"Prophetic Judaism"

• In Event: Realia and Rulers in Jewish Antiquity

Abstract

We speak of “Rabbinic” Judaism and on that linguistic model Gabrielle Boccacini has proposed looking for traces of “Enochic” Judaism. This presentation argues that the Second Temple period should be dubbed the era of “Prophetic” Judaism. That is, sources from that time indicate that the Biblical prophets had a central role in shaping Jewish identity then, and Jews looked especially to the prophets for guidance.

The presentation will survey the sources, from Ben Sira and the second half of Daniel, through the Dead Sea Scrolls to Josephus. I propose that the key to appreciating the role of the prophets is provided by 1QpHab ii.9-10. The prophets were the ones [אשר] בידם ספר אל את כל הבאות על עמו וע[ל עדתו]: “by [whose] hand God enumerated all that is going to come upon his people and up[on his congregation].” That is, the prophets were an accurate guide to understanding past events and to knowing what would happen in the future.

How did the prophets attain this authority? One part of the answer is that the Jews of antiquity read the prophets differently than we do. Where we see two or three prophets in the Book of Isaiah, who lived centuries apart, each reacting to the events of their times, they saw only one, who lived in the eighth century. They took the accurate reflection of events at the time of Cyrus in “Second” Isaiah as proof that Isaiah of the eighth century was a true prophet. The same was true of the second half of Daniel, whom they dated to the Babylonian exile, but whose “prophecy after the fact” narrated events in Jerusalem at the time of Antiochus IV. These evaluations of Isaiah and Daniel as true prophets, whose visions had come true, appear in Josephus.

A second factor in establishing “Prophetic Judaism” was the role of millennial expectations, so dominant at the time. Many millennial movements throughout history have turned to the prophets and to pesher type interpretation of the prophets in order to confirm their conviction that events prove that the end is at hand.

Author

• Albert I. Baumgarten, Bar-Ilan University