granted that prophecy could also be used against him by his adversaries. This not only speaks for the political relevance of prophecy, it also becomes obvious that all the prophets were neither in the king鈥檚 service nor under his immediate control so that the king needed to be informed by others about their sayings in order to uproot any sign of disloyalty among his subjects. This can be evidenced by the three letters of Nab没-reh坍tu-us蹋ur to Esarhaddon (**115鈥17), in which the writer is doing exactly what the treaty obliges him to do, that is, to announce the disloyal people. He tries to convince the king about a conspiracy that was being planned by people鈥渨ho have sinned against your father鈥檚 goodness and your father鈥檚 and your own treaty, 鈥漚nd quotes an oracle against Esarhaddon that had allegedly been spoken near the city of Harran115 by a slave girl of Bel-ah坍u-us蹋ur. In this oracle, the god Nusku says he will destroy the name and seed of Sennacherib and give the kingship to a person called Sas卯.116 Nab没-reh坍tu-us蹋ur is upset because the king does not seem to take his warnings seriously. In reality, the king probably was well informed about the conspiracy, because it seems that the plot was led by the chief eunuch, and Sas卯, in fact, was the king鈥檚 own man who had infiltrated the conspiracy and kept the king informed about it all the time. We know that Esarhaddon killed many of his high officials in the year 670鈥攑robably the conspirators Nab没-reh坍tu-us蹋ur wrote about鈥攁nd there are good reasons to conclude that Sas卯 was not among them.117
From Mari, no prophecies against the own king have been preserved to us. Nevertheless, there are prophets who take a stand on, and sometimes even a distance from, Zimri-Lim鈥檚 policy. Therefore, a brief look at some well-known texts concerning prophetic discontent with Zimri-Lim suggests itself.
The letter of the governor Itur-Asdu is the first document discovered at Mari in which prophecy was recognized.118 In his letter, Itur-Asdu gives an account of a dream of a man called Malik-Dagan,119 who, according to him,had experienced a dream revelation of Dagan on his way from Saggaratum to Mari. The god had asked him whether the troops of the Yaminites120 had made peace with the troops of Zimri-Lim who confronted them in the upper district of Mari. Upon the negative answer from Malik-Dagan, Dagan had wondered why he had not been given a full account (t蹋膿mum gamrum)121 from Zimri-Lim of his undertakings; had it been otherwise, he would have delivered the Yaminites into the hands of Zimri-Lim a long time ago. Dagan had sentthe man to Zimri-Lim with the message that he should send his messengers with a full account to Dagan, who would then make the Yaminites 鈥渇lounder in a fisherman鈥檚 chest.鈥 Even this divine word, like the above quoted prophecy of Abiya (*2), is structured according to the chronological scheme before鈥攏ow鈥攁fter.122
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The questions of Dagan are best understood as rhetorical.123 It seems that Dagan did not follow the king to the battlefield, so his words were not spoken on the field but rather in his temple at Terqa.124 However, the god knows pretty well that the Yaminites have made no peace with Zimri-Lim鈥檚 troops. The king is given a retrospective reminder of his failure to deliver the report, which is now presented as a prerequisite of the fulfillment of the promise proclaimed at the end of the oracle; there is no criticism of the warfare as such. Obviously, Zimri-Lim had not been obedient enough to consult an oracle of the god in a proper way, including the full account of the confrontation. In concrete terms this would mean that the temple and provincial government was not sufficiently informed about the current political situation, which caused uncertainty about the future. During his first regnal years, Zimri-Lim had to fight on several fronts, and his rule was everything else than established.
A couple of years later, the major-domo Sammetar writes to the king about the following words of Lupah坍um, a prophet (腻辫颈濒耻尘) of Dagan:
Wh[at] if the king, without consulting God, will engage himself with the man of [E拧]nunna!125 As before, when the Yamin[ite]s came to me and settled in Saggaratum, I was the one who spoke to the king: 鈥淒o not make a treaty with the Yaminites! I shall drive the shepherds of their clans away to H坍ubur,126 and the river will finish them off for you.鈥漀ow then, he should not pledge himself without consulting God.127
On the following day, says Sammetar, aqammatum of Dagan of Terqa came to him and said:
Beneath straw water ru[ns]! They keep on send[ing to you] messages of friendship, they even send their gods [to you], but in their hearts they are planning something else. The king should not take an oath without consulting God!128
Having been rewarded with a garment and a nose-ring, the prophetess had gone and delivered her 鈥渋nstructions鈥 (飞耻鈥欌赌檜谤迟耻尘) to Inib-拧ina, the king鈥檚 sister and high-priestess of the temple of Belet-ekallim.
Lupah坍um compares the current situation with the state of affairs at the time when Itur-Asdu wrote his letter. The Yaminites had progressed as far as to Saggaratum, but Zimri-Lim made no peace with them; instead, he defeated them and killed their leaders.129 According to Lupah坍um, the victory of Zimri-Lim over the Yaminites was ascertained by consulting an oracle, and this is what he suggests the king should do even now when King Ibalpiel II of E拧nunna, the former ally of the Yaminites, is willing to conclude a treaty with him. Zimri-Lim fought against Ibalpiel a long time, but in his sixth regnal year (1770) he started to contemplate the possibility of concluding a peace treaty with him.130 However, he had to confront the stern opposition of prophets and some influential people who transmitted their words against the treaty with Ibalpiel鈥攏ot only Sammetar the 鈥減rime minister,鈥 but also Inib-拧ina, the sister and political advisor of the king. She also quotes in her own letter to his brother the oracle of the qammatum who, according to Sammetar, went to her in person. Inib-拧ina鈥檚 version of the oracle renders essentially the same message as Sammetar鈥檚, even though expressed with different words:
She said: 鈥淭he peacemaking of the man of E拧n[unna] is false: Beneath straw water runs! I will gather into the net that I knot. I will destroy his city and I will ruin his wealth, which comes from the time immemorial.鈥 This is what she said to me.Now, protect yourself! Without consulting an oracle do not enter the city!131
The proverbial saying 鈥淏eneath straw water runs鈥 is quoted even in a third letter, written by Kanisan who tells the king what he had heard from his father. According to his version, however, the oracle had been spoken by a male prophet (尘耻丑坍丑坍没尘):
Kibri-D[agan], my father, [wrote to me] in Mari. [This is what] he wrote: 鈥淸I heard] the words [that] were uttered [in the temple of Dagan. Th]is is what [they] sp[oke to me: 鈥楤e[neath straw] water [runs]! The god of my lord has come! He has delivered his enemies in his hands.鈥 Now, as before, the prophet broke out into constant declamation.鈥
This is what Kib[ri-Dag]an wrote [to me]. My lord [should not be negligent in]letting [ora]cles be delivered for his [own] goo[d…].132
Even though this letter does not mention E拧nunna, it is probable that one and the same prophecy is dealt with in all three letters,133 although Kanisan had heard about it only indirectly and did not know by whom it was actually spoken. 鈥淏eneath straw water runs鈥 (拧apal tibnim m没 illak奴) is quoted verbatim in all three letters, but interpreted with different words. This implies that the prophecy is otherwise formulated by each of the authors, who all agree about the point that no treaty should be made with E拧nunna. Moreover, all three authors emphasize the importance of consulting the oracles鈥攏ot necessarily prophetic ones but also other kinds of divination.
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The prophecies against the treaty with E拧nunna are, of course, cited in the letters because their authors need a divine confirmation for their own political views. The pacific intentions of Zimri-Lim are criticized by the authors discreetly but clearly, appealing to the will of the gods expressed in prophecies. In the case of Lupah坍um, Sammetar even refers to the personal view of the prophet, which makes his letter a unique case among the non-biblical documents of prophecy.134
The political responsibility is shifted by the letter-writers to Zimri-Lim himself, and we know that he did not follow the prophetically corroborated counsel of his inner circle, but indeed concluded a treaty with Ibalpiel. The text of the treaty has been preserved and is supplemented by the correspondence of Zimri-Lim鈥檚 agent I拧h坍i-Dagan. These documents show that Zimri-Lim was the lesser party in this treaty; he calls Ibalpiel his 鈥渇ather.鈥135 The correspondence concerning the issue of E拧nunna demonstrates that Zimri-Lim not always listened to criticism against his activities鈥攏ot even the divine word pro-claimed by the prophets. In the case in question, he might have been politically wiser than his critics, however: within a few years (ZL 9 虂 = 1765 BCE) he vasallized several cities, thereby substantially diminishing the political significance of E拧nunna.136 That Hammurabi of Babylon soon came and put an end to Zimri-Lim and his state, is another story.
The precondition for the prophetical criticism was a certain distance between the prophet and the king,137 and this was constituted by the role of the prophet as the mouthpiece of the gods. As representatives of the Herrschaftswissen, which was the decisive function of the divinatory apparatus as a whole,138 the prophets formed an integral part of the ancient Near Eastern society, constituted by the palace, the temples and the domestic sphere.139 They were there to proclaim the favorable relationship (拧耻濒尘耻) between the king and the gods, manifest in the equilibrium of cosmic and social structures. In this role, they were certainly part of the system within which their capacity for transmitting divine words was recognized, but it was precisely this capacity that entitled the prophets also to exhort, warn, and even criticize the king. Unlike other diviners, they could do this in plain terms, because the prophets were expected to transmit the divine word rather than express their personal opinions.
Hence, the Herrschaftswissen enabled the Herrschaftskritik. The critical potential was built in the ideological structure of the Mesopotamian society, and even the patchy evidence at hand demonstrates that it found prophetic expressions, even though our fragmentary knowledge prevents us from understanding the prophetical criticism in the ancient Near East in all its ramifications.
Greece – Rulers and Oracle Sites
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While the institutions of divination and kingship appear as inseparable in the ancient Near Eastern sources, the Greek texts yield a different picture of the relationship of royal and divinatory institutions. Whereas in Mesopotamia, and the Near East in general, diviners were typically scholars educated for the service of kings and/or major temples, Greek (technical) diviners were usually not bound to a specific ruler. This is not to say that the Greek seers did not communicate with kings and other rulers; however, the Greek seer appears as 鈥渁n itinerant specialist, whose body of knowledge was oral, not written, and who was not required to serve a single employer whose fortunes were bound to his own.鈥140 The case of female and male inspired prophets is different from that of itinerant diviners in that they did have a permanent institutional affiliation鈥攏ot to a royal court or another political organization, however, but to the oracular sanctuary to which the consultants, including kings, came to receive divine messages through their mouths.
In Homeric works, kings often consult seers or even appear as seers themselves.141 The typical enquirers of oracles in the major Greek oracle sites, however, were not kings but, rather, the citizens of a city state (Athenians, Spartans, Milesians, and so on), as a collective or as private individuals. This may cause kings to seem less significant as agents of divine鈥揾uman communication in the Greek world (or at least in our source material), but it does not deprive prophecy of its political and socio-religious function as the source of divine knowledge necessary for the appropriate maintenance of society,whether a monarchy or a democracy as in the case Athens.142
It is far from exceptional to find kings as addressees of prophetic oracles even in Greek sources, whether themselves inquiring of the oracle at the site or sending envoys to do it on their behalf. The Delphic oracle in particular is said to have been consulted not only by kings of Greek states such as Iphitos of Elis,143 Lykurgos and Agesipolis of Sparta,144 Aristodemos of Messenia,145 and Damagetos of Ialysos,146 but also kings of more remote lands such as Gyges, Alyattes, and Croesus, kings of Lydia,147 Arkesilaos II and III of Cyrene,148 Tarquin of Rome,149 Ptolemy of Egypt,150 Philip II of Macedonia,151 and the Roman emperors, Augustus, Nero, and Julian.152
Reasons for turning to the Delphic oracle included warfare (Agesipolis, Aristodemos, Philip, Alexander, Julian), plague or sickness (Lykurgos, Tarquin), legislation (Lykurgos), and marriage (Damagetos). Philip of Macedonia is encouraged by the Delphic oracle to conclude a political alliance with Chalkidike: 鈥淚t is better that they become friends and allies according to the terms agreed upon.鈥153
A typically royal concern is, of course, royal succession, consulted at Delphi, for example, by the Cyreneans154 and King Gyges of Lydia who, according to Herodotus, was promised the kingship of Lydia but was also warned that the vengeance of his rivals, the Heracleidai would follow upon his descendants in the fifth generation.155 Philip of Macedonia, as related by the Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, was told at Delphi that his successor, mounting the horse Bukephalos, would rule the whole world;156 Philip鈥檚 son Alexander is identified here by the name of his famous horse, which is indicative of the legendary nature of the narrative. Alexander the Great himself is presented as especially active in seeking advice from oracles, including Delphi where he received encouraging oracles concerning his expedition against the Persians157 and was warned about plots against him in Macedonia;158 and Didyma, whose oracle was revived after a long period of decay 鈥渢o play a part in supporting Alexander鈥檚 cause.鈥159
The oracle of Didyma is also reported to have been consulted by, for example, Croesus of Lydia, Alyattes鈥 son, who, according to Herodotus, tested several oracles to find out how reliable they were (see the next section of this essay);160 Seleukos Nicator who was advised not to go to Macedonia but to stay in Asia;161 and the Roman emperors Diocletian who is said to have been prompted by Apollo to persecute Christians,162 and Julian who, according to Theodoret of Cyrrhus鈥 Church History, sent to 鈥淒elphi, Dodona and the other Oracles鈥 to find out whether he should take the field to invade Persia, receiving a positive answer.163
The Clarian oracles known to us are predominantly proclaimed to cities and individuals. Sources recording the oracle of Claros having been consulted by a Roman emperor have not been preserved; however, there is one inscription found on Hadrian鈥檚 Wall in Britain, reading Diis deabusque secundum interpretationem oraculi Clari Apollonis coh(ors) I Tungrorum 鈥淭o the gods and goddesses, in accordance with the interpretation of the oracle of Apollo at Claros, the first Tungrian cohort.鈥164 The same text has been found in no less than ten other inscriptions from Dalmatia, Pisidia, Sardinia, Galicia, and North Africa.165 The Clarian oracle referred to in these inscriptions has been interpreted as having been received by Caracalla as a reply to his inquiries concerning his illness in 213 CE;166 however, Christopher Jones has argued that all eleven inscriptions are connected with the Antonine Plague in 160s CE,causing Apollo of Claros to issue an oracle concerning the plague, probably upon the consultation of Marcus Aurelius. The remarkable feature of this inscription, besides its wide distribution, is the dedication to 鈥済ods and goddesses,鈥 that is, to any deity worshipped in different parts of the Roman empire, 鈥渋n accordance with the interpretation of the oracle of Apollo at Claros,鈥 implying an exegesis that made the royal oracle pronounced at Claros applicable to local circumstances. As such, the inscription provides important evidence of secondary use of prophecy in the Roman imperial setting.167
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In view of the references mentioned above, the issue of prophecy and kingship is relevant with regard to Greek sources; however, restricting the perspective to kings consulting the prophetic type of oracles reveals only one corner of the use, function, and significance of oracles of different types鈥攊ndeed, the significance of religion鈥攆or Greek writers and societies, which has recently been the object of extensive study.168 In the context of the present work,it makes sense to view the Greek evidence against the background of the Mesopotamian sources, paying attention to some palpable differences between the Mesopotamian and the Greek sources with regard to prophets and kingship.
First, while the documentation of prophecy in the sources from Mari and Assyria presents the ruling king as the primary addressee of divine messages and the main protagonist in the prophetic process of communication, the Greek sources lay more stress on the oracle sites visited and consulted by private individuals, delegations from Greek cities and, at times, also by kings from different parts of the Mediterranean world. This is probably due to differences in the historical development and functioning of the oracle sites. The Mesopotamian and West Semitic centers of prophecy, such as the temples of I拧tar at Arbela and of Dagan in Terqa, had an emphatically national function and seem not to have even attempted to provide services to foreign kings.169 The Greek world boasted a significant number of oracle sites throughout its history, most of which had a local character and, therefore, have left little traces in written documentation.170 However, a few oracles such as Delphi, Didyma, Claros, and Dodona developed into internationally renowned sources of divine knowledge. This is manifest not only in literature but also in archaeologically attested dedications from foreign countries to the respective temples.171
Secondly, the sources reflect differences in political structures: Assyria was an empire, while Greece comprised a patchwork of city states, and this positioned prophecy differently on the political and ideological map of the Assyrian empire compared to that of Classical and Hellenistic Greek world. The written documents of Assyrian prophecy present the prophetic kind of divination not only as an essential part of the universe-maintenance of the Assyrian empire but also as a herald of the state ideology.172 In contrast, the famous Greek oracles, at least in theory, had an authority and legitimacy independent of the kings and city states using their services.173 Greek prophecy never became a royal institution comparable to its Mesopotamian and West Semitic counterparts.
This is not to say that strong socio-religious and economical bonds did not exist between oracles and their patron cities, at Delphi as well as at Didyma (Miletos) and Claros (Colophon). The fates of the city and the oracle were bound together: when, for example, Miletos lost its independence when Xerxes conquered the city in 494 BCE removing the cult statue and transporting the Branchidae priests to Persia, it also lost its oracle.174 Similarly, the functioning of the Delphic oracle was closely connected with the Greek political structure consisting of autonomous poleis, and it began to decline when the nature of political power changed in the wake of Alexander the Great.175
The third difference concerns the way the sources present the process of obtaining oracles. At Delphi and Didyma, prophecy seems to have operated the same way as divination in general, that is, prophecies are presented as answers to questions posed by the consultants. Cases of spontaneous non-solicited prophecy are rather the exception.176 Even oracular responses seemingly irrelevant to any question are usually responses to a person who has inquired of the oracle.177
In Mesopotamian sources, the case is quite the opposite: the vast majority of the texts at our disposal give the impression that prophecies brought to the king鈥檚 notice were not triggered by a question but pronounced spontaneously, mostly in the absence of the addressee. That this is not the whole truth becomes evident from the few texts suggesting that prophetic oracles were indeed solicited by private persons as well as by court members.178 The very meager evidence of such consultations may be due to the simple fact that they left no written documents. It is important to note that the kings, both at Mari and in Assyria, regularly inquired oracles of the binary type by means of extispicy and astrology, and these queries were written down.179 On the other hand, there are not many Mesopotamian records to date in which such a binary question is presented to a prophet,180 neither are the words of the prophets formulated accordingly in any extant source. The existing evidence warrants the conclusion that even in Mesopotamia, prophecies were probably solicited but, unlike in Greece, the prophets were not expected to give answers to binary questions. This, in fact, is one of the reasons why the division between technical and intuitive divination makes sense with regard to Mesopotamian sources, while in the case of Greece, an absolute division of this kind cannot be upheld.181 The historical reasons for this conspicuous difference between Greek and Mesopotamian (or even biblical) divination can only be speculated. If the Greek divinatory techniques formed part of the 鈥渙rientalizing revolution鈥 in the Greek world in the Early Archaic Age, as Walter Burkert surmises,182 it is thinkable that the adaptation of elements of eastern divinatory culture did not result in exactly similar structures.
Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, there is a difference concerning the origin and genre of the source material. The Mesopotamian texts are for the most part primary sources deriving from royal archives, which explains a great deal of their royal focus. Whether we read oracle reports, royal inscriptions, or letters addressed to the king, wefind prophecy representing the voice and the interests of the king and the court. In the Greek sources, the kings communicating with oracles are typically to be found in what Joseph Fontenrose calls 鈥渜uasi-historical responses,鈥 that is, reports of oracular consultations in secondary sources that are not contemporary to the event but may still contain historical information depending on the reliability on the sources used by, say, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, or Pausanias. It is, indeed, quite possible to find historical events recorded in these sources, but what is even more important is that the kings in these texts appear as protagonists serving the needs of the writers鈥 narrative strategies. The voice to be heard here is that of the narrator and his ideology, not that of the historical kings or their ideologists, hence the texts鈥渕ay say more about a history of narrative modes than a history of divination.鈥183
Greece – Prophecy and Narrative Strategies
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In Greek literary sources, the narrator鈥檚 voice is typically distinct from that of the protagonists. This does not mean neutrality or disengagement from the point of view of the narrator, who has the power of defining the ideologies and intentions of his protagonists. An eminently pro-protagonist example can be taken from Callisthenes鈥 account on the massacre of the Branchidae priests and the revival of the oracle at Didyma by Alexander the Great.184 Callisthenes is the most contemporary source concerning Alexander鈥檚 deeds which he chronicled as they unfolded, and much of what he relates is probably based on events that actually took place. The primary objective of his narrative, however, was not to write a disengaged description of events as they happened but, rather, to construct Alexander鈥檚 image as a divinely sanctioned ruler of the world, hence鈥渢he tale of the revival of Didyma tells us more about the creation of Alexander鈥檚 image than about the oracle itself.鈥185 In this case, unlike in Herodotus鈥 account on the Persian wars, there is neither chronological nor ideological distance between the narrator and the protagonist, but the narrator鈥檚 voice is firmly on the protagonist鈥檚 side and in his service.
Herodotus takes clearly more distance from his protagonists, providing a prime example of a secondary use of prophecy in a literary setting created by himself: 鈥渋n his skillful collage of the omniscient voice of oracles, the voice of the similarly omniscient narrator, and the limited perspective of the protagonist, Herodotus manages to build a complex picture of why empires can fall.鈥186 Herodotus鈥 recurrent use of oracles reflects a conviction that they were trustworthy sources of divine knowledge and tended to be fulfilled unless they were misinterpreted, corrupt, or consulted in a faulty manner.187 This, of course, does not mean that Herodotus would only refer to historically 鈥渁uthentic鈥 prophecies in our sense of the word. Rather, prophecy forms an integral element in his symbolic world, necessary for keeping the Greek societies and their policies on the right track; moreover, he used it as the voice of greater authority that he himself could represent with moral or political judgments of his own. This, I believe, can be said whether we prefer to view Herodotus as a 鈥減ious sceptic鈥 or a 鈥減ious believer.鈥188 References to oracles are too many and too important in Herodotus to make him an utmost skeptic, but his use of oracles is much more subtle than a straightforward prediction-fulfillment pattern.
Herodotus refers to oracles especially in his accounts on the Persian wars,189 which he wrote distinctively from the point of view of Greek self-perception vis-脿-vis foreign peoples, whether Persians or others; indeed, the primary motivation for his history-writing has been seen in the idea of a common Greek identity consolidated in the Persian wars.190 This makes his history-writing much more than just an exercise in describing the past; rather, by writing about the past, Herodotus at the same time wrote to his contemporaries. He not only collected oral traditions circulating among his contemporaries,191 he also fashioned his narrative鈥渋n order to give his own particular perspective on the past and hence express his political views.鈥192 This can be demonstrated by his account on King Croesus鈥 testing of oracles.193
Herodotus鈥 account of the rise and fall of Croesus in the first book of his Histories can be read as an extended oracle report, in which his consultations of the Delphic oracle not only mark decisive turns of his career but serve as a prelude and model to the fate of many other rulers who appear later in his work.194 Croesus was at the height of his power but worried about the increasing power of Cyrus鈥 Persia. Therefore, he sent envoys to the most famous oracle sites, including Delphi, Dodona, Didyma, and even the sanctuary of Ammon in Libya, asking the same question of what he was going to do in the hundredth day after the departure of the envoys. Herodotus cannot tell what the other oracles answered, but the Delphic Pythia gave the following answer in hexameter:
I know the number of the grains of sand and the extent of the sea,
And understand the mute and hear the voiceless.
The smell has come to my senses of a strong-shelled tortoise
Boiling in a cauldron together with a lamb鈥檚 flesh,
Under which is bronze and over which is bronze.195
Of all oracles brought to him in a written form, Croesus was only pleased with this Delphic response, especially because he had boiled a tortoise and a lamb in a bronze cauldron after having sent his envoys, and the Delphic Apollo appeared to know that. He did not understand, however, what the readers of Herodotus are supposed to understand: by testing oracles to obtain a propitious answer he himself found pleasing, he did not acknowledge the difference between human and divine spheres and misunderstood the omniscience of Apollo by interpreting the oracle credulously in his own favor. Blinded by his own error, he then misinterpreted the judgment of each of the two oracles that if he should send an army against the Persians he would destroy a great empire196 as referring to Cyrus鈥 defeat and not that of his own. The third inquiry to the Delphic oracle as to how long his monarchy would endure was answered by the Pythia as follows:
When the Medes have a mule as king,
Just then, tender-footed Lydian, by the stone-strewn Hermus
Flee and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be a coward.197
Again, Croesus misinterpreted the oracle by reading it literally and not recognizing that the 鈥渕ule鈥 actually referred to Cyrus who was the progeny of a Persian father and a Median mother. His march to Cappadocia, intended to overthrow Cyrus, led to his own disaster, for which he blamed Apollo and his misleading oracles. He was answered once more by the Pythia who would teach him how the previous oracles should have been correctly understood,and how the end of the reign of his family and the fifth generation was revealed already to his predecessor Gyges鈥攁gain something that the reader of Herodotus knows better than the protagonist of the story.
Herodotus, thus, presents Croesus as a king whose hubris makes him forge this place, not appreciating the dividing line between the human and divine worlds; at the same time, he speaks to his audience about understanding and interpreting oracular language and about the fallible nature of human power.198 And not only that, but the Croesus narrative can also be read as another example of his making 鈥渦se of the past to encourage his audience to think to contemporary political realities.鈥199 It is probably no coincidence that,immediately after telling about Croesus鈥 misreading of the 鈥渕ule鈥 oracle,Herodotus mentions his inquiry to 鈥渄iscover who the mightiest of the Greeks were, whom he should make his friends,鈥200 with the result that Lacedemonians and the Athenians were the most powerful. This can be read as a telltale sign to the Athenian audience of Herodotus to look at itself in a mirror, not repeating Croesus鈥 misreadings but understanding the whole account on Croesus as a lesson about the disastrous consequences of hubris.
Hebrew Bible: Communication between Prophets and Kings
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Turning now to the Hebrew Bible, it is easy to notice that the communication between prophets and kings is taken as a matter of course. Kings of Israel and Judah, from the first to the last, regularly receive divine words spoken by people designated as prophets. Before the establishment of kingship, prophecy is rarely mentioned in the biblical historical narrative.201 Apart from Deborah in Judges 4:4 and the anonymous prophets in Judges 6:8鈥10 and in Judges 13:6, where the 鈥渕an of God鈥 is actually an angel, prophets are not mentioned in the premonarchical settings of Joshua鈥揓udges, unless prophetic features are found in the activity of characters carrying different titles.202
Many times in the Hebrew Bible kings consult prophets on their own initiative. Kings who actively seek the services of prophets include Saul who looked after Samuel (1 Sam. 9), himself joined a prophetic band (1 Sam. 10:9鈥12), and later turned to prophets, albeit to no avail (1 Sam. 28:6); Jeroboam on the occasions of the destruction of the altar at Bethel and the sickness of his son (1 Kgs 13:6鈥10; 14:1鈥18); Ahab who needs an oracle concerning his joint campaign with Josaphath against Ramoth-Gilead (1 Kgs 22; 2 Chr. 18); Ahasiah, having fallen through a window in his upper chamber (2 Kgs 1); Jehoram, Jehoshaphat, and the king of Edom, planning a campaign against Moab (2 Kgs 3:9鈥20); Ben-Hadad, the sick king of Damascus (2 Kgs 8:7鈥15); Joash at the deathbed of the prophet Elisha (2 Kgs 13:14鈥19); Hezekiah, intimidated by Sennacherib (2 Kgs 19:1鈥34; Isa. 37:1鈥35; cf. 2 Chr. 32:20); Josiah, scandalized by the newly found law book (2 Kgs 22:3鈥20; 2 Chr. 34:19鈥28); and Zedekiah, facing the threat of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 21:1鈥10; 37:3鈥10; 38:14鈥26). When there was no longer a king, the elders of Israel approached Ezekiel (Ezek. 8:1;14:1; 20:1).
Equally as often, the biblical prophets deliver unsolicited oracles to kings, addressing them directly or indirectly: Nathan (2 Sam. 7:4鈥17, 12:1鈥14; 1 Chr. 17:3鈥15) and Gad (1 Sam. 22:5; 2 Sam. 24:11鈥19; 1 Chr. 21:9鈥19) to David; Ahiah to Jeroboam (1 Kgs 11:29鈥39); Shemaiah to Rehoboam (1 Kgs 12:22鈥4;2 Chr. 12:5鈥8); Azariah son of Oded (2 Chr. 15:1鈥7) and Hanani (2 Chr.16:7鈥10) to Asa; Jehu son of Hanani to Baasha (1 Kgs 16:1鈥7) and to Jehoshaphath (2 Chr. 19:1鈥3); Jahaziel son of Zechariah (2 Chr. 20:14鈥17) and Eliezer son of Dodavah (2 Chr. 20:37) to Jehoshaphath; Elijah to Ahab (1 Kgs 18; 21:17鈥29) and to Jehoram of Israel (in a letter; 2 Chr. 21:12鈥15); anonymous prophets to Ahab (1 Kgs 20:13鈥14, 22, 39鈥43); the anonymous 鈥渟on of a prophet鈥 to Jehu (2 Kgs 9:1鈥13); two anonymous prophets to Amaziah (2 Chr. 25:7鈥10, 15鈥16); Oded to Ahaz (2 Chr. 28:9鈥11); Isaiah to Ahaz (Isa. 7:10鈥25) and to Hezekiah (2 Kgs 20:1鈥11), not to mention Cyrus (Isa. 45:1鈥7); Jeremiah to the kings of neighboring kingdoms (Jer. 27:2鈥11), to Joahash, Jehoiachim, and Jehoiachin (Jer. 22:10鈥19, 24鈥30), and to Zedekiah (Jer. 32:3鈥5; 34:1鈥7); Hosea to the royal house (Hos. 5:1); Amos to Jeroboam (Amos 7:10鈥11)鈥攁nd, by analogy, Haggai to Zerubbabel (Hag. 2:20鈥3) and, possibly, Noadiah to Nehemiah (Neh. 6:14).
Viewed from the Near Eastern perspective, the patterns of communication between prophets and kings seem rather familiar. Irrespective of the historicity of each encounter, which in many鈥攊f not most鈥攃ases is doubtful, the array of kings receiving prophetic messages demonstrates that the biblical writers regarded the communication between prophets and kings as a standard procedure. Like the kings of Mari and Assyria, the biblical kings turn to prophets in critical situations, and the prophets deliver oracles of support, instruction, warning, indictment, and judgment to the kings. The sayings of the prophets relate to political, cultic, and private matters, their activity is intensified in times of crises, and they proclaim judgment over foreign nations. Prophets in the biblical narrative, just like ancient Near Eastern prophets, are involved in the investiture of new kings (1 Sam. 9鈥10, 16:1鈥13; 1 Kgs 1:32鈥40, 19:15鈥16; 2 Kgs 8:13, 9:1鈥13; cf. Hag. 2:20鈥3),203 and they keep the kings informed of their duties, legitimacy, and the ideological and theological basis of their power. By and large, the function of prophets as specialists in the Herrschaftswissen in the Hebrew Bible, Joshua鈥揔ings in particular, corresponds to that in the ancient Near East in general.
All these fundamental similarities between the images of prophets and kings in the Hebrew Bible and other Near Eastern sources should be appreciated at their full value, but some significant differences must also be noted. The relationship between kings and prophets seems rather more immediate in the Hebrew Bible. The list of encounters between prophets and kings, to which even Daniel鈥檚 communication with Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Darius (Dan. 1鈥6) should be added, is much longer than can be assembled from the entire Near Eastern documentation. Sometimes biblical kings, like the king of Mari, are only indirectly informed of prophecies (Josiah in 2 Kgs 22; Jehojachim in Jer. 36; the king of Nineveh in Jonah 3), but much more often the communication between prophets and kings in the Hebrew Bible is direct and personal. Jeremiah, with his antagonistic messages, faces some problems at times in this respect, but there are prophets鈥擡lijah, for instance (1 Kgs21:17鈥24)鈥攚ho seem to have no difficulties in approaching the king personally in spite of their aggressive proclamation against him. Indeed, prophets like Nathan (2 Sam. 7:4鈥17, 12:1鈥14) and Isaiah (Isa. 7) conform to the conventional picture of鈥渃ourt prophets鈥漛etter than their Near Eastern colleagues of whom this term is (often derogatorily) used.
Actually, the role of some prophets comes closer to that of the Mesopotamian scholars: not only do they perform divinatory acts that in Mesopotamia would belong to the realm of the exorcists (2 Kgs 20:1鈥11; Isa. 38:1鈥8, 21鈥2), but they also appear as active agents in political decision-making, having direct access to the king (1 Kgs 1:11鈥31; 2 Kgs 19:1鈥7; Isa. 37:1鈥7; Isa. 7; Jer. 38:14鈥28). In these cases, the practice and function of the prophet resembles even that of the Greek seers more than Near Eastern prophets.204
All this makes the role of biblical prophets vis-脿-vis the kings more prominent and independent than can be deduced from any Near Eastern source.Moreover, while the portrait of some of the biblical prophets remains quite as faint as that of the Near Eastern prophets in general, many prophets in the Hebrew Bible stand out as the main characters in the stories written about them. The Hebrew Bible does not provide us with too many details of the life and deeds of Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, or Zephaniah, but a great deal more is said about figures like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea, whose personalities, theologies, biographies, and psychopathologies have, therefore, once been the subject of intensive research.
However, the increasing awareness of the difficulties in reaching historical persons behind the texts has turned scholarly attention away from the prophets as historical personalities to the prophetic books as scribal works and the development of the prophetic tradition in the Second Temple period when the scribal enterprise, for the most part, took place, even though it is probable that written prophecies existed already in the monarchical period.205 This highlights the difference between the Hebrew Bible and the Near Eastern documents, which include several reports on prophetic performances; these, however, are to be found in letters written to the king, not in literary compositions like the stories about prophets included in biblical books.
Hebrew Bible – Prophecy in a Secondary Setting
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In general, the Near Eastern documentation consists of mostly contemporary reports on prophecies delivered to the king himself, while the Hebrew Bible tells stories about the encounters of kings and prophets in a secondary literary setting. In this respect, the biblical evidence of prophecy is well comparable to the Greek evidence discussed above: the voice to be heard is primarily that of the authors of the secondary sources.
Moreover, and partly because of this difference in documentation, the ideological junctures of prophecy and kingship are much more complex in the Hebrew Bible than in other Near Eastern documents. Ideological neutrality can hardly be said to have belonged to prophecy anywhere; in a way, prophets mostly appear as stern supporters of the dominant ideology of each textual corpus, whether biblical or non-biblical. The difference is that, while the Near Eastern sources, as a rule, themselves represent the royal ideology of the kingdom they come from, whether Mari, Assyria, or Hamath, the biblical texts present a more tangled case, again well comparable to Greek literature asa secondary source.
There are enough traces of the 鈥渃lassical鈥 Near Eastern royal ideology in the Hebrew Bible to make it probable that the type of royal prophecy amply documented in Near Eastern sources also existed in Jerusalem. These include the oracle of Nathan in 2 Samuel 7206 and Haggai鈥檚 oracle to Zerubbabel (Hag. 2:21鈥3),207 as well as royal psalms that may have their background in prophetic activity (Pss. 2, 21, 45, 110).208 Especially in Second Isaiah, manypassages resemble the Neo-Assyrian oracles and are likely to utilize language and ideas inherited from traditional royal prophecy.209
On the other hand, the harsh antagonism of many biblical prophets towards kings and kingship is virtually unparalleled in Near Eastern sources, where the king can certainly be criticized, as we shall see later in this essay, but where the criticism never goes as far as to declare the end of the ruling dynasty of the country (cf. 1 Kgs 14:10鈥11, 16:2鈥4; Jer. 22:30; Amos 7:9, 17)鈥攅xcept for one case, reported by Nab没-rehtu-us蹋ur to Esarhaddon as a pseudo-prophecy proclaiming the destruction of the seed of Sennacherib (*115).210 This important piece of evidence shows that even in Assyria, prophecy could be used by oppositional circles against the ruling king, which is not surprising as such. What is noteworthy is that such a document, thanks to the solicitous servant of the king, has been preserved in the Assyrian state archives, where the point of view of the adversaries of the kings is otherwise poorly represented. This raises the question about the origin and motivation of the prophetic opposition against biblical kings.
It is evident that the lion鈥檚 share of biblical texts dealing with kings and prophets do not grow out of the official royal ideology of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, but from a distinct ideological soil, fertilized by oppositional, sometimes theocratic鈥揳nti-monarchical鈥攁nd, to a great extent, post-monarchical ideas. The perspective of the biblical books is neither that of the kings nor that of the prophets, but that of a third party not directly involved in the encounters of kings and prophets but looking at them, and manufacturing them, from a distance, for purposes nourished by other than royal or prophetic concerns.211
This is not to say that no historical evidence of such encounters can be deduced from the Hebrew Bible; a careful diachronic scrutiny may well be able to reveal some authentic cases that actually took place in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the comparative evidence may be helpful in recognizing them. Nevertheless, it remains a problem whether the fragmentary evidence found in the biblical texts, edited by the scribes of the Second Temple period according to their ideological preferences, is enough to enable a reliable historical reconstruction of the relationship between the prophets and the kings. The case of biblical writers is comparable to that of Herodotus discussed above: the authors of the texts, while referring to the past, actually speak to contemporary audiences.
From a historical point of view, the fierce opposition to kings and kingship in the Hebrew Bible may be quite as disproportional as the virtual lack of it in other Near Eastern documents. For the editors of the biblical books, the end of the monarchy was as much a reality as was the monarchy鈥檚 endurance for the scribes of Assyria and Mari, and this certainly had an effect on the general tone of the documents we have at our disposal.212 On both sides, we are dependent on incomplete evidence representing biased views, and this makes the comparison a cumbersome task.
All difficulties notwithstanding, there is enough evidence to warrant the conviction that, in the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, the institutions of prophecy and kingship were affiliated in more or less the same way as is documented by texts from other parts of the Near East. The historical and ideological role of prophets as specialists in the Herrschaftswissen and, thus, an essential part of the royal divinatory apparatus is presupposed by the biblical texts regardless of their dating. This is true especially for the narrative works that describe the kings and their activities, that is, Joshua鈥揔ings213 and, in particular, the Chronicles,214 where the communication between prophets and kings is depicted as more intensive than anywhere else, not to mention the book of Daniel. It is noteworthy that even texts of late origin follow the ancient Near Eastern pattern in reinforcing the fundamental affinity of the institutions of prophecy and kingship.
However, there are also intriguing differences between the images of prophets and kings in biblical and non-biblical texts鈥攆irst and foremost the active and, at times, aggressive engagement of the biblical prophets on the one hand, and their divinatory (and even non-divinatory) functions atypical of other Near Eastern prophets on the other. The roles of biblical prophets are manifold and should not be forced into a harmonized image. There may be historical and sociological reasons for the variety of the roles of biblical prophets. In Mesopotamia, there was a clear division between scholars and prophets, but an overlap of roles is more likely in less differentiated societies like those of Judah and Israel; for example, the priestly lineages of Jeremiah (Jer. 1:1) and Ezekiel (Ezek. 1:3), if historical, probably had implications for their social role and educational background. To a great extent, however, this diversity is without doubt the product of the creativity of the authors and editors of the biblical texts, and some part of it may be due to a secondary 鈥減rophetization鈥 of characters like Samuel215 or, in a different vein, 鈥渕en of God鈥 like Elijah or Elisha. It must be borne in mind that most methods of divination other than prophecy are condemned by the biblical writers, especially the Deuteronomists to whom we owe many of the biblical encounters between prophets and kings. While the existence of the diviners is acknowledged, kings turning to them appear in a dubious light, and the word of God never comes through their activities. In terms of this ideology, there is little room for diviners other than prophets who make the king conversant with the divine will
In comparison with other ancient Eastern Mediterranean sources, the question arises why the critique of kings is so prominently represented in biblical prophetic literature. It may be, in fact, that scholars have emphasized the social critical aspect to such an extent that many other aspects of the biblical prophecy have been overshadowed. It cannot be denied that in the Hebrew Bible, the prophetical criticism is more abundant and uncompromising than in any extrabiblical source, especially when it comes to the prophecy of doom. Nevertheless, the Mesopotamian sources discussed above demonstrate that no fundamental distinction should be made between cultic and social criticism, which require one another like the two sides of a coin. Moreover, the 鈥渞adical conflicts between the prophets and the king鈥 need to be examined from the perspective of the relationship of Herrschaftswissen and Herrschaftskritik, paying attention to the development of the image of a prophet and the concept of prophecy during the long history of the emergence of prophetic literature in the Hebrew Bible.
The critical profile of the biblical prophecy can be traced back to the development of prophecy as a phenomenon in ancient Israel on the one hand, and to the redactional process of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible on the other. In principle, the critical elements of prophecy could be seen as an original feature of the political and religious culture of ancient Israel and Judah. However, given the nature of the biblical prophetic literature, it is difficult to determine which part of this criticism was expressed in the pre-exilic period, and to what extent it should be attributed to the subsequent designers of the biblical image of prophecy.216
On the basis of the Hebrew Bible, the sole source of the ancient Israelite prophecy, the particularly rigid protest made by the most prominent biblical representatives of social and religious criticism鈥擜mos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah鈥攊s viewed as a herald of a new kind of intellectual leadership that subsequently served as a model for the later, mainly Deuteronomistic construction of prophecy.217 Since, however, the biblical prophecy, ultimately being a scribal phenomenon, is a very selective and fragmentary document of the ancient Hebrew prophecy, the role of these prophetic personalities in their historical environment remains unclear. Therefore, the prophetical criticism in the Hebrew Bible should not only be examined against the background of the pre-exilic societies of Israel and Judah, but also with an emphatic reference to the post-monarchic circumstances that certainly gave no less grounds for it.218 The ancient Near Eastern prophetic sources maintain their relevance to the matter as documents of the interplay of Herrschaftswissen and Herrschaftskritik which undoubtedly concerns even the changing power structures of the Second Temple community. Wherever power is exercised, outspoken criticism is risky;219 even so, there were scribes and prophets, male and female,220 who were not afraid to take chances.
See endnotes and bibliography at source.
Chapter 7 (257-296) from , by Martti Nissinen (Oxford University Press, 11.28.2017), by under the terms of a license.