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So is the church's attitude about it. What We Mean by Prophecy. SHARE tweet email print. Subscribe to continue reading. Subscribe Already a subscriber? Unlock This Article for a Friend To unlock this article for your friends, use any of the social share buttons on our site, or simply copy the link below. Share This Article with a Friend To share this article with your friends, use any of the social share buttons on our site, or simply copy the link below.
His De divinatione daemonum , written in the early fifth century, explains how that could be, for example because demonic bodies were very light and fast. But they are far below the height of prophecy that God effects through the holy angels and prophets. Origen appears to have held a similar position. But if indeed the Jews had no consolation in the form of knowledge of the future, then being led by the human appetite for knowledge of the future, they would not have paid any attention to their own prophets on the grounds that they had nothing divine in themselves, and would not have accepted a prophet after Moses, nor recorded their words.
Rather, they would on their own have changed to the divinations and oracles of the nations, or would have tried to establish some such thing also among themselves. What he predicted and how he predicted were the same. Our final example is drawn from the preface to an anonymous commentary on Jeremiah. The third and fourth types, as Ps. The third type includes a natural kind that belongs to animals, such as the fact that ants know when winter is approaching, and an artificial kind, such as the predictions made by physicians, advisers, and ship captains.
The first two types, on the other hand, labeled as spiritual and diabolic, are both prophetic, as the text says, or, as we might say, divinatory. The spiritual kind, he says, is mainly practiced by those who are holy, although sometimes not, as in the case of the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar Daniel 2 and Pharaoh Genesis 41 , and the prophecies of Balaam Numbers 22—24; —9; , 16 , and Caiaphas John — Spiritual prophecy is also said to occur not only when the prophets are asked, as it is with pagans, but also on their own.
And spiritual prophecy has as its purpose a reform of character and repentance, unlike pagan prophecy, which is mainly about property, diseases, and wars.
Furthermore, while pagan prophecy requires instruments, special places, and proper times, and pagan prophets speak for money, spiritual prophecy is free of all of this. As its name indicates, it is operated by servants of the devil. It responds to questions, requires special conditions, and costs money. But despite being far inferior to spiritual prophecy, demonic prophecy was still classified as prophecy.
It was not so different that it needed a different name. In the second century CE the dream interpreter Artemidorus had classified diviners along a similar spectrum. Those who cast horoscopes received a less robust endorsement. At the other end of the spectrum were necromancers and those who divined from knucklebones, sieves, and other common objects. But even so, Artemidorus did not apply a different name to such figures.
Rather, he attacked them precisely because they appeared as diviners to others, and therefore constituted a threat to his own profession. And in that way, the category of prophecy replaced the category of divination.
If we were to examine, instead of the Christian prescriptions discussed here, the actual divinatory practices in which Christians engaged, we would find a very high level of continuity between classical and early Christian methods of divination. A few kinds would have been impossible for Christians—for instance, those requiring animal sacrifice or performed through or at the shrine of a pagan divinity—but most kinds were not, including both the inspired types that could include prophecy and dreams and technical varieties such as astrology.
Contemporary historical and theological evaluations of ancient Christian views of divination and prophecy should be at least as willing as our sources to describe the performance of many forms of divination or prophecy as Christian. Doing so would allow us to examine the division between prophecy and divination as a subject of ancient debate and disagreement, but not necessarily as a meaningful or reliable template for modern scholarship.
Rahlfs and R. Hanhart, ed. Ivar A. Heikel, ed. I am indebted to Prof. Bernhard Rehm and Georg Strecker, ed. Cicero, De divinatione 1. Arthur Stanley Pease, M. Tulli Ciceronis de divinatione libri duo Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, , 70—74, —53, —17, , Augustine, Sermones de Vetere Testamento For details, see William E.
Augustine, De divinatione daemonum 6. True prophets are consistent in their prophecy while false prophets change their words to fit the situation of the moment. AJOL and the millions of African and international researchers who rely on our free services are deeply grateful for your contribution. Your donation is guaranteed to directly contribute to Africans sharing their research output with a global readership.
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