\JfSOT 42 (1988) 103-115]

THE END OF PROPHECY:

MO PLAYERS WITHOUT A PROGRAM

Thomas W. Overholt
University of Wisconsin
Stevens Point, Wisconsin 54481, USA

The problem of the 'end of prophecy' has in recent years been a topic
of interest to students of the Hebrew Bible. The dominant opinion on
this matter seems to be that Israelite prophecy came to an end in the
early post-exilic period. At the very least, prophecy was after that
time transformed into something else. Such a view does not seem to
me altogether satsifactory, however, and my intention in this paper is
to move the discussion of the 'end of prophecy' onto somewhat
different ground.
One difficulty with many approaches to the problem of prophecy's
end is that they focus on a search for bearers of a particular social
role, 'classical Israelite prophet'. Since with the possible exception of
Haggai and Zechariah none is to be found in the post-exilic period,
the problem is to determine what became of prophecy. But one might
ask whether the fact that the surviving literature preserves the
utterance of no such prophets means that there were none. Further,
one wonders how to account for the fact that a society which for
centuries had assumed and acknowledged the existence of prophets
could suddenly find itself without bearers ofthat social role.
The approach I intend to take to the problem of prophecy's end
may be illustrated by an analogy. At the theatre, a concert, or an
athletic contest, it is common to be provided with a program booklet,
the function of which is to enable members of the audience to
identify performers by name. But whether one knows these names or
not, the play or concert or game goes on. Even without a program,
there are players. What the title of this paper is intended to suggest is
that in the case of a social process like 'prophecy' there may be no
performance at all, and consequently no identifiable 'prophecy',
104 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 42 (1988)

apart from a conceptual 'program' in the collective consciousness of a

society which allows a given 'performance' to be recognized, and
which, therefore, authorizes it. Even obvious and unavoidable social
roles, such as 'parent', are subject to judgments, based on such
conceptual 'programs', about the competence of individual bearers of
them. Is, for example, an adult observed administering a severe
beating to one of his offspring recognizable as a 'parent'?

I
It seems appropriate to begin with a review of some recent
discussions of the 'end of prophecy'. Inevitably, these have had to
take into account the fact that 'classical' Israelite prophecy seems to
have existed only during and immediately after the period of the
Israelite monarchy. If the prophetic tradition continued at all
thereafter, it was only by virtue of its transformation into something
new. In particular F.M. Cross's elaboration of these ideas has had an
important influence on the subsequent debate. Cross sees prophecy
as coterminous with, and generally functioning as a limitation upon,
the monarchy, both 'offices belonging] to the Israelite political
structure which emerged from the conflict between league and
kingdom'.1 When the kingdom fell, classical prophecy, which for
Cross is 'prophecy sensu stricto\ ceased, undergoing a transformation
into apocalyptic.2 Haggai and Zechariah 'are only apparent exceptions',
a 'last flicker of the old prophetic spirit' at the time of a royal
'pretender', Zerubbabel.3
P.D. Hanson took up this theory about prophecy's transformation
and developed it systematically. His thesis is that 'the rise of
apocalyptic eschatology... follows the pattern of an unbroken
develpment from pre-exilic and post-exilic prophecy', apocalyptic
eschatology being 'the mode assumed by the prophetic tradition once
it had been transferred to a new and radically altered setting in the
post-exilic community'.4 The crucial distinction here is between
prophets, who affirmed history as a suitable context for Yahweh's
activity and understood their task as translating their visions from
the cosmic to the historical-political sphere, and 'visionaries', who
abandoned this 'prophetic task of translation' as a result of
pessimism over their social-historical circumstances.5 The resulting
'polarization' of a vision and pragmatic program signalled 'the
demise of prophecy'.6 The social and historical 'matrix' of this
 OVERHOLT The End of Prophecy 105

demise was 'an inner-community struggle' that raged in post-exilic

Judah, especially during the years 520-420 BCE.7 During this period,
prophecy became 'democratized', with the result that 'the individual
office of the prophet develop[ed] toward a collective office'.8
We can observe that what this finally boils down to is an
evaluation of prophetic figures in terms of the content of their
utterances. Visionaries are said to 'stem in an unbroken succession
from the prophets'.9 How is this so? Presumably, the continuity lies
in their vision of Yahweh's sovereignty.10 But the prophet differs
from the visionary in how he reports his vision: he translates 'the
activities of the divine council into the categories of the historico-
political realm'.11 To speak in this way is the prophet's 'mission'.12
Indeed, prophetic 'activity' is recognizable in the early church, at the
time of the Protestant Reformation, and even today in the struggle of
individuals 'to maintain the vital creative tension between vision and
realism which is the heart of genuine ethical religion'.13 We should
note the implication of this last statement: no preacher of apocalyptic
themes can be a 'prophet'. Probably, no one who is not a Jew,
Christian, or Muslim can be.
Given this emphasis on their utternaces, it is not surprising that
Hanson's concern with the social dynamics of prophecy is limited to
a proposal about how the social status of the visionaries motivated
them to adopt their peculiar theological/interpretive perspective on
events (a perspective which he then evaluates by the standard of pre-
exilic prophecy, especially Isaiah). This leaves open other questions
relating to the social dynamics of prophecy. For example, were there
persons (support groups) within the Jewish community who believed
that these men actually were prophets?
As a recent panel discussion of the topic shows, even when there is
disagreement with Hanson on specifics, there tends to be a consensus
that prophecy underwent a transformation in the post-exilic period.14
E. Meyers, for example, sees a transformation in the direction of
priestly activity and concerns. In a situation where there was 'no
realistic opportunity to reinstate the office of kingship' Haggai and
Zechariah 'presuppose[d] the hegemony of Persian authorities in all
local affairs and never questioned] the appropriateness of the office
of governor or high priest. In Zechariah the high priest is the
principle actor in the drama of the temple's refoundation (3; 6.9-15),
'while the Davidic scion... is relegated to an eschatological status'
(3.8; 4.6b-10a; 6.12). Haggai, who was closer to the rebellions and
106 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 42 (1988)

problems of succession occurring at the beginning of Darius's rule

(522-486 BCE), repeatedly mentions Zerubbabel and 'reflects a more
heightened eschatology' (2.20-23). On the other hand, his exhortation
and use of a priestly ruling (2.10-14) 'presages a new role for the post-
exilic prophet, one that is drawn more and more closely to the
priesthood'.15
In W. Harrelson's view,16 the transformation of prophecy after the
exile is to be seen mainly as an eschatological reinterpretation of
prophetic traditions addressed to a believing community. This allows
him to propose the thesis that 'prophecy in the period following the
return from Babylonian Exile continues to exercise a highly
significant function in the political, social, and religious life of the
Israelite community'. We can, therefore, speak of the end of prophecy
only in the 'limited' sense that we no longer encounter individual
prophets like those of the pre-exilic and exilic periods and that the
collections of material named for these earlier prophets are brought
to completion. Harrelson in fact suggests that
never is prophecy more alive... than when the collections entitled
Isaiah.. .[etc.]... have definitely taken shape and begun to be the
reference-points for a community that wishes to know what the
prophets of Israel have said and taught, or what message God has
to speak through God's servants the prophets.
The collectors of the prophets' words 'did not merely edit them', but
'added to them striking prophecies of their own' (he discusses Isa.
4.2-6; 19.23-25; 35.1-10).
Harrelson's proposition is that if 'prophetic eschatological texts'
added to the collections in the post-exilic period 'offer guidance in
the here and now for a faithful community', 'then prophecy is by no
means at an end'. I take him to be suggesting that until the arrival of
the 'End' (i.e. the consummation of God's work in the world),
prophecy cannot be said to have come to an end, though by the
standards of classical Israelite prophecy it underwent a change in
form: 'once the great prophetic collections are assembled, the
prophetic office consists largely in the interpretation of these
propetic texts'. One virtue of this position is that it does not tie the
definition of 'prophecy' to the specific manifestation of that pheno-
menon. The problem seems to me to be its ambiguity about the
nature of prophetic activity. What separates this type of on-going
interpretation from homiletics practiced by persons making no claim
 OVERHOLT The End of Prophecy 107

to be prophets and not believed by their audience to be such? Would

such persons be performing actions recognizable by their contempor-
aries as those of a prophet?
This situation seems to be ambiguous. Israelite prophecy in its
pre-exilic form apparently disappears, but not entirely! D. Petersen
reviews the evidence for this in a series of 'propositions' about the
end of prophecy. The first of these is that 'there is a radical polemic
against prophetic activity in the Persian period' (cf. Zech. 13.2-6 and
Jer. 23.34-40), which seems a more 'broad-based' and 'generic'
condemnation than had existed before the exile. Second, there is
evidence for a variety of activities during the Persian period which
the various writers define as prophetic (e.g. the Levitical singers in
Chronicles and the prophets and prophetess in Neh. 6.1-14), but
which seem somewhat different from the behavior of pre-exilic
prophets. Third, evidence for literary connections between pre- and
post-exilic prophets indicates both continuity and discontinuity.17
Like others, Peterson identifies the monarchy as 'the political-
religious locus of the prophet as mediator'. To speak of 'the end of
classical Israelite prophecy' means that at some point 'no one uttered
oracles or wrote tracts in the way that Isaiah or Jeremiah had', or at
least no such efforts were accepted by 'the canonical process'.18 At
the end of the monarchy there was a 'transition from classical
prophecy to an organically connected but profoundly different
enterprise'.19 Indeed, prophecy was conceived differently by different
groups within the society.20 In the deutero-prophetic literature, for
example, identifiable individuals functioning as prophets can no
longer be discerned,21 and the oracles depend upon and interpret the
classical prophetic traditions. In Chronicles prophecy is conceived of
as an activity that Levitical singers could perform. His conclusion is
that 'prophecy in the post-exilic period did not develop unilaterally
into apocalyptic'.22
There is an important caveat here: our judgment that prophecy in
the classical Israelite mode came to an end in the period after the fall
of the monarchy is dependent upon knowledge preserved for us by
the canonical process. It is one thing to say that such prophecy was
no longer officially (canonically) recognized, another to say it no
longer existed, and yet another to say that there were no longer any
performers of the prophetic role. As long as classical prophecy is tied
by definition to the monarchy, the first and second of these are
plausible, though not without some ambiguity (Haggai and Zechariah
108 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 42 (1988)

must be understood to be 'a last gasp of classical prophecy').23 The

third is very much open to question.
What we seen in the Hebrew Bible is that one type of prophecy
('classical') has been transformed, sometimes in ways which (by the
standard of pre-exilic forms) look somewhat strange. But this does
not necessarily require us to believe that the phenomenon of
prophecy itself came to an end. As Petersen notes, those post-exilic
groups who denied the existence of prophecy in their own times had
strong motivations for doing so (e.g. the desire 'to protect the past
ideal of classical prophecy from spurious encroachment in the
present', or in the case of the Chronicler the desire to appropriate the
title and features of classical prophecy for Levitical singers).24
Furthermore, he suggests that the deutero-prophetic critique in fact
'established the formative pattern in which prophecy would be
viewed in the future; the return of prophecy either in the form of an
individual or as the spirit of prophecy given to the entire religious
community'.25 Theoretically, for these persons prophecy was still
possible, only not in their present situation.
R. Wilson has also noted the ambiguity involved in speaking about
prophecy's end. After Haggai and Zechariah, no biblical book claims
to be prophetic. Furthermore, late prophetic material is in some
respects different from its pre-exilic and exilic counterparts, e.g. in its
stronger connection with the priesthood. Yet in a later period one
encounters Christian prophecy and Rabbinic materials in which the
teaching priesthood is considered to be spirit-inspired. Though we
tend to understand certain texts from the Hebrew Bible to say that
prophecy had ceased, the Essenes, Christians, and Rabbis obviously
did not read them that way.26
Wilson criticizes Hanson's distinction between visionaries and
priests as being too sharply drawn, arguing that one cannot draw a
direct une from a simgle tradition or movement in Israel to
apocalyptic. Ultimately, the shape of apocalyptic religion and
literature depended on the unique characteristics of each apocalyptic
group.27 One implication I draw from this criticism is that when
dealing with the problem of prophecy's end/transformation, difficulties
are likely to arise when one focuses too much on the content of what
the figures say.
Finally, we may note that J. Blenkinsopp shares this general view
of the development of Israelite prophecy, namely that it 'did not
come to an end during the Babylonian exile, though it did undergo
 OVERHOLT The End of Prophecy 109

rather profound transformations'.28 Among these he lists the

Deuteronomists' making 'prophecy serviceable to their contemporaries
by reading a message of judgment as one of salvation through
judgment', the prophetic subgroup which owed allegiance to
Deutero-Isaiah and which by the time of Trito-Isaiah was on the way
to becoming a sect, prophecy's 'reabsorption into the cult' (Joel,
Chronicles), and the 'eschatological reinterpretation of prophecy' by
persons who did not consider themselves to be prophets (additions to
Joel and Zechariah).29

II
One obvious feature of this discussion has been the emphasis on the
'transformation' of prophecy into something else. Implicit in this
notion is the identification of the phenomenon of'prophecy' with one
of its possible manifestations, the 'classical' prophecy of the Israelite
monarchy. Having adopted 'classical Israelite' as the norm by which
prophecy is to be discussed, questions about the social and religious
status of post-exilic, biblical figures who seem to stand in some
continuity with the prophetic traditions arise as a matter of course.
Nor is it easy to see how instances of authentic prophecy could be
thought to exist in post-biblical times.30
At base what we have is a tendency to define the 'end of prophecy'
as the last visible manifestations of a specific type of prophetic
performance. After Haggai and Zechariah (at the latest), the
tradition shades off into other forms, and such evidence as we have
for this development comes to us shaped by the biases of specific
groups within post-exilic Judean society. And the bias does not end
there, since researchers' own methodological assumptions can shape
their interpretation of the scant data on the 'end of prophecy'.31
D. Petersen32 points in the direction of another approach to this
problem when he suggests that attention to social context may reveal
'givens' which enable prophecy to occur, the absence of which 'might
allow us to speak about a time in which prophecy was not important',
and proposes that we accept as these givens the four 'social
prerequisites of intermediation' outlined by R. Wilson in Prophecy
and Society in Ancient Israel: for intermediaries to be able to function
in a society there must be 'a belief in the reality of a supernatural
power or powers'; there must be the further belief that these powers
can influence affairs in this world and can in turn be influenced by
110 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 42 (1988)

humans; the society has to view intermediaries positively, encouraging,

or at least tolerating, them; and 'social conditions' must be such that
'the services of an intermediary' are required.33
Post-exilic Judaism obviously qualifies on the first two counts. On
the third, Petersen notes that Zechariah 13 and Jeremiah 23 indicate
the presence of at least one group which did not encourage or tolerate
prophetic behavior. As to the fourth, the 6th-5th centuries BCE were
'a period without significant international interference in Syria-
Palestine' during which Yahwistic prophetic activity could be
expected to decline in importance.34 He concludes that 'classical
Israelite prophetic behavior' ended, but veneration of the words of
the prophets continued, agreeing in substance with Wilson that
prophetic support groups metamorphosed into apocalyptic groups.35
In short, prophecy came to an 'end' when prophets lost their base
of support within society. As Wilson has put it, 'There can be no
socially isolated intermediaries'.36 This, I believe, is the key which
allows us to move the discussion onto different ground.
When thinking about the 'end' of prophecy, we need to remember
that prophets were purveyors of a particular message only by virtue
of being performers of a certain recognized and accepted social role.
Their speech was but one aspect of a specific pattern of social
interaction. In previous publications I have proposed a model of how
this social interaction works, a version of which appears in Figure
l. 37 This model seeks to represent the social dynamics of prophetic
activity as a set of interactions among a god (A), a prophet (B), and
the prophet's audience (C). These interactions occur along three
axes: the god's revelation to the prophet (1, 3) and the prophet's
response (2), the prophet's speech to the audience (4, 6) and its
response (5), and direct manifestations from the god to the prophet's
audience (7).38 Any component of this set can occur many times.
I want now to ask the question: What, according to this model of
the prophetic process, would pass as the 'end' of prophecy?
Theoretically, the absence of any element primary to social interaction
(1, 4, 5) would be sufficient to render prophecy non-existent.
However, both prophecy and its 'end' are social phenomena, and the
question needs to be re-phrased to take that reality into account: Of
which element(s) of the prophetic process could it be said that its
(their) absence would necessarily be apparent, and thereby sufficient
to bring prophecy to an end?
 O VERHOLT The End of Prophecy 111

Figure 1

7
# \

/ / / \
/ / / \
*'* __± \
B« 5 C
6 "^
If the problem is phrased in this way, it is clear that we cannot rely
on the interactions along the revelation axis to signal prophecy's end.
Since revelation (1) is in essence a private matter not normally (or
ever fully) observable by persons other than those who are its
recipients, its presence can be chimed even in its absence. Furthermore,
its presence may be attributed even in the absence of such a claim, as
the case of Yali, a social reformer of sorts whose audiences
interpreted his activity as that of an inspired cargo cult leader though
he made no claims along those Unes, shows.39 Elements 2 and 3 are
not structurally necessary for an act of prophecy; element 1 is the
critical component on this axis. On the prophet-audience axis
element 4, the statement of a message from the god to the people, is
theoretically necessary, and its absence would be easily noticed. But
there can be mitigating factors. The audience, for example, can
understand as prophecy that which was not intended to be such (the
case of Yali), leaving the primary A-B-C-B sequence intact. On this
axis 4 is primary, so the absence of 6 (additional proclamations) is
not a reliable signal that there is no prophecy. Element 7 is basically
an enhancer of prophetic activity, and is not necessarily present.
Element 5, feedback from the audience to the prophet, turns out to
be the key. Though a speaker may claim to have received a revelation
from the god and to be a prophet by virtue of proclaiming it, the
failure of the audience to acnowledge, in effect to authorize, this
112 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 42 (1988)

activity means that the A-B-C-B chain is truncated, losing its final
stage. Prophecy comes to an end. But for how long? To what does the
'end' of prophecy refer? In my view it refers in the first instance to
the absence of persons who are acknowledged by members of their
society as performing the role of a prophet. To say that in a given
social context prophecy came to an end is not to deny the theoretical
possibility of valid prophetic activity, but rather to note the failure of
members of that society, at least for the moment, to credit
(authorize) specific instances of prophetic behavior. Within a given
society prophecy cannot be said to come to an absolute end until
such time as the 'social prerequisites' for this type of intermediation
have ceased to exist. Until that happens, prophetic behavior itself
will always (at least potentially) be with us; societal acknowledgment
and toleration of such behavior, however, may wax and wane and
even sometimes disappear altogether. In this respect we can note that
while Zech. 13.2-6 polemicizes against prophetic behavior on the
grounds that those currently indulging in it were speaking falsehood
in Yahweh's name (v. 3), it does not claim that visions themselves
have ceased (v. 4). Similarly, Jer. 23.34-40 seems to acknowledge the
possibility of divine-human communication (w. 35, 37), while
disapproving of current instances of prophetic behavior (w. 34, 36,
38-40).
It must be assumed that within Judaism and Christianity
prophecy has remained a possibility down virtually to the present.
Evidence for this is not difficult to find in the time of Jesus (Mk
8.28),40 the early Church (Montanists), or even in contemporary
America (David Wilkerson's The Vision).41 The conceptual structure
of the faiths allows for its continued existence.
Now, it seems reasonable to assume that if the role of'prophet' is
possible (conceptually available) within a society, some will feel
themselves drawn towards performing it. How, then, are we to
account for the apparent absence of a continuing sequence of
generally accepted performers of this role? The most obvious answer
is society's (periodic) lack of interest in (or hostility toward) the role,
resulting in its performers not being credited with an authentic
performance. That is to say, they may be ignored, or credited with
performing other roles than that which they intend (e.g. preacher,
evangelist, 'crazy person', 'religious fanatic'). The bias of the
audience clearly comes into play. In scholarly and many religious
circles Wilkerson's The Vision is probably either unknown or rejected
 OVERHOLT The End of Prophecy 113

out of hand as a record of prophetic activity (something like the

canonical process is still at work), but this is not the case in all
circles. In response to a question, some of my students suggested it
immediately as an 'obvious' example of comtemporary prophetic
literature. The reticence of the actors themselves may also be part of
the answer. Some may have been reluctant to announce themselves
as prophets, though they have performed, or attempted to perform,
that role. Some, of course, were no doubt unnoticed by those who
have preserved the past for us.
In my view, then, it is not correct to say that Israelite prophecy
ended with the exile, either in the sense that it ceased or that it was
transformed into something else. If my understanding of the social
dynamics of prophecy is correct, we ought to conceive of it as a
continuing potentiality in a given society, based on that society's
particular religious beliefs and past experience. This view allows for
the intermittent appearance of prophets within the society, defining
the conditions under which prophecy can be said to 'end', as well as
begin again. In short, it provides a 'program' which enables us to
identify prophetic 'performance' and, therefore, prophets.

NOTES
1. F.M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1973), p. 223.
2. Ibid.y p. 343. Cross suggests that in EzekiePs oracles, which coincide
with the fall of the monarchy, one can see 'the transformation of classical
prophecy into proto-apocalyptic' (p. 223 n. 15).
3. Ibid., p. 343.
4. P.D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1975), pp. 7-8,10.
5. Ibid., pp. 12, 26; cf. p. 409.
6. Ibid., p. 210; cf. pp. 219-20, 246-47, 354, 406.
7. Ibid., pp. 29, 409.
8. Ibid., p. 69.
9. Ibid., p. 10 n. 8.
10. See, for example, ibid., p. 12.
11. 7&¿f.,p.304.
12. Äitf., p. 406.
13. Ibid., p.31.
14. I refer to the 'Social Roles of Prophecy in Israel Group* at the Society
of Biblical Literature meeting in Anaheim, CA (November, 1985), which
114 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 42 (1988)

featured papers by E.M. Meyers ('The Persian Period and the Judean
Restoration: From Zerubbabel to Nehemiah', forthcoming in the F.M. Cross
Festschrift, Fortress Press), D.L. Petersen (The End of Prophecy: Perspectives
from Deutero-Zechariah and Malachi'), W. Harrelson ('Post-Exilic Prophetic
Eschatology and the End of Prophecy'), and S.B. Reid ('The End of
Prophecy in the Light of Contemporary Social Theory', in K.H. Richards,
ed., SBL 1985 Seminar Papers [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985], pp. 515-23).
R. Wilson responded to the papers.
15. Elsewhere Meyers has written that the 'unique usage of tora in [Hag.]
2:11 demonstrates.. .[that] post-exilic prophecy went hand-in-hand with
priestly concerns and provided the critical linkage between two disparate loci
of society which come together in the Restoration period for a little while but
remain together forever in the history of Judaism, where the sage or rabbi is
the true inheritor of the biblical prophet' ('The Use of tora in Haggai 2:11
and the Role of the Prophet in the Restoration Community', in CL. Meyers
and M. O'Connor, eds., The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in
Honor of David Moel Freedman... [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983],
p. 70). Important to Meyers's view of the transformation of prophecy in the
direction of priestly instruction is the assumption that 'Darius' attempts to
have the laws of conquered Persian territories codified' gave impertus to the
canonical process which ultimately definded as authoritive the collections of
the Pentateuch and Former Prophets. The law occupied center stage; the
great period of prophecy was acknowledged to be in the past. See the
forthcoming 'Anchor Bible' commentary on Haggai and Zechariah 1-8 by
C.L. Meyers and E.M. Meyers.
16. See note 14.
17. See note 14.
18. D.L. Petersen, Late Israelite Prophecy (SBLMS, 23; Missoula:
Scholars Press, 1977), p. 5.
19. Ibid., p. β.
20. Ibid., p. 8; Petersen uses the notion of 'theological streams' in this
context.
21. For example, Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah, Jer. 23.34-40, Zech. 13.2-6,
Joel 3.1-5, Malachi.
22. Ibid., p. 102.
23. Ibid., p. 97.
24. Ibid., pp. 98-100.
25. Ibid., p. 102.
26. See note 14.
27. R.R. Wilson, 'From Prophecy to Apocalyptic: Reflections on the Shape
of Israelite Religion', Semeia 21 (1981), pp. 82-83, 93.
28. J. Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1983), p. 178; cf. p. 188.
29. Ibid., pp. 192, 249-51, 252, 263.
 OVERHOLT The End of Prophecy 115

30. W.S. Towner has addressed this problem ('On Calling People
'Prophets' in 1970', Interpretation 24 [1970], pp. 492-509).
31. See S. Reid, note 14.
32. See note 14.
33. R.R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1980), pp. 28-32.
34. Thus Wilson, ibid., p. 32: 'Even in societies which are supportive of
intermediation in general, intermediaries tend to be forgotten or disappear
when they have no social function'.
35. Cf. Wilson, 'Prophecy to Apocalyptic', and Prophecy and Society,
p. 308.
36. Wilson, Prophecy and Society, p. 30.
37. Cf. my 'Prophecy: The Problem of Cross Cultural Comparison',
Semeia 21 (1981), pp. 55-78; reprinted in B. Lang, ed., Anthropological
Approaches to the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), pp. 60-
82.
38. For example, acts of power or 'miraculous' occurrences judged to be
'supernatural confirmations' of the prophet's authority. Cf. my 'Seeing is
Believing: The Social Setting of Prophetic Acts of Power', JSOT 23 (1982),
pp. 3-31.
39. An account of Yali's activities may be found in Thomas W. Overholt,
Prophecy in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Sourcebook for Biblical Researchers
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), pp. 295-308.
40. Cf. R.A. Horsley, '"Like One of the Prophets of Old": Two Types of
Popular Prophets at the Time or Jesus', CBQ 47 (1985), p. 435-63.
41. D. Wilkerson, The Vision (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1974).
Wilkerson's claims to a prophetic role are implicit, but nonetheless real. In
the 'Introduction' to the book he speaks of a recurring vision which he
experienced during the summer of 1973, and says, 'In spite of my fears and
apprehensions, I can no longer shake offa conviction that this vision must be
published. If I understand divine guidance at all, God has instructed me to
speak out' (pp. 11-12). In addition the text is sprinkled with phrases like, Ί
sense a kind of divine obligation to warn ministers and church organizations... '
(p. 21), and 'The message I have received for all true believers i s . . . '
(p. 29).
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